Could it happen here? (In the USA)

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it could be said, then, that your errant PM inoculated your nation against a repeat visit from future political bullies. I am reminded of what Churchill said about America, words to the effect that we eventually could be persuaded to do the right thing but only after we have done every other wrong thing first. sounds like a nutshell description of American style conservatism to me.

I think we could do with a booster injection to increase the efficacy of the past innoculation.. maybe that is the function that Trump serves here (as the booster injection).

Perhaps this will sound a cautionary note though: that particular Prime Minister even interfered with the time honoured concept of judicial independence, which is very strict here as it is in England. Only one Prime Minister showed contempt for that time honoured hallmark. He publically interfered in a judicial decision because it meant adverse consequences for a mate of his, who covered up the truth at an inquiry into an air accident in which many lives were lost, for his own benefit. The judiciary were appalled. The judge resigned in protest. Most of the country were shocked and appalled too. But that chapter did unmask for people the demagogic nature of the PM of the time, far more clearly than anything prior, though worse things were to follow before he was deposed.

Those worse things were nationwide riots and blood in the streets, all across the cities of New Zealand. The police attacked unarmed citizens, licensed especially to do so with vicious long batons (by the same demagogue). A bystander was viciously attacked and blinded by one of the police thug squads, only a few feet away from me. (Cynically the police called these squads "red squads - red being the colour of blood presumably). They were instructed not to use peaceful arrest as first option against lawful protestors but to attack, and they did. I was an eye witness on a number of different occasions. People were badly hurt. There were nationwide scenes kiwis never imagined in their wildest dreams they would see, had never seen before, have not seen since, and never want to see again.

The memories of that time and those horrors are scars on this country's soul. Healed now, pretty much, but never to be forgotten.

Prior to that, no one dreamt for a moment that such things could happen here. Yet just one powerdrunk politician made them happen. I truly do not wish that scenario on America. It is terrible. I think many in the USA don't know how bad it can be, and how quickly it can reach that stage, and how pervasive the menace is. Even in a peaceful peace-loving country like New Zealand, this happened. We don't talk about it hardly ever now, because it is too painful to be reminded of what actually happened here. Many of the people who had helped elect this cretin felt guilty and still feel affected by that.

Anyone who saw the NZ film "Sleeping Dogs" or read the novel "Smith's Dream" that the film was based on will get a sense of how things were back then. The novel was written both as a compelling tale and a warning before the worst happened. But at the time, people didn't at first take it seriously. They thought nothing like that could happen here. It could and it did. Don't make the same mistake as we did. It's over 30 years ago now and still causes me pain, as I write about the facts of those real events. The sense of betrayal goes very deep.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sleeping-dogs-1977
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1030248-sleeping_dogs/

did that PM get to escape scot-free or did he ever pay any penalty? i hope it wasn't like Nixon getting by with just a resignation and ez-pz retirement for 2 decades. Nixon tried something a little along those lines [what your PM did] with his "Saturday night massacre." and people of color here long have lived under the new jim crow where the cops attack first and ask questions later if at all.

Eventually his own party deposed him. He spent the rest of his life basically ringing up talk back radio, where he would slur his words in an alcoholic way. These were often strange, drunken, tragic and despicable rants full of self-justification and self-pity. He is dead now; he was the kind of man who liked power over others, and absolute power made him feel absolutely powerful. The more powerful he became, the crueller and more vindictive also.

As a Jewish person growing up a couple of decades after the holocaust we had it drummed into to us that "It Can Happen Here". The parallels between the safe prosperous position the Jews are in, in America with the Jewish position in Germany pre Nazi was mentioned often. Unedited concentration camp films were shown to us at a fairly young age.

Even as a person who did not know she had some Jewish ancestry in my childhood (only recently revealed to me by a relative), I was informed as a young child about the Holocaust, (in 1953 I learned what had happened in the death camps) and saw terrible evidence of children of my own age then being brutally murdered by the Nazis. It must have been even more traumatising for you in your childhood, APOM, I struggle to imagine that (though completely empathise). Just learning in my case that adults were capable of doing such things to children my age impacted on me as a child at a very deep level.

it is definitely helpful to categorically answer that question with yes.
you lose nothing by considering it a possibility, but you can lose a lot by falsely ruling it out.

