this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Ingonna be honest. Trump is a danger to democracy and to the world as a whole. Eliminating him would be a contribution to democracy. However, if you decide to go for him, make sure hes really dead. If he just gets hurt that's a Hufe win for him, because he then can use this attack to deploy a massive anti democratic campaign giving him more Attention.
However, violence should be the lädt option. There are other ways to defeat fascism. Make it possible that the average person can have a good life and don't copy fascists points. In the case of Trump the USA also missed its chance to ban him from the elections.
The problem with taking down Fascism with violence is that you're just killing the figureheads, not the fascist ideas. Say that the assassination attempt was successful - he'd become a martyr who would strengthen those beliefs in people (they want to take us down because we're right type of deal), and his legacy would be easily continued by thousands of influential conservative politicians/foundation members.
Also, political assassination doesn't exactly scream "upholding democracy". If you believe in democracy, you shouldn't want to see a political opponent lose an election for any reason other than the election itself.
This ignores the unfair elements of American democracy including gerrymandering and the electoral college. It also highlights a flaw in democracy, because a fair and equal society wouldn't permit fascists to be elected.
Democracy shouldn't be limited to the dictatorship of the majority, there need to be other ways to ensure fairness
Like murdering your enemies? Because that sounds more like barbaric "might makes right" despotism than democracy to me. The moment that both sides accept that these are the rules of the game, all pretense of democracy is dead. At that point "elections" would just be two years of assassination attempts and whichever candidate is still alive in November wins the presidency.
Do you expect to have a productive conversation when you frame things this way?
Anyway I'm sure if you vote hard enough the US Empire won't collapse as a fascist echo of itself. Make sure you put your back into it.
I'm not saying it's not an efficient way of dealing with your enemies. But you can't say "this person is a threat to the democracy we value so highly" and then say "voting won't help, we need to assassinate candidates we don't like". It sounds like you don't actually value democracy. You just value the candidate you like winning.
From a game theory perspective, democracy isn't fair. Someone has to lose in order for someone else to win. Particularly in a zero-sum game like the presidential election. You can change the rules of the game, but then you have to be aware that the rules are symmetric. If the new rule is "if the candidate is espousing particularly radical or offensive ideas, it's okay to kill them", then the other side gets to play by those rules too. If civil war and barbarism sound like fun to you then by all means go for it. Because once that seal is broken, there's no going back.
AFAIK the US has never had a presidential candidate get assassinated this close to the election. It would undoubtedly interfere with the fair execution of the democratic process.
Also, if you think Trumpism dies with Trump you haven't been paying attention. He's mostly just a useful idiot for the actual forces at work. He's just as senile as Biden, but he has better PR and more experience bullshitting people in order to hide his idiocy.
Also also, if you think the "American empire" isn't already a fascist echo of itself, you definitely haven't been paying attention for like the last two hundred years.
The only alternative to democracy is assassination and barbarism? What about consensus building and federation?
Once again you're making a straw man.
And yes, sometimes fascists need to be dealt with with violence, whether the figurehead alone or all of them. I'm not advocating for that to happen today but history teaches us this.
My mistake, I thought you were advocating political violence in your original comment (like many others in this thread are). Didn't mean to strawman you. Thought you were voicing agreement with all those other comments.
Thanks for the civil response. I can see how you came to that conclusion and to be clear I think violence can become necessary in order to defend a free and fair society but I don't believe that it should be common or expected by default.
Democracy has its problems and my critiques of it come from an egalitarian "left" perspective rather than the might-oriented perspective others espouse here.
The only point I meant to make is that American democracy isn't fair and even its ideal state leaves some people at the margins. In that system violence will always have a place.
Oh absolutely. I think there may come a point within the next decade where violence is inevitable. But IMO they aren't there yet.