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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13375 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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but do you really think we're doing better than we've been in recent years?

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.

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.

Is this a thing that is associated with fascist dictatorships more strongly than with other forms of government?

"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.

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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. ?

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