He is hurrying, but his $1.7 Billion militia and ICE will soon be fighting behind an El Cid propped up rider. It looks like he has had repeated strokes. Not the golf kind.
But fight they will because he will fully become a chatbot. FIRST DECEASED LEADER.
The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency[0]
Tue, Apr 29th 2025 09:34am - Mike Masnick
> We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration.
> But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.
> This is not the response of someone working from actual knowledge or policy understanding. Instead, it’s precisely how an LLM operates: taking a prompt (the question about job losses) and generating text based on some core parameters (the “system prompt” that requires deflecting blame and asserting greatness).
> The hallmarks of AI generation are all here
• Confident assertions without factual backing
• Meandering diversions that maintain loose semantic connection to the topic
• Pattern-matching to previous responses (“ripped off,” “billions of dollars”)
• Optimization for what sounds good rather than what’s true
It's funny how much democracies with free speech are always self critical with rampant doom saying while actual autocracies that crack down on this kind of speech are quiet and content when economic times are good only really cracking at the seams during distress.
I know its a healthy part of democracy but it is very draining.
> actual autocracies that crack down on this kind of speech
The ball is rolling. Action against media organizations is already underway. You already couldn't publish this message via CBS, WSJ or the Post, for example. They likely wouldn't even interview the author.
But yeah, it takes time, censorship is hard in practice, and random substacks are fairly far down the list.
But pretending that this is a "healthy" democracy at this point is pretty strained reasoning.
The problem is that America is not in a terribly healthy democratic state, and pretty much all of the indicators show it. At best, America is a "flawed democracy" ala The Economist. The worst evaluations label America as a "hybrid regime" / "competitive authoritarianism" / "electoral autocracy" or many other terms to describe a democracy-on-the-surface that has, in reality, become heavily titled in favor of one party rule.
The problems extend well beyond one party (see: Citizen United), but to me, the "fascism"-ish stuff is mostly concentrated on one end. It has been clear for a long time that the Republican Party has embraced the "illiberal democracy" model of Viktor Orbán. Orbán's government never got to the full-on violent oppression used in actual autocracies, but instead used many of the tools that the Republican party uses today to attempt to stay in power. That being: gerrymandering and other aggressive vote meddling; media manipulation (not full on censorship, but attempting to ensure that dominant media voices were party line); propaganda using social / culture war rhetoric; and government pressure on institutions (schools, businesses, etc.) to destroy independence, and force conformity to the party line.
There are differences between the two -- Orbán never attempted anything like ICE or the immigrant detention camps, but Orbán was able to capture the judiciary better than Republicans have so far. But it's the closet comparison I can think of.
Some of the characteristics of the "Orbán style" do share some similarities with fascism... however the "Orbán style" lacks classic fascism (along with the more direct cousin of "the Vladimir Putin style")'s full on authoritarianism. But as the above demonstrates, there isn't a term right now that neatly encapsulates hybrid governments at the moment, so I guess that is why folks are running with the term everyone knows. Besides, there is always the danger of a hybrid regime backsliding into an authoritarian regime. Russia, who many do see as a modern flavor of authoritarian fascism at present, was rated as a "hybrid regime" in The Economist in 2006.
> Orbán's government never got to the full-on violent oppression used in actual autocracies, but instead used many of the tools that the Republican party uses today to attempt to stay in power. That being: gerrymandering and other aggressive vote meddling; media manipulation (not full on censorship, but attempting to ensure that dominant media voices were party line); propaganda using social / culture war rhetoric; and government pressure on institutions (schools, businesses, etc.) to destroy independence, and force conformity to the party line.
This. One of the characteristics of modern transitions into fascism seems to be intentionally avoiding and subverting the antibodies democratic states have developed to curb authoritarianism, to wit all of the actions you mentioned above.
Grey warfare against democracy is real.
Charitably, its practitioners probably think of it as "playing politics hard", but if the outcome of a course of action is eroding democratic norms then we (the people) need to be harsher in our appraisal of it. Anti-democratic forces know exactly what they're doing, even if they don't admit it publicly.
What's more worrisome is constituting a credibly alternative to MAGA+conservatism in the US that can:
1. Win elections
2. Avoid overly alienating the current MAGA+conservative supporters (to the extent they reject democracy)
3. Restore and reinforce democratic norms and laws
The current "textualist" (read: when conservatively convenient) Supreme Court is likely the lynchpin in this.
- Clarence Thomas 78
- Samuel Alito 76
- Sonia Sotomayor 72
- John G. Roberts Jr. 71
Thomas and Alito are going to need replacing in the next presidential term.
Who controls the presidency and senate is going to matter a lot, in terms of unfucking the unbalanced court that Ginsberg's egotistical refusal to retire created.
Frightening thought: Alito and Thomas resign now, giving Trump two seats to fill with younger Justices of their "textualist" persuation who will be there for a very long time.
Just to be clear: Are you twisting the fact that America hits every metric for fascism into saying it must therefore be a healthy vibrant democracy full of free speech - because someone pointed that out? In a flagged story, that isn't anywhere near mainstream news?
... You know we have people getting thrown in camps and deported for saying maybe genocide is bad, right? And like, students and faculty in Ivy league schools getting beaten and/or fired for saying maybe we shouldn't be complicit in the mass murder of children?
Apologies if I've misread your remarks - deep and biting sarcasm doesn't always play well in text.
