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https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/texas-flood-climate-change-camp-mystic-20250708.html
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Across the country, authoritarian forces are getting bolder and more dangerous. Trump and his allies are not hiding their agenda: mass deportations, rollbacks of civil rights, weaponized courts, and full-scale attacks on our democracy. We don’t have to wait until it’s too late. We can stop this. But it’ll take all of us—not just on single days of mass action, but through sustained organizing in our communities. That’s why this summer, we’re launching One Million Rising—a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design. This is how we build people power that can’t be ignored. You’re invited to join us—and lead. Let’s build a force bigger than fear and louder than hate. Let’s get ready. Let’s get organized. Let’s stop Trump. **Session 1: The Moment & Your Mission - July 16** Get oriented to making meaning of this moment and the role you can play in coordinated strategic action. **Session 2: How to Make it Happen - July 30** This train-the-trainer session is how we get to one million. Learn not just our strategy, but how you can train others and get them on board. You'll host your first community resistance gathering after this session. **Session 3: What Now? - August 13** You'll be onboarded to basic campaign design and learn how to implement it locally as well as get plugged into our next national campaign work. Your second community resistance gathering will move this action forward. Sign up for all 3 sessions to get the most out of this experience. Watch it live with a friend in person, and get ready now to host your own community resistance gatherings after the second and third sessions. This is how we get to 1 million!
@amalia22 @knittingknots2 I’m sure it’s a tongue-in-cheek rhetorical question but, well, that would be illegal!
And while the highly politicized DoJ will ignore fake ICE agents in blue states, they would absolutely go after fake ice agents who kidnap maga cultists.
@lillyfinch Who would be America in the hypothetical scenario where we're Germany?
China? France?
The French melted down their government to help us previously. 😅
@bweller @lillyfinch I'm surprised to not see this thread flooded with tankies stressing one of the few historical facts they kinda actually get right:
It was, primarily, the Soviet Union that defeated Germany. The resistance, the UK, and the US helped, might have even shifted the scale; we will never know. But the main clash was by far Nazis vs Soviets.
@lillyfinch one foot in front of the other, we'll get there. 
So why were bombs literally dropping in England before the US entered the war?
There are plenty of myths about our involvement in WWII and the supposed noble sentimentality behind us choosing to enter, but let's not help tankies re-write reality.
The Soviets were on the Nazis' side, they signed an agreement to carve up Europe between them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact
The Soviets were invading innocent neighbours at the same time the Nazis were (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Baltic_states_(1940)).
The only reason the Soviets ended up joining the Allies mid-way through the war was because Hitler turned on them unexpectedly.
This is the part that Stalinist apologists leave out, their man was invading neighbours and doing imperialist deals with Hitler, and only pulled out when Hitler double-crossed them. And then after the war the Soviets kept their stolen territories.
China and the rest of the brics are going to dump US treasuries like the toxic waste that they now are. They all know cheeto will default on the debt.
Lol, China is the model Trump and the oligarchs are using top design this whole thing.
Oh gods, I've had that exact thought. Gd oceans, and there just aren't enough Canadians.
If We The American People are going to do it, We'd better get our asses in motion ASAP.
The USA hangs on by a thread, only because a few brave, patriotic judges and lawyers are resisting the Corruptlicans. Those few are soldiering on despite death threats and harassment, hoping that someday We The American People will show up to help them.
By now, every community should be organized and prepared for defense. If we are ready to fight, they will allow us to vote.
Real talk:
Until the day you turn on the news and hear people at a protest chanting “Shoot, Donald Trump,” things are only going to keep getting worse — because we can’t count on those already in office to remove him or stop the harm he’s causing.
America was put at risk many years ago by neo-liberalism that leapt onto the back of globalising capitalism when the east v west walls dropped.
It was like a war but in peace time against American workers & their dependents.
Now a Neo-fascist mafia gang have hijacked a willing media/techbro juggernaut machine to complete a constructed form of self negligent technical self imprisonment of Americans through their dependence on hostile media platforms.
