If Germans own #Hitler - and we obviously do - then Americans definitely own #Trump .
Saying: "I didn't vote for him!" Is no longer enough. Now the question is: "Do you comply, or do you resist?"
The Germans who grew up after WWII also asked these questions to the generations of their parents and grandparents... and the latter often failed to have good answers.
this is absolutely true
my fear is as long as people aren't hungry resistance will be muted in the usa
lazy ignorant inertia while more and more rights get stripped away is a real problem in this country
speaking for myself, i will do what i can
but we need more, louder resistance
@benroyce @juergen_hubert In my specific case, I can barely keep up with trying to take care of my special needs children. Obviously, it's not a coincidence that Republicans want more and more people to be like me - too busy drowning to put up any meaningful resistance.
I don't know what I can do that's meaningful at all.
@juergen_hubert @isaackuo @benroyce
for some people surviving is resistance.
@fritzoids @juergen_hubert @isaackuo @benroyce that is true
especially in contries like #northkorea #russia #bellarus #china citystate of #hongkong and #Macao
@juergen_hubert @benroyce Thanks
One of my children is not special needs, and he understands things.
My other two children are special needs, and the way they are they will not understand politics. I'm all for autistic people representing themselves and advocating for themselves if they can, but there are also a lot of autistic people who simply can not.
@juergen_hubert @benroyce It is possible, but I've had way way way way too much of people saying they will get better - and then they do not.
Of course, a lot of autistic people get better. A lot do not.
I mean, they have gotten better in some areas, like usually going in the toilet, and waiting until getting home before stripping naked. It's not like there's no progress at all. But they often regress also.
@juergen_hubert @isaackuo @benroyce the vast majority of people I know who are involved in political action are autistic (myself included).
juergen_hubert@mementomori.social @isaackuo dear Isaac, your very existence is an act of resistance. You have and will continue needing to challenge many of those government decisions just to survive.
So don't worry about going the extra mile, you are already doing more those who demand more action, who often do so from the comfort of not having THEIR own life on the line.
@sheislaurence Thanks so much!
It's true that in terms of how much effort I put into each day, it's much more than most. But I can't say honestly that what I do put effort into helps resistance.
And it's not like my votes matter. I live in a red state with red state gerrymandering. I vote every time, but always for the losing side.
@isaackuo If anything other than a white ableist supremacy is deemed a threat, your existence is resistance.
Also, grassroots movements are made of people like you: not so much because they wanted to make a difference to the world, but because they needed to organise to survive.
In the UK for example a Personal Independence Payment for disabled adults is about to get scrapped and I can tell you even those that weren't involved earlier are joining up forces now!
Isaac, I will second what ‘laurence’ is saying: existing and supporting your kids *is* a radical act of resistance against supremacist systems that insist that a human must “earn” their living to be considered a true person.
Every person is infinitely and uniquely valuable. Your care for your kids, even (especially) when it is difficult or seems endless, is a living testament to that beautiful radical principle. Thank you.
@isaackuo @sheislaurence but look at you! you’re on here answering questions, filling in blanks, advocating for your kids—that’s not nothing!
Keep doing what you’re doing. The world needs good, solid, persistently decent people.
@isaackuo @sheislaurence , as a great parent you'll always be on the winning side and the votes that often count most are where/how we spend our dollars (as insignificant and powerless as it may feel at times) -
lots of love.
trump is our first internet troll president
maga "won" by goosing bigotry on social media (bigotry is the root problem, social media amplified it)
many avenues exist and must be fought, but we can fight here too
"you're going to defeat maga by arguing with internet trolls?"
no. we're going to replace plutocrat social media with mastodon
"lol! you're dreaming"
i''m dusting off my rusty coding skills
watch me, and if what i announce you think is credible, join
@benroyce @juergen_hubert I do advocate for Fediverse social media. While I personally see Mastodon/ActivityPub to be vulnerable to the Embrace Extend Extinguish Enshittify attack method, it's still preferable to the social media platforms that can and will be simply bought just in time for the next election cycle.
I do what I can to try and fight the EEEE attack, by never interacting with Bluesky/Twitter/etc bridges.
(I vastly prefer diaspora and diaspora protocol. It's robust against EEEE.)
fedipact, no threads
and also no bridge:
bluesky is nice but it's owned by crypto bros, we can't trust it, and they'll pull an elon musk destroying twitter if/ when maga notices it. venture capital is the vector by which the plutocrat-bigot political axis has an in to any company
nonprofit/ individual ownership only, enforced with threat of defederation
diaspora is the OG, i respect it. i'm starting with mastodon code only because it's what i know
@isaackuo
It sounds like you're doing what you can. That is enough.
@benroyce @juergen_hubert
@isaackuo@spacey.space @benroyce@mastodon.social @juergen_hubert@mementomori.social
I'm in a not entirely different boat.
Wife is disabled and requires very expensive medication in order to be able to eat.
