cecinestpasunbot

That’s a pretty classic Marxist understanding of how class conflict actually happens. In response to a crisis a state can either adapt or fall into chaos if it can’t. That’s essentially what happened during the new deal era and the civil war respectively. Although arguably the external threats of WWII allowed the US to adapt rather than fall apart.

I think the line between a liberal democracy and fascism is much blurrier than most people think. I suspect the transition from one to the other, going in either direction, is entirely dependent on how much internal forces threaten the ruling capitalist class.

Right now, I think the US is on the decline but hasn’t yet experienced a crisis which really threatens the power of the capitalist class. Fascists seeking power therefore need to manufacture crises in order to accumulate power. That’s where I think the US is at right now.

However, I’m not sure how well it will really work. Democratic state leaders are effectively demonstrating that the existing law enforcement structures are perfectly capable of violently cracking down on dissent. So if you’re a wealthy capitalist, why would you push your bought and paid for judges and politicians to make Trump president for life? It seems like a needlessly risky move in my opinion.

That said, we can only say that the rich will operate rationally to protect their own interests on average. Individually, they can be wildly erratic like Elon Musk has proven to be. As such, the more wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the less predictable the outcomes are.

I imagine Israel actually has control over their nukes but I doubt they can use them in any offensive way without the US backing the decision. So in effect it would still be the US who maintains control, for now at least.

I think you might be underestimating the number of democrats that are also war hawks who want to bomb Iran.

You can systematically murder more groups than just 1.

If you support one genocide for your own personally benefit what's to stop you from supporting another? You're morally bankrupt and completely irredeemable at that point.

If it was that easy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

It is that easy! You just don't want to admit. You're operating on an absurd moral plane where you think one set of genocide supporters is more redeemable than another. At that point you've already accepted the inevitability of fascism and you're just trying to make a bargain with it. I'm here to tell you fascism doesn't work that way. If you give it an inch it will take a mile.

you’re arguing that doing nothing is the morally superior response.

You can actually do things that don't require you to carry water for genocide supports. Go to a protest and connect with likeminded people. Organize your workplace or community. Engage in civil disobedience against unjust state violence. Instead of pretending that the only choice that matters is the one where you spend five seconds filling in one of two boxes every four years, do something that actually makes a difference.

Less genocide? What does that even mean?! You can't systematically murder a people to a greater or lesser degree. There is no "good" way to support a genocide. Just don't support genocide. It's actually fairly easy to do.

It’s not allowing fascism to take over.

So the people who happily funded and supported a fascist ethnostate committing a genocide and who continue to do so are going to stop fascism? Right, got it. That makes perfect sense.

Stop letting perfection be the enemy of good.

So in this case you think supporting a genocide is a good option?

Vincent Bevins the author of The Jakarta Method actually wrote a book about why the protest movements of the last few decades rarely achieved their stated goals. It’s worth checking out.

Not really. The overwhelming majority of those protests were peaceful. However the media latched on to the few cases where riots broke out which is pretty much what they always do.

If that were true Iran would have almost certainly taken some of the actions I've described. They're trying to use that as a threat to get the US to back down and reign in their attack dog.

They could believe in their longterm capacity for success in a war with Israel and the US but still want to avoid all of the destruction that would entail. If they blow up Saudi oil fields, close the straits of hormuz, and attack US bases then any hope of deescalation is lost.

Yes. It was the largest protest movement in US history and it did precisely nothing to stop police brutality.