The parallels to the rise of Nazi Germany are striking. But it can be much worse. Read "February 1933" if you want to get a feel. Pretty much daily reports of people getting killed in clashes between Nazis and Communists. Hitler almost immediately suspends right to assemble, free speech etc, and orders police to kill dissidents on sight. Prominent artists and journalists are getting arrested or are fleeing the country. All of that within a month of Hitler taking power.
There is still hope for the US. The press is still critical, the opposition is not arrested, the courts are still giving push back, and it's not civil war level violence.
The midterms will be a landslide if allowed to run fairly.
Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope.
I don’t expect Civil War levels of violence because the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it. No large group of people will pick up arms to support Trump’s right to invade countries and ruin the economy.
> The midterms will be a landslide if allowed to run fairly.
SCOTUS just repelled the "voting rights" part of the civil rights acts, allowing states to gerrymander the black vote out. Which all red states immediately did. The midterms already won't be fair, and it can get worse until then.
> the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it.
It really isn't, 30% of the country is still diehard MAGA. They may be disappointed about the results (or lack thereof), but nothing will make them reconsider their support for Trump. And these people have disproportionately more firearms than the rest of the population.
That 30% have also been in a decades long information silo that has convinced them that anyone marginally to the left of them is either mentally ill or demons. I grew up with Michael Savage on the radio.
Disclaimer: I don't want to make people despair nor do I want to install fatalism. People should take action, no matter the bad chances.
> if allowed to run fairly.
> Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope.
The fairly part is already out of the window, we have had the fake bomb threats at the polling stations. But as you have seen in Hungary, an autocrat has to fear a mass revolt. So an outsized signal can still make it through, despite the rigged elections.
But that isn't even the most important part. Imagine the Dems win next round. What then? I have the impression that the Americans do not fully grasp the structural damage that has been done. The Dems won't be able to clean up the mess that the conservatives had left them as they have been doing traditionally.
This time the US is highly isolated, the economy is under severe threat from the GOPs own doing; Iran, almost unlimited lawless access to European markets (contrary to popular belief) for the tech oligarchy, institutional knowledge gone, soft power gone.
Also imagine throwing the owners of fake news blasters like Fox News in jail, would you think that would be possible? When an outsized portion of the populace think this is Free Press, there is a cultural problem that prevents root causes to be dealt with. The commercial apparatus is necessary for "flooding the zone", but doesn't function as the Fourth Estate, a required function the general population would not even know about.
The Heritage Foundation at alii have a large time horizon, they have been working on overthrowing democracy for decades. The asymmetry of having no regards for the rule of the law versus having to follow it is another disadvantage for the Dems. It is a seduction to join the dark side, to let the Dems play the game the other party is good at.
The Dems are setup for failure; they need a bizarre effort to overcome the structural damage and the corporate occupation of culture. Notwithstanding the neoliberal factions inside, which are equivalent to the "GOP of older times sliding into autocracy but not there yet". The GOP is bad, but I don't want to portray the Dems as 100% good, on the contrary. The Democratic Party is a big tent, and should rather be broken up in different parties, so Americans have something to choose from actually.
In short: people should not hope that the other party will fix their problems; they should start to question themselves, the cultural beliefs they have been fed and most importantly, they need to understand their own and their peers role in this mess. The change should come from bottom up, grassroots style.
Please correct me if I'm wrong and I would hope to stand corrected, but my impression from across the pond is that the Dems in general would enjoy being in the same lead and would gladly use similar mechanisms - so they wouldn't change structurally that much even when they get to the levers. Many techbros and other personalities would also simply swear new allegiances, get celebrated for "their" win and continue to erode at everything because money is money in the end and the GOP lead demonstrated there's good money to be made this way. Of course there are and will be exceptions to this, but significantly many? Time will tell.
> would gladly use similar mechanisms - so they wouldn't change structurally that much even when they get to the levers.
To address the first part, «similar mechanisms», the Dems realize too late that the GOP had stopped playing the same 'game', as in: the rule of law, respecting institutions, not overstepping the boundaries. They would not gladly use similar mechanisms, because it would mean that no party in the USA would be a democratic rule-abiding party. You would end with a Russia governance style, where 'might makes right' rules instead of the law. In other words: maffia governance.
That is why rules alone wouldn't save a democracy. If you can get away with ignoring them, the rules are dead
The second part, «so they wouldn't change structurally», is a real problem. There is quite a bunch of senators and people clinging to their position and their networks, standing in the way of real chance. Franklin D. Roosevelt had the same problems.
The moneyed interests are a big problem too. From a distance I think AOC is the most clear-headed and general interest driven person, but she has to overcome established interests in the Democratic Party. That requires money and backing from influential people.
And frankly, the press might sometimes sound critical about current affairs (out of necessity, they have to maintain strata-specific degrees of credibility), but they don't raise the alarm (which has been several years overdue). For some politicians and power brokers, just facing up to the consequences of their (in)actions would be too unpleasant, let alone they would want to give up their interests. So they gladly let themselves be lulled to sleep. If the editorial boards would stop down-playing and bullshitting, those "all is more or less fine" people would start to face electoral heat, but you can safely bet the corporate incentives aren't aligned with that.
As a German, I started wondering if every nation has to experience a fascist catastrophe on its own, before a majority agrees that a fascist takeover is possible at home (surely the peoples who failed to stop all the other fascist regimes were just dumb). Then again, 30% of German voters would vote for the fascist AfD party today, so there's that...
