Were you directing the “you” in your comment at people in Russia, China and North Korea?
If so, I don’t think they’ll be surprised that fascism is coming for them.
I understood “you” to mean people who believe that they live in free countries with a free press.
The post I was replying to said "Other countries - it’s coming for you. "
Most Lemmy users aren’t people using it from former Communist countries that never made the transition to working democracies. It may be coming (or have already come) for Hungary. But it isn’t coming for “you”, because “you” don’t have the problems that Hungary or the USA does.
A former soviet republic that never managed to stabilize after their soviet time doesn’t really count.
Other countries don’t have this problem because they don’t have the free for all media landscape that the US does.
For example, in virtually every other country there’s a well funded public broadcaster. And, even when that public broadcaster isn’t dominating the viewership, it’s normally seen as the most trustworthy news source. So, people can watch their favourite news channel, but when they want to fact check something they know they can tune in the public broadcaster.
Other countries are also not as insane as the US when it comes to defunding public education. Having a population that is able to tell fact from fiction is seen as important by most other countries, even if that means slightly higher taxes. The US sees well funded education as communism, and is trying to get rid of it, or defund it at a minimum.
The US is also one of the only places with a true 2-party duopoly with no other options for voters. Even in countries where only 2 parties have a realistic chance at forming a government, there are other parties that siphon off the crazies, and/or put pressure on the mainstream parties from both left and right.
I’ve lived in 4 other countries and have visited dozens more. The US is truly unique, and not in a good way. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen somewhere else, but it’s much more likely to happen in the US because of unique US dysfunction.
Musk is much more of an Edison than a Tesla. If he’d been honest he would have named his cars Edison. Then, the cool rebadge could have been Tesla. But, even he was smart enough to realize what an asshole Edison was, even if he didn’t recognize the Edison in himself.
It seems like there’s a market for a company that will buy Teslas ultra cheap, modifies them heavily, then rebadges them like Alpine does for Renault, AMG does / did for Mercedes, Abarth for Fiat, etc.
These days those are all subsidiaries of the main brand, and even before that they had a cooperative relationship with the main brand. But, I can imagine a setup where the main brand doesn’t support or approve of what the modifier company does.
In the US that’s true, but is it true of other countries? It seems like it in some countries like Israel, Italy and Hungary. But, those seem to be countries that have already gone pretty fascist.