5 ms·

Europeans like to look down on the rise of fascism in the US but even a superficial analysis shows that the US is simply Europe in 5-10 years. For the UK in pa

by jmyeet 2y ago

Europeans like to look down on the rise of fascism in the US but even a superficial analysis shows that the US is simply Europe in 5-10 years. For the UK in particular, people may point to how Labor swept the elections last year but they'd be wrong to say that there was left-wing momentum in the UK or even that it was another example of people voting against incumbent governments. Neither is true. All that happened in the UK is the right-wing vote got split between the Conservatives and the even more right-wing Reform party. That's it. Come next election, that won't be the case. At the current rate, Conservative/Reform will merge or ally and sweep in a landslide. Starmer actually got fewer votes than Corbyn did in his previous two elections by a substantial margin. The UK Labor party is playing the same role as the US Democratic Party. That is, they make occasional meek noises about institutional norms but they really don't oppose fascism at all. In fact, both parties are way more concerned with the rise of leftism than they are with fascism. We've seen this exact same scenario play out in France. You have grooming victim [1] Macron who has tried to occupy some mythical "center" with Le Pen's National Front, the brainchild of leaders of Vichy France, playing the role of fascist party. But in France there's actually some leftist opposition. And what does Macron do? Routinely side with the fascists to keep the leftists out of power. In the US, the role of Gestapo is being played by ICE. They take their marching orders from the Canary Mission to black-bag people who simply opposed Israel's genocide. This is quite literally picking up political dissidents and putting them into concentration camps. The UK, France and Germany are well on their way to the same fate. [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/06/politics/emmanuel-macron-wife-marriage-france/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/06/politics/emmanuel-macron-wife...

