this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2025
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The problem is that I don't respect "conservatives" if they continue to substantially support abusive politicians, organizations, and groups. I don't care if you're respectful and not personally bigoted; there's no excuse for supporting disrespectful and bigoted actions. Unless you admit your sins and agree to not support Nazis anymore, then your sympathy will never be enough.
Just because American conservatives are Nazis now doesn't mean that all conservatives everywhere are as well. I feel like that word, and fascism, get diluted way too much these days and all it does is increase political polarisation. For example, it scares me the number of Gen Z Aussies that that believe our centre-right conservative party are Nazis and that we're "one step away" from becoming the US. I mean I don't like those conservatives, I think they're fluffheads, but they respect the rule of law and wouldn't try to overturn an election!
They believe all the same stuff, they just know they can not yet bring it out in public.
You're right that they wouldn't try to overturn an election but it is only because they can't get away with it, not because they actually respect any law other than "fuck you I've got mine".
And your attitude of complacency is what makes it so that Australia will also become like the USA - you're not special somehow, this is happening everywhere.
Being realistic =/= Complacency
We aren't special, but we do have mandatory and preferential voting, which is fairly rare the world over, and that absolutely affects the outcomes of our elections. Mandatory voting has a far bigger effect than most realise on curbing extremism. I'm just so exhausted from American doomers trying to pretend the entire* rest of the world is heading the same direction so they don't feel as bad about the fluffed state of their nation...
Someone else mentioned the UK and it's the same FPTP, low voter turnout problem as the US. You know who's actually special? New Zealand with their Mixed Member Proportional. I'll give you a thousand dollars if they ever turn fascist!
Voting system helps but it's not a magic bullet. I'm from NZ. We've always been ten years behind the rest of the world, I'll hit you up in a decade to claim my thousand bucks. Germany is ramping up for fascism for real and they have the same MMP system as us, we copied it almost exactly from them.
These worries about increasing political polarization seem reasonable on the surface, but political polarization is only a symptom of underlying problems. If you want to worry about polarization itself, the demand must be equally applied to both extremes.
If no shared values and boundaries are agreed to, there's nothing to stop one party from pushing the window of acceptable ideas to favor their own clan. As one side takes a step forward towards reconciliation, the other can shift the entire conversation in their favor by simply taking a step back. Complaining about the two sides drifting farther apart as a problem in itself only hurts the side less willing to further radicalize themselves.
I don't know Australian politics, but I do know that most liberal democracies are only a step away from fascism. Some like the UK are already doomed. This is because unchecked capitalism breeds increasing wealth inequality, shrinking wages and opportunities, and causing an increase in people wanting to fundamentally change society in some way. Fascists offer easy answers in the death of liberalism, as many liberal politicians are unable to deliver or even promise substantial change.
The only way to preserve liberal democracy (the rule of law, civil liberties, a social contract) is to protect the working class from capitalism. Even if you think we need capitalism and can never live without it, capitalism causes societal instability by redistributing wealth from workers to the wealthy. Unless the state and workers can limit or reverse this trend, it will destroy the system by making people believe it can never serve them. Liberal democracy is incompatible with unchecked capitalism for this reason.
right now the coalition is deciding whether or not to continue its trajectory towards trumpist alt right politics or realign itself as a centre right party.
this is not something that is just going away.
Yet the Australian people firmly rejected that Trumpism, and the Liberal party, which is who I was referring too, seem to be keen to push towards the centre under Sussan Ley.
The likelihood that we get a Trump style, fascist government that ignores the rule of law and the courts is infinitesimally small, especially with our mandatory and preferential voting system. The Coalition are awful, but to call them fascist is to water down the term until it has no meaning.
Edit: The one caveat I'll add is Jacinta Price defecting to the Liberals but it's not like the rest of the party had a choice in that matter, and I think they will grow increasingly frustrated with her if she repeats her Trumpist clowning during the next election.