Faine Greenwood: to clarify: life under authoritarians is often boring and normal for many people until it all of a sudden isn’t, and of course it’s that uncertainty that causes the corrosion.

to clarify: life under authoritarians is often boring and normal for many people until it all of a sudden isn’t, and of course it’s that uncertainty that causes the corrosion.

Living under authoritarian regimes is both relatively boring and normal AND incredibly corrosive to the human soul. These things can absolutely co-exist. This is why everyone needs to resist authoritarians, even people who privately assume they’ll be just fine.

A lot of Americans do know what it's like to live under an authoritarian regime. My parents do. Many immigrants ended up in the US because they were fleeing authoritarianism (sometimes US backed). Offhand Haitians, Dominicans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Koreans all know.

Many Black Americans are one generation away from formal authoritarianism. That's not how we often talk about policies like Jim Crow but that's what it was.

Many are survivors of it.

This is why I always got so f—ing pissed at left intellectuals who minimized Trumpism by pointing to Jim Crow and Nixon, as if that wasn’t *evidence * of the danger.

Segregation really wasn't that long ago. deepcuts.blog/2021/06/19/j...

Jim Crow, Science Fiction, and WorldCondeepcuts.blog No black fans had become active to any extent by 1957, but females without brothers or husbands in fandom became more numerous. The one who attracted the most notice was Lee Hoffman, whom everyone had...

past or future?

I know - I’ve been trying to qualify the “many” thing as much as possible in my various posts about this, in that I’d say probably the *majority* of Americans don’t have direct experience with authoritarian regimes, but of course lots and lots of Americans do.

Yeah but I bring it up because also like... we can talk to them! About how they survived and how they resisted.

Oh yes, absolutely. They’re the people that the majority without direct experience need to be listening to learn how to survive this kind of thing.

Yes to all of the above. An immediate problem – vast majority of the public, loudmouth pundits, some academics, and editorial writers, don't have a clue about the structures of repression in place rn. We need to consider: 1) How to protect against current regime 2) What if current regime falls

The wildest thing about this is that i know some elder immigrants who fled authoritarianism who were brainwashed into "communism = bad" that they impulsively vote republican And continue to do so in defiance of everything they see because that training is so deep

oof, yes, I’ve met those people too and it’s pretty astounding to me

for one of the people i know it's really deep trauma related to why he doesn't have grandparents. his grandfather was a teacher in vietnam.

Right--i have people in my own family.with similar trauma But what they *never* seem to be able to grasp is that under no definition have the Democrats ever been Communist And yet they believe this thanks to the disinfo noise machine they've steeped themselves in Out of one prison, into another

I do think it's still worth having these conversations to understand where they are coming from and how that trauma lingers.

*nods in Miami*

This is a good report on the transformation to Authoritarianism worldwide. It may just mean a concentration of powers to the Executive Branch or full on dictatorship. bti-project.org/en/reports/g...

Global Reportbti-project.org

hmm.. interesting... here's the overall summary bti-project.org/en/reports/g... Would be interesting if they were also including all the G7 etc nations in this because it's not just Bangladesh, Mozambique and Türkiye who are experiencing it. Gonna have to dig here and see if they mention the IDU.

Global Dashboardbti-project.org

Thanks!

I suspect that Americans born here truly underestimate how new democracy is even among the "free world" - even ignoring former Communist regimes, our allies Portugal, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, etc were dictatorships in living memory!

Any Eastern European immigrant born before the 1980s.

yes, it's the constant background stress, unless you kinda self-lobotomise by buying in, which is a pretty understandable survival trait if you're that good at convincing yourself of stuff to feel better.

And obviously, certain classes of people will be doing great out of whatever brand of authoritarianism has turned up. So it's just a matter of the size of the leftover group you're suppressing.

Also in blue cities, a whole lot of white well off straight people nowadays have mixed race families and LGTBQ and POC family members and friends. Much more so than in the recent past. Not societies where straight whites can be super easily portioned out for favor from fascists.

Obviously too many straight white people WILL go along with the flow, but one can also assume that a lot of them won’t be willing to casually abandon their POC and LGTBQ family and friends to the wolves, either.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/nationa... I remember a lot of stories like this in 2017 and 2018. a big uproar when the Leopards Initially Eat My Face, but then it quickly becomes The Leopards Are Fine, Actually.

His American Dream died. His town got over it.www.washingtonpost.com A beloved restaurant owner was deported. A community was in uproar. Then it moved on.

All those Asian professionals with white partners who left their authoritarian home countries for a little rule of law in America are like:

yeah I DO NOT think they’re gonna go easy

thinking about the old italian guy who hung out with the prostitutes in Catch 22. can't find exact quote, but this was his mentality and his explanation for being so old.

62% of white voters plan on voting for MAGA… That’s a lot of self lobotimised people running around there

I recall a Russian protest with a lady was screaming at a cop "your violating the constitution", and the narrator noting "people did nothing and lost those rights 19 years ago" and even if somehow it were fixed they would do it again, too. This seems America's future now.

Well, how did anyone anywhere get rights?

Apparently some believe it comes on a piece of paper given to them by a government, hence yes, just as easy to loose them, too ;). Personally I believe in birthright freedom, simple as that. But I could also easily see someone in the US acting just like her in the next decade.

What people are willing to believe is what may often limit the actions they are willing to imagine or take against an illegitimate society. If they believe governments have power over them, it certainly will.

I don't think the average Russian could have stopped the Russian military (as Putin took power using them).

People who want a solid but emotionally survivable primer on what life is like under authoritarianism should consider reading Bulgakov's MASTER AND MARGARITA. The dreariness interspersed with terror--it's all there, but it's made digestible by one of the finest senses of humor in all writing.

Seriously, Bulgakov's sense of humor can match that of Voltaire or Shakespeare. I'm actually not sure who had it better.

This is in agreement. Which is the point for those regimes. Psychologically, being on edge at all times is very hard to do. Our brains stop being able to process it effectively and our body/mind sorta just "give up" and it becomes learned helplessness.

Which, we're already seeing from some groups. Particularly the "doomers" and defeatists.

Yeah - and I think it's worth mentioning that it's different if you're just a miscellaneous person who would is personally opposed to the regime, rather than a person in a group being particularly targeted by the regime.

A coworker of mine is from Poland, and I recently learned her parents were active in the resistance. I can’t imagine how awful living in that type of fear would be for a child, even if they knew it’s “the right thing to do.”

In the days just after February ‘22, as Putin began to crack down on dissent, I saw a photograph of some graffiti (which I can’t seem to find again)—“First you didn’t care about politics—now, you’re cannon fodder”

I recall it vividly because I recognized the last word even with very limited Russian—“мясо” which is “meat”

Trump says he will use the military to deport immigrants. Running guerrilla battles in large cities (NYC in particular for his revenge) will burn a lot of neighborhoods to the ground.

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