Would the United States actually risk a Tiananmen Square incident?
So, lets say we get to August or some summer month, and 4,000,000 people are protesting right out front the white house.
Do they send in the tanks? Do they kill 1,000,000 people? Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats? Or would it unite the nation like 9/11 did, except this time against the government?
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In 1970, the National Guard opened fire on a crowd of peaceful, unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine more. A Gallup poll conducted a week after the shooting found that 58% of Americans blamed the students for the massacre, with only 11% blaming the guardsmen. Many students who were present at the massacre were shunned by their own families, some were even disowned, and some were told that even more students should have been killed to teach them a lesson.
The students, for their part, couldn't even comprehend what was happening at first. Many of them thought the soldiers' weapons were loaded with blanks, that they were just trying to intimidate them. After the massacre, many of the students wanted to reassemble and continue peacefully demonstrating, in defiance of the guard. One of the professors convinced them to disperse, by shouting at them that all of them would be killed.
How was it possible for the public to see it that way? Because of how the media spun it. Even before the massacre, they were saying that the protests were full of "outside agitators" and claiming that they had been doing things like lacing the water supply with LSD. Of course, it eventually "came out" that these claims were complete bullshit based on nothing. So, once the moment had passed, they quietly printed retractions.
All that shit still happens today. It happens every single time a cop murders someone, whether it's Renee Good or George Floyd. The right wingers immediately start digging for any possible way to spin it and if they can't then they simply lie, and if the lie falls apart it doesn't matter, by that point people will have forgotten and moved on.
Yes they will kill you. They'll put people down like dogs and worry about how to justify it later. People want to believe the world is just, and that often means blaming the victim. They'll do it and they'll get away with it too.
Buy a gun.
That was partially just a result of the NG having rifles but not the less than lethal tear gas and stuff now.
https://youtu.be/MN_9VqfVQ9c
Lol buying a gun won't fix anything. You need to train with it and connect with other people who know how to use guns (and who can get other resources for you) or well, Luigi Mangione can tell you the other option.
Just consuming gun won't fix anything.
My question is, why do authoritarians try so hard to disarm a populace then? It seems every person thinks we'll have a large formation of troops fighting it out and not turn this into any number of guerilla resistance movements against the USA and other countries throughout time.
There's 1.5 guns per person in the USA, but we also have the largest prison population per capita in the world.
I can't name an authoritarian that started by disarming people. My guess would be there comes a point where disarming the populace happens in authoritarian process as part of "disarming the enemy". When the enemy is the public, you disarm all of them.
So succesful authoritarians eventually just reach the point where the public is the enemy. They either get there by killing people or imprisoning them or starving them.
In the US they're making housing unaffordable. You sell your gun to pay rent, problem solved for the wealthy. There's much higher death rates for homeless people. There have been a number of stats that say the US has similar death rates to societies in civil wars.
If guns were used as a solution I think we'd see more sherriffs and deputies being shot during evictions.
How do you train with a gun if you don't have one?
You can get a gun without buying it. Luigi mangione allegedly bought about half a gun
Personally, I would rather not walk around with an object that would land me in prison if it were discovered.
Where I live first infraction for a ghost gun is a fine so prison seems a bit dramatic.
Not everyone lives where you live. If I'm giving advice on the internet, where people live in many different locales, I think "buy a gun" is better advice than "3D print a gun." Especially considering that 3D printed guns require more technical knowledge to put together and there's potential for misfires or even injuries if you don't know what you're doing. Not to mention the cost of the 3D printer in the first place.
You want to go that route, by all means, knock yourself out. But it feels like you're picking a pointless fight over this.
I don't think playing right into the arms industry's bosom is good advice unless you're serious about actually training and organizing around using a gun.
Owning a gun doesn't fix anything, hell using a gun doesn't fix anything. There's no guarantee when/if shit gets stupid you'll even be able to get enough ammo for the thing (let alone the issues with caching a large amount of ammo).
The only way guns are going to matter in a realistic sense is if people are afraid to shoot you because they'll get shot. If there's actually some kind of civil war you'll get guns an ammo from the army.
I've always just gone to the range with my friends who have guns. I'm not going to give the gun industry here a dime they don't need.
You had me right up to the last word.
That nonviolent shit will get you killed.
Tell that to Alex Pretti
The guy who got killed doing nonviolent shit?
Are you suggesting he should have used the gun that he had on him?
Yes
Yes, there's a chance he'd still be alive today if he did so, and there'd be at least one fewer fascist.
There's a chance he would have died in a hail of gunfire, and probably gotten a lot of innocent bystanders killed as well, and a certainty that if he had survived, he would have gone to jail for the rest of his life. I don't know what the solution is to the problems my country is facing right now, but I know for a fact that what you're suggesting is not the solution.
