This thread https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1854030304677073233.html made its way around and everybody freaked out. Calm done, it's pretty much nonsense, born out of the author projecting his fears rather than displaying his understanding.

True, my belief in #peakfascism, utterly justified in early summer, has been smashed by the state elections in Germany and the various elections now in the U.S. I had hoped otherwise and it didn't turn out. Yet.

But that doesn't mean that the nonsense displayed in this thread (esp. posts # 11-17, 20-25) should be taken as reliable prediction or even profound insights instead. It's not based on an informed understanding of facts, but based on fear. Which is, as one doesn't need to learn anything for that, easier to act out and act upon.

Calling T and Musk "the worst men in the United States" [#11] and conveniently ignoring Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, Mitch McConnell, some of the Supreme Court justices, etc., is just silly.

Anyway, NATO will not cease to exist [#12] (although perhaps shrink); most of Gazans will not be killed [as claimed in #13] (although Israel will, in my opinion, annex the West Bank and leave Gaza to international administration); the EU will not shrink in size [#14] (no arguments given for the preposterous claim it would); a "new axis of evil" [#15] (rather: its enlargement) especially with the "new members" mentioned is so utter and uninformed nonsense that I don't even know where to start debunking that claim. Suffice perhaps that most of these new members are too poor and weak to pose as a threat.

With regard to the horror porn the author sketches of the U.S. turned end-Weimar Republic [# 20-25] with all the screeching of martial law and police murder rates sykrocketting due to police activities, stock market crashes, and all, seriously, man, on what does the author base such fever dreams? Esp. when most of the stuff he is in the prerogatives of the individual states and not the federal government.

Where I think the author is partly right is that nuclear weapons will get proliferated to more states. The author mentions Saudi Arabia, the Emirate of Dubai, and Egypt [#16] but ignores, e.g., the aspirations of Turkey. He also ignores that the UK and France think about sharing their nuclear weaponry with the European countries and even Germany thinking about acquiring nuclear deterrence, and all not for the authors beloved reason, i.e., T playing with witholding the U.S. nuclear shield, but for the other main reason, i.e., the imperialism of Russia and Putin. Which, of course, the author fails to mention; as he fails to mentio the other imperialism in China and Xi. (With that the author lands in the lala-land of conspiracy theories which all fail because they neglect or ignore the complexities they are supposed to explain.)

The author is likewise partly right, in my opinion, that there will be a "new axis of evil". [#15] But definitely not the one he thinks of. (Venezuela, El Salvador, and Israel are in this new axis, but Iran is not? Seriously?)

What emerges with T's second term of office, in my opinion, is an emerging and balancing alliance of oligarchic families, crime networks, states turned to mafia organisations,¹ greedy autocrats, influential billionairs, surveillance capitalists, etc., trying to run states like corporations, transgressing state boundaries and replacing international treaties with oligarchic accords and influence spheres. Their main goal is wealth, sweetened with power. In order for them to get rich and their activities unrestricted, they will use the means and institutions of national states to advance their aspirations. If Ukraine stands in their way, they will obliterate it. If not, they will find a more cost-efficient way around. One that is better for "business". (Imagine a Russian movie gangster's heavy English.)

Financial greed does not need to be the sole motivation; finding meaning and purpose beyond, esp. when combined with a reason to fight and exert power, is a second one. Putin is a good example. Greedy like hell he still invests heaviliy in historical romaticism. Money doesn't provide meaning and purpose. Neither power. Meaning comes from somewhere else. Virility too.

But all that does not mean that "fascism" (in lack of a better word) is now on the loose. It means that many oligarchic endeavours will turn out not to work or to work better when not combined with violence, when climate crisis is taken seriously, etc. That is: The rising and increasing worldwide oligarchic interconnectedness that results in reshaping whole national states into mafia organistation (with the president or leader as the Capo dei capi of such a mafia organisation) is far more likely than "the end of the world" as the author of the thread knows it.

And if that outcome or development is the more likely scenario, than the instabilities that we will confront is less so in the civic spheres of societies than it is in the hierarchies of such crime syndicates posing as states themselves.

What most people ignore when looking at such mafia systems is that they are intrinsically volatile and insecure to all of their members. Violence, paranoia, alliances, mistrust, and constant power struggles make not for the stability of such entities but for the violent character of these. And as one can see in the history of Russia of the past 30 years: Leave the mafia organsation and the Capo unchallenged, and life can be pretty normal for the burgeois peasant.

That does not mean that I prefer such a life. But it means that I think the author of thread misplaces the area where violence will occur. The end is still far away. From that arises hope and obligation.


¹ This is not about a state being infiltrated by some mafia activities – and thus in part being harmed and in another capable to fight back – but a state that is turned completely into a mafia organisation: a criminal enterprise that uses the resources and legal perogatives of a national state in the service of the criminal entity. Or put differently: a mafia organisation that poses as a national state.

#talkingtomyselflettingyoulisten