I agree with the premise of the article wholeheartedly. Minor nitpick:
> The German dynasties behind Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW pretty much merged with the Nazi regeime.
Volkswagen was founded by the Nazi regime after they have already taken over. While support by car companies was relevant, there were far more important supporters of the war effort in the chemical and steel industry.
"yes" heh. more a human problem i'm slowly figuring out, spend enough time on this earth and it's honestly tiring. social media and modern new cycle prob just accelerates it.
Its sad thing but in every society there appears to be a significant portion of people who support the tenants of fascism. The whole 'that minority group over there is wrecking things for you, we will punish them' vibe seems to really strike a chord time and time again.
There's a peer-reviewed study of this that appeared in the last couple of years that showed the percent support for authoritarian rule tends to hover around 20% worldwide regardless of country, plus or minus some fuzz amount. I can't find it now because I keep finding other papers but this is another report that's is pretty consistent with it:
Once you get that group control is when you have problems.
This is kind of an interesting deeper dive into why people support fascism. Maybe not surprising but highlights the two main reasons: something like "we need a strong leader to take control of the government away from corrupt elite and put it back into the hands of the people" and "the government needs to be in the hands of the real, true, competent people, and not the other, fake, lesser people".
Personally I'm past the point of "what does fascism look like" and want to have a realistic discussion about "how do you reestablish a democracy when you're in a fascist regime?" So far the historical examples at my fingertips are all basically some variant of "people get tired of it, the cult leader passes away and everyone kind of magically agrees that fascism isn't working".
There is research that suggests that our brain composition determines our political ideology. More or less gray matter in different parts of brain determine where we land on spectrum of progressive, liberal, conservative, authoritarian.
don't forget about the historical examples of having your home destroyed by war (usually a war started by your leader) and the regime being forcefully replaced by a foreign power. Japan, Italy and Germany are democracies today.
The problem with needing to experience fascism to worry about it is that the lesson will fade too quickly to be useful. 5 generations, maybe, before the majority have forgotten.
Germany's current political course is a replay of the Weimar Republic. Including the people wagging their fingers about the dangers of fascism. You'd think the people telling us not to repeat history would read a history book.
The consequences of replacing Jefferson’s Union with Lincoln’s Republic in 1861 were foreseen at the time, but the ‘copperheads’ were shouted down. ‘Fascism’ emerged in Europe from different causes much later.
Only casuals find this insightful.
Also, don't get the [flagged]. For what it's worth: Rutger Bregman is a historian and best-selling writer from the Netherlands. While you don't have to agree with everything he says most is thought provoking at least.
Another opportunity to recommend "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45" by Milton Mayer. The audiobook is great too.
A critical but empathetic look at how fascism rises and spreads through, and alongside, ordinary people in ordinary society. Excellent book, incredibly relevant.
I am reading this book now and from reading the book to me it seems there are some differences between 1930s Germany and 2026 US:
1. Germans back then were conformist people and following other Germans; especially authority figures. Americans are anything but.
2. Germans did not know what was going on; today there is a ton of media.
3. Nazi party took care of the “good” Germans: Nazis gave Germans jobs (anyone else, Jews, Romas, communists had to fend for themselves). Trump and his goons openly shit on American people.
4. It took about 8 years from boycotting Jewish businesses to burning synagogues, then another 2 years to start implementing the Final solution. Trump’s goons shot and killed Americans less than 1 year since taking power.
(Also important is that Adolf Hitler became chancellor at 44 years old, Trump’s most consequential presidency started when he was 79.)
Similarities to today’s situation that I got from the book are charisma both Hitler and Trump have, and how people seem to identify themselves with Hitler and Trump (for ex: which other American president had people put his name on flags, tattoos, cars, houses?)
Freedom is fragile and needs constant support. Trump touched a raw nerve but he is too vain, greedy and old to follow through with a full blown dictatorship. The goons around him are dangerous but lack his charisma and connection to the average person (do you see JD Vance filling up stadiums while spouting non-sense?)
Americans are astonishingly conformist. Don’t let the myth making of American exceptionalism blind you to the amazing cult of MAGA or the reach of evangelical churches.
It only takes a small minority of violent thugs to make a bigger population of people who only want to stay out of trouble compliant.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, ACTUAL facists (as in no serious discussion possible, nobody needing to be convinced) were in power from 2023 to 2025. The country of the author has had a fascist prime minister for 2 years ...
And the main reason that stopped is that a bunch of his party members ran off and started a new party.
As a reaction voters became more extreme. The FvD (forum for democracy) is making big strides forward and they lack the (very few) positive qualities the PVV did have. PVV was anti-violence and pro-democracy. Oh, and FvD is anti-democracy in the sense of they're against "1 person 1 vote", and looking for ways to limit who can vote (and going to lengths that Trump and Republicans are not even daring to mention (yet?)
While some* of that is true, does that matter to the argument being made by the author? And yes, that author also opposed fascist forces in the Netherlands.
: Former prime minister Schoof was was not* a fascist, but basically just an independent bureaucrat hired to attempt to hold a very brittle coalition together. He failed at that miserably. Also, the 'main reason that stopped' was that the PVV party went from 23% of the votes to 17% of the votes in the next election, and none of the other parties was willing to work with them again in a coalition.
