• Signtist@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Watch out guys, if we keep letting our presidents openly commit crimes without consequence and send legal citizens to death camps on a whim, we might someday eventually end up becoming authoritarian!

    • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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      14 hours ago

      Hey, mods. You removed my post for misinformation. Let’s go through it with sources and corrections:

      The USA has always been authoritarian - FFS

      This my position, which I will back up with claims, and I will back those claims up with sources where I can, and I will correct my claims where my research has revealed my incorrect beliefs:

      • we were forcibly sterilizing undesirables until the 1970s

      source

      • we allowed husbands to force their wives to get ice pick lobotomies

      source

      • we have launched preemptive first strikes on multiple sovereign nations and destroyed them entirely for profit under thinly disguised lies that news media was coerced into publishing through infiltration and economics

      source

      • we crush teachers and students through an absolutely brutal school system that is required to teach only official doctrine and punish anyone who tries to change it

      This is overstated. There is no “official doctrine” defined by law, except of course where official doctrine is defined by law.

      source
      source - confederate propaganda in US curriculum
      source - school to prison pipeline
      source - communists banned from teaching
      source - teacher suspended for teaching history
      source - teach reprimanded for teaching about constitutional rights
      source - Compulsion, Indoctrination, and Retribution in State Pledge of Allegiance Statutes

      • we imprison more of our own people than any other nation in the last 150 years

      This was a bridge too far. This has only been true since the 1970s, not the last 150 years. It’s also only been the highest rate in the world for 23 years straight, but has been contending for the highest in the world for almost 30 years. However, this doesn’t include the number of people who are on probation, which requires continuous state surveillance. The US has about twice as many people under probation as incarcerated, and they already have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which means the percentage of people in the US under some form of enforced state surveillance (including incarceration) is 1659 in every 100,000, which is just BONKERS authoritarian.

      source
      source
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      source

      • we use those prisoners as forced labor to produce billions in profits

      source

      • we put those prisoners in brutal and violent conditions

      source

      • we put children in solitary confinement doing massive developmental damage to them

      source

      • we spend millions on police brutality just for homeless harassment programs

      source

      • the NYC police department is in the top 10 largest standing armies in the world

      source

      • the NYC police budget is larger than the entire DPRK national military budget including nukes

      source

      • the amount the US spends on local and state police in aggregate makes it the third largest military budget in the world

      source

      • the US Congress gave retroactive immunity to corporations found to be breaking the law because the laws they broke were laws protecting citizens from domestic spying by the military

      source

      • the US imprisoned or exiled every person who exposed US domestic surveillance programs

      source

      • the US kills political enemies domestically and abroad

      source
      source
      source
      source
      source
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      source

      Do I need to go back to Jim Crow and before?

      Do i?

      I mean how much more evidence is needed before people wake the fuck up to reality?

      So. Instead of removing my post for disinformation, if you have a problem with some of my claims, maybe contest them and have a debate. But now, unfortunately, you have to read through a whole bunch of sources that back up the above claims (and corrected claims) or you can just remove this for being “disinformation” and we’ll know where you stand.

    • blandfordforever@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      It seems like your post is an attempt to normalize what the Trump administration is doing. It’s not normal.

      • freagle@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 day ago

        You don’t understand what my post is doing then. Get another word that isn’t authoritarian because that’s not the distinction between Trump and everyone who came before him.

    • Tundra@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      And what would you suggest as an alternative to capitalism? (genuinely curious)

      The divide between rich & poor seems to be expanding.

      • Bloobish [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 hour ago

        Communism, like straight up. And don’t bring up “failures” cuss you also have Cuba which has survived and maintained a good quality of life with low resource input but astounding life expectancy all under embargo by the US, Vietnam which most of the world ignores but has created some amazing outcomes for internal productive forces. There’s also China, and please don’t start with “but it’s not communist”, because name me a capitalist state that willingly and readily executes billionaires and millionaires on a regular basis for abusing citizenry and violating the law.

      • hexthismess [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        Communism, plain and simple.

        Capitalism, and the capitalists that own the real estate and goods production, will cozy up to fascist regimes to protect their investments and profits, every time. There will always be someone who takes the money and the fascists will gladly trade money for the legitimacy that the capitalists provide.

          • hexthismess [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            Communism is not designed nor intended to accumulate power to either a small group of people or a dictator of that’s what you mean by authoritarian. Communism establishes that the common people hold the power over the elite/rich because otherwise, the rich and elite will use their money and therefore power to erode any gains the people make.

            Communism is authoritarian?

            What do you mean by authoritarian?

            • el_bhm@lemm.ee
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              19 hours ago

              Every implementation started with the centralisation of power. And never transitioned outside of it no matter how hard you quote lenin.

              It always ends with red fascism, get it through your thick skulls.

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    US has always been authoritarian if you aren’t wealthy and preferably white. Ask the black panthers, MOVE, George Floyd, the victims of McCarthyism, those killed at Blair Mountain, native Americans…