[diggan]

> but half the country welcomed this wave of oppression with open arms.

And the other half? They seem to welcome this as well, but with crossed arms. Where are the protests? Seems most people end up writing upset messages on Twitter/Bluesky, but also seems there are no grassroots movements to actually protest the borderline coup that is happening?

[fabian2k]

This is moving very fast, and the sheer amount of chaos they're creating is successfully stymieing the potential responses. The important initial challenges here are the legal ones. And there are already some temporary decisions that should stop some of the blocks on funds.

Now comes the part where we see if the administration abides by those legal decisions or not, and how the final legal decisions here turn out once these cases inevitably land in front of the Supreme Court.

At the point where the administration ignores the courts and laws and continues on with their illegal impoundment, that's the point where you have to protest.

[NickC25]

The administration doesn't need to ignore the courts - the courts have building for decades to get to this point, where the unitary executive gets to do whatever they please and the courts exist solely to rubber-stamp the executive's actions.

He was declared immune for all actions he and he alone declares as official.

He will die in office, in his mid 90s. Democracy has been cancelled.

[brainlet]

I've been monitoring online discussions with some interest and the complete lack of self reflection in left-leaning US population is interesting. People who were writing very nasty things about Russians too scared to destroy their lives by protesting against a brutal dictatorship not that long ago now sit on their asses and do nothing, because "what can we do?". Maybe at least some of them now understand what it's like. My sincere sympathies in any case, we understand you very well.

[kiba]

I voted in the November election. I called my representatives. My plan invited me to a protest over immigrants getting deported.That isn't nothing, but I have very little power on a federal level. The next step is getting involved in local politics and the community, but I am simultaneously moving and live far away.

I can talk to people about it, but the difficult part is not talking but getting people to truly listen.

So yes, ordinary people are limited in their power and capacity even if these adds up.

[CalRobert]

Protest doesn't do anything. I marched plenty and it accomplished nothing except letting like-minded people blow off a bit of steam and feel like something we did mattered. If anything it was just a distraction.

[diggan]

> Protest doesn't do anything.

Most rights that workers have today have been earned through protesting (and sometimes the bloody consequence of protesting while the state is resisting wanted changes). Protests only "doesn't do anything" when you don't do it enough or give up. Maybe I'm too European to understand, but the "pacifist" approach of the US working class seems to not be working out great.

[CalRobert]

Protest works when it’s backed by a threat. “Do what we want or we will remove you from power”. What we have now is “do what we want or we’ll be sad”.

The pitchforks aren’t just for show!!

And I’ve lived in Europe for over a decade now and frankly much of Europe is painfully naive about how much people in power care about protestors waving clever signs.

[marcosdumay]

Just remember, the most successful protest in recent Europe history has been when about 10% of the Iceland population showed up in front of the administration building with literal pitchforks and torches on their hands.

They immediately got what they wanted.

[CalRobert]

Even the NRA supports gun control when it's the black panthers exercising their rights.

https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...

[mindslight]

More recently, don't forget them being completely silent when Breonna Taylor was summarily executed for Kenneth Walker daring to exercise his second amendment right of home defense in the middle of the night. When this movement says "freedom", they mean merely for themselves to do whatever they please - not as a universal societal principle.

[diggan]

> And I’ve lived in Europe for over a decade now and frankly much of Europe is painfully naive about how much people in power care about protestors waving clever signs.

I guess the same goes the other way, Americans seems painfully unaware how effective the public's will can be, when you act together. But I think that's to be expected, the US is still relatively new and young, compared to other countries, so lessons others have learned still need to be learned by the Americans themselves. I guess this is what we're witnessing right now.

I'd urge you to look up changes brought by protesting and riots, but I think we both know you're not interested in learning, since you already stated twice you think it's pointless.

[CalRobert]

Your condescending and dismissive tone notwithstanding, I am curious to hear more about peaceful protests working when they weren't backed with an implicit threat of removing politicians from power.