I'm suggesting that if it were me, and I was gonna go down either way, I'd rather die knowing that I helped rid the world of at least one of those rat bastards.
Pretti's death may have turned the tide. If he had fired his weapon or even unholstered it, that would not be true.
I see we've got a badass on our hands.
LOL. Being armed is not a violent act.
No, what the hell, don't buy a gun for that reason. That will only escalate the violence. And there's only so far that you can escalate as a civilian until they roll out the tanks, and your guns can't do shit against tanks.
You need power in numbers. That's how you can build a proper resistance.
Seems to be they are escalating the violence with or without us.
Except they can't escalate nearly as quickly if they don't have an excuse. They've been wanting to escalate way further than they have, but everytime they tried to paint protestors/... as violent mobs, reality betrayed them. So far that they're somewhat pulling back. That didn't happen because someone shot at ICE, quite the opposite.
They're pulling back? Let's see what happens in Springfield because last I checked, they were escalating even before Good died. I'm not convinced at all they are slowing down because people aren't violent, not at all. I think they aren't escalating as fast as they want because they're worried people will turn violent and no jury would convict someone taking down an ice officer.
You need numbers and you need those numbers to have guns. They are not stopping, they do not care about right or wrong, and there is no telling how far they're going to go. Without the threat of armed resistance, what is stopping them from open massacres?
Guns will not keep you safe, granted. But not having a gun obviously won't keep you safe either. Think about what you're saying, you're relying on the fascists to act in good faith, out of the kindness of their hearts. That's nonsense.
Nonviolence is a tactic, it can be an effective tactic, but it is only a tactic. If conditions reach a point where that tactic is not applicable or effective, then it will be time to change tactics. What's the plan if they start firing up the gas chambers?
CIA would like to present you Simple Sabotage Field Manual solving all your needs in that department.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual
This was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had over morning coffee in a long time. Thank you for sharing this. Also, for anyone who wants a cleaned up pdf version that 404 Media encouraged people to check out, it can be found here:
Ukraine has shown that Armour is heavily vulnerable. And tanks are too heavy for the road anyway, it would be wheeled vehicles only.
At some point that doesn't matter.
Downvoters, look what coincidentally happened some months ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_250th_Anniversary_Parade
There exist special addons to make tanks less destructive for roads.
That peaceful bullshit only benefits the oligarchy. There's not a single right you have that wasn't won via violence.
Same sex marriage. Transgender rights. We are in a different age, wars are fought by information now. We are fighting the current war for America by information now. Not by bullets. I am all about Luigis rising up but that's a lot different than "everyone grab semi and hope for the best." This isn't 1776.
You think gay rights came without violence? One of the first well documented events leading to where we are right now was called the Stonewall Riots
The fight for gay rights STARTED with a riot. Same sex marriage came through the courts, decades later. In a new age. I was there, I was fighting for it. There was no violence when SSM and trans rights were brought about.
Edit: To further my point, what DID move the needle was public support for SSM and trans rights, which happened through EDUCATION, which is INFORMATION. When public support got there, SCOTUS granted the right, and eventually legislatures followed. A lot of organizations did a lot of work educating the public, which is the very work I did in the third state that got SSM. To act like the Stonewall riot directly lead to SSM is absurd.
Could make you wonder how much power the elite had to shed for those.
You mean the rights that largely don't exist in half of the US?
Trans people were already reporting their identifying documents like passports, birth certificates, driver's licenses, and social security cards were being confiscated in the period after the election and before Trump got into office.
We haven't "won" trans rights, we've only had them because the fascists hadn't yet gotten around to destroying them. Violence in one form or another is a requirement for successful change, whether that violence be economic or otherwise. The oppressor isn't going to give you justice simply because you demand it. It wasn't until after MLK was murdered and billions of dollars in property damage were done that Civil Rights were drafted, voted on, and signed into law - one week of rioting after his death.
You're a goddamn coward and you deserve to however they treat you. But let's be honest, you won't leave the "safety" of your home till they drag you out of it. You're just going to sit on your ass and criticize those of us who do fight. Broke wristed pacifist, fuck you.
Government has tens of thousands of troops and RPGs and tanks and riot gear and bulletproof shields and chemical warfare and fucking nuclear weapons but Lemmy among others are convinced arming up will save us somehow. It's proof that the gun lobby has done their job.
Everyone calls it the Kent State shootings but all the shootings actually happened on the campus and none in the actual university.
Campus is the grounds and buildings of a university or college. If it's on the campus it's in the university.
