DocWatts

Thanks! Above all, we're in this together. That means not just the Left, or even the littl corner of the internet we've cultivated on these Forums, but everyone who doesn't want to live under a tyrannical white supremecist mafia state. The challenge over the upcoming years is to build a broad-tent pro-democracy movement that can close ranks against the American equivalent of the Nazis. The Hands Off and No Kings protests are a promising start - but we need to keep up the momentum and above all draw more people in to the pro-democracy movement.

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Seems that the wanna-be dictator is having a narcissistic crash-out over the No Kings protests. Not only did the protests ruin his North-Korean style military parade, he was waiting with baited breath for mass violence in the streets, which the No Kings protests didn't deliver. Mango Mussolini is trying to incite a civil war, but we didn't take the bait. 12 million people came out in defense of the Constitution and the Rule of Law, in peaceful defiance of Trump's fascist regime. And this historic turnout was in spite of violent intimidation by Trump and his MAGA brownshirts. The only violence to speak of was from far-right domestic terrorists.

The point of the protests wasn't to change the hearts and minds of MAGA - most of them are beyond saving. It was to make the pro-democracy movement visible, as part of a sustained public pressure campaign on politicians and institutions that are obeying Trump's criminal regime in advance. Beyond this, the target is ordinary people who have tuned out of politics since the election, and folks who are disturbed by what's going on but don't know what to do about it. Trump wants nothing more than to project an image of strong man. He wants us to think that his reign is inevitable. In actuality, his regime is weak and historically unpopular. No Kings Day was a humiliating optics defeat for a fragile narcissist. While Trump was being the world's saddest birthday boy with his farcical military parade, 12 million people - or 3.5% of the entire population of the United States - was out in the streets saying NO to his authoritarian regime. Time and time again, this regime has shown us that it can't be compromised with. Trump is above all an abusive narcissist and a bully - attempts to appease the wanna-be dictator is only received as an invitation to take more. All of the 'reasonable' MAGAs left after his violent coup attempt - those still with him after close to a decade of escalating authoritarianism are the American version of the Nazis. They need to be boldly and loudly rejected, not compromised with. A large part of how we got to where we are was by normalizing creeping Trump's authoritarianism, criminality, and political violence.

Detroit - and Michigan - showed up!

I had no idea we had an attachment quota! Thanks, you've solved my difficulties

Alt National Parks is estimating that over 11 million people showed up - that's more than twice as many as the Hands Off protests, and over %3 of the entire US population! 🇺🇸

Meanwhile, 11 million people - or over %3 of the entire population of the United States - was out in the streets protesting this disgraceful regime.

The author is me, btw And you're right - what I'm suggesting in that article is a long term strategy, and on its own it's not enough. The epistemic work needs to be done in parallel with civic participation. In addition to the approach of epistemic attunement I outline in that article, we need to be building a broad-based civil resistance movement to hold the line against fascism - which is why I've been encouraging folks to join pro-democracy groups like Indivisible and attend the No Kings protests. We also need to be building the infrastructure for the 2026 midterms right now. Neither assuming that Trump is going to cancel the election (ie obeying in advance), nor assuming that an election that's a year and a half away will save us. Taking the House and Senate will be vital in obstructing Trump's authoritarian takeover, but we need to be acting as citizens right now. That means attending protests, participating in boycotts, calling your elected officials, knocking on doors, raising money for pro-democracy organizations. Even if midterms are a blowout for the Dems, we need to put in the work right now to make sure that happens and some form of democracy survives until then.

Short of getting married or having major surgery, whatever you're doing today is less important than showing up to defend your country from fascism. This is an all hands on deck situation, even if you can only attend briefly it will have an impact. Stay safe, remain peaceful, give 'em hell. (No shade towards folks who genuinely can't make it for one reason or another, but I'm encouraging everyone to make an effort. This is not a drill - fascism IS HERE, and we need to come together to stand against it.)

I'd also recommend 'Nexus' by Yuval Noah Harari, which is a deep dive into human information networks. In it, he goes into why the so-called 'marketplace of ideas' - the notion that the best ideas supposedly win in the end - is dangerously naive.