I'm scared, when people like Zizek say he sees democracy developing either into a nationalist, fascist socialism (after all, nationalsocialism sustained itself that way), or communism, with the latter seeming unlikely...

but I think we in the west are currently still a far cry from death camps, - while we have refugee/concentration camps at european borders, we don't have any "genetic" opponent, i.e. a presumed enemy whose presumed evilness goes down to his genetic makeup and needs to be extermminated for that reason. for now our so called enemies are muslim, and we're not considering the idea of having to keep our genepool save from muslim genes or some similar garbage.

I'm going to say something horrible now, but please understand that I don't mean to offend anyone but rather point out an unhappy councidence, namely that the jewish people are a relatively closed off community, which, at the worng place and at the wrong time, made them almost perfect "genetic" enemies for the nazis. they were, as a group, easily defineable. (no, I'm not trying to say they brought it on themselves by being a closed off community or some malicious nonsense like that.)
muslims are currently not as easy to define by racism, so a theoretical act of racial cleansing is challenging even to conceptualize.

but I'm sure it's not impossible, and someone will find a marker at some point....

...There's a new stageplay adaptation of Lewis's novel (which I've read twice?? over the years) playing/that recently played in San Francisco , BTW .
I am very hurried now , find it for yourself .

Thank you. I plan to spend part of the approaching New Zealand Summer down at beach reading all of his novels, under the flowering Pohutukawa trees If there is a play of his performed to be here in future, I will be going to it also.

...I don't know that he ever wrote plays - There maybe were some , at least one IIRC , other play adaptations , some movies - I have read ELMER GANTRY , BABBITT , and MAIN STREET , I am sure , over the years . ARROWSMITH is well-known , but I don't recall ever reading it .
I guess he is coming back into style ! I believe , after being very popular and seen as influential and winning a Nobel Prize ! in his time , he rather fell out of fashion is the post-World War II/his life " modern " 20th Century .

Sinclair Lewis provided this address and biography to the Nobel Prize Committee.
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes ... s-bio.html

For such a famous writer, he comes across as rather modest, compared to some of his contemporaries who were less successful than he. He was offered two Nobel prizes AFAIK, refused the first offer, accepted the second later on.

I am afraid you are wrong. Thilo Sarrazin (former financial minister in Berlin, socialdemocrat) has exactly advanced this: that muslims are genetically inferior to Germans. His book "Germany is getting rid of itself" ("Deutschland schafft sich ab") has been thoroughly discussed in all media for several months and found wide acclaim with a huge part of the German population. http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 15876.html It also has a lot to do with the rise of the local Pegida movements and the AfD (which started well before the big wave of refugees).

I would also not say that "the jewish people were a relatively closed off community". Not in Germany at least: many had been assimilated, the Prussians already had accorded Jewish a lot of rights in order to attract investment and people to populate Belrin and the less densely areas around which had been partly marhsland before, they did not live in separated areas anymore, many either hardly practiced their religion or converted to christianism, changed their (already German) surnames (-stein, -baum etc.) into non-Jewish names, chose Christian or Germanic for their children, and most of all: the big majority of them did look like Germans. So much less "closed off" than the Turkish in Germany today. I would say that it was exactly this indecernability that made them the ideal target, because you could also fathom that all capitalists, your nasty Non-Jewish landlord or the ex-girlfriend that maliciously left you must be Jewish.

Btw, Sarrazin also spoke of a Jewish gene ("Judengen") but this time he seems to put it on the Arian side, so to say, as it is apparently associated with the "high-giftedness gene" which runs in the German population.

To Mootoo: you are basically right with your objections against my optimistic view. But I would say that there is a slight difference and it counts. I was not saying: "nothing like that could ever happen". I was just saying: it could not be that bad. Then there is one point which is probably more of a whishful thinking: that this time, the reasonable people will stand up earlier instead of letting things derail completely. A lot depends on this. And by standing up, I mean rather the many little acts and deeds of many than the big revolt.

