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Any number of deaths is worth the fantasy, apparently (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 0 points 1 year ago (13 children)

When I hear comments like this, I think that in your eyes democracy is optional when you have somebody like Trump in office. He’s clearly a fascist, so democrats need to arrest him and put a democrat in charge.

If you belong to a party that values democracy, you need to recognize that the fascist is an elected officials and do what you can legally do to maintain control and make sure the voters know who is to blame.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Fascists are incompatible with democracy and should be barred from holding any office.

    Your take is either aggressively fucking stupid, or you are a fascist arguing in bad faith.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Please, tell me what the policy is that prevents the fascists from holding office. I think you are expressing a “feeling” not an actual policy that stands any chance of being created.

    You want to bar fascists from holding office? I’d love that. Who gets to define who the fascists are? The Lemmy hivemind? Do we hold a vote to determine who the fascists are? I think Trump is a fascist, but I think most people that voted for him would disagree. What happens if Trump labels all democratic governors as fascists? Do they all of a sudden have to leave office? Also, how the *** do you expect this law to be created? You think the house and senate can pass this and the president will sign it?

    I may be aggressively fucking stupid IRL, but I’m not hearing any real actionable policy ideas that would pass and also cannot be abused by the actual fascists.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Bare minimum, if at any point you've expressed as a politician negative views towards democracy or any core philosophical element of democracy or indicates a desire to remove or destroy it, you should be bared from running for office.

    Any politician who expresses positive feelings or views of historical parties who dismantled or destroyed democracy should also bar them from running.

    You wouldn't even have to use the word "fascism". Just create a law that establishes that its illegal to dismantle, weaken, or destroy democracy and that even conspiring or openly stating the criminal threat of doing so is also a crime and on top of whatever criminal penalties it also prevents you from running for office as punishment.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    First, no chance in a million years this would ever make it through the house, senate and get signed by the president. And unless it’s a constitutional amendment, the courts would kill this under first amendment protection.

    Even if none of that is true, this would be so incredibly easy to abuse, you would just be handing a dictatorship to anybody that wants to abuse it. For any idea like this, you need to ask, how could Trump abuse this? Sure, Trump, as he exists now, would be barred from running for office. But what if he was careful to hide his fascist side? Now that he’s in office, it’s game on!

    The 50+ Texas democrats that have left the state to prevent redistricting? One might argue that act is undemocratic and immediately remove them from office and bar them from ever running for office again.

    It’s easy to downvote and talk smack on a web forum, it’s hard to come up with a realistic plan.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Cool, so there's an ethnic cleansing going on. When it becomes full on genocide, do we still just shrug and respect democracy?

    They're currently attempting to rig elections and taking bribes, all out in the open. Trump attempted a coup, and managed to get back into office. They've pushed the unitary executive theory into practice, they're ignoring both the courts and Congress when it suits them.

    The rule of law is dead. No amount of following the rules will fix that. Our democracy has been hacked. The checks and balances have failed. Things will not go back to how they were.

    There is only fascism until everything collapses, or progressives take hold of power and do reconstruction.

    If you want to live in a democracy, respecting the will of people who don't want democracy is not an option

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    So what are you actually suggesting we do, then? Take up arms and start a civil war against the nuclear powered government?

    Let me hear some actual solutions. All I’ve heard so far is [very legitimate] complaints and fantasies where individuals are able to magically remove fascists from power.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    We resist, and we take back power and give it to people who will use it.

    We need to take every seat. From district school boards to US senators, every seat that comes up needs to go to someone who will fight.

    And I really mean fight - everything from gerrymandering California to ordering police to arrest federal agents invading our cities. But smaller and more personal things too

    If you're so much as in charge of a book club, I want you to abuse that tiny amount of power to bully any open MAGA people

    These people are trying to kill us and destroy our country. They don't want democracy, they want to take away our votes and our freedom.

    Their voices don't matter, they need to be shamed and attacked until they can't make eye contact. They should be made to realize they aren't entitled to opinions.

    No, there's no glorious revolution coming. Just a period of fascism before the collapse of an empire. We are just fucked

    But that doesn't mean we can't make a difference. Things can get better locally, we can drive the Fascists back and save a lot of people. We can slow them down until we can take back power.

    We can start working on the cultural norms that will drive fascism underground for another century.

    So if you want to make things better, fuck the rules. Things never would have gotten this far if we were more punk rock. We need to learn to be punk rock.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hmm, I 100% agree, but I just want to point out that this is not incompatible with “respecting democracy”.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Well, when I hear "respecting democracy", I think back to a guy I met in France. They just had an election, in his words "he's going to ruin this country, but eh, this is democracy". He accepted the result, because he respected the process

    That's exactly what I don't want. I don't want respect in the Democratic process, because breaking norms and cheating let them hack the system. We need to cheat too

    This isn't respectful of democracy, it's contemptuous of a failed system

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    That’s exactly what they believe.

    But it’s an inherent issue with democracy, that it only really works if we all have somewhat of a shared view of the world. If the people in a democracy have many different, and opposite views of the world, democracy simply cannot work because we’re not just disagreeing in what the method to reach our goals are, we disagree fundamentally on what our goals are and what the very fabric of our society should look like. That’s why many on the right will say that assimilation is important. And yes that has been co-opted by racists, but originally the idea was that a democracy can only sustain itself if all its members have a shared culture. Pluralism, as has been observed since Plato, only leads to the collapse of a democracy because consensus becomes impossible.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I don't find democracy flawed by itself, but it is nothing but a cherished and fragile balance that gets watered down and coopted if not constantly maintained.

    Coexisting with other opinions is a work that doesn't end once you get there, and natural foes of it like corporative lobbies, career politicians and now again pointless populists are always there to dismantle whatever was built. It being 'a thing to fight for' is reduced to a movie cliche, but it does, unlike feudal caste elite-guided medieval shit, require that effort at all times. Erosion of that understanding leads to what we can see today.

    Sharing culture and integration can start right now, and it spontaniously happens on it's own if not put down, but the same rightwing people would likely draw another isolated Israel on the map than break the barriers from their own side, than accept other people as equals and discuss.

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