this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Simultaneous purging of the chief generals of all three branches.
They are ensuring the military has no cohesiveness to stage a future coup against the Executive Branch, and are replacing all control with their own loyalists.

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[–] Corno@lemm.ee 19 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (2 children)

Imagine helping to protect your country for 40 years, only to have a felon who is offended over the existence of people with any skin colour besides white take all that away from you. I predict that a white man will be offered to take Brown's place and will be far less qualified.

That's what all of this anti "DEI" (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) is about, purging anyone who isn't a straight, able-bodied white male.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 23 minutes ago

offended over the existence of people with any skin colour besides white take all that away from you

This isn’t the problem here, it’s military leadership that may disobey him

[–] MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 7 points 1 hour ago

*besides white and orange

[–] DrFistington@lemmy.world 19 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I hope the joint Chiefs already had plans in place as a contingency for this. Now is the time for a military coup. The sooner it's done, the less messy things will get

[–] n1ck_n4m3@lemmy.world 11 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Every single member of the military I've talked to, somehow, for some reason seems to support Trump. I'm fucking stunned by it, but it seems he has their support.

[–] DarthKaren@lemmy.world 6 points 50 minutes ago (2 children)

it's about a 50/50 at my local base. The vets, on the other hand, tend to lean towards tRUmp. I have never gotten it either. Our regional congressman, or ex now, never did jack shit for us. We were a tool to get her elected every time. She didn't really do anything to help. When she left, what did they do? Idiots voted in another useless GOP.

When PACT was first shot down, I had to actually explain why that was a bad thing and that we needed it. They bought every last fake talking point. I had actually read the measure. Anyone that did had seen why it was a good thing.

We have a problem of propagation of fake news on bases. A lot of them show faux on the TVs in waiting areas. On top of that, it tends to be conservatives that join. Officers do tend to be less red. I really don't know what would happen if the military actually fulfilled its oath to protect against the domestic threat part of our oath.

It is disgusting hearing fellow vets with the "I got mine" attitude, or other attitudes that are directly against the nature of service. That isn't what we were serving for.

[–] earphone843@sh.itjust.works 4 points 48 minutes ago

Also, the "I got mine" group is about to lose all of what they got.

[–] fadingembers@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 21 minutes ago (1 children)

This is a really dark thing to say and I might delete it if it's too off base, but as a vet that decidedly does not support trump, I wonder if the ones that don't are too suicidal

[–] DarthKaren@lemmy.world 2 points 7 minutes ago

I would honestly not be surprised to see the suicide rate increase. Especially among the marginalized veterans. We've already seen a couple. I remember the one who jumped off of the VA building wherever they were at. It's been mentioned a few times on the reddit vet board, and I'm noticing an increase in vets posting that they're at their limit and contemplating ending it all.

My BIL is a vet as well. He was having a mental break last week. I was able to talk him into going to the ER. He's getting better, but we're all worried about events going down. We're trying to prep as best we can. We feel as though something really bad is coming up. I told him to take a step back from the news and social media. I had to for a bit as well.

[–] ryegye24@midwest.social 28 points 4 hours ago

Remember a few months ago when Trump said he needed generals like Hitler had

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 37 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I was just talking to a friend yesterday who mentioned that the conditions for China to invade Taiwan will be optimal in three weeks based on the ocean conditions and ship movements.

I said even if Trump wants to be the "president of peace" and avoid interfering, the generals wouldn't allow the inaction. I think my exact words were, "he would have to fire them all in the next two weeks."

[–] perestroika@lemm.ee 3 points 40 minutes ago* (last edited 39 minutes ago)

One absolutely doesn't prepare such a large operation at such a short notice.

For an intelligence analyst, signs of an invasion are typically detectable 3 months ahead. If one performs a maritime invasion at a notice of weeks, failure is likely. (For reference, the D-Day needed years of planning and months of moving resources to work.)

