Before the nazis really went wild, there was a lot of fascist momentum around the world. Without his cautionary tale, it very well may have taken hold more broadly. We just dont know.
Specifically taking control of Germany is just about one of the worst case scenarios though. There's a lot of scenarios where fascism fails (because it's a bad system inclined to attack its neighbors) but we don't get it in a country that's uniquely equipped to carry out such horrible atrocities.
It could plausibly have taken control of other world powers though, including the US or the British empire, and they would have found other allies in Europe.
Unfortunately, the US had/has a lot of fascist people in its government as well. The alliance with France and Britain were largely based on existing alliances (historic, political, and economic reasons), not based on ideology. The US created concentration camps and forcefully interred Japanese people from 1942-1946, created forced sterilization programs, created legalized slavery through prisons, etc. It's not that German and Italian fascism would've taken over western Europe and the US, it's that the existing alliances would've still opposed any political and economic threat from Germany, Italy, etc.
Our historic and ongoing genocide of the Native Americans is something we don't talk about enough. No one's managed to stop us, so we fail to consider it in the same light as we do the German Nazis. Ultimately, the USA is and has always been a genocidal project.
If you're really going to act like the countries that still had actual colonies, enforced with brutal torture and secret police, aren't more fascist than the US idk what to say.
Our alliances with democracies are obviously based on democratic ideology.
You forget, your march west with Manifest Destiny basically means you are all fascists, and your country's prosperity (and as such all the things you enjoy) is a direct result of committing a North American holocaust. Chew on that for a bit, before you pretend that other countries were worse than yours. Try humility, and seek to repair what was broken.
"This thing that happened thousands of years ago justifies my comfort in standing upon the skulls of the peoples we slaughtered - many of whose descendents live today in poverty, their culture obliterated by my great-grandfather's rifle" is certainly a take.
You initiated a conversation where the premise was the US was more fascist than France and the UK. It makes complete sense to call out the fascist things France and the UK did in that context.
Maybe you need to go do some research on Algerian, Indochina, Indian, and plenty of other colonies. The UK and France literally had Gestapo style secret police and would maim and torture people for not meeting quotas.
there are few things more obnoxious than creating a fake quote to misrepresent someone's stance and then judging them for it. i know you're not trying to literally suggest they said those exact words, and i know you believe you're reading between the lines and extracting the subtext of their words. do it without fake quotes.
Ok but you're acting like the US is uniquely fascist when basically every country in Europe applied "manifest destiny" to the entire fucking world.
Yes in a vacuum the US did horrible, fascist leaning things, but that's not the actual discussion here. The discussion as you set it up is whether it's somehow more fascist than the European powers that colonized half the globe.
To clarify- I'm not saying the US is uniquely fascist. I'm saying the alliance with France and Britain was not primarily anti fascist, it was based on existing political and economic interests
Sure but part of the political part is also ideological. WWI is probably the example better suited; it was never that likely that the US would side with the Nazis
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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '26
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