Similarly, I'm on very expensive medications to keep seizures under control and to keep my arthritis from degenerating quite as quickly as it did before the medication. In the case of the former, I need to stay seizure-free so that I can remain employable. With respect to the latter, the medication prevents the pain from rising to the point where it's hard for me to even type – a situation that would render me "unemployable", since my job is working at a keyboard, writing computer code.
Medical issues ignored as a direct reason, that "unemployable" outcome literally puts two lives at risk if I get too direct in my resistence.
@isaackuo @benroyce @juergen_hubert Reminder for underwater people..get on your phones or computer, type in your representatives in Washington, State government , Local government and text them your issues!!! It takes moments not days and every voice is a nudge!!!
@isaackuo @benroyce @juergen_hubert > I don't know what I can do that's meaningful at all.
Being there for your special needs children, and advocating for them to the best of your ability, is *huge*.
Even pre-Trumpist USA was hugely hostile to such things, and now all marginalized people will need all the help they can get.
Related: there are lots of people out there doing things that matter, but don't look like it, because it's genuinely dangerous now (compared to just a few weeks ago) to discuss things publicly.
@dpnash @benroyce @juergen_hubert Thanks so much - but to be honest I do not advocate for them to the best of my ability. I was reading the other day something like:
"I'm to tired from mopping the floor to fix the roof."
I can't keep up with the forms. I can barely even look at a form and read it, much less fill one out. It's bad.
Making phone calls, or going to a meeting, much less a city council meeting or something? I can barely even contemplate it.
@isaackuo @benroyce @juergen_hubert > I do not advocate for them to the best of my ability
They're getting fed and clean and educated, right? That counts, because there are too many people out there (and a disproportionate number of the current government's supporters) who *don't* think you should be doing that.
Tired from mopping the floor? You're mopping the floor, so they have a safe, clean place to live. Counts.
Advocacy doesn't have to be signing petitions and marching down streets and shouting at disgusting politicians.
It can be something as simple as making sure they have *a* safe place *- any* safe place - to be who they are.
@dpnash @benroyce @juergen_hubert Again thanks!
Yeah, I keep them fed and as clean as I can mostly (my autistic son has a sensory thing about digging his fingers into his butt, so his fingers and especially under his fingernails are not so clean). Educated? I guess it depends on your definition of educated. They don't get away with their more gross behaviors at school, but at home we're just too tired to try and teach them to do things for themselves.
We do have a few people come and help at
@dpnash @benroyce @juergen_hubert home, and with their help it's possible to force them to learn things like putting on their own clothes and putting away dishes.
It was hell for us to even get that help, so yeah. We have done a lot, in terms of effort, to try and educate our kids.
It's a lot tougher for my wife, because she can't deal with various things that I am able to live with. Like, the fact that the house is messy. Or the fact that she can't have a conversation with her autistic kids.
@dpnash @benroyce @juergen_hubert For me, I just want our kids to be happy. And for the most part they are. I mean, obviously not when they're having fits but the majority of the time they're happy.
My wife? She wants them to be "normal". She grieves every day, almost constantly, at the "death" of the children she imagined her kids would have been.
@dpnash @benroyce @juergen_hubert Also, my autistic son spends a lot of time wailing and wailing. Almost a sort of singing. It's not out of distress. He enjoys it. Like he's singing almost.
But it absolutely destroys my wife on a sensory level. She can't deal with it. It's really tough on her, and it's for hours and hours at a time.
@isaackuo @dpnash @juergen_hubert
an analogy: you can frequently find me being a hothead and a loudmouth about nonvoters. but not in a billion years do i hold one tiny iota of anything against people who can't vote because of legality, finances, time constraints, social situation, physical limitations, etc
Isaac, no one doubts what is in your heart
we all know you are here in any way you can be
your hands are full with doing good for your loved ones
we only appreciate you for that
@isaackuo @benroyce @juergen_hubert@.social Isaac you can do one of the most important things, raise those kids to know they deserve better and help them learn how to demand better as they become adults. My kids spotted some problems way before I did and now my grandkids can say “end stage capitalism” with a straight face and know what they are talking about. The bullshit doesn’t work on them like it did on me 50 years ago. You just keep on keeping on. 
@benroyce @juergen_hubert Agreed. This has always been true. So long as everyone is fat and happy, nothing really changes. Will Trump be enough to force that hand or will the majority simply roll over and shrug? From what I'm seeing, big media themselves are muting any coverage of anti-MAGA/Trump protests.
@benroyce@mastodon.social @juergen_hubert@mementomori.social
my fear is as long as people aren't hungry resistance will be muted in the usaAs I said, yesterday (or, maybe just earlier this week), if the billionaires don't fuck up boiling the frog, they could very well get what they want. On the plus side, it feels like their seeming lack of patience could make it so they fuck up boiling the frog.
lazy ignorant inertia while more and more rights get stripped away is a real problem in this country
@juergen_hubert the #us has a historical playbook how to resist #fascism, so there is no excuse not to
@juergen_hubert exactly right.
