Paul Cantrell
I don’t like to overstate or exaggerate political danger. And I don't think @paninid is overstating anything here.
We’ve avoided careless comparisons to the Nazi regime for generations, and rightly so: we don’t want that comparison to lose its power. We need to save it for the moments when it truly applies.
This is one of those moments, in the US and across the world. We are on the knife’s edge.
Here’s the thing, though… https://mastodon.world/@paninid/112768842226761788
Paul Cantrell
…we are •not• on an inevitable downslope. Knife’s edge, NOT off a cliff.
We are in a place in the US where things could get very bad very fast. We are •also• in a place where this newly resurgent fascism is on verge of total implosion.
Nothing is inevitable here: not the bad, and not the good. Now is one of those moments when •everything• matters.
Paul Cantrell
To hell with doomerism, cynicism, nihilism. We don’t have the luxury. Go wallow in despair some other day. We don’t have time for that shit now.
Hope, joy, action: these three are intimately connected, and they are the urgent work of this moment. Find them. Create them. Embrace them. Because right now, •everything• matters.
🔏 Matthias Wiesmann
@inthehands @paninid I a weird way I disagree, nazis were evil, but believed in some form of modernism, highways, pushing forward young engineers that resulted in jet engines, rockets. Italians fascists had a weird obsession with synthetic fibres. Fascist architecture is a thing.
The current crop has nothing of that, what will we call Trumpian Art? All the evil, but without having to iron your shirt or shine your boots. You won't get an 1000 year empire, but a cheap reboot of the 50s…
Paul Cantrell
@thias @paninid
I don’t think it’s useful to split hairs about how much real infrastructure different fascists built.
Consider: Mussolini did •not• in fact make the trains run on time. (There’s research on this: his train system ran very poorly!) But he •talked• all the time about how he’d made the trains run on time, and that lie still lives on as a well-known phrase today.
That’s completely in line with modern Trumpian fascism.
🔏 Matthias Wiesmann
@inthehands @paninid it’s not about what they did but what they claimed to do. In practice the difference is academic, maybe. When you look at Orban, Erdoğan, or Vučić the behaviour looks different.
Paul Cantrell
I agree that Orban, say, is a somewhat different beast: more toward the kleptocracy end of the spectrum. Again, I'm not sure how useful it is in this moment to finely parse those categories, especially wrt Trump. Mass deportation and militias targeting political enemies aren't counterbalanced by how realistic your new bridge plans are.
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