This is fascism. Stick your heads in the sand all you want, whine about how "overused" that phrase is all you want, but fascism is exactly what we are facing in the United States.

United States has always been fascist. It enslaved blacks, slaughtered the natives, need I continue with the Irish, Italians, Chinese or Japanese…

Glad people are seeing the corrupt country for what it is, though. The propaganda is finally wearing off thanks to Trump ironically. Once the world sees USA for what it is we can all move on.

What’s up with all these posts that try to normalize the current admins turning ice into the gestapo, waging a war against the environment, and blatant overt corruption like pardoning every white collar criminal and fraudster they can.

Because bush invaded Iraq the current guy gets a free pass to round up immigrants with gestapo like tactics?

These “but in the past…” posts come off as excusing current wrongs and it seems willful

I think they're less excusing current wrongs and more attempting to point out that Trump and the nature of the current regime aren't anomalous. Believing such means getting rid of Trump alone is sufficient. Rather the attempt here is to illustrate that Trump is a manifestation of deep and systemic problems with American culture and that simply waiting for the "pendulum to swing the other way" or "Democrats to clean up the mess" isn't going to help.

We need to have a much more complex and nuanced conversation than "Orange man bad," even given that orange man is very much bad. Otherwise he won't be the last, much less the worst.

Yeah, I believe there is a difference between "hey, welcome to the party, isn't this horrible" and "what are yall complaining about, this is totally normal".

The latter is "normalizing", the former is attempting to get folks to understand a broader context.

The house is burning down, we should put it out!!.

“it burned down before this is more of the same hurrrummmph.”

Democracy cannot rest or it is eroded, so yes bad things happened. American is flawed but over time has worked towards improving itself and going towards its ideals of equality. But every inch forward is hard fought against the likes of the current administration. Suffrage, voting rights, environmental regulations, abolition were all won as huge battles against those clinging to and abusing power.

The way these “but America has always been…” post are toned, if we listened to the likes of them then none of those victories would have occurred.

Listening to them, we backslide. Dwelling on past imperfections instead of fighting today’s fire? Thats Self sabotage.

These posts are never framed in a constructive way, like how do we right the wrongs of the past, how can we make reparations for them. No, they’re framed like “we’ve always been bad, so this current bad is not so bad”

They seem to be insidiously on the side of injustice, trying to diminish current ills so that they may continue.

The better metaphor is: the house has been on fire for decades, and hyper-focusing on throwing water on a single part of the fire that's only been around for a few years isn't going to fix the gas pipe leak that's the actual reason for it going on for decades. People say words like "fascism" as dog whistle for "Trump" which is exhausting because of reasons other posters have been made clear: he's a symptom, not the root cause. It's boring partisan politics and very naive to the real systemic issues that people are blind to due to many reasons, and at least in part because of group think and tribal mentalities and a lack of class consciousness. And it's a perspective/dog whistle ignorant to nearly any establishment politician being at least, in part, complicit for the gas leak not getting fixed. And it's exhausting that the same accountability and frustration isn't being held when it's someone they voted for who's in office despite them still being an enabler of a broken system.

I strongly disagree that it’s pointing out the gas leak, it’s posting the way a foreign dictator would gleefully like his minions to post. “See that democracy has always been just like us”

If I were a totalitarian leader of any sort, I’d definitely be having my propagandists go after any country more liberal and try to paint them as also authoritarian and bad, and always that way.

Are you denying America has not improved itself? Slavery was horrible but slavery was ended even though it took a massive bloody war. Thats an extreme example but there are plenty.

No no, to the Debbie downers we are and always have been the equivalent of mao, Stalin, mussolini, and polpot

show a country that doesn't have some dark stuff in its history?

This is not whataboutism. Trying to shift it to the past is not helping the cause. If all countries are fascist because they did something like this some time ago then the word has no useful meaning anymore.

So now in the eyes of some centrist American who has any national pride and half a brain you are making a biased argument. Then yall act surprised why they elect Trump AGAIN.

> It’s not about the past.

You literally said US has always been fascist. This is wrong if you look at the dictionary of what fascist is. Show how authoritarian, intolerant, oppressive US was under Obama for example.

It's one thing to say US could do better and another thing to say US has always been fascist while there are tons of countries that were 50x more fascist (and racist too, which is a different thing) than US, like PRC or USSR (side note it's funny how some lefties I meet straight up admire them).

It’s not about the past. United States has significant institutionalized racism today. Slavery is still legal today. Go read the 13th amendment and then look the change in prison population since reconstruction…

It’s a shame how brainwashed Americans are. You think everything was great under Obama? lol

I'm not American and here's some news for you:

- "everything was great" does not imply "not fascist"

- "not everything was great" does not imply "fascist"

you did not answer my simple question. you clearly refuse to have a serious discussion

Good luck.

No discussion to be had with whatsboutism. Good luck to you too. Hopefully we get another Obama lol. FYI Jim Crow is worse than anything happening now, and if you don’t think so look in a mirror.

if your definition of fascist means every country is fascist then that's just not a useful definition. literally the point of adjective is to describe differences between things of same type.

It's true that these patterns and problems have existed and will likely continue. It's also true that common rhetoric and bias have changed dramatically in the last 10-15 years. I don't forsee any simple or easy ways to replace the social and political dams that tamed the pressures of power. It's very difficult to make power useful instead of destructive and it's very unlikely that this entropy will reverse. It's also illogical to do nothing about it.

