[BigglesB]

Anyone who might dismiss this as being just a few isolated cases — or who think it is desirable to just remove political opponents from the equation — should think long and hard about what it will actually take to maintain this kind of “criminalisation of dissent” over the long term… escalation is inevitable.

There is clearly an intentional narrative being pushed that defines anyone who disagrees with the current administration’s ideology as an enemy who should be punished. Even if the risk to any one person is currently relatively small, just the threat itself will have profound effects on individual’s decisions.

A massive brain drain seems inevitable but such a war on free speech will also radicalise people, even if it starts only in whispers. That will likely necessitate further oppressive measures to “stamp it out” and so forth, creating a vicious cycle. With each iteration the stakes increase, justifying increasingly violent measures & countermeasures on both sides, further increasing the consequences of — and the need avoid — actually being held accountable for those actions…

[bko]

I'm concerned about this as well. If this keeps progressing, we could see a monoculture develop among elite institutions and media where the shots are being called by three letter agencies. We could get to a place where federal agencies are working directly with social media companies to coordinate censorship of dissent and set speech guidelines. If they don't oblige they'll be threatened with arbitrary enforcement and getting dragged out in front of Congress.

Eventually there could be an entire political capture of these social media companies, universities, journalists, NGOS etc where 90%+ of its employees subscribe to one political party .

But it gets even worse. If this continues we could see activist judges try to throw political rivals in jail. They would even change the law in order to try to get them to go to prison, combining misdemeanors into felonies.

And this says nothing about the rhetoric. By casting political opponents as villains, this invites assassination attempts and general lawlessness to intimidate people perceived as not falling in line. By this point the media will be complicit so there will be no investigation into these activities. Even a failed assassination attempt would be at most a few day story with no reporting on motive or coordination.

I too am very concerned about all of this.

[cogman10]

So the final solution is a masked police force abducting people off the streets and rushing them onto a flight to a death camp in El Salvador?

I get you are being cute, but let's be real. Nothing "the left" did compares to this.

[f38zf5vdt]

"Let's do all of this, but much worse, with more corruption, and more violently" is a weird response to perceived political grievances. Like how Leninist critiques of the Russian monarchy and subsequent revolution lead to a system at least as bad as that of the Tsar.

If you want to deconstruct the status quo, make sure that your outcomes will be actually be better for you. Even Stalin ended up as a victim of his regime at the end of days, his physician ending up arrested and being interrogated while his health declined.

[jhp123]

There is an old documentary called "the Revolution will not be Televised" about the Chavez presidency in Venezuela. If you watch it you will come away feeling that Chavez was treated pretty unfairly by the rightist media and "deep state" who attempted to overthrow his Presidency.

But even if that is true, it is also true that Chavez took many actions to centralize power, erode democratic safeguards in the Constitution, control the media and destroy the opposition parties. Every step was justified by pointing to the horrible rightist conspiracy against Chavez. But the end result was a dictatorship and the absolute ruin of the Venezuelan state.

This is normal for dictators. Many cast themselves as victims. Stalin was pressed on all sides by Capitalists, Kulaks, and Trotskyists. Hitler, of course, by Jews and Communists. Whether the accusations are pure fantasy or rooted in some level of real persecution of the movement, it is very important not to allow them to be used to justify the establishment of tyranny.

[hypeatei]

> where federal agencies are working directly with social media companies

When did this happen? If you're referring to the "Twitter files", then you're take on this is very misinformed and the government did not coerce Twitter to suppress the laptop story. It was even found that Republicans submitted so many similar requests that Twitter had to keep a special database to track those requests.

The right wing has a weird persecution complex while they have the biggest cable news network in the US (Fox News), just got control of all three branches of government, and had a billionaire buy Twitter for them to help their guy win.

Will you only be satisfied if everyone agrees with you and drinks the Trump kool-aid? Also note that the "other" political party you're referring to didn't deny the election results and try to overthrow the government.

[archagon]

I don’t quite recall Biden storming the Capitol, phoning politicians to “find votes,” and sending in a slate of fake electors to subvert the democratic process. But sure, the “activist judges” and their “lawfare” are the real problem here. Not, say, Judge Cannon punting and deferring rock-solid cases without precedent until it’s too late.

Fucking horseshit.

[unraveller]

What is a Culture War?

[cheema33]

All of this seems to borrow ideas from Putin's playbook. I never realized how strong of an appetite certain segment of US population has for authoritarianism.

[te_chris]

There was a survey done recently and the GOP is about as rightwing and authoritarian in outlook as the Russians.

Miles beyond most other right wing parties. https://on.ft.com/4iqh3qA

[freehorse]

Whatever one may think about them, "protests, cancellation or boycotts" are not anywhere close to being governmental actions as those discussed here, so I would not call that "already happened" with "slightly different means".

[bhouston]

> This had already happened for a long while in the US, it just used slightly different means like protests, cancellation or boycotts, just the victims were from the other side.

It sounds like this is viewed as revenge? The trend of using state power as revenge against groups one doesn't like is problematic and can be escalatory. As it escalates, eventually groups will fear the loss state power and that can lead to the end of democracy.

[davidgrenier]

There's only one "other side" in this, it's the American people.

[Frieren]

Citizens protests = Government oppression

Is that your opinion? Just let me tell you that I politely disagree with your weird assessment.

[regularjack]

I don't understand how someone can legitimate think this.