It seems to be a pitfall of the thinking “it can’t happen here.”
What? Everybody thought fascism would come from the inside in the US. Even if you slept through the first Trump term this has been a thing since the 1930s. Surely during the Cold War, and definitely for everybody outside the US itself, but… I mean, were you alive during the whole “war on terror” nonsense?
Had the post-Reagan, post 9-11 US fascists successfully brainwashed even left of centre normies into thinking that was not the case? Were Americans that oblivious?
Everybody in this space, yeah, absolutely.
Everybody who is informed and has been paying attention, definitely.
Everybody in the voting public of the US, not so much.
American exceptionalism is a real thing. The vast majority of the country has been fed fairytales about how they live in a perfect utopia where things are always getting better. They were taught that they were the richest, strongest, smartest, nicest, and most popular country in the world. Hollywood and the press barraged them with the message that everybody wants to either be them, be friends with them, or they’re an evil person with no understandable motive that seeks to destroy them so that they can take over the world and rule with an iron fist. They won every war they’ve ever fought in, usually showing up to save the day in conflicts that aren’t their own, just because they’re that kind, generous, and always looking out for the little guy. Nothing bad ever happens within the impenetrable borders, and when it does, it’s just a freak accident or a single bad apple.
A shocking number of people began to interpret “American” exceptionalism as something that only applies to the largest part of the population, the straight, cis, white, Christian. Suddenly everyone outside any one of those categories becomes un-American and therefore the evil person who cannot be understood and deserves no sliver of empathy in attempts to do so.
Those people voted for Trump.
Twice.
In 2024 they made up the popular vote. That’s the majority of America. That’s what this country was then. That is “everybody.”
It’s crazy how long it’s taking for people to wake up. It seems like if the election would happen today, Trump wouldn’t win, but that approval rating might swing if his opponent is anything other than a straight, white, masculine, cisgendered man, with multiple children who all celebrate Christmas together.
When will the truth become mainstream? What additional atrocities will need to occur before Trump becomes as universally hated as Hitler? I honestly feel like we’re not there yet. If anything happens to Trump now, it seems that nearly half the country will turn him into a martyr before realizing they are free of the figurehead of a fascist oligarchy.
Given the amount of people still proudly sporting Trump merch in the rural area I live, I do think he’d still win. I literally don’t understand these people, the sheer lack of… anything. Awareness. Empathy. Self-preservation!?
The only person I vaguely know well enough to take a crack at why she’s like this, is because she herself is a raging narcissist who wants to be special and feel special. So she aligns her views with the person who tells her “You’re special!” and gives her that desperate validation. Morals become secondary to feeling good rather than being the source of it. It’s incredibly sad.
Sure, Mr or Ms “I knew it all along”. But even most respected analysts thought the first Trump term was “fascist-adjacent”. Even though Slavoj Zizek was correct that voting outsiders is the correct thing to do to shake up the corrupt status quo, he was wrong to say that Trump isn’t fascist until the second term. Hindsight is 20/20.
It is possible to do an internet search for a date range. Looking at 2016, there were many articles regarding fascism and Trump. Here is just one:
It is true that many people were uncertain if Trump was a full on fascist, or if he was thwarted by a lack of reading. Which sounds like a lie. I am cherry picking this quote from the article, the article itself is not particularly cherry picked.
Do you think that Trump is consciously using fascist tropes, or do you think that he’s just sort of stumbled into this?
I doubt it’s conscious. I don’t think he’s a bookish man. I’m sure he’s never read a book about Hitler or Mussolini.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/02/is-donald-trump-a-fascist-an-expert-on-fascism-weighs-in.htmlEdit: editing for clarity.
I mean… yeah, but also I’m very well on the record disagreeing with that and calling Trump a fascist since day one. Not that I expect you dig through my online presence to corroborate it.
I’m not American. The presence of fascists in US politics has been a commonly accepted truth in anybody anywhere left of demochristians for half a century. This isn’t “hindsigh”, it’s “I recommend always reading what people say about your country in foreign newspapers”.
