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Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listeni

Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line. I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany" that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do. another edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s The really interesting part of the interview gets going around the 7:50 mark, but here Dan talks about the options if you're an average citizen trying to figure out what to do. A litany of poor options if you're trying to pick a side right now really resonates with me.

HK-NC 1y ago
Wasnt Germany better off in the decades following WW2 than the British that defeated them?
- jackstraw42 1y ago
  The Allies defeated Germany, not the British.
  - JackFr 1y ago
    From June 4, 1940 to June 22, 1941 Britain faced Hitler alone.
    - jackstraw42 1y ago
      I'm not saying they didn't. But Britain didn't defeat Germany alone, and certainly didn't get the entire share of control after Germany was defeated. And after that the further decline of the UK showed that the power was shifting into the hands of those with wealth anyway, and here we are. Since around Nixon (maybe?) there has been a gradual post-WW2 deregulation that really accelerated under Reagan and now with Trump its accelerating again. More and more keeps shifting into the hands of unelected, wealthy individuals who see that their power keeps growing and growing and as far as I can tell, won't stop until they have it all. It doesn't make any sense to me why that looks like a stable world to them, but the one thing that is certain is that there is no 2nd amendment that will stop the billionaire club.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - delichon 1y ago
    It turns out that the British were one of the allies and about 380,000 of them died fighting the Nazis, so they have a good claim to having defeated Germany, with help from their friends.
    - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
themgt 1y ago
The number of different national and international situations that get compared to Nazi Germany seems to reflect a paucity of historical imagination and desire to collapse every conflict into an manichaean analogy with modern civilization's foundational battle of good vs. evil. It might make at least as much sense to compare to Erdoğan's Turkey, Orban's Hungary, Syria's Assad and al-Julani, Chile with Allende and Pinochet, Bolsonaro and Lula in Brazil, the Spanish Civil War, Maidan and the Ukraine war, Cerén and Bukele in El Salvador, etc etc etc. The point is, if you drew up a few dozen historical parallels that were at least as close to the current American predicament as is Germany in the 1930s, you might draw (and implicitly suggest your audience draw) more tentative and complex conclusions regarding the correct course of action. Whereas the Nazi Germany analogy ends with near-inevitable wave function collapse into "start shooting Nazis", other historical analogies might caution against encouraging everyone escalating into a violent conflict as the only imaginable course of action.
- api 1y ago
  Some of it reminds me of the CCP, which I think is openly considered a model by some neo-authoritarians. Ubiquitous mass surveillance, social credit, and state capitalism with heavy control though regulatory pressure. I assume we will eventually see party men installed on boards of major companies, especially in media, tech, and entertainment. The “tech right” is a major player here and a lot of those folks idolize China right now. I think the US has been spiraling toward authoritarianism since 9/11 personally. This did not start yesterday or with the most recent election, nor is it exclusively the result of the right or the Republican Party. A lot of people to the left have also abandoned liberalism and ideas like free speech. There’s been a broad based shift away from liberalism and individualism and toward collectivism, which always leads toward totalitarianism. Right wing collectivism comes in the form of racism and nationalism, while for the contemporary left its identity-grievance politics and a resurgence of Marxism. “Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens?” is one of the questions I keep asking.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1y ago
    I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control. Control of the people comes from all sides. The end result is the same, but the methods are different, intended to make people happy to be controlled.
bboygravity 1y ago
[flagged]
- dctoedt 1y ago
  > This is probably the most ironic post I read in quite a while. [¶] TLDR: brain washing is dangerous, we don't have headspace due to Trump oh and btw Trump is hitler. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. (But no, Trump isn't Hitler — even though they do share some characteristics.)
- jackstraw42 1y ago
  I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying this is obvious and nothing needs to be done, or that I'm totally wrong or what? Or saying that I'm being a conspiracy theorist by seeing parallels?
- ycombigators 1y ago
  [flagged]
- rixed 1y ago
  It doesn't matter if Trump is Hitler or not (what does that even mean?) Stop paying that much attention to people, they mostly do not matter. Think instead about the circumstances. What matter is that the USA in 2025 is not Germany of 100 years ago, today economics is not the same as the great depression, there is no threatening civil unrest due to a massive neighboring country which just went through a social revolution, nor due to decomposing colonial empires.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    That’s what makes this scarier. If a political party can drum up this much social unrest when the world was largely prospering, then that shows just how much people have forgotten about the real hardships our parents and grandparents suffered, and how quickly we could end up back there through greed.
nosianu 1y ago
> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troops. Not to mention that the new administration did some cleanup among the ranks already. The chances for enough, or any, troops breaking away from the command are very low, no? So who is going to fight that "civil war"? It looks to me like the government has overwhelming power. At most I see some troops refuse orders to shoot at the American people, or at other troops. Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jackstraw42 1y ago
  Well, I think you did a pretty good job of describing the resources that they are consolidating into that one party that controls the military. For now it's just the National Guard going into cities, but didn't they float the idea of sending Marines to LA? There's so much it's impossible to keep track of what's actually going on. I've always been of the idea that 100 guys with guns gets wiped out with 1 bomb nowadays, so why do individuals arm themselves to the teeth and LARP in the woods? it is looking more like that's going to be a paramilitary arm, or "private consultants" to ICE and CBP. those resources aren't for nothing, and they certainly aren't for taking down the US military. This is a WW2 figure who had a song written about him after he was martyred. It became the anthem of the Nazi party. I didn't ever hear about him in my many years in the US, until a few days ago on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel
  - ForHackernews 1y ago
    He already sent active duty marines to Los Angeles, and it was ruled illegal by a judge (after the fact) but it doesn't matter because no one with any real power cares what laws or judges say: https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles-marines-judge-ruling/ https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles...

