If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance, not political in form — test-fitting an imprecise definition. The fact it also reaches a firm conclusion (spoiler alert right there in the title) is depoliticized by allowing for malleable application. A benchmark article I will now go share elsewhere.
What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
People are dying on broad daylight and who knows what Anne Frank atrocities we're going to discover in the years, even decades, to come in this year alone. Yes it's political. No, this isn't really red vs. blue anymore.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
It's nice but also endlessly frustrating and very very late, because what he regards as overuse of the term is really just people who were applying the term correctly for the past 10 years as people like the author refused to call a spade a spade. If the nascent fascist were discarded, people would have stopped saying it so much.
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
This is it. Trump doesn't really matter anymore, he will likely be dead by the next election. Why it doesn't matter is because its all project 2025 people now, they're using Trump to further their goals and those hove some overlap with Trumps wants. Their main goal is that there will be no transfer of power away from them again. Like the 2020 election they will try many different things, but will likely succeed as the party now is mostly loyalists, the entire white house cabinet as well, so does most of the government as a goal of project 2025 wasn't just RAGE, it was also to hire replacements. And now they have very well funded goons in training to deploy when needed.
Back in 2024 after reading project 2025 and about its authors and backers (federalist society, Thiel, Vance, other tech CEOs, Curtis Yarvin, etc) it was already clear that this was going to happen. I was already convinced that the only way out of this was a general strike and/or military coup, and it doesn't look any better now. I fear an Iran like crackdown is in the deck now.
> The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
> If you are debating whether to read this article, read it. It’s comprehensive and precise, and although political in substance […]
Also perhaps worth noting that David Frum, former speech writer to Dubya Bush, writes for The Atlantic (and has been against Trump from the start: see his book Trumpocracy):
The left / right split isn't really meaningful in the United States right now.
The split is currently between people who believe in and want a functional and equitable government, and those who are fine with a kleptocracy as long as they are personally the beneficiaries (or at least, the people they dislike suffer worse).
People like Frum were quick to notice this and get on the correct side of it. Unfortunately, there are not enough Republicans who feel the same way to make much of a difference.
I don't think accelerationists would mind - even if they believe that what's happening is wrong, going further in is the backbone of the whole ideology, so why would they be having second thoughts?
I think the real group behind this is people who are capable of sensing that this is wrong at least on some deeper level, but who are so complacent that they just want not to think about it too much. Maybe it's because they're in too deep, maybe they make too much money off of it to care, maybe their heels are too dug in on social issues for them to ever try to reconsider. Possibly a combination of any of the three.
Every thread about US politics has this comment, and the same response: this is not the right outlet, and some people feel like this content does not fit the topic of the website.
If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum, and have it take over every subreddit and conversation. Americans get all uppity when you tell them that you don’t want that, as if their news are so important that they transcend categorisation.
I care. It’s important. It’s just not the right website.
When your political reality becomes scary. Confronting reality is scary. Politics is scary but honestly living in facism is just about the worst thing for founder culture imaginable
I think it isn’t mod actions but rather the very likely fact that there is a small, but large enough group of flaggers who will act in unison to remove any such post from the front page. If you want an affirmation of the efficacy of the moderation system, what you should want is transparency into the voting behaviors of the population. If you see a heavy voting correlation between flagged posts and either a specific set of users, voting timing (these types of posts get flagged much earlier than those that lean the other way politically), or both, then there is cause for concern that the algorithm of HN’s self moderation tools is being gamed. My bet is that it’s not the mods doing anything, but rather that there is already a critical mass of flag happy users that are controlling what gets to stay on the front page. I think it would be very interesting to see a write up on this topic, but it’s highly unlikely because I think it would violate privacy and user expectations of anonymity.
Let me see if I can outline how we approach this in a way that might make sense to you...
People use the word "transparency" to mean different things. Here are the ways in which I think it's fair to say we're transparent about mod actions: (1) we explain the principles that we apply, frequently and at length; and (2) we're happy to answer questions, including about specific cases.
In our experience, the current approach is a reasonable balance between the tradeoffs. It's true that we don't see all the comments like the ones you posted here, and we can't address what we don't see. It's also true that, as volume has grown, we've found it harder to reply to absolutely every question. But it's still eminently possible to get an answer if you want one—especially if you're asking in a way that signals good faith*.
(*I add the latter bit because some people use the format of "asking a question" as way of being aggressive and in such cases we may respond otherwise than by taking the question literally. That's pretty rare though.)
I think generally the mods like to avoid anything involving "politics" since it's likely to start a flame war.
The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo.
