Pictured: a young, wrathful Frederick Douglass.

Comparing America’s racist immigration control and enforcement measures to 1930s Germany is… inaccurate. 2026 America is now emulating what it was before 1860. The

When:

  • Indigenous, black, tan, brown, Asian, and people are arrested because the look like ‘the other,’

  • lies are written off as memes,

  • the Monroe Doctrine is foreign policy,

  • cities are terrorized by secret police,

  • non-conformists are shot in the streets,

  • political opposition is met with federal investigation

all of America’s episodes of villainy are back in play.

Genocide, colonialism, plunder, militarism, more plunder, expansionism, Manifest Destiny, white supremacy, even more plunder, hypocrisy, calamity profiteering, segregation, McCarthyism, monopolies, interventionism, propagandizement, dumbing-down, and a lot more plunder — this is the “great” some in America seek.

    • Soulg@ani.socialEnglish
      7·
      1 day ago

      On one hand, I do generally appreciate posts like the OP drawing connections between historical events, not only is it interesting to learn about but it’s useful to examine for the future.

      On the other hand, it really, REALLY feels like it’s just kinda being done as hate America porn. There’s a lot of atrocities in American history, but we’re not uniquely bad, we’re not the only country that’s done bad shit, and we’re certainly not the reason Nazis were bad. Maybe I’m being a little sensitive, but so much of it is hyper focused on the US and almost no mention of the other inspirations like you gave

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        3·
        23 hours ago

        It’s centered on the US because the US is enacting it again. If it was South Africa, we’d be talking about the apartheid. But it’s not.

        • eightpix@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          23 hours ago

          Its centered on the US because they’re harming themselves and everyone else all at once. “Flooding the zone” as it were. What’s there to be done but stand on principle and dominate the narrative.

          Inception, followed by a kick.

      • biofaust@lemmy.world
        21·
        1 day ago

        The scale at which it was applied, both geographically and in number of individuals, was and possibly even remains, unprecedented.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    16·
    2 days ago

    Germany simply reproduced colonialism internally. Everything they did was modeled after what colonies had already done, the difference was that it was being done to Europeans this time instead of Africans or Native Americans or Asians.

    • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 days ago

      Which is why Hitler and Nazis have become such villains in the eyes of the West when they didn’t do anything particularly new or shocking for their societies: because they did it to other White people. Non-whites? Fuck em, lol, chop off their hands and put them in zoos, get them all hooked in opium, starve and murder them while claiming you’re the victim, etc etc. Oh well. The imperial boomerang is hitting hard in America and will be felt in Europe as well, will Westerners finally learn that those who believe in nothing but their own supremacy don’t care about anyone and anything, skin colour included, and that something has to dramatically change at the core of the Western psyche?

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    101·
    2 days ago

    You make a great point, but WTF does Tyler Durden have to do with anything?

    There are many ways to read media, and one of the popular ways to read Durden and his project is as explicitly fascist. The speech your meme references sounds to my ear like white-male-grievance-porn straight from the Daily Wire editorial page.

    I’m not saying you should adopt this reading, just that you should be aware of it.

    • eightpix@lemmy.worldOP
      4·
      2 days ago

      Thanks for that. And true, Durden was not the best to offer. I meant it to be jarring. I meant it to reach out to the disaffected youth and the millennials and the middle of the road white boys. It is anachronistic. And, you might note, it’s no longer about Douglass in that last sentence. It’s us. We, now, are, and should be, pissed off.

      The thing is, black anger has always been regarded a threat. My anger has always been a threat. So, I picked one of my heroes as a picture. One of the first of ‘the other’ to take command of his own photographic image. But the current state of affairs — which has never changed — caused me to co-opt the words that, in some readings (like the one you shared), spurred on the Tea Partiers, the “basket of deplorables”, and the Red Hats. An inversion, or, if you like, a suplex for those words.

      It was not the smartest, or most apt move. But, it’s what I chose. And published. And am responsible for.

      Thanks for your insight.

      • BlackJerseyGiant@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        I think you did wonderfully. Don’t let the naysayers get you down. Your post was moving, jarring, and most of all, thought provoking. Everybody fancies themselves an Art Critic, it would seem. Keep it up.