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574 points nh43215rgb | 8 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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ktallett ◴[] No.45780988[source]
Why exactly have ICE been given limitless power? Facial recognition is at best right more than half the time, but many studies have shown it to be consistently faulty leading to many wrong ID's. What is the point of a database with incorrect biometric data connected to a person?
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AtlasBarfed ◴[] No.45781284[source]
Because half of American voters want fascism.
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danaris ◴[] No.45782453[source]
This is unhelpfully reductive.

First of all, it's misleading in its categorization: "half of people who voted in the last election" is not the same as "half of all eligible voters".

Second of all, a lot of the people who voted for Trump do not meaningfully "want fascism". Some do—no question about that! And, unfortunately, some who didn't before have rationalized themselves into wanting it now in order to self-justify their decision to vote for him.

But many of them are low-information voters who genuinely do not understand what is going on, and fall into one (or more) of a few categories:

- People who have always voted Republican, because their parents always voted Republican, and that's just The Way Things Are.

- People who have been brainwashed by constant propaganda from Fox News over the past 30 years telling them that Democrats are Evil.

- People who have poor to no civics education, have seen their economic situation slide slowly downward over the last few decades (or fall off a cliff, eg in 2008), and have heard the various Republican candidates telling them, over and over, "Just vote for us! We will solve all your problems. You don't have to worry about how!" (or "...by punishing the evil Others who are the cause of every ill in this country", depending on how racist they're already primed to be)

None of that requires "wanting fascism". And I can tell you, from personal experience, that there are still people out there—left, right, and center—who genuinely do not know what is going on. They don't watch the news. They just try to get by. They have no idea that ICE is abducting citizens off the streets, that Trump has shattered the executive branch institutions that actually run this country, or that the Supreme Court has said that Trump can do whatever the hell he likes.

If you want to be able to fix a problem, you have to understand it in all its nuance, and just dismissing tens of millions of people as "eh, they all wanted fascism; guess there's no possible way to reach them, then" is the wrong problem definition.

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1. dfedbeef ◴[] No.45783583{3}[source]
Not to be an asshole, this will not get fixed. It doesn't matter how reductive people are, helpfully or otherwise. The fascist cat is out of the bag.
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2. danaris ◴[] No.45783881[source]
Oh, well, then I guess we should all just give up and deepthroat the boot, right?

Don't be absurd. Fascism rose in Germany, and was defeated. Fascism rose in Spain, and Italy, and was defeated.

We can defeat fascism too. We will defeat fascism too.

It'll just be harder if more people think like you.

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3. ergl ◴[] No.45784269[source]
> Fascism rose in Spain, and Italy, and was defeated.

Someone forgot about the 40-year long fascist dictatorship Spain was under

4. tastyface ◴[] No.45784906[source]
Obviously, fascism will be defeated someday. The cost is the issue. Defeating fascism in Germany required the biggest and most violent war in all of human history, plus a decimation of its population.
5. anigbrowl ◴[] No.45784935[source]
In Germany and Italy it was defeated by the military loss of a total war. In Span it was defeated by the eventual death of Franco and the assassination of his designated successor, after decades of right wing rule.

You are in such a rush to be sarcastic that you're accusing the GP of wanting to cooperate with fascism, when they're simply stating the reality of the problem. You're saying naying nice words about the outcome you want to see, but ignoring the horrors between the institution of fascism and its eventual defeat. That suggests to me that you don't really have any idea or plan about how to overcome it, you're just wishcasting. The danger of this is that many people will advocate waiting for the next election to decide if it's really fascism (because that's an unpleasant thing people would prefer to avoid), but don't have anything in reserve if the election is subverted, and in any case are giving away the political initiative for a year.

Instead of trying to rally people with WW2 tropes (which the non-fascists are in no position to wage) it'd be better to build momentum toward general strikes, which have a rather successful track record in the US and have been quasi-outlawed as a result (eg by the Taft-Hartley act, which bans solidarity and political strikes by labor unions).

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6. SpicyLemonZest ◴[] No.45785236{3}[source]
I just don't see how you're going to run a general strike against Trump with the Teamsters and much of their membership on Trump's side.

My plan to overcome it is to make it clear to elite decisionmakers that they will be held personally responsible for the misery Trump's administration inflicts on people, including by many of the people who thought they supported Trump before they realized what he was doing. It's not a perfect plan, nor does it have a guarantee of success, but it seems better than the alternatives.

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7. anigbrowl ◴[] No.45786939{4}[source]
A general strike is general, not just trade unions. Not everyone will join in, nor will it be national in scale, at least at first. But it can disruptive enough as it spreads to slow down the economy, be the top headline every day, and push the administration into increasing untenable positions. A general strike isn't a formal legal state of affairs, but a combination of ongoing protest and economic stoppage that succeeds by the fact of mass participation, without any violent focus.

make it clear to elite decisionmakers that they will be held personally responsible for the misery Trump's administration inflicts on people

How?

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8. SpicyLemonZest ◴[] No.45790477{5}[source]
Perhaps we're talking about different things? When I imagine a "general strike", I envision something like the general strike in Italy last month, where major trade unions got together to announce that October 3 is strike day and everyone in Italy should go on strike together. I'm not sure what a general strike without broad participation, national scale, or labor movement backing is.