Also, I trust that Taiwan has infiltrated China just as deeply as China has infiltrated Taiwan - they likely cannot keep massive secrets from each other.

[–] eatthecake@lemmy.world 14 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

America is toast. Best we can hope for is a military coup. Military purge is in progress. At this point I think threatening to nuke Canada is the red line and only if prevailing winds are on my side.

Left and right are living in alternate realuties and this can only lead to violence. If the military chooses right then it's world war 3.

[–] notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

The non-violent alternative is for the left is to do an economic coup by halting consumption.

[–] eatthecake@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

In my dreams

[–] oyzmo@lemmy.world 15 points 8 hours ago

Just prepping the landscape for the Russian takeover 😅😢

[–] aarRJaay@lemm.ee 48 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

"The removal of the second Black man to serve as America’s most senior general and the first woman to" .....and there it is.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 43 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I genuinely hope racism and sexism are the primary motivations behind this because that's pretty much the best case scenario

[–] eatthecake@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

I get what you're saying but the sexism and racism lead, in this case, directly to slavery, so maybe blow shit up before women and blacks become slaves. Again.

[–] towelie@lemm.ee 62 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

General Brown was abruptly dismissed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on February 21, 2025 by President Donald Trump. Trump subsequently announced that Brown would be replaced with John D. Caine, who did not meet the legal prerequisites for the position, and who, according to Trump, had pledged "I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir.", while wearing a MAGA hat.

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

If they don't meet the legal prerequisites, they don't get the job. dafuq!

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 8 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

So a Conservative DEI hire?

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 5 points 2 hours ago

In a manner of speaking, yes. Should bring this up in c/conservative. We've already established that an unelected H1B immigrant from S. Africa is dismantling our government.

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[–] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 26 points 10 hours ago

Even if Americans actually stand up to this and General Strike or something, how long will it take anyone who isn't a white man to believe pretty much anything the American government tells them?

I was skeptical the entire country was going to fall, but now I think it is already happening. Putin won the cold war after we all thought it was over, I guess. And what a world he's provided for us...

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 60 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

And so his purge of bipartisan and democratic leaders of the military allows him to ensconce lackeys that won’t question or refuse orders to invade other countries, like Canada.

People keep on saying that America won’t invade other countries, like Panama or Canada. THIS IS WHY THEY WILL BE ABLE TO DO SO.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago

He's also about to fire all the JAGS, so they can court-martial anyone who isn't a loyalist and pardon war criminals who are.

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 20 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

It's time to remind the military that the only moral response to an unethical order is to ignore it.

[–] Stamau123@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

How many Silas Soule's do you think are still in the military? Not many, I imagine

[–] atempuser23@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

That is why this step is so important. Leadership is nearly everything in the military. Removing ethical leadership it makes it very hard for decisions to be challenged. This is the start, in 2 years when this is down the command chain you'd need thousands of officers to disobey orders at the same time and be filling to physically attack and defend from officers who don't.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 106 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Unprecedented? Not according to the playbook we're following to the fucking 't'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

[–] underfreyja@lemmy.world 87 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

It's absolutely batshit insane that we can see this happening in real time and have direct references to the third reich.

Every fucking week they do something and we can just pull an article about how the Nazis did it first.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 62 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, I was listing a few examples out in another conversation, and just off the top of my head... and I'm no historian or anything - I'm sure there are similar lists orders of magnitude more detailed floating around the internet somewhere. Anywho:

1921 - The Sturmabteilung – More commonly known as the ‘brown shirts’, militant branch of the Nazi party, loyalists who used violence and intimidation against opposing parties and targeted populations. Today we have MAGA or ‘red hats’ who use the same tactics but in a less organized fashion (arguably groups like the ‘Proud Boys’ are a closer match, but those are all just smaller subsets of MAGA). A few recent key highlights were the Jan 6 insurrection and the caravan that ran a bus of Biden supporters off the road; and of course countless individual instances of targeted bigotry.

