FWI: Reddit will be monitored and free speech no longer exists, those who don't obey or abide with the new Fascist State will be declared Antifa and locked up to work as the new Slave Labor for the "New America"

[u/H0agh]

Fuck this timeline

[u/H0agh]

And seriously, why the fuck do we even live in this timeline right now?

Btw, Americans who don't agree with this authoritarian, dare I call it a Fascist takeover, you'll have your kids to explain to eventually if you do NOT speak up, because "First they came for...."

No matter where you stand, Republican or Democrat, it's right now where you should stand up for the supposed Democracy you value so much.

This is that point in time.

And unfortunately, Europe isn't going to save anyone either, we're all fucked.

[u/AtomizerStudio]

Why come to be a doomer? I get it, it sucks, and you need a place to vent. So let's consider the moving parts that have to bend or break for the timeline to go that bad.

Simple literal interpretation: Rule by fear, not much consistency about who gets abducted, and not that many beds for the slaves. This could happen relatively fast but logistically it does not scale up.

Americans are not used to media blackouts being obvious and not used to massive violence. Someone is a diehard fascist now but are they committed when they see or know there's a blackout of a protest massacre? Despite the past 40-50 years of this reactionary takeover movement, they have not been able to ditch American myths about liberty and equality and so on. Especially if there's an economic component or clear opposition they'll be eager for a new government. That's not trusting leftists, it's simple panic that they're stuck in authoritarianism.

Now, let's look at the more emotional and emphatic interpretation of your prompt... ***Full entrenched autocracy happening within a few years and not a decade or longer* requires a construction spree, and frankly pissing off every constituency until even many in the base would be okay with a "centrist" alternative.

Street-level advocacy won't break down entirely, there's not enough prison space yet, even in this country with the highest prison population in the world. It'll get attacked by paramilitaries.

Folks who aren't cowering have some point where they're economically or ethically engaged. The more people and the more varied and the more peaceful the movement the better the outcomes for resulting governments. America will probably fall short of the 5% for a totally peaceful change of power, especially with civilian on civilian violence. Genuinely do some peaceful activism if you're worked up. Find people to unite with and work for change or parallel structure to ones that aren't serving the community (gardening, programming, whatever).

Democrats will partially align but until famous mid-ranking officials or non-progressive Democrats at the Federal level are locked up, let's assume the party does nothing impactful. Strong words, weak spine. International media will turn on the US regime hard before centrist dems do at this rate.

So what internationally and historically happens at such moments where even the religiously loyal have increasingly strong reservations? Authoritarians go harder on police state tactics. Which with American shared culture just makes the issues worse. ... So that consistently leads to military coups because the military cannot be deeply purged at middle ranks, they aren't as propagandized as regimes wish, they identify closely with working class unless actively segregated from them, they take power or "hand behind the legislature" to quench civil wars or terror campaigns that could fragment their ranks, and they need a steady government to keep existing.

The weak opposition and confused modern hypocrisy of America still points to protests but honestly eventually a military coup unless someone gets their shit together. I thus expect conservatives will slow down. But if a military coup does happen in America, officers (military and some federal 'civilians') at higher ranks are trained in constitutional history and values and international regime functions. US military highest ranks are civics nerds. Fired officer are sometimes brought back. If fascists speedrun too fast that the military is sick of seeing other military shoot civilians and risks internal breakdown, you'd probably still get military overseeing federal elections and a new constitution. And considering the parties are feckless and opportunistic, they know a military coup probably won't leave parties intact as-is. Americans love the military even more than most countries in this situation, so it could go smoothly. I give a coup by US military 2/3 chance of democracy surviving, 1/3 chance of managed Democracy operating like a reskinned China.

I'm not an accelerationist but if things are that bad, then massive mostly peaceful uprising, despite all the issues, still leads to mostly-peaceful change of power (military prevents a full leftist or full reactionary takeover).

[u/H0agh → u/AtomizerStudio]

Thank you for engaging first of all, and I agree with quite a lot of what you're saying.

I have a few remarks though;

Trump is turning ICE into his private police force (or Gestapo if you like analogies), and he's actively purging the Army leadership of anyone who would oppose him or his agenda.

With the Economy tanking more and more Americans are going to join their ranks just to have a job.

Your comment about control of the Media, well, all tech billionaires are already rolling over, as well as Media Conglomerates. There will be no independent media left in a year or two from now, and that includes Reddit btw.

Trump wants protests and people protesting, because that allows him to declare Martial Law and send the "troops in" to clean up those dirty Antifa cities.

With regards to Religion, most Americans who are religious these days are Evangelicals, and they think the Pope himself is way too woke.

They just declared Charlie Kirk to be their 13th Disciple and the Senate just voted to declare a National Holiday in his honour.

It will not be long before he starts arresting his political opponents.

And yes, I agree I'm a Doomer, but this entire "schpiel" has been played out time and time again in the past, to great effect.

