People seem to be forgetting the mod reminder, and I’m tired of deleting posts and banning people and I do not want to lock the thread, so here is a reminder of the reminder.
Edit: Well, this is what happens when people can’t play nice. I’m locking this thread and taking out the trash.
history won’t do shit if it’s controlled by tech billionaires until they destroy the planet.
You have the freedom to decide, you do not have the freedom from the consequences on your decisions.
The most successful tactic of the right has been judging the left for their politics - “woke” etc. This works because it’s “othering” - makes the left part of the out group that people don’t want to be a part of. The left needs to be similarly unabashed, even though othering is kind of against the whole point of being on the left.
But it needs to be more fun and less serious than this post. Why is there no “screaming maga” meme? Surely there’s plenty of those images, and more.
Putting aside whether or not that’s anathema to the cause, I’m not sure how you’d “other” them in a meaningful way. The reason it works for the right is that they target groups who’s members are publicly visible and can’t voluntarily leave (LGBT+, minorities, foreign religions, etc…)
If you target a group of people for their beliefs (something not overtly visible), they can either relabel their group or plausibly claim their beliefs differ in some way. We already do this for fascists and nazis, but very few people are going to outwardly admit to these ideals. Now they’ll just say they’re “extra-constitutional”, “alt right”, “Christian patriot”, or any other hat a bigot wants to swap out for far right authoritarian.
You can’t “other” them where they already proudly claim a majority (white + Christian) so what are you left with?
I see three main types of people that voted for trump, the easily duped, racists and the rich that don’t care how they get their money. If someone tells me they voted for this guy I loose all respect for them. I’m sure that there’s some one issue voters out there but I would lump them into the first category. I have even less respect for someone that doesn’t like trump but did not vote.
I’m at a loss of what to even do. I would like to see the dnc grow a pair of balls and take on these monsters. I would like to see the dnc organize a national boycott on any company even closely tied to musk and trump. The protests are fine to show solidarity but the people in charge will not see it. Hitting the companies in the wallet that are helping musk and trump destroy our country would be a good cause IMHO.
There’s also the “vote to hurt people I don’t like” group:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida
I knew one of those types. The first Trump campaign he straight up said he wanted to see the US destroyed and that’s why he was voting. He used to be a run-of-the-mill liberal dude but got caught up in stupid 4 Chan and shit and became a huge mysogynist and racist. It was sick watching him turn and become emboldened over the years.
Accelerationists are a blight. That sucks.
I’ve lived all around this country and I think the biggest bucket that you exclude is “people who grew up their whole lives in Republican communities that also don’t care about politics nearly as much as chronic Internet users”. these people go to the booths and go ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ before voting for whoever’s campaign banner they saw around town more or whoever they heard a relative mention. these people are everywhere. they aren’t even bad people or misinformed dummies, per say, just willingly uninformed. for a large swath of Americans, being Republican is just the default unfortunately.
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This is the political awareness equivalent of telling people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
People are overworked, lack childcare, have poor healthcare, come from underfunded schools, never get exposed to diversity, etc… Just because it’s possible to escape those conditions and doesn’t mean it’s natural or easy.
Saying people are dumb and lazy is a thought terminating cliché, you have to view that as an extension of the problem.
Assuming you’re correct, what alternative is there besides MAGAs getting gut-punched with reality? All the issues that you say contribute to the problem are being exacerbated by Trump.
There might not be an easy alternative right now.
People tend not to internalize a problem until they can personally see it, and a lot of these problems (deportations, cutting education, handcuffing the CDC, etc…) might not affect them until things get truly bleak. Unless of course they do something reckless like directly cutting funds that goes directly to their wallets (Medicare or Social Security).
Spreading awareness has always been a huge problem. Activists in Tsarist Russia had the same problem of trying to reach out to uneducated rural peasants and their efforts didn’t go smoothly. And of course this was before everyone had hand held disinformation machines in their pockets.
I don’t have a magic bullet but we do have some things going for us. It’s not yet illegal to spread radical ideas, our targets are generally literate, and we still share a fair number of cultural references.
The following is my best guess at advice, I’m just as open to ideas as giving them:
The tricky part is that mainstream social platforms are a non starter. You’d never outweigh the echo chamber. In my opinion digital organization is secondary at best because anything can be suppressed at the whim of server owner, ISP, or government.