Last week I was at Amsterdam station and I became 100% sure of one thing: this will happen again. Hopefully not with FvD on top this time. But it's going to happen again, for sure.
The story was flagged by many users. The problem with articles like this is the discussions are repetitive and predictable. We rarely see anyone approaching them with genuine curiosity. The topic of whether this president and administration are befitting of particular labels and historical analogies has been continually discussed (in broader society and on HN) since about 2015. And in the discussions we generally just see people trying to justify why they believe what they already believed about the topic, sometimes quite belligerently.
This is why discussions about politics are generally bad on online forums (and considered to be best avoided at dinner parties); it’s a domain in which people’s belief about the topic is deeply entangled with their identity, and by definition, people get defensive and hostile when their identity is thrown into question. Thus, they work much harder to justify why they were already right about the topic, instead of seeking to learn anything new.
The kind of politics discussion that would be good to see much more of on HN would explore the question: if we were to agree that the state of politics globally is terrible (I certainly do), what actions can ordinary people like us working in technology do to make things better?
Comments, when they say "flagged", are also dead. But articles say "flagged" for some number of flags, but they aren't dead yet. It takes more flags to kill them. "Flagged" is just a notification that an article has received some flags, but it doesn't actually change anything yet.
Donald Trump strikes me as a low-level antichrist who's more honest and upfront about everything, whereas other politicians are more cute and polite about their agendas, or are just stupid in their policy making.
But then again, most of politics is corrupt.
You really are voting for the lesser of two evils, in that, the choices you're given are all actually evil, no matter what party, platform, or side of the aisle you're dealing with.
I think Donald Trump is especially popular though because of bad handling of immigration in the USA, and any politician that is serious about dealing with waves of immigration in the same way in Western countries has the ability to take advantage of a similar trend.
In other words...
...90% of illegal immigrants are probably genuinely seeking a better life or even desperate for it, but then you have demographics such as devout Islamist populations, criminals / bad actors who take advantage of, and the fact that if people can flood across borders, it seems that they will.
And then border towns in whatever country will bear the brunt of the issues that causes, or you will have literal replacement and a huge uptick in violent crime like what's happening in the UK...
...not to mention local citizens and legal immigrants tend to notice that illegal denizens get a fast track toward government benefits and legal protections they themselves have not and do not receive.
Now, are Donald Trump and those like him bad? At best they are a step backward due to real and serious policy failures by more "Left" politicians, and at worst they are just as awful, but a realistic backlash, according to Horseshoe theory, that extremes on different ends of a spectrum wind up being functionally the same, for example, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War, despite having arguably antithetical ideological beliefs.
In the USA too, its worth pointing out that our Democrat party is heavily influenced by hardcore leftists, that is, not reasonable people who want high tech trains, better healthcare, and a strong social safety net, but rather people who literally are alright with items like transgender "medicine" and pornography for young children, rioting, and think terrorists are justified openly calling for rape and murder.
I think its worth pointing out too that actual historical fascism is openly violent, xenophobic, war-positive, genocidal, and eugenic.
I really don't like Donald Trump, but I would describe him as a moderately right populist that isn't a complete idiot when it comes to dealing with real problems, which is perhaps what makes him dangerous, is that he actually is correct on certain prominent issues, and again, just as antichrist as most politicians, which generates a fair amount of detached cynicism within me.
I'm one of those people too that sort of thinks that a lot of differences between Left-and-Right or Conservative vs. Liberal actually collapse into nothing on a lot of simple problems, for example, gun rights, healthcare, border security, and that a lot of it is just meant to divide us.
For example, why shouldn't we trust private, law-abiding citizens with guns after they take a one-day or two-day class in safety, have laws that prevent someone from buying weapons during a day long random bi-polar episode, and have police officers or security guards in schools?
Why not have quality government provided healthcare and a welfare state, as well as private alternatives in healthcare and an understanding that opportunity and attitude is the biggest factor in persons lifting themselves out of poverty?
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcf5RQqVEM -- Elephants in Rooms discusses these very issues, even the Texas governor in the US getting mad and bussing illegal immigrants to liberal cities like New York who then said they couldn't handle the influx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJNTnA2UvWw -- A discussion on the harms on Islamism as it pertains to the fact that the ideology of a reasonable amount of persons who claim to follow Islam is not compatible with Western societies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrM78ZigyPE -- A Republican senator in the US makes the argument that for the same reason you lock the front door of your house at night, a nation should have a secure border and properly vet anyone entering into the country
I would suggest doing your own research into what's happening in the UK for example, don't just take my word for it obviously.
The Führerkult also has a problematic conclusion: Everything needs to happen during the Führer's lifetime, for only he can restore the nation.
That's obviously a problem when your Führer is 80+ years old and overweight.
It means the Führer will try and fix everything as soon as possible.
He is hurrying, but his $1.7 Billion militia and ICE will soon be fighting behind an El Cid propped up rider. It looks like he has had repeated strokes. Not the golf kind.
But fight they will because he will fully become a chatbot. FIRST DECEASED LEADER.
The Hallucinating ChatGPT Presidency[0]
Tue, Apr 29th 2025 09:34am - Mike Masnick
> We generally understand how LLM hallucinations work. An AI model tries to generate what seems like a plausible response to whatever you ask it, drawing on its training data to construct something that sounds right. The actual truth of the response is, at best, a secondary consideration.
