cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/noncredibledefense/p/1490862/the-correct-response
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Trump was elected in 2016. Obama was still president in 2014. While the problems with American imperialism obviously go back a very, very long way, their overt slide into fascism had not begun in 2014. If you'd tried to talk about "American Fascism" pre-2016 people would have assumed you were a very specific kind of racist who is probably deeply concerned about FEMA for vague and implausible reasons.
Ish? Personally, gamergate was my alarm bell, especially when I saw some of the stuff people were saying in the weirder corners.
There were plenty of alarm bells, but that's not the point in contention here. The person I replied to was trying to claim - effectively - that it was public policy in Germany to cut ties with "fascist America" in 2014 and that's just not remotely true.
That's absolutely not what I said at all. I said the decision to add some contracts with Russia seemed like a good decision at the time, and fascist murica was entirely my opinion/assessment. I last set foot into fascistan in 2010 and I will not do so again ever. So much damage done, it can't be repaired in a single lifetime.
The anti-war coalition that got Obama elected by giving the party a pivot from the stain of voting for Bush's wars were long accustomed to using that terminology.
It was always used for the Bush administration post 9/11.
Obama got a bit of a pause but the troop surge in 2009 really fractured that coalition.
It was during Obama's terms that criticism of policy could be automatically slapped with a racism charge, mostly due to all the overt racism being leveled at Obama at the time.
But, yeah, I don't think it was common in German or European discourse to consider America overtly fascist in 2014.
Magastan became Magastan in 2016 (2020 depending on how you look at it). But many of the country's policies were fascist long before. Not sure how you get from despising 'murica to racism though.
You don't, and I didn't say that. What I was pointing out was that the people throwing around the term "fascism" to describe America in Obama's tenure were primarily racist weirdos who believed that FEMA was going to round them up into internment camps. That was kind of a major part of the right-wing discourse at that time.
America sucked in 2014, but broadly speaking the idea of the US being fascist, or being a threat to their allies (esp Europe and Canada) was not remotely a part of public discourse. Obama did a lot to repair the public image damage Bush had inflicted, despite how little he actually did to fix any of the bad stuff America was doing.
Okay, I think we're in agreement on all points. I think Obama was really charismatic (still is) and I had high hopes, but I cringed at the premature peace nobel price, and I had to admit in hindsight that many really bad foreign policies continued under his administration. So thinking about interventions in South America (e.g. Salvador Allende), Cambodia (the only person I wished to have to endure eternal hellfire is Kissinger), Vietnam and Iran (Mohammed Mossadegh) - I said that Magastan policies were always fascist.
But you didn't say that. You said;
At no point did I claim that America was a shining beacon of goodness and light in 2014. On that point we agree.
But you tried to present the claim there was a strong public opinion in 2014 - at least in Germany if not elsewhere - that nations needed to cut ties with "fascist America", and that's not even remotely accurate. While a lot of people were broadly concerned about the US' behaviour, and the behaviour of their electorate, there was never any real public impetus towards cutting ties, or fear that they would badly mistreat their allies until the last few years. Sure, a lot of leftists might have been arguing for those things, but that's not the same thing at all.
I never said anything about a strong public opinion. As most people, Germans are mostly politically illiterate and hardly known for wise decisions in elections. But no matter who -as the Antichrist/Kissinger said: 'murica doesn't have friends, only interests - so making sure the dependency on any critical resource is balanced between multiple evils is a better idea than committing fully to one single despicable regime.