So as dumb as it sounds, go forth and talk to people in real life. Be sure you’re educated on what you want to talk about (read your history and theory, know what political buzzwords actually mean). Try to avoid activities that insulate you in your own comfort zone, and gravitate towards ones with wide appeal and low barriers to entry.
Start a woodworking club with some like minded friends or join a book club and offer suggestions. Running group, bodybuilding, birdwatching, whatever… If you want to do some good for your community, join a mutual aid network.
Try to know the narrative these people are living in, even if it’s a fantasy. Avoid trigger words they’re primed to react to, keep it simple and let them draw their own conclusions. Not everyone will be receptive, some people are just assholes.
It’s not sexy but it’s also not that hard to point out glaring injustices in the world. Most people can at least see that far and agree that something needs to change, starting that conversation is first step.
pretty elitist thing to think imo. some people just don’t want or have the time to concern themselves with certain things. I’m honestly envious of those people. I wish I could care less.
gatekeepers have historically existed for a reason.
they certainly shouldn’t have been voting but no one wants to think about putting up barriers to keep idiots out of democracy.
Literacy tests as an entry barrier to voting were banned in 1965.
I’m going to continue judging them for the party they belong to because its a valid proxy for all the other stuff.
History will look back at the American empire and judge all its complicit civilians equally. It’s Democrat vanity that makes them think they’re not in the same genocidal boat as Republicans. You may think of yourselves in another class, but your politicians were complicit in the same crimes.
The people who are getting real mad over Republican voters don’t really care that Rs and Ds have the same foreign policy. The frontier of empire is coming home, but acknowledging that would mean acknowledging we export suffering.
it’s really not about blaming voters anymore. that ship sailed. i had been calling for a conservative purge for the last 10 years but nobody listened to me. i don’t know if we can stop what’s coming now.
There’s a tiny part of me that’s willing to allow that the people voting for him in 2016 just wanted to make their protests heard. Even though he was very, very clear who he is and what he stands for, people were struggling and made themselves heard in the shittiest possible way.
But the people who voted him in again, knowing exactly how it’s going to shake out could all drop dead at once and I wouldn’t shed a tear. Fuck every one of those cunts.
I thought we stopped doing that that in 2003
America is waking up to the reality, as Germany once did, that 1/3 of their population wants to kill another 1/3 while the other 1/3 watches and stands by.
The tools that were used to drive Germany to madness are much the same we’re seeing today. A lot of that first 1/3 is being bombarded with mass media saying “Black people are trying to kill you! Leftists are trying to rob you! The Evil Biden Government is trying to transgender your children!” over and over and over for decades on end.
This isn’t just Americans waking up one morning and deciding to be MAGA chuds. It is a product of two generations of intense right-wing propaganda through every avenue of mass media.
It’s also Americans not doing anything about it for the last two generations. The right-wing propoganda machine has been a threat for literally my entire life, but it has been allowed to complete its ultimate goal without anyone actually trying to stop it.
Oh boy, I am seeing it first half my country. An old friend of mine shares right wing propaganda several times a day, and doesn’t matter how many times I try to counter argument - he just doesn’t care. No reply, no reaction, no nothing. Not even responding to DMs.
Lost cause these people, and I’ve got better things to do than driving two hours just to knock on his door and talk some fucking sense into him.
At least I am getting positive reaction from people who see what kind of bullshit he shares.
I honestly think the answer has to be banning the content. I don’t understand why we allow people to lie and demonize minorities on the internet and TV, it seems pretty obvious what giving a platform for hateful ideology leads to. For Americans, this level of censorship was a bridge too far, but hopefully other countries realize that it’s a necessary bulwark against the rise of fascism.
But how could we ban the content when the owners of the media are fascists? When all three branches of the government are dominated by people who rely on this messaging?
There was a time when this wasn’t the case, and there was independent media in the United States. Unfortunately, that was when it needed to be nipped in the bud.
I honestly think that removing the Fairness Doctrine doesn’t get pointed to enough as one of Reagan’s massive blows to the U.S.
That’s the one thing that gives me hope: their views changed radically but only in one generation through concentrated, directed effort. Calling people idiots or sheep misses the point that this is the natural result of exposing people to this shit daily.