It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moderation is generally very good. They're not perfect but they do try and shut things down before they devolve into flame wars and personal insults. If there weren't aggressive modding, HN would devolve into 4chan or 8chan, and it wouldn't be appealing to me after the age of ~17.
Can we have a discussion that improves in quality if people dissent to the view of the article, agree with the article, or hold a view that is something in between?
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
Open and peaceful isn't the same as accepting an objectively incorrect viewpoint as equally valid. But I agree that what you describe as how some people read it is likely what is happening.
Considering how often I’ve been seeing people on HN ardently defending everything Trump and “owning the libs”, I somehow doubt “open and peaceful discussion environment” is the deciding factor in flagging submissions of this nature.
I read through every comment in this thread and no one seems to be addressing that the people voted for this. They'll probably vote for it again in the midterms and/or 2028. You're despairing over a democratic outcome. What do you actually propose that would fix this? Disenfranchise half the country? Outlaw things people are voting for to happen? Any criticism needs to address how we democratically counter this regime, how this makes sense when this is the voted upon regime, or perhaps make an argument for why democracy has failed.
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election. Best case scenario (and very unlikely scenario): blue sweep in the next elections and then massive electoral reform.
Electoral reform is really hard for parties just voted in by that election system. Suddenly they see the good in that which they had previously seen as bad.
The USA has about 342 million people, and over 18% of them are age 14 or younger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...) and at least some of them are 15-17 (citation needed). So clearly, doing some arithmetic, there are fewer than 304 million adults.
Not only was "half the country" not "disenfranchised", literally a majority of adults actually voted (and this is not even considering that not all adults were statutorily allowed to vote in the first place).
Only republicans are actively destroying federal voter protections. Many red states already run elections with ridiculous voting restrictions. It's up to the federal government to discourage those practices, not encourage them. Luckily, they cannot mandate such changes.
You can't vote away the Constitutional rights of other people. ICE is regularly violating the Constitution and being encouraged to do so by those in power. Unless multiple amendments were removed from the Constitution without anybody noticing, your point about "the people voted for this" is an absurd and ridiculous attempt to justify real abuse of power and anti-democratic actions.
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
There might be Gandhian/Nelson Mandela way of handling this.
Both fought to change system and didn't teach hatredness towards individual a Racist person.
Get arrested peacefully.
Others can work for immediate protest for release of the arrested.
Appeal to common values that they also have, and show how they are violating the religious values they profess.
Technically someone can make some app, that can easily help in getting the citizenship proof for an individual.
I think a lot of voters were fooled (or foolish) into thinking that Trump would limit himself to go after other people; he got a higher percentage of minority votes in 2024 then prior elections. That's not good but the mask is off and I think Trump has lost a lot of those voters.
It's also hard to quantify how much the pandemic and inflation moved some voters away from Biden/Harris.
I think Dems will win big in the next election. The question is how long this lesson will last with voters.
If your definition of Democracy is based on how we elect our leaders, then Hitler's Germany was a Democracy because Hitler was elected Chancellor by a majority. You need to define Democracy based on how we replace our leaders. In that case, Hitler's Germany was not a democracy since it was impossible for the people to replace the Fuhrer had they wished to. In Trump's case, we may still be a Democracy but there are worrysome indications ("Trump’s recent musing that there should be no 2026 election may or may not have been jocular").
I actually think disenfranchisement is the only solution. Nazis didn't change their worldview after the war ended, they were shamed for them and learned to hide.
Republicans are now defending straight-up murder in broad daylight by federal forces. I doubt there's anything that could change their minds at this point, they're too far gone.
The people voted for border control and law and order, shooting random protesters in cold blood was not part of Trumps platform. It was an obvious conclusion after some thought, but many didnt think that far ahead.
I thought a lot of the rhetoric was around economic issues during the 2024 campaign season? I see this argument a lot, and while it's true that a sizable percentage voted for punishment of their political opponents, I don't think independents (in the immigration and "egg prices" camps) wanted this. Trump 2.0 voters should be ashamed because the signs were obvious, but the notion that we need to put kid gloves on for the vile, murderous fascists is asinine.
The next chapter of America needs to be punishing anyone who was apart of these death squads and the officials who allowed it to happen. That's it. There is no statute of limitations on murder or treason. We can't make the same mistakes as we did after the civil war (leniency towards confederates and various compromises)
Yeah Americans don't want to face that their culture is the problem. Trump is still slightly more popular than he was at this point during his first term
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.
Is this common belief grounded in reality? We're well past the notion that the "old man" (and his VP, as well as most, if not all of his cabinet) believes in the law and he has stacked the deck in his favor.
To beat a dead horse, propaganda works. And it's so much more pervasive than an occasional misleading message.
