It’s not self-defense if the fascists haven’t done anything violent or destructive. Unfortunately the fascists in the US have been doing violent and destructive things and are close to completing their takeover of our democracy. As an exmaple, there were January 6th rioters and organizers who were arrested and imprisoned. However, there are plenty of people who would meet criteria that would make them varying degrees of fascists, but haven’t done anything yet.

There are overt fascists who espouse fascist ideology and talking points, but haven’t performed acts of domestic terrorism like January 6th. There are people who want their prejudices validated and want to return to an imaged past. There are people who have bought into the lie that minorities are the cause of their problems instead of systemic issues. There are people in the Republican Party who are neo-cons who want to work with the fascists. There are people who shout both sides further to the left of the neo-cons. There are neo-liberals who want to keep things the same despite our downward spiral into fascism.

A christo-fascist regime is being built primarily thanks to the actions and inactions of people using our system without directly hurting anyone or destroying any infrastructure. The fascist movement is spreading ideas, violating democratic norms, upending the guard rails in our democracy, filling the government with like minded individuals, and in the case of Trump, violating the law and stalling out the court system. The Supreme Court ended the rule of law on July 1st, 2024, not by shooting people, but with the stoke of a pen.

The fascists build the system to target groups for elimination in a way that doesn’t directly harm anyone until the system is in place. Your argument calls for the elimination of people based on political ideology.

they tend to target the least dangerous people first.

The enemies of fascists are at the same time both too strong and too weak. They claim the out-groups they target are both inferior to and a threat to the in-group. According to the fascists the out-groups must be eliminated to preserve the in-group. And the in-group is justified in eliminating the out-groups because of the in-group’s superiority. This is a contradiction, because a superior group should have nothing to fear from an inferior group.

The fascists divide the population into in-groups and out-groups as a mechanism of control, usually based on physical characteristics. As part of their crusade against out-groups they actually have to destroy the out-groups. But the fascists need an out-group to exist in order to stay in power. If there is no threat to the in-group, then there is no use in having a fascist strongman.

To solve this problem, fascists have to repeat the process of dividing the population into in-groups and out-groups. The Nazis divided people into a extensive racial hierarchy from the get-go. This process repeats itself until no one is left. It is not a slippery slope, but rather the nature of fascism as a self-destructive ideology. Inevitably the fascists are defeated military or destroy the entire population. In the end, no one meets the ideal qualifications of a superior human that the fascists imagine.

Your argument does the same thing with ideology. It calls for the preservation of an in-group by the extermination of an out-group. The out-group is both a threat to the in-group and yet inferior. Rather than striving for purity of the body your argument seeks purity of thought. It is the same outcome sold with a different scam. Once everyone considered to be too fascist to be allowed to live has been killed the next out-group will be on the chopping block.

There’s a popular adage that says, scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. The neo-liberals will be deemed to dangerous to keep alive because they obstruct systemic change and their ideology leads to fascism. The progressives will be deemed well meaning, but under closer examination they aren’t left enough. Their policies don’t allow workers to seize the means of production.

The social democrats, while socialists, believe in democracy. And what is democracy to the far left but an incubation chamber for fascism. The democratic socialists are also open to a political socialist revolution, ie democracy, and cannot be trusted by the far left. What are socialists but people who believe in an ideology that is only a stepping stone to communism. Communists who want a stateless society are simply deluding themselves according to the authoritarian communists. The authoritarian communists believe only an authoritarian dictatorship can preserve the worker’s revolution.

We move so far left we end up wrapping around back to the far-right in the form of authoritarian communism. The most substantial difference between the red fascism your argument is proposing and the fascism we are seeing in the US today is that they divide people on different metrics. These ideologies are all self-destructive because there is no stopping point. No one is good enough by any metric, and so what these ideologies are really saying is that we are all better off dead. No one deserves fascism because life is worth living no matter our flaws.

We should defend ourselves from fascists who break the social contract of tolerance. However, if we preemptively target individuals based on ideology we end up with the same problem as the fascists.

