Mastodawn

Cameron MacLeod Aug 16, 2025

A good* historical tour.

“The statistics are brutal. Fascist takeovers prevented after winning power democratically: zero. Average length of fascist rule once established: 31 years. Fascist regimes removed by voting: zero. Fascist regimes removed by asking nicely: zero. Most were removed by war or military coups, and tens of millions died in the process.”

https://medium.com/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-stop-fascism-in-history-the-success-rate-is-0-a665e2e048a2

* for various versions of “good”, see replies for corrections and context that some people feel is lacking. They sent lots of comments to me but zero to the author?

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Cameron MacLeod Aug 16, 2025

“The pattern is so consistent it’s almost funny if it weren’t so terrifying. Every single time it goes like this: Conservatives panic about socialism or progressives or whatever. They ally with fascists as the “lesser evil.” Fascists take power. Fascists immediately purge anyone who stands in their way. Then it’s 30–50 years of dictatorship. This happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.”

https://medium.com/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-stop-fascism-in-history-the-success-rate-is-0-a665e2e048a2

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Chantaru Aug 16, 2025

@c_9 was it all with the same dictator for the whole run or did the dictator die and succesfully get replaced?

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zbrown

@chantaryu2 @c_9 Estado Novo (now Portugal et al) successfully transitioned peacefully from the dictator of near 40 years, who then fell into a coma, to one that'd serve another 6 before the state spontaneously collapsed.

Part of the trick is they both contented themselves to ‘only’ being PM operating under a degree of nominal presidential oversight, and so providing legitimacy for the changeover — in theory a constitutional process was followed.