Ideally, of course, you have a functioning democracy, but I don't really think that describes much of the US at this point (the people who'd protest are mostly in blue states anyway where their votes, even if correctly tabulated, count less). Other examples might be Ghandi, who promoted nonviolence but really only got India's freedom when the British empire was in terminal decline, or the civil rights movement, which happened when the US was a much healthier democracy and swaying public opinion was enough to remove people through elections. You might cite the velvet revolution too, but that also was targeting an empire in decline.

I argue that elections in the US _will not matter_ (Trump's cryptic comments about how Elon knows all about these voting machines and they won Pennsylvania thanks to him are telling....) and in that context protest doesn't do anything because the people in power have nothing to fear if they ignore the protestors.

[marcosdumay]

> when they weren't backed with an implicit threat of removing politicians from power

Normally, in a democracy, when you get a lot of people together complaining about something, it is already an implicit threat of removing politicians from power.

But if you manipulate the electoral system enough, it stops being. The fact that this mostly doesn't work nowadays is loudly telling people all they need to know.

[diggan]

> Your condescending and dismissive tone notwithstanding

I was trying to adopt to your own tone, not sure why you'd feel that it is condescending or dismissive.

> I am curious to hear more about peaceful protests working

Some starting points: 2024 protests in Serbia leading to the resignation of the Prime Minister. 15-M protests in Spain leading to the formation of new political parties and reforms. Velvet Revolution (I know you already mentioned this) leading to the overthrowing of the communist government. The Singing Revolution leading to the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Euromaidan/Revolution of Dignity leading to the ousting of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. These are just recent examples, I could go on...

Honest question: Have you attempted to lookup examples yourself, and you didn't find a single example?

[Dalewyn]

It seems like you're missing something pretty basic here, so here it goes:

Government workers going on strike means they're doing what we want them to do, which is nothing. As a Trump voter, I want these federal government workers to stop working so the astronomical waste of our time/money and disturbing of peace stops.

The best work the US government does is when it's doing nothing, because it's hardly working properly unless it's forced to (ICE is an example of government actually working again).

Whether the workers resign, strike/protest, or get back to work implementing MAGA policies in the office, we win.

[9283409232]

I hope you still feel like you're winning when more wars start.

[Spooky23]

The good news is that as a Trump voter who is a MAGA believer, you’ve established that you’re ignorant and open to emotional manipulation. You’re the political equivalent of the old lady who talks to the scammers.

So when your glorious day comes, and your State asserts their rights and levies your bank account to pay for your parents medical bills as your filial responsibility, (or whatever your personal tragedy ends up being) you’ll have the feels, and will flip to the next cult of personality.

[CalRobert]

I agree with you 100%, but in the interest of effective discourse it might make more sense to steelman the response. For one thing I have a hard time believing that the best government is one which does nothing, considering the extent to which our lives depend on an intricate web of supply chains, information networks, etc. that require coordination at a high level and may not be best handled by businesses seeking local profit maxima.

But perhaps they're advocating a return-to-the-Earth philosophy with every person (or family) aiming for self sufficiency in a frontier-style economy. I doubt it (when I try to point out that their truck requires a lot more gas than they can refine as a hobby I get pushback), but maybe.

[Dalewyn]

>But perhaps they're advocating a return-to-the-Earth philosophy

Indeed. Not quite as far back in time as you sarcastically suggested, but down-to-Earth enough that Congress stops enjoying absolutely abysmal approval ratings and President Reagan's infamous line of "I am from the government and I am here to help." stops resonating so strongly as a prime criticism.

If we also have to destroy ostensibly useful institutions like NASA to achieve it, well then so be it. As I mentioned in a sibling comment, the chances for more amicable processes have come and gone.

[9283409232]

The answer is a general strike. This will never happen in the US though.

[CalRobert]

Hard to strike when your boss can make you and your kid homeless. Housing precarity is a useful tool of control.

[9283409232]

According to this[0], they want around 4% of Americans to agree to a general strike. The problem is the people who are most capable of surviving a general strike are not the same group that has the most impact in a general strike.

