I really liked the comparison to 1939 France that someone made and you retweeted today. The racial divisions in American society get a lot of attention, but in my opinion the reason that this conflict has ended up here is because it is primarily a religous conflict (Q Anon is rightly considered a cult, for one thing, and the woman who was shot was Q Anon).
That is, America has been undergoing a grinding clash between a Christian Nationalist movement on the one hand, and a long overdue secularization process on the other. Those Catholic/Evangelical American identities and religious institutions that Reagan and Bush II appealed to have long been crumbling. That's where the parallels to France and incidents like the Dreyfuss Affair become intriguing. Or, as you pointed out, the Spanish Civil War also comes to mind in terms of a kind of religous conflict.
America needs an acceptance of secularization, religious pluralism, and much healthier religous cultures so badly.
Thanks on the religion problem. America desperately needs a more secular citizenry. Look at history, forever, religous groups/cults have been at war with each other wanting more power and control of citizens. How did we get SIX catholics on our Supreme Court, and now another catholic president coming. Way too much delusional fanaticism.
I am a "Handmaid Survivor" & former member of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's PEOPLE OF PRAISE COMMUNITY CULT. Crimes were committed against me by PEOPLE OF PRAISE COMMUNITY leaders & my husband. Please read my 5 page Oct. 8, 2020 letter to the Senate & Judiciary Committee. Sen. Lindsay Graham would NOT allow me to testify at Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination Hearing. For more information about my life story & pubished memoir, BONSHEA Making Light of the Dark, please visit my website: www.coralanikatheill.com
Whenever I hear theories about racial or ingrained societal predilections I think of the Vikings/Nordic cultures and how they put the boots to that. But what the Nords did in millennia the Japanese and Germans did in a couple of generations.
In addition to punishing the actual participants in this coup, we should start suing people for defamation when they start insane conspiracy theories. Part of the reason these theories gain steam is there is no punishment for making up objectively false stories and spreading them everywhere. You hate Hillary's guts? Ok, fine, everyone has their opinion. You think she's the leader of some sort of pedophile ring at Comet Ping Pong, and keep promoting it even when you know it's false? Jail time for you.
That gets out of hand quickly. Soon you have restaurants on Yelp suing customers posting bad reviews. And outrage artists suing anyone who smirks at them or posts a witty gif on Twitter.
None of those things are objectively false. Those things are not subject to defamation laws.
I'm not even proposing any new laws. I'm only suggesting people are more aggressive about employing the laws that currently exist. There are people out there that are making up lies, know they're lies, and promote them, with no consequence. Right now, I'm sure most politicians don't sue people for defamation because it's hard to win and it looks bad. But letting people continue to deliberately promote lies is destroying democracy.
I want to be constructive about this. Problems exist to be solved. But I think it will need a truly circuitous strategy to get people to prefer hard truths over comforting lies. Secularisation (see last night's comments) would help, but it advances only one funeral at a time.
This is stupid for a lot of reasons. The first being that it would only make things worse. Imagine if, in this situation, when we have people who smashed up the capitol, when we have people making far worse threats, we have a squad of the gov't going after those who are spouting conspiracy theories for defamation. This would only make them more entrenched. Doesn't solve anything. It's also impossible to police this. There are millions of people who say shit like this every day.
Debunking conspiracy theories makes the believers more entrenched. I guess we should just give up on truth?
I'm not suggesting the government start proactively investigating people for spreading conspiracy theories. I'm talking about the subjects of these conspiracy theories taking action. For example, Hillary Clinton suing people who deliberately and knowingly falsely accuse her of being a pedophile ring leader. I'm not talking about randos who retweet or share those accusations. I'm talking about the social media influencers and media figures who set these theories in motion for money.
The jolly frat boys who pulled that epic prank on January 6th deserve nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to from the Dean. What do those politicians deserve who flooded this country with Third World invaders and dispossessed their own people?
OK, but isn't the real lesson that if there is broad support for something within the populace, it will happen, one way or another? A broad segment of japanese society at the time supported militarism, and militarism is what they eventually got, even though it seems like paradoxically it was the cooler heads of the conservative government/Hirohito that didn't want to push the envelope initially.
