Most definitely. But we all are in some sense complicit, right? However unwittingly we accepted the entirety of the FAANG ideology: cornered markets, monopolistic practice, regulatory capture, anti-competitive business and now government practice. There's a reason why so many tech folks are not super nervous about what's going on politically. It's familiar.
I've lost count how many articles make a point of listing CEOs present at Trump's inauguration omit Tim Cook who also contributed $1M to the inauguration fund.
The current administration is absolutely showing hallmarks of illiberal democracy and autarkic economic policy, but constantly overusing the term "fascist" has and will continue to reduce it's staying power.
If every opponent is called a fascist, you'll grow numb to actual fascists or extremist organizations exploiting low information voters.
The same holds if you call every Democrat a "Marxist" or "Socialist".
This mudslinging will only accelerate illiberal democracy and when a real monster joins a poltical platform, much of the base is immune or indifferent.
Look at how decimated the opposition in Turkiye and Hungary became due to this kind of oratory flourish.
End of the day, we live in a political world where Citizens United is the law. If we lump actual donors who formerly leaned D barely a decade ago with bad actors, there's no reason for them to support us.
Apart from the apparent atheist Musk, the rest is being driven by the US Council for National Policy, operationalised by the New Apostolic Reformation and their 7 Mountains Mandate. Texas Observer on some of this: https://www.texasobserver.org/new-apostolic-reformation-texa...
These people are Christo-Fascists busy making govt so small it can be drowned in a puddle.
Yes, in general we over-apply extremism labels to political opponents, but specifically in the US in the last 8 years, the things labeled "fascist" tend to check more fascism checkmarks than the things labeled "socialist/communist" check socialism/communism checkmarks, by a pretty significant margin too (subjectively).
Calling every Democrat a "Marxist" or "Socialist" appears to be working out great for the politicians who do it. Nobody appears to be growing numb to it.
> Look at how decimated the opposition in Turkiye and Hungary became due to this kind of oratory flourish.
Or was it the Fascism itself that decimated the opposition?
If your closing argument is "Don't anger the oligarchs or else we'll end up in Fascism" then maybe you need to reassess where we are along this process.
I'm not sure this is the biggest or most relevant problem and I can't think of many sincere good faith reasons why you'd bring it up here. It's the consensus mainstream position on this subject on HN, and is discussed and ultimately endorsed many times a week for the last few years.
Kishi, the war criminal mentioned in the opening, didn't just go on to serve as Prime Minister of post war Japan, so too did his younger brother Sato and his grandson Shinzo Abe.
>Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultra nationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition... (wikipedia)
There are some similarities but they are pretty lacking on the militarism, there's still an opposition and still elections in 2028.
The only government I'd really call fascist these days is Russia.
[+] [-] inftech|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cmurf|1 year ago|reply
I've lost count how many articles make a point of listing CEOs present at Trump's inauguration omit Tim Cook who also contributed $1M to the inauguration fund.
[+] [-] alephnerd|1 year ago|reply
If every opponent is called a fascist, you'll grow numb to actual fascists or extremist organizations exploiting low information voters.
The same holds if you call every Democrat a "Marxist" or "Socialist".
This mudslinging will only accelerate illiberal democracy and when a real monster joins a poltical platform, much of the base is immune or indifferent.
Look at how decimated the opposition in Turkiye and Hungary became due to this kind of oratory flourish.
End of the day, we live in a political world where Citizens United is the law. If we lump actual donors who formerly leaned D barely a decade ago with bad actors, there's no reason for them to support us.
[+] [-] unearth3d|1 year ago|reply
These people are Christo-Fascists busy making govt so small it can be drowned in a puddle.
[+] [-] Zigurd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] happytoexplain|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jfengel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|1 year ago|reply
Or was it the Fascism itself that decimated the opposition?
If your closing argument is "Don't anger the oligarchs or else we'll end up in Fascism" then maybe you need to reassess where we are along this process.
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] janice1999|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|1 year ago|reply
There are some similarities but they are pretty lacking on the militarism, there's still an opposition and still elections in 2028.
The only government I'd really call fascist these days is Russia.
[+] [-] greenie_beans|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] andsoitis|1 year ago|reply