If you're interested, I wrote an entire Substack article on how 21st century authoritarianism isn't just a political crisis - it's also an epistemic one, rooted in how we respond to uncertainty in a complex world. Substack: How Broken Ways Of Knowing Feed Modern Tyrants The authoritarian bargain - from Nazism to Maoism to MAGA - is the emotional comfort of certainty without the burden of truth-seeking. It’s the epistemic version of having your cake and eating it too. Emotional validation without introspection, certainty without responsibility, belonging without accountability - what’s not to like? Too bad, then, that the cake is poisoned and the person selling it knows it. Even worse, most of the people eating it know it too, but have convinced themselves that the poison is an acceptable trade-off for the intoxicating feelings it provides.

Timothy Snyder - one of the leading experts on fascism who wrote On Tyranny - is sounding the alarm bells that Trump is trying to incite a second Civil War. Below are some quotes from the writeup, but I'd recommend reading the Substack article in full - it's chilling. When people whose job it is to study fascism are telling us that the moment we're living through is a flash point, we should take them seriously. If you've ever wondered what you would have done in Nazi Germany or the US Civil Rights struggle, you're doing it right now. A second civil war and the reforging of the United States into a white supremacist police state isn't a foregone conclusion, but preventing it requires that we be brave and step up to the moment. That means no more equivocating, no more burying our heads in the sand, no more compromising with extremes that need to be rejected. And no more saying that 'this doesn't effect me'. If you're on a conscious politics forum, you should be more willing than the average person to take responsibility for the current moment, and not watch from the sidelines as a petty, inhumane dictator tries to plunge your country into violence and chaos. RESOURCES - How YOU can get involved in the pro-democracy movement: No Kings Day: https://www.nokings.org/ Indivisible: https://indivisible.org/ 50501: https://www.fiftyfifty.one/ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Trump's Civil War - Timothy Snyder https://substack.com/home/post/p-165796793?source=queue "Earlier this week Donald Trump called for a second civil war at a US military base. This scenario can be resisted and prevented, if we have the courage to listen, interpret, and act. And this Saturday we will have the occasion to act. In general, we imagine that the US Army is here to defend us, not to attack us. But summoning soldiers to heckle their fellow Americans is a sign of something quite different. Trump seized the occasion to summon soldiers to join him in mocking the press. Reporters, of course, as the Founders understood, are a critical check on tyranny. They, like protestors, are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was teaching soldiers that society does not matter, and that law does not matter. He "loves" soldiers. He is personally responsible for the pay raises: "I gave you so much money for four years it was crazy." "We're giving you an across-the-board raise" This is the way a dictator speaks to a palace guard, or a fascist to a paramilitary. We are witnessing an attempt at regime change, rife in perversities. It has a historical component: we are to celebrate the oathbreakers and the traitors. It has a fascist component: we are to embrace the present moment as an exception, in which all things are permitted to the Leader. And of course it has an institutional component: soldiers are meant to be the avant-garde of the end of democracy. Instead of treating the army as defenders or freedom, Trump presented soldiers as his personal armed servants, whose job it was to oppress his chosen enemies -- inside the United States. Trump was trying to instruct soldiers that their mission was to crush fellow Americans who dared to exercise their rights, such as the right to protest."

If there was ever a time to to be crystal clear in our messaging - and to do so in bold and uncompromising language - it's right now. This isn't all that complicated: Trump is intentionally manufacturing a crisis so that he can invoke martial law. ICE is kidnapping people off the streets in violation of our laws and the US Constitution. Trump is a traitor, and MAGA is the American equivalent of the Nazis. The regime needs to be resisted. The most effective way to do so is through mass nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. Standing up to tyrants is a reflection of core American values. The US flag doesn't belong to insurrectionist traitors, which is why we'll be flying it at the protests.

Hitler's brown shirts - armed street gangs - would deliberately force their way into areas where they were not welcome in order to provoke street fights, then claim that they were 'attacked' when the groups they were terrorizing defended themselves. Nazis - and their American equivalents - are nothing if not uncreative in their tactics. Masked men who are refusing to identify themselves as law enforcement are kidnapping people off the streets. Without proper identification and due process we don't know who these people are or if the people they are trafficking are even in this country illegally. They could be Proud Boys in tactical gear bought off from Amazon for all we know. If Trump wanted to enforce existing immigration laws more strictly, there are legal ways to do that which follow due process. Hell, Biden deported more people than Trump at this point in his presidency, and he didn't have any problem following the law. These raids aren't about enforcing immigration policy - they're state sponsored terror designed to clamp down on dissent, and create a manufactured pretext for invoking martial law. Don't let anyone gaslight you that these tactics aren't strait out of the Nazi playbook.

