A companion thread to the one I just posted; obviously, the two are connected, but not enough to exist in the same thread.
Obviously, saying that the U.S. could NEVER turn into a fascist government or a dictatorship is probably not reasonable. But what I’m looking for is discussion, with as much detail and specificity as possible, on what would actually need to happen, and/or what factors exist, to have it actually happen in 2017 or the reasonable future.
While writing this OP, I came to the realization that it’s very difficult for me to define what “turning the United States fascist or making it a dictatorship” would involve and look like, exactly, without making the parameters too limited. How much of the population would need to be in favor? Is the mere successful execution of certain actions by the executive branch enough? What would “successful” even mean? Does it meant there would be no resistance whatsoever? How much resistance is a threshold to declare it “successful” or not?
It seems to me that this is a very much “know it when I see it” feeling based judgment, and I welcome it being part of the debate, as long as you make your definitions clear.
Just to put this out here, I am not attempting to dismiss anyone who thinks the current situation is dangerous, nor am I necessarily interested in the specifics of the current administration. I just feel like making the modern United States in the modern world into a fascist state or dictatorship is a hell of a lot more complicated and fraught than it happening in a small Central American country, for example, and I wanted to explore that.
If CGP Grey is correct in his excellent Rules for Rulers videoit’d take either an economic collapse of unprecedented severity or the discovery of some kind of resource that is so valuable it totally dwarfs the productivity of the US citizenry to destabilize US democracy.
While either of these are possible I guess, I suspect they are wildly unlikely.
In the literal sense, a dictatorship requires a dictator. The closest America has to such a thing is the president - but he’s hindered by three major things from becoming a true dictator: the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and term limits. When all three of those things get wiped away or functionally subjugated to the president, then we will have a dictatorship.
The “functionally subjugated” thing may or may not already have happened due to party alignment and loyalty (either now or at various points in the past); it’s hard to tell. Term limits, on the other hand, are pretty clear and visible. When those go, get worried.
As for turning the US facist, my googles of the definition indicate that fascism has the following characteristics:
Right wing
Authoritarian
Suppresses internal expressions of disagreement with it.
I think we get 1 and 2 every time the republicans are in power. So 3 is the one to watch for. Specifically, I don’t thing a truly facist government can tolerate a free press - that’s too clear a route for dissension, and it would have to be stopped. Just calling critical news sources fake news wouldn’t do it - they’d have to be shut down or coerced into agreement by the government. If that’s happening, at that point you can get worried.
The owners of capital don’t need a dictatorship, they already have most of that they’d want plus there is the illusion of a democracy so the masses don’t need suppressing.
The USA is an undeniable oligarchy imo, as confirmed as you’d want by two brothers demanding the removal of healthcare from 23 million.
Yes, but an oligarchy is still different than a fascist dictatorship. Argue all you like which is worse in another thread, but they’re two different things. Please don’t derail my topic.
You don’t think there’s the possibility of some severe threat (or perceived threat) to national security that could do it? Widespread Islamic terrorism, or left-wing terrorism, or something like that?
How would the government push through a constitutional change without already having complete control of the political process? You’d pretty much need to be in a dictatorship already?
Another possibility which is implicit in that video, but which he doesn’t go into particularly, is increasing concentration of economic activity, and polarising of productivity. If sufficient human productivity is automated, ISTM that you’re back to the same situation as the resource-oligarchies of the video - most of your population is out of the wealth-creating loop, and you can ignore them.
Gazooks, I never realised that universal healthcare was an identifying tenement of a fascist dictatorship. Can you let somebody know in all those pinko-euro-workers collectives on the other side of the ditch that they’ve gone about it the wrong way?
And there is a whole gamut of situations where I can adequately defend my family’s welfare without a gun, another vast set where I couldn’t defend my family’s welfare while in possession of a gun and a handful of unlikely situations where I could. And, leaving aside the cultural bravado, my money is that you are in exactly the same position.
Well, I gotta point out that universal health care and strict gun laws are characteristic of most developed democracies. The US is the outlier here, not the norm. So there’s not really much empiricial evidence that introducing them is a threat to democracy.
As for going to e-cash meaning and banning paper currency, the government already issues and controls paper currency, so this wouldn’t increase government control over the money supply. Plus, it’s already the case that only a small part of the broad money supply is represented by currency, so the change you suggest would be incremental, not radical. And I don’t see that it it has much connection woth dictatorship or the destruction of democracy.
By popular support. If a large percentage of the population really like the idea of putting an end to the shenanigans of those anti-American traitors, by closing down their newspapers, putting a bullet in the head of their leaders, arresting or harassing those who voice their disagreement. From then, assuming that this support is particularly significant in the establishment, the army, etc…people who are regularly in charge can switch to a dictatorial model, brutally by a coup, by progressively eroding liberties, by organizing a popular referendum on a new constitutional system…
I think it would be hard the generically answer the OP
One could come up with plausible scenarios, but each would probably be very different.
