Trump has moved to gut the federal government, fire critics and reward allies – a path similar to ‘would-be dictators’ like Orbán, experts say

A pitiless crackdown on on illegal immigration. A hardline approach to law and order. A purge of “gender ideology” and “wokeness” from the nation’s schools. Erosions of academic freedom, judicial independence and the free press. An alliance with Christian nationalism. An assault on democratic institutions.

The “electoral autocracy” that is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary has been long revered by Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) movement. Now admiration is turning into emulation. In the early weeks of Trump’s second term as US president, analysts say, there are alarming signs that the Orbánisation of America has begun.

  • kitnaht@lemmy.worldEnglish
    224·
    6 hours ago

    To be fair, “Gender Ideology” is fucking craziness. Additionally, there has been this weird constantly pervasive push to just simply be anti-american, anti-colonial, anti-stability and anti-sanity.

    We’re a colonial nation, and the constant push to tear that down has worn on for a very long time. I can see how these kinds of people have been created. I don’t agree with many of the things they do, but I am saying I understand how they managed to get that way.

    • Andy@slrpnk.netEnglish
      7·
      5 hours ago

      I feel like that term is ambiguous.

      Are you saying that gender ideology is crazy as in ‘It’s crazy that all these gender abolitionists are trying to force a complex ideology of new gender norms’ or that it’s crazy as in ‘it’s nuts that all these people think that any change in gender norms is part of a New World Order conspiracy to indoctrinate their kids and dissolve male authority in order to collapse civlization and turn everyone into livestock for the J*ws’ ?

      It’s not clear where in that fog you’re pointing.

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
      10·
      5 hours ago

      So there’s this funny thing about colour. I’m not talking about race here. Actual colours. Wherein certain languages always seem to have the same colours when they only have a certain number of base words for colours. When the language has words for only two colours, these usually correspond to light and dark. Black and white.

      I’m still not talking about race.

      And when there’s three, the third is always red.

      Then if there’s another it’s yellow or green.

      Then if there’s five, they’re generally the other one from above and then blue.

      Then you get an old and heavily moulded language like English with hundreds of colour names.

      But there are languages which only discern only two colours.

      Has the penny dropped yet?

      Decrying gender ideology is like saying that there’s only light and dark. “What’s all this ‘red’ business? And don’t get me started on green.”

      Now I’m certainly not going to tell people whose languages lack words for primary colours that they’re backward, because they have other ways of describing those things, or can learn names from other languages.

      But if someone from one of those cultures was to insist that there’s only two and can’t accept that other languages break things up into separate categories, that’s denying a fact, and that’s a problem.

      And if they get violent and start painting things black and white because “that’s all there is”, that’s an even bigger problem.

      Do you understand yet?

      “But black can’t change to white and white can’t change to black!!1!”

      Not all things are the same colour all the way through. What’s on the outside is not necessarily representative of what’s going on on the inside. This here red apple, sorry, dark apple, is light on the inside.

      And now it’s illegal to peel an apple.