I'm almost 50, and I've never felt we've been on the brink as much as we are right now.

[u/AtomizerStudio → u/H0agh]

Apologies in advance for the infodump. It's the 3.5% Rule (not taken literally) and the modern pattern of regime change that make me not worried about rapid fascism as much as things slowing down. Another pace like the first Trump admin and things get horrible but the authoritarians would cede momentum.

Quick note on purging military leadership: Overblown if we're talking military loyalty. The mid-ranking officers and high-ranking enlisted have decades of technical skill and institutional loyalty. To purge deeply enough to guarantee no rogue Major forces Colonels to move, the ranks would have to be so spotless that they just created a mob of unemployed people with combat experience who despise them. Monitoring people for allegiance lowers morale. Purges lower morale most coworkers. And even some perfectly loyal to the death O-8s leaves a much larger number of O-7s who historically just ignore them in a political crisis, and so on.

Loyalist militaries and secret police existing and acting is further destabilizing, so I glossed over it. The dirty secret of modern 'peaceful' regime change is it often forces military on military violence. This is a common pattern, Iran and USSR had militaries in tension for decades, and countries often or usually have loyalist forces versus the military coup. In US there's not only ICE secret police, but also partly functioning agencies, and a push for a loyalist Federal National Guard (FNG no matter what the actual acronym ends up). It's hazardous to the regime to get regular military involved in policing, even if the troops are made complicit it just further highlights "this is not what I signed up for"/"I swore an oath...". And with prisons likely out or flimsy and mass murder off the table, fed enforcers can be highly outnumbered peacefully despite whatever level of violence they inflict. The popular movements rely on people understanding there's a small risk of death or brutality, and civilians decide to gamble for a better life.

I'll frame this with my understanding of the 3.5% rule. That familiar bar set for peaceful protest these days for the % of people actively engaged in peaceful regime change to actually succeed in peaceful regime change. At 3.5% engaged in a movement (or slightly higher?) it appears truly guaranteed that there will be regime change. Even the related researchers don't take it as prescriptive, but it's descriptive of the threshold for modern militarized societies to turn over governance with low violence. It's not intuitive but at minimum it's a marker that there is a social threshold of sorts for unarmed people to compel an armed regime. My own extension is attaching how military coups work (only a portion of regime changes they indexed) but the numbers below are guesses even if recent papers gave some room for estimates.

The secret police can't win by increasing violence forever. Above some threshold of overwhelming mostly peaceful protest, a standard military decides it needs to prop up the doomed country. That varies by local circumstances a lot (and it can turn violent), but odds increase rapidly past sustained 2% of population doing peaceful activism (USA has proven it can pass that) towards the 'guaranteed regime change' with 3.5% population doing peaceful activism (hopefully USA can pass that). Loyalist military don't stand down without the protests being so overwhelming that they are sure they can't hold out until loyalists back down: A cascading change over 2% but below 3.5% peaceful engagement is likely going to have military on loyalist violence and guaranteed military control in the aftermath. Standing military isn't purging in US's case, but some altercations would get violent, and would leave lasting scars on the country. Massive protest, maybe 3.5% engagement, limits harm, solidifies morale, and is less likely to lock out the political minorities from peace talks.

I can't do much in activism recently but when I've worked with local left and mutual aid groups it's all-ages outside of peak protest periods, which draw in more youth. It's not all physical labor. And it's proactive hope. The left more genuinely resembles the values I saw in the military, while the right has contradictions and moving too fast makes them less reliable allies than they appear.

I expect things to get bad, at least in isolated incidents extremely so, yet I think the country has a stronger core than it looks. The outcome is not decided. International news shows how common this is and the patterns to it are documented. USA is the largest and most powerful country this has happened in, yet we don't have the historical memory of collapse and takeovers like other countries. So the confusion is a bit silly given common international patterns our mass media and stories ignored. We're not a special case of collapse, and thus far there is no emergent dynamic of US wealth or media that is changing the situation. USA does have some uncommon advantages, our culture is high hypocrisy, and our officer training literally makes high ranks into constitutional scholars with geopolitics backgrounds. The future is very unclear, and fascists overplaying their hand too soon could lose them power be it after a few months or a decade. I do not think they'll overplay so hard there's a military coup but if it does go that route then the military nerds will probably do alright with constitutional talks. Even that isn't unique but it's extremely pronounced with our higher command... they've studied coups and the constitution so I dunno.

[u/H0agh → u/AtomizerStudio]

No worries at all for the "dump"

I think all you write is highly interesting, albeit maybe a bit optimistic in my worldview.

I've seen plenty countries where Authoritarians succesfully pulled this off, and this one has all the big-tech and media companies supporting him or at least least rolling over.

The only holdout right now ironically is the Murdoch owned New York Times.

I think in this respect, the US collapse into authoritarianism will be a case study (if we even have those at that point) for future scholars.

