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I think you're directionally correct about how close we are to disctatorship relative to what the average redditir thinks, but do you really think we're doing better than we've been in recent years? I'd allege that we're closer to fascist dictatorship than we've been since... WWII maybe?
I know the executive branch has been growing in power my whole life, but Trump II really has a YOLO attitude about it and is really just willing to do whatever shit he wants. E.g. blatantly unconstitutional tariffs that the Supreme Court won't even rule on. The weaponization of the justice department without even a pretense that things aren't political. Politicization for previously apolitical administrative roles, including firing people for not stroking Trump's ego enough. The expansion of ICE-- it's not like the public didn't vote for more deportations, but similarly it's a force being used for Trump's political/personal vendettas. You really think Minnesota is more of a hotspot of illegal immigrants than, say, Texas? (Actually, I'd be curious to see data on this.)
A lot of this is about the fuzziness of how our laws are applied. Of course the executive can fire people, but when you brook no disagreement and surround yourself with yes-men, you are certainly taking things a step closer to authoritarianism.
Augustus never disbanded the Senate; he didn't just disband everything Star Wars style and declare himself emperor. But nonetheless he ran over previous norms and altered the constitution of Rome forever, becoming the quintessential (pre-modern) authoritarian.
Texas has deported more people than Minnesota, it just sends in the state troopers to beat up annoying lefty protestors instead of letting ICE handle it themselves.
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Is the issue here that Trump doesn't make pretenses when the media criticizes him for it, whereas previously the media just never criticized Biden and Obama for doing it?
Texas is working with ICE so there's no need for it. For example, after an illegal alien rapist serves his time in jail in TX, the prison system calls up ICE and hands him over. MN does not do this - for some reason MN wants illegal alien rapists out on the streets and collecting welfare. So you need ICE agents on the streets doing police work instead.
I agree that we're closer than we have been in a long while. But we're certainly further from fascism than we were under Obama and Biden.
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Manafort, Bannon, Roger Stone, George Papadapolous, Pete Navarro, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Trump himself, etc. etc. etc. The idea that the last DOJ had a "pretense that things aren't political" is doing a lot of work here, come on now.
Is authoritarianism just whenever the executive isn't constrained from doing things?
I mean, yes? That’s a pretty decent definition.
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/shrug, that's not so bad a definition. If all the power is concentrated in a single authority and is unconstrained, yeah, that's authoritarianism. Our constitution (both the written document and the actually makeup of our government) work(s/ed) so well because political actors had lots of constraints on them. Most formally this is the other branches of government but is also affected by governance norms and public outrage.
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In 2021 I was hours from losing my job because I wouldn't submit to a medical procedure.
Trump hasn't done that to me yet.
Incidentally, this is one thing that drives me crazy about so much of the anti-ICE stuff. Plenty of those protestors supported vaccine mandates, firing people, and taking their kids away for opposing getting a vaccine. Now that the boot is on the other face, they are up in arms about fascism, which tells me they have learned nothing and will eagerly put the boot back on my face when they get the chance.
If they said, "oh man, we've learned our lesson, the response to covid was terrible and uncalled-for, and we'll never do it again," it would be different. They might be lying, but one could be generous and assume good faith and it would be a step towards affirming mistake theory and overall de-escalating things.
But no, there are people even all these years later who will find ways to try to justify the government trying to fuck those of us who didn't want an experimental medical treatment and then tell me I need to be really, really worried about government overreach.
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Is this a thing that is associated with fascist dictatorships more strongly than with other forms of government? Usually "if the government forces me to do things I don't want, that's basically fascism" is a leap of nomenclature more associates with young lefties.
"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" is arguably more of a generic totalitarian sentiment, but I think it's safe to say it's pretty strongly associated with fascism?
Well, but it's a stretch to go from a medical procedure being mandated under threat of losing your job to that motto. There are many procedures that match the motto better than mandatory vaccination, while being very common - like, for example, state railways, public schooling with civics classes, and mandatory ID.
Those don't seem all that salient at the moment (nor Trumpy)?
It started well before the mandates; how else can you frame widespread and clearly unconstitutional restrictions on freedom of movement etc. "for the good of the state"? I literally had reddit normies upvoting and commenting in agreement with (less famous) Mussolini quotes at the time -- it was very bad.
My point is just that "mandatory medical procedure" does not code "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State" to a greater degree than other things which are very common, so unless all these other things are also signs of fascist dictatorship, to whatever extent "mandatory medical procedure" signals fascist dictatorship at least does not factor through any similarity between it and "Everything in the State(...)".
The connection to Trump is downstream from the discussion that preceded it: @birb_cromble was trying to argue that Trump is not closer to fascism than his American predecessors on the basis that Biden before him imposed mandatory medical procedures, which he presumably sees as a very fascist thing to do (more fascist than any of @guy's examples). I argue contra this in the direction that mandatory medical procedures are not actually all that fascist, and hence @guy's examples about Trump can't be flatly dismissed with something to the effect of "Biden was very fascist so none of this should even rise to the point of consideration".
It's everything in the state, not "the state owns some trains and funds schools" -- mandatory ID does strike me kind of fascist, but is not a thing that US government does AFAIK?
Anyways the point is that while it's (maybe?) possible to imagine a forced vaccination program that doesn't rely on "nothing against the state" type rhetoric, the COVID one definitely did.
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Even if you were to define "fascism" solely based around your personal feelings toward and experience with the government (rather than some greater, big-picture perspective), vaccine mandates were in no way a novel or unique feature of COVID. There's a long history of them in the United States, at various times and for various reasons.
So novelty is the primary concern? If something with enough precedent means it's not authoritarian or fascist, then under Buck v. Bell and Korematsu, there are no grounds to complain when El Presidente for Life Vance decides everyone below 75 IQ must be sterilized and all Muslims must be interned and have their property confiscated. Novelty seems like a rather poor rubric.
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They were actually quite novel - the supreme court decided that.
The closest comparison that might make it not be novel, if you squint and ignore details, would be Jacobson, but that covered the states and not the feds, and predates a lot of other important jurisprudence.
Above and beyond that, using OSHA to try and justify it was literally a thing that had never been done before.
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Who cares if they were novel? What difference does that make? The government tried to have millions of us fired because we didn't want to take a vaccine that didn't even work. Imagine for a second that the vaccine cured homosexuality or made everyone white. Imagine that the government wanted to make everyone get their bodyfat percentage calculated. ?
I’m for this one
We need to leverage more government power against the fats.
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I think many of your points can be rebutted. They are in essence treating the progressive option as neutral.
Take for example the politicization of certain administrative roles. Did you miss the first Trump term where those ‘apolitical’ roles were used to #resist. Was that not political? The departments were not apolitical to start with; Trump II is merely saying if they are going to be political might as well be our guys.
Or take ICE. It is deporting more people in Texas and Florida. The big difference is those states are working with the feds so you don’t need a lot of federal people there to enforce deportation. Not so in Minnesota. Is that fascist? Was Little Rock and the 101st fascist?
Re the weaponization of the justice department did we not just live through the Dems trying the leading opposition candidate on novel bogus charges? That is but one example. You also had under Obama the targeting of conservative NGOs.
Maybe you say this is just the “you too” fallacy. But I think the reality is that Trump recognizes he (and Republicans more broadly) being knifes to shootouts. Trump decided to finally bring a gun. Maybe that increases the odds of something spiraling out of control and leading to right fascism. But if he didn’t it would clearly lead to left fascism.
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