> But over the last few months, it has occurred to me that, for all the hype about generative AI systems “hallucinating,” we pay much less attention to the fact that the current President does the same thing, nearly every day. The more you look at the way Donald Trump spews utter nonsense answers to questions, the more you begin to recognize a clear pattern — he answers questions in a manner quite similar to early versions of ChatGPT. The facts don’t matter, the language choices are a mess, but they are all designed to present a plausible-sounding answer to the question, based on no actual knowledge, nor any concern for whether or not the underlying facts are accurate.
> This is not the response of someone working from actual knowledge or policy understanding. Instead, it’s precisely how an LLM operates: taking a prompt (the question about job losses) and generating text based on some core parameters (the “system prompt” that requires deflecting blame and asserting greatness).
> The hallmarks of AI generation are all here
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/29/the-hallucinating-chatgp...It's funny how much democracies with free speech are always self critical with rampant doom saying while actual autocracies that crack down on this kind of speech are quiet and content when economic times are good only really cracking at the seams during distress.
I know its a healthy part of democracy but it is very draining.
> actual autocracies that crack down on this kind of speech
The ball is rolling. Action against media organizations is already underway. You already couldn't publish this message via CBS, WSJ or the Post, for example. They likely wouldn't even interview the author.
But yeah, it takes time, censorship is hard in practice, and random substacks are fairly far down the list.
But pretending that this is a "healthy" democracy at this point is pretty strained reasoning.
The problem is that America is not in a terribly healthy democratic state, and pretty much all of the indicators show it. At best, America is a "flawed democracy" ala The Economist. The worst evaluations label America as a "hybrid regime" / "competitive authoritarianism" / "electoral autocracy" or many other terms to describe a democracy-on-the-surface that has, in reality, become heavily titled in favor of one party rule.
The problems extend well beyond one party (see: Citizen United), but to me, the "fascism"-ish stuff is mostly concentrated on one end. It has been clear for a long time that the Republican Party has embraced the "illiberal democracy" model of Viktor Orbán. Orbán's government never got to the full-on violent oppression used in actual autocracies, but instead used many of the tools that the Republican party uses today to attempt to stay in power. That being: gerrymandering and other aggressive vote meddling; media manipulation (not full on censorship, but attempting to ensure that dominant media voices were party line); propaganda using social / culture war rhetoric; and government pressure on institutions (schools, businesses, etc.) to destroy independence, and force conformity to the party line.
There are differences between the two -- Orbán never attempted anything like ICE or the immigrant detention camps, but Orbán was able to capture the judiciary better than Republicans have so far. But it's the closet comparison I can think of.
Some of the characteristics of the "Orbán style" do share some similarities with fascism... however the "Orbán style" lacks classic fascism (along with the more direct cousin of "the Vladimir Putin style")'s full on authoritarianism. But as the above demonstrates, there isn't a term right now that neatly encapsulates hybrid governments at the moment, so I guess that is why folks are running with the term everyone knows. Besides, there is always the danger of a hybrid regime backsliding into an authoritarian regime. Russia, who many do see as a modern flavor of authoritarian fascism at present, was rated as a "hybrid regime" in The Economist in 2006.
> Orbán's government never got to the full-on violent oppression used in actual autocracies, but instead used many of the tools that the Republican party uses today to attempt to stay in power. That being: gerrymandering and other aggressive vote meddling; media manipulation (not full on censorship, but attempting to ensure that dominant media voices were party line); propaganda using social / culture war rhetoric; and government pressure on institutions (schools, businesses, etc.) to destroy independence, and force conformity to the party line.
This. One of the characteristics of modern transitions into fascism seems to be intentionally avoiding and subverting the antibodies democratic states have developed to curb authoritarianism, to wit all of the actions you mentioned above.
Grey warfare against democracy is real.
Charitably, its practitioners probably think of it as "playing politics hard", but if the outcome of a course of action is eroding democratic norms then we (the people) need to be harsher in our appraisal of it. Anti-democratic forces know exactly what they're doing, even if they don't admit it publicly.
What's more worrisome is constituting a credibly alternative to MAGA+conservatism in the US that can:
The current "textualist" (read: when conservatively convenient) Supreme Court is likely the lynchpin in this. Thomas and Alito are going to need replacing in the next presidential term.Who controls the presidency and senate is going to matter a lot, in terms of unfucking the unbalanced court that Ginsberg's egotistical refusal to retire created.
Frightening thought: Alito and Thomas resign now, giving Trump two seats to fill with younger Justices of their "textualist" persuation who will be there for a very long time.
Just to be clear: Are you twisting the fact that America hits every metric for fascism into saying it must therefore be a healthy vibrant democracy full of free speech - because someone pointed that out? In a flagged story, that isn't anywhere near mainstream news?
... You know we have people getting thrown in camps and deported for saying maybe genocide is bad, right? And like, students and faculty in Ivy league schools getting beaten and/or fired for saying maybe we shouldn't be complicit in the mass murder of children?
Apologies if I've misread your remarks - deep and biting sarcasm doesn't always play well in text.
Given that this is written by a historian it should be taken seriously.
The parallels to the rise of Nazi Germany are striking. But it can be much worse. Read "February 1933" if you want to get a feel. Pretty much daily reports of people getting killed in clashes between Nazis and Communists. Hitler almost immediately suspends right to assemble, free speech etc, and orders police to kill dissidents on sight. Prominent artists and journalists are getting arrested or are fleeing the country. All of that within a month of Hitler taking power.
