“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power ... becomes illegal,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said.

“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power … becomes illegal,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said.

Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power.

In a speech Friday in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee blasted the immigration system and lobbed a rhetorical grenade at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal,” said Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money trial. “She really is, if you think about it.”

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  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 months ago

    Human choices, human systems, and human preferences for the untrue are, for many, stronger forces than reality.

    That’s precisely the point. In the early 20th century, access to reputable sources of information was much more difficult. It was far easier to go about your day without seeing a single piece of information that contradicted “dear leader”. Fascism was also a relatively new, relatively untested ideology said to combine the “best parts of the right and the left”.

    Nowadays, fascists choose to plug their ears with their fingers and hum in order to support the ideology, or they support it because they actually support its eventual ends of genocide and authoritarianism. In the first go around, not everyone knew where these roads led, but this time we should know better but either do not, or do not care.

    • Samvega
      1·
      2 months ago

      Nowadays, fascists choose to plug their ears with their fingers

      Yes, because they’re motivated to live in that fantasy world where they are ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’ are being punished.

      but this time we should know better

      Why ‘should’ people prefer reality to a fantasy? Humans had the choice to make a reality which provided human decency for as many as possible, but it was consciously and repeatedly decided to exploit the many in order to enrich the few.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        Why ‘should’ people prefer reality to a fantasy?

        Maybe because other people that you punish unjustly as part of your fantasy world fucking exist and feel pain?

        I get why someone with zero empathy, values, and morals would argue that acting out a fantasy in the real world is superior to hum drum reality, but that’s what you have to be to act that way.

        • Samvega
          1·
          2 months ago

          Maybe because other people that you punish unjustly as part of your fantasy world fucking exist and feel pain?

          It is perfectly possible for some people to not care about this, as is discussed in psychological literature. It is also perfectly possible for some people to only extend care towards their ingroup, as they discuss as part of discussions of their own political preferences.

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 months ago

            You were asking why someone should prefer reality over fantasy land and I answered that.

            I also covered that I understood that asshole nihilists and hedonists exist, so I’m not sure why that had to be retreaded.