Sure. MAGA/Trumpism aren’t reincarnated Nazis though. It is a uniquely American populist personality cult. Calling them Nazis means you don’t understand how they operate and why they’re successful.

Trump has achieved a ceasefire in Gaza. Some Palestinians are celebrating it as a victory.

Trump has delivered a ceasefire that was always clamored for.

Trump actually delivered a ceasefire.

Mods and admins are connected across instances on Lemmy. I have seen someone get banned from their own instance for posting something, that wasn’t even against the rules, on another instance. These power structures are not transparent and can bite you any time.

Mods can be very ban happy around here as well.

Agreed. I highly recommend choosing a different instance for your account.

The mods on !worldnews@lemmy.world and other communities routinely ban posters that don’t violate the rules, just because they don’t like their political opinion.

See !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com for some discussion around mods‘ abuse of power.

I doubt there’s a plan behind this.

Social media wasn’t the primary driver behind the Arab spring. The economic issues were the trigger. People couldn’t afford to buy food. Lack of food will topple any government. Media control only gets one so far.

On the Internet the dominant websites can change quickly. Being banned from Twitter enabled Trump‘s Truth Social. Buying Twitter gave Elon Musk a giant soap box. However new soapboxes are constructed all the time and some succeed.

Asset doesn’t mean Russia has full power over them, only that they’re acting to their advantage

I also think this is some crypto bro shenanigans. Ulbricht might even have billions in Bitcoin stashed away somewhere for a juicy payback.

The US was the first large scale modern democracy. Of course it has design flaws.

Parlamentarism, as we know it now, had only been recently established in the UK in the 17rh century.

Contemporary to US early democracy were absolutist monarchies based on aristocracy. Separation of powers envisioned by Montesquieu, Rousseau‘s social contract, were still new political ideas. The federalist papers and later US constitution were cutting edge political theory at the time.

It’s very impressive that the US has lasted so long actually and was able to adapt. The French established their first democratic republic later and were unable to create a stable state.

Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote

Who should have the power to make that decision?

Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?

Or maybe have something like an electoral college?

Or the army coups, if things get too far?

The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.

Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.

Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.

Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.

There are many conservatives, who hold democratic values, freedom, and the US constitution in high regard. Those in government service have sworn an oath to protect it against enemies foreign and domestic. They have their red lines and breaking points. The ones in powerful positions draw their whole legitimacy from it.

This very liberal use of Nazi and fascist as a epithet has devalued its meaning.

Hate is not enough. The Nazis did far more than spread hate. National-Socialism was much more coherent and thought through ideology than Trumpism/MAGA is today.

Nazi might be useful as an expression of anger and resentment, but it’s not conducive to serious analysis or discourse regarding the situation.

Links to Russian websites and telegram are banned on most of not all subreddits.

Boycotting Twitter is a good idea for many reasons. However this kind of blanket link ban will lead to more informational segregation quickly. This has already happened in many ways since the beginning of the war on Ukraine. Linking to Telegram or any Russian website is no longer allowed in many forums, e. g. Reddit. That has made finding original sources and verifying information much more difficult.

Take links to videos for example. Reddit is full of videos copied from YouTube, Telegram, TikTok, etc. without attributing the original source. The World Wide Web was supposed to link information together into a network, where you can follow up on origins snd details. Nowadays it has turned into a series of copy & paste silos, enabling the most extreme echo chambers.

People have been leaving Twitter in waves for years. This is just another one.

It’s not a full on Nazi salute as the words „Heil“, „Heil Hitler“, or „Sieg Heil“ aren’t used. However, it is a full on salute in its tradition. A right wing oligarch holding a victory speech espousing conservative revolution and a glorious future are in the vein of the fascism of old.

Trumpism doesn’t need to even express itself as fully fascist. The popular support, the support of the tycoons of industry, institutional acquiescence, lack of organized resistance, means he doesn’t need to go full authoritarian.

The ideological flexibility of Trumpism is enormous. Allegiance to Trump and MAGA is pretty much it. The rest of the ideology is dynamically formed by sycophants looking for Trump‘s favor. The post ironic attitude means immunity to value based criticism.

Elon Musk is a mix of minister for propaganda and court jester at the same time.

My heart goes out to you is the fig leaf Elon used for plausible deniability. He probably thinks he was terribly clever. Which, as it turns out, he was. Elon will get away with this and pushed the envelope of what’s possible. Others will imitate him.

This has all the elements for a softer fascist salute, where the words aren’t „Sieg Heil!“ or „Duce!“, but simply „my heart!“. A salute with the hand moving from heart to extension while saying firmly „my heart!“ works well to be visually striking.