It's a sarcastic reference to communists correctly pointing out that the deaths on June 4th, 1989 were in and around Beijing, not on Tian'anmen square itself. It's a comment intentionally undermining how communists are dispelling Red Scare mythos.
They weren't being sarcastic, meaningless semantics is their MO
Fair enough.
Everybody keeps expecting civil war when what we're likely going to get is akin to "the troubles" of Northern Ireland. Prolonged, indefinite, bloody, insurgency. Bombings. Assassinations. More heavyhanded fascist paramilitary actions. Blood and chaos.
I agree. To have civil war you need multiple opposing armed forces of somewhat similar military strength. I don't really see that happening because of the purges of military leadership but an insurgency is very possible.
Agreed, civil war will only happen if states bands together and starts fighting each other or the federal armed forces.
What we've seen so far has been almost too small to be called skirmishes. The intensity and size of the confrontations will likely increase, but it won't be civil war.
Even if states band together who they gonna send? Police side with ice. Military sides with ice. Maybe you get the state national guard and some reservists but you'd need the guard to effectively mutiny and hope they follow the state instead of the fed. Realistically there's no way organized fighting occurs. It's just going to be police and military killing protesters with an occasional guerilla strike against them.
Yep, there is no organization capable of staging armed opposition to the government. A series of mass shootings and maybe some explosives is all we are going to get.
Given the number of incidents, I wouldn't be shocked if historians decide later we are already living through it. Political assasinations in Minnesota, the attempted murder of pelosi's husband, attempted trump shooter, charkie Kirk, the car bomb in Memphis that didn't go off a few years ago. The United Healthcare CEO hit. Attempted kidnapping of Gretchen Whitmer.
There is plenty of violence to go around, but nothing that would rise to civil war.
I have imagined a scenario where a debt crisis degrades the capacity of the federal government and polarization leaves citizens and national guard more loyal to their state than the federal government, but we are a long way away from that.
i mean i only have a minor in history and have been saying this since steve scalise got shot but go off queen
At the end of the day, the die hard MAGA folks are a quarter of the country. The stuff they're doing is wildly unpopular. At some point you have to fight for democracy. It is worth dying for. It is worth killing for. If we have to go through a troubles, so be it. Frankly, this probably isn't going to end until we start seeing a whole lot of dead Evangelical Christians. The Christian nationalists are so used to being able to violently oppress and persecute everyone else. They don't realize that their own lives and freedoms can be just as easily destroyed.
We already are in a civil war. One portion of the population has declared war on everyone else, hell bent on forcing their evil beliefs on everyone else. They do so in the confidence that they themselves will never face persecution, the loss of their rights, or a threat of violence. White Evangelical Christians are way too fucking comfortable.
Honestly, a troubles might be the best thing to knock some sense into these fuckers. Once the retaliatory killings start and their churches start getting torched, maybe it will finally get through their thick skulls that if you want to live in a democracy, you have to be willing to respect other people's choices and let them live their own fucking lives.
The troubles ended because both sides felt threatened. No one felt safe. This encouraged everyone to come to the table. Right now one side feels invincible. They believe they can act with complete impunity against the rest of the population. So far, we're all just holding our punches and trying not to escalate things, but these fuckers just keep pushing. Something will have to give.
Mutual bloody violence is a superior option to one-sided bloody violence, which is the situation we have now.
Incredibly fucked up to think there’s any upside to the troubles. Typical clueless yank energy.
As someone who lived through the Troubles, there were clearly upsides vs the country we had before.
The civil rights movement grew at a pace, the police service was completely revamped, and cross community relations improved dramatically. Most importantly, we largely stopped killing each other.
There was nothing good in the Troubles, but what came out of it was undoubtedly better than what had been there before.
We then ask was this due to the troubles, or was it a progression held back by the troubles.
It was deeply rooted systemic shitting on that was going nowhere.
lol, next you'll wonder if India is better off today for having overthrown the brits, too.
fucking yes, they were a bunch of sadistic fucks destroying everything they could in the name of profit.
the worst descendants of those sick fucks got shunned to america, for being too fucking crazy. they eventually schismed into what is now known as american protestants/various other brands of fundamentalist christians
protestants, all evangelical christians really, fundamentally do not respect consent. they have tied their own supposed eternal salvation onto the idea that they must "save" everyone else by spreading the Good Word by any means necessary...desperate people like that are not stable.
Incredibly absurd perspective. It's like a US southerner saying "There were no upsides to the civil war", and then someone points at the federal abolishment of slavery, and you respond "oh yeah well the question now is did the civil war prevent the south from releasing their slaves from captivity?"
