Trump’s administration is dismantling disability rights and education. History has shown this can be a warning sign for all civil liberties
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I don’t think we’re so far gone that we must lose hope.
First: maybe you’re right, and this is the end of everything we’ve ever held dear, the end of all hope forever. But if that’s true, then everything is futile, which gets you nowhere. Plus, nobody can predict the future, so however compelling this idea is, it’s still ultimately a theory. What’s the point of believing a theory that only makes you feel like shit?
Remember that despair only serves the enemy. Moreover, despair is a coping mechanism, an escape - if it’s all hopeless, you don’t have to fight back, so you don’t have to face the possibility of loss and defeat. Whatever happens to you, is this how you want to live?
Lemmy sure loves doomerism, but I’m going to post the facts that currently give me hope anyway:
The Nazis stayed popular because they actually fixed Germany’s economy, at least in the short term. Trump and his cabal of idiots have conclusively shown that they are neither capable of nor interested in this.
They are already massively unpopular. Even in the kinds of business circles that supported Hitler then and would support him today - the fucking Wall Street Journal is criticizing Trump. Bezos’ mouthpiece. Also, y’know, there’s massive rallies and grassroots organizing. Republicans chanting “tax the rich” at their representatives.
We’ve seen stronger, worse governments fall. Argentina’s military junta waged a Dirty War for nearly a decade, using horrific mass torture to totally destroy their political opponents. They succeeded in wiping out all opposition. They even had majority support in the beginning (neither the Nazis nor Trump did). But the junta fell anyway - because they utterly destroyed their economy. Trump probably won’t take a decade to do that.
In summary: hold on to hope, and fight back. You get to choose what that looks like for you. For me, it looks like: stopping my current doomscrolling, doing some chores so I can feel less shitty about how little I’ve done today, then doing some tonglen to deal with my own fear and grief and despair. It won’t end fascism, but maybe it’ll help me become functional enough to organize and build one day.
Good luck, and I hope that if I’m ever strong enough to join those who resist, I’ll meet you among them.
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Fair enough. You can probably tell that I mostly wrote that reply to work through my own despair and apathy.
I’m just personally done with Orwellian imagery. As a faraway threat, the fear it inspires used to motivate me. Now it’s no longer a faraway threat - it’s right here. Now, after learning about ever-worsening mass surveillance, after seeing popular movements crushed, after years of burnout and despair, I find it only makes me want to curl up and die.
In general, I see a lot of people react this way to what’s happening right now. So I try to share what little hope and strength I can muster. Maybe it’ll help someone.
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I don’t expect to be here past that point so I haven’t looked that far ahead lol
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll be gone in the second wave. Either dead from losing access to my cancer medications or dead in an El Salvadorian prison without my cancer medications.
You’re being really negative and focusing too much on your cancer medications. C’mon, think of all the other great ways you could die! All the safety and infrastructure associations are getting dismantled, so you could easily fall down something or get crushed. If you want to focus on medications, have you ever considered forced medical trials??
/s and my heart always hurts for you, but I hope you found a chuckle in there somewhere.
Well that’s your fault for being a lefty terrorist, innit?
Getting cancer and needing money is communism and terrorism and real nazism and all other isms. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and join the 20 or so billionaires in the government or die. Welcome to the American dream, no, trying to wake up from it is also terrorism.
Yeah but have you considered taking more vitamin A?
I wish the media would stop portraying it as left vs right. In the UK, the traditionally left-leaning Labour party that is currently in power are also coming after disabled people. It’s not left-right politics, it’s the predatory billionaire class coming after everyone, taking the easiest targets first.
Their owners want you to focus on the culture war so you won’t notice the class war.
It’s America vs MAGA. Many versus few, while the few try to remove humans from the many.
Maybe corpo media will finally realize that they won’t have any readers/viewers/listeners when there’s no jobs and nobody left to consume their media.
Unlikely though. Status quo is so comfortable until it’s too late.
How is left against accessibility? You say “traditionally”, as well.
I’m Canadian and these terms are not jiving with me.
That was a great watch. Scary how similar the situation in America is now as it was then in Germany. Because there is no one who can save the US, as there are no Allies this time around.
The nazis called them “useless eaters,” as I recall.
“Lebensunwertes Leben” life that doesn’t deserve to live. Only a matter of time until Donnie borrows that one.
He’s already said “Disabled people should just die”, os not far off
They’re coming for everyone, and appear to be doing it in stages. Immigrants and foreigners first. Those with disabilities next. They’re setting the ground work for judges and journalists already. After that it’ll probably be gay people, or possibly black people. Democrats they’ll likely save for last, as there are too many straight, white, male Dems to go after right now. They’re going for the “there’s no one left to speak out for me” method.
Oh gosh, you think? Damn, I wish we had a historical blueprint somewhere that could show us how a modern autocratic regime would go about eliminating their “unwanteds”.
Oh hey turns out we have one, but no one ever considered it could happen in the US because Americans are super special snowflakes who can’t do wrong. And according to that one, Democrats will actually be the first ones in camps. In fact it doesn’t matter if you’re not white or gay or whatever. As long as you support the regime, you will be safe under Trump, but not necessarily his successor.
Step 1 is ALWAYS coming after regime-critics first. Ethnonationalist concerns are second.
