So, lets say we get to August or some summer month, and 4,000,000 people are protesting right out front the white house.
Do they send in the tanks? Do they kill 1,000,000 people? Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats? Or would it unite the nation like 9/11 did, except this time against the government?
Buddy, we’ve already bombed our own citizens multiple times. Battle of Blair Mountain for starts.
Battle of Blair Mountain for starts.
Just worth saying again so ppl research it
1921 Tulsa is on the line.
This is the endgame Moscow wants: Balkanization of America.
We did already, when MacArthur razed the Bonus Army. FDR was elected the next election and bought some guillotine insurance in the form of taxes and social programs.
We’re rounding people up into interment camps. We’re way past tank man.
…ok, but you do realize what hspprned the 2 days prior to tank man, right?
Short of sending an M1 Abrams, they’ve thrown everything at us along with the kitchen sink.
We’re way past Tank Man. Also, they already sent in the tanks. The police have riot vehicles which are typically repurposed military tanks.
I don’t think you understand how bad it is in the US right now.
There has never been anything like this in this country since WWII and even then the Japanese labor camps were leaps better than alligator alcatraz.
Is the issue tanks ? Because the National Guard has killed people during Vietnam.
MAGA will justify anything as “they shouldn’t have been there”. Even when something happens to them.
Sure they killed 1,000,000 protestors in the streets of DV, but at least they would never nuke an American city!
Suddenly, a flash in the distance turns into an angry, boiling glow. At least getting knocked back to the stone age means not having to see thousands of versions of “I told you so” afterward.
Plenty of historical examples how they’ve handled this in the past to look for examples.
Beware those who dream of killing the people they do not like. They promise paradise but deliver only another tyranny.
I don’t know guillotines sound like a promising solution to wealth inequality and mismanagement
Yes this administration would in a heartbeat.
Well they certainly could go much much worse. The regime and their base are so far from anything being based in reality I don’t think anyone can truly be certain where this will go.
And you can just read about early ish days fascism in Germany and see how that meshes with this Regime and it’s historical context. In no particular order :
- Legislature ineffective and captured/ aligned
- Judiciary captured /placed
- Executive controlled (by proxy)
- Intimidation / Terror Squad
- Industry leaders largely aligned
- Populous tired and under economical hardship
- Extreme militarization
- Strong and largely aligned surveillance system
- Scapegoating / internal Enemy phantasms
- History of ineffective Governance / Corruption
- Generally unrepresentative and unstable Political System
- Moderate / Ineffective International push-back
- Unpredictable and Hostile foreign Policy
There are also lines that haven’t been crossed yet but there are not a lot before we get to the really Bad ones. So yes Large scale incarceration and killing against internal resistance, or simply against the ‘racialized other’ are maybe already the next steps if MAGA(and the reaction to it) keeps on this trek.
There could be some kind of thing to fan the flames and lead into the big Bads including probably some external War as well.
Or there could be circumstances that stop this insanity before we get there. But holy hell Americans are way to chill about all of this currently and MAGA certainly won’t stop until they are made to stumble and fall. Could be self inflicted of course but if the pressure is higher the chance of a fumble goes way up. So every resistance is worth the attempt at this point, and if the ship can still be pulled around there have to be real consequences otherwise it’s just gonna be this again on a few decade cycle. I mean this shit is already worrying over here and in Germany well we seem to rhyme politically with the US of ten or so years ago so …
For me this certainly is Fascist and we all should know how that goes if it truly gets to go.
If maga successfully tigs the election to perfect a democratic takeover in November there will be tiananmen level event every week.
Fun (?) Fact: Trump is actually a fan of the massacre:
Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength," he said.
“That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak… as being spit on by the rest of the world.”
What risk? It worked out great for the regime in China, it would work here too.
In 1970, the National Guard open fire on a crowd of peaceful, unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine more. A Gallup poll conducted a week after the shooting found that 58% of Americans blamed the students for the massacre, with only 11% blaming the guardsmen. Many students who were present at the massacre were shunned by their own families, some were even disowned, and some were told that even more students should have been killed to teach them a lesson.
The students, for their part, couldn’t even comprehend what was happening at first. Many of them thought the soldiers weapons were loaded with blanks, that they were just trying to intimidate them. After the massacre, many of the students wanted to reassemble and continue peacefully demonstrating, in defiance of the guard. One of the professors convinced them to disperse, by shouting at them that all of them would be killed.
