Famously, the way out of fascism has not been through democratic means. Fascist dictators tend to rig the democratic process to the point where it is obviously no longer democratic. The US has been seeing this since the founding of the country (electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression, 3/5ths compromise, lack of any federal direct ballot initiatives, mass propaganda campaigns like the Red Scare, etc.), but has only accelerated as more time has gone on, but more extreme contemporary examples would be countries like Russia, North Korea, or China.
The US also has a two party state due to the first past the post voting system that only accelerates this process faster, as the two parties are both corporate parties, and no party represents the will of the workers/lower classes.
Capitalists and fascists alike will do anything and everything in their power to both maintain and expand their power. The only exceptions are when there are mass, well-organized protests/uprisings/boycotts, but the corporations/the state also controls the media and now also the majority of the Internets’ communication services when “Web 2.0” started replacing less centralized services, making mass organization much more difficult.
Don’t get me wrong: We are indeed fucked beyond repair.
However, we have a dying fascist autocratic president who is trying to achieve dictatorship. We don’t have a dictator quite yet. And chances are he’ll be dead before he achieves that goal.
We’ll just become a rightwing hellhole as Vance more competently consolidates power for capital than Trump could dream of. And then the Democrats will probably barely win the presidency but it wont matter because they probably wont have the Senate, they definitely wont have the courts, and maybe even not have a majority in the House with all the gerrymandering. Nothing will get done and we’ll rot and liberals and socialists will be at each other’s throats too much over Trump’s previous repeated victories to pull anything together to meaningfully fight back.
Organize en masse. Look at what Nepal was able to do. Also be sure to have a permenant solution to corruption that the majority can agree on. I prefer Prof. Richard Wolff’s ideas personally, and I think avoiding centralized power as much as possible is of great importance.
Also have a voting system that isn’t on Discord that is very hard to hack by experienced hackers. I think blockchain voting can work very well for this. I understand the word “blockchain” is associated with cryptocurrency, but that can be changed. The voting system must also be transparent. If using software, open source, cryptographically signed software is a must.
If there are three or four points/demands that can be focused on that are easy to remember, even better. Look at how Bernie was able to bring the idea of single payer healthcare to the masses. Maybe something like this:
All businesses must be owned by the workers and run democratically.
Hard wealth cap of $50 million, including unrealized gains, tied to inflation. Enough to comfortably retire, but not enoigh to buy political favors.
All basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, sewage, higher education, healthcare, internet, etc. provided to everyone free of charge paid for by taxes.
Universal basic income tied to inflation so that people who can’t or don’t want to work can still persue hobbies and produce art without worry about failure.
Famously, the way out of fascism has not been through democratic means. Fascist dictators tend to rig the democratic process to the point where it is obviously no longer democratic. The US has been seeing this since the founding of the country (electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression, 3/5ths compromise, lack of any federal direct ballot initiatives, mass propaganda campaigns like the Red Scare, etc.), but has only accelerated as more time has gone on, but more extreme contemporary examples would be countries like Russia, North Korea, or China.
The US also has a two party state due to the first past the post voting system that only accelerates this process faster, as the two parties are both corporate parties, and no party represents the will of the workers/lower classes.
Capitalists and fascists alike will do anything and everything in their power to both maintain and expand their power. The only exceptions are when there are mass, well-organized protests/uprisings/boycotts, but the corporations/the state also controls the media and now also the majority of the Internets’ communication services when “Web 2.0” started replacing less centralized services, making mass organization much more difficult.
Don’t get me wrong: We are indeed fucked beyond repair.
However, we have a dying fascist autocratic president who is trying to achieve dictatorship. We don’t have a dictator quite yet. And chances are he’ll be dead before he achieves that goal.
We’ll just become a rightwing hellhole as Vance more competently consolidates power for capital than Trump could dream of. And then the Democrats will probably barely win the presidency but it wont matter because they probably wont have the Senate, they definitely wont have the courts, and maybe even not have a majority in the House with all the gerrymandering. Nothing will get done and we’ll rot and liberals and socialists will be at each other’s throats too much over Trump’s previous repeated victories to pull anything together to meaningfully fight back.
This is interesting. Do you know how to get out of the corpo fascist death spiral?
Organize en masse. Look at what Nepal was able to do. Also be sure to have a permenant solution to corruption that the majority can agree on. I prefer Prof. Richard Wolff’s ideas personally, and I think avoiding centralized power as much as possible is of great importance.
Also have a voting system that isn’t on Discord that is very hard to hack by experienced hackers. I think blockchain voting can work very well for this. I understand the word “blockchain” is associated with cryptocurrency, but that can be changed. The voting system must also be transparent. If using software, open source, cryptographically signed software is a must.
If there are three or four points/demands that can be focused on that are easy to remember, even better. Look at how Bernie was able to bring the idea of single payer healthcare to the masses. Maybe something like this:
All businesses must be owned by the workers and run democratically.
Hard wealth cap of $50 million, including unrealized gains, tied to inflation. Enough to comfortably retire, but not enoigh to buy political favors.
All basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, sewage, higher education, healthcare, internet, etc. provided to everyone free of charge paid for by taxes.
Universal basic income tied to inflation so that people who can’t or don’t want to work can still persue hobbies and produce art without worry about failure.