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this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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Apathy is a poor turn of phrase for a fascist takeover.
The problem in the US isn't apathy. ICE doesn't seem apathetic. The military doesn't seem apathetic. Silicon Valley doesn't seem apathetic. Wall Street doesn't seem apathetic. The billionaire class is engaged and has financed an enormous army of brownshirts to flatten dissent.
Meanwhile, people are fighting and dying on the streets. Parades of people march in opposition. Blossoming networks of activists inform on and undermine the state. Lone wolves even take pot shots at the President.
There's apathy and complicity in the senior leadership of the opposition. But they're a fraction of a fraction of the agents involved in the conflict.
So many people (or bots, but especially on reddit) get their panties in a bunch when you say the DNC is not your friend. They are complicit. There are a handful of politicians that caucus with Dems that I really believe are fighting for the little guy, but the party as a whole loves the power/wealth the ruling class is gaining through the fascist takeover.
Eh, I dunno. I don't think the DNC is my "friend", but I also recognize that the harm caused by democrats is a paltry fraction of that caused by republicans, and I do find it offensive when people equate them, its absolutely lying and I absolutely consider it harmful.
I may be against the existence of the state, but I can also recognize that one choice gets way more people hurt and killed that I don't want to see hurt or killed.
Just because I recognize that the US is a poor excuse for a democracy doesn't mean I won't try and make use of the currently available mechanisms to prevent additional people from being hurt and/or killed. I'm not into the accelerationist bullshit.
I think part of the problem is that many of the people who complain about democrats absolutely will call them fully equal to republicans, which just makes them seem like an idiot that isnt worth listening to because of how separated from reality those comments are.
As bad as in certain situations? Sure. Overall? LOL no.
But just as some people will complain that I just wrote "whole ass paragraphs", nuance doesn't often play well on social media (including the fediverse) compared to "strong stances against!!!" whatever thing, which just furthers the divide rather than expanding the further left.
Just my opinion of course.
Why do you think all these bills that would substantively improve peoples lives always fails by just 1 vote, and it's always a different person? Have you ever heard of the rotating villain method? They all figure out what to do and then make the voting look like they were trying so hard but just failed.
If I had to pick between these two dogshit parties, I would pick D every time, but the party as a whole doesn't give a shit about you, they care about power and wealth. They just happen to have a little better messaging than Republicans. By the way that's most politicians everywhere.
The Dems (neolibs) want the 1990s. They don't want an oligarchy, and they're (mostly) not complicit, with a few exceptions.
The Dems, as a whole, have never taken the kind of power that Trump has. Partly because it's damaging to the country, and partly because it's blatantly illegal.
The Dems also haven't had 8 years of cutting internal opposition in primaries. In fact, after the whole Bernie/Hillary thing the Dems went in the opposite direction of that. That's what you all wanted.
You wanted the party to have less control. The party now has less control, and you're all :shocked Pikachu: that they're not able to whip every single member in line.
(Progressives want to fix problems, not just return us to the 1990s. We can do better.)
Pure cope and denialism, through and through. You need to allow yourself to face reality. I know it's uncomfortable and scary, I know nobody wants to feel disillusioned and disenfranchised, but it beats being under the illusion that the democratic party are doing everything they can to beat the republicans and deliver a progressive policy platform.
It is overwhelmingly obvious that mainstream democrats are more focused on fighting their left flank than they are about winning. They would rather lose as centrists than win as a left-leaning party. That's why they snatched Clinton's defeat from the jaws of Bernie's victory, that's why they constantly cry about Hasan Piker, it's why they refused to primary a candidate in 2024 and it's why Kamala advocated for republican policies (harder border, pro-military/military industrial complex, and so on.
The democrats try to strike a balance between the base of the democratic party (generally progressive people) and the donors of the democratic party (corporations, billionaires, Israel, lobbyists) but when it comes down to a conflict, the party has and always will side with the money.
Yup totally the opposite direction, that's why they didn't even have a primary and forced a terrible candidate on everyone, sounds like less control right?
The leadership isn't whipping because they want this to happen. Schumer literally said his priority is Israel.
The dems are complicit, they had the Epstein files and did nothing, they watched as Trump tried to overthrow the government and they did nothing, just like they watched as wall street destroyed our economy and did nothing. If they regain power they will again do nothing about what has happened.
Honestly I think you're more complicit than the Dems are.
Ahh yes I an individual with no power is more complicit than a party that has shared the responsibilities of managing our society for centuries. I didn't choose to provide bombs for a genocide but don't worry you can continue to think whatever it is that will help you sleep at night.
Yes, those are acting... the apathetic ones are the US Voters as OP pointed out
There have been 2 large marches... on weekends. For the first one, the rapist king literally send a video shitting on the protesters, that should have made it clear a weekend protest would mean nothing.
Yes, some Minnesotans did rally harder, not on weekends, and weakened ICE stance... maybe the rest of the country should learn from them and not wait until it's literally life or death as Minnesotans did
Even if the people of the USA who claim to hate this regime bothered to do a free act en mass, like closing your Meta and Xitter accounts, it would be noticeable... alas, nothing of significance can be done and all we (the rest of the world) get from Americans is some victim complex cry
We've repeatedly hit record high turnout during Presidential cycles, even in the face of widespread disenfranchisement.
Far more than two. They're heavily underreported, but I see (and periodically participate in) marches and rallies at Houston City Hall twice a month, easy.
Slacktivism Will Save Us
Dude, please touch some grass
If you are referring to voter turn out, still the largest group belongs to those who could but did not vote
Happy to fill my brain with this good news if you can provide any source
Definitely would be more efficient than just slacking...
