this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 127 points 1 week ago (11 children)

The only problem I have is with the whole "foreign backed" language. It's technically not wrong, but please, as a reminder: It was not simply manipulation from Russia and others, putting Trump into power and creating MAGA. It is a homegrown problem, fascism has been smouldering in the US for a long time, and just as another reminder, it is also glimmering in the EU as well.

The country is "occupied" by its ruling class, and in this case, a specific clique of them benefitting themselves even against other capitalists, but overall, this is much more about class-, than it is about nation-dynamics.

[–] eatCasserole@lemmy.world 41 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Well said. I would even go so far as to say that facism is the bones of America.

American colonialism served as inspiration for Hitler, and the history of America is packed solid with violent othering of various groups. To pretend that any of these problems are new or came from elsewhere is an incredibly naive and whitewashed point of view.

American colonialism served as inspiration for Hitler, and the history of America is packed solid with violent othering of various groups.

It's not wrong, although I would stress, that fascism is not just that, and there is a reason why we only call those systems starting in the 20th century fascist.

It is also class collaborationism, and trying to somehow have the advantages of capitalism without its utter destruction of social norms and traditions. It is intertwining state and capital with the ideological aim to create a "strong nation" in the fight against other nations. It is imagining society as a body with people being its organs, who should serve their allotted place in society, and not rebel against it. America also had non-fascist tendencies woven within into history, and the settler-colonial era was still too early to be called "fascist", lacking the kind of developed industrial capitalism and violent reaction to socialist class struggle 20th century fascism was born in.

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago

Yeah, we've rarely been the good guys in history.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

No, Jim crow was the inspiration for Hitler, he wrote about it explicitly in mein kampf as the model that must be followed.

The Nuremberg Laws are actually, I shit you not, Jim crow but watered down as Germans wouldn't tolerate the 1 drop rule.

The south was so impossibly evil even the nazis blanched, and we never did anything to solve their unimaginable inhumanity.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let's not kid ourselves.

The human race is a bunch of smouldering fascists. Balkans, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Darfur. Nigeria, Mali, Sudan, and other countries in the Sahel region. Take a look at this list of ethnic cleansings.

World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don't look like them.

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

We (the USA) were smoldering fascists prior to WW2. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Eh, I actually disagree. The US did a social democratic turn after the Great Depression, I think it was one of the eras where the US was furthest from fascism. It ultimately still created and maintained the conditions of fascist tendencies later on and only very partially did the work analysing their own history of imperialism, but I really dislike overuse of the word fascist, because it blunts the analytical edge. The implicit neoliberal social contract was different than the implicit fascist one (which was different than the more social democratic one solidified under FDR, etc.) - and the system no longer having to wear the mask of humanity has real life consequences and creates its own dynamics.

World history is rife with people trying to gain power so they can kill all the people who don’t look like them.

Indeed, but I think it is a fallacy to use that as an ideological framing of inevitability (unsure if that was your aim here). Ingroup-Outgroup thinking is one of the few things, that I think is indeed fundamental to the human condition, but the way it materialises is dependent on the interaction of that tendency with material and historical conditions. Without colonialism, the specific framing of race, for example, would not have existed in the same way. And universalism as a current within modernity is not just a fluke or illusion, but a proper potential tendency within human behaviour as well, one that relies on cultural and material conditions of its own.

Cynicism is in its own right an ideological distortion, where it leaves analysis and tries to impose its interpretation on reality.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Well you do sound like a pretty smart person. I don't think I can get on the intellectual playing field with you, but I think there was plenty of Nazi sympathizers prior to World war II in America. Here's just one example from NPR.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323/when-nazis-took-manhattan

As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I'm not saying it's inevitable, just that it's the default mode. Sort of like entropy, it asserts itself unless we actively act against it.

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That, I can agree with. There needs to be active work and conscious moulding of material dynamics, in order to allow for it to be overcome.

As to ethnic strife and tribal warfare, I’m not saying it’s inevitable, just that it’s the default mode

Funnily enough, there are huge parts of pre-historic mankind, where they were the exception instead of the rule (although, when it did happen, we have evidence it was often very genocidal and total).

Organised warfare can be traced to the beginnings of class society, where societies started to have the surplus necessary, so that risking a large part of their population could be "worth it" to acquire labour power (slaves) and surplus (property) of other societies. At least, that is my current understanding of archaeological and anthropological evidence (e.g. tracing when weapons of war, explicitly not just as tools, or palisades around settlements appear in the archaeological record).