You would need a catalyst, some kind of catastrophic event i’d think.
Economic collapse seems to work.
You’d need to get enough people into the government who are onboard with it.
Enough to undo the checks and balances.
I think you would definitely need a very charismatic mouth, someone who can stir the people and sell them a bag of goods and get the majority to buy into it.
And that’s a lot of merchandise to sell.
It also seems (and i could be wrong) That you need a scapegoat, a good scapegoat.
Something you can get the people to target all their hate and frustration on, something they think they are all working to defeat.
And something they really believe has done them grievous wrong
And you have to deliver on this illusion, at least in part, in a publicly visible way.
I know i havent answered anything specifically, but i kind of have a picture in mind where you might set up Roosevelt as a dictator with some extra events instigated in WWII.
Given that the other thread dealt with terrorism, I’ll try to paint a semi-plausible picture, with some level of detail, and answering some of your questions. Here’s my hypothetical:
ISIS is losing Raqqa (ok, that part isn’t really hypothetical), and their leadership is frustrated with the lack of progress on the whole bring-about-the-great-and-final-battle front, so they’ve decided they’re REALLY going to piss off USA.
They enlist / deploy numerous sleeper agents all across the country, and encourage them to arm themselves with rifles, pistols, axes, knives, baseball bats, explosives, etc. Basically, whatever they can get their hands on.
At the beginning of Ramadan next year, and every school day thereafter, they “activate” a handful of their sleeper agents, ordering them to find the school nearest to them and wreak as much havoc and carnage as possible while screaming “Allah Akbar”, before dying in glorious martyrdom. Maybe some seriously underperform, just showing up at the school, banging on the glass of the locked door with a knife in hand, before the police show up with taser and dog and haul them away. But some meet with moderate “success”, killing a teacher or two and some kids, wounding some additional ones, maybe hitting a cop or two on their way down. Some build bombs and take out whole classrooms, or schools. Some manage to kill dozens and dozens of kids before getting taken down. This goes on day after day, every day, without fail, for weeks. The terrorists hit all age levels, from preschool to colleges and universities, all across the country, in all 50 states, in big cities, and suburbs, and small towns. One day it’s a high school in Madison, WI and an elementary school in Wendover, NV. The next day it’s a pre-school in Sacramento, CA, a high school in Juneau, AK and a junior high outside of Rochester, NY. It’s like another Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or Newtown (or all three) every single day, just a relentless slaughter. Images of dead and wounded children are blasted out on Twitter and Facebook for horrified parents to see every night.
The police adjust tactics, but it’s not enough. There are just too many vulnerable schools and too few police. Sometimes, they get lucky, and the school resource officer takes down the terrorists with minimal loss of life, other times, the gunfight goes the terrorists’ way and a massacre ensues. Some of the terrorists switch up tactics, hitting school buses stopped in traffic, or running over kids waiting at the bus stops with their SUV.
Schools all across the country, unable to ensure the safety of their charges, shutter their doors, but not even that’s enough to stop the mayhem. The terrorist switch tactics again, targeting groups of kids playing in the park, or swimming in the community pool or at a concert or walking around the mall. The steady drip drip drip of the body count goes up and up, and always targeting kids, day after day, for weeks on end, all in the name of Islam.
What would America’s response be? I don’t know exactly, but I suspect that it would be horrifying. Things that, in the calm of this evening seem almost absurdly-impossible would suddenly be reasonable, even necessary. Steps that would leave our dearly-held Constitutional protections in tatters. People would cry out, en mass, to their elected leaders: “DO SOMETHING!!!” Almost nothing seems out-of-bounds in that environment: Mass deportations or arrests of Muslims, closing of mosques, criminalizing the practice of that particular religion, shoot-on-sight orders for anyone wearing a hijab, cities of origin for the foreign-born terrorists might be summarily destroyed by nuclear strikes, etc. The few dissenting voices would be crushed in a wave of populist rage. Bills would be passed, constitutional amendments could be rushed through ratification, whatever it took to “protect the children”. Politicians that didn’t go along would be recalled, or assassinated. At the next election, the guy who promised the harshest crack-downs on Muslims would win in a landslide. Perhaps he’d have enough popularity to push through a repeal of the 22nd Amendment.
I don’t know, does shredding the Constitution count as a dictatorship? I think I’d say yes, but what about if it’s done with overwhelming public support? Does that make it a democracy still?
Just to clarify, I obviously don’t think anything like this is going to happen. It’s probably well beyond the organizational capabilities of a group like Al Qaeda or ISIS, and thankfully most of our homegrown terrorists have been of only middling competence, and there are rather few of them.
In my experience the primary factor is politically motivated violence reaching a certain threshold.
When there’s enough people who decide that not having people killed on the streets is the main priority for a government, and that violence is directly connected with the existing political actors, then the field is open for a dictatorship.