Nobody in history ever thought people are inherently rational and considerate, society is held together through a culture that reinforces it. The tools of the information age can rapidly and drastically shape our society however we want it, we just need to pull them out of the hands of those billionaires burning civilisation to the ground for their own benefit.
Your message is true, but your stats are off. Trump only got something like 15% of the total voting population in the US and won by like 1.5% of the vote. Studies say that historically, 60% of Americans are more liberal than the government - and that includes when Democrats have been in power.
Conservatives are a minority, and the MAGA crazies even more so. They just shout really loudly to convince everybody that they’re a majority. The real issue is that 50% or so of Americans simply don’t care enough to vote against fascism or care more about maintaining the facade of order than freedom. Like MLK said, the biggest threat to equal rights isn’t the white supremacist, but the white liberal who cares more about a negative peace than true justice.
Your numbers don’t seem right to me. He got ~45% of registered voters and ~28% of adults. Where’s your 15% from?
History doesnt judge people
Nobody claims that WW2 was because of voters, that the Poland invasion was because of the soldiers
The people leading the propaganda are blamed
And yet, so many people’s German grandfathers refused to talk about what they did during the war. Despite the lack of judgment.
Nobody claims that WW2 was because of voters
Maybe if folks had been shamed into not supporting the Nazis and their hollow, superficial, hateful “solutions” we wouldn’t even have an example with such obvious and clear parallels to draw upon.
Nobody claims that WW2 was because of voters, that the Poland invasion was because of the soldiers
Nobody should be (or seems to have been) fucking absolved for handing their nation to fascists, either.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/german-civilians-forced-see-real-11908228
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1084913
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn556026
edited to correct unclear wording
History does judge people. The nazi soldiers have caught a ton of grief, even in my lifetime. The israli soldiers currently serving are frequently compared to nazi soldiers both in meme and article form.
Yes the leaders get most (and should) of the blame. But people do remember the other people making it possible. (google the Yaroslav Hunka scandal for a example).
Ill probably be considered a fascist myself in my descendants eyes, having not run for office or started/participated in a violent revolution. (I am holding out hope I might still be able to participate at least).
Hot take:
The problem isn’t the other middle class people who’ve been convinced to wear a different color hat.
The problem is the oligarchs who’ve been plotting to take over and destroy the power of the people by dismantling the government. The people who are actively doing that exact thing while the ignorant masses engage in tribalism and attacking people for voting.
Engaging on this topic is just furthering the distraction tactics. The people who’re actively working to destroy the government or implementing policies targeting minority populations are not your neighbors or anybody that you will run into on social media.
Ok but I still partially blame the people who voted the oligarchs into power
Sure, but as a leftist who grew up in a deep red area, I can tell you that those people are, largely, uneducated and ignorant.
It is because of that ignorance that they’re able to believe the lies that led them to acting the way that they did. The people who bear the majority of the responsibility and blame are the ones who know that they’re taking advantage of and cultivating that ignorance.
I get to hear, in real time, the propaganda engine work on these people (which includes most of my family). I see how topics are framed, by media personalities, into palatable actions. As I’m writing this, there’s a podcast playing at my job, where DOGE is being celebrated for finding ‘fraud and abuse’. I know, for a fact, that the listeners don’t have a high school education and have no idea how the government’s payment systems work… but the radio is telling them that DOGE is doing good work.
So, how can they know any better? These are not people who’re ever going to continue their education and their media literacy skills were developed in the 80s. They’re simply not equipped to handle the scale of lying that exists in the modern world.
On the other hand, the person talking, has multiple degrees and has served in the federal government. That person KNOWS they’re lying but continue to do so because it is profitable. I find people like that to be far more culpable. They’re lying for profit (grifting, to use an over used term) and their lies reach millions of voters.
Then you have the people who benefit from the lies. Trump and Elon know that they’re dealing with ignorant people, they know exactly how to use populist rhetoric at public events. While, in private, they’re using the power that they’ve obtained to corruptly enrich themselves and their sycophants.
Direct your ire at the people who’re actively profiting off of lies and corruption. Help to educate the other people around you when they’re being fed lies.
Attacking your neighbor while Elon and Trump ransack the government is not only pointless, it’s completely counter-productive and ensures that we’ll never unify against this kind of power grab.
I live in the state that gave Trump his highest margin of victory, so I have seen what you describe many times.