zozbot234 2y ago
[flagged]
- Tostino 2y ago
  Who on the left is calling for jail for speech? Legitimately asking.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  Centrism has always meant too stupid or milquetoast to stake out a proper position. Damned few on the left want to arrest people for giving offense whereas the overwhelming majority on the right support an actual fascist regime on this side of the pond. You know this and you still made this comment.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    > Damned few on the left want to arrest people for giving offense Of course they do. Plenty of people on the left say that the very notion of free speech is "problematic" and must be criticized. Which directly implies that they find it less problematic to criminalize speech, as the UK does.
    - Yoric 2y ago
      Do you have any example?
      - muro 2y ago
        https://www.srf.ch/kultur/musik/kontroverse-schweizer-saengerin-darum-hat-das-m4music-festival-bernarda-brunovic-ausgeladen https://www.srf.ch/kultur/musik/kontroverse-schweizer-saenge...
        Yoric 2y ago
        If I read this correctly (my Swiss German is a bit rusty), there is an unnamed group (presumably somewhere on the left) who called for causing disturbances during a concert of a singer, and the organizers decided to cancel the concert? Is that correct? Because if I recall your (now flagged) message correctly, you were claiming that the left was in favor of putting people in jail for their opinions. While "we're going to make a demonstration to show how much we disagree with someone" can definitely be an annoyance, it's really, really, really far from your initial claim. At this point, I remain unconvinced.
    - fpoling 2y ago
- 9283409232 2y ago
  This reads like you get all your opinions or interactions with "leftist" on Twitter because very few people, if any, are actually proposing this.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    The flip side to that is that very few people, if any, on the left are actually calling for meaningful protections for free speech. They see nothing wrong when someone is put in jail for "causing gross offense" on Twitter, as happens often enough in the UK. As for the rest of Europe, just look at the knee-jerk hysterical, pearl-clutching response to Vice President JD Vance's recent speech about the EU and its values, and how much of that response was coming from the left.
    - owisd 2y ago
      Or they just take the more nuanced JS Mill view that free speech is about truth and not simply about being able to say whatever you want without any consequences. Being offensive for the sake of being offensive has nothing to do with finding truth, so isn't perceived as a question of free speech.
      - zozbot234 2y ago
        Truth is not considered a defense to the crime of "causing offense" in the UK. Besides, the official standard of what's considered to be "truth" as opposed to "misinformation" is often skewed in ways that are entirely self-serving.
        owisd 2y ago
        Of course, because we also consider intent, so the law distinguishes saying something true that someone happens to find offensive (which carries EHRC Article 10 protections), as opposed to saying something to cause offence that also happens to be true (which does not). If you're worried about a compromised judiciary one day interpreting such a distinction unfavourably then it's pointless because by that point they can interpret any law in a way that silences critics of the regime. Navalny was officially in jail for embezzlement but no-one's suggesting we shouldn't have embezzlement laws on free speech grounds.
- Yoric 2y ago
  I've heard many conservatives claim that, but I've never seen a progressive actually asking for people to be put in jail for opinions. Are there sociopaths on all sides? For sure. But right now, I see plenty of sociopaths in power instrumentalizing conservatism to tear apart at our democracies, while screaming and yelling that the left is out there to get conservatives – and plenty of conservatives believing them. So... no, I don't buy this "no better", not in 2025.
  - decremental 2y ago
    [dead]
- linuxhansl 2y ago
  This Left vs Right - us vs them - does not serve us well. It seems to me that what the world needs is a mix of conservative and progressive ideas. Instead of calling each other names or label each other, we could also work together. In the end we all have a the same goal: Preventing harm. We just happen to have different ideas about how to go about it.
  - jmyeet 2y ago
    This kind of bothsidesing is either hopelessly naive, intellectually lazy or a deliberate attempt to minimize right-wing violence by falsely claiming the "left" is just as bad. What conservative ideas do we "need" exactly? there is no compromising with fascism. We are quite literally black-bagging people and unlawfully deporting them and/or putting them in camps, some in our country, some in third-party nations like El Salvador. What's the compromise here? Only black-bag half as many people? Also, in the US in particular, there is functionally no "left". Everyone is a neoliberal and we have two parties: the center-right Democrats and the far-right Republicans who both defend American imperialism and domestic and foreign capitalist exploitation, who only differ on inconsequential "social" issues. > In the end we all have a the same goal No, we don't. The goal of our political establishment is to further concentrate wealth in the hands of the already ultra-wealthy and further impoverish the working class. You still enjoy a lot of benefits that the left fought for and the right bitterly opposed: weekends, a 40 hour working week, vacations, job safety, Social Security, Medicare and so on. The right wants to literally do away with all of those things. The core organizing principle of the American right is cruelty. It's exacting revenge on their perceived enemies, be they immigrants, trans people, queer people, women or black and brown people.
    - linuxhansl 2y ago
      No, no, and no. This is exactly the problem! You define conservative ideas as fascism in one swoop and now "they" are all evil, all discussion stops, and you fall in exactly the trap you accuse the other "side" of. We do not need sides. There is no "The Right" as much as there is no "The Left". Of course we need to not allow fascism (and the populist MAGA nonsense), I have stated nothing to contrary. For the record I tend to be strongly liberal progressive (see my various comments, although I keep politics on HN to a minimum). But I also realize that only liberal progressive ideas are not enough, just handouts do not work, people want jobs through which they can support themselves, we need a working economy, reduce debt, etc, etc. So, again, I wish we would come together instead of drifting more and more into extremes. If we did come together, we would not have a problem with fascism in the first place. We would not be so easily divide by populists smoke bombs like trans-athletes or alleged violent immigrants. This is not "hopelessly naive" but intensely practical and necessary.
cedws 2y ago
Social media is probably a major catalyst for hatred. Hatred is driving people to vote against their own interests.
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  Oh, absoltuley. And basically inviting any external propaganda machine direct access to people attention
- jmyeet 2y ago
  I really dislike this idea that social media is somehow to blame. It's too superficial. Right-wing hate speech dominates social media because it's the normative position of our society. All of that existed long before social media. The only reason people think otherwise is probably because they were too young to observe it. Segregation only officially ended ~60 years ago. Even after that we have had, and even continue to have, economic segregation. Slavery might've been officially abolished ~160 years ago but it exists to this day in the form of convict leasing. Queer people were criminalized and persecuted up until the late 20th century. Women only really gained bodily autonomy in the 1960s and 1970s (and lost some of it in 2022). Social media simply reflects how popular all of these ideas still are.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    > Even after that we have had, and even continue to have, economic segregation. A lot of real-world economic segregation is directly linked the housing market, and then the leftists actively support it. When policy choices are adopted such that the market threatens to reduce the amount of segregation that a city or neighborhood is subjected to, leftists call that development "gentrification" and scream in protest against it.
    - jmyeet 2y ago
      > A lot of real-world economic segregation is directly linked the housing market Yes. > ... and then the leftists actively support i No, they don't. Liberals (which really means neoliberals) support it. Here's a helpful diagram: <--------- Left ------ Center ------- Right -------------> +-------------------------+------------------------------+ } Cares about People | Cares about Property | +-------------------------+------------------------------+ | Leftists/Progressives | (Neo)liberals | +-------------------------+------------------------------+ | Socialism | Capitalism | +-------------------------+--------------+---------------+ | Materialism | Idealism | +-------------------------+--------------+---------------+ | | Democrats | Republicans | +-------------------------+--------------+---------------+ Actual leftists want everyone to have access to affordable housing and realize that landlords are anathema to that. Leftists believe in "social housing", which is the government providing a significant portion of housing stock to guarantee shelter. Leftists also generally believe in "personal property" not "private property". That is, you can own your own home but you can't hoard housing. How successful NIMBYism is in the US just shows you how normative right-wing attitudes are. done