And for the record, we got fascists, too. We’re just less shy about calling them that, maybe? Certainly don’t have any delusions about ourselves in terms of being inoculated from fascism at a fundamental level. The idea that Americans would have survived Bush, let alone the overtly fascist Trump without noticing or acknowledging it seems outright bizarre to me, but there you go.
I mean, Stephen Miller isn’t even shy about it. Even if you are the kind of European that would argue Berlusconi wasn’t a fascist and could maaaaaybe entertain Trump is on that same level of “just horny criminal idiot” you surely would have had zero questions after hearing five minutes of Dracula Hitler back in 2016.
m not American. The presence of fascists in US politics has been a commonly accepted truth in anybody anywhere left of demochristians for half a century.
I am an American and idk where this idea comes from because I’ve been noticing a decline at least since high school political science forced me to pay attention for the first time. It’s been hard not to notice the slope getting steeper every day.
As a German, on the contrary, it was blindingly obvious. Starting with your massive(ly overblown) patriotism. No insult intended.
As a Black American the number of white people saying “Who could have known” what we have been screaming at them is infuriating.
As a leftist, the people who said we were overreacting about the Patriot Act 25 years ago (and continuously since) are now saying that we devolved into fascism quickly.
Lots of insult intended. More insult than you can imagine. If you’re reading this and you have been complacent, it’s time to get into the streets.
When I was getting really nervous that Obama and the Dems, when they had a trifecta, back a decade ago now… when they had that, and they were not going to repeal the Patriot Act?
My other white ‘leftist’ “friends” called me racist for being too critical of Obama.
Oh lordy do I still feel the rage at their immense, performative, entitled hypocrisy.
It’s painful to watch. And aware it’s always been far worse for you. I’m sorry. You lost the birth lottery (edit to make it clearer: in the eyes of some assholes).
(I did too in biological ways critically btw, but I still ‘enjoy’ the German health system and white privilege)
I did not at all lose the birth lottery. Being Black is fucking awesome. I just need the rest of y’all to act like you have some sense.
I agree. (except for the obvious of course, that a lot think different)
Yeah, as an Australian, when I learnt as a teen that they do the “pledge of allegiance” everyday in school, I kind of wondered how easy it would be to hijack that into something evil.
They slipped “God” into it in the 1950s. So probably a sizable factor in why we have Christian nationalists now
I’m not sure how many classrooms do this, but it is becoming less common.
I think plenty of media actually depicted that. Watchmen the tv show is a clear example. I also think Captain American Winter Soldier have that topic.
Those are some recent popular ones, surely there are more.
Star Wars the prequels sort of dealt with the subject, although it framed the fascist leader as an exceptionally skilled statesman puppeteering behind the scenes and not the reactionary populist personality cults they usually are.
The general understanding of experts on fascism after figuring out what the hell went wrong in Germany was that America was particularly vulnerable to it and it would use the flag and the cross to gain influence.
Lol, many, many people knew that fascism would come from within and warned as such. Coincidentally, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book titled “It Can’t Happen Here” in 1935 about how a fascist would come to power in America. It’s been a while since I read it, but I recall it having some eerily similar parallels to Trump’s rise to power.
Came to say this. I recall especially the books private, paramilitary “marching clubs” being turned into law enforcement, which feels a lot like how the Proud Boys and 3% have fallen out of the media at the same time as ICE has co-opted their tactics.
“We’ll have fascism in [America], but we’ll call it anti-fascism” - Huey Long
The whole of US political commentary 1935-1939 feels very relevant today.
I haven’t read it but I will, eventually. But I must ask, I wonder though if George Lucas read the book and drew inspiration from it? Even some of the themes on how the republic fell and rise of the empire has kinda happened in real life. The toxic masculinity and alienation has real life parallel contributing to the decline of democracy, aside from the more obvious such as institutional corruption, wealth inequality and complacency. I also think Lucas was inspired from Hannah Arendt’s book, Origins of Totalitarianism, where she concluded that loneliness is precursor to totalitarianism. Anakin’s downfall is because he is lonely and alienated, and essentially told to “suck it up”. There is parallel to his experience and those in real life who have turned to the far right/dark side.