Organizing people into a hierarchy based on political ideology has the same issues as a hierarchy based on any other metric. Each time the least desirable group is removed from the population the next group in the hierarchy is at the bottom. By the logic that the most far-right group deserves extermination, we eventually remove every group of people. Even the furthest-left group eventually becomes the furthest-right group by process of elimination.

Are you a bot? Keep saying the same thing without addressing what I’m saying.

Is there anything I could do to convince you otherwise? I have refuted these arguments multiple times. No matter how many times they are repeated they are still just as flawed.

you are claiming that you either vote for Biden or democracy ends

I am claiming that we have a chance to save democracy by voting in Biden in 2024. It is not a guarantee, but it will be possible to elect candidates who are not neo-liberals or fascists in 2026 and 2028. If Trump is elected in 2024 democracy will end. We would not even have this opportunity if we did not live in a democracy.

if there is no real practical choice, there is no real democracy.

Averting fascism and death camps is a real choice. Having the opportunity to build a better society is a real choice. There is still democracy for now.

edit: Also, the option to end democracy is a choice. It’s an option that can happen in a democracy. And there are fascists who want to choose this option. We need to out vote them.

At the core of self-destructive ideologies like fascism is the idea that we are all better off dead. By asserting that anyone can deserve fascism we are agreeing with that idea and we are conceding the idea that life is worth living.

We had primaries this year. As per usual the incumbent president won their primary. Now the American people have two choices for president. With Biden we have a chance at electing progressives and socialists in 2026 and 2028. We will not have that opportunity with Trump.

I believe people are going to do the right thing this November. We need to be vocal and vote. But no matter what happens, no one deserves fascism. We’re all still people.

The rule of law ended today. Democracy will end if the christo-fascists win the election.

The rule of law just ended. Democracy will be next if Trump wins. So vote Biden!

By electing Biden democracy continues and we will have the opportunity for better choices. There are ways to fix our problems, but we have to be willing to fight for them. If we choose to keep fighting we can avert self-destruction. In this case it means voting for a neo-liberal. That’s a small price to pay for a shot at a better society and averting death camps.

In a democracy, the person who wins an election gets the position they ran for.

Biden won the Democratic Party’s primary election so he is going to be the Democratic Party’s candidate. That is democracy.

We have a democracy. There is a real Democratic Party primary every four years. Incumbent presidents usually win their primary when they are up for reelection.

The press is independent, but for profit in most cases. There are of course non-profit exceptions. The fact capitalism exists doesn’t mean democracy doesn’t exist. It means the owner class has a profit motive to overthrow our democracy.

Electing Biden preserves our flawed democracy for four more years. This gives us time to build grassroots movements to put people with better ideas into political positions in the next two elections. It delays the christo-fascist movement for four more years, who have to win a presidential election to succeed.

Getting Biden in office is how we save our democracy, but not because of something he will do. In order to save our democracy, we first have to keep it. Then we have to fix it.

This is validating. =)

The community is not made up of transphobes or accelerationists so there is no problem. I don’t post or comment there because I don’t see the point in taking the time to write or make something for an echo chamber that will just remove my comment or post. But just because I don’t agree with every take in that community doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.

The Democratic Party’s primary already happened. As is typical for American politics the incumbent won their party’s primary.

Yes, as I understand it they would have to change the rules to expel him. People seem to be assuming that there is already a mechanism to expel him without doing that.

Not a lot of them vote out the would be dictator so that he incites an insurrection.

There is no mechanism at this stage that can force him to do so that I am aware of. They can of course try to convince him, but no one from Biden’s inner circle, like Jill Biden, or any of the hypothetical candidates people like to float, like Gavin Newsom, has expressed interest in doing that.

It is the sign of democracy for the people. All of the social, economic, and political progress in the US is thanks to movements that translated into legislation, amendments, and court rulings via our democracy. Without a democracy those movements would have hit a wall. Of course we need to continue to improve our democracy. We need unfettered majority rule in this country. It is functionally possible to achieve this, but people have to vote. The movements won’t translate into positive change if people skip voting.

Yeah, at least Trump didn’t gain any ground. Biden lost the battle, but we’re still fighting the war.