Millions in the U.S. get "information" from a firehose of propaganda.
That defines the reality they see. Others perhaps just feel hopeless but... want to believe that our constitutional democracy somehow manages to hold on and rebound.
If anything, there's lots of writing on how Germany was ultimately inspired by socio-political events here in the USA on how to conduct their fascist behavior.
I am glad that atleast some journalists writes about this in the US+West. In India, there is little to no resistance, contemporary culture is flooded, institutions are tamed, media houses are strong armed or bought entirely and there is no one on the streets fighting the tyranny.
If you're unable to make an actual comment in your own words, then perhaps you might take your link regurgitation to an appropriate link aggregator site. Elsewhere.
I'm guessing the existence of two sites, both rated [HIGH] for factual accuracy, give you a sense of outrage when you read accurate facts?
Readit News
What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
If nothing else it's very clear we need to bring politics back to the dinner table. And not he afraid to talk about it in 'nonpartisan' spaces. You can ignore politics, but it never ignores you.
I highly recommend Anniversary https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12583926/
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
https://scribe.rip/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-...
The problem for people like the author is that other more astute individuals [1] correctly diagnosed the issue over a decade ago. All it took was for her to have grown up in Poland and to be a clinical psychologist who knows how to spot malignant narcissism. The rest fell into place because human nature is so... predictable.
So while it's welcome for the author to finally catch up to the rest of us, it's a little late at this point. Also If people like the author had listened to more sensible people when they had started using the F word instead of dismissing them as hyperbolic, then we wouldn't be here.
Also this bit:
> Although Trump is term-limited, we must not expect that he and his MAGA loyalists will voluntarily turn over the White House to a Democrat in 2029, regardless of what the voters say—and the second insurrection will be far better organized than the first.
shows the author is still a step behind. The correct framing is that the first insurrection succeeded. It continued after Jan 6 for 4 years, as Trump waged an information war contending he was the true winner of the election, and also a war on the judiciary to evade accountability. In that battle he evaded all accountability, nullified the impeachment clause of the Constitution, and also gained "Presidential Immunity" from his appointees on SCOTUS. He also nullified Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath to support the Constitution from holding state or federal office if they have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the US. Trump caused an insurrection, and yet somehow he was allowed to run and hold office again.
So the first insurrection was successful, the perpetrators got away with it, and they assumed total power over the government they attacked after evading judicial accountability and waging an information war on the population.
Anyway, next time there won't be a need for an insurrection, because the only reason there was one in 2021 was because plans A through G failed -- they couldn't get votes in Georgia, they couldn't overturn any state, they didn't win any court cases, they couldn't get people to go along with their "alternate electors" theory, and they couldn't get Pence to go along with the scheme. So they caused an insurrection as a last ditch effort to delay certification.
In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A. They've already purged everyone who did the right thing in 2021 from the party. So they won't need an insurrection because any Democrat that wins in Georgia will just be erased, as they've made sure to take state control over county election boards after county election boards there went against Trump's wishes in 2020.
[1] https://medium.com/@Elamika
Back in 2024 after reading project 2025 and about its authors and backers (federalist society, Thiel, Vance, other tech CEOs, Curtis Yarvin, etc) it was already clear that this was going to happen. I was already convinced that the only way out of this was a general strike and/or military coup, and it doesn't look any better now. I fear an Iran like crackdown is in the deck now.
If you redefine success to whatever you want, then sure.
> In 2029 every Republican will go along with plan A
If you treat people as enemies, they’ll become one. The arrogance in the assumption that every Republican will allow Trump to get elected for a 3rd term might spite them into it.
Also perhaps worth noting that David Frum, former speech writer to Dubya Bush, writes for The Atlantic (and has been against Trump from the start: see his book Trumpocracy):
* https://www.theatlantic.com/author/david-frum/
So we're not just talking about 'leftists' criticizing these actions and policies.
The split is currently between people who believe in and want a functional and equitable government, and those who are fine with a kleptocracy as long as they are personally the beneficiaries (or at least, the people they dislike suffer worse).
People like Frum were quick to notice this and get on the correct side of it. Unfortunately, there are not enough Republicans who feel the same way to make much of a difference.
Maybe he's grown a spine.
I really worry for the people in the US, but I'm hopeful it's hegemony is ending.
I think the real group behind this is people who are capable of sensing that this is wrong at least on some deeper level, but who are so complacent that they just want not to think about it too much. Maybe it's because they're in too deep, maybe they make too much money off of it to care, maybe their heels are too dug in on social issues for them to ever try to reconsider. Possibly a combination of any of the three.
