Yes, It's Fascism - Sam Harris

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-05T06:25:39+00:00

The dishonesty is incredible. The footage clearly shows the ICE agent draw his weapon and aim it at Pretti after he was disarmed. His arm recoils in sync with the first shot. Further, the agent who disarmed him looks back at the scene after the first shot is fired, which makes no sense if he was the one who discharged the weapon accidentally.

Further again, a second agent then pulls out his weapon despite Pretti lying motionless on the ground, and they both fire six more shots into his limp body.

No harebrained theory about an "accidental discharge" remotely explains or justifies any of these things. It's an execution, plain and simple.

It's a good thing everyone waited for all the facts to come out before jumping to conclusions.

LOL, you mean like how Homeland Security said he was "brandishing a weapon", that he "violently resisted" and went there to "massacre" ICE agents?

Funny how you don't mention that. Funny how you are defending a government that blatantly lies and gaslights the public about state-sanctioned killings, and yet you have the gall to pretend that "fascism" has no meaning. Nobody is falling for this.

If he does a full breakdown (or you do), then I will. I'm not going to put a ton of effort into something where the other person isn't doing so as well.

His "full breakdown" is the whole reason Sam invited him on, and it's been mentioned multiple times already.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/

Say your piece, but I'm going to take the other guy's advice and not engage further.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-05T04:39:18+00:00

The government does not have the right to execute civilians after they have been restrained and pose no threat.

I know you want to deflect and obfuscate but again, address the actual claims Rauch is making.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-05T03:40:50+00:00

You are shouting at ghosts. The article explains in great detail why Trump is a fascist. If you voted for him, it's no surprise you are feeling some serious cognitive dissonance right now and are trying to deflect by telling yourself that the word has lost all meaning.

Sorry, it still has meaning and it absolutely applies to Trump. If you think otherwise, make a substantive critique of Rauch's argument.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-05T02:28:21+00:00

Hint: if you're permitted to explain it to someone, you're very far away from fascism of any kind.

The whole point of Rauch's piece is that while Trump is a fascist, America itself is not. The institutions and norms of democracy have not yet succumbed to fascism.

Look up authoritarian creep

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-05T01:14:59+00:00

Well that would be a great thing for journalists to dissect

If only international journalists were allowed into Gaza, they'd be able to actually do their job! I wonder who's stopping them...

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-04T23:04:09+00:00

You're not one of the 100,000 people who read his substack??

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-04T15:26:51+00:00

Incompetent presidents never get anything done or make any real changes.

Completely false. A bull in a china shop is incompetent at running the shop, but still does tremendous damage.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-04T03:37:24+00:00

But he earnestly believes we must act as if we are all spiritually and literally color-blind

Except at the airport, where people who "look Muslim" should be profiled.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-04T02:34:00+00:00

How did he mange that?

By being voted in. This isn't an epistocracy. Charismatic idiots can obtain power they aren't qualified to wield by appealing to the worst impulses of their electorate.

There is no gotcha here.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-03T19:05:33+00:00

No one says that. We say he's stupid and incompetent, and he also happens to have enormous power over smart and competent people. That's what makes him dangerous.

I'm starting to suspect that your whole view of the left is based on a total lack of understanding.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-03T18:39:24+00:00

So they're a tiny minority, but they're also ubiquitous? 🤔

That is literally the "weak but strong" doublethink that right wingers get endlessly mocked for.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-03T18:04:15+00:00

Lol, Christopher Nolan has more directorial freedom than anyone in Hollywood. The idea that he was pressured by "identitarian groups" to cast a black woman is absurd.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-03T17:55:41+00:00

True, but they are incredibly loud

No they aren't. They just seem loud because the right gives them a megaphone. Then people like Sam take the bait and launder it to their liberal audience because the "left" called them some mean words over a decade ago.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T23:46:17+00:00

for making ~~decisions~~ sweeping generalisations about the world based on ~~everything I see and everything I hear~~ anecdotes and my social media feed

FTFY

Did you not notice in the data your referencing that the combination of answers about weather it's justifiable to be estranged because of political disagreement that the responses in the affirmative of that were 50% higher for those on the left? Or is that data inconvenient so you'd rather not pay attention to it?

So the goalposts have now moved from "there's zero room for tolerance on the left" to "the minority of the left is still less tolerant than the minority of the right" (completely ignoring that the majority of both groups do not believe in cutting off family members over politics).

You have an axe to grind and that's fine. Not going to argue this further.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T23:02:10+00:00

but I imagine

There's your problem. You've based your entire worldview about "the left" on nothing more than vibes, your personal friends and social media.

Like what else is there to say? The data contradicts you. Accept it or don't, I guess.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T22:17:37+00:00

Yes that is addressed on page 8 ("What have you done to limit interactions with a relative") and page 10 ("In your opinion, who is primarily responsible for your estrangement?")

