I’m sorry but this post is absurd and absolutely misses the point. It’s no longer hyperbole to say that voting for Trump is voting to end democracy and institute dictatorship in the USA with a Hitler-like character at the helm. If you are at all skeptical about that statement then you are uninformed.
Here are some bullet points of why a second Trump presidency will be completely unlike the first:
The Supreme Court is stacked in his favor, with provably corrupt justices, who have already taken actions to strengthen executive power of the president to dictator-like levels and given the president complete immunity from the legal consequences of his/her actions. This in theory even includes the use of violence against political adversaries. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/trump-immunity-murder-navy-sotomayor-00166385
The Republican party has become extremized with more Trump-like fanatics such as Marjorie Taylor Greene supporting extreme far-right policies. There won’t be a Mike Pence or other voices of reason to hold back Trump next time.
Trump claims to have no knowledge of Project 2025 and yet many members of his staff and JD Vance have ties to it and the Heritage Foundation. The leader of Project 2025 has stated on national TV that it “will be a revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Trump’s “rhetoric” is not rhetoric. When he unapologetically says he wants to be dictator on day 1 in countless interviews, even when confronted on his seriousness about it and given chances to back down, that can no longer be considered rhetoric. When he tells people they won’t need to vote anymore after this election that’s not rhetoric. There’s a reason his own vice president said he went back and forth on wondering if Trump was “America’s hitler”.
When he continues to make baseless claims and builds a large cult following around the idea of election fraud in 2020 even though those claims were widely investigated and found to be completely unsubstantiated, and then talks about getting retribution against people who have rigged the system against him, that’s not rhetoric. If you’re rationalist and value intellectual integrity how can you support one of the greatest gas lighters in history?
When he gives glowing reviews of other authoritarians like Putin and Xi Jinping that’s not rhetoric.
The idea that anyone who is remotely interested in EA and doing good in the world can even considering supporting Trump is atrocious and makes me sad.
I think describing anyone “Hitler-like” is pretty bad for the discourse quality, especially if you don’t support it with arguments. Autocrats differ quite a lot. For example, while Trump is extremely dismissive of democracy and willing to undermine it, he’s not as ideologically driven as Hitler and mostly interested in power and praise.
I am also extremely worried about Trump being elected, and agree with your list of bullet points being very concerning. However, it’s not certain that Trump would succeed in destroying US democracy.
Free & fair elections in 2028 if Trump is elected? 75% (n=35) to 80% (n=31)
If Dems win 2024, will Republicans attempt a coup? 21% (n=35) & 39% (n=12)
if elected, will Trump invoke insurrection Act within 3 months? 24% (n=60)
if elected in 2024, will Trump remain in charge in 2031? 7% (n=22)
All these are very concerning, but not certainties. Also, they all depend on specific resolution criteria and I wish there were more forecasters on these questions (so please join & promote it among friends!)
That said, I agree with your broader point that focusing on a few disparate policies while ignoring the undermining is democracy makes this not a great post. (Although I like the fact that specific policies can be discussed here, and some can still be positive!)
Thanks for your response. To be clear, you are aware of these Hitler-like facts regarding Donald Trump (just to list the ones that first come to mind):
In speeches he often describes plans to do massive-scale round ups of illegal immigrants into “camps” and mass deportations if he is elected again.
I would apologize for the relatively undiplomatic nature of my writing but the time for long-winded slow-moving discourse is long passed. There are barely 3 months left until the 2024 election which may prove to be one of the singular most important moments in human history.
If anyone is still undecided on this subject, please set aside a day this week to do your own research, come to a conclusion, and get to work. We need you.
I don’t think all of the examples are reliable indicators, but I agree policy changes, declarations, and executive orders are clear demonstrations of intent. On specifics:
As far as I can tell, Trump doesn’t support Fuentes and vice versa (at least for now?)
A lot of the quotes are from people in conflict with Trump that gain something from going to the press. The Hitler speeches story doesn’t sound credible, and the latter part is clearly a joke. I worry more about John Kelly’s claims.
There are a lot of 3 word matches you can get if you dig through every quote Hitler said.
The “stigmatize opponents as Nazis” tactic wins short-term but undermines epistemics and amplifies long-term conflict by reducing info access and the viability of reasonable dissent.
People with stigmatized beliefs hide them to keep their friends, and others become more sensitive to detect them. False-positive and false-negative rates go up. False accusations polarize victims and mobs while true accusations lose credibility as people cry wolf. Some associate with stigmatized people when they don’t intend to, others avoid associating with people that don’t even hold stigmatized views for their correlated reasonable views.
As all want every vote they can get, each side competes to stigmatize the other, while dog whistling to extremists to gain support without spooking the center. It’s a big defection trap we should step back from, and focusing directly on policy helps avoid distraction.
