this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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I think this is the ultimate red line that the US crossed from a democracy to a fascist authoritarian country. Here are my points:

  • Trump is a known criminal who encouraged a terrorist attack against the government and government officials. The fact that he was not only free of punishment but also legible for running as president shows that the democracy was already extremely vulnerable to a hostile takeover.
  • Trump before that has repeatedly tried to convince the public that the election he lost was rigged, this is a blatant attempt to hurt the government and derail the people twoards an insurrection. At the very least he should have been investigated for conspiracy against the government (If he was muslim he would have been fucking assassinated as a terrorist already)
  • The insertion of an unelected and unqualified person into the government and letting him run around and fuck with confidential and extremely sensitive systems and data (Elon) is something that should have been stopped way before he was able to start gutting public services.
  • Trump did a pump and dump on NFTs, meme coins, and most recently the literal US economy. He is not even investigated for securitys fraud.

And now the really really bad things:

  • Deported legal residents without due process and with secret "evidence" that no one is willing to share past "terrorism and national security"
  • Ignored the supreme court and deported innocent people to a literal concentration camp. This is the 101 of a democracy being shattered, the authority ignoring the law and the police (ICE in this case) listening to the authority and not the law.
  • Has now publicly and shamelessly announced that legal, US born citizens are next. This is past illegal, this unconstitutional and is the very thing the founders of the USA had in mind when writing the constitution.

And all of this without mentioning Trump as a private person being a convicted felon, rapist and a failure of a businessman to a degree that any sane person wouldn't let him run a fucking easy-bake oven bakery.

So, am I crazy or did we just witness the actual moment that historians would label as the fall of the US democracy?

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

As an American I can no longer speak freely about what needs to happen to this unspeakably evil piece of trash without fear of being sent to his extermination camps.

It's unfuckingbelievable.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think literally every person with working fingers and a working mouth should speak about what needs to happen to Mango Mussolini and the fascists. They can try, but they can't deport the entire country.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

I, too, am Spartacus.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

I can no longer speak freely about what needs to happen to this unspeakably evil piece of trash without fear of being sent to his extermination camps.

So their plan seems to be working...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

All it takes is one person…and they were with me the whole night.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago

Along with wannabe Goebbels, Stephen Miller, saying that people spreading hate about America will be deported too. We're in for some fucked up times.

But hey, maga was mad about egg prices and that black people and women get jobs so I guess it's ok that we have a fascist dictatorship now right?

Also, for Stephen Miller: I fucking hate America, I fucking hate what you've turned this country into. We were never the greatest, but we were never this fucked up. America is worthy of hate. Fox news and Reich wing media have enabled all of this shit and if there was ever justice to be had their propagandists would fucking die in a fire.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 weeks ago

Guns.

Buy them.

Help others buy them.

Train.

Help others train.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago

Horrified and a bit scared. I'm currently out the country and I have to wipe my phone before heading back just in case. I don't think I've said or done anything illegal, but just not liking Trump could get me in trouble these days.

I've got so much family here, a grandchild due soon, I can't leave so that only leaves fighting. Ideally in the ballot box but I will defend this democracy by whatever means are left to me, as required by my oath of enlistment almost 34 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Rage, disappointment, fear. Also for now the strange feeling that despite everything my life isn't any different than it has been for the most part. I do feel some hope as I have been going to protests and watching the numbers of people there rise every day.
The scariest thing about everything is just how absurdly powerful the US military is, and knowing that they have chain of command which has Donald Trump at the top. My instinct keeps telling me I should flee, but to where? Canada? I could see a possible future where that would make sense, but I also see a possible future where Canada becomes just as bad.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I know someone that fled Croatia in the 50s to become a refuge and a stateless person. He made his way to the US via Germany, eventually getting naturalized and having a successful life and family.

This may be the last path open to us: Flee to a rational Euro country and seek asylum. Be the refugees that they push us to be.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

European countries are also passing laws preventing mass-immigration through their borders. Of course, they are responding to Muslims and other brown people, but really, their fear of losing their culture is aimed at all foreigners equally. I’m not sure that asylum will be available or that current citizens will be welcoming to incoming American refugees.

Honestly, I’d be happy to become truly integrated into another culture and country and land. Like, if I end up as a refugee in another country, don’t naturalize me, don’t give me the right to vote until I’ve forgotten American values and culture. I don’t wouldn’t want to taint my new home with the same American biases that led to fascism. I want to learn better values and ways of relation.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

Plan A is to tough it out. Illinois is a relatively safe state.

