It’s odd the way these articles talk about dictatorship taking hold in the US
Yeah, there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned by studying the Roman Republic and Empire. This article does none of that, it just lists a bunch of parallels. It’s in the same genre as “12 reasons why Joe Biden was the antichrist!”
I’m continually disappointed in The Atlantic. At one time it would have published a thoughtful essay on the topic. Instead this article just normalizes the idea that democracy in the US is doomed to fall.
silence7@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
A big chunk of the US population wants dictatorship
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
It’s a solid 30%, by all accounts.
K4Z2FVH1@feddit.org 1 week ago
1933, of approx. 65m Germans, 39m voted and gave the NSDAP 43% of the votes (after a harrowing year of violence, repression, propaganda and harassment by the SA and SS). That’s around 26% of Germans if I didn’t a dumb.
Two weeks later, he passed the enabling act.
In the next parliamentary election, he received 92% of the votes.
The next federal election was not held until after the war.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m not excusing German citizens by any means, but it must be mentioned that putting up with absolutely crippling economic conditions made every single German pretty fucking miserable, and liable to jump at literally anything different. As in - and this is not hyperbole - inflation so bad that price hikes were often performed every day, throughout the day, and people brought literal wheelbarrows of cash to buy basic supplies. They minted reichmark notes in denominations of billions. Everyone’s savings was wiped out. People walked away from the Weimar Republic for a reason; it’s just absolutely fucking tragic that they walked towards the populist scapegoating of fascism, because it gives that good dopamine hit from the daily hour of hate.
And there are a hell of a lot of echoes of that tale in the circumstances we find ourselves in now.