As soon as your rapist dictator stops killing people around the world, I will take a day off... I know this is likely not something that causes you ANY concern but in this last year, literally tens of thousands of people have been slaughtered by your country's actions with not even a flimsy justification for it
I don't think it is, fascism always rears its ugly head when the general public becomes apathetic about their government's leadership. It's dependent on people being fed up over political stagnation, offering people easy and decisive solutions for complicated problems.
Ice is filled with losers who are apathetic about not being handed some fantasy version of a trad life they think they deserve for simply existing.
The military is honestly probably more apathetic about their current situation in Iran and current leadership than they've been prob since Vietnam.
Really the only people who aren't apathetic are the billionaires, who will prob become a little apathetic once their AI bubble burst.
Like what, less than one percent of the country? When people are speaking of the mood of the country, they typically aren't specifying the outliers. Most Americans are just upset with trump about gas prices.
Historically, it's reared it's head when people were the most energized
It depends on what part of the timeline you are evaluating. Apathy is the environment that allows fascism to take root, and fascist promising to dispel apathy is how they secure their power base.
Hitler's rise in power happened after years of apathy following the German defeat in WW1. Yes, there were socialist and fascist outliers fighting in the streets of Berlin. However the vast majority of the population were center right and apathetic about the bureaucratic nature of the Reichstag.
That's simply not true. Liberalism thrives under apathy. But when locals become active and begin to resist liberal rules, the fascists operate as a political counter to popular leftism.
Whether it's Franco's Spain or Pinochet's Chile or Park's Korea, fascism is a social tool to mobilize a population against itself at the height of unrest.
Hitler came to power amidst decades of riots, strikes, and mass migrations.
Nothing about Germany in the 1920s was apathetic except the failing Hindenburg government. The people were in the streets - for good or ill - nearly constantly.
I would say liberalism creates the apathy that leads to populism on both the left and the right.
I think that's a bit of a reductive way to view how fascism develops. Calling it a social tool implies that there is some kind of puppet master wielding it. In reality most of the time fascism is just aided by liberals who think they can control or ally with them because they often share cultural similarities. However there are also examples of liberals, and leftist of all types creating popular fronts against aspiring fascist regimes.
Again, you are referencing a tiny portion of the population. You are also misconstruing the time in which these events occured. The origins of the Nazi party developed from the DAP, which was started in 1919 as an ultra nationalist, antisemitism, and anti communist party. In 1928 they only had less than 3 percent of the vote. It wasn't until after the great depression began that they started to actually become more popular with regular German people.
From their origins to their popularization there were oppositional riots and strikes from the left, but from a relatively small portion of the public, mostly in Berlin. However the majority of the public were still mostly center left and center right parties who were uninterested in confronting the rise of political violence from the right. From 1918-1933 there were over 350 political assassination committed by the right compared to around 20 from the left, and the left were generally prosecuted to a much higher degree.
Populism isn't apathetic. Again, just the opposite. Populists are activists, practically by their nature.
Whether you're rallying to block deportations or throwing a riot over vaccines, the accusation that you're apathetic flies in the face of your views and actions.
Call it a technique then. But national media and the political elite blaming migrants, religious minorities, and social progressives for economic woes is nothing new.
You're thinking of what you see on the nightly news as the sum total of all activity.
For every BLM protest reported on there were dozens that never got mention. For every MAGA rally or Tea Party event, dozens flew under the radar.
I've been to events with thousands of people that never got a peep of coverage. And I've watched riots in real time that barely earned a minute of footage on the local channels.
is more than just a quip.
The same year Rosa Luxembourg was assassinated after leading the Sparticus Uprising. Two years after the Russian Revolution kicked off next door.
Hardly a dull era for German politics
They were jockeying for position among half a dozen different radical and reactionary movements. Hitler had gone to prison attempting a coup - Germany's own J6 style event - years earlier. Meanwhile, Communists, Anarchists, Liberals, and Conservatives were engaged in foreign sponsored street fights across the country.
What the Nazis achieved was an effective paramilitary that could operate with impunity in a country that was in the grip of a low key civil war.
Again, that's simply not true. The Beer Hall Putsch of '23 was in Munich, not Berlin. The Hamburg Uprising happened that same year, in an event known as German October (intended to be a parallel to the Russian October Revolution six years earlier). Blutmai, in '29, was in Berlin, but it was far from the only event leading up to the '33 dictatorship.
You had lower key actions and oppositions happening across the country. The Cuno Strikes, for instance, were nationwide.
There were over 3000 strike actions in 1918. How many of those were organized by right leaning parties?
I didn't say that populism was apathetic. What I said is liberalism causes the apathy which populism rises out of in response.
I mean that's just conservatives in a liberal democracy.
I just think you're underestimating the size of the US population. Blm was the largest sustained protest, counting all those who participated in protest over 2 years was estimated between 15 and 26 million. So somewhere between 5-8% of the total population, and those included large amounts of people who are not normally politically active.
Again..... I'm not claiming there isn't anyone participating in revolutionary activity, just that they are an outlier compared to the vast majority.
Yes.... These outliers could operate because the vast majority of the public were apathetic about their own government.
I was specifying the leftist clashing with fascist in the streets. Berlin was the cultural hub of most leftist movements.
Parties hadn't developed yet in 1918..... It wasn't a democracy yet. The general strikes in 1918 were mostly against the war and led to the fall of the German empire. Of course there weren't right leaning parties, the right at that time would have been working for the kaiser.
Where do you get this stuff?
There were socialist anti empirical parties and conservative pro imperial parties, but the conservative parties that would function and form into conservative democratic parties and into fascist parties had not yet developed.
You asked how many of the strikes were coordinated by the right in 1918, which wouldn't make any sense as the right at that time were pro empire, which wouldn't be striking to end the war or the empire.