In seems like in our case the populace is much more divided.
It's probably some complicated function of broad support, or at least lack of opposition, and a smaller group who wants something quite badly. In this case, the extremists weren't punished because there wasn't any meaningful constituency that had a principled disagreement with their approach. They were only guilty of taking their principles too far, and that's not that much of a sin.
If there was some sort of opposition party with meaningful support that had a principled view that Japan should be something other then an imperialist power, or a very legalist liberal view against ex-judicial actions or military rule, then things might have turned out differently. It's hard to imagine how that could have existed at the time though.
The USA may be more divided than Japan was (I don't really know) but it sure seems as if support for autocracy, oligarchy, kleptocracy, and white nationalism are becoming broader (at least increasing in the past 4 years and more out in the open.) I think overall lesson from 1930's Japan is that if the trend is not reversed then we've only seen the beginning so far.
More common or more commonly known? It feels very inline with the attitudes I grew up with in rural America, but now they're responding to our changing culture more than external threats.
I think Weimar Germany is a better comparison. In the ‘30s, the streets of big cities like Berlin were filled with leftist protestors and anarchists clashing with police, rightwing thugs, and paramilitaries. Why? Because the social order had been destabilized by a recession, and by a loss of faith in the old Junker establishment (which formed the core of the administrative state) to provide solutions to social problems.
The left was full of young ANTIFA-type groups like the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (Fighting League against Fascism), that believed the only way to prevent a fascist takeover was to confront fascists in the streets, while the right was full of young Proud Boys-type groups like the Braunhemden (Brownshirts), that liked to goad the leftists into street fights, and larger Oath Keeper-type militia groups like the Freikorps (Free Corps), composed of disgruntled middle-aged men, many veterans of World War I, who had no use for street fighting but who were armed, disciplined, and understood quite well what their role would be if the brush fires began to spread beyond the streets.
The vast majority of people, of course, didn’t belong to any of these groups. So how did the fascists take over?
It’s complicated, and I’m no historian, but part of the answer is that a lot of, well, let’s compare them to “moderate swing voters in contested states,” a whole lot of genial and law-abiding Herrn & Frau So-&-So’s, pillars of their Bavarian communities, who attended church and minded their own business, were persuaded that things had gotten so bad that only a strong leader, one committed to law and order, could fix it. It’s true that these Herrn & Frau So-&-So’s may have been racist (principally anti-Semitic), but they were still decent people — generally gracious to outsiders, and respectful of tolerant Weimar norms.
When Hitler became a public figure, Herrn & Frau So-&-So initially spurned him as a rabble-rouser and vulgarian. But within a few years, things had changed. Many Herrn & Frau So-&-So’s came to support Hitler because he promised to make Germany great again. They came to see him as a straight talker with the courage to call out those intellectuals and leftist college professors who wanted to destroy what was good and pious in traditional German culture and replace it with a godless Marxism. He promised to be tough on crime, and he stood up to the various communist and anarchist groups in the universities and in the streets -- groups that had questioned the very idea of the German nation, of German identity and history, and of the family as the principal unit of social organization.
Hitler consolidated his power on a law-and-order platform. And he did it, in part, by goading the left into street fights. Weimar was a parliamentary system, and Hitler succeeded because leftist parties were unwilling to work with center-left parties and center-right parties to form a coalition that would block the coalition led by the Nazi Party. In the absence of this willingness to work together, with no center-left or centrist coalition capable of forming a government that could promise to quell the unrest while also protecting civil liberties and respecting tolerant Weimar norms, Herrn & Frau So-&-So were persuaded by Hitler’s alternative.
So we need to find a way to persuade Mr. & Mrs. So-&-So in contested states against voting for Trump in 2024 because they will decide the election.
I really liked the comparison to 1939 France that someone made and you retweeted today. The racial divisions in American society get a lot of attention, but in my opinion the reason that this conflict has ended up here is because it is primarily a religous conflict (Q Anon is rightly considered a cult, for one thing, and the woman who was shot was Q Anon).
