Ask Lemmy

Idiocracy

Andor

The historical precedent is the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. You should now be somewhere in the early 1930s.

The Man in the High Castle.

1984 by George Orwell

Not TV (at least not that I am aware of), but it was the first thing to come to my mind. They made a movie if you prefer but, as always, you'll get more from the book.

It’s a novel, but “It Can’t Happen Here” follows a scenario where a populist becomes President and removes all opposition.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Great book and a TV miniseries. An alternative history that has Lindbergh winning the presidency in the 30s and the US government enacting fascism domestically. The book does a great job of portraying the chaos that ensues. The series is also very good.

The Plot...

VEEP

Seriously. “Today the secretary of defense with a drinking problem reveals military secrets to a reporter due to a texting error.”

Elysium; the Matt Damon movie where the rich live on a space station and leave the rest of us to rot.

I'm not saying it's what's going on right this moment, but it's the end-goal of everything that Musk, Bezos, etc... are doing.

Idiocracy

The Prequel to Schindler's List

There’s a satirical (well, don’t know how long it will be considered that) movie about it… it’s called Idiocracy

Ever heard of the rise of Nazism in Germany?

The bobiverse series (about a guy who is hit by a car right after signing up for a cryogenics thing and then wakes in the future to find out he's basically been legislated to have no rights and is stuck into a self-replicating drone for space exploration, it's pretty good) kind of starts off setting the backstory like it. The christofascism just started a bit later.

Obviously it's not one to one but given Trump's performative Christianity it was all I could think about around the failed coup on Jan 6.

Behind the Insurrectionists

A lot of what he talks about prior to previous insurrections are pretty similar to what's happening now.

The Ultra podcast has two seasons and goes in-depth into previous attempts by fascists at taking over the US government.

Sitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power.

When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.

I find the last days of the Qing dynasty China to be somewhat analogous. Institutional rot, rampant corruption, a complete failure to adapt to crises and open hostility to anyone proposing workable solutions or trying to learn from foreign examples. Basically the two voices in government were, "Learn how guns work while completely refusing to understand the scientific principles that allowed them to be developed" and "Learn absolutely nothing." The "lesser evil" was woefully inadequate, and once the government finally collapsed, both factions that emerged (communists and nationalist) were far more influenced by Western ideas than even the most radical in the Qing government were.

The wave of fascism going throughput Europe in the 19th and 20th century of course.

But the state of the American people is also portrayed well in The Hunger Games (books and movies).

Literally the first novel ever written "Sinuhe" speaks of a very similar crisis in ancient Egypt.

The Twilight Zone (2019), "The Wunderkind"

Synopsis: A down-on-his-luck campaign manager (John Cho) is determined to get a kid (Jacob Tremblay) elected as the next President of the United States.

Take a serious look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gutting of the Commonwealth, and the rise of Russia under Yeltsin, then Putin. I'm not sure of any fictionalized works that examine this in any detail, but the aftermath and the new reality is well-described in Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. Link is a 10 year old review in the Guardian.

The falls of other empires would also be instructive. There is an excellent podcast/YouTube channel, the Fall of Civilizations(YouTube Link)(Spotify Link). In listening, I found several parallels to the first Trump presidency. I haven't listened in years.

A paper-thin skinned hegemon leads a dying empire against his staunch allies. I fed this prompt to ChatGPT and it handed me back Dune by Frank Herbert and Foundation by Isaac Asimov.

Player Piano by Vonnegut

Babylon Berlin

Any sci-fi by Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley Phillip K.Dick, some by Robert Heinlein iirc.

The Great Dictator