#RNC corruption

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

* * * *

Why Ronna McDaniel’s hiring and “firing” by NBC matters.

March 25, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Opening thoughts

In the span of 72 hours, NBC announced the hiring and partial “firing” of former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel. McDaniel’s hiring sparked a firestorm of protest within NBC internally and by viewers of MSNBC and NBC that caused the network’s executive to announce that she would not appear “on air” on the MSNBC cable network. (As of Sunday evening, it appears she will continue to appear on NBC as a political contributor.)

NBC’s decision to hire McDaniel was deeply troubling on many levels. The backlash by viewers and journalists at MSNBC and NBC was instructive and encouraging. But this story also serves as a morality tale for the challenges we will face in the next seven months as the media and pundits normalize and dismiss the attempted coup and insurrection.

Indeed, the hiring and partial retraction of McDaniel’s employment occurred amidst a renewed round of handwringing by pundits and consultants who are freaking out about the possibility of Biden losing in November. That fear is rooted in a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the stakes of the 2024 election and an obsessive compulsion with “favorability ratings.”

It’s a good thing none of those pundits or consultants were in charge of the Continental Army during the American Revolution when George Washington’s battlefield record was six victories, seven losses, and four draws. The modern-day pundits would have surrendered after the first loss, and America would be a colony of the United Kingdom today.

We will be forced to endure a constant barrage of defeatism from the political class in the months to come. Why? They are reserving their pre-emptive “I told you so” rights so that if things turn out badly, they can claim to be geniuses. If Biden wins, no one will remember or hold them accountable for their defeatism.  For the pundits, it’s a “Heads I win, tails you lose” proposition.

So, let’s burst the “I am a genius” balloons of the pundits now. The 2024 presidential election will be a close race. It takes no great skill or insight to wring your hands and say you have a bad feeling about the election. At this point, pundits and prognosticators are dead weight, holding back those of us who refuse to retreat at the first hint of trouble.

Most of the analysis by the self-proclaimed experts is incredibly superficial—about a quarter inch deep. For example, a reader sent me an “economic outlook” from the large Wall Street bank managing her retirement account. The Wall Street bank said that the markets are beginning to anticipate a Trump victory because Biden’s unfavorability ratings remain high.

The reader’s retirement advisers apparently do not understand that Americans actually vote for president and that elections are not determined by “favorability ratings.” Voters are not securities traded in an efficient market. They are people motivated by a multitude of factors.

The investment advisers do not appear to believe that women (or men) care about having their reproductive liberty controlled by religious zealots, allowing weapons of war to be carried in public without a permit, rolling back climate protections after the hottest year on record, disenfranchising Black voters, denying equal dignity to LGBTQ people, or allowing Americans to choose their leaders.

Nor do the investment advisers appear to be concerned that one of the candidates for president has 91 felony indictments, will sit through one criminal trial before the election, has promised to be a dictator, is threatening to blow up the strongest military alliance in the world, and appears (again) to be supported by Russia in his bid for the presidency.

We are in uncharted waters. Old maps do not apply. But pundits, pollsters, and Wall Street gurus insist on looking back to templates and spreadsheets that applied in “normal” times.

We are living through an exceptional moment in which we can make our own rules. Recognizing that fact and having the audacity to break “the old rules” to create a new template for success is critical to controlling the outcome of the 2024 election. Don’t allow yourself to be weighed down by consultants re-litigating the 1992, 2000, 2008, or 2016 elections.

I could go on, but you get the point. We control our destiny—but only if we ignore people who tell us we are sheep, shares of stock, or widgets. We are not. We are Americans wielding the awesome power granted us by the Constitution.

But how is Ronna McDaniel’s hiring and firing related to the shortsighted defeatism of the consulting class? Read on!

Rona McDaniel’s hiring illustrates the normalization of the insurrection and coup among the media and political class.

There is a direct line between normalizing the coup and panicking about Biden’s prospects in 2024. Hear me out.

Ronna McDaniel was aware of the fake elector's plot in real-time and did nothing to stop the attempted coup. Worse, she participated in a call to pressure local elections officials in Michigan to refuse to certify election results based on non-existent fraud. When the media reported on her participation in the election interference plot, she accused MSNBC of ‘spreading lies’ and employing ‘prime time propagandists.’” She repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

Regardless of whether Ronna McDaniel has criminal liability for the attempted coup, she cheered loudly for its success and smeared journalists who spoke the truth about the first-ever effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. That alone should ban her for life from any role at a legitimate news platform.

It is reprehensible that Comcast / NBC would hire Ronna McDaniel as a political consultant after her election denialism and active involvement in at least one overt act to overturn the Constitution. And yet, dozens of executives at NBC apparently view the attempted coup as part of the game of hardball election politics. They are ready to forgive and forget despite the lack of accountability for Trump and his advisers—including members of the RNC.

