this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2025
826 points (92.1% liked)

Privacy

32796 readers
1410 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Your analogy is actually very apt because at the height of their power, the Nazi party made up a whopping 15% of the German population, IIRC.

It doesn't take a lot of crazies to end with a death count for a minority group so high that they only passed their pre-WW2 population levels about 15 years ago. It merely takes the indifference or implicit support of the majority. So many Americans are either one issue voters or indifferent because their rights aren't up for debate every 4 years that the political compass has swung so extreme that in the first 6 months of (I think) 2022, there were more anti-trans bills proposed than there were days in the year at that point. I did the math, and it came out to roughly 1.2 anti-trans bills per day. The Nazis didn't start with the gas chambers. They started with prisons and internment camps for political prisoners, LGBT people, immigrants, and anyone else they deemed "undesirable," inspired by America's treatment of the indigenous peoples.

If we're willing to call the people of Germany in WW2 Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, then we can call the "I'm a Republican, I vote for the nominee" crowd that I've known my entire life and the indifferent silent majority Nazi sympathizers as well, and the MAGA crowd that call for banning trans people from public spaces and to deport immigrants Nazis. They hold the same values about fascism and white supremacy, and many even wear the same outfits and fly the same flags as Nazi Germany. They've been marching in the streets since Trump's first campaign. And we haven't even talked about the white supremacist terrorist groups and militias. The FBI spends more than 50% of their time putting down white supremacist groups.

We have been marching down the exact same path as 1910s Germany for years, and we need to call it out. Even Hitler referred to the US as the sisterland across the ocean who shared his values in Mein Kampf. In any other country, the KKK would be considered a terrorist group. Here, they're a political activist group who almost got one of their leaders elected to a fairly major government position.

The Democrats have spent 50 years "reaching across the aisle." How'd that go for them in this past election? The country seems to have slipped ever further towards a Fourth Reich to me. When Republicans came out in support of Harris in swing states, she lost a large percentage of independent voters in those states - like 5% of the total voters in each state. There's no understanding to be had with white supremacists and fascists. All they want is for people like me to die.