TBH i feel a lot of what is happening was easily predictable in recent years BUT i did not have "US follows Russia path" in so many words because i felt given our more generally liberal society and economic conditions i couldn't imagine such a path in my head. But it really clicked when i went to listen to the last few podcasts of the recently deceased and realized how it felt precisely like Russian propaganda; now here i am second guessing the risk of things i type when only a few short years ago i bragged that being able to yell f** Obama without concern was the quintissential example of how America was still quite different.
The real struggle is i have true believers and apologists in my own family, and its just so... unreal how unreachable they are. For all the talk of what to do about it, i feel for people who havent really explored the depths to which many reasonably intelligent and reasonably kind people have fallen. And just wandering what if anything will shake them out of it.
You don't remember the people wearing "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" in 2017? That's all I needed to see to realize where we were headed. They would rather live in an oppressive, white, Christian ethnostate like Russia rather than the multicultural pluralistic free society with Democrats.
It is fascinating how quickly US got on the Putin path. Trump seems to run the same Putin playbook. For example Russia also had max terms in a row - so this was removed in 2020 before elections (this will happen if Trump is still alive). Yes Russia still has elections but the fanaticized public + vote faking resulted in Puting having 88%.
It's actually pretty consistent - they knew back then that the entire Red Scare was a complete bullshit, used only for oppression of dissidents - and now they are just using new methods for the same goal.
What words mean is actually pretty complicated. When groups of people start co-opting one word as a symbol, rather than having a name that word can easily become a name for that group.
The Biden DHS called them “loosely affiliated organizations” because they were underground. Closest analogy might be anonymous or lulz. You can see members show up to protests and carry Antifa flags, in full military gear, causing violence, etc. There are arrest videos on YouTube, and the ATF, DHS, and Florida AG went after some named members back in 2023
