The road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting.

[kpete]

Link to tweet

?s=20

[dalton99a]

1. Yeah, relax. Trump is too stupid to cause damage

Ivanka is a moderating influence

Senate Republicans have a respect for their institution

The Supreme Court won't let it happen

etc. etc.

[In It to Win It]

46. Remember the "you can't take him literally. When he actually says [x], what he REALLY means is..."

[RhodeIslandOne]

56. Trump is a "New York Democrat"

Heard that one in 2016.

[SergeStorms]

64. I'm a New York Democrat.

And I'm NOTHING like Donald Trump. That's the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard. Whoever told you that should be drawn, quartered, then drawn and quartered again.

[RhodeIslandOne]

65. It was a Conservative trying to talk down people with common sense.

I told him he was full of shit and got an "Orange man bad" flippant comment.

[klook]

67. Mattis will rein him in. No, Kelly. No, _______ (nt)

[dweller]

2. yeh chill

"ANONYMOUS" has got this covered ...


✌🏼

[Solly Mack]

3. No shit.

Some have been telling anyone that would listen that this moment in time has been coming for years. They were ridiculed and scoffed at for trying to tell people. Because, America!

The "it can't happen here" crowd have been little more than enablers.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

13. My oldest brother ignored an old German physicist...

... at his workplace (Wright-Patt AFB), in the late-70's and early-80's, who kept predicting that the USA would become fascist. My brother admired the intelligence of his German boss (who had personally witnessed the rise of Hitler) immensely, but thought he was crazy to think it could happen here.

The physicist rightly blamed the Republicans, mostly, because of their obsession with the military and corporate power... which he argued was damaging to a person's psyche.

[Solly Mack]

19. I'll never understand why anyone thought America was immune to someone like Trump, Barr, McConnell

and the rest. To the decades and decades of grooming by the right that many in the population embraced.

Our "institutions" are made up of people and people can be greedy, cruel, power-hungry, and tyrannical.

Yes, people can be good. But you shouldn't bet your freedom on that.

[standingtall]

38. I believe why people thought America was immune to the likes of Barr and McConnell

Is we have been conditioned from an early age to think that we are a lot better than what we really are. We have been conditioned to believe that those types of politicians only rise to power in the 3 world countries. The believe that the American people were to good to ever let someone like Trump rise to power obviously wasn't true. Were just as bad as anyone else and we are just as susceptible to letting fascist rise to power depending on the circumstances.

[Solly Mack]

40. I think that not everyone got that conditioning. Especially those who had to fight

their entire lives to be seen as people. To gain rights held by white males in particular. For example.

Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say we heard all that patriotic, real Americans, we're the "good guys" bullshit noise and didn't buy into it because of how we were being treated by our own country.

But yeah, that conditioning is a huge part of the problem.

[Illumination]

55. That German physicist predicted the future & knew what he was talking about. Perhaps that was

because he was familiar with "Operation Paperclip". 1,600 Third Reich German scientists were brought to the U.S. to work during the Cold War...

[Magoo48]

36. It can happen anywhere; of course it can happen here.

That said, worry and concern without decisive action are wasted energy and mental health.

What do you propose we do?

[Solly Mack]

37. Vote. Protest. Worried about women's health choices? Volunteer to get around punitive measures

by state and federal. Donate money to pay for care, volunteer to be a host or driver to make sure women get to where they need going. All the while fighting to keep abortion legal and safe. I do.

Defy any authority that seeks to oppress through onerous and punitive laws. And I mean defy. Take the battle to the courts and fight it out there. Even a lopsided court can be influenced by public outcry. Push the issue and then push it some more.

Fight. Refuse their narrative. Speak truth until you're dead. Never settle. Compromise can be a dirty word. Not always, but sometimes. Demand more.

Run for local school boards. Fight at the grassroots by attending town halls, run for local offices, and never let them forget you exist.

Not everyone can do everything but we can all do what we can.

Yeah, it's scary. Yeah, it means time, effort, and money.

But we can push back. We need to push back and push hard.

[Tiger8]

51. Do whatever it takes to stop them

They've had their propaganda wing for decades, and it must be taken down.

It was on the fringes for years, and then Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine, which enabled Limbaugh, Fox News bastards crawl out from the graves.

If you cannot end the propaganda, then we should just shut up and forget about it.

[nolabear]

4. What's overreacting for the goose is righteous anger for the gander.

Particularly if it’s attached to righteous action.

[superpatriotman]

5. +1

Kick and rec

[Escurumbele]

6. Too many people say the same thing "It Can't Happen Here, not in the USA"

And then...crap, how did this happen? How did we get here?

[PatSeg]

9. "No one saw it coming!"

People in the U.S. tend to be very naïve. They see this sort of thing happening in other countries or throughout history, but somehow, we're different, we're some kind of magical special. Shit happens to other people, never to us.

