In France we have people on far-right billionaire-funded yet widely popular TV channel openly advocating for the adoption of ICE tactics.
We’ve also already got special administrative prisons with inhumane conditions for undocumented migrants for a while. Likewise, on paper, the far-right has never participated in any government since 1945.
Let’s not forget that the EU has delegated arbitrary arrest and violent policing of migrants to other states for quite a while now.
Dark times ahead, we need to fight now, but, indeed, also prepare for a worsening of the situation.
I mean, all of what one might construe as benefits of fascism would be better served otherwise: strengthening your country, a sense of belonging, public order…
You’ll experience a much stronger sense of belonging if you don’t push your neighbors to hate you because you’ve arbitrarily decided to hate them and support doing bad things to them.
Letting armed thugs arbitrarily arrest people is not public order, quite the opposite.
Countries which have fully embraced fascism never stayed strong for very long and lost quite a lot in the process. This is when they were ever strong in the first place.
And I’m not even going to talk about the even more blatant lies (family values, moral righteousness, upholding traditions…)
Personally, I choose to believe he was just zoning out one day during a meeting with a big Mercator-projected map on display and he was like “wtf is this bigass piece of land right next door? Whatcha mean this isn’t an actual country? Let’s claim it then!” Then his yes-men counselors all came up with actual strategic reasons for this (minerals, halfway between the US and Russia, etc…)
Yeah whatever… I scrolled through both your and his comments… (some of it - I’d take your word that I missed out the juicy bits, but it would help if you explained in clear language what I should be looking for)
So yeah, I’m not really sure what you’re on about. Sure, there seems to be some dubious (IMHO) takes here and there from both of you. Then again, I’m sure I could find some of my own comments to be rather dubious when taking them out of context.
Besides, if I may offer some advice, combining a very adversarial posture, altcaps as a cheap way to pastiche op, and an inability to clearly communicate what your grief with op is in the first place really doesn’t help make your point.
Now, in the light of what little I’ve seen of your comments, I’m guessing op has been advocating abstaining in your last presidential election due to the ongoing US-supported genocide in Palestine. I understand you are pissed off about that, I fail to see how going on a witch hunt after the fact, badmouthing op on every comment in a post that has nothing to do with that issue is achieving anything. Especially when the post is just some rather mild news article with no commentary from OP himself. Especially when you make it really hard to understand what you are on about.
This infighting between you non-MAGA Americans, while fascism is sweeping through your country, is quite ridiculous at this point. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to settle the scores if you succeed in getting out of this mess, and in the meanwhile, we all have much bigger problems to worry about than who did what in 2024.
I’m not really sticking out my neck for op, I frankly don’t care. I’m sticking it out to keep lemmy a place for sane and constructive exchanges and discussions.
Sorry for resurrecting this after a long while but it’s much more complex than that. Saddam was very much his own man, all while gladly accepting the assistance of global powers when their interests aligned with his own.
The Iran-Irak war he instigated was indeed largely supported by the US and the west, but he had his own reasons to launch that war and probably would have done so even without the involvement of foreign powers, having much to gain from a seemingly weak Iran (an oil rich region), a legitimate claim from his and his supporters POV (the oil rich region in question being mostly Arab speaking) and being a major regional power at the time (with a strong and well equipped army even before direct western support during the war)
Before that, he was an official ally of the USSR for nearly a decade (while also being strongly propped up by France) until he felt too threatened by Iraqi communists and cracked down on them.
Before that, which is before taking power, he was indeed part of a party that was at odds with iraki communism, but that was also a major proponent of pan-Arabism, panarabists not being exactly friendly with the US although their main beef was with the former colonial powers of the region as well as the newly formed colonial power (Israel) and it seems that they might have enjoyed some support of the US at certain times.
the title of the post is the title of the article, which is pretty good practice when relaying a news article on social media.
the title of the post quotes a question asked by B. Sanders.
what you know of op makesyou claim that he asks the question in bad faith.
I remark op isn’t the one asking the question.
I add that it’s a rhetorical question.
Now to answer your last comment, what I was getting at with my second point, and which is maybe not that all pertinent in hindsight, is that it’s kind of hard to make out from a rhetorical question alone what the author ‘s stance might actually be exactly. Maybe Sanders thinks that the extent of Musk’s donations might suggest the US not being a true democracy, maybe he thinks that this is in contradiction with an otherwise healthy democracy, maybe he thinks there’s nothing democratic about the current US political system ; or any shade between these. All in all, the conclusion is left to the reader.
In light of all this, the fact that op could be a bad actor is not very pertinent : it’s not his words, and even if it was, the nature of the question and its effect on the reader is quite open ended and IMO not as manipulative as « bad faith » would imply.
Edit: the important point being that op is not the author of the question. The rhetorical question remark was first and foremost there to point it out in case you missed it.
Fun idea, unfortunately what empowers those corporations, besides the system they thrive in, is the fact that they have immense wealth commandeered by a select few, not their sole legal status.
However, yea, votes don’t count on an individual basis, that’s inherent to any decision making system that evenly splits decision making power between thousands of people of not millions (if not billions if you’d even hope for an actual world wide democracy)
That’s even the whole point of it. And no, I don’t mean that in the sense of how liberal democracies with unbridled capitalism make the average vote/voice meaningless compared to what a billionaire can achieve by spending only the tinyest fraction of his wealth. Indeed, a true democracy would and should make the individual vote/voice of any individual by theirselves meaningless, and that should include billionaires, self-serving autocrats and what not.
In France we have people on far-right billionaire-funded yet widely popular TV channel openly advocating for the adoption of ICE tactics.
We’ve also already got special administrative prisons with inhumane conditions for undocumented migrants for a while. Likewise, on paper, the far-right has never participated in any government since 1945.
Let’s not forget that the EU has delegated arbitrary arrest and violent policing of migrants to other states for quite a while now.
Dark times ahead, we need to fight now, but, indeed, also prepare for a worsening of the situation.