by jmyeet 2y ago

zozbot234 2y ago

[flagged]

Tostino 2y ago
Who on the left is calling for jail for speech? Legitimately asking.
michaelmrose 2y ago
Centrism has always meant too stupid or milquetoast to stake out a proper position. Damned few on the left want to arrest people for giving offense whereas the overwhelming majority on the right support an actual fascist regime on this side of the pond. You know this and you still made this comment.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  > Damned few on the left want to arrest people for giving offense Of course they do. Plenty of people on the left say that the very notion of free speech is "problematic" and must be criticized. Which directly implies that they find it less problematic to criminalize speech, as the UK does.
  - Yoric 2y ago
    Do you have any example?
    - muro 2y ago
      https://www.srf.ch/kultur/musik/kontroverse-schweizer-saengerin-darum-hat-das-m4music-festival-bernarda-brunovic-ausgeladen https://www.srf.ch/kultur/musik/kontroverse-schweizer-saenge...
      - Yoric 2y ago
        If I read this correctly (my Swiss German is a bit rusty), there is an unnamed group (presumably somewhere on the left) who called for causing disturbances during a concert of a singer, and the organizers decided to cancel the concert? Is that correct? Because if I recall your (now flagged) message correctly, you were claiming that the left was in favor of putting people in jail for their opinions. While "we're going to make a demonstration to show how much we disagree with someone" can definitely be an annoyance, it's really, really, really far from your initial claim. At this point, I remain unconvinced.
  - fpoling 2y ago
9283409232 2y ago
This reads like you get all your opinions or interactions with "leftist" on Twitter because very few people, if any, are actually proposing this.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  The flip side to that is that very few people, if any, on the left are actually calling for meaningful protections for free speech. They see nothing wrong when someone is put in jail for "causing gross offense" on Twitter, as happens often enough in the UK. As for the rest of Europe, just look at the knee-jerk hysterical, pearl-clutching response to Vice President JD Vance's recent speech about the EU and its values, and how much of that response was coming from the left.
  - owisd 2y ago
    Or they just take the more nuanced JS Mill view that free speech is about truth and not simply about being able to say whatever you want without any consequences. Being offensive for the sake of being offensive has nothing to do with finding truth, so isn't perceived as a question of free speech.
    - zozbot234 2y ago
      Truth is not considered a defense to the crime of "causing offense" in the UK. Besides, the official standard of what's considered to be "truth" as opposed to "misinformation" is often skewed in ways that are entirely self-serving.
      - owisd 2y ago
        Of course, because we also consider intent, so the law distinguishes saying something true that someone happens to find offensive (which carries EHRC Article 10 protections), as opposed to saying something to cause offence that also happens to be true (which does not). If you're worried about a compromised judiciary one day interpreting such a distinction unfavourably then it's pointless because by that point they can interpret any law in a way that silences critics of the regime. Navalny was officially in jail for embezzlement but no-one's suggesting we shouldn't have embezzlement laws on free speech grounds.
Yoric 2y ago
I've heard many conservatives claim that, but I've never seen a progressive actually asking for people to be put in jail for opinions. Are there sociopaths on all sides? For sure. But right now, I see plenty of sociopaths in power instrumentalizing conservatism to tear apart at our democracies, while screaming and yelling that the left is out there to get conservatives – and plenty of conservatives believing them. So... no, I don't buy this "no better", not in 2025.
- decremental 2y ago
  [dead]
linuxhansl 2y ago
This Left vs Right - us vs them - does not serve us well. It seems to me that what the world needs is a mix of conservative and progressive ideas. Instead of calling each other names or label each other, we could also work together. In the end we all have a the same goal: Preventing harm. We just happen to have different ideas about how to go about it.
- jmyeet 2y ago
  This kind of bothsidesing is either hopelessly naive, intellectually lazy or a deliberate attempt to minimize right-wing violence by falsely claiming the "left" is just as bad. What conservative ideas do we "need" exactly? there is no compromising with fascism. We are quite literally black-bagging people and unlawfully deporting them and/or putting them in camps, some in our country, some in third-party nations like El Salvador. What's the compromise here? Only black-bag half as many people? Also, in the US in particular, there is functionally no "left". Everyone is a neoliberal and we have two parties: the center-right Democrats and the far-right Republicans who both defend American imperialism and domestic and foreign capitalist exploitation, who only differ on inconsequential "social" issues. > In the end we all have a the same goal No, we don't. The goal of our political establishment is to further concentrate wealth in the hands of the already ultra-wealthy and further impoverish the working class. You still enjoy a lot of benefits that the left fought for and the right bitterly opposed: weekends, a 40 hour working week, vacations, job safety, Social Security, Medicare and so on. The right wants to literally do away with all of those things. The core organizing principle of the American right is cruelty. It's exacting revenge on their perceived enemies, be they immigrants, trans people, queer people, women or black and brown people.
  - linuxhansl 2y ago
    No, no, and no. This is exactly the problem! You define conservative ideas as fascism in one swoop and now "they" are all evil, all discussion stops, and you fall in exactly the trap you accuse the other "side" of. We do not need sides. There is no "The Right" as much as there is no "The Left". Of course we need to not allow fascism (and the populist MAGA nonsense), I have stated nothing to contrary. For the record I tend to be strongly liberal progressive (see my various comments, although I keep politics on HN to a minimum). But I also realize that only liberal progressive ideas are not enough, just handouts do not work, people want jobs through which they can support themselves, we need a working economy, reduce debt, etc, etc. So, again, I wish we would come together instead of drifting more and more into extremes. If we did come together, we would not have a problem with fascism in the first place. We would not be so easily divide by populists smoke bombs like trans-athletes or alleged violent immigrants. This is not "hopelessly naive" but intensely practical and necessary.