How was this possible? Because of how the media spun it. Even before the massacre, they were saying that the protests were full of “outside agitators” and claiming that they had been doing things like lacing the water supply with LSD. Of course, it eventually “came out” that these claims were complete bullshit based on nothing. So, once the moment had passed, they quietly printed retractions.
All that shit still happens today. It happens every single time a cop murders someone, whether it’s Renee Good or George Floyd. The right wingers immediately start digging for any possible way to spin it and if they can’t then they simply lie, and if the lie falls apart it doesn’t matter, by that point people will have forgotten and moved on.
Yes they will kill you. They’ll put people down like dogs and worry about how to justify it later. People want to believe the world is just, and that often means blaming the victim.
Buy a gun.
That was partially just a result of the NG having rifles but not the less than lethal tear gas and stuff now.
You had me right up to the last word.
That nonviolent shit will get you killed.
Tell that to Alex Pretti
The guy who got killed doing nonviolent shit?
Are you suggesting he should have used the gun that he had on him?
Yes
I’m suggesting that if it were me, and I was gonna go down either way, I’d rather die knowing that I helped rid the world of at least one of those rat bastards.
Everyone calls it the Kent State shootings but all the shootings actually happened on the campus and none in the actual university.
Campus is the grounds and buildings of a university or college. If it’s on the campus it’s in the university.
No, what the hell, don’t buy a gun for that reason. That will only escalate the violence. And there’s only so far that you can escalate as a civilian until they roll out the tanks, and your guns can’t do shit against tanks.
You need power in numbers. That’s how you can build a proper resistance.
Ukraine has shown that Armour is heavily vulnerable. And tanks are too heavy for the road anyway, it would be wheeled vehicles only.
And tanks are too heavy for the road anyway
At some point that doesn’t matter.
That peaceful bullshit only benefits the oligarchy. There’s not a single right you have that wasn’t won via violence.
Same sex marriage. Transgender rights. We are in a different age, wars are fought by information now. We are fighting the current war for America by information now. Not by bullets. I am all about Luigis rising up but that’s a lot different than “everyone grab semi and hope for the best.” This isn’t 1776.
You think gay rights came without violence? One of the first well documented events leading to where we are right now was called the Stonewall Riots
not a single right you have that wasn’t won via violence.
Same sex marriage. Transgender rights.
Could make you wonder how much power the elite had to shed for those.
Seems to be they are escalating the violence with or without us.
Except they can’t escalate nearly as quickly if they don’t have an excuse. They’ve been wanting to escalate way further than they have, but everytime they tried to paint protestors/… as violent mobs, reality betrayed them. So far that they’re somewhat pulling back. That didn’t happen because someone shot at ICE, quite the opposite.
They’re pulling back? Let’s see what happens in Springfield because last I checked, they were escalating even before Good died. I’m not convinced at all they are slowing down because people aren’t violent, not at all. I think they aren’t escalating as fast as they want because they’re worried people will turn violent and no jury would convict someone taking down an ice officer.
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You need numbers and you need those numbers to have guns. They are not stopping, they do not care about right or wrong, and there is no telling how far they’re going to go. Without the threat of armed resistance, what is stopping them from open massacres?
Guns will not keep you safe, granted. But not having a gun obviously won’t keep you safe either. Think about what you’re saying, you’re relying on the fascists to act in good faith, out of the kindness of their hearts. That’s nonsense.
Nonviolence is a tactic, it can be an effective tactic, but it is only a tactic. If conditions reach a point where that tactic is not applicable or effective, then it will be time to change tactics. What’s the plan if they start firing up the gas chambers?
as a civilian until they roll out the tanks, and your guns can’t do shit against tanks.
CIA would like to present you Simple Sabotage Field Manual solving all your needs in that department.
You’re a goddamn coward and you deserve to however they treat you. But let’s be honest, you won’t leave the “safety” of your home till they drag you out of it. You’re just going to sit on your ass and criticize those of us who do fight. Broke wristed pacifist, fuck you.
Government has tens of thousands of troops and RPGs and tanks and riot gear and bulletproof shields and chemical warfare and fucking nuclear weapons but Lemmy among others are convinced arming up will save us somehow. It’s proof that the gun lobby has done their job.
Everybody keeps expecting civil war when what we’re likely going to get is akin to “the troubles” of Northern Ireland. Prolonged, indefinite, bloody, insurgency. Bombings. Assassinations. More heavyhanded fascist paramilitary actions. Blood and chaos.