That is, America has been undergoing a grinding clash between a Christian Nationalist movement on the one hand, and a long overdue secularization process on the other. Those Catholic/Evangelical American identities and religious institutions that Reagan and Bush II appealed to have long been crumbling. That's where the parallels to France and incidents like the Dreyfuss Affair become intriguing. Or, as you pointed out, the Spanish Civil War also comes to mind in terms of a kind of religous conflict.
America needs an acceptance of secularization, religious pluralism, and much healthier religous cultures so badly.
Thanks on the religion problem. America desperately needs a more secular citizenry. Look at history, forever, religous groups/cults have been at war with each other wanting more power and control of citizens. How did we get SIX catholics on our Supreme Court, and now another catholic president coming. Way too much delusional fanaticism.
I am a "Handmaid Survivor" & former member of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's PEOPLE OF PRAISE COMMUNITY CULT. Crimes were committed against me by PEOPLE OF PRAISE COMMUNITY leaders & my husband. Please read my 5 page Oct. 8, 2020 letter to the Senate & Judiciary Committee. Sen. Lindsay Graham would NOT allow me to testify at Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination Hearing. For more information about my life story & pubished memoir, BONSHEA Making Light of the Dark, please visit my website: www.coralanikatheill.com
Amen!
When I read about the Rape of Nanking and Unit 731 it's remarkable how different and total a change Japan has made.
Yep. Just goes to show that countries don't have "essential characters" or "DNA" as much as people think.
Whenever I hear theories about racial or ingrained societal predilections I think of the Vikings/Nordic cultures and how they put the boots to that. But what the Nords did in millennia the Japanese and Germans did in a couple of generations.
In addition to punishing the actual participants in this coup, we should start suing people for defamation when they start insane conspiracy theories. Part of the reason these theories gain steam is there is no punishment for making up objectively false stories and spreading them everywhere. You hate Hillary's guts? Ok, fine, everyone has their opinion. You think she's the leader of some sort of pedophile ring at Comet Ping Pong, and keep promoting it even when you know it's false? Jail time for you.
That gets out of hand quickly. Soon you have restaurants on Yelp suing customers posting bad reviews. And outrage artists suing anyone who smirks at them or posts a witty gif on Twitter.
None of those things are objectively false. Those things are not subject to defamation laws.
I'm not even proposing any new laws. I'm only suggesting people are more aggressive about employing the laws that currently exist. There are people out there that are making up lies, know they're lies, and promote them, with no consequence. Right now, I'm sure most politicians don't sue people for defamation because it's hard to win and it looks bad. But letting people continue to deliberately promote lies is destroying democracy.
Trouble is, the promoters are often far outside the reach of US courts. Do you remember https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-macedonian-teen-earns-thousands-publishing-lies-n692451 ?
I want to be constructive about this. Problems exist to be solved. But I think it will need a truly circuitous strategy to get people to prefer hard truths over comforting lies. Secularisation (see last night's comments) would help, but it advances only one funeral at a time.
This is stupid for a lot of reasons. The first being that it would only make things worse. Imagine if, in this situation, when we have people who smashed up the capitol, when we have people making far worse threats, we have a squad of the gov't going after those who are spouting conspiracy theories for defamation. This would only make them more entrenched. Doesn't solve anything. It's also impossible to police this. There are millions of people who say shit like this every day.
Debunking conspiracy theories makes the believers more entrenched. I guess we should just give up on truth?
I'm not suggesting the government start proactively investigating people for spreading conspiracy theories. I'm talking about the subjects of these conspiracy theories taking action. For example, Hillary Clinton suing people who deliberately and knowingly falsely accuse her of being a pedophile ring leader. I'm not talking about randos who retweet or share those accusations. I'm talking about the social media influencers and media figures who set these theories in motion for money.
The jolly frat boys who pulled that epic prank on January 6th deserve nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to from the Dean. What do those politicians deserve who flooded this country with Third World invaders and dispossessed their own people?
Cue the kooky far rightwingnut, Anthony.