Like, I'm trying to use less hateful language, but I really don't know what the fuck else to say to you other than point out the fact that you... well, like, some people just need someone to grab their heads and shake them really hard for a while. That's you.
Would it have been better if there was violence, but only one side was violent?
Peace happens when both sides have a motive to achieve peace. You cannot have a peace treaty when only one side is willing to use force.
Three sides were using force. The republicans and unionists were mainly occupied with using violence against their own people suspected of “disloyalty”. As usual, regular people were the big losers.
Incredibly fucked up to think there's no upside to fighting imperialism. Typical clueless Brit energy.
People forget that labor unions were a major factor in Tiananmen Square, US labor unions are not a credible threat to take over so don't need to be put down as brutally.
They used to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
"Would republican civilians see empathy for the dead americans who were democrats?"
You mean a couple hundred paid agitators that were bussed up from asylums in south America?
Because that's the story your average republican voters would believe. I know it's a bit hyperbolic but some of the shit I've heard them say about Mrs Good, and in general about the current protests leads me to feel that there is no limit to the lies an average republican voter is willing to suck down.
All that said I do not believe the military would follow those orders, but I'm not sure they would interfere if the DOJ started killing protesters in front of them.
They 100% believe all the protesters are bussed in with pallets of bricks waiting for them. My co workers 100% believe this.
Its fucking sickening. And they all have kids, teaching them all this fox news hate and racism daily.
Sometimes I truly just want to leave here.
America bombed its own city 40’ish years ago, and the entire country just moved on without a care. And about 60 years before that, almost forty city blocks were razed to the ground because the inhabitants were black.
Yes, they 100% could risk it. America is an extremely propagandized country, with patriotism on the right reaching jingoistic levels.
What was the name of the event where the US bombed itself 40'ish years ago?
The MOVE bombing in Philadelphia. Also against black people, by the way.
Thank you! Im gonna research it now!
Buddy, we've already bombed our own citizens multiple times. Battle of Blair Mountain for starts.
Just worth saying again so ppl research it
1921 Tulsa is on the line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
Rosewood
Oh my sweet summer child, the United States has had several tiananmen Square style incidents.
Look up the bonus army, Kent state, battle of Blair mountain...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
Just to add: Ruby Ridge...
Ruby Ridge was a shootout between a family of paranoid religious whackjobs and the feds after they cocked up handing a guy a warrant, which eventually got taken by what today would be called "Magats" as a rallying cry.
They call make Ruby Ridge look like a bar squabble.
Yeah, no. The religious nutter part is utterly irrelevant.
What IS relevant is that the ATF entrapped the dude; they wanted him as an informant, so they spent a long time cajoling and threatening him into cutting a shotgun down for them ("short barrel shotgun", a National Firearms Act of '34 violation), and when he did, they immediately fucked his life. He ended up getting arresting him, he bonded out, and then got multiple differing dates for a court hearing. He didn't trust the courts because he thought the gov't was out to get him (spoiler: they were), and so skipped court. The judge issued a warrant improperly, and then the US Marshalls showed up, and everything went downhill.
It was a very, very clear case of entrapment, and what the gov't did was inexcusable. It doesn't matter that they wanted him to spy on the Aryan Nations, what they did to try and bend him to their will was evil.
Don't minimize that shit.
The gov't can, and will, crush every single person that they can get away with crushing.
It's crazy that you believe that government propaganda from then, but rightfully distrust the government now.
lemmy.ml is over there.
I literally got information from Wikipedia. The wife believed that the end of the world was nigh. Now I will admit, even back then, you didn't need to believe the end of the world was nigh to not trust the government. But let's be frank, ruby ridge was not on the same level as the bonus army, or the battle of Blair mountain, or Kent state.
If you think I shoot out between a conspiratorial family who believed at the end of the world was nigh and group of incompetent cops is equivalent to the battle of Blair mountain, then frankly, I think it's you that's fallen for the propaganda.
I am not saying it's worse, I'm saying it was still a collosal government fuck up that resulted in the deaths of an entire family.
Are you trying to tell me that it was ok simply because they believed in a sky daddy???
Ffs, the response to the LA Riots in '91 happened two years after Tienamen.
Nevermind the police response to Occupy Wall Street and BLM.
True but... None were THAT bad. The US has done some heinous shit but usually it's outside of their borders. Inside their borsers, still heinous shit but not as bad as Tiananmen square
Edit: in "recent history" of course, say, within the last 50 years. Go back further than that and you'll find much greater atrocities, especially against the natives, but do the same in China and it'll still resign supreme in their atrocities against civilians
You don't use tanks in a city. You use machine guns.