The US has always had some fascist tendencies, but it's absolutely become a lot more fascist under Trump. The censorship, the expansion of cruelty, the policy of lies, the teardown of the rule of law and democratic institutions (though they were flawed before), and the worship of a single "strong" leader, are all massive steps in the direction of more fascism.

Define a robust set of fascist indicators we can use across presidents beginning with the first and let’s see.

Link to the video https://archive.org/details/insidececot

It's better to give the magnet link from the dupe thread from before because this will be taken down.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:QECTODWX3OSQ3R7MMWP5M5KQK2NU3WFA&dn=insidececot&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fbt1.archive.org%3A6969%2Fannounce

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361024

someone flagged and killed that one so not technically a dupe, it deserves to be on FP

The grifters at yc are in bed with trump anyways so it's no surprise.

Sure Trump gov is friendly to big tech/corporate ... but I'm not even sure it's that much more friendly than previous gov

I just the other day was in an argument over a pro maga comment that was killed along with an interesting thread. In my opinion it's insane to suggest there's some new trend of HN mods selectively killing specific political views because YC benefits from Trump. More likely enough of your fellow techbro HNers flagged it and the algorithm did its thing.

Last government was breaking up Google.

This one is protecting it. How much of a reversal do you need before you can tell the difference?

Did you follow the Google Antitrust case at all?

How is that even relevant

The current US government is reversing literally everything like a small child out of spite. That doesn't mean HN mods are "grifters" who are "in bed" with them

> but I'm not even sure it's that much more friendly than previous gov

Do you take this line back, or did you simply forget you said this? Or is there some fine detail you wish to clarify here.

Because one admin literally suing for the breakup of Google, and the next admin giving the case up with no argument is about as opposite as you can get. The facts simply do not match your assertions

Why would I take it back? Did I lie in it?

Should I assume that breaking up google is bad for YC? And not breaking up google is good for YC? Why? Like having Google around would increase business opportunities for YC funded startups? And therefore HN mods are grifters in bed with trump? Sorry my friend but this is simply an insane

And even if breaking up google actually hurts YC, if one admin is reversing literally everything from the other admin out of princple and this accidentally does some good for you it doesn't mean it's friendly to you.

Sometimes I can't tell here who's more crazy US righties or US lefties...

> Why would I take it back? Did I lie in it?

Just say that the Trump admin is friendlier to Google. Can you do that for me?

Or are you unable to even do that?

> How is that even relevant

If it's not relevant, you should be able to admit it yourself without any issue. So take the statement 'This admin is friendlier to Google than Biden admin was', and make sure your statements are logically consistent with said statement.

That's all I'm asking you to do.

> Sometimes I can't tell here who's more crazy US righties or US lefties...

Don't making this a left or right thing. I'm just seeing if you can admit to the differences between 2024 and 2025 with respect to Google and the antitrust case. It's not like the fine issues of antitrust cases are an issue that the left or right really rallies behind.

"trump is accidentally friendlier to google because he likes to reverse things from biden" doesn't mean trump is friendlier to tech overall.

for example most of what Trump claims he invested in chip production was actually invested by Biden. Trump gives more promises and less actual money.

https://itif.org/publications/2020/09/28/trump-vs-biden-comp...

And with the antitrust case lifted we now see Skydance/Paramount merger. And Netflix/WB merger. And TikTok.

That's a lot of friendly to tech things Trump is doing.

The previous admin likely would have kept the companies separate / brought up antitrust issues.

except for TikTok none of them are really "tech"

I want to say Trump seems a bit friendlier to corporate. But the pro corporate guy would not take from corporate their best cheapest workforce. Maybe his friendly tax policy compensates for his strict immigration policy idk

Larry Ellison literally is stepping into Paramount and providing guarantees for $40,000,000,000+ to try and push Paramount + WB Merger. Literally Larry Ellison.

Are you unaware of any of the tech CEOs who are involved in any of the stuff I was discussing?

And we know it would not happen if it is democrat gov because we have access to alternative histories?

Because under a Democrat Government, TikTok was getting banned.

Under Trump, he kept it long enough for TikTok to be bought by Republican-allies.

This is just stuff from last year. Have you paid attention to any of the companies I've brought up at all? Are you unaware of all the massive $Million++ dinners that every tech-bron attended for Trump? Do you know the connections of JD Vance to Ellison and other tech bros?

Have you watched cryptocoins suddenly surge into mainstream with the Trump presidency as Trump literally pardoned those criminals?

What part of this administration is not pardoning cyber criminals or tech bros or otherwise sending money to them?

I can give you that trump is 100% more friendly to crypto. that's for sure

This is a petty political slapfight, basically the definition of an off-topic submission. If you want to hear about it, turn on CNN.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

You could maybe make that claim about the original broadcast, but an article in The Verge about internet censorship - and the internet routing around censorship! - seems highly relevant to tech.

What exactly is novel about this case of copyright infringement if you put aside the political angle? Thousands of new torrents get uploaded every day, this is established technology that has existed for decades.

For this to be actually tech related it needs to have more interesting technical details. Otherwise it's like any other pirated movie and limitations of free speech story (it is always "censorship" or "good thing" depending on what speech particular person dislikes because of their political party)

3 hours ago I was against flagging these posts but after discussions in this thread I can see that it brings out the most insanity/flamebait/unconstructive/petty HN people and I fully support flagging these posts. No thoughtful conversation will happen

Please keep your petty bickering off HN. Complaining about topic-ness is off-topic.

Besides, this is very on-topic. Precedent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6912967 (331 points)

No.

Wow I really hope the US upgrades their prison system to something like this.

Concentration camps where people is incarcerated without trial?