There is still hope for the US. The press is still critical, the opposition is not arrested, the courts are still giving push back, and it's not civil war level violence.
The midterms will be a landslide if allowed to run fairly.
Trump’s response to that landslide will tell us whether there’s hope.
I don’t expect Civil War levels of violence because the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it. No large group of people will pick up arms to support Trump’s right to invade countries and ruin the economy.
The National Guard may end up having a decision of a lifetime
> The midterms will be a landslide if allowed to run fairly.
SCOTUS just repelled the "voting rights" part of the civil rights acts, allowing states to gerrymander the black vote out. Which all red states immediately did. The midterms already won't be fair, and it can get worse until then.
> the country is mostly united in its hatred of how the GOP is running it.
It really isn't, 30% of the country is still diehard MAGA. They may be disappointed about the results (or lack thereof), but nothing will make them reconsider their support for Trump. And these people have disproportionately more firearms than the rest of the population.
That 30% have also been in a decades long information silo that has convinced them that anyone marginally to the left of them is either mentally ill or demons. I grew up with Michael Savage on the radio.
Disclaimer: I don't want to make people despair nor do I want to install fatalism. People should take action, no matter the bad chances.
The fairly part is already out of the window, we have had the fake bomb threats at the polling stations. But as you have seen in Hungary, an autocrat has to fear a mass revolt. So an outsized signal can still make it through, despite the rigged elections.But that isn't even the most important part. Imagine the Dems win next round. What then? I have the impression that the Americans do not fully grasp the structural damage that has been done. The Dems won't be able to clean up the mess that the conservatives had left them as they have been doing traditionally. This time the US is highly isolated, the economy is under severe threat from the GOPs own doing; Iran, almost unlimited lawless access to European markets (contrary to popular belief) for the tech oligarchy, institutional knowledge gone, soft power gone.
Also imagine throwing the owners of fake news blasters like Fox News in jail, would you think that would be possible? When an outsized portion of the populace think this is Free Press, there is a cultural problem that prevents root causes to be dealt with. The commercial apparatus is necessary for "flooding the zone", but doesn't function as the Fourth Estate, a required function the general population would not even know about.
The Heritage Foundation at alii have a large time horizon, they have been working on overthrowing democracy for decades. The asymmetry of having no regards for the rule of the law versus having to follow it is another disadvantage for the Dems. It is a seduction to join the dark side, to let the Dems play the game the other party is good at.
The Dems are setup for failure; they need a bizarre effort to overcome the structural damage and the corporate occupation of culture. Notwithstanding the neoliberal factions inside, which are equivalent to the "GOP of older times sliding into autocracy but not there yet". The GOP is bad, but I don't want to portray the Dems as 100% good, on the contrary. The Democratic Party is a big tent, and should rather be broken up in different parties, so Americans have something to choose from actually.
In short: people should not hope that the other party will fix their problems; they should start to question themselves, the cultural beliefs they have been fed and most importantly, they need to understand their own and their peers role in this mess. The change should come from bottom up, grassroots style.
Please correct me if I'm wrong and I would hope to stand corrected, but my impression from across the pond is that the Dems in general would enjoy being in the same lead and would gladly use similar mechanisms - so they wouldn't change structurally that much even when they get to the levers. Many techbros and other personalities would also simply swear new allegiances, get celebrated for "their" win and continue to erode at everything because money is money in the end and the GOP lead demonstrated there's good money to be made this way. Of course there are and will be exceptions to this, but significantly many? Time will tell.
The second part, «so they wouldn't change structurally», is a real problem. There is quite a bunch of senators and people clinging to their position and their networks, standing in the way of real chance. Franklin D. Roosevelt had the same problems. The moneyed interests are a big problem too. From a distance I think AOC is the most clear-headed and general interest driven person, but she has to overcome established interests in the Democratic Party. That requires money and backing from influential people.
And frankly, the press might sometimes sound critical about current affairs (out of necessity, they have to maintain strata-specific degrees of credibility), but they don't raise the alarm (which has been several years overdue). For some politicians and power brokers, just facing up to the consequences of their (in)actions would be too unpleasant, let alone they would want to give up their interests. So they gladly let themselves be lulled to sleep. If the editorial boards would stop down-playing and bullshitting, those "all is more or less fine" people would start to face electoral heat, but you can safely bet the corporate incentives aren't aligned with that.
As a German, I started wondering if every nation has to experience a fascist catastrophe on its own, before a majority agrees that a fascist takeover is possible at home (surely the peoples who failed to stop all the other fascist regimes were just dumb). Then again, 30% of German voters would vote for the fascist AfD party today, so there's that...
I agree with the premise of the article wholeheartedly. Minor nitpick:
> The German dynasties behind Porsche, Volkswagen and BMW pretty much merged with the Nazi regeime.
Volkswagen was founded by the Nazi regime after they have already taken over. While support by car companies was relevant, there were far more important supporters of the war effort in the chemical and steel industry.
"yes" heh. more a human problem i'm slowly figuring out, spend enough time on this earth and it's honestly tiring. social media and modern new cycle prob just accelerates it.
Its sad thing but in every society there appears to be a significant portion of people who support the tenants of fascism. The whole 'that minority group over there is wrecking things for you, we will punish them' vibe seems to really strike a chord time and time again.