[0] https://generalstrikeus.com/

[FollowingTheDao]

Wow. My grandfather is turning over in his grave. He suffered not only starvation and homelessness while striking against the coral companies of Pennsylvania, he was also beaten.

If they have instilled this much cowardliness in you they have won. Imagine you’re kid looking at what you wrote twenty years from now and think of how he/she would think of you. Courageous or coward?

[FollowingTheDao]

For reference

https://coalpail.com/coal-forum/viewtopic.php?t=1422

[CalRobert]

I don't know. I am a coward I guess, I emigrated. I think my kids will be glad they didn't grow up in the US.

Good for your grandfather though.

[9283409232]

You are but so is most of America. And there will be no safe place to emigrate when there are wars everywhere.

[Spooky23]

It does. Hopefully people start taking to the streets when the economic calamity (temporary adjustments in Musk-speak) hits.

People slowly figure it out. On HN 2-3 years ago, any critique of Elon would bring out the brigades of simps babbling about autistic genius. That’s mostly gone now.

[CalRobert]

OK, people walk in the streets and wave signs, then go home.

What happens next?

[FollowingTheDao]

A general strike. Boycotts, etc.

Protests get the word out and create comrades.

[CalRobert]

This is true - the ability to meet new people and coordinate is a big plus.

[Spooky23]

How long will they have a home?

Starting a trade war has consequences. That mortgage of yours is pegged to 10 year treasury rates. Bend the demand curve for foreign investors seeking safety in US government debt and stuff happens, like real estate bubbles deflating. What happens when foreign investors start dumping loans for vacant NYC buildings on the market because of their governments restrictions?

Look at the the classic Bogglehead investment - VTI. 30% of that portfolio is 10 companies, half of which are extremely vulnerable to foreign action. What happens to Apple stock when there’s a 30% tariff on iPhones?

You have reckless idiots turning knobs and people are going to get hurt. Then they get angry. LARPing right wing morons love to talk revolutions on their podcasts, they may get their wish.

[trymas]

They’re just salivating for anyone to protest. Any protest will be a pretext to use violent power, start some marshal law and move ten steps closer of totalitarianism.

[ModernMech]

You misread. A lot of us have been warning about this and fighting against it for 10+ years. We have protested, and voted, and passed laws, and conducted investigations, argued in court, impeached him twice, and defended against a legislative coup, and a literal insurrection - every legal, constitutional, and peaceful method was exercised at the federal and state levels.

But at the end of the day a lot of people didn’t listen and voted for this direction instead.

So the people who protested and tried everything for a decade are done. Now we are just waiting for the 70 million people who still support this direction to finally burn themselves on the stove and discover it is in fact hot, just like we’ve been saying. The next protests have to be Republicans and Democrats or there’s no point.

[bmitc]

What do you propose? The only way to change is either voting, money, or violence. I'm generally lost as what to do.

[lazide]

Voting - already happened.

Money - the folks doing this already have a ton of money, and used it in large part to get to this point.

Violence - necessary for change, but against who exactly? anyone trying to be violent against the folks running this will be disavowed by 90% of the rest of the population, and galvanize an outsized violent crackdown against anyone and everyone who even somewhat looks like them.

It’s going to have to get a lot worse before there is appetite to do the things that will actually make it better. people aren’t bleeding enough yet.

[rexpop]

Uh, what ever happened to Civil Disobedience? Direct Action? Nonviolent Action?

There are at least as many ways to respond to repression as there are avenues of repression: https://commonslibrary.org/198-methods-of-nonviolent-action/

[bongodongobob]

Whatever happened to it!? We are past that at this point. Nonviolent has been normalized for the last, idk, 80 years, very conveniently for the ones in power. It works if we have a functional government and an educated and engaged populace. We don't have any of that. Hold all the signs you want, vote with your dollar, walkout of work and get fired. If it doesn't scare people in power, you're not doing anything meaningful.