If they can, probably
Ask yourself how many people in the US showed empathy for the Gazans.
Lol no, the US is a terminally propagandised country. Iraq has WMDs, Venezuela has drugs, free healthcare is bad somehow, Israel is not genociding the Palestinians, etc. etc.
america is a silly place
Free healthcare is bad because of taxes.
Idk why Americans are culturally allergic to paying taxes.
I can only assume it stems from the revolutionary motto of "No taxation without representation", which permanently affixed the idea in everyone's head that taxes were inherently bad.
And nobody within a 30 mile radius of me understands how a fucking tax bracket works. /Hyperbole
If you really wanted to use the military, you would just drop anti personnel cluster bombs. That would do any crowd in.
Fun (?) Fact: Trump is actually a fan of the massacre:
We're rounding people up into interment camps. We're way past tank man.
.......ok, but you do realize what hspprned the 2 days prior to tank man, right?
Short of sending an M1 Abrams, they've thrown everything at us along with the kitchen sink.
We're way past Tank Man. Also, they already sent in the tanks. The police have riot vehicles which are typically repurposed military tanks.
I don't think you understand how bad it is in the US right now.
There has never been anything like this in this country since WWII and even then the Japanese labor camps were leaps better than alligator alcatraz.
Dude... Just no. They have not thrown the kitchen sink at us. Tear gas, unconstitutional arrests, even shooting people in isolated incidents is not even fucking close to how bad it could get. Short of sending an M1 Abrams? How about just unloading full auto rifles into a crowd? How about taking out targets with predator drones? FFS, they only just started deploying LRAD.
Things can, and very well may, get so, so, SO much worse even before tanks start rolling in the streets.
This isn't Iran.
If they could have done all that by now they would have.
It would be fairly difficult to convince any military branch or even police force to open fire on its own protesting citizens. There is a reason why we have three branches of government and Congress and a Senate.
That's not to say I'm not downplaying it. It's still really bad out there.
Ice is the new age Gestapo.
This is the endgame Moscow wants: Balkanization and destabilization.
America failed itself, and Putin loves to add more gasoline to the fire. Either that country must save itself, or the rest of the world experience the unimaginable once the collapse is completed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
You guys are gonna blame leftists and/or Putin all the way to prison, aren't you? What's happening now is purely American, baby, and non-whites have been subjected to it for hundreds of years.
Sarcasm aside, you really don't need to look much further than American literacy rates and money in politics to see how we got here. Bonus points if you look into FPTP and gerrymandering. Of course it's much easier to be intellectually lazy and just say "this is all Putin's fault. Just wait till the miderms".
edit: geopolitics- yea, the US did this to itself (but a few people made a lot of money!!).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
Capitalism
Bananas.
All the things that were said the USSR would do, we did unironically.
Friendly reminder that Boris Yeltsin shelled Parliament back in 1993
If you stand up against this, everyone on every other side tries to tear you down as a traitor to their own cause(s).
There is no winning in the middle anymore.
Honestly though, we did it to them first with the Soviet union. It may have toppled by itself but we were DESPERATELY funding and fomenting the same shit in the Soviet union for decades.
It worked.
Now it's working here.
The other night, I was eating lunch at my desk, in our small open office. The IT guy and one of the robot techs were debating whether the summary execution of Alex Pretti was justified. IT guy believes the government’s version of events, suggesting that Alex brandished his firearm (which is patently false). They openly support the state’s murder, and further, encourage it. It might be a bit difficult to get them to go along with a massacre, but they’ve already been walked through 2 murders, and are primed for more.
Would something like this ever happen? Hope not. But if it does, god help us all.
I’ve checked out from trying to advocate for the truth. You cannot reason with someone who is arguing in bad faith. The blatant disregard for the live’s lost, instead focusing on proving a point to justify the theft of those live’s. It’s gross. How anyone can look at the system that has been fully exposed in front of them and say More of that! blows my mind. But those are the people that will backup Trump if such a thing happened.
I don't think IT guy, or at least the equivalent people in my life, would be supportive to the point that they would actively involve themselves in a shooting war in support of Trump, which is what this hypothetical scenario would turn into.
If there's one thing I've learned about conservatives it's that they will start to pay attention once something impacts them personally. They are fine with the lies when it's about some abstract person some other place but when it involves someone they know or happens in their town they will change their tune quickly. Of course not all of them but enough to matter. These kinds of people prioritize familiarity and perceived stability over just about anything else. As long as things are stable enough that they can maintain most of their routines they won't think too deeply about anything. This kind of event, and the ensuing chaos, would force them to take a deeper look at things in a way that they're currently too comfortable to be forced to confront.