cedws 2y ago

Social media is probably a major catalyst for hatred. Hatred is driving people to vote against their own interests.

onemoresoop 2y ago
Oh, absoltuley. And basically inviting any external propaganda machine direct access to people attention
jmyeet 2y ago
I really dislike this idea that social media is somehow to blame. It's too superficial. Right-wing hate speech dominates social media because it's the normative position of our society. All of that existed long before social media. The only reason people think otherwise is probably because they were too young to observe it. Segregation only officially ended ~60 years ago. Even after that we have had, and even continue to have, economic segregation. Slavery might've been officially abolished ~160 years ago but it exists to this day in the form of convict leasing. Queer people were criminalized and persecuted up until the late 20th century. Women only really gained bodily autonomy in the 1960s and 1970s (and lost some of it in 2022). Social media simply reflects how popular all of these ideas still are.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  > Even after that we have had, and even continue to have, economic segregation. A lot of real-world economic segregation is directly linked the housing market, and then the leftists actively support it. When policy choices are adopted such that the market threatens to reduce the amount of segregation that a city or neighborhood is subjected to, leftists call that development "gentrification" and scream in protest against it.
  - jmyeet 2y ago
    > A lot of real-world economic segregation is directly linked the housing market Yes. > ... and then the leftists actively support i No, they don't. Liberals (which really means neoliberals) support it. Here's a helpful diagram: <--------- Left ------ Center ------- Right -------------> +-------------------------+------------------------------+ } Cares about People | Cares about Property | +-------------------------+------------------------------+ | Leftists/Progressives | (Neo)liberals | +-------------------------+------------------------------+ | Socialism | Capitalism | +-------------------------+--------------+---------------+ | Materialism | Idealism | +-------------------------+--------------+---------------+ | | Democrats | Republicans | +-------------------------+--------------+---------------+ Actual leftists want everyone to have access to affordable housing and realize that landlords are anathema to that. Leftists believe in "social housing", which is the government providing a significant portion of housing stock to guarantee shelter. Leftists also generally believe in "personal property" not "private property". That is, you can own your own home but you can't hoard housing. How successful NIMBYism is in the US just shows you how normative right-wing attitudes are. done