[kairos12]

17. Predictable since SOB Raygun.

[Mr.Bill]

29. The real warning

was that he got elected twice. And so did Nixon.

[not_the_one]

68. As did W.

n/t

[appalachiablue]

31. +1 Always other places, Third World like we are now

[soldierant]

34. I doubt that they do wee it happening in other countries.

For one thing, to do so, they'd have to pay attention - and why would they want to do that? But also, if they did, they might possibly recognize it when they see it happening here. And they clearly don't.

[PatSeg]

42. That's just it

They can observe it happening in other countries or in history books, but they are blind to what is happening right in front of them. It is like the woman who can see her friend's spouse cheating on her, but oblivious to the cheater in her own house. People have trouble being objective about their own world, blinded by close proximity.

[MustLoveBeagles]

7. K&R

[BlueJac]

8. K&R

[mjvpi]

10. I've been told to settle down ever since Reagan.

Trump is a logical extension of a moral policy of rationalizing greed on a political and judicial level that has been championed by the Republican Party.

[BamaRefugee]

12. I've been told to since NIXON! Something like 32 years of my life WASTED by republican rule.

[BamaRefugee]

14. I've been told to since NIXON! Something like 32 years of my life WASTED by republican rule.

[Kaleva]

22. Why did you listen to them?

Following the logic of the tweeter, the reason we are in the mess we are in right now is because so many, who should have known better, listened to those who said not to overreact.

[wnylib]

48. I don't see the OP that way.

The problem is not that people who warned about US fascism listened to the ones who said they were overreacting.

The problem is the other way around. Too many who cried "overreaction" refused to listen to the warnings.

I am one of the people who repeatedly warned about creeping fascism in the US. People refused to believe that it could ever happen here. They cited our courts and checks and balances as protection from it. They refused to believe that a "leader" could sell the people on changes that would disrupt our institutions.

Many people who said the warnings were overreactions actually did see what was happening. They found it too scary to face. So they said what they wanted to believe instead of what they could see happening, in order to make themselves feel better.

[Kaleva]

54. And history shows that trying to warn others is not an effective tactic.

The only effective tactic that has proven to work is to kill or imprison them. Of course, one must really believe that they truly are fascists before taking that route.

[RKP5637]

11. Oh, this is the USA. We have checks and balances, we don't have to do a damn thing!

[uponit7771]

26. THIS !!!! ☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾

[Mr. Ected]

15. You know who was overreacting? The Tea Partiers. The MAGATs.

We owe the demise of our country to a bunch of effing idiots that believe everything their fascist media spoon feeds them.

[durablend]

16. "BUT TEH CONSTITUTION!!!!"

"IT WOOD BE ILLEGAL--HE CAN'T DO THAT!!!!"


HE'S DOING IT.

[LuvNewcastle]

18. When lazy, ignorant, greedy people without

critical thinking skills become dominant in a nation, evil men come along and take advantage of their foolishness and rule them. It's always been that way and it always will be. The people are too ignorant to know of the instances in which it has all happened before or the skills to understand that it is all happening again, to them.

[Yavin4]

24. Fascism gives society's dullards a chance to become the elite and subjugate the "others"

That's why it's such powerful political system.

[DSandra]

20. What do we do though?

Being the “overreactor” is almost guaranteed in many family and friends circles to alienate you.

People who say that don’t want to believe it will happen because it means doing the seemingly impossible or about the scariest things one can imagine, including fighting for their life in a war or living the nightmare of living under a Nazi like regime.

[wnylib]

49. Ask them what they are so afraid of that

they refuse to see what's happening.

Remind them that when an ostrich has its head in the sand, its ass is sticking up in the air and vulnerable.

[appalachiablue]

21. Smedley Butler K/R

https://www.npr.org/2012/02/12/145472726/when-the-bankers-plotted-to-overthrow-fdr

[soldierant]

35. Oh, yes. They surely picked the wrong general to invite, didn't they?

One of my heroes.

[Kid Berwyn]

59. Long, intact line from then to the present.

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=872755

[Meowmee]

23. This very much

[Kaleva]

25. History shows that the only way to prevent despots from gaining power is to kill or imprison them

Because, history shows, they and their followers will not hesitate to kill or imprison you in their quest for power.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

43. Truth👆

[bucolic_frolic]

27. Pollyanna's too

And there are a few on DU that post rosy scenarios all the time. I can't tell if they're optimistic, or disinformation.

[MontanaMama]

32. The evening of November 8th 2016.

When it was clear that the cart was going off the rails...I was in tears. I looked at my husband and said “It’s happening and I’m terrified”. He said: “You just need to relax.” Let me say that it was ON in that moment. He has since apologized. Many times. But I knew what we’d be in for. Lots of us did. Relax isn’t in my DNA on the best of days let alone when the worst is happening. I don’t want to be told to calm down. Ever.