He wouldn't have to, the army and the police would do the shooting.
The point is that you don't casually go about your routine during a civil war
You sort of do, until suddenly, unexpectedly, you don't:
https://www.vox.com/politics/2026/1/xx/fascism-normal-life-authoritarianism-duality
Without a doubt
heck we are the blueprint for a lot stuff like this in fact the Nazis studied us for protips on how to do Industrialized racism
The government has been fascist for a while and has killed its own people demonstrating several times. Too me some time to understand this myself but when I did, I've been talking about it for 20 years to people who'll listen. Needless, not many cared.
Kent State says yes
They can't risk it. Too many people could record it so they couldn't control the narrative.
Too many people recorded the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti for them to control the narrative, but all that happened was that one guy got demoted.
It is building political pressure against them, they're very clearly uncomfy within the administration. It may not directly fix all our fucked up shit but the admin blinked for the first time this cycle when it was looking increasingly likely that they had no limit and we were headed straight for a police state.
We survived last time by keeping them consistently on the defensive and for the first time we've managed to control the narrative again
It's not over yet. I choose to believe this is the turning point.
Do you think they care? Dude they’re shooting unarmed women in the face in broad daylight in front of thousands of witnesses and on video.
And just imagine, the heartless coward that did it isn’t facing charges and gets to lie down in his own bed every night and walk up the next day.
Yep
No consequences so far
Civil wars have started over less than this
Civil wars require 2 sides capable of taking power.
IIRC they moved Ross out of state. So yes, he's not in jail but he's not exactly lounging at home either.
Hard disagree. Their base will believe anything.
If we set up gas chambers in Florida some people would be insisting they were harmless showers while they were being forced into them.
They’ve done it before. They’ll do it again.
Based on the reaction to all of this, it’s kinda clear they do not give a shit. So we’ll see how the all plays out.
They're waiting for AI video to get "good enough". Once AI can make believable clips of length 3 minutes or so. Then they can murder with impunity and half the country will say "that's just AI, they would never do that".
Haven't been paying attention, have you?
I'm still surprised that all of the January 6 insurrectionists could just storm the capitol building without being shot. They were breaking into the main building that had all of our lawmakers in it at the time, and only one of those morons was shot. Only the stupidest one. The queen of morons.
And did you notice what happened after that idiot was shot and killed? Nobody else tried to go through that window.
Wasn't there an incident where Pelocy was begging for the national guard to be called in? Or maybe one of the cabinet members. And Trump kept declining.
So the only people to do the shooting were the limited number of capital police. I don't think they're set up for riot defense and it's a lot to ask them to individually put their lives on the line by just shooting into the crowd.
Is the issue tanks ? Because the National Guard has killed people during Vietnam.
Right?
So many people are ignorant of history. I had someone in another thread screaming at me how this is all because of 2001. As if this stuff didn't happen before then.
This thread is actually really depressing.
Sometimes depression is a natural and healthy reaction to the world around us.
No one liked the nonviolent solution, no one will like the violent solution.
Don't underestimate this administration's cruelty.
Well they certainly could go much much worse. The regime and their base are so far from anything being based in reality I don't think anyone can truly be certain where this will go.
And you can just read about early ish days fascism in Germany and see how that meshes with this Regime and it's historical context. In no particular order :
There are also lines that haven't been crossed yet but there are not a lot before we get to the really Bad ones. So yes Large scale incarceration and killing against internal resistance, or simply against the 'racialized other' are maybe already the next steps if MAGA(and the reaction to it) keeps on this trek.
There could be some kind of thing to fan the flames and lead into the big Bads including probably some external War as well.
Or there could be circumstances that stop this insanity before we get there. But holy hell Americans are way to chill about all of this currently and MAGA certainly won't stop until they are made to stumble and fall. Could be self inflicted of course but if the pressure is higher the chance of a fumble goes way up. So every resistance is worth the attempt at this point, and if the ship can still be pulled around there have to be real consequences otherwise it's just gonna be this again on a few decade cycle. I mean this shit is already worrying over here and in Germany well we seem to rhyme politically with the US of ten or so years ago so ....
For me this certainly is Fascist and we all should know how that goes if it truly gets to go.
MAGA will justify anything as "they shouldn't have been there". Even when something happens to them.
Would the United States, under normal circumstances, in the era of cellphones and cameras?
No.
Would Trump?
I don't think theres a single thing that Trump wouldnt do, he is such a infantile, reactionary, egomaniacable manbaby that I can see him doing literally anything, if it makes him feel powerful or if he thinks it'd give him some kind of edge/opportunity.
What risk? It worked out great for the regime in China, it would work here too.
