[kaoD]

So the economic crisis finally rocks the US to its foundation. A charismatic but authoritarian leader surfaces (let's name him... I don't know, Hutlor?). Common populace vote him out of desperation based on his promises to bring back US to its place in the world.

A few months later Hutlor shows his true face, the government radicalizes and becomes violent. Hutlor's party does NOT like homosexuals. He does not like people posting on Hacker News either. But the average Joe is not homosexual nor a Hacker News reader, so nobody actually cares.

Then Hutlor's right-hand man comes up with a great idea: they'll just take those nice backups that the NSA collected in their huge datacenters and track down homosexuals (and Hacker News users).

Now you're screwed.

With this I mean: it's not the statu quo but whatever the future might bring.

PS: I know, Godwin's law.

[hga]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Pistols

And they'll have a lot of non-homosexual allies, even ones who don't particularly care for homosexuals, for enough of us remember where the pink triangle base of this organization's logo comes from, and even more will learn.

[kaoD]

Is that even relevant? What are you going to do against the SWAT Anti-Homo unit raiding your home alone in the night? Pretty much nothing.

Are the Pink Pistols going to fight the army too? With pink tanks I guess :P (come on, how stereotypical is the pink reference?)

Also: you completely missed my point. Replace "homosexual" with whichever minority you want. Maybe mexicans? Muslims? And their friends too! Whoever they target, they'll be minority and will smear their name and accuse them of America's illness. Desperate people buy that shit.

[hga]

This quote from Alexander Solzhenitsyn'a The GULAG Archipelago provides a start:

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"

And that's just from a reactionary point defense. Go on the offense---if you're a member of a targeted group, what do you have to lose?---and things get ... interesting.

And when you bring up fighting the army's tanks, you're implying playing the game by the other side's rules. Those of us who are contemplating the awful contingency of a hot civil war have absolutely no intention of doing so.

"Desperate people buy that shit."

And?

Do these desperate people matter at all in such a conflict? Well, they can inform on you, observe you in action or preparation for such, and call the authorities, but otherwise, most people will just want to be left alone.

[kaoD]

And by wanting to be left alone they'll give power to the wrong people. It won't be them, so it won't matter.

Seriously. The Holocaust DID happen. Or so I'm told. And under the citizen's tolerance (or blindness, who cares).

What game are you going to play? The game of death. There's no game for you to play. You're just killed or sent to a camp and that's it. You won't stand a chance.

Nazi Germany didn't last too long because the US had too much to lose, but the USSR took 69 years to be dismantled... with how many political deaths?

You're being overly optimistic. I wasn't even talking about a civil war. It's the state and most of the population against some unpopular minorities.

Well, even if it was civil war. Do some research on how the last Spanish Civil War turned out for Republicans.

[temp453463343]

Yeah, if you think the US is going to go fascist you're living in a fantasy land. You wouldn't just need a depression, you would need the whole fabric of society to unravel and become as poor as pre WW2 Germany.

No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian. Authoritarianism doesn't work in wealthy countries.

[short_circut]

Japanese internment camps were not a fantasy land. The US exhibits fascist qualities all the time. We don't usually call it that but there are certainly examples which could be considered that way.

[temp453463343]

You mean back when people thought blacks were less human than white and women didn't have the right to vote? Back when a depression meant people starving to death?

We're not the same society we were back in the 1940s.

[kaoD]

> if you think the US is going to go fascist you're living in a fantasy land.

Snooping on citizen's private business seems quite fascist to me.

> No country with a high GDP has turned authoritarian.

For how long will the US have a high GDP? Every single empire has fallen, even the wealthiest.