A senior executive at the Social Security Administration was physically dragged from his office this week after clashing with DOGE, according to The Washington Post.

Greg Pearre, a career civil servant who led an IT team working on the agency’s data systems, was removed over his opposition to a DOGE plan to cut off immigrants from key financial services, three people told the Post.

The scheme cooked up by Elon Musk’s DOGE squad falsely lists thousands of migrants as dead in a Social Security database known as the “death master file.”

Being entered into the death database cuts a person off from crucial financial services, like the ability to receive government benefits and access a bank account or credit card.

    • stormdahl@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I’m honestly not a fan of calling these people nazis, as there is a very clear definition of what a national socialist is, and throwing any far right authoritarians in with them diminishes that definition.

      They’re MAGA, let’s tie that definition to their actions. This is MAGA behaviour, this is what MAGA does.

      EDIT: Oh cool, so this is just an echo chamber then? We got people straight up calling me a nazi sympathizer for trying to make the point that maybe not every god damn authoritarian is a “nazi”.

      You know, just call them whatever you fucking like. I’m done.

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        as there is a very clear definition of what a national socialist is

        Hardly. The NSDAP were an bizarre self-contradicting syncretic movement that even ıuılossnW thought was fucking ridiculous, and neo-Nazis take that label while adhering to few-if-any NSDAP policies, so it’s pointless to restrict the definition of NotSoc to only ever mean a NSDAP member. Were Strasserists NutSacs? Were the copycat fascist movements in other countries NotSoc? And most importantly - why does it even matter if they are or aren’t? Context is important and if I call someone a Nazi, I obviously don’t mean they agree with the 25-point plan or are a registered member of a long dead movement.

        We’re not throwing in ‘any far right authoritarians’, we’re throwing in ones who are mirroring the early years of the historical Nazi regime - rising from failed liberalism, using emergency presidential powers to dictate, ultranationalism (see Canada, Greenland), deporting political enemies and locking certain minorities in camps, scapegoating queer peoples, leading figures are even copying the salute to show off. Why bother nitpicking when the comparison is perfectly appropriate? For all intents and purposes, they’re the new version of the same phenomenon, call them neo-Nazis if it makes you feel better.

        “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

        • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
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          9 hours ago

          or are a registered member of a long dead movement.

          Oh, it should be long dead, but it’s not. There is a significant amount of people that legitimately think “Hitler was right”. Those you’re referencing aren’t all Nazis (though some certainly seem to be, or at least are heavily inspired by) they’re fascists.

          Using the word “Nazi” instead of “fascist” limits the useful historical comparisons that you can draw from and can have a blinding effect on making important comparisons. I do disagree with Stormdahl about ‘just calling them MAGA’ but I do agree with them that MAGA =/= Nazi just because it’s an explicitly fascist movement.

          • comfy@lemmy.ml
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            32 minutes ago

            Oh, it should be long dead, but it’s not.

            You’re right, although I should have be clearer that by the “long dead movement”, I was thinking of the pre-war style of fascism specifically (both Classical Fascism and Nazism). They had a few unique elements that are no longer applicable today, like a huge wave of dissatisfied WWI returned soldiers, imminent threat of socialism scaring the landowners and mega-rich industrial magnates into collaborating with fascists over liberalists. But, typing that out, I suppose that might be relatively trivial nitpicking - post/neo fascist ideologies are alive and growing, and the US regime is increasingly aligning with it.

            [second paragraph]

            I completely agree. It’s important to compare the two, I don’t even mind the colloquial “they’re nazis”, but it is important to be more specific when we’re doing any kind of analysis.

      • workerONE@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        National socialist is just a spin to sound nice. Nazis were in no way socialists. It doesn’t make sense to me why you are trying to preserve this label, maybe you can explain and I just don’t get it.

        • WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          National socialist is just a spin to sound nice. Nazis were in no way socialists.

          I agree they were in no way socialists, but “national socialism” isn’t a spin. It’s what the word nazi literally means. It’s a shortening of the German word Nationalsozialistische.

          It doesn’t make sense to me why you are trying to preserve this label, maybe you can explain and I just don’t get it.

          Nazism is an ideology which informs the behavior of Nazis.

          Nazis are antisemetic and blame the Jews for the failures of society. When you call Trump a Nazi you might be confused as to why he loves Israel.

          Nazis are Aryan Supremacists, they believe in the superiority of their racial identity. When you call Elon Musk a Nazi you might be confused as to why he’s encouraging so much immigration of Indians via the H1-B visa.

          The much more general term fascist avoids the ideology directly tied to Nazism (antisemitism, Aryan supremacy). The new fascism is built on anti-wokeness and rich people supremacy and is a distinct form of fascism separate from Nazism.

          It has a bunch of technofeudalist angles like forcing AI in places it doesn’t belong, complete surveillance, cryptocurrencies, etc that need a new label to accurately describe.

          Technofeudalism is the term I think is more descriptive, albeit less provocative.

          • workerONE@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            That’s a great answer, but I do believe Trump and Musk are white supremacists. Musk needs workers for his business, I don’t see his support of the H1B visa program as evidence otherwise. It’s a financial decision for him.

            Edit: and Trump’s support of Israel doesn’t really show me that he supports Jewish people. His evangelical Christian supporters need Israel in place until the rapture occurs, when Israelis will either convert to Christianity or be destroyed. Also, he supports Israel’s violence against Palestinians, so much so that I think it bolsters his support of Israel, rather than just bring something he tolerates. I think that’s all racism. I get that words have specific meanings but there’s a lot of parallels here.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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        2 days ago

        The only group ever claiming to be “national socialists” were, in fact, not socialists at all so there’s no fucking reason to give a single shit about diminishing the definition of a fucking lie. They were Nazis, and these current assholes are also Nazis.

        • stormdahl@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          No idea why you’re arguing semantics. I’m not trying to make a point that there’s a difference here. Nazis and national socialists are the same, we’re in agreement.

      • Floodedwomb@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        You’re technically correct. But nazi has become a shorthand for fascist over the years and they are definitely fascists.

        • stormdahl@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          No, by definition they’re not fascists either, but these words get thrown around so much that they’ve lost all meaning so sure. Call them whatever the fuck you like.

          • spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            10 hours ago

            No, by definition they’re not fascists either

            Lol, so you don’t actually know what fascists are. Literally the definition of fascism:

            a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition

            Please, explain how “by definition” they’re not fascists when the political philosophy they’re putting in place is fascism.

            (If you’re wondering why you’re being called a sympathizer, it’s [charitably] because you’re saying things that the Nazis say, and you don’t understand the words you’re [mis]using.)