Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning added to OP 10/1/26

"Foreign students will be required to unlock their social media profiles to allow US diplomats to review their online activity before receiving educational and exchange visas, the state department has announced. Those who fail to do so will be suspected of hiding that activity from US officials.

The new guidance, unveiled by the state department on Wednesday, directs US diplomats to conduct an online presence review to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States”.

Sounds very much like the Thought Police. Where's the Orwell fan gone again?

Sounds like a burner phone won’t pass muster -it gives them licence to essentially exclude anyone for whatever reason - you don’t need to have committed hate speech - a mediocre review of a McDonalds restaurant is all that it will take

Maybe,but what are they going to bar you for? Not having social media installed?

You are looking at it the wrong way - your thinking is that they will have to find and give a reason to bar you. i.e., default position is allowed in unless they find evidence not to let you in.

It's plausible that the opposite will apply - with a default of rejected unless you and your social media history are acceptable. In which case the absence of social media could lead to a rejection and presumably you have no right to be given the actual reason.

“but in the near future to have the social media assessment carried out by AI meaning it will be extensive.”

It’s very possible now and will only get more detailed as time goes on - they may well have bespoke apps that summarise your key posts into themes- very quickly they will determine the cut of your jib- just think of all the posts we make on this site - it would be very easy for an AI app to develop key conclusions of the poster - seconds is all it would take

I used to hear 'freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences' a lot round here. Not so much now.

That's because anyone who specifically shouts about freedom of speech these days actually just means freedom from consequences, i truly believe many don't actually know the difference.

Any chance you could address my post, in response to your statement that Trump isn't a fascist?

It's a kind of important distinction to make.

And Canada for example does believe he's very much so serious in his targeting of their sovereignty. As a direct result of that and tariffs, the US relationship with Canada is at an all time low.

In terms of his egging on of genocide in Gaza, I'd say Israel view themselves to have carte blanche. Then his pulling of intelligence to Ukraine, that once again benefited a war monger in the form of Putin.

On top of that USAID cuts are estimated to have cost 300,000 lives to date. So basically you can say he's all talk but the man is very much so responsible for many deaths.

So given your complete silence on these issues, one can conclude you simply don't care. In the case of Russia you've even been sympathetic towards the invasion and tried to imply it was justified. So I guess helping the Russians out isn't so bad.

You didn't really "address it", you posted this article from the Guardian which prompts as many questions as answers.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/is-donald-trump-a-fascist

Now, as you cited the article, if posted in good faith, it means you accept the bona fides of the experts and author of that article, according to which he is either:

Robert O Paxton, an authority on the historical definition of fascism, argued in 2017 that, despite many overlaps, Trump did not ultimately fit the bill: he was too much of a poser, too lacking in a coherent political programme and too much of a plutocrat. Hitler expropriated the wealthy; Trump sucks up to them. But after the events of 6 January 2021, Paxton changed his mind. In Newsweek a few days afterwards he wrote, “Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol … removes my objection to the fascist label. His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line.” Trump’s time in office, by implication, had not revealed him to be a fascist (he had, after all, failed to deliver on his promise to jail his main political rival, as he had failed to deliver on many of his promises). It was the manner of his refusal to leave office that had moved the dial.

OR

Tomasky argues it is possible to spend so much time bogged down in the impossible conundrum of Trump’s essential political personality that the basic threat he poses gets overlooked. He is a real and present danger to the American republic and the wider world.

OR

A victory for Trump could nevertheless be a cause of 21st-century fascism. Not because he is a fascist, but because he doesn’t know how to govern and good government is the only guarantee against the worst form of politics returning. Trump is not and never has been a genuine exponent of fascism. In the end, he is too much of a cynical asshole. But for that reason he could yet be one of its enablers.

So which is it, is Trump a fascist, or a real and present danger to the American republic and the wider world and\or is he incapable of good governance and therefore a potential fascist enabler?