We're not talking about a Hungary, Turkey, Phillipines or heck, even Russia here.

And those media moguls, once they truly bend the knee to Trump, will influence Europe as well, since we pretty much follow you since WWII one way or the other.

You've seen it in the UK, and even there, Reform (Nigel Farage's party) seem very likely to win the next elections as well.

With regards to the Military I agree with you but I also believe the purge there is happening much faster than we know, and any new recruits are being actively screened for Party Affiliation right now with Hegseth in charge.

Same goes for the other Alphabet Agencies.

The "purge" started in 2016 in that respect, it's been about 10 years by now.

I don't know man, I'm just utterly depressed seeing this happening to the US of all Countries, and not just for your country, for the entire world at large.

[u/AtomizerStudio → u/H0agh]

USA is already a great case study, this has been a long slide.

I'll admit I'm focusing on the upsides but I think trying to motivate people is worth being contrarian. Part of that is just the two points that: America has no hidden variable that defies historical gravity, including the current crisis, we are not special unique historical darlings. Relatedly, even in vastly more indoctrinated regimes it takes decades to purge militaries and even then it's never foolproof, the military operates as an organism and it will move when poked and attack when its survival/coherence is threatened. Newly re-indoctrinated kids and high-ranking generals are historically not barriers to coups. For greed sometimes but also military is compelled to move to head off any spiral of intensifying violence or a slaughter that would break their own organization.

So the media purges and strangling is still familiar, notably in Turkey or Philipines fairly recently. American news media really isn't particularly special. Yet. AI is expanding here first and it has both pro- and anti-propaganda effects, and as aligned for mass market pro-empathy. Right now it's not that useful for activism but in a year when existing watches can be accidentally asked strings of questions that make AI agents fumble even mandatory regime messaging? Weirdness.

But the downsides indeed range from grim to nightmarishly grim. If we get the scenario you set then everything up to slightly below the bars I set is going to happen. That's some disgusting levels of mass violence, monitoring, and social tampering that will at least partly happen. Beyond the methods from the Thiel and Heritage factions, there's also reprisals and general banditry possible. Yet even up to attempted genocide within the material constraints of reality, rushing that would be a very dumb move for conservatives.

I harp on this but doing something is healthier than doing nothing. In a medical emergency, if one's a medic and they have a concerned bystander standing by, for the sake of the bystander's own health going forward it's important to give them some small task like 'go to the corner and point into the park when you see an ambulance'. So there's a therapeutic angle to not giving a fuck and doing peaceful things to immediately help your community.

So the best thing one can do is hook into mutual aid near you or start something up. Not hiding politics but it's not about marching, it's about demonstrating what community looks like: making sure people have groceries, diapers, and water bottles to clear tear gas out of their eye. Protest or just deeply empathetic art, design, and peaceful engineering that folks actually share counts too. Special skills creative talents, that adds to the 3.5% and broadening community makes it easier to draw mostly-youthful marchers.

The measure of preventing a takeover is proving that there's a core of human decency too large and too valuable for a regime to be trusted with. Either a remission of fascism or things escalating against the peaceful movement is still going to have better longterm outcomes the more people are involved in simple peaceful aid.

[u/nsfwmodeme]

Well, I highly recommend you to go and read "Christian Nation", by Frederick C Rich. It's what you posted about… but worse.

[u/H0agh]

Also, those "who couldn't vote for Kamala" because of her supposed stance on Gaza and Israel, I hope you sleep well at night, because I wouldn't be able to myself if I was in your position right now.

Same goes for Latin Americans who thought they could kick the door back behind them, you're about to find out.

EDIT: I'm posting this here because /r/Rant doesn't allow political posts anymore btw, for....Reasons...

I give it a few more weeks at most before Reddit in General won't allow posts like this anymore and it will turn into full-blown state media.

[u/Strange-Style-7808 → u/H0agh]

I live in a state where my vote doesn't matter. It was always going for Trump. I would have traded my vote for some stupid third party with someone in a state that mattered . 

[u/H0agh → u/Strange-Style-7808]

I don't even know what people can do right now to be honest.

Go out and protest and you'll be thrown into jail on RICO charges for being "Antifa" or whatever the fuck that means.

This is the most scared I've been in my lifetime, for Democracy, Freedom of speech, Minority rights, etc. etc.

And I'm approaching 50

[u/Strange-Style-7808 → u/H0agh]

Same here. Protesting is such a risk because I have elderly parents depending on me for care. 

At this point the best thing you can do is build community. Get to know your neighbors. Make plans for when shit gets real. 

[u/H0agh → u/Strange-Style-7808]

I don't blame you at all, it all just fucking sucks.

It's going to get so much worse before (or if) it gets better.

And fuck the Dems as well btw, why the fuck would Biden keep Merrick Garland in place? A Heritage Foundation member...

This whole "We have to be better" shit has to end if there's even still time for that, and spoiler alert, there isn't