Post #3512106

2026-06-28 12:36 UTC

When totalitarian states realise failure is imminent, the old men running them engage in a kind of nihilist generational expenditure: since there's no future for them, they assume there couldn't possibly be any future (of value) for anyone, and start deliberately squandering the lives and livelihoods of future generations. Examples: Imperial Japan's push for "Ichiogu Gyokusai" (100M shattered jewels, or national self-anihilation), including the suicide attacks the west calls "kamizake" Nazi Germany's Volkssturm, forcing child soldiers as young as 12 to fight, and the "Nero-Befehl" to leave no infrastructure for any Germans left alive after the war Be prepared for similar scorched-earth policies if some of the world's current authoritarians start losing their grip on power. #authoritarianism #totalitarianism #history

Replies (3)

@art_histories@mastodon.social 2026-06-28 12:40

@david_megginson@mstdn.ca We can see this already in Russia.

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@odaraia@mastodon.green 2026-06-30 11:04

@david_megginson@mstdn.ca Not coming from a place of complete sarcasm, is this not paralleled in the destruction of numerous public monuments in Washington DC, including a public golf course park now covered by toxic debris from the demolition at the White House and the expanding algae in the Reflecting Pool? Had it not been for the resistance in Minneapolis, Chicago, New Jersey and Los Angeles, I dare say more arrests and abductions would have impacted US workers. #IndependenceDay2026

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@wyatt_h_knott@mstdn.social 2026-06-30 11:13

@david_megginson@mstdn.ca this is what makes me nervous for Ukraine. When the hordes of gas-deprived Russians storm the Kremlin, what's to stop Putin from nuking Kyiv?

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