If you are not American, it’s rather tiring to have every website and news outlet talk about it ad nauseum, and have it take over every subreddit and conversation. Americans get all uppity when you tell them that you don’t want that, as if their news are so important that they transcend categorisation.
I care. It’s important. It’s just not the right website.
People use the word "transparency" to mean different things. Here are the ways in which I think it's fair to say we're transparent about mod actions: (1) we explain the principles that we apply, frequently and at length; and (2) we're happy to answer questions, including about specific cases.
What we don't do is publish a complete moderation log. To understand why, it's probably easiest to look through my past answers about this at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu.... Here's one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39234189.
In our experience, the current approach is a reasonable balance between the tradeoffs. It's true that we don't see all the comments like the ones you posted here, and we can't address what we don't see. It's also true that, as volume has grown, we've found it harder to reply to absolutely every question. But it's still eminently possible to get an answer if you want one—especially if you're asking in a way that signals good faith*.
(*I add the latter bit because some people use the format of "asking a question" as way of being aggressive and in such cases we may respond otherwise than by taking the question literally. That's pretty rare though.)
Transparent as you could ever hope for: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
The issue, of course, is that literally anything can be "political", and moreover by trying to actively avoid political discussions you sort of tacitly endorse the status quo.
It's a tough line to draw, and I'd be lying if I said where I knew where to draw it; HN is a fun forum specifically because the moderation is generally very good. They're not perfect but they do try and shut things down before they devolve into flame wars and personal insults. If there weren't aggressive modding, HN would devolve into 4chan or 8chan, and it wouldn't be appealing to me after the age of ~17.
https://news.ycombinator.com/flagged
If the answer is no then the risk that someone will flag the article increases dramatically. If the discussion environment isn't open and peaceful then how much more likely isn't it that people will just disengage, flag, and then move on.
Deleted Comment
My perspective is that a scale has tipped, a critical mass of people decided they want this sort of thing, and they got it. It wasn't rigged, it wasn't fraudulent, it was a democratic election. Critique democracy itself, or the criticism is incoherent. Make an argument for why a government should be disallowed from doing things that the voters want it to do.
Way more than half the country was disenfranchised in the last election. Best case scenario (and very unlikely scenario): blue sweep in the next elections and then massive electoral reform.
Over 152 million votes were cast, representing more than 64% turnout among those eligible to vote (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...).
The USA has about 342 million people, and over 18% of them are age 14 or younger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...) and at least some of them are 15-17 (citation needed). So clearly, doing some arithmetic, there are fewer than 304 million adults.
Not only was "half the country" not "disenfranchised", literally a majority of adults actually voted (and this is not even considering that not all adults were statutorily allowed to vote in the first place).
If we can't agree as a people that the Constitution applies to everyone equally then it isn't a problem with democracy, it's a problem with fascism and must dealt with as such.
Others can work for immediate protest for release of the arrested.
Appeal to common values that they also have, and show how they are violating the religious values they profess.
Technically someone can make some app, that can easily help in getting the citizenship proof for an individual.
I am not from USA.
It's also hard to quantify how much the pandemic and inflation moved some voters away from Biden/Harris.
I think Dems will win big in the next election. The question is how long this lesson will last with voters.
Republicans are now defending straight-up murder in broad daylight by federal forces. I doubt there's anything that could change their minds at this point, they're too far gone.
The next chapter of America needs to be punishing anyone who was apart of these death squads and the officials who allowed it to happen. That's it. There is no statute of limitations on murder or treason. We can't make the same mistakes as we did after the civil war (leniency towards confederates and various compromises)
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
They'd have to change the fundamental nature of business. Most US companies are run like tiny little fascist dictatorships, which is a great training ground for the real thing. The relationship between capital (owners/management) and labor is usually adversarial with "at-will" employment. Contrast in Norway, where businesses operate within a 3-way Agreement (Trepartssamarbeidet) - a formal cooperation between the government, employers' associations, and trade unions.
Americans would have to change capitalism too. The most reliable way to prevent the rise of the far right is to implement robust safety nets and low inequality, to reduce status anxiety and grievance.
But even in this thread they don't want to do that.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
Hopefully old man won’t be around that long
Millions in the U.S. get "information" from a firehose of propaganda.
That defines the reality they see. Others perhaps just feel hopeless but... want to believe that our constitutional democracy somehow manages to hold on and rebound.
Dead Comment
Slaves were brought here against their will.
Illegal immigrants snuck in against ours.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/atlantic-media/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outrage_porn
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditForGrownups/comments/dvyd48/w...
https://therapygroupdc.com/therapist-dc-blog/why-we-snap-und...
I'm guessing the existence of two sites, both rated [HIGH] for factual accuracy, give you a sense of outrage when you read accurate facts?