Meanwhile, over at Fox News
Hopefully you all (in the USA) donât at some point get a rude awakening.
I mean, 40+% of the voting electorate being happily support these people - in deeds if not in words. And you have elected representatives - including your President - openly making statements that support these viewpoints. This is not normal. Iâm not saying theyâll be able to repeal the 19th Amendment (Democratic elections will have been abolished long before you reach that point), but as many nations that have devolved into Authoritarianism have found - itâs always just propaganda and a few extremists - until it suddenly isnât.
Not to worry, weâre all scared shitless over here.
I know that most on this board understand the stakes. I just hope enough of the electorate does. Having the US go authoritarian is liable to be destructive for democracies everywhere (the election of Trump, in itself, is bad enough).
Honestly, I donât think they do. My parents are fully on board with the authoritarian without even an understanding of what theyâre actually supporting. I know many Republicans would laugh and roll their eyes if you said their party was flirting with authoritarianism, thatâs just liberal hysteria from people who canât get over that they lost in 2016.
I think this is the end result of Fox News style propaganda. They claimed for eight years that Obama was a tyrant going to cancel elections without a single scrap of evidence to point to that. I think a lot of the âsmarterâ Republicans agreed with a wink and a nod. I mean no one with a couple firing synapses would actually believe that, but hey, if it motivates the baseâŚ
So I think they see the current climate as liberals just doing the same. âOh, both sides play up this whole tyranny thing. It couldnât actually happen. Not hereâ. Just take one look at how many of Trump supporters (even on this forum) claim that Trump doesnât actually MEAN the things he says. Of course not!
Most the electorate does not understand the stakes. Thatâs why we are where we are at which includes having not only the President cater to Neo Nazis but an entire party unwilling to drop kick them.
Not to mention a President of the United States who openly characterizes his political opponents of being radical extremists who are too dangerous to govern.
I understand what youâre saying, Kevin, but anyone who canât see the issues with a President and a Party that speaks and acts the way the GOP is currently doing, is simply either in agreement or willfully blind to what is going on. Trump is literally following the rhetoric of an Orban, Erdogan, and other tin-pot dictators, and the end-result will be the same unless your democratic institutions manage to check him.
For most of the Trump supporters I know, I bet they donât have any idea who those people even are, let alone seeing the dangerous similarities.
I think for some itâs willful blindness, like you say. For others itâs abject ignorance and intellectual sloth. Worrying about both have kept me up at nights.
There was a study about authoritarianism that we discussed on these forums somewhere way back at the beginning on all this. The gist was that certain people have authoritarian leanings on a psychological level and crave a strong man leader who will play to those leanings. I doubt itâs conscious for the majority of them and itâs fear based which is why ten propaganda coming from Fox, Trumps and the rest of them is designed to terrify his base at all times.
At the end of he day, theee folks willl go along with anything the authoritarians say or do because they are psychologically predisposed to do so
Which isnât an out, btw. It doesnât make them any less terrible for supporting terrible things. It just explains why there are so many of them and why they donât seem to have a bridge too far
Yet lots of conservative rhetoric and imagery (including the Tea Party hats, etc.) is based on the idea of âkeeping government out of my XYZ,â and attacks on Democrats frequently accuse them of being the true authoritarians. Thereâs a profound cognitive dissonance, or maybe tribalism ultimately explains it best â doesnât matter whatâs done as long as itâs âmyâ guy doing it.
Sure is lucky that thereâs no record of tweets after you delete them!
Not the Onion: Pt. 7,926,417
The owner of a former marijuana testing lab in Eugene filed a defamation lawsuit against anonymous activists after an anti-fascist website exposed her ties to local white nationalists.
Bethany Sherman claims her business OG Analytics cratered and she was forced to flee Oregon after Eugene Antifa publicized her writings in an online message board and social media posts âout of context,â according to court documents filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Aug. 30.
The suit does not seek a specified sum in damages.
Records show Sherman also has subpoenaed Weebly, a San Francisco-based company, that hosted the Eugene Antifa website, a move lawyers for the unnamed defendants say is an attempt to identify their clients.
[âŚ]
Last year, Eugene Antifa alleged Sherman had supplied food, including swastika-shaped cookies to celebrate Adolf Hitlerâs birthday, and support for neo-Nazi gatherings.Sherman also operated a now-defunct Twitter account under the handle @14th_word, the group alleged. âOur children deserve to be raised in a wholesome environment free of oppression against whites,â the accountâs bio read.
The Anti-Defamation League says â14 wordsâ is a slogan used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, meaning, âWe must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.â
Unfortunately thereâs no such thing as wearing a hood on the internet.
So I recently got around to watching the Man in the High Castleâs new season.
Itâs quite good, but man, thereâs some stuff in there that is pretty disturbing given the recent rise of Fascism in America and abroad.
Thereâs a scene where you have a ton of teens effectively rioting in the streets, carrying torches and shouting âBlood and Soilâ. And itâs nuts, because this is shit that we actually saw happen in America last year. Like, shit is going down that Philip K. Dick wrote in a book, intending to portray a dystopic alternate universe.
We are in the dystopic universe.
I feel like a lot of Trump supporters are going to wake up one night with John Smithâs expression after one of his nightmares.
I havenât seen the new season yet, but damn, thatâs the kind of thing thatâs prevented me from watching this and some other shows at the moment. It was all fun and games in a hypothetical dystopia, but it strikes a little too close to home now. Itâs almost like I see enough of this kind of shit in real life now, the last thing I want to do is dive in deeper in a fictional universe. Part of the fun for me was always âDamn, thatâs crazy imagery. Can you imagine living in that environment?!â. Unfortunately, the answer to the last question has fundamentally changed for me.
Itâs a really good series, and yeah, the end of the season is kind of jarring.