Hitler would be so proud, Putin is seeing a massive return on his investment in tRUMPski.
How much longer until USians recognise they have no effective peaceful means to rid themselves of the fascists challenge 2025.
@lillyfinch This is true. We can't use WWII as a template for eliminating US fascism.
I've been saying that it's like a wildfire. It has to burn itself out. No external force is going to stop it.
Possibly the next closest analogy is the fall of Rome.
This is frankly all so a-historic, I don't even know where to start.
Yes, true. I am German and (for a layman) comparably knowledgeable on the Third Reich. The resonances are beyond bearable, the only mitigating factor for me, that I don't live in the US.
But what I meant with a-historic is the attempt to draw 1:1 parallels also with regards to resolution. Internally it' fascism pure and unadulterated in the US now. The foreign policy situation is starkly different. Only to mention a few points:
- There will be no Axis, since there is now Mussolini, not Japanese Empire.
- Germany was in word an deed expansionist, the US under Trump is rather withdrawing from the international stage. The message here is mixed at best.
- Still no concentration camps (though it's a bit early to rule them out).
- The US is the largest military power in the world (Germany wasn't and arguable only one battles for 4-5 years expending strategic capital they didn't have, mortgaging their future.
- The US didn't have an all-out war (even in country) only half a generation before. Germany had, which made it relatively simply to justify all kind of things (from KZs to starting anew war).
And this different situation specifically in foreign relations means that every simple analogy with the 3rd Reich, especially with reference to resolutions, breaks down.
The second a-historic aspect I see, is the idea, that WWII was lead mostly/solely with the idea to liberate those being brutalized. That is practically never a factor why powers enter a war, definitely, though, not the dominant factor. In the case of Germany IMHO it was pure luck (for Germany) that cool and forward looking heads prevailed, the Marshal plan was put into implementation and the western allied powers tried to transform Western Germany into a democracy.
That could (and I suspect with relatively little different decision) gone to totally different.
I see the question how to transition from an autocracy to a democratic state largely unsolved. The US couldn't repeat that success (with Korea, Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan) and there is little in moral philosophy that suggests that the righteous forces would always prevail. So it would an accident of history whether "democratic forces liberate brutalized victims of fascism" or "glorious fascist forces liberate people's comrades from foreign scum".
"Only Americans can liberate Americans" might be a fact of the distribution of military power, but sounds a bit like another instance of American exceptionalism: Only Americans can liberate. An attitude I'd have understood until end of last year, because the US was the oldest and longest functioning democracy, so we all assumed a certain amount of democratic fortitude, but that idea got a huge dent in November.
And it boggles the mind if in 1939 the prevailing attitude had been "we need to let this burn out".
Which I suspected for some time. Only that the American military (not like the Turkish one) has no history of executing a coup against autocrats (they didn't have much of an opportunity). The suspense rises.
Note: Just refusing orders would likely have some effect already. So perhaps a coup against something is not necessary. But the marines are already in LA (or were?). It seems that train as already departed (in the wrong direction).
They are also trained to obey. Big problem in case of a take-over from within.
Guess who also was and thought they were "apolitical"? Germany had to learn the concept of "illegal orders" the hard way. In Nuremberg, after '45.
I have suspected for some time that this idea hasn't yet filtrated into the ranks of the US army[1]. Why should it? In times of democracy you (that is, the ruling class) want your military obedient, efficient and not asking too much questions. That is totally understandable...
[1] There are exceptions, I totally admit. I knew some them back (not very well, though) in ~2007.
[FIXED: First sentence typo. Sorry]
Focusing on the actual oath is one of the mistakes in translating lessons from history to later times which I would like to point out.
I am not sure if e.g. Mussolini or Franco required a personal oath to the leader. The oath itself is IMHO only ornament.
What makes a fascist state is the idea that everything (or rather the well-being of the state and the renewal of former glory[1]) revolves around loyalty to a single leader or a small enlightened elite (typically in the form of a Junta or a revolutionary committee).
And regarding this idea, Trump and his court are guilty as charged, never mind who and how many actually had to swear an oath on what some time.
