On the other hand, Hungary banned Pride, installed face recognition cameras, threatened everyone with fines and the organisers with prison.

It became the biggest mass event ever. Literally there has never been any civil event that was bigger than that. 5% of the population was there, in one place, in the capital.

The police tried at one point to prevent passge or control the crowd, but they were so overwhelmed that they just got ignored. So were the right wing counterprotests.

Then the government started to try and fine at least the organisers, but people went up and started reporting themselves en masse, saying they were organisers since they asked friends to come.

Nobody got punished, those in power were humiliated, people realised they have power.

If the home of democratic backslide and illiberal "democracy" can do it, so can you.

There is no regime in history where anything like that works. The Nazis couldn't arrest all the KPD/SPD voters, for example. Once you start talking about a significant percentage of the entire population, it's simply not feasible.

That's why the fascist playbook is to cleave off sections of the population and tell you to hate them. It wouldn't work any other way.

They can't. They're not coordinated, they're not competent, they aren't remotely meeting recruitment numbers, they literally cannot do this, and some of them know it. They could turn the world to bubbly boiling glass¹, but they can't occupy three medium or larger American cities.

If they try to do LA, Chicago or new York, they're done. All their resources tied up just in that.

Occupying cities at the level they would need to takes a lot of work.

¹if anyone's been doing maintenance on those things; who actually knows how many still work

Oh, good to know! Thank you!