Protests can work, but only if it triggers a government overreaction.

True, but that’s the thing: Only disruptive protests can trigger a government overreaction. As authoritarianism takes hold the definition of “disruptive” becomes more expansive, but at least as it stands right now the kind of protests we’ve seen so far won’t cut it.

Especially against fascists who are often very good at portraying themselves as the victims.

I think there needs to be a lot more “spicy” resistance before violence becomes viable, but to be fair people who buy bullshit fascist narratives and people who would join anti-fascist resistance are probably two non-intersecting circles on a Venn diagram. I mean have you seen how MAGAts talk about Renee Good? These guys do not live in reality.

or you end up with another Horst Wessel or Charlie Kirk.

Not sure who the former is, but the killing of Charlie Kirk was a net good. The fascists aren’t doing anything they wouldn’t already do, and now there’s no more Charlie Kirk pushing fascist narratives.

what the fuck do we do?

If you’re American, organize locally. Agitation is nice and all, but at this stage I suspect you’d be more screaming at a wall than anything else. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, as they say, so right now it’s better to get some infrastructure ready for when shit hits the far. If you’re not American, then frankly there’s nothing you can do except hope for the best and brace for the worst, in which case welcome to the club.

Hoping and playing people educate themselves, or pushing people who already mostly have similar base ideals to realize the logical conclusions of our current systems and what this administration is trying to do, and act accordingly?

Education is nice, but there are better ways to do that than policing memes on a small leftist community in the corner of the internet.

I have to say, Fauda is an amazing name for an anarchist organization. That’s “chaos” or "anarchy“ in Arabic.

The country of Tiananmen Square?

True but irrelevant.

The country whose people practically develop an ever-changing coded language to avoid big brother coming down hard on any sort of criticism?

Yes. I never said that China tolerates criticism, but that doesn’t mean Chinese people live in fear of their government. An incompetent government will have criticism coming from every which way, necessitating draconian measures and exaggerated crackdowns, which does lead to fear (ask me how I know). This isn’t the case for China because, despite their faults and the evil shit they get up to, Chinese people are generally satisfied with their governance. Fear isn’t an automatic result of authoritarianism; it appears when there’s too little carrot and too much stick.

The country that runs “reeducation” camps for many who do get caught?

True but irrelevant.

The country that has Uyghurs and Tibetans to blame “within,” and Japan without? Or the US?

Source? Not for their oppression of Uighurs and Tibetans, or rivalry with the US and Japan, I know about these, but that they’re using any of these as scapegoats for their own troubles. Oppression can be motivated by things other than scapegoating, and it’s not like China is lacking in real reasons to oppose the US and Japan. Without something that corroborates your claim this is just a non-sequitur.

Where senior cadres of the party magically grow richer?

This is just a non sequitur. Senior CCP officials are rich, but the other half of your claim “everyone else pretty much won’t” goes against everything we know about Chinese economic growth.

If this happens I hope this is the straw that broke the camel’s back

Absolutely not, this camel can take a lot more of these.

I mean it’s better than nothing?

Nope. It’s a do-nothing release valve, kind of like taking a painkiller and pretending your arm hasn’t been chopped off.

Sure it could always be more but I feel like pushing for more resistance and better protests is better than just making fun of it.

Probably, but this is c/leftymemes, not r/howtoeducateliberalsmemes. Also Americans tend to be very resistant to the idea that they should do more.

Think of the list of political rights you take for granted. The right to voting, free speech, association, peaceful assembly, etc. Those don’t exist or are severely curtailed, meaning that political activity and discourse that anger the ruling class can and will be punished. How much is tolerated and what kind of punishments are doled out varies depending on the strength and heavy handedness of the ruling regime.

People live in fear and try to adapt, self-censor. Authoritarian leaders need a bogie man, somebody they can blame for all their failures. So an ethnic group, minority, or another country will constantly be blamed for everything from the economy to ingrown toe nails. The elite will get richer, everybody else pretty much won’t.

Not necessarily. Authoritarians are usually corrupt/incompetent, which tends to lead to these things, but competent dictators with legitimate public support exist, China being the best-known example.

*Basic political rights. You can have a perfectly liberal democracy where the average person is one missed paycheck away from starving to death. Education for example has nothing to do with authoritarianism, except that authoritarians tend to benefit from lack of education.

They’re not evil because they want to be evil; they’re evil because they fundamentally don’t care. Ibn Khaldun famously (???) said “the morals of oppressed peoples decline.” Scarcity makes people desperate and causes them to make questionable or even evil decisions that they believe they need to make to survive. These decisions are then rationalized and justified to avoid cognitive dissonance (i.e. we didn’t do it and they deserved it). Combine that with this economic oppression and it’s not hard to see why the far right gets so much support; if you accept the underlying assumptions and feel desperate enough it’s not hard to sell “your suffering is their fault, it’s either you or them” to enough people to do some pretty evil shit, and they won’t feel guilty about it because they’ve already done the math.

Counterpoint: All of 20th and 21st American history outside of WWI and WWII. The US never declared war on Iraq or Afghanistan.

“They’d kill you if you lived in Gaza” is commonly cited, though usually to LGBT people.

Congress can try the rule of law since they’re useless anyway, but your average person really has much better uses of their time than hoping it’ll work, because it won’t.

Hell, they gave it to Henry fucking Kissinger.

Nah, this is what I hear when they say it was self defense.

And my point is that your point doesn’t make sense. People can, in fact, disagree with you (and be assholes about it) without being Russian/Chinese/whatever trolls. The sentiment they’re expressing is common enough that it’s not at all grounds for accusing them of being a paid troll.

That is some serious drip. Also yeah someone should try that again.

Someone just discovered civil religion.

Yeah God forbid people write six comments a day. It’s not like politics internet arguments drag on forever, no it has to be them evil Russians.

We call people, who worked for the Nazi Party, in the Nazi government, Nazis.

I mean, do we? I’m don’t think I’m convinced that every public school teacher in Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a Nazi.