In a second. It might not have the same end result though. Trumps handlers are playing risky game. Least they unite a majority for the short time it would take to destroy the current despot and all his sycophants.
Sure they killed 1,000,000 protestors in the streets of DC, but at least they would never nuke an American city!
Suddenly, a flash in the distance turns into an angry, boiling glow. At least getting knocked back to the stone age means not having to see thousands of versions of "I told you so" afterward.
We did already, when MacArthur razed the Bonus Army. FDR was elected the next election and bought some guillotine insurance in the form of taxes and social programs.
It really depends on when this happens. If it would happen today, there would be bloodshed, but probably not on a Tiananmen level. The longer we wait, the more likely that the number of deaths is higher in such a case. Which makes it that much more important to act now (which, to be fair, is easy for me to say, considering I don't live in the US).
If it was the one thing to keep Trump in office and therefore out of prison, yes, indeed.
Don't confuse United States with Trump. Trump would risk it
No one hates the USA more than US Americans, but we also unite against foreign hostility, it's like an exclusive club for self haters. So I'm sure the world views us in much the same way. Just from looking around and seeing the Trump flags coming down, it appears a significant portion of his past supporters are realizing that they made a mistake or are at least a little hesitant to proudly display their support.
I would say Trump has a hammer and every problem is a nail, but he's not sure what a nail is or how to use a hammer so he just goes around hitting things with the wrong side of the hammer. So now everyone else thinks they all of the USA doesn't know how to use hammers.
I promise you, the people who you bomb, murder, and torture by the millions hate you more.
Pretty sure those countries that got bombed are full of people who hate the US a lot more than Americans
Like it or not, the distinction is meaningless to people outside of the US
Trump wanted to literally bomb protestors last term. There is some report on a call where he wanted to do it. Just drop a missile on them.
It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve bombed Americans in the US.
The false flag, the event, the whatever you want to call it is on the way.
Yes this administration would in a heartbeat.
First of all, I don't think the Anerican military would follow that order. Shooting supposed drug smugglers illegally and shooting your neighbors illegally are two different kettle of fish for us humans who want to belong to sonething.
They would have to turn off the internet including satellites and then destroy all camera capable gadgets, maybe with an EMP. I think this is too much hassle. There won't be a Tiananmen Sq in the US. The Chinese could control the narrative internally and didn't give af about the rest of the world - in 1989. As we see in Iran today, the world is but a village and footage travels fast. The risk is too high.
But keep looking at ICE or "proud" militias. I would not be surprised to hear about these bastards sniping at protest leaders or even rando participants to discourage more protests. Look for fat guys on roofs.
I concur. They have already done illegal things. There will be some who will.
Blowing up innocent fishermen boats and killing off the survivors.
Stealing oil tankers. Kidnapping a leader of another country.
Oh. Yeah. They would absolutely kill Americans.
There is enough of them.
You mean like they ‘didn’t’ at Kent State?
Don’t kid yourself; they absolutely will. Going by our history, though, if they can they’ll do it to a black neighborhood first.
You are more supporting my gut feeling here by invoking Kent State. A handful of people died there; hundreds+ died in Beijing.
A situation like Kent State is very possible but they will have learned the lesson and it won't be NG or other armed forces opening fire. It'll be the obese SA or a right-wing militia that opens fire from a sniper's nest.
It won't be their neighbors though it'll be troops shipped in from the other side of the country just like in China.
Neighbors, countrymen - choose your own metaphor.
I'm no expert on the people's army. I don't think they had any way to refuse an illegal order. The US armed forces do have this. I think there are enough people in the US military that would refuse to shoot on protestors. Supposed drug smugglers are the out group and scruples are sadly low enough not to refuse that illegal order. Sending in the tanks in Minneapolis or Boston to shoot on their in group would be crossing the line. Not a good, sterdy, moral line but a line nonetheless.
They could literally just not carry out the order, that's why the CCP brought in out of town troops. I don't know the structure of ICE but it seems they are doing the same, troops from Texas and Arizona are more likely to shoot Minisottans than Minisottan troops, and I suspect they would do the same if they deployed the military.
Let's hope then that I'm right and even out of towners of the armed forces will not want to shoot.
Imagine a scenario where an American government deployed armed soldiers into the center of a city to suppress a civilian revolt against the government.
A thing that has never happened before.
False flag incoming
Yes. Yes they would. Only it would be different as they’d need to have thousands of babies and kittens to fill up the empty spaces before they crushed them to death, as trump’s pathetic little ego can’t fathom being compared to someone- he has to beat them.
So yeah… What deplorable acts China did would be dwarfed by this fascist if given the chance. And I guarantee you that he wants that chance.
