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> If you are open to the view that conflicts happening today are fast approaching the scale / seriousness of the above two events... I'm open to it, but would

> If you are open to the view that conflicts happening today are fast approaching the scale / seriousness of the above two events... I'm open to it, but would need to see evidence. I'm not even sure what you mean by conflicts in this case, but I cannot think of anything that is on a trend line that would get take it even close to the level of those examples you name. What do we have that's about to become another holocaust, for example? In general most things I can name have gotten noticeably better compared to the eras when those examples took place. Because I agree with the author that attacking an opponent only makes them more entrenched in their position, I disagree with what I take to be the suggestion that, the more important something is, the more you should be willing to attack your opponent over it. The reason is that, unlike war, we can't just kill each other, we have to have to live together at the end of this. So, we should use the least centrifugal tactics we can.

zzzeek 4y ago
> What do we have that's about to become another holocaust, for example? While large scale genocide seems unlikely to be in the near future, the history of the rise of Nazi Germany has many parallels with the current rise of authoritarian governments around the world as well as among the right wing of the US. If there were to be large scale genocide, the conditions that precede such an event are certainly taking place right now within the right wing of the US as well as in authoritarian movements around the world. Here's a take written by an expert on how much Trumpism, right in the middle of his last term, can be compared to Nazism (short answer: not the genocide part, but other than that, a lot): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0... > Politically, the president has certainly taken actions which are in many ways parallel to those of the early Nazi movement. As Evans rightly notes, his propaganda machine would be immediately familiar to Joseph Goebbels’s Nazi office. The recent executive order making administrative law judges political appointees subject to executive power cannot be seen as anything less than an attempt to bring the courts in line with the administration’s political ideology. The Nazis called this “Gleichschaltung,” or coordination, as they sought to co-opt government and private organizations. Even his management style has similarities to Hitler. Like Trump, Hitler was reluctant to surrender too much authority to one subordinate, and so his Cabinet (which he never called) was a den of backbiting and maneuvering underlings seeking the support of Hitler, who was the only one who decided policy. ... > Let’s again be clear: Trump is not Hitler; Hitler was arguably a far more astute politician with deeply held convictions and the means to turn a fledgling democracy into a totalitarian state, something that should be much more difficult here. Nonetheless, these historical comparisons are not hyperbolic and should at least give us pause. however, since this article was written, Trump has paved the way for *much* more astute authoritarians like Ron DeSantis etc. to take his place. A takeover of the US by authoritarian fascists and the end of whatever "democracy" the US has, replaced by sham elections that mean nothing while the government is turned into basically an enemy of the people with the exception of a very privileged few, would be a very serious, world changing event, and they are going for it big time right now.

zzzeek 4y ago

> What do we have that's about to become another holocaust, for example? While large scale genocide seems unlikely to be in the near future, the history of the rise of Nazi Germany has many parallels with the current rise of authoritarian governments around the world as well as among the right wing of the US. If there were to be large scale genocide, the conditions that precede such an event are certainly taking place right now within the right wing of the US as well as in authoritarian movements around the world. Here's a take written by an expert on how much Trumpism, right in the middle of his last term, can be compared to Nazism (short answer: not the genocide part, but other than that, a lot): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/0... > Politically, the president has certainly taken actions which are in many ways parallel to those of the early Nazi movement. As Evans rightly notes, his propaganda machine would be immediately familiar to Joseph Goebbels’s Nazi office. The recent executive order making administrative law judges political appointees subject to executive power cannot be seen as anything less than an attempt to bring the courts in line with the administration’s political ideology. The Nazis called this “Gleichschaltung,” or coordination, as they sought to co-opt government and private organizations. Even his management style has similarities to Hitler. Like Trump, Hitler was reluctant to surrender too much authority to one subordinate, and so his Cabinet (which he never called) was a den of backbiting and maneuvering underlings seeking the support of Hitler, who was the only one who decided policy. ... > Let’s again be clear: Trump is not Hitler; Hitler was arguably a far more astute politician with deeply held convictions and the means to turn a fledgling democracy into a totalitarian state, something that should be much more difficult here. Nonetheless, these historical comparisons are not hyperbolic and should at least give us pause. however, since this article was written, Trump has paved the way for *much* more astute authoritarians like Ron DeSantis etc. to take his place. A takeover of the US by authoritarian fascists and the end of whatever "democracy" the US has, replaced by sham elections that mean nothing while the government is turned into basically an enemy of the people with the exception of a very privileged few, would be a very serious, world changing event, and they are going for it big time right now.