I think Trump would crack down on illegal immigration. I’d be unhappy if it goes beyond throwing out criminals with victims and illegal immigrants consuming more than they make. I doubt it will be as extreme as what he says, because few things ever are and it wasn’t before, but I do worry about downside risk. As things are, I worry more about status quo and downside risks with Harris on immigration outcomes and policy.
I think it’s important to get the facts right and to present the best case when trying to persuade someone who disagreees with you to change their mind.
When he tells people they won’t need to vote anymore after this election that’s not rhetoric.
This one is a bad example. When I first heard he’d said this, as an Australian my initial reaction was ‘he probably means that they won’t need to if they don’t want to, voting isn’t compulsory in the US and an insane amount of resources seems be spent each election on getting people to vote at all’. And sure enough, when asked by journalists what he’d meant, he said that Christians tend not to vote in these elections, and so he’s trying to convince them they should do so in this election because he’ll ban abortion and then they can go back to their non-voting.
This seems overly charitable to someone who literally tried to overturn a fair election and ticked all the boxes of a wannabe-autocrat back in 2018 already (as described in the excellently researched How Democracies Die). I don’t think Trump will be able to stay in power without elections, but imo he’s likely to try something (if his health allows it). This seems like standard dog whistling tactics to me, but of course I can’t prove that.
It not about being charitable, it’s about what is the most straightforward explanation. I agree he is anti democratic, but this is not an example of that, and it makes it harder to convince people when you lump true and false things in together.
I’m sorry but this post is absurd and absolutely misses the point. It’s no longer hyperbole to say that voting for Trump is voting to end democracy and institute dictatorship in the USA with a Hitler-like character at the helm. If you are at all skeptical about that statement then you are uninformed.
Here are some bullet points of why a second Trump presidency will be completely unlike the first:
The Supreme Court is stacked in his favor, with provably corrupt justices, who have already taken actions to strengthen executive power of the president to dictator-like levels and given the president complete immunity from the legal consequences of his/her actions. This in theory even includes the use of violence against political adversaries. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/trump-immunity-murder-navy-sotomayor-00166385
Trump issued Schedule F while president giving him absolute power to fire any federal employee at will and replace them with a person of his choosing. He never got to use this power because he was not re-elected. He has vowed to re-invoke it on day 1 if elected again. https://protectdemocracy.org/work/trumps-schedule-f-plan-explained/#:~:text=In%20October%202020%2C%20the%20Trump,to%20the%20president%20when%20hiring.
The Republican party has become extremized with more Trump-like fanatics such as Marjorie Taylor Greene supporting extreme far-right policies. There won’t be a Mike Pence or other voices of reason to hold back Trump next time.
Pro-trump election deniers have infiltrated important but overlooked political positions in swing states that give them the ability to influence election results. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-swing-state-officials-election-deniers-1235069692/
Trump claims to have no knowledge of Project 2025 and yet many members of his staff and JD Vance have ties to it and the Heritage Foundation. The leader of Project 2025 has stated on national TV that it “will be a revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Trump’s “rhetoric” is not rhetoric. When he unapologetically says he wants to be dictator on day 1 in countless interviews, even when confronted on his seriousness about it and given chances to back down, that can no longer be considered rhetoric. When he tells people they won’t need to vote anymore after this election that’s not rhetoric. There’s a reason his own vice president said he went back and forth on wondering if Trump was “America’s hitler”.
When he continues to make baseless claims and builds a large cult following around the idea of election fraud in 2020 even though those claims were widely investigated and found to be completely unsubstantiated, and then talks about getting retribution against people who have rigged the system against him, that’s not rhetoric. If you’re rationalist and value intellectual integrity how can you support one of the greatest gas lighters in history?
When he gives glowing reviews of other authoritarians like Putin and Xi Jinping that’s not rhetoric.
The idea that anyone who is remotely interested in EA and doing good in the world can even considering supporting Trump is atrocious and makes me sad.
I think describing anyone “Hitler-like” is pretty bad for the discourse quality, especially if you don’t support it with arguments. Autocrats differ quite a lot. For example, while Trump is extremely dismissive of democracy and willing to undermine it, he’s not as ideologically driven as Hitler and mostly interested in power and praise.
I am also extremely worried about Trump being elected, and agree with your list of bullet points being very concerning. However, it’s not certain that Trump would succeed in destroying US democracy.
I am curating relevant forecasts [on Manifold] (https://manifold.markets/news/us-democracy). Some relevant ones:
Free & fair elections in 2028 if Trump is elected? 75% (n=35) to 80% (n=31)
If Dems win 2024, will Republicans attempt a coup? 21% (n=35) & 39% (n=12)
if elected, will Trump invoke insurrection Act within 3 months? 24% (n=60)
if elected in 2024, will Trump remain in charge in 2031? 7% (n=22)
All these are very concerning, but not certainties. Also, they all depend on specific resolution criteria and I wish there were more forecasters on these questions (so please join & promote it among friends!)