There's a peer-reviewed study of this that appeared in the last couple of years that showed the percent support for authoritarian rule tends to hover around 20% worldwide regardless of country, plus or minus some fuzz amount. I can't find it now because I keep finding other papers but this is another report that's is pretty consistent with it:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/28/who-likes...
Once you get that group control is when you have problems.
This is kind of an interesting deeper dive into why people support fascism. Maybe not surprising but highlights the two main reasons: something like "we need a strong leader to take control of the government away from corrupt elite and put it back into the hands of the people" and "the government needs to be in the hands of the real, true, competent people, and not the other, fake, lesser people".
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/artic...
Personally I'm past the point of "what does fascism look like" and want to have a realistic discussion about "how do you reestablish a democracy when you're in a fascist regime?" So far the historical examples at my fingertips are all basically some variant of "people get tired of it, the cult leader passes away and everyone kind of magically agrees that fascism isn't working".
There is research that suggests that our brain composition determines our political ideology. More or less gray matter in different parts of brain determine where we land on spectrum of progressive, liberal, conservative, authoritarian.
https://www.psypost.org/authoritarian-attitudes-linked-to-al...
https://youtu.be/t-hwrIkTNFo?si=V3TKg-3dqc1htQBU
don't forget about the historical examples of having your home destroyed by war (usually a war started by your leader) and the regime being forcefully replaced by a foreign power. Japan, Italy and Germany are democracies today.
> Japan, Italy and Germany are democracies today
For now. But democracies are always only one election away from a party taking power and passing laws that entrench them indefinitely.
The problem with needing to experience fascism to worry about it is that the lesson will fade too quickly to be useful. 5 generations, maybe, before the majority have forgotten.
Germany's current political course is a replay of the Weimar Republic. Including the people wagging their fingers about the dangers of fascism. You'd think the people telling us not to repeat history would read a history book.
The consequences of replacing Jefferson’s Union with Lincoln’s Republic in 1861 were foreseen at the time, but the ‘copperheads’ were shouted down. ‘Fascism’ emerged in Europe from different causes much later. Only casuals find this insightful.
Seems like a needed rehash of Eco's article about "ur-fascism" https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Also, don't get the [flagged]. For what it's worth: Rutger Bregman is a historian and best-selling writer from the Netherlands. While you don't have to agree with everything he says most is thought provoking at least.
See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV8KGcFqeLc.
Another opportunity to recommend "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45" by Milton Mayer. The audiobook is great too.
A critical but empathetic look at how fascism rises and spreads through, and alongside, ordinary people in ordinary society. Excellent book, incredibly relevant.
An excerpt, if you don't want to commit to the whole thing: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
I am reading this book now and from reading the book to me it seems there are some differences between 1930s Germany and 2026 US:
1. Germans back then were conformist people and following other Germans; especially authority figures. Americans are anything but.
2. Germans did not know what was going on; today there is a ton of media.
3. Nazi party took care of the “good” Germans: Nazis gave Germans jobs (anyone else, Jews, Romas, communists had to fend for themselves). Trump and his goons openly shit on American people.
4. It took about 8 years from boycotting Jewish businesses to burning synagogues, then another 2 years to start implementing the Final solution. Trump’s goons shot and killed Americans less than 1 year since taking power.
(Also important is that Adolf Hitler became chancellor at 44 years old, Trump’s most consequential presidency started when he was 79.)
Similarities to today’s situation that I got from the book are charisma both Hitler and Trump have, and how people seem to identify themselves with Hitler and Trump (for ex: which other American president had people put his name on flags, tattoos, cars, houses?)
Freedom is fragile and needs constant support. Trump touched a raw nerve but he is too vain, greedy and old to follow through with a full blown dictatorship. The goons around him are dangerous but lack his charisma and connection to the average person (do you see JD Vance filling up stadiums while spouting non-sense?)
Americans are astonishingly conformist. Don’t let the myth making of American exceptionalism blind you to the amazing cult of MAGA or the reach of evangelical churches.
It only takes a small minority of violent thugs to make a bigger population of people who only want to stay out of trouble compliant.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, ACTUAL facists (as in no serious discussion possible, nobody needing to be convinced) were in power from 2023 to 2025. The country of the author has had a fascist prime minister for 2 years ...
And the main reason that stopped is that a bunch of his party members ran off and started a new party.
As a reaction voters became more extreme. The FvD (forum for democracy) is making big strides forward and they lack the (very few) positive qualities the PVV did have. PVV was anti-violence and pro-democracy. Oh, and FvD is anti-democracy in the sense of they're against "1 person 1 vote", and looking for ways to limit who can vote (and going to lengths that Trump and Republicans are not even daring to mention (yet?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom
While some* of that is true, does that matter to the argument being made by the author? And yes, that author also opposed fascist forces in the Netherlands.
: Former prime minister Schoof was was not* a fascist, but basically just an independent bureaucrat hired to attempt to hold a very brittle coalition together. He failed at that miserably. Also, the 'main reason that stopped' was that the PVV party went from 23% of the votes to 17% of the votes in the next election, and none of the other parties was willing to work with them again in a coalition.
Last week I was at Amsterdam station and I became 100% sure of one thing: this will happen again. Hopefully not with FvD on top this time. But it's going to happen again, for sure.
