What’s left to talk about? How to react. How it ends. Where we likely go from there. Where we should go.
I highly recommend Anniversary https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12583926/
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.
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
https://scribe.rip/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-...
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.
Transparent as you could ever hope for: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang
At least that's what it looks like to an outside observer from elsewhere in the world. It's been fascinating as an outsider to watch your republicans suddenly unsure about the second amendment after the last few days.
The movement opposes equality because equality stands opposed to their need for hierarchy. It is a domination and submission movement. It boasts about its application of double standards. Double standards are not logical fallacies, when they use them they are virtues. To enjoy for themselves what they deny to others is a display of dominance.
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.
But now that the status quo of Western countries had begun rapidly shifting into something completely different, the other side of that initial ruling is starting to bear fruit. I really think that at this point they should revisit this policy - not to abandon moderation, but make amends that try to distance this place from the current political establishment. What was yesterday's implicit favoring of the boring consensus is now a defined position that's supportive of whatever the current powers do. But, being more cynical, given how close HN is to Y Combinator, I'm not sure if that option is on the table.
You're correct that we like to avoid flamewars, but not correct to say "anything involving politics". We don't try to (or want to) avoid politics altogether—a certain number of threads with political overlap have always been part of the mix here*. For (reams of) past explanations see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
What we want to avoid is HN being taken over by politics altogether, and thereby turning into an entirely different site. We want HN to adhere to its mandate, which is to optimize for intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). That certainly includes some political discussion, but (a) not beyond a certain threshold, and (b) not every kind of political story or article. (For example, opinion pieces are usually less of a fit than stories which contain significant new information, and so on.)
Unfortunately, this way of doing things inevitably generates conflict. For politically passionate users, that "not beyond a certain threshold" bit is far too little—especially in turbulent times, as now. Apart from that, there's no agreement on which particular stories deserve to be on the frontpage, and even if there were such agreement, there's still no way of making sure that the most deserving stories get the spots (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306).
Everyone has the experience of being frustrated when a story that they care about gets flagged or otherwise falls in rank. When feelings are running hot, people jump to the conclusion that we're secretly on the opposite political side, or trying to suppress discussion on a particular topic. That's not the case at all—it's all fully explicable by the principles that we've been repeating for years—but that doesn't change how it feels.
Then of course there are the users who feel like HN has been hosting way too much politics lately and is a shadow of its former self—this too has always been with us: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
Double unfortunately, I don't think there's much of a fix for any of these binds, because all of them derive from the fundamentals of what HN is - e.g. a single frontpage with only so many slots (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
(* Or to put it differently, note the words most and probably in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, as pg once said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4922426.)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-tr...
https://x.com/eastdakota/status/2009654937303896492
he's even using their rhetoric ("DISGUSTING")
That's some optimism right there.
It's been translated in English as Ur-fascism and is available online for free at the anarchist library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci....
See Ted Cruz's remarks on Jimmy Kimmel: "[W]hen it is used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it."
Or Brett Kavanaugh on Lisa Cook: that Trump shouldn't dismiss her because "what goes around comes around [...] if there's a Democrat president".
This is the moderate Republican position: no concern for the harm caused to people on the political left, only concern that they on the right might not get away with it. The MAGA position is, as this article shows, much worse.
My heart aches for the countless victims of this band of fascists in the executive branch.
This suggests to me there is some level of systemic intent (or at least ambivalence) with this administration's use of ICE's use of lethal force. It is beyond concerning. This admin is now very literally murdering us and will immediately try to justify it.
I remember reading 1984 when I was a kid and enjoying it, at no point did I think it was more than sci-fi though. I suppose it goes to show how much we took for granted the last 80+ years.
It also makes me respect Orwell so much more. Which was already very high based on how he makes tea. How was he able to see you presciently?
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
The US administration has always labeled any resistance against it as terrorism at least ever since 9/11. You might remember the justification of killing young Afghani males, who were posthumously labelled as terrorists. They drone strike an apartment complex and report 25 dead terrorists, conveniently omitting to report on dead children or women, because there were 25 males between the age of 15 - 25 among the dead. No evidence of terrorist activity required.
The only change is that the same justification is now being used within the US borders.
The dead are still, however, The Other, which is how it's being justified now as it was when the dead were foreigners in a war zone.
Imperial boomerang. After enabling Israel/IDF which routinely just shoots unarmed people and officials on all levels simply justify it with "Terrorists.", and also routinely denies ambulance access to victims shots, it was only a matter of time until such and similar tactics come back home. Because politicians back home saw that the world was okay with it, so why not do it home.
People are supposed to defend their rights from far away, so that they don't have to defend them uncomfortably close when it's too late to avoid many casualties.