My friend listened to punk music and played in punk bands. He was very conservative politically. I hadn’t seen him in a while and we decided to go to a show hours away and catch up. We had stopped talking politics to preserve our friendship. We were on our way back from the show, listening to Rancid, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was like “hey man, you love this music, but do you not hear the lyrics? How can you say the things you say?” I didn’t know he had changed.
He had been doing survey work for a mining company for years. He explained that after he got out of that job, everything became clear. He wasn’t conservative anymore, in fact he had become progressive.
He explained that when he worked with nothing but hard right conservatives, with Fox News on all day, it seeped into his brain and corrupted him.
This is an intelligent man I’m talking about. He was a victim of propaganda and was smart enough to realize it once he was away from it.
This is always on my mind:
"“We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
Trump said this at a speech in Nevada during the primary in 2016, and people cheered.
Ignorance is no excuse.
What if the system is designed to keep you ignorant?
If you want to come to that conclusion in a political postmortem 20 years from now I’d fully encourage it.
The problem is that right now the house is burning down and shaming people for playing with matches won’t save us.
Oh but you don’t get it, they are NAZIS you seeeee
I mean I am sure of that even tho I haven’t actually met them or talked to them or even made an effort to understand them. But yeah pretty sure
I think once someone is making Nazi salutes on a presidential inauguration stage, we can safely call them a Nazi. And as the old saying goes, you know what you call all the people who sit down at a dinner table with a Nazi?
Fully agree that we can see the obvious fascists at the top and the rot seeps down. But idk that I can call 77 million people who casted one ballot Nazis.
My (maybe optimistic) perspective is that the rot has shallow roots. These days you don’t need thousands of dedicated grunts to print flyers and hang posters. Just get one billionaire with a social media platform and a few dozen managers and you can broadcast anything you want.
Germany had a reckoning after the war and plenty of people were able to admit that yes, in fact, they were Nazis and that was wrong of them. And then they tried to make things better.
Because they realized that maybe all they did was support the Nazis by wearing an armband, but that still made them a Nazi and that made them complicit.
Plenty more were never able to admit it but also were never willing to talk about what they did during the war out of shame and embarrassment. Because they also knew they were complicit.
All of these people who voted for Trump did not just sit down at a table with a Nazi. They went out of their way to go to a voting booth or sit down and fill out and mail a form to choose a man who made absolutely no secret about his Nazi ideals. The roots are very, very deep.
Right but this isn’t the conclusion of a world war yet. I don’t doubt that the problem gets worse after people are forced to participate or be complicit while atrocities are committed.
There’s a series of miniscule steps from being ok with a hateful statement to being ok with dangerous people being rounded up to being ok with dangerous political opponents being rounded up to being ok with gas chambers.
Assuming that everyone who ignores the first step is a full fledged Nazi isn’t putting faith in people to change or even resist. Plenty of people stepped out of line in Germany and paid the price.
The real lesson after WW2 is that the Nuremberg Trials were far too lax and narrow in scope. Germany’s populace (while on the cusp of swinging far right) went through the most thorough denazification. It’s still putting up much better resistance than the United States (which had basically no punishment for nazi sympathizers) or Italy (handwaved due to surrender).
What is the effective difference between a “full fledged Nazi” and someone who ignores all of their promises and votes for them anyway?
Ya, I think calling them all Nazis isn’t accurate or right. But you can absolutely call them Nazi supporters.
What is the fundamental difference between a Nazi and a Nazi supporter?
The word supporter of course.
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How the arm got to that position matters. We know what Elon did. Unless there’s video I don’t know how the rest of those arms got raised.
Can we see some video of those stills?
The last one of AOC looks like someone forgot to fully crop out the arm coming from out of frame. I bet she was going in for a hug.
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Everyday I read the news and get more depressed.
that’s why i only sit and read it once a week. the rest of the time I just skim headlines.
This may not be the best thread for your mental health in that case. It hasn’t been great for mine, taking care of all the rule violations.
Honestly, i have ground news that I subscribe too and most of the time I try (not too successfully since it’s EVERYWHERE) to avoid politics outside of it. I’m a federal employees as well so there’s even more fear involved.
One problem is the GOP has been taken over and continually converted to MAGA; it started with calling people “RINOs,” attacking each other for party purity.
“Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.”
