“We have become a country where people are disappeared by a paramilitary force that hunts them down in their apartments, on city streets and country roads.”
"We have become a country where a person can be summarily executed in public for protesting that paramilitary force.”
"We have become a country whose federal government deploys military and paramilitary forces in the streets of its major cities, terrorizing the residents in the guise of protecting them.” (1/2)
Masha Gessen. It needs to be said, and it needs to be felt.
“We are a country ruled by a megalomaniac whose views are openly hateful and proudly ignorant, whose avarice knows no bounds and whose claim to power is absolute. Foreign leaders try to appease him with flattery and curry his favor with gifts.”
In the EU we have tried to appease him assuming he was like the flu: it will pass.
But I think we all are slowly coming to the realization that it is not; that trumpism it is more likely to be a chronic condition.
Time to look for alternatives to the US, then. The first big treaty have already been signed.
The US needs to bridle that psycho ASAP.
@mister_shade02X2 @jgg @gleick Unless by the time those voters would get a chance to vote US has become another russia where “voting” no longer is possible.
@mister_shade02X2 @jgg @gleick
How many of us believe that there will *be* midterms, that they'll be honestly counted, and it will make a difference in who actually runs things? Asking for a friend.
@mister_shade02X2 @jgg @gleick
The liberals won't cut it. They're too interested in supporting the wealthy and corporations. We need progressives. We need the poor people's campaign and the working families party and everyone who've been actively ignored at best and undermined more commonly. We need the desperate who turned to Trump because the Democrats didn't want to help them. Not the racists, though.
@mister_shade02X2 @jgg @gleick
And I wish them the best.
However, going forward the #EuropeanUnion must work with the assumption that #MAGA and #Trumpism are a permanent condition of the USA. The USA is not to be trusted, even if a Democratic candidate manages to get elected in the next election.
We thought that George W. Bush was an aberration, but we were wrong. We must not be fooled again.
@juergen_hubert @mister_shade02X2 @gleick
I agree.
Even if Trump is defeated and retires, everything points to the Republican Party being now the MAGA Party, period. Imagine having a new Trump-like president every decade.
There is no way NATO can survive that.
There is no way any country would want to create the kind of alliance we got until now with the US if the US is that way.
Friendship is always based on mutual respect. MAGA doesn't respect anything.
@jgg @gleick The thing about the flu is that sometimes it doesn't pass. Like Covid and other viruses, sometimes you don't get better -- and every time you get sick with that virus, the odds of ending up with a chronic illness go up exponentially.
We got infected with variant 2.0 before we'd actually gotten over 1.0; there's definitely been measurable organ damage, and the odds of us ending up with Long MAGA are, unfortunately, extremely high.
@gypsyvegan @jgg @gleick Brilliantly written 😊🥲
@gypsyvegan @jgg @gleick USA got long CoupVid
Fascism doesn't pass simply because its leader is ousted or dies.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/13/alito-supreme-court-far-right-ties
Look at Germany, still having to deal with fascist aristocrats a century later.
Heinrich XIII
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/06/five-jailed-for-far-right-plot-to-overthrow-german-government
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63885028
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5v27zn248o
Same with the UK
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/nigel-farage-and-oswald-mosley-their-london-endeavours-compared/
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/the-disturbing-history-of-royal-infatuation-with-hitler
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/may-2021/blue-bloods-and-brownshirts/
To be honest, in Europe we started having fascistitis even before Trump. But it has been getting really nasty as of late.
I totally agree with your point: fascism is never a person, it is always a movement.
MAGA is something that has been brewing for a long time; Tea Party, Reagan, McCarthy... It is only the worst offshoot of a long genealogy.
@jgg @gleick
Our hope here is that the non-voters who stayed home in 2024 will join with the Republicans who thought they wouldn’t be harmed by #Trump, and both will join the liberals who never wanted any of this, to push Trump and his party out of power in the midterms.
Yes, there’s no guarantee, and yes it will be difficult, and YES it is worth striving for. Hopefully enough people will understand.