It's 100% the intent of this admin to use their secret police to drive fear and terror
I think they are simply poorly trained people that are given free reign. The results are disastrous. They probably don't wake up thinking "Today I'm going to murder someone" but they just don't realize what they're doing. I'm not sure how it's at the destructiveness scale at this moment, but these organizations can and it probably will get much worse as their internal culture morphs into more directly aggressive stance.
The shootings were incredibly dumb, and it's pretty much what one would expect when they create this kind of situation. Listening to the "Revolutions" podcast I realized situations like these are incredibly common all along history, you have armed people with tense spirits, a gun goes off and tragedy ensues. The most terrible part of all of this is the reaction of the authorities that lie, gaslight and support these people, get them off the hook and this reaction will only generate more violence and more deaths as ICE realizes they _really can_ act with impunity.
The Stanford Prison Experiment is a good analogue to what we are seeing with ICE. People empowered to be cruel.
And they are given the message (from the president!) they have absolute immunity, and instructed to regard the law as a set of nonbinding guidelines.
The Supreme Court played a role in this too. They made it harder to stop by halting the long-established precedent of nationwide injunctions.
The people pulling the trigger are still not blameless. They are murderers no matter how badly misled. Your common murderer is misguided too. That doesn't mean they are absolved. I don't think that's what you were saying, but it bears mentioning.
They absolutely woke up thinking that. This is the happiest these monsters have been in their lives
Maybe not explicitly, but I do think there's a selection bias towards people who do want to do that. If you know you can get away with exerting violence towards a group of people you don't like, then that career is going to be very appealing towards people who want to do that.
It's the same thing with priests and their abuse of children. It's not like being a priest turns you into a child-abuser. It's just that priests are in a situation that they're constantly surrounded by kids unsupervised, can live alone unmarried without anyone questioning it, and when they do something horrible and abuse their power then they're often just moved to another parish. Of course a job like that is going to be attractive to people who want to abuse children.
I think ICE is similar. I do think there are people who join ICE with genuinely noble intentions, like getting rid of cartels and whatnot, but the Trump admin has made ICE something extremely appealing to people who have worse intentions.
The shooting of Alex Pretti was a long chain of escalatory and poor decisions on the part of ICE (well, assuming here that "good" is defined by not shooting people, I'm sure some in this admin might disagree). I might come off too sympathetic to ICE. I am not, but the real killers here are the ones creating these kinds of situations, the ones using ICE as a political gain machine. I'm sure that ICE has its shares of psychopaths, but giving them reign in the first place... those people empowering them have blood on their hands.
Except that "flinching" is not happening. An earlier comment of mine:
---
On the most recent event, a reduced-speed video showing one agent (centre, bent over at beginning) removing the victim's firearm from his waistband, then a second agent (left) waiting for the first to get clear, and then pulling his pistol (video stops before any shooting):
* https://x.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015272806636736647
* https://xcancel.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015272806636736647
The actual shooting of the victim; view discretion advised:
* https://x.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015335743443378660
* https://xcancel.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2015335743443378660
---
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754974
The second waited for the first guy to be clear, then drew, then started shooting. He was waiting for his opportunity.
I still think that the most dangerous thing from this whole situation is how this admin frames it and effectively encourages ICE to kill people further, because there will be no consequence for them. Essentially, same thing they did with the Jan 6 protesters.
Obviously, the ICE agents have to rationalise what they do. "We are the good guy, we work against the bad guys". But I don't think that they wake up in the morning hoping that they will have an opportunity to hurt what they themselves consider "average americans".
Looking at the video, I could totally imagine that the first shot fired was a mistake, and then one or more of the agents panic and shoot... well... a LOT of times. That doesn't seem rational, or professional. I don't think that the agent thinks "ahah! Here is my opportunity, I'll shoot him 5 more times". Still, they killed someone for no apparent reason (it's not a proportional defense, quite obviously) and they should be judged for that.
Jonathan Ross (the ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good) is an Iraq war veteran who has served in military and paramilitary units (National Guard, CBP, ICE) for over two decades. He intentionally engaged in a behavior that has been documented as far back as 2014 [1] to manufacture a reason to shoot the person in front of him.
Did he premeditate killing someone while getting out of bed that morning? Probably not.
Did he make the decision to kill Ms. Good in advance? No reasonable doubt.
[1] Even by CBP internal reviews, no less: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-i...
Most LEO's are lawful well intentioned, but they do stand by and cover for a good many who are not, those that these days have encrypted chat groups dehumanising those they interact with and swapping notes on what they can get away with and come out smelling of roses.