That’s the funny thing: you won’t even be safe if you support the regime. Fascism is a constant battle for power on every level and things can turn sour for anyone if they just happen to be on the wrong side even once.
This is exactly why I cannot fathom how some people are choosing to be apathetic about what’s happening to their neighbors. You see that in your neighborhood and you think you have anything to offer that will satisfy the hunger of capitalists turned fascists? Our lives are nothing more to them than another resource to exploit and bleed dry.
And according to that one, Democrats will actually be the first ones in camps.
No, according to that blueprint leftists and progressives will be the first ones in camps. Democrats are controlled opposition and are, in fact, beneficial to the regime. I mean why the heck would they go after a Schumer when they have Bernies to worry about?
Well true, the “far left” will be first, then the “moderate left”, then “people in our own midst who fail the purity test”. I’ve used the term Democrat as an umbrella.
I always see this dude in Burbank rolling around in his power chair with a Trump and American flag sticking off the back. My first thought when I saw this post
Don’t worry, I was assured by many Very Serious Leftists on here that nothing would change under a Trump presidency and that I was just fearmongering.
Tankies all
Some were just garden-variety idiots.
Not all idiots are tankies but…
Maybe that’s just me but I never saw anyone here say anything about that. I’m pretty sure most Very Serious Leftists will tell you that while nothing would change in Palestine, a lot would change in America.
Where Palestine goes, we all go.
Until everyone who really believes in freedom and liberty understands that, good luck out there.
Unfortunately, if you’re seriously interested, I can give you a long list of examples from pre-election arguments I had with people.
Wait what the shit? I wanna see that.
https://lemmy.world/comment/14674367
We were going to end up in the same place whether democrats or republicans won. It’s just more pleasing to you draped in blue instead of red. I thought maybe TDS democrats would finally start fighting for Palestine once Trump came into office, but they instead turned their derangement on the people who don’t want American to fund and safeguard a genocide. Crazy times we are witnessing.
https://lemmy.world/post/12247352/7775795
This, but unironically. No point in electing a different fascist. We have to cut the tumor out of the body.
https://lemmy.world/post/21302719/13116088
My honest feeling, and this is just speculation, but it seemed like it was easier to organize large protest movements under trump than under Biden. Once Biden got into office all the liberals stopped supporting protest and started defending the status quo.
I doubt it will be as easy in a fascist police state.
America is a fascist police state right now
Police reaction to protests was about the same under both trump and Biden
https://lemmy.world/post/21302719/13108379
The point is nobody is saved by electoral politics instead do actual organizing and actions.
https://lemmy.world/post/20205865/12584685
To leftists that have been paying attention to the DNC’s politics and how they serve the American empire, a DNC win is the “bad guys” winning. Just the same way a GOP win would be.
https://lemmy.world/post/20720227/12824714
If you vote for the lesser of two evils, you deserve to get the greater evil.
https://lemmy.world/post/20720227/12824370
Voting for Trump or Harris is the same result. Some rich ass who doesnt give a rats ass about me or my community and just wants to funnel money to their rich friends. Its like two-faces double headed coin. Neither gives a shit. Fuck both parties and their candidates.
My blood pressure is rising looking back through them, and Lemmy.world having its first outages in two weeks isn’t helping me search, so I’ll leave it here.
Some of these are pretty insane, but some also make sense (especially without the benefit of hindsight). “Nobody is saved by electoral politics” for example is, well… that’s exactly what happened.
“Nobody is saved by electoral politics” for example is, well… that’s exactly what happened.
“Nobody is saved by electoral politics” pretty clearly implies “Nobody can be saved by electoral politics, by the nature of electoral politics in this society”, not “Nobody will be saved by electoral politics in this election, because I believe firmly in the inevitable victory of the immeasurably worse candidate to win by 2% of the vote”
As someone who’s been predicting Harris would lose since August, both are true. Also rather than “in this society” it’s “everywhere”. The way I like to put it is that electoral politics is only the victory lap; you go out and do activism work, build a base of support, spread your ideas, create a movement, negotiate with or (metaphorically or literally) come to blows with the establishment and finally ask people to vote for you or your ideas in the election. So with that in mind, nobody anywhere is saved by electoral politics alone because whether you win or lose in the election hinges on doing the actual hard work before and during campaign season. And if you want to ask “do I need to do all this when my idea is that I want to stop fascism”, the answer is I think quite demonstrably yes.
Any group that is different from the Nazi norm will be persecuted by Republican scum.
Here’s the especially fun part: the people deciding ‘norm’ will always find a way to slice the in group into ever smaller wedges.
The Right Wing is a death cult. It eats everything until they’re forced to eat themselves because without an out group to persecute they don’t have any real purpose. So, they just keep making more out group until they’re forced to shoot themselves too.
In Nemesis (comic books) there was a moment when the racist fanatics ran out of groups to persecute, so they just came up with a new target: people with freckles.
Totally true the Right Wing is death cult they come to hurt and kill as many people as possible.
First they came for x and I didn’t speak up.
Then they came for y and I didn’t speak up.
I may be misquoting here but the sentiment and line of thinking is the same.
First they came for the Palestinians…
I hope they start with Texas governor Greg Abbott
Gov Hot Wheels
He’s pretty much the perfect example of pulling the ladder up behind you with his policies about disabled people. You could throw in there the eventual instance of the inner circle turning against him, but that hasn’t happened quite yet.
