Political Memes

And maybe also familiarize themselves with the story of Ossietzky. For 6 years, he, Tucholsky and other authors tore the - then slowly rising - Nazi party a new one every week in their magazine. They found them part threatening, part hilarious, certainly completely unable to govern.
Well, the Nazis did eventually rise to power; Tucholsky had seen the writing on the wall and had gotten out of Germany, urging Ossietzky to do the same. He refused, was soon taken into custody and tortured. Arguably, at this point in time, this sort of blatant Nazi terror was still considered despicable. To lend him visibility and get him out of internment, an unprecedented campaign to award him the Nobel Peace Prize was started - and succeeded in 1936, the year of the Summer Olympics in Berlin. Alas, it was too late; he died after receiving it, still in custody.
(EDIT: in hindsight) Hitler's reaction was entirely predictable: He barred any German from accepting a Nobel Prize ever again.

People really should familiarize themselves with the Nazi party’s rise to power.

On the one hand, I think there's an impulse to take deep dives into every Beer Hall Putsch and Reichstag Fire, in an effort to glean patterns of fascism that were particular to that time and place. If you're waiting for the next big western dictator to have a tiny mustache and a vegan diet, it seems like you're fixating more on the ascetics of history than the material conditions. The end result is looking for Weird Dudes In Politics and asserting their particular brand of dressing, acting, or talking strangely is a hallmark of their fascist politics. And if you're not weird enough, you're not a Real Fascist. Trump's a fascist but Nicki Hailey is fine, because Trump's a big wet dude and Hailey is comparatively normal.

On the other, I see a very knee-jerk impulse to credit anything vaguely popular or broadly appealing as "creeping fascism". That quickly gets us to "BLM is Fascism!" and "YouTube Moderators are Fascism!" and "Everyone I Don't Like Is Hitler!" I've seen more than a few conservative Op-Eds asserting that DSA is Fascist because they're a form of National Socialism. I've both Ukraine and Russia denounced as Fascist, both Hamas and Israel denounced as Fascist, both Cuba and America denounced as Fascist, both California and Texas, etc, etc... and it quickly seems to boil down to "Anyone with a police/military doing something I don't like is Fascism".

While the people’s quality of life decreased, politicians squabbled instead of passing bills. Hitler and his party argued a rule by decree would bypass the bureaucracy. They knew what needed to be done, and it was those pesky leftists in government that prevented it from happening!

Okay, but this is something I see from every political angle. Whether its Democrats saying we need to "Mint the Coin" to override obstruction on the Debt Ceiling and "Pack the Court" to undo the conservative majority on the bench or its a Texas/Florida governor asserting state sovereignty to push through school privatization or a new round of border enforcement, the desire to bully past political bottlenecks created by the opposition is a tale as old as Two-Party Politics.

Also, not particularly unusual for people to use the term "Communist" when describing any opposition movement, whether its Trumpian Russo-philes or Biden-esque SJWs.

To quote a particular manifesto

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

So this isn't unique to fascism, unless we want to describe American politics as grossly fascist from end to end.

Anyone who said otherwise would be killed as an enemy of the people. Oh yeah! They were going to kill people. Did they not mention that before? Whoopsies!

That is, again, the end game of any government with sufficient will-to-power. When push comes to shove, the prevailing state government enforces its dictates through violence. And, again, this country is rife with state violence. It wasn't as though the Weimer Government was above killing people. Hell, its not as though the current German government is above killing people.

As the years went on, political disagreements in the German government led to a standstill while the economy declined. While the people’s quality of life decreased, politicians squabbled instead of passing bills. Hitler and his party argued a rule by decree would bypass the bureaucracy. They knew what needed to be done, and it was those pesky leftists in government that prevented it from happening!

This is exactly also what Pierre Poillievre is promising with "Common sense politics". all why being obstructionist to the government and stopping action for the last 10 years.

I'm confused, why did you replace GOP with Nazis, Trump with Hitler, and US with Germany? Other than that, yeah you described exactly what we're dealing with right now.

(It's a "joke") :(

Honestly it really does seem like he was way too optimistic about how fucking horrible conservatives are, and how much of their ideology is simply about being able to hurt others for no other reason than enjoyment.

It's getting pretty bad everywhere; in Finland we have multiple literal neo-Nazis in the current government, for example.

Yeah: the (increasingly non-moderate) Republican base eats that up - they want to hurt people.

Maybe, and I for certain people I totally agree. But I also think certain media outlets work really hard to make sure their audience is afraid of nearly everything. Because of that, these folks are in constant fight-or-flight mode and ready to kick, punch, or shove anything and everything that makes them feel slightly uncomfortable.

Certainly no shortage of those

On the other hand let your 'enemies' talk without consequences and then you'll have Murdoch media everywhere.

"Things will get better, we just have to get rid of those pesky foreigners and left-wingers who ruined this country"