alt Hacker NewsI'm confused, is Cory under the impression that the fascism isn't already here? America is well underway on the that project. Frankly the fascism was plenty apparent after 9/11, when the Bush years entrenched a permanent security state through endless-war powers (AUMF), mass surveillance (Patriot Act/NSA spying), expansive detention and torture regimes (CIA black sites like Guantanamo), a huge domestic enforcement bureaucracy (DHS/ICE), and tax cuts that concentrated wealth upward, cuts to education and healthcare. These are the exact things the current-day fascists are using to choke us now.
People are only upset today because it's affecting white folk more directly, when back then it was aimed at Muslims. We warned you all back then about this, we warned again in 2016, we warned again in 2024, and yet here we are, knee deep in fascism. Maybe we'll be neck deep soon but let's not pretend this is just starting or about to start because of AI.
Words have meaning, I don't think any serious scholar would agree with you that the US in the early 2000s was a fascist state. It lacked the societal regimentation, the autocracy, the personality worship, the aesthetics of order, the totalitarianism of the state, the subservience of religion and the individual to the state. It's an absurd proposition.