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Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Must be nice to be financially stable enough to run away.
How did you get financially trapped?
People in the rest of the western world and also mostly elsewhere in the entire world can actually travel.
What do you have to lose if you can't walk away from where you are? You already lost your freedom and can no longer go anywhere else, because finances? In the richest country in the world?
If I ever find myself in that kind of serfdom without a dime in my pocket, I will put on my shoes and start walking.
Most people are just born into it
It may shock you know that even in the richest country in the world there are homeless people. There are people who live paycheck to paycheck. There are many people who a single unexpected expense would ruin.
...Okay Denmark.
I know of people in Denmark who walked by foot from Syria during the last refugee exodus. They came to Denmark from Norway, because they crossed the border in the arctic between Russia to Norway.
Try to plot that route into your map and then go on complaining about strolling through a few states in USA.
You know national borders exist, right?
Sure, but what about them?
In most cases they're just lines on a map that don't actually exist physically in the real world.
Tell that the the sovereign nations you’d be illegally entering
“What are walls, just some man made obstacles, I live in your house now”
Uh, why do you think those Syrians had to walk all the way to the Arctic to get to Europe when they were coming from Syria?
They wanted to admire the scenery of the bogs and pines?
Why didn't they just take the direct route, because "they're just lines on a map"?
Why did they more than double the over 4000km long journey to over 8000 km?
Oh, right, because of border control. They had to travel more than 4000 kilometres more to use less guarded crossings.
And good fucking luck crossing any Russo-European borders currently.
Yes, it's true that borders are vast and not all controlled as easily. But nations sure as fuck try to.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland%E2%80%93Russia_border
That alone added a few thousand km for them, as they went all the way to Norway to cross, because we Finns actually guard the border pretty intensely due to that fucker Vanja disrespecting it so.
Lol. You're getting replies from people so complacent with their lifestyles that they can't fathom the effort of just walking away from everything and starting up elsewhere. Literally millions of people have walked across continents in the last decade to live in places with better opportunities, but these people'll find any excuse to say that that's not possible for whatever reason, but really just because it's a type of change they are unwilling (not unable) to make and they want to make themselves feel better by saying/believing all that isn't a real option for them.
I doubt those people would be doing all that walking if they had any better option. It’s easy to leave when there’s nothing to leave
You can still walk away, it'll be more difficult and take longer, but you can do it.
Tell that to the natives.
An academic who's job is is to know these things is spending the money to do it. That's the take away here. They're the Canary in the Coal Mine.
yeah, you got the same vibe from the political professors that Jon Stewart had on his podcast last week. Just depressed and resigned.
I don't know your story or your financial situation.
It is a sad reality that in the US there are literally millions who probably can't leave even if it was life or death. But i feel like your comment directs your anger and pain towards those who are in at the very least a similar boat to you. Considering that she is an academic, I doubt she is rich, probably middle class at best. The billionaires stole from you, she is probably a victim of this system just like you.
She is lucky to be able to leave, but realistically she is probably just putting a much bigger weight on this issue than most and I would guess that she sees this as a life or death situation. I think that in a life or death situation, most people can afford to leave to Canada, this isn't that crazy nor does it cost a fortune. It is true that not all people can, but I'm pretty sure that by far most can.
This.
There are very many shades of "I can't leave".
Depending on how urgently you want to leave, some of these reasons are "can't leave" or turn into "I'll leave anyway".
There's also another category, "I can leave, but I don't want to leave behind people important to me that would be at significantly more risk than I am." I've got the work experience to head off to any of several fairly comfortable and stable countries on a skilled work visa, and hope that, if push comes to shove, none of my debts I currently have in the US would become obstacles to my permanently settling there. I can more or less fluently speak Spanish and Portuguese, and I can get by fine in French. Within a couple more years, I'll have a degree from a European university completed, and I continue to study other languages, with varying degrees of success.
I'm still hanging around, waiting for my sister-in-law to finish up her degree in another two years so that the three of us could all get out at once, as, despite being a naturalized citizen for more than 20 years, I wouldn't put it past ICE and the current administration to target her just for having darker skin and a slight accent to her English. I'd rather be here where I can watch out for her and raise hell ASAP if something were to happen, than be posted up in a new flat in France or something, and suddenly realize I can't get in contact with her at all.
There's also the simple fact that, for those who don't have the means to legally obtain a visa, I'm unaware of any nation that has started accepting asylum cases from the US on the grounds of the current administration's actions and policies. Yeah, I could walk to the border with Canada, or overstay on a tourist trip in Europe, but then you face the very real possibility of being caught and sent back, straight into the hands of the very people you are trying to escape, clearly marking yourself out as a dissident of some form. This is leaving aside all the issues you would face as an undocumented immigrant in a foreign nation. I sure don't have the funds to just show up in Ireland or Portugal and be able to get myself somewhere to stay indefinitely, clothe and feed myself, even assuming I find work within the first few months. I don't know anyone there that could help me land on my feet.
Getting out, and more importantly, being able to assure you can stay out, is not as simple a task as people who haven't seriously looked into it might think.
All the ways to escape that didn't require lots of money are all long gone