[etherus]

The question is: will and or when will the response to this violence exceed levels which can be controlled by the same mechanisms? I believe there is a window here, where in most countries experiencing this shift, there are still many individuals who have the power to effect change if they accept the risk. This won't be the case forever - at some point it will be few, not many. Community is important; look after it.

[avtar]

Unfortunately communities tend to be endangered species these days. Perhaps this issue and other seismic societal shifts will change that.

[etherus]

Becoming more politically active has been a massive source of community for me. And if community is already endangered (which isn't something I disagree with, by the way - so many people are inadequately supported), that's all the more reason we should find and build it.

[designerarvid]

What countries apart from the US are experiencing this shift?

[moxifly7]

half of Europe is on the verge of shifting to parties with nostalgia for 20th century fascism and the Trump admin declared it a foreign policy goal to help bring them to power.

it's red alert time.

[designerarvid]

Not to get into politics too much, but surely that is a bit different. EU right wing populism and conservative raise had been slowly happening for some 15-20 years. US for 14 months.

[etherus]

Trump was elected in 2016, the Snowden leaks are from 2013. These processes have been going on for a while, and those aren't the earliest indicators.

[brandensilva]

We can go all the way back to the Patriot Act honestly. All admins have perpetuated this. Trump is just end game.

[moxifly7]

The AfD in Germany scheduled their party conference in Weimar, Thuringia to take place exactly 100 years to the day after a famous Nazi rally in... Weimar, Thuringia...

and they say it's a coincidence.

[RGamma]

The US has weakened structurally a lot over the past decades. Democracy ends slowly then suddenly I guess.

[cyanydeez]

uh...fox news started from NIXON, so too were the far right judges. this republican farce hit a tipping point, it didnt just suddenly be fascist. its like bitcoin and they suddenly saw they had 51%. whether its true is debateable but this isnt just a few months.

[bananamogul]

"NIXON" (also known plainly as Nixon) was "far right?"

You must be joking.

By any measure, and in every poly sci department, Nixon is viewed as moderate or even slightly left wing.

He created the EPA, signed the Clean Air Act, created OHSA, signed NEPA, monkeyed with wage and price controls, signed a breath-taking number of anti-discrimination and affirmative-action orders, pushed school desegregation in the South...Nixon would be called a "progressive" today.

I know. Your baby boomer grandparents thought anyone who wasn't McGovern must be Hitler, but...Nixon was pretty liberal. Regan ran against him in the 1968 primaries just for this reason.

[shimman]

I think you need to look into the history of Roger Ailes, this is 50 years in the making. Maybe a 100 if you want to include the John Birch society.

[Eyeland0]

By policy standards you could say Nixon was the last truly liberal president. Does this mean that Nixon himself or his cabinet was liberal? Nixon and the types of people surrounding him were not liberally minded. Nixon's 'southern strategy' serves to demonstrate the contradiction in his administration's policy versus internal beliefs.

This is important because if Nixon's administration wasn't ideologically liberal, why pass liberal policy? The reason has to do with the political environment of the 60's and early 70's, which had enough populist solidarity that it could effectively pressure the administration. Compare he Privacy Act of 1974 - what the was in response to - to the insane privacy violations going on today, yet we aren't capable of passing an updated privacy act because we lack populist solidarity on the issue. The populism of today is apathetic and fragmented compared to the movements of the 60's and 70's, so consequently it exerts less political pressure.

[datsci_est_2015]

Yeah just gloss over all of his aggressive geopolitics in order to make your point lol. Next you’re going to tell us that Kissinger was a communist.

[chinathrow]

Putin is behind all this shi(f)t.