@Fishercat
Well, you're right, democracy is a thin veil; you can tell it's a dictatorship when the veil gets replaced by a a concrete wall.

@Remittancegirl

@CosminOprescu @Fishercat

Well, democracies only function when the people living under them take responsibility for them.

The fact that 1/2 the fucking country wasn't out on the street protesting after Pretti's murder is proof of this.

People COULD get out and protest en mass, but they chose not to.

In non-democracies, you can't. You get shot.

@Remittancegirl @CosminOprescu

Protestors are murdered by every form of government. When the kleptigarchs feel like there's threat to their position, protesters get shot. To my mind, there's not a significant difference between those deaths being at a protest or in front of a firing squad.

Quelling protests, and making it clear that white privilege is no protection, was part of the point of killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

@Fishercat

Here you're absolutely wrong. Dictators are those who kill; thousands of people or more.

In democracy you might see tear gas or even rubber bullets but no mass shooting by police.

When protesters like Renee Good or Alex Pretti are killed, you know a country took its first step towards a totalitarian regime. The fact that people can still protest against those killings means it was *only* the first step.

@Remittancegirl

@CosminOprescu @Remittancegirl

There's certainly a difference in scale between dictatorships and democracies with respect to how many of their citizens they kill. That doesn't mean people in democracies are *safe* from being shot by their governments.

Tear gas and rubber bullets aren't harmless, and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were absolutely not the first step the US took towards fascism. This has been building for decades.

It's not new, and it's not just the US.

https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/lethal_in_disguise_inclo_single_page.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/india-authorities-must-immediately-investigate-use-of-lethal-force-against-leh-protesters/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/25/bloodiest-day-how-gen-z-protest-wave-hit-indias-ladakh-killing-four

@Fishercat

I agree, and this's why I believe crimes like those committed by ICE are the first sign a wannabe-dictator has started building 'walls'.

Anecdotal data is not reliable, for sure, but it's hard for me not to mention this:

@Remittancegirl

@Fishercat

I live in a country (Ro) that went from a horrific Stalinist dictatorship to being a self titled 'original democracy' to being a full EU member state, and all these in only one generation.

And now I realize the more democratic the country became, the safer protests became.

From machine gun shooting, to isolated incident, to being safe to take a kid to a protest.

@Remittancegirl

@snaefell

Yes, Romania was the only place where things got terribly violent, culminating in the execution of the dictator.

And looking at the fate of - for instance - Belarus, we can tell Ceausescu's attempt to cling to power was not entirely unrealistic, after all.

@snaefell The wannabe autocrat who ran Norway on behalf of the Nazis in WW2 considered himself "minister president" still when the war ended. He claimed his innocence until the firing squad shut him up.

@CosminOprescu