To my knowledge none of this behavior is connected to the planned protests organized by #50501, Indivisible, or any other pro-democracy groups. I've attended more than half a dozen of these planned events where exactly zero acts of violence or property damage occurred. What's happening in LA has the feel of people reacting in a viscerally emotional and unplanned way to having their communities terrorized by ICE. Trump - or to be more accurate, the people behind the curtain like Stephen Miller - are intentionally trying to provoke violence, and escalate the situation to justify the invocation of the Insurrection Act. The governor of California, the mayor of LA, and even the chief of the LAPD have all said as much. The regime is hamfistedly manufacturing a crisis in order to build the groundwork for quasi-Martial Law. I say 'quasi' because there's no constitutional or legal framework to invoke marital law, 'declaring' it is akin to ripping up the US Constitution and throwing it in the garbage. But to your point - yes, optics matter, and we want the protests to be nonviolent. On April 5, 5.2 million people took to the streets in defiance of the Trump regime, without a single instance of property damage or violence that I've heard of. We can marshal how people behave at planned and organized events, but people also behave in somewhat predictable ways to being brutalized that no movement can fully control when we're speaking of a nation of 330 million people. So we need to be doing two things: 1) Emphasize like a broken record that protests are more effective when they are peaceful. Note that 'peaceful' doesn't mean non-confrontational or non-disruptive - just look to the civil rights movement to see how effective civil disobedience can be to a nonviolent resistance. Protest movements need two things to be successful - attention and positive optics in the eyes of the public. Violence grabs attention but it's counter productive to maintaining positive optics in the eyes of the public. This is hugely important because positive optics is a large part of what keeps participants safe -- it makes crack downs much riskier for the regime because of the horrible optics of using disproportionate force against a peaceful movement. 2) Don't cede any ground whatsoever to the regime or its apologists on this issue. The regime is clearly in the wrong for intentionally provoking these communities with its Gestapo-like tactics. ICE agents are Trump's brown shirts - brutalizing thugs that have absolutely no legal basis for the cruelty they're inflicting. There are ways to remove people who are in this country unlawfully that follow due process and the rule of law. That's not what these ICE raids are - they're about inflicting terror. (Not so fun fact - Biden deported more people than Trump did at this point in their presidency, and didn't have to break the law to do so). Nazi apologists are going to try to equivocate a handful of people vandalizing cop cars with ICE agents literally disappearing people to concentration camps. The idea that everyone in the country loses their Constitutional Rights to free speech and free assembly because a tiny handful of people engaged in property damage in response to provocation is a narrative that we need to be pushing back against hard. Make no mistake - the regime is crossing a huge red line here by deploying the Marines against US citizens. This is hugely, unprecedentedly illegal. The Posse Comitatus Act is quite explicit about this.

From Senator Chris Murphy, who's got a good head on his shoulders for his understanding of the Trump regime: "Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in Los Angeles. The state and city have the means to control the protests. Donald Trump is getting involved to intentionally make the situation more violent. And potentially to create a pretext for some sort of martial law."

That line of tanks in the video? Those will be tearing up the streets of Washington DC, all so the insecure tyrant can throw himself a lavish North Korean style military for his birthday. $45 million taxpayer dollars are being spent on this disgusting farce at a time when Trump is firing tens of thousands of veterans from our federal workforce along with devastating budget cuts to the Department Of Veterans Affairs.

Also keep in mind that these crack downs are taking place on the eve of Trump of spending $45-90 million taxpayer dollars to throw himself a lavish North Korean style military parade for his birthday. That endless line of tanks in the video? Those will be tearing up the streets of downtown Washington DC this Saturday. If you haven't signed up, consider joining us for the No Kings protests on June 14 - which will be taking place everywhere else in the country other than Washington DC.