Lucas actually has directly stated that the original Star Wars trilogy was to some extent based off of the Vietnamese resistance to Western Imperialism.
“We’re fighting the largest empire in the world, and we’re just a bunch of hay seeds in coonskin hats that don’t know nothing,” he says, referencing the American Revolution against the British Empire, and how he based the heroes of Star Wars on real-life rebellions against powerful empires.
Lucas and Cameron discuss how during the Vietnam War, America became “the Empire.”
“The irony is that, in both of those, the little guys won. The highly technical empire – the English Empire, the American Empire – lost. That was the whole point,” Lucas says.
Another part of this same discussion with James Cameron, from another article:
https://www.cbr.com/george-lucas-vietnam-war-star-wars-inspiration/
Cameron pointed out how the Rebels are a small group using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized Empire. Today, Cameron added, the Rebels would be called terrorists. “When I did it,” Lucas replied, “they were Viet Cong.” In other words, Lucas viewed the Vietnamese as the rebels and America as the invading villains.
He further explained that Star Wars was a “vessel” in which to place his worldview that the United States had become an empire during the Vietnam War, doomed to fail like every empire before it.
Its uh, honestly rather obvious, but uh, right wingers consistently fail at basic media literacy, so … ?
“when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” - Sinclair Lewis
Fricken spot on. I say this quote a lot when I see what’s happening.
Especially because there’s a gun store near me and their logo is the American flag hanging on the cross. Not joking.
What the fuck are you talking about. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it, Punk rock has spoke about it since it’s inception, I’ve been worried about the fascist threat since I became politically aware during the end of Bush 2 saying we’re just waiting for a Caesar.
“Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage they have been conned into believing will be freedom from fear.
Ho ho ho. Let’s not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters.
Hunter S. Thompson
“Germany lost the second World War, fascism won it.” - George Carlin
Hell Hitler and his crew got a lot of his ideas from America at that time. Plenty of our rich elite supported it to. Including Ford.
Hell Hitler?
Adolph’s cousin, who was a big proponent of raw fruit diets.
He hated juice.
Anyone thinking “it can’t happen here,” wasn’t paying attention in history class. It has always been a part of us from the very start.
In fact America was founded on the genocide of natives. The founding fathers were such hypocrites, preaching about freedom while owning slaves
No offense, but Americans were (or still are) literally the only ones oblivious to this. Fascism in the USA did not start with Trump’s second term. It did not start with his first term either. This has been progressing practically ever since the declaration of independence.
Most at least slightly educated people saw this clearly decades ago. Most weren’t saying anything, because we had bigger problems.
The main issues here consist of:
- lack of an at least semi-functional education system
- ubiquitous propaganda
Nothing about the current state of the USA is surprising whatsoever to most people who weren’t born there. Americans have been exploited and manipulated for generations, and this is the effect. As pointed out by other commenters, there are countless books, essays and works of fiction discussing this phenomenon.
Right-wing politicians are also on the rise everywhere else. So while Murica is cranking fascism up to 11 like they do with everything else, it’s not isolated to here.
From my perspective, right-leaning politicians aren’t necessarily a problem by themselves. It’s good to have a mix of various opinions and backgrounds. The problem is that ‘right-wing’ in the year 2025 is almost always just fascism. It’s like every single person associating with the right is extreme right and never anywhere in the middle.
Canada is right behind you, fucking embarrassing. If we don’t elect a fascist piss baby next election I’d be very surprised.
Nah we did, we’re just not filmmakers.
A lot of media depict the United States as being invaded by fascists from the outside.
Apart of “Man in the high castle”, nothing comes to mind. I’d say media-wise, the US gets invasion from zombies, aliens, or monsters. But aside of MITHC I’m drawing a blank.
Plenty of people expected that, we just don’t like to think about it because it makes us feel bad to think about our own flaws
Alternate, simpler explanation: watching the trump administration in movie form isn’t fun. Fascism is boring.