Not necessarily disagreeing, just adding that, to highlight that defining a "default" is basically impossible. Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I was tracking pretty well with you until the last line

Mankind has always acted within its historical and material context.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. People have an aspect that is dictated by historical and material context. But there are also natural abilities, like speech, and propensities, like social organization, that are part of being human itself.

Surely, to my way a thinking, it's the whole nature/nurture thing, and your last sentence seems to leave nature out of it.

Even if you view man as a machine it doesn't change that. A windshield wiper doesn't cook eggs.

Some things do what they do because of what they are, not their material and historical context.

[–] AbnormalHumanBeing@lemmy.abnormalbeings.space 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah, I can see how that reads. So, short answer: I agree, but with the caveat that that simple truth can be misrepresented.

Of course, there are things that are inherent in "our nature". You mention speech, which is a great example - the ability of language and being adapted to being born into a complex system of language is one of the main reasons why I think humanity is acting so much within a material and historical context - more so than more intuitively acting animals adapted to a biome.

It is indeed my thesis, that besides some smaller things, "human nature" is being adapted to "culture", adapted to dialectically interacting with reality around us, and creating a new context that then influences us again. We aren't specialised to one biome any more, for example, or one circumstance in climate, but naturally inclined to change ourselves and our surroundings. And I agree, that we are indeed specialised for complex social organisation, too.

My issue comes there, where very specific behaviours or systems are presented as human nature, where I would claim, they are better explained as "how something within human nature is filtered through its historical context." Think of how people may say "private property" is human nature. Or "racism" is human nature. No, both are dynamics of something within human nature in a very specific context.

A windshield wiper doesn’t cook eggs.

True, but for humanity specifically, it can be damn hard to clearly define if we are a windshield wiper, an egg-cooker, or whatever. Because everything we study about our nature, will always appear to us filtered through the surrounding context. So it is only through hard work and building up theories to ever be falsified again, that we come closer to the essentials. (Like language, social organisation of high complexity, etc.)

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-023-09464-0

This study, and others like it, would be to my mind the right way to go about finding out what the baseline is for humans.

Look to the great apes, see what great apes do - because we are great apes. Old World monkeys would provide clues as well. We're absolutely going to be somewhat different, but that's where research comes in.

We don't have to guess.

PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It's always nice to talk to somebody brainy.

Thanks for the study, I only glossed over it, but it does indeed fit with the view I fundamentally have there as well. My own personal, more philosophical speculation added on top being, that the observed guilt and resentment, for example, are - again, in my own opinion, not stated as fact - intertwined with the foundation of language and being born into language. Interesting here, I think, is that children from traumatic upbringings without language acquisition, so-called "feral" children, do lack this aspect of mutual/joint commitment, as far as I know. But I am now starting to get out of my field of obsessive interest/expertise, myself.

Looking at behaviour of children in early childhood especially, can be very useful for some fundamentals, and using other Great Apes as a reference, can help a lot, too. But the older the observed humans get, the harder I think it is to use the observation, and studies have to be very carefully crafted. But I would agree, that it is part of the toolbox, as well as anthropological studies that can then be cross-referenced, and just because everything is always within a context, does not mean absolutely no things can be deduced from observations. (I realise now I made a mistake when I think I earlier said "basically impossible", when really it's just amazingly hard, and possible only for very general things).

PS. I know I was way out of my depth here. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. It’s always nice to talk to somebody brainy.

Thank you, and you're welcome. In the end, I am also just another ND person on the internet, currently hyper-talkative about a special interest. So I don't know how much "brainy" is really fitting, I always think it might be too positive of a description - but I guess I can't escape that I am indeed prone to geeking out about the Humanities at times without a proper filter. That has definitely caused me to make mistakes before, too, so you shouldn't take my word where what I say is in clear contradiction with facts.

[–] Back_it_up@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Where does one draw the line between cynicism and experience?

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[–] Crikeste@lemm.ee 70 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Elon Musk also did a Nazi salute on the presidents stage.

I’m fucking sick of people acting like it was something else.

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] DougHolland@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Three. The camera wasn't on him for the third Nazi salute.

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 4 points 1 week ago

Jesus christ 🤦🏻‍♀️

[–] YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No shit? Separate location/event or what?

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[–] LucidiaDiamond@lemm.ee 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It’s called a sieg heil. Salute makes it sound respectable.

[–] LeninOnAPrayer@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago

I mean it is respectful but just to Hitler.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Litmus test of friendship.

Just ask them if that gesture was a nazi salute or not. If they say no, walk away, they aren't worth being friends with.

