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Travis's avatar

"The war in Gaza is a textbook example of the dangers of epistemic certainty, because it is too complicated, freighted with too much history, and too full of horrors to fit neatly on one side of the ledger or the other."

This is the money shot in today's Triad for me because epistemic certainty is the starting point on the path toward autocracy--though it doesn't always progress past the starting point. It's why simple people looking for simple explanations about complex issues are often the people who fall into these movements. They easily fall into epistemic certainty because they can only deal with binary choices around complex topics and need a scapegoat or oppressor to blame. And once they have the scapegoat/oppressor in mind ("elites," immigrants, liberals, Jews, etc.), they fall right in line with the side who opposes the scapegoat/oppressor. Know who really likes to commit to epistemic certainty? The White Christian Nationalism (WCN) movement within MAGA.

There's kind of a psychological order of operations in moving a group of peoples toward autocracy--whether from the left (communism) or the right (fascism)--and it starts with epistemic certainty about your side being the good guys and the other side being the bad guys, often accompanied by layering religious virtue from an unquestionable authority onto their side ("god is for us"). It then moves to dehumanizing the other side, becoming uncooperative with them, segregating the other side from the rest of the populace, taking over institutions--particularly the security services that enforce laws, committing stochastic violence against the other side once they're segregated from the rest and the security services are controlled, and eventually either forcing the other side to mass-migrate or slaughtering them wholesale if they refuse.

When viewing where MAGA is on this scale of progression, they're already dehumanizing liberals, they've already invoked their side as the side that "god" (an unquestionable authority) is on, they're already being uncooperative with liberals within state/federal institutions, they're already planning to take over security-based institutions ("constitutional sheriffs," Schedule F/Project 2025 purges, etc.), and they're occasionally committing stochastic violence against liberals/minorities (Charlottesville, Buffalo, Charleston AME, El Paso Walmart, Tree of Life, J6th, etc.). I guess the question is how far down the progression scale they end up, which is partly a factor of how strong our institutions end up being in the short run and partly a factor of how much society willfully tolerates MAGA's extremism in political elections via popular support at the ballot box.

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SandyG's avatar

I wanted to make that point about the relationship between epistemic certainty and authoritarianism. You made it for me!

I also love your steps on the path toward autocracy.

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Travis's avatar

It's a slippery slope, but it doesn't always make it to the last stop. Like I said, it's a factor of institutions and levels of tolerance for extremism by the general populace. Hitler took power with something like 29% of the vote. They don't need half the country, they just need enough. The rest is a matter of how the public reacts once autocratic movements start grabbing the levers of power within institutions. If the public is mostly indifferent--kind of like how Jamie Dimon is when thinking about a 2nd Trump presidency--then the autocrats can read the room and figure out that they can get away with it. If the public and institutions forcefully push back, they eventually lose and go back into hiding.

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Youngy's avatar

You’d think that with the shit Jamie Dimon came out with, a great payback to those assholes once Biden is reelected (hope), is to say “time to tax these bastards a lot more”. I’m sure you’d approve Travis!

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Travis's avatar

Oh I certainly would!

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Matt Onderode's avatar

The big question now: have the autocrats already figured out they can get away with it? Are they getting away with it?

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Travis's avatar

Time will tell.

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SandyG's avatar

Yes, and it will be in November when we know. We'll also know then whether the public and the institutions push back enough. The critical institutions, I think, are the military and law enforcement. I keep asking for some investigative reporting on how infected both of those institutions are with Trumpism. I think that's an even bigger question.

One good sign is how well law enforcement performed in the cities where Trump was arraigned - New York, Miami and Atlanta. There was no violence.

As to the pubic, I'm more and more convinced of JVL's recent diagnosis - decadence. That parallels Germany as well, yes?

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Travis's avatar

I would say no on the Germany question, because coming out of WWI they were made to pay other countries for the damage they had done. Those people weren't decadent, they were poorer and were looking for a scapegoat to blame. That's when Hitler came around with his "stab in the back" narrative that blamed German elites for surrendering in WWI when Hitler said Germany could have kept going. He made it clear to Germans that they were poor because German elites had given up on the war when German soldiers were still willing to fight, and that the stab-in-the-back surrender is what brought on the economic sanctions that impoverished Germany when they could have kept fighting and won the war instead (according to Hitler).

Remember: Hitler was a decorated veteran who was at the Battle of Passchendaele--one of the most violent battles in the whole war. Hitler wasn't some rich kid who skipped the draft, he was a war hero in the eyes of many. And he wrote Mein Kampf from a jail cell where he claimed to be a victim of the same elites he was rallying his fellow Germans against.

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SandyG's avatar

I guess I'm thinking about Berlin, not the entire country, as it was depicted in the musical, "Cabaret". The musical was based on a 1939 Christopher Isherwood book that described Berlin's slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, filled with Jewish artists, intellectuals and scientists. About a third of Germans lived in such large cities. The two-thirds is who you described.

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Travis's avatar

Well, if there was that much wealth inequality in the aftermath of WWI then it's no surprise that Hitler's anti-elite rants caught on. If most people are poor because of WWI and they see their elites living it up, and then Hitler comes around with his anti-elite stab-in-the-back narrative, well, as Sgt Drucker said in Heat: "I don't have to sell this and you know it, because this kinda shit right here sells itself."

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Rita Parker's avatar

Reading this made me flash back to my father's words about WW2 and Germany. He fought in the war, and it deeply affected him. The paternal side of his family had emigrated from Germany, and it was appalling to him what the Nazis did to German Jews. Friend turned against friend. When I was eight years of age, my father introduced me to a German woman who had lived through the war and emigrated to the United States after. I listened as she shared how the Nazis had come into her classroom and broken her wrist because she didn't say "Heil Hitler" quickly enough. Over sixty years later I remember the fear I felt hearing her story.

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Travis's avatar

I had a holocaust survivor in the family (no longer with us) and the one feeling she remembered the most was the shock of how easily all of society went along with things and how unreal it felt. Even when she was being loaded for transport to the camps she remembered thinking that it all seemed so surreal, like a giant sick joke. The feeling that this couldn't *really* be happening, even as it was *actually* happening. That's what being on the business end of epistemic certainty looks like from the side of "the other" once it's progressed far enough.

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Rick A.'s avatar

Rita, I was so wrong too. I keep talking about the Dorothy Thompson story in Harper’s Magazine from 1940 or so. I read it only a year or so ago. It is so good and is about who at the party will “go Nazi?” My USA moral superiority to the Germans for all my 70 years is long gone. It can happen here, and we are almost 100% there. And my fellow Christians are front and center for the autocracy. It IS frightening.

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Timothy M Dwyer's avatar

No offense meant here,but aren’t the Christians always front and venter when there’s some killin’ to be done? Sure there are exceptions, Like when there just aren’t enough Christians around, but ….

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Rita Parker's avatar

It's frightening. I sound like a broken record, but I wish everyone would watch "The Mortal Storm". It's an old 1940's black and white movie about a blended German/German Jewish family. It begins the night Hitler was elected, and it's exactly as you say. I never thought this could be the United States. I was wrong.

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Michael's avatar

How many times has ,”Oh this is just a joke,” been used to excuse Trump and his ilk.

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Cheryl from Maryland's avatar

“It’s a joke” is the standard retort of gaslighters and abusers.

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Travis's avatar

That's how that shit starts! Appeals to humor are always a convenient cover for the alt-right. It's a way of publicly stating your actual views while maintaining plausible deniability about them.

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Michael's avatar

I guess if things really go south we can all look forward to hearing, “it’s just a prank bro!” as we get locked into a reeducation camp.

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