4 ms·

Just wait and see what he'll do to the federal workers, before he gets to screw up Mars for good. Maybe replace them with AI, since that's the current hype trai

by petre 2y ago

Just wait and see what he'll do to the federal workers, before he gets to screw up Mars for good. Maybe replace them with AI, since that's the current hype train. Think of full self driving but for government. https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-harassing-federal-workers-x https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-haras...

baggy_trough 2y ago
Firing federal workers and going to Mars is what fascism is?
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  In 1944, before the actual universally agreed upon to be fascist powers were defeated in WW2, George Orwell wrote about how the word had been applied to just about every group imaginable and had already lost any real meaning it might have had: https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e... "It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else." "Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come." "But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."
  - maxfurman 2y ago
    Try Umberto Eco's "On Fascism," it's the best definition of the term I've ever come across
    - HideousKojima 2y ago
      What makes it the "best" in your opinion? Looking at the list, several of the points could be applied to just about every modern nation-state, several easily apply to communist states just as easily as fascist states, and there are several that don't apply to many states that most people would argue are fascist. For example, Salazar's Portugal is widely regarded as fascist but points 9, 10, 11, and 13 (and maybe more) don't really apply to it. It strikes me more as someone trying to give fascism a formal definition as a way to use it as an ideological cudgel in arguments than any attempt to define it based pn observation of multiple actual fascist states and political movements.
- petre 2y ago
  I said wait. Every fascist regime begins with a purge. Then it was the communists, now it might be federal workers? I guess we shall see.
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    Hmmmm, I can't quite put my finger on what it is but I suspect there are some fundamental differences between firing a bunch of bureaucrats from the federal government vs. Hitler's purge of the SA or Stalin's purge of the Soviet officer corps.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Musk doesn't need to do the heavy lifting himself. He can just direct his supporters to violently attack opposition: https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-harassing-federal-workers-x https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-haras...
      - HideousKojima 2y ago
        "Musk can't highlight specific examples of the federal government pissing our tax money down the drain because of how other people who see it might react." You ever heard of a Heckler's Veto?
        threeseed 2y ago
        It is completely legitimate to argue about the use of taxpayer money. It is not legitimate to launch death threats against a woman who (a) had no involvement in the discussion and (b) was not responsible for the role existing.
        HideousKojima 2y ago
        >It is not legitimate to launch death threats against a woman who (a) had no involvement in the discussion and (b) was not responsible for the role existing. Which Musk didn't do? Are all the people who said "Trump is a threat to democracy" and similar statements responsible for the multiple assassination attempts against him?
- cyberax 2y ago
  Firing Federal workers so that ultra-rich people can do whatever they want without any oversight, while at the same time undermining the rule of law, and creating a scapegoat ("illegal immigrants") at the same time - that's literally fascism.
mongol 2y ago
I think the word for what is about to happen is not yet invented. It will be something else, something with dire consequences but of a different kind. Something that leaves everyone but a thin elite completely behind. Some may say it has been like this a long time, but I think it will evolve/level up to something we have never seen before. Some call what they fear to come is fascism, but I think it will be inaccurate. Oligarchism maybe. Or something new.

by petre 2y ago

baggy_trough 2y ago

Firing federal workers and going to Mars is what fascism is?

HideousKojima 2y ago
In 1944, before the actual universally agreed upon to be fascist powers were defeated in WW2, George Orwell wrote about how the word had been applied to just about every group imaginable and had already lost any real meaning it might have had: https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e... "It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else." "Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come." "But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."
- maxfurman 2y ago
  Try Umberto Eco's "On Fascism," it's the best definition of the term I've ever come across
  - HideousKojima 2y ago
    What makes it the "best" in your opinion? Looking at the list, several of the points could be applied to just about every modern nation-state, several easily apply to communist states just as easily as fascist states, and there are several that don't apply to many states that most people would argue are fascist. For example, Salazar's Portugal is widely regarded as fascist but points 9, 10, 11, and 13 (and maybe more) don't really apply to it. It strikes me more as someone trying to give fascism a formal definition as a way to use it as an ideological cudgel in arguments than any attempt to define it based pn observation of multiple actual fascist states and political movements.
petre 2y ago
I said wait. Every fascist regime begins with a purge. Then it was the communists, now it might be federal workers? I guess we shall see.
- HideousKojima 2y ago
  Hmmmm, I can't quite put my finger on what it is but I suspect there are some fundamental differences between firing a bunch of bureaucrats from the federal government vs. Hitler's purge of the SA or Stalin's purge of the Soviet officer corps.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Musk doesn't need to do the heavy lifting himself. He can just direct his supporters to violently attack opposition: https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-harassing-federal-workers-x https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/22/24303594/elon-musk-haras...
    - HideousKojima 2y ago
      "Musk can't highlight specific examples of the federal government pissing our tax money down the drain because of how other people who see it might react." You ever heard of a Heckler's Veto?
      - threeseed 2y ago
        It is completely legitimate to argue about the use of taxpayer money. It is not legitimate to launch death threats against a woman who (a) had no involvement in the discussion and (b) was not responsible for the role existing.
        HideousKojima 2y ago
        >It is not legitimate to launch death threats against a woman who (a) had no involvement in the discussion and (b) was not responsible for the role existing. Which Musk didn't do? Are all the people who said "Trump is a threat to democracy" and similar statements responsible for the multiple assassination attempts against him?
cyberax 2y ago
Firing Federal workers so that ultra-rich people can do whatever they want without any oversight, while at the same time undermining the rule of law, and creating a scapegoat ("illegal immigrants") at the same time - that's literally fascism.

mongol 2y ago

I think the word for what is about to happen is not yet invented. It will be something else, something with dire consequences but of a different kind. Something that leaves everyone but a thin elite completely behind. Some may say it has been like this a long time, but I think it will evolve/level up to something we have never seen before. Some call what they fear to come is fascism, but I think it will be inaccurate. Oligarchism maybe. Or something new.