[1] The resurrection of former glory after having come down in the world by subversion of a race of sub-humans or a progressing disease of moral weakness --- this idea is another tell-tale. Any time somebody talks fervently about former glory I see the swastikas waving above their head in my mind's eye and Goebbel's spittle dropping to the ground below them.
We (the people of the world) should not mistake the ornaments of fascism for it's substance. In the sense that the ornaments have become symbols under which fascists rally, I am all for sanctioning those ornaments/symbols (as is the case in Germany), though.
But modern fascists (including Trump, the abominable "Heritage"[1] Foundation and the GOP [2]) are really good at re-creating the essence of fascism and avoiding the ornaments / accidental attributes.
We (PotW, see above) need to understand what the essence of fascism is.
I am not going to bad-mouth the US. It's likely (and I have heard/read vivid testimony to that effect) that before 1/21/25 not all was well either. The foundations were there, I imagine, the structural racism, a legal system, a constitution and a party political system rife for exploitation.
Only it didn't happen before. But now the US is officially a fascist state (keyword: ICE, deportation, revocation of citizen-ships, threatening elected mayoral candidates for reasons of political opportunity).
I leave it to everybody (mature adults we all are) to decide if anything is yet missing. Trump is not Hitler, true. Not every fascist is Hitler. Not even every lunatic fascist is Hitler. But if people think, something is still missing, I'd ask them to consider if this something is not an "accidental ornament" of historical cases of fascism or really an essential element.
And I am, I should add, for reasons of transparency, not a US citizen. You (people out there) might dismiss my statements because of that, because I might not understand the US.
Or I am seeing more clearly for not being involved. You can at least take what I say as one voice in a larger chorus of how the rest of the world sees the US now. And our fears.
[1] Giving history a bad name since '73, the pox on them.
[2] A tip for them: "I got operated on and a chip was implanted in my brain" will not be a valid defense when the time comes.
@lillyfinch @glitzersachen I think I agree with what you have both said here.
With regard to the oath, I look at it as a possible symptom, telling us a bit more about the disease and its progress. But I do agree that we have a fully developed case of fascism here.
As far as non-Americans commenting, the current situation affects the entire world.
> The Americans I know are very firm on the distinction
I already thought so. Which is, why focusing on the form of the oath is not effective. The Trump cabal knows that Americans are firm on the distinction and will not choose the actual oath as their hill to die on.
On comparison the situation in the Weimar republic was completely different. With the emperor only abdicating in 1918 the idea of a personal leader and loyalty to this leader was very much alive in the years leading up to Hitler coming to power (1933, so just 15 years later).
This idea, already in the heads of almost all of the population, could easily be repurposed into loyalty to a fascist leader (and the empire idea into "we have been stabbed in the back, but the NSDAP will lead Germany back to former glory")
The situation in the US is starkly different, so any 1:1 analogy breaks down here.
Actually, regardless of the disappointment any resistance to Trump is at the moment, this is also reason to hope just a bit: Many fascist states were hardly working (however imperfect) democracies before.
The Kaiserreich was an autocracy (for example). The US in contrast (all imperfections, all roots of the evil, aside) was a democracy. Trump is still loosing support by his base. And it's not clear he'll actually have police forces and military forces on his side in the long run (which would be the alternative option to populism).
So there is hope, Because the analogy to the third Reich does NOT hold completely.
But everybody get me right: Trumps obsession with personal loyalty: That's a page directly from the playbook of the fascist leader.
@glitzersachen @lillyfinch I don't view it as American exceptionalism except in the sense the the US has a bigger military than the next 10 countries combined. At this point in time, there are no viable external military threats. And, under this regime, it looks like that military will be turned against the US populace itself.
As far as expansionist ideas it would not surprise me at all to see an attempt to annex the rest of North America and Greenland. This regime has been trying the make the case that it's necessary. I do think it's insane, but much of what they're doing now is insane, so it would not be out of character.
I do think there are things that can be done to oppose this regime, so I'm not suggesting doing nothing. But the forces at work are not trivial.
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