Yep, there is no organization capable of staging armed opposition to the government. A series of mass shootings and maybe some explosives is all we are going to get.
Given the number of incidents, I wouldn’t be shocked if historians decide later we are already living through it. Political assasinations in Minnesota, the attempted murder of pelosi’s husband, attempted trump shooter, charkie Kirk, the car bomb in Memphis that didn’t go off a few years ago. The United Healthcare CEO hit. Attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer.
There is plenty of violence to go around, but nothing that would rise to civil war.
I have imagined a scenario where a debt crisis degrades the capacity of the federal government and polarization leaves citizens and national guard more loyal to their state than the federal government, but we are a long way away from that.
i mean i only have a minor in history and have been saying this since steve scalise got shot but go off queen
I agree. To have civil war you need multiple opposing armed forces of somewhat similar military strength. I don’t really see that happening because of the purges of military leadership but an insurgency is very possible.
Agreed, civil war will only happen if states bands together and starts fighting each other or the federal armed forces.
What we’ve seen so far has been almost too small to be called skirmishes. The intensity and size of the confrontations will likely increase, but it won’t be civil war.
Even if states band together who they gonna send? Police side with ice. Military sides with ice. Maybe you get the state national guard and some reservists but you’d need the guard to effectively mutiny and hope they follow the state instead of the fed. Realistically there’s no way organized fighting occurs. It’s just going to be police and military killing protesters with an occasional guerilla strike against them.
At the end of the day, the die hard MAGA folks are a quarter of the country. The stuff they’re doing is wildly unpopular. At some point you have to fight for democracy. It is worth dying for. It is worth killing for. If we have to go through a troubles, so be it. Frankly, this probably isn’t going to end until we start seeing a whole lot of dead Evangelical Christians. The Christian nationalists are so used to being able to violently oppress and persecute everyone else. They don’t realize that their own lives and freedoms can be just as easily destroyed.
We already are in a civil war. One portion of the population has declared war on everyone else, hell bent on forcing their evil beliefs on everyone else. They do so in the confidence that they themselves will never face persecution, the loss of their rights, or a threat of violence. White Evangelical Christians are way too fucking comfortable.
Honestly, a troubles might be the best thing to knock some sense into these fuckers. Once the retaliatory killings start and their churches start getting torched, maybe it will finally get through their thick skulls that if you want to live in a democracy, you have to be willing to respect other people’s choices and let them live their own fucking lives.
The troubles ended because both sides felt threatened. No one felt safe. This encouraged everyone to come to the table. Right now one side feels invincible. They believe they can act with complete impunity against the rest of the population. So far, we’re all just holding our punches and trying not to escalate things, but these fuckers just keep pushing. Something will have to give.
Mutual bloody violence is a superior option to one-sided bloody violence, which is the situation we have now.
Incredibly fucked up to think there’s any upside to the troubles. Typical clueless yank energy.
As someone who lived through the Troubles, there were clearly upsides vs the country we had before.
The civil rights movement grew at a pace, the police service was completely revamped, and cross community relations improved dramatically. Most importantly, we largely stopped killing each other.
There was nothing good in the Troubles, but what came out of it was undoubtedly better than what had been there before.
We then ask was this due to the troubles, or was it a progression held back by the troubles.
It was deeply rooted systemic shitting on that was going nowhere.
lol, next you’ll wonder if India is better off today for having overthrown the brits, too.
fucking yes, they were a bunch of sadistic fucks destroying everything they could in the name of profit.
the worst descendants of those sick fucks got shunned to america, for being too fucking crazy. they eventually schismed into what is now known as american protestants/various other brands of fundamentalist christians
protestants, all evangelical christians really, fundamentally do not respect consent. they have tied their own supposed eternal salvation onto the idea that they must “save” everyone else by spreading the Good Word by any means necessary…desperate people like that are not stable.
Incredibly fucked up to think there’s no upside to fighting imperialism. Typical clueless Brit energy.
Would it have been better if there was violence, but only one side was violent?
Peace happens when both sides have a motive to achieve peace. You cannot have a peace treaty when only one side is willing to use force.
Three sides were using force. The republicans and unionists were mainly occupied with using violence against their own people suspected of “disloyalty”. As usual, regular people were the big losers.
People forget that labor unions were a major factor in Tiananmen Square, US labor unions are not a credible threat to take over so don’t need to be put down as brutally.
They used to be.
