There isn't an "authoritarian bit", it's not binary. When I was young the idea that your own computer would spy on you, or the one in your phone, or in your car? That was a William Gibson novel, wiretaps happened to mob bosses, you didn't worry about it happening to you as part of a dragnet. Security camera? You mean in a bank right?

Microsoft bundling IE was so egregious that the department of justice took time off from chasing drug dealers and terrorists and came within an inch of being split up if it didn't back the fuck off on strangling the web. Financial fraud on Wall St or in the boardroom? Skilling, Fastow, Ebers. Hard prison time. Clinton lied about chasing skirt in the office, ended his career, real consequences.

Even once the Internet was becoming common, the idea that something typed into it might get you fired? Preposterous!

I don't know what being a "western liberal" government means to you, but this thing where all the walls have ears and billionaires do fucking anything they want and no scandal can damage a politician and all the surveilance and technology is an ever-tightening noose and everything is on a permanent record?

Sounds pretty damned Soviet to me.

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stavros 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

I haven't seen anything more authoritarian than the fact that, when you travel, someone will open your suitcase, rifle through your stuff, then close it again, and maybe leave you a little "you are being watched" note, just to make sure you know you shouldn't try anything funny.

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fragmede 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What sounds pretty damned Soviet is people having to carry their papers around with them in case the gestapo or ICE stop them.

	▲	heavyset_go 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		And the papers don't matter because the brownshirts signed up to crack skulls, not check paperwork

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mattnewton 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think we’re in violent agreement about what is bad and what we should fight for.

My point is that there is a difference and throwing your hands up and saying everywhere is bad obscures what is being lost and how democracies allow nonviolent ways to seize it back.

	▲	7 days ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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XorNot 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay but no scandal can damage a politician because you the American people are currently choosing to let that be the case.

Same with the billionaires.

The entire problem gets painted as "other" but it's you: you're actually promulgating it by your very choice of language here!

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benreesman 9 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not saying that the decline of Enlightenment values and the rise of crony-nepo-central-committee surveilance nightmare is "other", I'm saying it is indifferent to the stated political system, it's about the de facto political system no matter what you call it.

What I care about is outcomes, what actually happens, what norms and institutional posture actually obtains in reality.

And on that basis, "western liberal" society has very little business holding its nose up about "authoritarianism" as a blanket term for rival nations in 2025. No one here is talking about Sudan or Turministan, they're talking about other advanced nations with participatory politics, robust social welfare programs, limited influence for oligarchs, and highly competent governance.

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BriggyDwiggs42 8 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You could explain any authoritarian regime this way, but how much of what we believe and do is some kind of pure, unconditioned-by-our-surroundings choice?

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cyanydeez 9 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sure, but its a boiling frog with cancer. Certain states made choices to skew far right and other states mde choices to "keep business open" and others made choices to remain ignorant.

This becomes diffusion of responsibility because every cycle maybe 1% were directly embracing far white religious authoritarian. The consistency of those choices were sticky because the oligarchy spent decades ensuring.

The point being, very few people actively participated and there was no progressive decadal length comspiracy. But the reverse isnt true.

There was and is a decadal length conspiracy to become a far right ethnostate run by religious minority.

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Levitz 8 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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BriggyDwiggs42 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

The left has… vastly less power than the right, especially the christian right, because the right has money.

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Levitz 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

Money? More money than Hollywood? California? Both of which lean left pretty hard? It's not 1980 anymore.

"Vastly less power", pray tell, would you rather piss on a Christian cross and post it on social media or a LGBT flag? What do you think would have worse consequences? Can you even imagine a prevalence of corporations showing to align themselves with the Christian right for a month every year?

The "Christian right" would, no doubt, sell their soul to have half as much power the left has. It doesn't even come close, it's off by orders of magnitude for crying out loud. If anything this power is exerted so widely you barely even recognize it. You see a pride parade, or any entity making an effort to promote or signal multiculturalism and it doesn't even register as left wing when it evidently is.

Can you even picture anything comparable to BLM, on the right? Can you imagine the right managing to pull a display of power comparable to disturbing the meaning of a word as basic as "woman"?

Where is this vast amount of power manifested? It's surely not in the form of respect, it's definitely not in the form of demographics, which dwindle year by year. Culture? What references are even there, Jordan Peterson? Nick Fuentes??? I'm just baffled by this perspective.