Because performative cruelty is the entire point of these raids. There are ways to remove people who are in this country unlawfully that follow due process and the rule of the law. That's not what these ICE raids are. Without due process, anyone who the regime doesn't like can be disappeared as an 'illegal' and trafficked to a foreign gulag. This can and has been happening to people who are here legally. And to American citizens. Step out of line and you too could be disappeared to a concentration camp in El Salvador- your American citizenship be damned. Creating an atmosphere of fear that has a chilling effect on dissent while the regime consolidates power is the real aim here. That and pursuing an openly white supremacist agenda. Two of the regime's biggest intellectual influences - Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel - have been explicitly calling for American democracy to be replaced by a corporate dictatorship. One of the books that's being traded back and forth by people within the regime like Stephen Miller and JD Vance calls Liberals and Leftists 'unhumans' who need to be liquidated by the state - while praising fascist dictators like Pinochet and Franco for carrying out this horrific vision. Project 2025 itself and leaked internal memos have openly called for the US military to be turned against the American people - in fact that was an explicit part of Trump's coup strategy in 2020, had he been able to successfully overturn the results of the presidential election. In sum: never, ever give the Trump regime the benefit of the doubt on anything. Rule of Law is an impediment to this regime's aims. And ICE is the American gestapo.

Thank you for helping to spread the word. Show up on June 14th, bring a friend, encourage others to show up. Trump may project an image of himself as a strong-man, but he's resorting to these strong-arm tactics because his regime is weak and unpopular. His regime is using this show of force in LA as an intimidation tactic, hoping that we'll obey in advance. Don't fall for it. There's not enough troops in all branches of the military for him to occupy a country of 330 million. Moreover, he's assuming our service members are mindless automatons willing to enforce Trump's illegal orders without question. Don't do this regime's work for it, don't give this regime power it doesn't have. I'll continue exercising my Constitutional Rights to free speech and peaceful assembly as a proud member of the pro-democracy movement, and I hope everyone here will as well. I'd also strong encourage everyone here to join their local chapter Indivisible - one of the hub organizations in the pro-democracy movement - to stay informed about events in their area, network with people in your community, and make sure that we're participating in these events with a long term strategy for how to weaken Trump's regime. https://indivisible.org

Just a friendly reminder for folks in the 'States that a huge, national protest is being planned for Sat, June 14th. While Trump is throwing himself a gaudy North Korean-style military parade with tanks rolling down the streets of Washington DC for his birthday, millions of us will be taking to the streets in a NON-VIOLENT day of defiance against his regime everywhere else in the country. More than 1600 protests have been planned all across the country - from big cities to small towns in Ruby Red districts. In the April 5th 'Hands Off' protests, 5.2 million of us came out to say hands off our rights, hands off our constitution, hand off our health are, hands off our bodies, and Hands Off our immigrants. The June 14th No Kings protests are poised to be even bigger. You, yes YOU, have a role to play in the pro-democracy movement. The larger these recurring protests are, the more it puts the lie to Trump's claim that he has a mandate from the American people. And the more courage it gives for politicians and institutions to stand up to Trump's bullying. Find your protest here: https://www.nokings.org/ https://indivisible.org/

Not true! The American right is a strong advocate for the 'freedom' of mediocre white men to fail upwards into positions of power. Their whole cultural project is essentially DEI for white people - no matter how incompetent you are, they'll make sure no highly qualified person of color is able to take away your God-given place in the dominator hierarchy. Which is how we end up with a failed businessman who bankrupted a casino for president, and an alcoholic talk-show host who drunk-texts war plans as Secretary of Defense. 🫡🇺🇸🍻

I can respect this position. For what it's worth, coherence is never total - it's always limited, partial, and incomplete. The world would be a far less interesting place without Zarathustras to pull down our totems of coherence, and tell us that the holy idols we've invested ourselves in are frauds. I'd just counter to Zarathustra that the whole point of deconstructing our myths of coherence is to build something more truthful, flexible, and inclusive in their place. Not as a 'final' totem - nothing is ever final - but as a stopgap for the next iconoclast to come along and remind us that our reconstructed idols have their own cracks. Just like evolution doesn't have an 'end point', there's a dialectic here that's non-teleological. In other words, I think there's a good amount of productive tension between coherence and rupture. When I claim that all views are localized, limited, and incomplete, I'm not making a special exception for my own pluralistic viewpoint. I'd be disappointed if there were an end point to this process.