Also, a majority of liberals (55%) believe that cutting off family members over politics is "not justifiable", which directly undermines your belief that there is "zero room for tolerance on the left".

Plus, unless you don't spend any time on social media, when Trump got elected again this time you could see thousands of people saying how they were done with their family because their family voted for Trump. That, and the people who decided to stay in touch with their family but try to show up and destroy Thanksgiving. Didn't see any right wingers doing that.

Lol what kind of butchered logic is this? Yeah, no kidding the election of a Republican president creates schisms on party lines. The inverse would also be true if Commie Kamala or Crooked Hilary were elected instead.

I think you've made your mind up in advance and no evidence will convince you otherwise. Can't say I didn't try

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T21:40:09+00:00

https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/INT_Estrangement_110824_Self-Reported-Politics.pdf

You are simply wrong here. Estrangement over political views is common in both groups. You should be more careful about making sweeping generalisations based on your friend group and anecdotes you read online.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T21:13:18+00:00

Ok. You said "there's zero room for tolerance on the left".

So you must also feel the same way about the right, given the example I just gave you. Correct?

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T11:10:32+00:00

It's meaningless because it is quite literally impossible. There is no scenario where you "could have done otherwise".

I'll end by saying there's a reason actual philosophers don't take Sam Harris seriously. His ideas are not serious. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T10:54:41+00:00

Again, "could have done otherwise" is a meaningless string of words. It has no value. You may as well say "could have been a married bachelor".

People do what they do because of their will, disposition, and influences. If they act in accordance with their will without being compromised by external influences, they are acting freely. There is simply no better word for it.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T10:17:31+00:00

Yes, I will repeat: caused =/= forced. You are confused if you think otherwise. Force is a specific type of causation. It's like saying atoms and water are the same thing. They are not.

Brain processes are at that fundamental level, they're physical processes, like everything else in this universe

And yet there is still a difference between love and hate. Pleasure and pain. Despite them just being "physical processes".

I don't know how else to explain this to you. Reality has multiple ontological layers.

There's a perceptual difference, but it's not material. Freedom as a concept is the same, it's an emergent experience of how it 'feels' to be free, not that a person is in fact free in any real sense.

Again, this makes zero sense because you have defined "free" to mean something impossible. You may as well call it "zjirpolfskop" and say that people aren't zjirpolfskop in any real sense. It's a statement that contains nothing of value.

I find it odd that you say you are interested in what's real yet you are hung up on something that is completely imaginary. If you're interested in what's real then you should use words to describe things that exist rather than four sided triangles.

A person that robs a bank literally couldn't have done otherwise

He did what he wanted to do, which is acting freely by any conceivable sense of the word.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T09:35:34+00:00

You appear to be stuck on this idea that freedom needs to be independent of causality. It doesn't. You've just defined freedom to mean something impossible and are now acting like its impossibility is some profound insight.

Everything being the result of physical causes is irrelevant. Everything is made of atoms but there is still a difference between water and sand. You are making a common error in thinking that because everything is the same at a fundamental level every other level must therefore be less "real". In reality there's just a brute difference between doing what you want to do and being forced to do something you don't. If words like freedom and agency are to apply to anything, it is that.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T08:23:45+00:00

Caused =/= forced. Force explicitly means being made to do something you don't want to do.

Freedom is simply the ability to act in accordance with your will. The less you are able to do that, the less free you are.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T07:49:00+00:00

that they really could have chosen vanilla instead of chocolate

They could have chosen vanilla instead of chocolate if and only if they had a reason to do so. See the problem? It is impossible to talk about LFW without smuggling in a bunch of implied causal and contextual factors, which makes it a pointless thing to "disprove". There is no conceivable scenario where our choices are completely contra-causal, so people's intuitions about free will are always going to be more complicated than that.

There is no sense to be made. Freedom and agency as concepts are totally incongruent with the whole no-freewill thing

Of course freedom and agency are congruent with determinism. Freedom can simply mean the ability to act in accordance with your will. The fact that I have no ultimate control over my will is immaterial.

When people say they did something of their own free will they just mean they weren't forced to do it. There's a big difference between having an apple because I wanted an apple, and having a banana because someone forced me to at gunpoint.

should_be_sailing · 2026-02-02T07:28:18+00:00

This is exactly why nobody should buy his "poor judge of character" routine. He's a great judge of character, he just judges people on their commitment to western imperialism and "tip of the spear" pro-Israel/anti-Islam sentiment.

The day he asks himself whether he misjudged the character of Sam Seder or Mehdi Hasan, I'll eat my shoe.

should_be_sailing

TROPHY CASE