I’m unfamiliar with German basic law, but considering the lawlessness we’re seeing play out in the US right now, I’m curious how/why modern constitutions are less vulnerable?

By this I mean: it’s not as if the things we see playing out are lawful. Is there a structural difference that somehow prevents the same kind of lawlessness?

Put another way, what stops a movement that decides to ignore Germany’s constitution from ignoring it should they somehow gain power?

1. When Trump lost to Biden, many Republicans including Mike Pence certified Biden's win as prescribed by the constitution.

2. Trump knows the military will not participate in a coup.

3. Trump will not run for a third term. If he does, he will loose because Americans knows it's unconstitutional.

So Americans know that all the dirty laundry will come out when the next president takes office.

Constitution is just a social contract, it’s not a law of physics. Without people wanting to preserve it, it’s just words on a piece of paper with no real power. With a majority in the Supreme Court, the Constitution can be interpreted however one wants.

In what way are democrats (or, “leftists,” if you must) authoritarian?

Requiring face masks in a pandemic (which happened under the trump admin, in case anyone forgot) is not the same as masked goons throwing brown people into vans.

> Similar to calling everyone Nazi’s and fascists who has an opposing point of view?

Well, the actual neo-Nazis do support one particular party (and it's not the Democrats); see (e.g.) Charlottesville, 2017:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally

And it was (is?) official Republican strategy to court racists:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

As The Simpsons once joked “Fox News: Not Racist, But #1 With Racists”:

* https://www.nydailynews.com/2017/07/24/simpsons-creator-matt...

> My only question who is pushing the messaging and who does it benefit?

You get 0 "both sides gotcha" points for this one because there is a clear answer when it comes to right wing messaging, and it has been the same since the 19th century, long before modern conservatism existed. It's big business owners and anyone else who stands to gain from an oligopoly economy backed by an authoritarian state that punishes and suppresses anything that could destabilize said oligopoly. There's no conspiracy theory here.

Meanwhile who is pushing the horrible left wing messaging that racism is bad? A bunch of professors and kids on social media?

You must separate actions from words, and government actors from private citizens, and powerful monied interests from powerless randos. If you don't do this your brain will remain cooked.

There are no "Leftists" in government. No, Bernie and AOC do not count. Soc Dems are nice, don't get me wrong, but the vanguard they are not.

There is no "Leftist" billionaire funding propaganda, no the boogyman 'Soros' doesn't count. He's very much a 'liberal' capitalist, just ask the UK.

There is no major US media outlet or platform owned by a "Leftist". If you insist that actually Biden, Obama, Clinton, Schumer, or Pelosi are leftists, please please just stop talking about politics.

Again, I'm begging you to separate "things pseudonymous people say online" from "things government officials say and do"

Let's try an example: "Fascists are sending the US military and an unaccountable masked federal police force into cities to quell dissent and hunt down their ideological enemies" or "Leftists are sending the US military and an unaccountable masked federal police force into cities to quell dissent and hunt down their ideological enemies"

Which of these statements is true?

Now we have 2025-? stare censored social media. Of all the hypocrisies, people screaming "but what about THEM" while ignoring what people in power NOW are doing is the most insufferable

I think the appropriate response to a lack of due consideration to the bill of rights should be doubling down on the bill of rights. not setting it on fire as show of oneupmanship

Constitutional amendments by fiat: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/17/biden-dec...

Assassinated Americans with drone strikes: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-were-the-4-us-citizens-kill...

Lied to the courts to imprison Twitter users: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.967...

Used intelligence agencies to spy on Congress: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief...

Expanded mass surveillance: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/obama-on-mass-gov...

EO declaring that some laws would not be enforced on favored demographics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DACA

Ordered social media companies to censor and ban users: https://twitterfiles.substack.com/p/1-thread-the-twitter-fil... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...

Locked people down unless they were protesting for approved causes: referring to the BLM protests

> engaged in politically motivated prosecutions of their enemies. Another reference to the Mackey case and the novel legal theories required prosecute Trump in NY, and the now known to be false constructiion of the Russia narrative.

Look, many or all of these things may have been for a good cause, a good end. But the problem we're talking about is the means. Now people are using the same means for different ends. Everyone has to agree authoritarianism is bad even when it’s for really good ends or this will continue to escalate.

You have to take Trump "seriously but not literally". The government threatened to revoke a broadcast license, a right to use a limited resource for the public good. Broadcast licenses come with rules to ensure the limited resource is used for public benefit: for example, you're not allowed to broadcast profanity over the air despite profanity in general being protected speech. Nobody is denying anyone's ability to communicate over privately owned channels. What Trump meant is that a network that uses limited spectrum to broadcast nonstop partisan lies isn't operating in the public interest and doesn't deserve the license.

Consider the contrast with the 2016-2024 state and corporate effort to suppress inconvenient truths as "misinformation". Remember when they used naked, hard power to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story? That's what real censorship looks like.

In America, you can express any viewpoint on social media and be treated fairly. That wasn't the case just a few years ago.

In most of Europe, and in the UK, you can't express certain ideas. The state will literally come to your house and arrest you if you have the wrong opinions on government policy. The US does not do that.

It's inaccurate to blame Trump. He is a greedy egotistical idiot. Blaming Trump is like blaming a rock that hit you in the head. Look up and pay attention to who threw the rock. Blame them.

The Trump presidency is the culmination of a roughly 45 year campaign to return the United States to the Gilded Age, and to ensure it stays that way until it's bled dry and nothing remains of its corpse. The political and social problems that led to his second election have been a long time coming.

What's interesting is that the gaps in our political system that allow him to do so many illegal and distasteful things have always been there. The framers of the constitution never anticipated all three branches of government colluding together in alignment and bad faith, with the vociferous support of roughly half the voting population.

That's the nature of fascism, it molds itself to fit different societies. German fascism would never have worked in America, American fascism is draped in the flag and holds the cross.

It really isn't "entirely legal" to deceive people as to how/when/where to cast their vote, and I don't think you'll find much sympathy for the view that it should be even among vigorous defenders of the First Amendment.

His conviction was overturned due to lack of evidence of that he knowingly joined a conspiracy (required by the specific statute they charged him under) not because what he did is protected speech.

https://www.law.georgetown.edu/icap/wp-content/uploads/sites...

>They would say for example that Kimmel was simply deplatformed because he also spread misinformation.

Okay, but they would be either misinformed or lying.

The outcome is not the same: allegedly repressive liberal administrations, internet businesses, and tv networks allowed openly authoritarian media to continually build momentum for a decade until that media delivered an authoritarian regime willing to actively dismantle the open system that allowed it to come to power. Contrast that with less than one year of the authoritarian regime, where the full force of the government apparatus is being used to crush political opponents by: defunding educational institutions, ending international soft-power programs, militarizing cities, threatening to de-license broadcasters, and classifying rights-based activist organizations as terrorists.

The liberal era was marked largely by criticism without consequence, where "deplatforming" was a social phenomenon that meant hopping to one of many other open networks, not the dogged federal punishment of institutions and individuals promoting inconvenient narratives. I'll join you in criticizing the liberal order any day, but it's beyond bad-faith to pretend the current administration is just more of the same.

The mechanism is rather important though. Government coercing private parties based on content of speech is illegal. Private parties governing their own speech is not, and is in fact a key First Amendment-protected activity in and of itself.

> The outcome is the same.

That's the problem. The outcome is not the same. It couldn't be more different. That's how one side knows they're right.