[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

It's much worse than this

I too used to believe that Trump is getting some kind of kickback for his helping Russia, and maybe he still is

Until very recently I called Trump Putin's puppet

After seeing Vlad Vexler's video

I now understand the depths of Trump's narcissistic psychopathy

Trump separates people into two categories: People who have value to him and those who do not.

Trump will freely give the US and the west to Putin just because he wants to be in Putin's good graces because Trump requires validation from him.

To Trump, Putin belongs in the class of people that have value to him.

[–] Lumbardo@reddthat.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Post outlines quite possibly the worst-case scenario

HappySkullsplitter: it's actually much worse.

[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

yes, thats what weve been saying. he just wants to pull a reverse kissinger with russia, so he can hurt china.

i doubt he will succeed, but he will throw all he can at it because he convinced himself capable of it.

[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)

We are not of value to Trump.

He does not have the mental capacity to have a conscience.

He does not care if we live or die.

To him, it is not Russia that he is helping, only Putin because he has a compulsive need for validation from him.

Ultimately, it's not even about Putin. It's just fulfillment of his personal need for validation, a constant quest for self-gratification through the validation of those he sees as being of value

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

he is a narcissist, but he also has political goals.

[–] HappySkullsplitter@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Like all mental health conditions there are grades to its severity

Trump isn't a run of the mill narcissist, he has acute narcissistic personality disorder.

Any political goal he has isn't his own. They are only there because he is seeking validation from someone else and is enacting their will to achieve that validation.

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[–] alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We are not of value to Trump.

He does not have the mental capacity to have a conscience.

He does not care if we live or die.

This is true of literally every big capitalist and most small capitalists (actually the small capitalists are more likely to be pointlessly cruel, instead of simply not caring). Yall focus on individuals too much to understand the systems at work here.

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[–] IceFoxX@lemm.ee 4 points 1 week ago

To make a long story short. Trump always claims that others do something before he has it done... He says others risk a ww3... which countries does he want to claim everything again?
It boils down to further consolidating his dictatorship regime and completely abolishing democracy. To then attack Europe together with the ally Russia... Trump is now making sure that money and everything will flow again and Russia can rearm on the side. Your judges or anyone else won't be able to do anything about it. The only thing that can change it are people who sacrifice themselves for their country and go and kill terrorists.

[–] AnjunaSouls@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

As someone who was raised by a narcissistic sociopath (and who was fucked up by it in countless ways), it's beyond terrifying seeing the same type of scumbag occupying the white house.

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[–] Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Doesn't sound fair to me. Musk is an oligrach, but he's also, at least, a nazi transphobe who disowned his own daughter. Donald is, at least again, a convicted felon and rapist who was best friend with the the most notorious pedophile of the past 50 years, and also tried to overthrow the government while being backed by a foreign country. Let get our facts straight.

Lol DHS is now listed in Wikipedia as a Secret Police Organization 🤣

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_secret_police_organizations

I love these editors, they speak the truth as it is.

[–] barneypiccolo@lemm.ee 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

By all objective measures, HitlerPig us the most prolific traitor in American history, wirse than all other American traitors COMBINED.

And yet, I've never heard an elected official or media outlet ever call him a Traitor. Until the left starts tying these traitors to their crimes, and hammers on it every single day, the Dems will NEVER wrest the power from the MAGA Traitors.

HitlerPig is a proven traitor, and anyone who still supports him, is also a traitor, and none of them should be allowed to forget it.

[–] kreskin@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

In the same vein, zionism is a far right philosophy of land theft and murder, and its not anti semitism when you object to it-- zionists are being antisemitic when they hide behind the entire jewish religion to commit their terrorism. Dont be afraid of pushing back on old school terrorism and war crimes. We're better than that. -- Or maybe we have been better than that in the past, and will be again.

[–] Brotha_Jaufrey@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Yes, I can’t believe I see dipshits that get angry and scream “antisemitism” even on Lemmy, in response to someone pointing out that massacring innocent civilians because you want their land is genocide. There’s no depth in the view of someone who got their feelings hurt when you pointed out the damage they’re causing.

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[–] Wilco@lemm.ee 9 points 1 week ago
[–] barkbarkbark@lemm.ee 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't see this post on their bluesky. Can anyone post a link, please?

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[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Reminder Trump has arranged for "Illegal" Latino men (Venezuelan to be precise) to be sent to Slave/Rape Camps in El-Salvador

Instead of following protocol to sent them back to Venezuela & The fucking Right-Wing (can we call them Rightists ?) Scum-fucks are jerking off to this disgusting state-sponsored slavery.

[–] segabased@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

You can also just call them all pedophiles because that is also what they are

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