Those rotten apples corrupt new recruits and normalise harshly putting the boot in, curb stomping, and other extremes.
An acquaintance of mine has seen the full roller coaster over the past 45 years, first defending police that were unquestionably exuberant in violence, later shunned for having had enough and pulling the rug.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
They literally just murdered someone in cold blood. Textbook execution without trial. And have some of the most powerful people in the world saying how brave they are and how great of a job they did executing their duty.
Their entire recruiting process has the effect of self selecting for the exact kind of person who is significantly more likely to shoot an unarmed nonviolent protestor.
If I recall correctly they even have notably higher salary and signing bonuses compared to similar agencies, which could be (decent pessimistically) interpreted as a way to hoover up more recruits with questionable moral bases. "Oh I really don't think ICE is doing the right thing, but oh boy sign me up for that cash baby".
https://www.kuow.org/stories/how-ice-grew-to-be-the-highest-...
posting isn't praxis. what do you think more articles on this site will achieve?
I'm not sure why you need to conjure up ultra-cynical motives for us running HN this way, since the reasons we give for this (i.e. the real ones) explain things better. (for example, if we only cared about suppressing this stuff, why would HN be having frontpage threads about it at all? that doesn't make much sense.) But that's just me.
I think it would help you guys to understand that most of the HN community, even most who agree with you politically, do not want us to throw in the towel and let HN become just like the rest of the internet. Only a small portion of users actually want this, though they do post intense (and sometimes even aggressive) comments about it. Given that HN has always stuck to its mandate and that the community wants us to keep doing that, I don't see this as a close call.
Would you like to know the difference between those spaces and here? It's that in those spaces, regardless of if the members are left right or center, the community is on the same page in terms of authoritarians, and authoritarian apologia will get you tossed.
Therefore, there isn't the same sort of desire - or need - to point out the obvious and show the uncomfortable realities to the crowd.
Refusing to take a stand on this sort of thing and leaving it for the community to sort out will only make things worse. It's functionally no different than the kind of combative environment you get on major social media networks; the only difference is the amount of tone policing caused by the user-facing moderation tools.
Will the US say "Wait a minute, things went too far, now that he's gone we need more checks and balances before another President tries to repeat what just happened" like when they added term limits to the Constitution after FDR, or some of the post-Watergate limits imposed on the Presidency?
Or will Trump's redefinition of government power become normalized, like the redefinition of government power that happened with the Patriot Act, TSA security theater, NSA spying on US citizens, etc. after 9/11 that was justified as anti-terrorism? Those policies were never unwound even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are over, Osama bin Laden is dead, and there have been no more attacks on that scale.
First up, I don't think the republican party moderates in 2029. The Trump mentality is the new normal and I believe republicans are just going to keep trying to be as fascist as possible as long as possible. We've learned that there are basically no limits on a corrupt presidency and I really fear what that will mean for any future republican president.
But secondly, I'm afraid that Democrats aren't rising to the occasion. They aren't putting forward meaningful reforms or changes to address the fascism. In terms of ICE, a lot of them are trying to put forward meaningless reforms like "let's give them more training" or "let's put their names in a QR code". The entire agency needs nuremberg style trials at this point and some Dems want to give them a weekend meeting with HR.
These two facts scare the shit out of me. Because, my fear is we will see a repeat of 2024 in 2032. Assuming we have free and fair elections, I can see a Democrat becoming president in 2028, doing nothing to address the systemic problems exposed by trump, and ultimately a new republican will be voted in in 2032 because people are sick of nothing getting better under democrats. And that 2032 republican president will ultimately know they can do everything Trump did and they'll be cheered on by the base.
Democrats need to be messaging about real positive changes they'll make.
I believe this country will need massive investigations and criminal trials to heal. I am concerned with what happens in between, but this is reality as I see it.
Protests are what Trump wants. He would like nothing better than marshal law and cancelling the mid terms. He has said so many times.
Let's not forgot and/or (3) going after Minnesota voter roles (per this letter from Pam Bondi):
* https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/...
* https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bondi-minnesota-voter-rolls-wel...
This is obviously violence directed at Minnesota, who is led by a political opponent. It’s capital F Fascism and everyone on the right has grandfathers that are ashamed of them.
There's plenty of German heritage in the US. There was a decent number of grandparents who thought the US was on the wrong side of WW2.
It's called being pro-rule of law.
You're not allowed to just shoot people in the back that are very obviously not a threat, even if their idiotic lack of proper training makes them feel like they're in danger. It's literally South Parkian "they're coming right for us!!!" -- BANG -- as justification for lethal force of an unarmed person in custody.