If ICE gets too close to me for comfort, or if Pritzker loses power, Plan B is to visit a friend overseas and forget to come back. Maybe we can find a civilized country that would not simply extradite us

If fleeing is not practical then Plan C is guns

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The way I see it, if you see someone killing an ICE member, no you didn't. Doesn't matter if they have video evidence of you seeing it or GPS. Claims it's fake AI videos of yourself and/or your phone was stolen,.just NEVER admit to being there. I know they don't follow the law, but you should definitely do everything in your power to make their lives miserable if they hastle you.

So my stance doesn't matter if they're going after people born here or not. Also, if you can safely cause a scene, cause one. Just be confident in claiming you weren't there or your ability to cause a big enough scene to scare the cowards away.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

To be fair, if they try to kidnap you while wearing plain clothes and not showing a badge and a court order, you are well within your rights to self defend

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Under a normal administration I'd say you'd be more than fine, but under the current one, that could be extra spicy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

The British crown placing tariffs on tea was tyranny. This is authoritarian fascism.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 weeks ago

I've been predicting that by the time this is all over, there will be mass graves in the US and Trump will be included in the lists of worst mass murderers in history.

I'm now predicting that there will be mass graves in El Salvador and Trump will be included in the lists of worst mass murderers in history.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

For the time being, I, a EU citizen can say "I hope Trump dies" (or worse) without having to fear repercussions... yet.

I absolutely cannot enter the US anymore though. I've said things that would get me sent to CECOT on arrival. No big loss...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

I had a therapist that said they wished the would be assassin hadn't missed. Def my favorite therapist, though I still question that he was ever even shot in the ear.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's terrifying but it's not entirely new, that "red line" was crossed long ago, with thunderous applause. Bush did this shit too, disappearing people off the streets with no due process and sending them off to be tortured at a CIA blacksite or Egyptian prison. And extraordinary rendition also goes back to Clinton, and then Obama explicitly reaffirmed that the US considers itself to have jurisdiction over every country on earth, that it can freely drone strike anywhere it thinks there are terrorists - and that can include US citizens as well.

These tools have existed for 20 years or more and constitute a massive violation of civil liberties both for Americans and for the entire world, they are fundamentally incompatible with a free society, and there was no telling how far they could be taken. These concerns were largely ignored and brushed aside because of 9/11 and the "Jack Bauer" fantasy of being a badass antihero who breaks all the rules to get things done, there was a virtually complete bipartisan consensus that these tools needed to exist and at no point has anyone had the opportunity to vote against any of it.

Trump is of course expanding the scale of it, which is terrifying. Maybe you're right that he'll be remembered as the "tipping point" into fascism, but the real tipping point was Bush, who was all the more terrifying because he was doing it while having like a 90% approval rating. Trump is just taking the mask off and doing it in a blatant, incompetent, and unpopular way, which makes him in some ways more dangerous and in some ways less.

Of course you could make the argument that it goes further back than Bush, the US has a long history of toppling democratically elected governments and disappearing people to blacksites, running experiments like MKUltra and the like. But there was a massive shift in discourse after 9/11 where caring at all about civil liberties meant you wanted the terrorists to win.

This might be corny but I remember a movie from my childhood - Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame - certainly a flawed movie in many respects, but you can tell that it was very obviously made before 9/11, because otherwise it would've read as a call to action to rise up and overthrow the US government. The bad guy is obsessed with hunting down minorities to the point that he burns and kills innocents, doing whatever it takes to get them, his ultimate act of crossing the line is violating the right of sanctuary, breaking and entering a place of worship that he wasn't legally allowed to, at which point the heroic captain of the guard turns to open rebellion and rallies the masses against him - it's a direct allegory for Bush's presidency and calls for soldiers to disobey orders and turn against the government - except for the fact that it was made before he took office. Growing up at this time, I watched those virtues become vices and those vices become virtues. A mere five years later and Judge Claude Frollo would be the based antihero doing whatever was necessary to save Paris from terrorist infiltration while Captain Pheobus would be the weak disloyal liberal traitor undermining Paris' safety through the sin of empathy because of his whiny "rules" about whose houses you're allowed to burn down. (Although tbf, it was attacked at release, but the people attacking it were considered the far-right fringe as opposed to the mainstream discourse).