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cyanydeez 8 days ago | parent | next [-]

People who are afraid of the "left authoritarians" seem to think that you can just sum up human history and cherry pick some great "left-branded" authoritarian and equate that to todays.

You're arguing that the people kidnapping people without due process and zero consequences, masked police, are equal to some arbitrary "leftist" in some time that's not relevant to todays political climate.

It truly is bizarre how mental gymnasts survive in this logical incapacity.

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Levitz 8 days ago | parent [-]

Sorry but I can't take this seriously. I've given more than enough contemporary examples, if you want to dismiss the whole of it and pretend nothing makes sense, that's a choice and I can't help you.

	▲	BriggyDwiggs42 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		All your examples were social movements that did nothing or virtue signaling from massive corporations owned by right wing billionaires.

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BriggyDwiggs42 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m not gonna convince you of a thing. Who’s your favorite youtuber?

What do you think leftist means? I think we can divide it loosely into social and economic elements, and while aspects of social leftism have (sort of) made serious advancements in the last 50 or so years, the US has become more economically right over that same period. We’ve deregulated and allowed vast consolidation among corporations and wealth and income inequality have exploded. Leftists typically share many opinions with socialists economically, and typically don’t get along with the growing class of the uber-wealthy (they want to take their money). They don’t get along with huge companies so they don’t get campaign funding from them. The democrats are centrists with some progressive social policies (because they need to be to get money). They hardly ever do useful leftist things like tax corporations or the wealthy. Leftists have been screaming about palestine, dems hardly give it a peep and some are proudly, openly zionist.

> Where is this vast amount of power manifested? It's surely not in the form of respect, it's definitely not in the form of demographics, which dwindle year by year. Culture? What references are even there, Jordan Peterson? Nick Fuentes??? I'm just baffled by this perspective.

I’m baffled by your detachment. All three branches of the US government. Fox news for the olds. Joe rogan, the largest podcast I think, is moderate and constantly brings on righties. The corporations that make all our stuff and heavily influence our government aren’t exactly socialists. Academia might be the least right wing institution I can think of, and it’s a glorified jobs training program that rakes in money and holds enormous investment portfolios. If left means not lynching gays then sure, but otherwise our society is quite right wing in the ways that matter. Do you think a corporation putting up a pride flag for a month to make more money makes them leftists?

>Can you imagine the right managing to pull a display of power comparable to disturbing the meaning of a word as basic as "woman"?

>"Vastly less power", pray tell, would you rather piss on a Christian cross and post it on social media or a LGBT flag? What do you think would have worse consequences? Can you even imagine a prevalence of corporations showing to align themselves with the Christian right for a month every year?

Frankly, do you care about any issues that matter? Literally issues made of matter. Point me to material shit that affects lots of people. I can point at plenty of real, material issues that are produced and sustained by right wing economic and social policy. Homelessness, disproportionate incarceration, high recidivism, housing costs, soon power costs from datacenters, shit pay, pay not tracking productivity gains, shit infrastructure, tons of drug overdoses etc.

>Can you even picture anything comparable to BLM, on the right?

Maga?

>You see a pride parade, or any entity making an effort to promote or signal multiculturalism and it doesn't even register as left wing when it evidently is.

Yeah they do it out of the kindness of their fucking hearts right? I bet uber cares a ton about the minorities while they pay shit, deny you benefits, and raise prices.

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clown_strike 8 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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mindslight 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The current difference in the US context is bureaucratic authoritarianism vs autocratic authoritarianism. They're both authoritarian, and they're both oppressive and stifling. But their actual specific dynamics/mechanisms/effects can be quite different. For example autocratic authoritarianism has a much higher variance (for better and for worse) - look at the current autocrat in the White House coming up with idiotic ideas by the week/month, It's done in the name of unchaining greatness, and it would be nice if that were indeed the outcome. But in reality the chaos from the unrestrained terrible ideas is actually quite stifling. Whereas bureaucratic authoritarianism is more of a beige tyranny of the mediocre, which creates a drag on greatness, but at least provides a stable foundation for building on (as long as you can outrun the bureaucrats)

(disclaimer: I've gotten more conservative as I've gotten older. It will happen to you, too)

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cyanydeez 8 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah sure, but todays market is monopolized by the right.

The bogeyman of authoritarian left is just amusing.