The mainstream media is not covering the many daily protests I see in my area, and hear and see from friends and family elsewhere. However, I do think the majority of Americans do not have the luxury (or fear of losing their job, and thus their healthcare, etc) to just walk out on their jobs or responsibilities, and the social safety nets here are limited (and being further cut by this administration).
I do think a general strike is the last chance at a non-violent resistance, but the oligarchs and powerful can weather that storm much more easily than the average American.
It's very obvious this administration and it's supporters are trying to control the narrative of their crimes against the American people. It's evident with their doctoring of evidence, their outright deceit, and the suspicious censorship we see across the entire web. Including HN.
If that's true then this site and pg can go ahead and fuck themselves with a rusty knife.
edit:
I challenge you to post a comment labelling the United States government "fascists" in this front-page thread about ICE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46756117
It won't stay up for long.
Also, this phrase from him:
> This is an inconvenient perspective that some of the more well-funded and well-connected Hacker News readers would prefer to ignore.
Them winning absolute control over the country would be a disaster for their movement though. They'd turn to internal fighting, the entropy of victory and all that. And they don't seem terribly competent with governance, it would probably turn off a lot of smart people, so the country would lose a lot of its capabilities.
EDIT: Also, there are funny things going on with the political submissions. I think there is active interference going on, they get flagged almost immediately. This got flagged and unflagged in the space of a couple minutes, so thanks to the mod team they are letting it up, I think there is important conversation to be had here.
that would be after they've finished executing the undesirables?
I am quite amazed that the 2nd amendment people seem to be the ones that are cheering on the federal gestapo
"Rights for me, not for thee"
Monarchs are in place without democratic support, so they have little incentive to be popular (though not unpopular either). Not being involved in politics often results in them having a distant concern for their subjects. They rarely instigate policy making. Doesn't sound like Trump.
They are very relevant to the current state of affairs in America, with respect to tech, immigration, startups, and the hacker ethos
The brain drain was massive, both before the war, and even more so after. That didn't stop the peasant minded from supporting the Nazi regime though. They got to punish the people who they were told made them poor.
I live in FL, so I get to interact daily with people who are cheering for this crackdown, and have said the equivalent of "those rioters (protestors) should be put down in the street". I don't have much hope for where our country is headed.
The flags on any type of post like this are absolutely ridiculous. Glad the mods are at least for now letting this one stand.
Of course these all turned out to be grave miscalculations. I imagine that pattern will eventually play out this time too...
The centrists ultimately lost when the Nazis banned other political parties. If they were not murdered first. And the Nazis took control of the German workforce, imposed harsh taxation on businesses, central planning, nationalization etc.
I'm sure the uneasy alliance worked well for a a little while though!
The only question now is will the people be able to stop the takeover before it’s too late.
The US was supposedly ruled by a fascist in 2018: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/books/review/jason-stanle...
There was also supposedly fascism coming in 2016: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/this-is-how-fascism-comes...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626...
And yet we had elections in 2020. So whatever, it was clearly not authoritarian fascism because we had free elections that the authoritarian fascist was ousted in. So what I think I experienced there was semantic satiation with the word fascism.
EDIT: To clarify position vis a vis reply, I am simply saying that I have heard the word 'fascism' so much I don't really react with any sense when someone says it. It's like hearing 'rape' or 'spying' on Hacker News. I assume it means "I was shown a banner ad for toothpaste after searching for toothpaste". In other contexts those words have negative valence of great significance. In this context, I just glaze over.
Likewise, the word 'fascism' from a left-leaning outlet could be anything from the end of medicare subsidies to a drone strike on an Islamic fundamentalist general to charging fares on a train.
Just sharing how I feel about it. It does not have that emotional strength that it originally felt.
2015: You're overreacting!
2016: You're overreacting!
2017: You're overreacting!
2018: You're overreacting!
2019: You're overreacting!
2020: You're overreacting!
2021: You're overreacting!
2022: You're overreacting!
2023: You're overreacting!
2024: You're overreacting!
2025: How could we possibly have known things would have gone this way?!
Also, the midterm elections this year will be a direct, real and concrete mechanism that demonstrates that we aren’t living under fascism in the United States.
I'll accept a little front-running then, if you don't mind.
Every pessimistic approximation isnt always good. We lose credibility when we keep doing it.
It hasn't yet captured the whole country. The parts of criticism they have had the power to silence, they have already silenced. Who's in the White House press corps again?
When they will capture all the power they need, the criticism will be silenced.
I fear that we might not see a definitive Democratic win though at the midterms. I think your country is already past the point of no return and your population is just not getting it yet.
I think I _am_ guilty of using a poor intellectual facade trying to make sense of this what the fuck historical moment we're in. Because trust me, my country is in a dangerous place as well.