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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12818 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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I recently came across this video from the NYT. It is titled: "We're experts in Fascism. We're Leaving the U.S."

Not to boo my outgroup too much here (and that's not the point of this), but holy shit this video is bonkers. The logical jumps these people are making, their inability to understand or recognize that they are explicitly not living in a fascist dictatorship when they work for the largest newspaper in the country publishing content about how the leader of the country is a giant fascist. This video is frightening to me for the following reason:

What does the deprogramming effort for all of this eventually look like? Or does it happen?

These people (not necessarily the ones in the video, but the ones who might watch this type of video earnestly) seem convinced that we are living in a society which is comparable in some way to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy.

I guess I have to stop myself here to check my biases: are we? Just to look at the most obvious thing here, the press, the answer is unequivocally: no, or perhaps even "fuck no, lol".

Or the military? It seems like we have the most powerful military on earth, and are essentially not using it at all.

As far as ICE: ice killed two people in situations which were arguably (though not definitely) self defense, and the response was that the Federal Government largely pulled out of the area (Minnesota) where they were deployed. This is while local residents are doing things like stalking federal law enforcement, setting up various checkpoints, and delaying "rapid response forces" to track their movements.

Would Hitler have tolerated this? Was there an equivalent in Nazi Germany of non-Nazis setting up checkpoints for the Nazis and driving them out of town?

Okay I'm talking to myself here: no we are not even remotely close to anything even remotely like a fascist dictatorship. By almost every definition we are likely the farthest we have ever been from living in a fascist dictatorship.

So deprogramming: has there been any serious discussion about what this will look like? It's been on my mind for a little over a year now. Here was the positive realization I had about it: it's not necessary. The people being dispatched by this sort of propaganda don't hold coherent beliefs. This is not part of a larger system of beliefs that all build on top of one another. These ideas are mostly just sitting on their own. They are a collection, not a system.

So this means that deprogramming isn't so much a process of unwinding everything, it's just a matter of installing a new set of ideas. Deprogramming could happen in a few days, for some people it could probably happen in a single episode of John Oliver or Rachel Maddow.

Realistically this was a happy realization to me. Am I wrong to think this?

By almost every definition we are likely the farthest we have ever been from living in a fascist dictatorship.

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.

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".

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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