[SauciestGNU]

Meeting fascism with nonviolence is a good way to sacrifice your life in a way that's guaranteed to be ineffectual.

[rexpop]

What's presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, but because it's important I'll deign to enlighten you with some counter-examples:

- In Nazi-occupied Europe, during World War II, various groups wielded nonviolent resistance (such as hiding Jews) against the Nazi regime and managed to hamper the regime's efforts, and in some cases saved lives. Not ineffectual.

- In Germany, in 1923, the German population wielded nonviolent non-cooperation and strikes (the Ruhrkampf) against the French and Belgian occupation and managed to gain international sympathy and hinder the occupiers. Not ineffectual.

- In Nazi-occupied countries--Denmark (Engaging in public protest and social boycotting, along with acts of noncooperation and striking), Holland (Developing an underground press network, social boycotting, noncooperation, striking, and hiding and facilitating escapes), Norway (Sending letters of protest, maintaining social boycotts, engaging in cultural resistance, noncooperation and creating alternative institutions such as unofficial sports leagues), France (Stalling and obstruction the forced relocation of Jews, noncooperating, developing clandestine media, and demonstrating open defiance, eg wearing the yellow star in solidarity), and Belgium (Hiding and facilitating escapes, noncooperating, and obstructing authorities protected the lives of Jews, made it harder for the Nazis to enforce their policies, and weakened their ability to maintain order)--during World War II, various populations wielded nonviolent resistance against the German occupiers and managed to present a unique challenge to the Nazi regime, which was more equipped for violent conflict. Not ineffectual.

- In East Germany, in 1953, workers and other citizens wielded strikes and demonstrations against the Communist regime, revealing the extent of public dissatisfaction with the working conditions, inspiring groups such as the Volkseigener Betrieb Industriebau's Block 40 section and the Zeiss factory at Jena to make bolder collective demands such as the release of a fellow worker who had been arbitrarily arrested and even inspiring sympathy from Russian/Polish soviet soldiers. Not ineffectual.

- In Russia, in February 1917, striking workers and other citizens wielded massive strikes and peaceful demonstrations against the Tsarist regime and managed to lead to its disintegration. When troops did fire on demonstrators, as occurred in Znamensky and Kazansky Squares, it backfired. The soldiers who obeyed these orders later felt remorse and questioned why they had shot at the crowds. This resulted in mutinies, such as that of the Volynsky Regiment. These troops then went into the streets to proclaim their support for the people. Not ineffectual.

- In the United States, during the mid-20th century, civil rights activists wielded sit-ins, marches, and boycotts against segregationist authorities and systems and managed to dismantle racial segregation, voter disenfranchisement, and discriminatory employment practices. Not ineffectual.

- In India, during the early to mid-20th century, Gandhi and his followers wielded civil disobedience, boycotts, and strikes against British colonial rule and managed to challenge that rule, demonstrating the power of non-cooperation and willingness to suffer for a cause. They won independence. Not ineffectual.

So, now the burden lies on you, really, to demonstrate that our opponent in this moment is somehow more fascist, more cruel, and also more independent of the consent of the governed than any other fascist administration in history against whom nonviolence prevailed or, at least, mitigated.

But in order for me to even read your response, you would have to open by convincing me that you will do something other than sit on your ass and pull in a SE salary until the next election. Because even if nonviolence were ineffectual--and, again, it's not--you could, at the very least, opt out of participation in the socioeconomic systems from which the fascists draw power.

Because "nothing but violence will work," is a total cop-out from someone who also isn't already training with their local Antifa regiment.

[lazide]

I’m not sure how saying ‘some people succeeded at hiding Jews, didn’t get caught, and somehow survived’ says what you think you’re saying - considering how many millions got on those trains (or were rounded up and put on them!) and got murdered. And how even attempts to just defend themselves (Warsaw Ghetto uprising, among many others) resulted in mass death.

Or all the examples from non-facist regimes, where those regimes were less murderous? Or from pre-Nazi Germany, where it was clearly ineffective at stopping the abuses or the rise of the Nazi regime.