[C Moon]

33. I keep looking for all the dropped shoes.

[Evolve Dammit]

39. Well said. Period. Ignore at your own (and our) peril. ie. Wake TF up!!

[johnthewoodworker]

41. 40% of our population, I assume about 50% of white people, would love some fascism.

[wnylib]

50. That was true in the 1930's, although

I don't know if the proportions then were the same as you mentioned.

I do know that a lot of Americans who lost faith in the institutions after the 1929 crash and the Great Depression admired fascism in Italy and Germany as an alternative. The same was true in the UK until Churchill took office there.

In times of uncertainty, there are always people who feel assurred by authoritarianism. There are also always people who feel better by finding a "them" group to feel superior to. They flock to leaders who feed on their insecurities.

[DBoon]

44. I highly recommend "Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco

Ionesco personally witnessed the hold Fascism gained over Romanian intellectuals.

Wikipedian quote:

In interwar Romania, the most virulent and violent antisemitic movement was the fascist Iron Guard founded in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. As a university student, Ionesco saw one of his professors, Nae Ionescu, who taught philosophy at the University of Bucharest, use his lectures to recruit his students into the Legion. In an interview in 1970, Ionesco explained the play's message as an attack on those Romanians who become caught up in the "ideological contagion" of the Legion:[2]

University professors, students, intellectuals were turning Nazi, becoming Iron Guards one after another. We were fifteen people who used to get together, to find arguments, to discuss, to try to find arguments opposing theirs. It was not easy ... From time to time, one of the group would come out and say 'I don't agree at all with them, to be sure, but on certain points, I must admit, for example the Jews ...' And that kind of comment was a symptom. Three weeks later, that person would become a Nazi. He was caught in a mechanism, he accepted everything, he became a Rhinoceros. Towards the end, it was only three or four of us who resisted.[3]

In 1936, Ionesco wrote with disgust that the Iron Guard had created "a stupid and horrendously reactionary Romania".

Read up on the Romanian Iron Guard. It was a very brutal fascist movement.

Here is how it ended, the last moments of the Second World War:

During the crisis members of the Iron Guard instigated a deadly pogrom in Bucharest. Particularly gruesome was the murder of dozens of Jewish civilians in the Bucharest slaughterhouse. The perpetrators hanged the Jews from meat hooks, then mutilated and killed them in a vicious parody of kosher slaughtering practices.[27][28] The American ambassador to Romania Franklin Mott Gunther who toured the meat-packing plant where the Jews were slaughtered with the placards reading "Kosher meat" on them reported back to Washington: "Sixty Jewish corpses were discovered on the hooks used for carcasses. They were all skinned....and the quantity of blood about was evidence that they had been skinned alive".[26] Gunther wrote he was especially shocked that one of the Jewish victims hanging on the meat hooks was a 5-year-old girl.[26] Sima and other legionnaires were helped by the Germans to escape to Germany.

Again, Wikipedia

[appalachiablue]

63. Tx for posting, I hadn't thought of Ionesco in many years.

How horrifying to watch as many students on US college campuses and elsewhere follow the dangerous extreme right elements that have pushed us to the gates of fascism.

[Meowmee]

66. Links

[link:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionnaires%27_rebellion_and_Bucharest_pogrom|


][link:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iași_pogrom|

[kentuck]

45. Yep.

Right on target!

[Cha]

47. Rt.. nobody I know says we're "over reacting"..

Thank Goodness

[Loge23]

52. Criminalizing protest

Yes, that's a thing in 2020 America now.
Noted gasbag/racist/idiot FL Gov. Ron Desantis has introduced legislation that will effectively criminalize protests by more than 7 people.
Included in this modern-day beer-hall putsch manifesto is a provision granting immunity to motorists who run over protesters under the guise of fleeing for their lives.


The fact that we're in the situation we find ourselves in today is enough to raise any sane, reasonable thinker's fears about fascism in America - it's here, it's now, and it's only getting worse. If the unspeakable occurs on Election Day, this site itself may have to truly go Underground.

Think about what you do, now. Exercise the utmost caution, as the Reich is listening. Social media is not our friend.

[Baltimike]

53. remember 2016 when people HERE said it was CRAZY to suggest Russia interfered

"Prove it!" They demanded. As if your not producing a fucking video of actual vote flipping meant YOU were the crazy one.

Beware of the bullies. If they get away with stealing it again, the same thing might happen if we don't stand up to it.

[dalton99a]

57. +1

[bluewater]

58. K&R

[llashram]

60. thank you. This truth is

set in historical precedence. Worldwide. And for the last 20-30 years, the GOP and hate radio has been prepping us for a person like a trump. Either a person is RED or BLUE. No middle ground.

[Bettie]

61. I am at the point where I don't think that overreacting is even a thing anymore

We are accepting things that we shouldn't.

[zentrum]

62. Damn True.