Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis: 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.

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?

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.

yep, agreed

*nods in Miami*

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

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

Thanks!

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

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.

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