Trump is worse only because he's further down the line of where this shit was always headed and where I've been saying it was headed since I was like 13 when libertarian weirdos like Ron Paul were the closest thing we had to any kind of opposition to any of it. I'm glad people are finally waking up to the fact that the president has dictatorial powers and that that's a bad thing, but please remember that when the next, more competent fascist gets in and does all the same shit while being more "respectable" and having better PR.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 weeks ago

Trump crossed the red line during his first term when he tried to overturn the 2020 election and this is an escalation of the same thing. With Republicans as active participants in the slide to fascism, and Dems still trying to follow the law while other side doesn't, there isn't anything to hope for because the only solution will be violent revolt and that would lead to even more death and suffering.

Even if he was overthrown and the Republicans scattered to the winds, US history has shown that it will not actually hold connected people responsible so we will just be back in the same position in a few decades.

We are completely screwed.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel so incredibly sad and exhausted at what has happened to my country. The US has had its flaws, sure. I was born in the late 90s and just within my own lifetime everything I grew up with has been ripped to pieces as an adult over and over again.

It's some sort of sick joke.

I no longer have any hope for the future and am just bracing for impact at this point with what little I have.

The fact that he can make these statements and there still are people ignoring or defending him is just so incredibly gross and further proves how f'ed we are.

Basically at this point I don't think there's any comfortable way out of this, it's going to be a very painful and costly road ahead for us and I don't know if I really believe in this country anymore. If we actually make it to a real election in 4 years I'll eat my words, but seeing how this is just starting I would say its extremely unlikely.

Trump seems content on driving us off a cliff

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Second Amendment people, where are you huh?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago

Turns out, most are fascists.

That's why anyone not in the cult needs to start purchasing and training with firearms.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm not American, and I know this community has a "no politics" rule, but by now I'm questioning whether everything is just becoming political, when you see such decisions.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel like "no politics" is a general way to make a "safe space" from politics, but when things are this bad, you can't really escape it..

But, I didn't know that there is such a rule here. If it get's removed I will understand.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

I'm starting to disregard no politics rules. Shit's getting too serious to play that game.

There is no safe space from fascism.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Always has been.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel like it’s been a long four months.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

It’s only been three 😭

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Too many US citizens literally wanted all of this. They are settler-colonial culture, the moral descendants of slavery and Jim Crow, the very same Americans who sent native children to slaughter at boarding school and the black children to die in the chain gangs. Today, we all still happily outsource our poverty, violence, and environmental destruction to other countries so we can live comfortably.

What is happening now is the real USA. We were force-fed the “beauty” of the American experiment, the importance of “freedom” in school, the pride for our country, while never being taught empathy for all of those people in our way.

So, while I like to think that I know better, and of course I am absolutely horrified of what is happening, horrified at American history, terrified for my own future as a gay female, I am also beginning to understand that too many Americans want what is happening. To fix it, we need mass buy in and mass movements. But…the protests aren’t stopping anything and our leaders have too much money to care about us.

I’m trying really hard not to be defeatist. I’m going to do anything I can to help stop it. I’m going to fight in every way I know how. I don’t want to be sent to a concentration camp for being against the Trump regime and for being queer. I just don’t know how to juggle my job and all the other plates I have to keep in the air to survive while also fighting against such a massive deep-rooted wave of racism and sadism.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yeah... The job thing is very much intentional.

Too busy to fight is a real strategy by oppressors

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

Condemnable and yet barely even surprising.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago

We should deport Trump. Into the sun.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

Source?

Regardless, I think deporting legal immigrants with no due process was the red line. Just disappearing people is dictator levels of corruption.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

gestures broadly

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I feel like most of what I wrote is very clear from the news. But if you have anything that you are doubting and can't find a source to, say so and I will provide a source or correct it if it's wrong.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm talking about the statement in the title.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Wow, shit is going downhill so fucking fast.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Have you seen the news in the past 3 days?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

As an American I am deeply offended, horrified, angry and increasingly resigned to what may have to happen.

The 2026 elections will likely be the most defining moment in American History since the American Revolution.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

God I hope so. I can see them attempting to declare martial law and cancel elections because of some sort of shit.

They've proven nothing is off limits.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I can see them attempting to declare martial law and cancel elections because of some sort of shit.

Honestly I've been hearing that same line since Bush Jr was in Office. Heard it again for Obama, then again for Trump, then again for Biden, and now again for Trump.

If Trump does take it there then we start watering the tree.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

They were pretty big on saying you'd never have to vote again.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

American living abroad for a decade, so don't know if I count. It is absolutely a violation of people's rights to deport them without due process. It is unbelievable that the republican government in power would exile citizens at all, let alone without due process, let alone confining them in prisons and the like. It is reprehensible that the republican-lead government allow this to happen even once.

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