That said, I agree with your broader point that focusing on a few disparate policies while ignoring the undermining is democracy makes this not a great post. (Although I like the fact that specific policies can be discussed here, and some can still be positive!)
Thanks for your response. To be clear, you are aware of these Hitler-like facts regarding Donald Trump (just to list the ones that first come to mind):
He is widely supported by white supremacists and has proudly supported them in return: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23484314/trump-fuentes-ye-dinner-white-nationalism-supremacy
After the violent and deadly white supremacist-led rally in Charlotesville in 2017 which featured Nazi and Neo-Nazi rally-goers, Trump remarked that there were “very fine people on both sides”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally and https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/116973/documents/HHRG-118-ED00-20240417-SD006.pdf.
As president he issued an executive order which banned entry to the US for people from a variety of muslim countries.
His own running mate once ruminated that he could be “America’s Hitler”.
He wife said he used to keep a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside and jokingly had an employee greet him with “Heil, Hitler”. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-kept-hitler-speeches-by-his-bed-resurfaced-ivana-interview-reveals
He has literally quoted Hitler in his speeches, saying illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of Americans, an exact parallel to Hitler saying Jewish people were poisoning the blood of Germans. https://apnews.com/article/trump-hitler-poison-blood-history-f8c3ff512edd120252596a4743324352
According to him, “Hitler did some good things”. https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2024/03/13/trump-hitler-putin-kim-jong-un-john-kelly
In speeches he often describes plans to do massive-scale round ups of illegal immigrants into “camps” and mass deportations if he is elected again.
I would apologize for the relatively undiplomatic nature of my writing but the time for long-winded slow-moving discourse is long passed. There are barely 3 months left until the 2024 election which may prove to be one of the singular most important moments in human history.
If anyone is still undecided on this subject, please set aside a day this week to do your own research, come to a conclusion, and get to work. We need you.
I don’t think all of the examples are reliable indicators, but I agree policy changes, declarations, and executive orders are clear demonstrations of intent. On specifics:
As far as I can tell, Trump doesn’t support Fuentes and vice versa (at least for now?)
I don’t think the fine people controversy was accurately portrayed:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
A lot of the quotes are from people in conflict with Trump that gain something from going to the press. The Hitler speeches story doesn’t sound credible, and the latter part is clearly a joke. I worry more about John Kelly’s claims.
There are a lot of 3 word matches you can get if you dig through every quote Hitler said.
The “stigmatize opponents as Nazis” tactic wins short-term but undermines epistemics and amplifies long-term conflict by reducing info access and the viability of reasonable dissent.
People with stigmatized beliefs hide them to keep their friends, and others become more sensitive to detect them. False-positive and false-negative rates go up. False accusations polarize victims and mobs while true accusations lose credibility as people cry wolf. Some associate with stigmatized people when they don’t intend to, others avoid associating with people that don’t even hold stigmatized views for their correlated reasonable views.
As all want every vote they can get, each side competes to stigmatize the other, while dog whistling to extremists to gain support without spooking the center. It’s a big defection trap we should step back from, and focusing directly on policy helps avoid distraction.
I think Trump would crack down on illegal immigration. I’d be unhappy if it goes beyond throwing out criminals with victims and illegal immigrants consuming more than they make. I doubt it will be as extreme as what he says, because few things ever are and it wasn’t before, but I do worry about downside risk. As things are, I worry more about status quo and downside risks with Harris on immigration outcomes and policy.
I think it’s important to get the facts right and to present the best case when trying to persuade someone who disagreees with you to change their mind.
This one is a bad example. When I first heard he’d said this, as an Australian my initial reaction was ‘he probably means that they won’t need to if they don’t want to, voting isn’t compulsory in the US and an insane amount of resources seems be spent each election on getting people to vote at all’. And sure enough, when asked by journalists what he’d meant, he said that Christians tend not to vote in these elections, and so he’s trying to convince them they should do so in this election because he’ll ban abortion and then they can go back to their non-voting.
This seems overly charitable to someone who literally tried to overturn a fair election and ticked all the boxes of a wannabe-autocrat back in 2018 already (as described in the excellently researched How Democracies Die). I don’t think Trump will be able to stay in power without elections, but imo he’s likely to try something (if his health allows it). This seems like standard dog whistling tactics to me, but of course I can’t prove that.
It not about being charitable, it’s about what is the most straightforward explanation. I agree he is anti democratic, but this is not an example of that, and it makes it harder to convince people when you lump true and false things in together.