OK, but isn't the real lesson that if there is broad support for something within the populace, it will happen, one way or another? A broad segment of japanese society at the time supported militarism, and militarism is what they eventually got, even though it seems like paradoxically it was the cooler heads of the conservative government/Hirohito that didn't want to push the envelope initially.
In seems like in our case the populace is much more divided.
What if 40% support something and 60% oppose? Who wins?
It's probably some complicated function of broad support, or at least lack of opposition, and a smaller group who wants something quite badly. In this case, the extremists weren't punished because there wasn't any meaningful constituency that had a principled disagreement with their approach. They were only guilty of taking their principles too far, and that's not that much of a sin.
If there was some sort of opposition party with meaningful support that had a principled view that Japan should be something other then an imperialist power, or a very legalist liberal view against ex-judicial actions or military rule, then things might have turned out differently. It's hard to imagine how that could have existed at the time though.
The USA may be more divided than Japan was (I don't really know) but it sure seems as if support for autocracy, oligarchy, kleptocracy, and white nationalism are becoming broader (at least increasing in the past 4 years and more out in the open.) I think overall lesson from 1930's Japan is that if the trend is not reversed then we've only seen the beginning so far.
More common or more commonly known? It feels very inline with the attitudes I grew up with in rural America, but now they're responding to our changing culture more than external threats.
I think Weimar Germany is a better comparison. In the ‘30s, the streets of big cities like Berlin were filled with leftist protestors and anarchists clashing with police, rightwing thugs, and paramilitaries. Why? Because the social order had been destabilized by a recession, and by a loss of faith in the old Junker establishment (which formed the core of the administrative state) to provide solutions to social problems.
The left was full of young ANTIFA-type groups like the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (Fighting League against Fascism), that believed the only way to prevent a fascist takeover was to confront fascists in the streets, while the right was full of young Proud Boys-type groups like the Braunhemden (Brownshirts), that liked to goad the leftists into street fights, and larger Oath Keeper-type militia groups like the Freikorps (Free Corps), composed of disgruntled middle-aged men, many veterans of World War I, who had no use for street fighting but who were armed, disciplined, and understood quite well what their role would be if the brush fires began to spread beyond the streets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_paramilitary_groups
The vast majority of people, of course, didn’t belong to any of these groups. So how did the fascists take over?
It’s complicated, and I’m no historian, but part of the answer is that a lot of, well, let’s compare them to “moderate swing voters in contested states,” a whole lot of genial and law-abiding Herrn & Frau So-&-So’s, pillars of their Bavarian communities, who attended church and minded their own business, were persuaded that things had gotten so bad that only a strong leader, one committed to law and order, could fix it. It’s true that these Herrn & Frau So-&-So’s may have been racist (principally anti-Semitic), but they were still decent people — generally gracious to outsiders, and respectful of tolerant Weimar norms.
When Hitler became a public figure, Herrn & Frau So-&-So initially spurned him as a rabble-rouser and vulgarian. But within a few years, things had changed. Many Herrn & Frau So-&-So’s came to support Hitler because he promised to make Germany great again. They came to see him as a straight talker with the courage to call out those intellectuals and leftist college professors who wanted to destroy what was good and pious in traditional German culture and replace it with a godless Marxism. He promised to be tough on crime, and he stood up to the various communist and anarchist groups in the universities and in the streets -- groups that had questioned the very idea of the German nation, of German identity and history, and of the family as the principal unit of social organization.
Hitler consolidated his power on a law-and-order platform. And he did it, in part, by goading the left into street fights. Weimar was a parliamentary system, and Hitler succeeded because leftist parties were unwilling to work with center-left parties and center-right parties to form a coalition that would block the coalition led by the Nazi Party. In the absence of this willingness to work together, with no center-left or centrist coalition capable of forming a government that could promise to quell the unrest while also protecting civil liberties and respecting tolerant Weimar norms, Herrn & Frau So-&-So were persuaded by Hitler’s alternative.
So we need to find a way to persuade Mr. & Mrs. So-&-So in contested states against voting for Trump in 2024 because they will decide the election.
Does Japan offer any lessons on preventing a communist takeover? Just wondering.
Forget about 30s Japan, you might even end up 90s Australia! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Parliament_House_riot