Mind telling us what happened at Amsterdam station that made you sure of that?
With the risk of sounding naive: How come this post is flagged?
Reading the guidelines I can't see how this is off-topic or does _not_ "[gratify] one's intellectual curiosity."
Edit: spelling
We’ve turned off the flags.
The story was flagged by many users. The problem with articles like this is the discussions are repetitive and predictable. We rarely see anyone approaching them with genuine curiosity. The topic of whether this president and administration are befitting of particular labels and historical analogies has been continually discussed (in broader society and on HN) since about 2015. And in the discussions we generally just see people trying to justify why they believe what they already believed about the topic, sometimes quite belligerently.
This is why discussions about politics are generally bad on online forums (and considered to be best avoided at dinner parties); it’s a domain in which people’s belief about the topic is deeply entangled with their identity, and by definition, people get defensive and hostile when their identity is thrown into question. Thus, they work much harder to justify why they were already right about the topic, instead of seeking to learn anything new.
The kind of politics discussion that would be good to see much more of on HN would explore the question: if we were to agree that the state of politics globally is terrible (I certainly do), what actions can ordinary people like us working in technology do to make things better?
I guess it falls under "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics".
My thoughts exactly.
And it's not even possible to vouch fot it
It's not possible to vouch for articles that are not dead
what a lovely loophole
Comments, when they say "flagged", are also dead. But articles say "flagged" for some number of flags, but they aren't dead yet. It takes more flags to kill them. "Flagged" is just a notification that an article has received some flags, but it doesn't actually change anything yet.
wrong, [flagged] removes it from the front page
If you could, you would just lose vouching privileges.
Donald Trump strikes me as a low-level antichrist who's more honest and upfront about everything, whereas other politicians are more cute and polite about their agendas, or are just stupid in their policy making.
But then again, most of politics is corrupt.
You really are voting for the lesser of two evils, in that, the choices you're given are all actually evil, no matter what party, platform, or side of the aisle you're dealing with.
I think Donald Trump is especially popular though because of bad handling of immigration in the USA, and any politician that is serious about dealing with waves of immigration in the same way in Western countries has the ability to take advantage of a similar trend.
In other words...
...90% of illegal immigrants are probably genuinely seeking a better life or even desperate for it, but then you have demographics such as devout Islamist populations, criminals / bad actors who take advantage of, and the fact that if people can flood across borders, it seems that they will.
And then border towns in whatever country will bear the brunt of the issues that causes, or you will have literal replacement and a huge uptick in violent crime like what's happening in the UK...
...not to mention local citizens and legal immigrants tend to notice that illegal denizens get a fast track toward government benefits and legal protections they themselves have not and do not receive.
Now, are Donald Trump and those like him bad? At best they are a step backward due to real and serious policy failures by more "Left" politicians, and at worst they are just as awful, but a realistic backlash, according to Horseshoe theory, that extremes on different ends of a spectrum wind up being functionally the same, for example, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold War, despite having arguably antithetical ideological beliefs.
In the USA too, its worth pointing out that our Democrat party is heavily influenced by hardcore leftists, that is, not reasonable people who want high tech trains, better healthcare, and a strong social safety net, but rather people who literally are alright with items like transgender "medicine" and pornography for young children, rioting, and think terrorists are justified openly calling for rape and murder.
I think its worth pointing out too that actual historical fascism is openly violent, xenophobic, war-positive, genocidal, and eugenic.
I really don't like Donald Trump, but I would describe him as a moderately right populist that isn't a complete idiot when it comes to dealing with real problems, which is perhaps what makes him dangerous, is that he actually is correct on certain prominent issues, and again, just as antichrist as most politicians, which generates a fair amount of detached cynicism within me.
I'm one of those people too that sort of thinks that a lot of differences between Left-and-Right or Conservative vs. Liberal actually collapse into nothing on a lot of simple problems, for example, gun rights, healthcare, border security, and that a lot of it is just meant to divide us.
For example, why shouldn't we trust private, law-abiding citizens with guns after they take a one-day or two-day class in safety, have laws that prevent someone from buying weapons during a day long random bi-polar episode, and have police officers or security guards in schools?
Why not have quality government provided healthcare and a welfare state, as well as private alternatives in healthcare and an understanding that opportunity and attitude is the biggest factor in persons lifting themselves out of poverty?
Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFcf5RQqVEM -- Elephants in Rooms discusses these very issues, even the Texas governor in the US getting mad and bussing illegal immigrants to liberal cities like New York who then said they couldn't handle the influx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJNTnA2UvWw -- A discussion on the harms on Islamism as it pertains to the fact that the ideology of a reasonable amount of persons who claim to follow Islam is not compatible with Western societies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrM78ZigyPE -- A Republican senator in the US makes the argument that for the same reason you lock the front door of your house at night, a nation should have a secure border and properly vet anyone entering into the country
I would suggest doing your own research into what's happening in the UK for example, don't just take my word for it obviously.
I’m not reading all that, Donald Trump is definitely a pedophile.
Wonder how many times i saw this article with different countries…
Reddit-style spin posts leaking into HN.
Which ones? Russia and what else?
Which countries? Can you be specific about two or three of them?
And what point are you trying to make?
The fascism is worldwide now.
Remarkable how much of this fits Israel as well. 6 and 7 didn't, until Netanyahu took it upon himself to fix that.