1923 – Speaking of Jan 6, that was the modern equivalent to the Beer Hall Putsch, which was also an unsuccessful attempt at an insurrection.

1924 – Hitler was sentenced to a 5 year prison sentence for his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch, for which he only served 10 months; during that time he wrote his manifesto “Mein Kampf”. Our current president was recently convicted of 34 felonies, for which he faced zero consequences. Around that time, Project 2025 surfaced, which echoes many of Mein Kampf’s key points, most notably a disdain for democratic institutions and a call to restructure the government into a more authoritarian model made up of loyalists. Trump has also directly quoted Mein Kampf multiple times, and borrowed other language from Hitler like "Lügenpresse" (Lying Press) as "Fake News".

1926 - League of German Worker Youth, or “Hitler Youth” – heavy exploitation of teen impressionability, especially teen boys, to woe support from a young audience. Today there are youth groups for just about everything, but leveraging insecurities of young boys played a role in the recent election, with exit poles showing Gen Z males leaning disproportionately to Trump.

1929 – The Great Depression left pretty much the entire planet dreaming of a more economically secure future, which gave opposition parties to the status quo a major point to criticize those currently in power; the Nazis were no exception, and gained a lot of their support promising an improved economy. The modern world economies were recently all hamstrung by covid, and remain weakened, once again giving opposition parties something to blame on their opponents – costs of groceries, housing, etc are a huge part of why people justified support for Trump (and more broadly, a global shift toward authoritarianism).

1933 – Enabling Act of 1933 – The gist of this one is that Hitler used their existing legal framework to completely undermine and rewrite their legal framework. He put out a rapid slurry of legal decrees and took a grand total of 53 days to basically destroy their constitution and grant himself absolute power. Today, we’re seeing a similar rapid-fire of concerning legislation from Trump via his executive orders.

1933 – Hitler appointed Chancellor by German president Hindenburg. Hindenburg was in his mid-80s at the time of that appointment. Trump may be more of a Hitler’s-enabler figure than an actual-Hitler, but it doesn’t take long to spot a younger vocal appointee that’s been handed power without the say of voters: today’s actual-Hitler could be Elon Musk. *as I understand it, voting for a party then appointment to chancellor was pretty standard for the German govt at the time, so this was very much Germany's equivalent to Trump taking the majority vote.

1933 – Book Burnings – Basically material that didn’t align with Nazi ideals was made contraband. Today, we’ve seen a push to remove things like LGBT or civil rights content from public schools and libraries.

1934 – The Night of Long Knives – Purging of non-loyalists from government positions by execution. Today’s equivalent is happening right now, starting with the email that was sent to all federal employees essentially bribing them to resign, and threatening firing of those remaining as part of a restructuring of the federal workforce, and continuing with the gutting of non-loyalists from the military.

There's also the seeming never-ending list of examples of minorities who support Trump.

[–] Podunk@lemmy.world 29 points 11 hours ago

You know. Its interesting. Like... really interesting. And sobering.

Reading history books about the rise of the nazis and the reich, and you ask yourself, "how could they have not known what was going on?" and "how could they let these things happen?" What were they doing just standing around? Why did they let this happen?

I understand that history is written by the victors. I understand that there is so much we will never know. There is nuance and circumstance and so many things that snowball into the most terrible things.

But now... im starting to understand the feeling of powerlessness now. The inability to change the machines that are in motion. The overwhelming dread.

I could make generalizations of the people of germany in the 1930s. But it would be disingenuous. And unnecessary. It feels like they are my neighbors now in 2025. They are angry, or apathetic, or ignorant. And the machine and history does not care about them in the slightest. History will be written by the winner and we are all going to be a broad generalization of what happens next. Your experiences will be written off as a success for the new order, or as a failure. If it is written at all.

History doesnt teach you to dwell on the minutiae and routines of the common man. It doesnt teach you that, despite everything you may do or what you believe, or how much you loathe the actions of your leaders, that you have so little sway. That you are powerless and ineffective.

I feel that and understand that now.

History books in school taught us the wrong lesson i think. But i dont think that we can learn this experience from a book or documentary. If it could, we would not be repeating it now.

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[–] freebee@sh.itjust.works 28 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

This shit is moving so fast. And any pushback initiative to the insanity moves so slow. I hope there will be real elections again in a few years, but it feels like game-over tbh

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.world 12 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, people abroad are wondering why Americans won't just stand up, but the reality is that the country is massive and you need an incredible organizing effort to offer any real, organized resistance.

And sure, some groups have tried, but you really need your opposition party, or some kind of major celebrity, or someone else with major reach to organize something that reaches every American and pulls them together to action.

And that just hasn't happened. Some people have spoken out, but nobody has been willing to lead that next step and really lead a movement. Words aren't gonna be enough to counter this.

[–] DrFistington@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

I'm hoping that blue states file state level treason charges for Trump, and every one of his appointees and co-conspirators, and begins to use the national guard and special task forces to find and capture them. If anything, wait until they are already in the state, then announce charges, and surround them before they can leave.

Also, make sure to look at the list of the biggest personal donors to the Trump campaign. Many of them probably live around you, and they paved the way for this bullshit

[–] Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

but the reality is that the country is massive and you need an incredible organizing effort to offer any real, organized resistance.

That's no problem.
The protests that brought down East Germany weren't that much organized at first. People went to the street every monday and that was it. Internet and instant messenger didn't exist back then. Most didn't even had a telephone at home and TV was censored by the state.
Children were pretty successful too. The whole worldwide protest grew from a single child.

The USA is big, yes, but the population live in the cities not in between them.

Now you know what to do:
Pick a day and go protest every week on that day in your city. Politics eventually will feel the pressure.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago

ITT: Europeans thinking they know what a big country is.

[–] Kayday@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

The USA is big, yes, but the population live in the cities not in between them.

Some of us are a 2 hour drive from a small city, 4 from a big one. My state capital building is almost 3 hours from me.

[–] CMahaff@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I don't disagree that it could work, but I'm also not sure it's that simple either.

There's a big difference in trying to get people to protest for the threat that is over the horizon than the one in power for 40 years. People just aren't good at conceptualizing the weight of that future pain against what they currently stand to lose.

And they could lose a lot - their job first, which also means their house and their health insurance. Not to mention plenty of laws criminalizing most protest already, where you are bound to be caught on camera or via other digital surveillance, and a single arrest on your permanent record means no future employment, and missed payments on your credit history means no future economic prospects.

And believe me I know the risk of that is worth it, and the risks you'd have in the future are even worse, but most people in the country still aren't ready to make that trade - hell, most still deny the direction things are headed.

[–] Krik@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 hours ago

And they could lose a lot - their job first, which also means their house and their health insurance. Not to mention plenty of laws criminalizing most protest already, where you are bound to be caught on camera or via other digital surveillance, and a single arrest on your permanent record means no future employment, and missed payments on your credit history means no future economic prospects.

It's astounding you aren't already rioting! People in my country would tar and feder the guy who's responsible for that or anyone who doesn't want to change that.

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 15 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

It’s the same strategy used by Hitler and the nazis to seize control of Germany. They initially only got control of some of the smaller, “less important” government departments. And then they just started drastically expanding the reach of existing departments, declaring themselves to be in charge of other departments, consolidating loyalists, etc…

The idea is that by the time opponents have time to push back, you have already seized control and are already ousting them. Court battles take months or years, but the takeover was done in a few days.

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 123 points 15 hours ago (11 children)

This is an internal coup, there's no doubt about it. I'm not sure how the oligarchs are letting this happen. It's insane. Their regret will not make me happy.

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