Ed The Fascism Checklist, Trump 2025

What is going on with the photograph?

And Bukele’s mockery?

If Bukele thinks Garcia is a terrorist he wouldn’t be sipping martinis. And in the picture he is not. The cap is almost certainly to hide the shaved head.

Trump and Bukele are fascists, pure and simple. Anyone supporting them is supporting fascism.

ETA: editing annoying autocorrected hypercorrection for anyone reading.
 
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bruto said:
I hope people take that exile thing seriously. It is legal to deport a naturalized citizen if it can be proven that the obtaining of citizenship was itself fraudulent. But assuming no fraud, there is no second-class citizenship. What you do, do not do, become, or do not become after that is done as a citizen. There is no law or precedent in existence that makes naturalized citizenship a different thing from native citizenship, and one of the founding principles of our nation, and the revolution that brought it about, was opposition to the exile of citizens.

If a citizen is thrown out of the country, citizenship becomes ◊◊◊◊ and our country with it. I mean it. It's a tipping point.
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While agreeing with you in general, I feel compelled to point out (probably because there's something wrong with me) that there is such a law (the US constitution), and naturalized citizens are quite literally second class citizens (despite being the only class of citizens where at least some can be said to have earned their status). There is no path to eligibility for the presidency for naturalized citizens.

People have a tendency to dismiss this as rather inconsequential, but once you entertain the notion that naturalized American citizens aren't, like, American American, even for fairly rarefied pursuits, you're creating a toehold for exactly the sort of nativist contempt for equality between citizens we're seeing today. That particular requirement should have been abolished generations ago, when it was still possible to pass constitutional amendments.
 
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mumblethrax said:
While agreeing with you in general, I feel compelled to point out (probably because there's something wrong with me) that there is such a law (the US constitution), and naturalized citizens are quite literally second class citizens (despite being the only class of citizens where at least some can be said to have earned their status). There is no path to eligibility for the presidency for naturalized citizens.

People have a tendency to dismiss this as rather inconsequential, but once you entertain the notion that naturalized American citizens aren't, like, American American, even for fairly rarefied pursuits, you're creating a toehold for exactly the sort of nativist contempt for equality between citizens we're seeing today. That particular requirement should have been abolished generations ago, when it was still possible to pass constitutional amendments.
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One might consider this an example of "the exception proves the rule" in the sense that the no-presidency provision needs to be explicit because naturalized citizenship is complete in all other respects.

But though I hadn't thought of your angle before, it's probably right, and that toehold is enlarging as people pick at it. Once upon a time, I suspect that, owing to the unique properties of the American government in the world, and the relatively less stringent requirements for naturalization, the prospect of a foreign-born person messing it up either accidentally or on purpose must have been frightening. Nowadays we have perfected the cultivation of indigenous idiocy, and the world around us has changed.

I can think of at least a couple of foreign-born governors who'd be a big step up from what we have now. ON the conservative side you could do a whole lot worse than Arnold Schwartzenegger, and on the liberal side, I'd have voted for Madeleine Kunin (though in the "Vermont governors who'd make good Presidents," I'd have preferred Howard Dean). But we at least have the consolation that, so far at least, we won't have a President Musk.
 
Hercules56 said:
Nope never said that.
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No, but you need to guard against the unfortunate conservative tendency to dismiss any criticism that does not quote your statements literally. You did not say that, but you did insistently bring up references to Garcia's faults, and the intent was pretty clearly to imply that he was, owing to his badness, less entitled to due process than others. And you pretty explicitly stated that you thought advocacy for his situation was a bad idea because others would similarly cite his dubious character as an excuse.

That latter statement may, unfortunately, be true, but it's true because people look it that way, and you should not. As I've said before, probably to a point of tedium, but I'll say it again: freedom is tested at the edges, not the center.