Look into US involvement with the Tlatelolco massacre. It was effectively order by the US. If they are willing to do that to someone else they will eventually be willing to do that to you. The death count you see on wikipedia is almost certainly an understatement they locked them in a square and shot at them like fish in a barrel
That sounds like it was the inspiration for the specific timeline of the Ghorman Massacre in Andor.
ghorman massacre
If maga successfully tigs the election to perfect a democratic takeover in November there will be tiananmen level event every week.
If you have that many people they can just knock them out. This is what should have happened a year ago.
The United States? No.
The American Nazi Party? Without a doubt.
There is no more United States. They would have to be United for that name to still apply. Now there is only the Disunited, Distracted States of America and the rapidly growing Fourth Reich taking their territory from within.
They don't bother with such things, America uses other means to squash such protests long before organization.
The means of organizing (the internet) is also the surveillance state. "grass roots" organizing has been dead for a very long time.
See the Patriot Act and history of CIA for further details. Recommend "Legacy of Ashes" by former CIA spook regarding history since 1950s or so. The people in charge then have been replaced by far worse, worse every term.
We only know a tiny bit, and what we do know is truly staggering and frankly when I've repeated actual facts online I've been told I'm a conspiracy theorist and booted, so I'll skip that part. The truth sounds ridiculous.
This is all publicly available information, they don't even bother hiding it any longer.
The orange regime kinda tried to do that in the first stint, and I would not be super shocked if they tried and actually did something like that nowadays. But it would also probably trigger widespread riots, if not outright rebellion in a lot of places.
They don't need to. The situation is so fundamentally different.
(Not saying that they wouldn't, because lunatics everywhere)
Sure, they have a lot of medal of honours to give out these brave patriots
It's honestly hard to say.
Doing it today? Probably no. Communication isn't nearly as censored as it was in 1989 China.
However there's 2 possible ways I could see a "yes".
Yes. The Tulsa race massacre for instance. Not that I’m comparing the current state of politics to longstanding racism, only that once you are sufficiently demonized by conservatives they have no problem killing you. And you can find similar events big and small throughout American history.
risk? risk what? there is evidently no consequence to any of the shit they pull. when you add the idea that the fucks in power are completely divorced from everyday people shit, they got even less of concept of risk vs reward. who's gonna rebel? who's gonna rise up?
you got "federal" goons invading states, kidnapping and killing people, commandeering the state's military, i.e. the national guard and the head of state is like "here's a tweetdunk".
garland's Civil War (2024) had an overly optimistic premise - that some people will have enough at some point.
Plenty of historical examples how they've handled this in the past to look for examples.
Im very skeptical of those pushing for and talking about wanting a civil war. Why? Because it means they wanna kill those they dont like.
Beware those who dream of killing the people they do not like. They promise paradise but deliver only another tyranny.
I don’t know guillotines sound like a promising solution to wealth inequality and mismanagement
Also, never forget those who use the guillotine die by it. It always ends the same for the robespiere
That’s a risk I’m willing to take
Well, thank you for the chat. I promise ill ponder this back and forth.
Came back to genuinely ask:
1, what are you willing to kill for? Ie What are the goal and ideals of your revolution
2 why haven't you started yet?
3 guns are woefully outdated, drones are the weapons of today. Are you dronned up yet?
I’d like to see every billionaire, shareholder and corporate CEO tried for their crimes and have their wealth confiscated. I’d like to see every politician with ties to Israel put on trial for treason and have the death penalty be put on the table. I’d like to have the goal be reducing wealth inequality by making all services required to live be public and a to have a constitutional convention with the goal of a total reformation of government.
one rando doesn’t make a revolution
not going to talk about what I have or don’t have on the internet
Ill suggest in your platform to not only hate the rich, but to also love the poor
Thank-you. Totally get 3. Have good day
You wish guillotine. Go to Reddit's page for combat footage. Watch drones blown people up so that they're on fire and their spine is exposed. That is the Civil War. You'll get.
Yeah you’re right let’s just see how bad this pedofile controlled Zionist dystopian prison gets. I’m sure if the Palestinian’s just complied nothing bad would have happened to them /s
There is no moment so bad, that it cant get worst.
Palestinians suffer greatly, needlessly. But there is a lesson we can take from their horrible mistreatment.
If you are a player in the game, you can win...but you can also loose.
Unless you have at least a few states of people ready to join you....your chances are bad and can end up w your death or worse: guantanimo level detainment.
Good luck w your choices...Genuinely.
Edit: my bad form, didn't realize i was responding to you.again or id skip it. We've chatted. No use deleting it now.