Let's imagine this horror has happened: a sleeping dog situation has developed where dissenters are hunted, punished, even killed. The authoritarian ruler functions as a despot, rather than a president. Brute force is used to terrify and intimidate, families are thrown out of their homes, parents out of their jobs, etc, unless they "join the club", protestors are shot in the street, murder squads operate covertly on behalf of the leader..

As we all know, the citizens of America are already heavily armed, though that includes the despot's supporters of course, so relying on guns to reclaim freedom could become a "last man standing" scenario fairly quickly. And "last woman" standing. If the despot hates those who dissent enough, their lives will have no value; the rule of law will be rewritten to increase and cement power in a few hands.. a nightmare.

Which (if any) of the four other eyes would or wouldn't help the "rebels"? Would there even be a five eyes anymore? Would NZ throw the American spybases out of NZ? IF the five eyes completely crumbled what would that mean for USA security from external threats and would it encourage attack by other unfriendly countries? Would Canada and Mexico allow USA dissenters to flee to their countries across the border and let them take safe haven and citizenship there? Presumably freedom of movement would not allow them to board a plane and seek political asylum anywhere else, though maybe there would be a "get out we don't want you" policy, "just go". Either way?

However if they can theoretically leave, which countries would accept them as refugees? Why and why not in each case? What if all your assets had been confiscated by the state and you were declared a "non person" so leaving wasn't an option? Would people just pretend to agree to avoid being hurt, so that there appeared to be little real dissent? What would the former allies' response to that be? etc

Feel welcome to create an alternate vision of what an authoritarian state under a despotic leader would be like or use this one..

What if?

PS: In the land of reality, the New Zealand government has announced this very day that it is immediately going to limit the numbers of immigrants it will allow to come here. (This is a new direction that surprised everyone when it was announced, as the government has said up until today that it had no intention to change the status quo re this).

Fascism came to America long before our current spat of things, I think George Carlin said something along the lines of 'Germany lost WWII but fascism won it" and I would say it came here well before that even. You students of history should know the praise heaped on these fascist regimes from America & the inspiration taken from America by these fascist regimes, most know that Adolf Hitler took inspiration from our greatest industrialist Henry Ford. We treat fascism and communism as these unique ideologies that never once existed in history before the 20th century but what are they in practice but despotism in search of a righteous cause?

Trump supports Supreme Court justices that will uphold the constitution, he wants to stop meddling in the Middle East and to change the American policy of regime change, and he'll reverse the centralization of power in our oppressive federal government so a fascist I think Trump is not relative to his opponent who openly disregards the rule of law and has shown a penchant for wreaking murderous havoc across the globe for decades now. Hillary is beholden to the special interests, she is a corporatist to her core and has no real ideological principles besides the relentless pursuit of power. Trump has power and money, he doesn't need to do this like Hillary does who has made hundreds of millions by selling political influence and may running to stay out of prison which is not an all too uncommon occurrence in other parts of the world as often the elected leaders are given immunity from prosecution and it seems we simply do that in all but name as nobody is ever really held accountable unless of course they've flown to close to the sun but that's not really holding who is really in charge responsible.

I imagine it was always a tall hurdle for Americans of average means to emigrate to NZ. no $$$$$$$= no entry. no college degree = no entry. chronic illness = no entry. lack of squeaky-clean record = no entry. how could it have been made stricter?

The qualifying system itself is staying the same, it's the numbers that are changing (downwards). Theoretically you can get in if you fit into a category NZ wants at any time (right now there is a shortage of qualified builders) though you have to pass character and other checks too of course. That wouldn't get you automatic citizenship, though it could lead to a successful application for what is called "residency" - which means you can stay for a longish time and enjoy the privileges of NZ life in a fairly unrestricted way. There are different pathways to get here though all of them are conditional on approval, which can be denied even if you meet all the conditions. Some students who study here from overseas are permitted to work during the course of their visitor/study visa too.

There is as you suspect another way in and that is to buy citizenship basically (though it isn't called that of course) if you make a very very substantial monetary donation to the government... which kiwis are not happy about as some bigtime criminal scumbags have got in under that particular provision, you bet! That's what free market policies do - pay enough cash, you can buy anything, and the politicians currently in charge here are pretty rabid free marketeers. They may be elected out next year. Hope so.