How to build an autocracy

[Lexicus]

You all are worried about Trump but the dictator is going to be Bannon.

 

[jackelgull]

Trump Ian the vehicle bannon needs to operate through. Trumps movement is built around him with bannon acting as a kind of stabilizing force. Until trumps movement is strong enough to stand without trump defeating trump is defeating bannon

 

[plarq]

Ok, Trump is the Von Hindenburg, and Bannon is Adolf the wolf.

 

[civvver]

I really doubt it'll happen in our lifetime, not without some major event like an all out world war, or a domestic invasion or a gigantic terrorist event that makes 911 look like child's play. Cus people won't give up their rights that easily, just look at all the protests against a temporary visa ban against 7 countries, which doesn't even infringe on the rights of our citizens.

I think with the internet it's too impossible for the government to do all this stuff in secrecy, there will always be some whistleblower, like Snowden or wikileaks. The question I guess is how people respond. It'll take government controlling all information as they do in places like China, but that won't happen overnight, or some major event to get people to voluntarily give up their rights.

You reference nazi germany and how that party took over all the police forces and imprisoned all objectors. I just don't see that happening in the US. You'd need all the individual departments to be fanatics basically, and these people aren't badly enough off to be persuaded right now.

 

[Lexicus]

You reference nazi germany and how that party took over all the police forces and imprisoned all objectors. I just don't see that happening in the US. You'd need all the individual departments to be fanatics basically, and these people aren't badly enough off to be persuaded right now.

Of course you don't. But let me assure you, the majority don't need to be fanatics - they just need to be more concerned with order, or with getting along, than with justice. They just need to do what is easy, rather than what is right.

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/201...itarian-states-boring-tolerable-fascism-trump

A relevant passage:

Most Americans conceptualize a hypothetical end of American democracy in apocalyptic terms. But actually, you usually learn that you are no longer living in a democracy not because The Government Is Taking Away Your Rights, or passing laws that you oppose, or because there is a coup or a quisling. You know that you are no longer living in a democracy because the elections in which you are participating no longer can yield political change.

It is possible to read what I’ve written here as a defense of authoritarianism, or as a dismissal of democracy. But my message is the exact opposite. The fantasy of authoritarianism distracts Americans from the mundane ways in which the mechanisms of political competition and checks and balances can erode. Democracy has not survived because the alternatives are acutely horrible, and if it ends, it will not end in a bang.

It is more likely that democracy ends with a whimper, when the case for supporting it — the case, that is, for everyday democracy — is no longer compelling.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I really doubt it'll happen in our lifetime, not without some major event like an all out world war, or a domestic invasion or a gigantic terrorist event that makes 911 look like child's play. Cus people won't give up their rights that easily, just look at all the protests against a temporary visa ban against 7 countries, which doesn't even infringe on the rights of our citizens.

Notice in the Bannon quote I provided that he openly intends to produce an all out world war.