Stalin and the USSR were a huge, murderous problem (Holodomir being just one example), but they also weren’t Nazi germany, yes? And while murderously authoritarian, they were also fundamentally different in many key ways from facists. Notably, they tended to target and destroy ‘their own’ through terrorizing different (and shifting) internal factions, rather than having a more consistent set of ‘out groups’ they were targeting. And for all the problems in the USSR, they were generally pro-labor. It was the intellectuals and property owners they tended to target.

Unlike Nazi germany, where it was more ethnic identity, and willingness to bend a knee to them ideologically. [https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-night-...].

I don’t think we are at that point. Yet.

But striking against Nazi Germany later in the process was clearly a bad idea. [https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/general-strike-amste...]. A common theme in concentration camps was people being forced to work, often to the death. [https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camp-...]

Nazi Germany was very good for business (at first), as the State actively supported and provided cheap labor to business, among many other kinds of support. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany]

A key differentiator between Nazi Germany and the USSR was essentially that Nazi Germany was pro-big-business (as long as you’re ‘one of us’), and the USSR was pro-worker (as long as you do/believe what we say).

The biggest danger in Nazi Germany was being one of the ‘others’ - if they found you. And it was often a death sentence for anyone trying to hide one of the ‘others’ too. Hiding people, while it did work for a small number of people, was completely ineffective at stopping the larger holocaust. [https://www.npr.org/2019/01/29/689272533/the-invisibles-reve...]

In fact, the holocaust continued up until Hitlers suicide and subsequent German surrender, after the allies had totally obliterated Germany in a war of annihilation they had been forced into, and were literally within shooting distance of his bunker.

[bmitc]

That's kind of my point. We're heading directly into Nazi, USSR, and CCP territory and gotta ride this out until another election (if we even have one), someone with money cares (they don't), or we're all ready for violence (it's all the idiots who have guns).

[lazide]

The issue here is all the ‘opposition’ will do anything but actually fight - or allow anyone else to fight - or allow anyone else to violate the law.

So anyone actually trying to fight back will be destroyed by their own side. Where the folks doing this, won’t be.

[ebcode]

would you participate in a general strike?

[tbrownaw]

You left out rhetoric.

[zikduruqe]

> Where are the protests?

It is quickly being organized for 2/5/2025 at each state capital.

https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/

[dpflug]

We've done the protest thing. In the past decade, millions of people have protested, repeatedly, trying to change parts of this trajectory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra...

A bunch of Americans have been taught that protests only "count" if they don't inconvenience anyone. Laws have been changed to make effective protest impossible. It's legal to ram protesters with your car in Florida, for instance. The cops use force to suppress protests and the media tells everyone your protest was invalid because it broke the law.

If we press the point more aggressively, we'll probably start another civil war. The right holds Rittenhouse up as a hero, and that's not an isolated thing. For decades, average, rank-and-file GOP voters have made jokes and jabs about shooting liberals. It used to be a few tasteless blowhards, but it's commonplace now. See also comments from Kevin Roberts about how the "second American Revolution" will be "bloodless if the left allows it."

There are resistance movements extant and forming, but it's a wicked problem. The size and population of the US requires more resources and participants to make an impact. The speed at which the situation is changing makes it hard to find purchase to do so.

[Applejinx]

That's not how that works. The situation is set up to attempt to produce 'wild crazy radicals' who can be acted against super-aggressively. Failing to run about throwing rocks is a refusal to provide the guilty parties with exoneration for their acts. In effect, 'grassroots movements' directed by adversaries is what got us here, and is overwhelmingly unlikely to get us out.

[fn-mote]

> 'grassroots movements' directed by adversaries is what got us here

This is too pessimistic. Consider successful grass-roots movements: civil rights and maybe anti-war (Vietnam).

> and is overwhelmingly unlikely to get us out.

In the sense that nothing is likely to get us out? Sure. At some point you need to stand up for what you believe is right, though.