@juergen_hubert did they even bother to vote. Millions didn’t
@John_Loader That's something they will have to explain to their descendants one day.
"What did you do during the Trump Years?" will become the new "What did you do during the Third Reich?"
@John_Loader @juergen_hubert Here's something I wrote for Canadians who couldn't grasp how un-free US elections are. Both parties have always made sure far fewer of the people they don't like would vote. Oppressed groups and their allies have been carrying the more and more right-wing Dem party for decades and that party's candidate doubled-down on genocide. Combined with voter suppression Harris had no chance as she forcefully spurned a group that was always reliable.
@juergen_hubert in my experience (so far), the majority of americans simply don’t care. It hasn’t personally affected most of them, even on this site, so they’re happy to let it continue. They think resistance is posting and calling a politician once in a while, one even called the Tesla protesters “vandals”. These people are decades from taking responsibility for their crimes, I’m not holding my breath.
THIS
@aapis @juergen_hubert
I've seen Tesla vandals called 'protesters', but I don't want to resort to nazi methods to fight owners of a certain brand of vehicles.
@tailspinner @aapis @juergen_hubert A certain brand? You must be kidding.
@tailspinner @juergen_hubert then congratulations, you are a nazi collaborator and a fascist. 
People receiving consequences for their actions isn’t “nazi” behaviour, there was a time when we referred to it as karma. Your purchases have always been driven by your politics. Everyone else can see that whenever you drive down the street in your nazi car. It’s time you did as well.
@tailspinner @aapis @juergen_hubert
Destroying fascist vehicles is a fine old antifascist tradition. Whether in Stalingrad in 1942, in Madrid in 20 December 1973, in the long Russian invasion columns stuck in the mud in February 2022, or in the US in March of 2025, it's both cool and correct. There's nothing nazi about it.
The fascists and their lackeys cannot be everywhere at once. They cannot guard every point at once. Because of this, smashing up some Teslas here and there is a great tactic because it forces them to spread thin and exhaust themselves.
@passenger @aapis @juergen_hubert
Fundamentally this is not in any way different from the persecution of jews in the third reich. Absent the concentration camps (not yet anyway), it follows the same playbook. The roles are just reversed.
The goal seems to justify the means!
@tailspinner @aapis @juergen_hubert
I'm sorry, are you comparing wrecking luxury cars to murdering human beings, or am I misunderstanding?
@passenger @aapis @juergen_hubert
You are definitely misunderstanding.
Try reading again!
@tailspinner @passenger @juergen_hubert this is why no one respects democrats
@juergen_hubert With any luck, we’ll reach our own version of the Nuremberg trials. As a transgender immigrant with a serious chronic illness, I have my doubts that I'll live to see it, but I can hope for future generations…
@juergen_hubert I posted hard, kids. Into an echo chamber of people who already felt the same. That counted as activism in those days.
the German experience of having grandparents who didn't know things were happening, but then tell you about how their neighbors got picked up and transported away, their place of business given to the mayor's best friend or cousin. This includes the German experience of having your parents be very upset at their own parents for the stories they tell and which bits they leave out.
It is not the experience of every German. I know of several former Nazi who acknowledged their culpability. They weren't aware of the extent of the abhorrent truth at the time and there is a discrepancy of their experience of the time and what they were forced to acknowledge after the war.
Many of those former Nazi's had changed their thinking. I know from personal experience that many grandparent led a life in the spirit of tolerance & anti-authoritarianism in BRD.
@juergen_hubert same goes with Modi in India.
@juergen_hubert As to what some others may say, resistance is hard when “they” are coming after you. Like Issac says, I too have little to draw on when caring for a severely disabled child who may be impacted in a big way, soon. So many people are dependent on any lines of support or coverage for housing and medical needs that resistance may be very weak. If we draw in our wagons and set up our moats around the tiny family home, we can hope to be unnoticed for quite a while. At least we could find ways to resist by funneling support here and there to others who can more actively resist in powerful ways.
@juergen_hubert
Don't worry folks, the grandkids will be too busy fighting water wars to ask you uncomfortable questions.
@juergen_hubert and let's not forget, the farright party in Germany, AfD, is growing non stop. They went from ~6.4 million voters, in 2021, to 12+ million voters in just 4 years. In some German states they are already the biggest party.
Coincidentally, they have close ties to Russia.
@juergen_hubert There just might be reasons why you wont hear about active resistance out on social media.
And I would also say - don't expect it if you want them to be effective.
@juergen_hubert Even more than "did you resist" it is, your society elected Trump, what parts of your society are you going to change.
@juergen_hubert With all due respect, you're not the one currently being disappeared by a fascist government. Please do shove your posturing up your posterior.
@juergen_hubert there are many of us who are resisting. But there needs to be more.