The enemies of freedom are pushing in from those edges, changing the rules, rescinding promises, redefining our language, normalizing their terrors and intrusions. Every time we let something go because it's not all that bad, not all that far over the line, the line moves. They're already driving around with masks and guns in unmarked cars, demanding proof of what we should never have to prove, smashing windows with firemen's tools and bearing our neighbors off in handcuffs for speech whose only fault is that the President doesn'l like it. Our President thinks videos of people being marched off in chains, women in tears, are celebrations of virtue.

Sure, it's not likely to happen to us. I'm old, white, and all that stuff. My wife is 70 and doesn't look much like a terrorist. But she does have a foreign kind of name. She is naturalized, and she was a refugee once. Just having a Hispanic name these days seems enough to get ICE to your door. And right now, right here, not somewhere else or in some other time, right now there are ICE agents roaming, stopping cars and forcing their way into homes, seemingly immune to any rules but their own. At some point, we have to stop saying it's not our circus.
 
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autumn1971 said:
We are the bad guys now. We need to be stopped
Gentle suggestion hasn’t worked.
The world needs to stop America by any means necessary
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Careful. You'll get all the pearl clutchers just looking for things to be outraged about to feel better about themselves supporting a murderous, violence-loving fascist cult.

Do I hope or wish it'll come to violence, maybe even a full-blown insurgency against the Dump regime? Hell no. May it come to that regardless? In the worst case, absolutely. Would that be horrible, in countless imagineable and unimagineable ways? Oh yes.

I'm holding out hope peaceful resistance prevailed. It worked against the Soviet Union.
 
angrysoba said:
You were supporting his deportation of innocent people to El Salvador and defied the Supreme Court. You crossed the Rubicon with him.
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The whole defying the Supreme Court thing is ironic in a way, though. This is the same Supreme Court that let him run for Führer even though it was against the Constitution. It's the same court that declared he has total immunity for official acts. To see them try to put on the brakes now is actually darkly amusing.
 
Darat said:
Can anyone explain to me why detainees in custody in the USA forceably have their heads shaved by masked government workers?
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Oh, it's not everywhere in the US, either... maybe it is in federal custody, though. Same thing as when you first join the military.


After looking it up, it's mainly a practice of private contractors that work with ICE nowadays, although it was more common in the past. Of course, different states have different rules here... and Club Fed (if it's owned/run by the national government) doesn't do it anymore.
 
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Safe-Keeper said:
The whole defying the Supreme Court thing is ironic in a way, though. This is the same Supreme Court that let him run for Führer even though it was against the Constitution. It's the same court that declared he has total immunity for official acts. To see them try to put on the brakes now is actually darkly amusing.
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I think it's a case of the SC shooting the judiciary's foot with its own gun.
 
Not fascism at all.
bsky.app

Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler.com)

This line is catching on among the conservative influencers: unless SCOTUS backs down, Trump will be forced to suspend the constitution and declare the US a dictatorship, and it'll be all their fault.
bsky.app bsky.app
 
Maybe we could make a Project 2025 checklist? Track how much of the plan has been implemented?

johnny karate said:
Once again noting the disappearance of the people who mocked and naysayed this thread at the beginning. They just completely vanished like a person legally in the U.S. getting snatched off the street by ICE.
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Trumpkins everywhere seem to be getting more and more quiet. Strange, that. They won the election, congress, and senate, and Dump is doing exactly what they voted for. They should be loud and proud, not skulking away and taking down their flags.
 
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Resume said:
Not fascism at all.
bsky.app

Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler.com)

This line is catching on among the conservative influencers: unless SCOTUS backs down, Trump will be forced to suspend the constitution and declare the US a dictatorship, and it'll be all their fault.
bsky.app bsky.app
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This quote must surely be a parody:
We must dissolve the Supreme Court and give Donald Trump unlimited powers. Or else we will have a dictatorship.
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Even so, it went whoosh over a lot of peoples' heads.
 
ACADEMICS assess nature of SLIDING
He's a normal.. racist, but the people just don't see the good side of his tariffs!