HK-NC 1y ago

Wasnt Germany better off in the decades following WW2 than the British that defeated them?

jackstraw42 1y ago
The Allies defeated Germany, not the British.
- JackFr 1y ago
  From June 4, 1940 to June 22, 1941 Britain faced Hitler alone.
  - jackstraw42 1y ago
    I'm not saying they didn't. But Britain didn't defeat Germany alone, and certainly didn't get the entire share of control after Germany was defeated. And after that the further decline of the UK showed that the power was shifting into the hands of those with wealth anyway, and here we are. Since around Nixon (maybe?) there has been a gradual post-WW2 deregulation that really accelerated under Reagan and now with Trump its accelerating again. More and more keeps shifting into the hands of unelected, wealthy individuals who see that their power keeps growing and growing and as far as I can tell, won't stop until they have it all. It doesn't make any sense to me why that looks like a stable world to them, but the one thing that is certain is that there is no 2nd amendment that will stop the billionaire club.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- delichon 1y ago
  It turns out that the British were one of the allies and about 380,000 of them died fighting the Nazis, so they have a good claim to having defeated Germany, with help from their friends.
  - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

themgt 1y ago

The number of different national and international situations that get compared to Nazi Germany seems to reflect a paucity of historical imagination and desire to collapse every conflict into an manichaean analogy with modern civilization's foundational battle of good vs. evil. It might make at least as much sense to compare to Erdoğan's Turkey, Orban's Hungary, Syria's Assad and al-Julani, Chile with Allende and Pinochet, Bolsonaro and Lula in Brazil, the Spanish Civil War, Maidan and the Ukraine war, Cerén and Bukele in El Salvador, etc etc etc. The point is, if you drew up a few dozen historical parallels that were at least as close to the current American predicament as is Germany in the 1930s, you might draw (and implicitly suggest your audience draw) more tentative and complex conclusions regarding the correct course of action. Whereas the Nazi Germany analogy ends with near-inevitable wave function collapse into "start shooting Nazis", other historical analogies might caution against encouraging everyone escalating into a violent conflict as the only imaginable course of action.

api 1y ago
Some of it reminds me of the CCP, which I think is openly considered a model by some neo-authoritarians. Ubiquitous mass surveillance, social credit, and state capitalism with heavy control though regulatory pressure. I assume we will eventually see party men installed on boards of major companies, especially in media, tech, and entertainment. The “tech right” is a major player here and a lot of those folks idolize China right now. I think the US has been spiraling toward authoritarianism since 9/11 personally. This did not start yesterday or with the most recent election, nor is it exclusively the result of the right or the Republican Party. A lot of people to the left have also abandoned liberalism and ideas like free speech. There’s been a broad based shift away from liberalism and individualism and toward collectivism, which always leads toward totalitarianism. Right wing collectivism comes in the form of racism and nationalism, while for the contemporary left its identity-grievance politics and a resurgence of Marxism. “Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens?” is one of the questions I keep asking.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1y ago
  I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control. Control of the people comes from all sides. The end result is the same, but the methods are different, intended to make people happy to be controlled.

bboygravity 1y ago

[flagged]

dctoedt 1y ago
> This is probably the most ironic post I read in quite a while. [¶] TLDR: brain washing is dangerous, we don't have headspace due to Trump oh and btw Trump is hitler. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. (But no, Trump isn't Hitler — even though they do share some characteristics.)
jackstraw42 1y ago
I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying this is obvious and nothing needs to be done, or that I'm totally wrong or what? Or saying that I'm being a conspiracy theorist by seeing parallels?
ycombigators 1y ago
[flagged]
rixed 1y ago
It doesn't matter if Trump is Hitler or not (what does that even mean?) Stop paying that much attention to people, they mostly do not matter. Think instead about the circumstances. What matter is that the USA in 2025 is not Germany of 100 years ago, today economics is not the same as the great depression, there is no threatening civil unrest due to a massive neighboring country which just went through a social revolution, nor due to decomposing colonial empires.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  That’s what makes this scarier. If a political party can drum up this much social unrest when the world was largely prospering, then that shows just how much people have forgotten about the real hardships our parents and grandparents suffered, and how quickly we could end up back there through greed.

nosianu 1y ago

> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this. I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it). There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troops. Not to mention that the new administration did some cleanup among the ranks already. The chances for enough, or any, troops breaking away from the command are very low, no? So who is going to fight that "civil war"? It looks to me like the government has overwhelming power. At most I see some troops refuse orders to shoot at the American people, or at other troops. Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jackstraw42 1y ago
Well, I think you did a pretty good job of describing the resources that they are consolidating into that one party that controls the military. For now it's just the National Guard going into cities, but didn't they float the idea of sending Marines to LA? There's so much it's impossible to keep track of what's actually going on. I've always been of the idea that 100 guys with guns gets wiped out with 1 bomb nowadays, so why do individuals arm themselves to the teeth and LARP in the woods? it is looking more like that's going to be a paramilitary arm, or "private consultants" to ICE and CBP. those resources aren't for nothing, and they certainly aren't for taking down the US military. This is a WW2 figure who had a song written about him after he was martyred. It became the anthem of the Nazi party. I didn't ever hear about him in my many years in the US, until a few days ago on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel
- ForHackernews 1y ago
  He already sent active duty marines to Los Angeles, and it was ruled illegal by a judge (after the fact) but it doesn't matter because no one with any real power cares what laws or judges say: https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles-marines-judge-ruling/ https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles...