I am frankly sick to death of this lens being applied to things all the time. I think it started from a good place --- Americans should be able to recognize bad things are bad without knowing that The Bad Thing also happened in Places Americans Think Are Bad. That's a dumb worldview. Stipulated.
But it has very quickly morphed into making fun of people any time an American draws a connection between our current regime and other examples of authoritarian governments. And like. Guys.
Learning from history is good. Seeing commonalities between your circumstances and the circumstances of people from other places is good.
Do you genuinely want Americans to treat our country as some exceptional land where there are no parallels to be drawn with other places?
Are you so ignorant of history that nothing going on around you ever reminds you of things you've learned about other times and places?
This is like that time on Twitter I watched someone quote Marjane Satrapi's iconic line about how ordinary Americans have more in common with ordinary Iranians than either of us do with our governments --- a thing this person was quoting in order to express support for Iranians being fucked over by US foreign policy --- and someone else responded by questioning their right as a white American man to claim to have things in common with Iranians.
It's rad as fuck to learn about the jokes that carried other people through their dark times. I hope someday someone going through their own dark times learns about the jokes that bounce around my groupchats on any given day and thinks "That's sounds just like OUR nascent fascist regime!"
It's rad as fuck to see your own circumstances reflected back across time and across borders. It's rad as fuck to situate yourself as part of an endless human tapestry, with a history that doesn't repeat, exactly, but definitely rhymes.
And if you aren't interested in learning that history or applying its lessons to our own lives, then at least stop making fun of the people who are.