While the vast majority of scholars surveyed say Trump is pushing the country toward autocracy, other professors strongly disagree. James Campbell, a retired political scientist at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, says Trump is using legitimate presidential powers to address long-standing problems. Campbell points to Trump's use of tariffs to try to push companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. In recent decades, economic globalization led to catastrophic layoffs of everyone from furniture makers in North Carolina to auto assembly-line workers in the Midwest as firms sent work overseas, especially to China.

"I think they've done an excellent job," Campbell says of the Trump administration.

Campbell adds that he thinks many political scientists may see Trump as autocratic because they don't like him or his politics.
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but he really is a dictator...and your can detect FEAR
But many democracy scholars say the Trump administration is using tactics employed by autocrats, and they point to specific actions. For instance, Trump's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is investigating all the major broadcast outlets — except for Rupert Murdoch's Fox, which owns the pro-Trump Fox News Channel.

Trump White House seeks tighter grip on message with new limits on press
The FCC is questioning how CBS edited an interview of Trump's 2024 rival, Kamala Harris, and whether NPR and PBS are complying with regulations on corporate underwriting spots. The FCC can revoke local broadcast licenses, which could damage the networks financially.
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In another example, Trump has withheld or threatened to withhold billions of dollars from universities, including Harvard, Princeton and Columbia, citing concerns about antisemitism. Scheppele says Orbán also targeted universities that had been critical of his government.

"In the first two years, Orbán cut the university budgets by 40%," she says.

Another way to measure authoritarianism, according to Levitsky, is whether publicly opposing the government comes with a cost. He says — under Trump — it does. For instance, Trump has issued executive orders barring lawyers with firms he doesn't like from entering government buildings and representing government contractors.

Fear of government retribution is now spreading through society. A scholar who spoke to NPR for this story later asked not to be quoted, saying he feared the Trump administration might try to punish him by slashing research grants he's working on. In a recent NPR series on free speech, many people did not want to be identified by name.
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It's sliding, but how? Like a seal into a pool? A mud slide in California? We have no idea.
 
The WH wants Americans to have more babies. Incentives like a "National Medal of Motherhood" are being considered:


These proposals range from offering cash "baby bonuses" to new mothers to providing special scholarship benefits for married applicants.

One proposal suggests a one-time $5,000 "baby bonus" for every new mother, while another recommends reserving 30% of prestigious Fulbright scholarships for married applicants or parents. Symbolic recognitions, such as a "National Medal of Motherhood" for women with six or more children, enhanced child tax credits, access to in vitro fertilisation (IVF) subsidies, have also been proposed. These ideas reflect the administration's efforts to tie family expansion to national renewal, a theme championed by figures like Vice President JD Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
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They can just use the "Mutterehrenkreuz" issued to German mothers of four+ children during the Nazi regime. I actually have one they can borrow.​


medal.JPG
 
Arresting judges is a big one, a large step towards dictatorship. I wonder if any MAGA people are going to defend this.. I mean, I know they will, but what ridiculous justification will they use?
 
The things you are now defending if you are a still a trumpkin:
  • The regime going after universities
  • The President ignoring judges and the supreme court
  • Individuals picked up on the street by plainclothes agents and sent to foreign prisons to be tortured without due process
  • Two year old US citizen deported
  • Judges arrested for not complying with the regime
What did I miss? I know there's probably plenty we can add to the list. Any trumpkins feel like weighing in and adding things you'd like to be implemented?
 
Safe-Keeper said:
The things you are now defending if you are a still a trumpkin:
  • The regime going after universities
  • The President ignoring judges and the supreme court
  • Individuals picked up on the street by plainclothes agents and sent to foreign prisons to be tortured without due process
  • Two year old US citizen deported
  • Judges arrested for not complying with the regime
What did I miss? I know there's probably plenty we can add to the list. Any trumpkins feel like weighing in and adding things you'd like to be implemented?
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Yes, and ?

They wouldn't do this if they didn't deserve it and/or you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs..
 
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