By reducing the attempted coup and insurrection to mere “partisan politics,” NBC is misleading the American people about the stakes in 2024 by denying the reality of what happened in 2020. And if you ignore the stakes, if you ignore the unprecedented nature of the 2024 election, then perhaps it isn’t unreasonable to say, “Well, in 1992, George H.W. Bush’s favorability ratings were X and he lost.” But Bill Clinton in 1992 isn’t Donald Trump in 2024. The world has forever changed because of the insurrection and the incipient fascism that is roiling beneath the surface.

We cannot allow NBC to continue in its misguided view of what is at stake in 2024. Read on!

The backlash against NBC was partially successful.

Hundreds of readers of this newsletter—and tens of thousands of Americans (an estimate) let NBC know that they strenuously objected to the presence of Ronna McDaniel on the network. Journalists at NBC and MSNBC also spoke out. The combined pressure worked—at least at MSNBC. See WaPo, Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel faces sharp criticism after NBC hiring. (This article is accessible to all.)

According to WaPo, the president of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, sent an internal memo assuring MSNBC staff that Ronna McDaniel would not be forced on the hosts at MSNBC as an on-air contributor or commentator. Good! The pressure campaign worked.

But it is not enough.

McDaniel appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday and attempted to dismiss her previous election denialism by saying that as chair of the RNC she “had to take one for the team.” One reasonable interpretation of that statement could be, “I lied because I was paid to lie.”

Chuck Todd was part of an NBC panel that dissected McDaniel’s interview on Meet the Press by Kristen Welker. Chuck Todd said,

Our bosses owe you [Welker] an apology for putting you in this situation because I don’t know what to believe. . . . I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn’t want to mess up her contract. There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this, because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.

Good for Chuck Todd! (Not usually on my list of “go to” sources.) Let’s hope he speaks for a substantial portion of the NBC News staff—and that NBC management is listening.

The deluge of comments from listeners had an immediate effect on the editorial and staffing decisions at MSNBC! There is a lesson in that for all of us! We can fight the normalization of the coup and insurrection. Indeed, we must! Otherwise, voters will be misinformed about the stakes of the 2024 election.

There is more to be done.

As of Sunday evening, Ronna McDaniel appears to remain at NBC as a “contributor.” Thanks to a reader (Susan O. S.) for identifying the executives at NBC who oversee the news function at the NBC network (not to be confused with the cable-based MSNBC). The email addresses are:

President, NBC: Rebecca.Blumenstein@nbcuni.com

SVP of Politics: carrie.budoff@nbcuni.com

Keeping Ronna McDaniel “off the air” at a legitimate media outlet is imperative. She lied before she joined NBC and smeared NBC’s journalists for telling the truth. She participated in at least one act designed to overturn the election. She should not be trusted with any news platform that reaches persuadable voters—because we have no reason to believe that she will tell the truth going forward.

The stakes are simply too high, and the time is too short for NBC to “see what happens” if NBC “gives her chance.” McDaniel has proven who she is; we should believe her.

Let NBC know how you feel about its cynical willingness to play politics with our democracy.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[icubud]

“Everything appears to be a cover up,” says the decorated police chief

EXCLUSIVE: Capitol Police Chief Called Jan 6 Events ‘A Cover Up’ in Tucker Carlson Interview HIDDEN By Fox News Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that events surrounding the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol appear to have been a “cover up,” in never-seen-before footage published exclusively by The National Pulse. In the hour-long interview, Sund…

[undergroundusa]

"Why hasn’t the litigation sector of the political Right used the legal precedent established in the ruling against [Alex] Jones to go after [Joy] Reid and MSNBC for defamation?…"

ORIGINAL CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/hello-lawyers-of-the-right-bueller

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, SHARE & EDUCATE

Hello? Lawyers Of The Right? Bueller? Bueller?

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Color me shocked.

Fox News is hosting the GOP debate in Wisconsin.  During this build up segment, Martha MacCallum introduces the “random Republican voters” in Wisconsin who will watch the debate.  Except, well… there’s a little problem.  MacCallum introduces Chris Lawrence as a “Wisconsin GOP voter” who seemingly supports Ron DeSantis.  However, MacCallum fails to mention that Chris Lawrence actually works for the Koch Network, who have recently pledged to spend $70 million to defeat President Trump.

@RaheemKassam

Hi I looked into “Wisconsin voter” Christopher Lawrence, why didn’t you tell people he’s a paid activist belonging to the open borders network that recently pledged $70M to stop Trump?

‘Globalist’ Koch Network Blows $70M of Donor Cash to ‘Stop Trump’.

From Sundance Treehouse Blog: "The ‘Koch network’ group Americans for Prosperity Action is dropping $70M+ on a bid to stop President Donald J. Trump becoming the 47th President of the United States, according to a new report which suggests the libertarian billionaire backed organization is campaign in the Republican primaries “for the first time in its nearly 20 year history”.

The money is in addition to a $200M+ fund established by corporate backers for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign, and will likely be used for “digital advertising on the issue of electability in the presidential race,” in addition to direct mail. In such scenarios, high percentages of donor cash ends up in the pockets of campaign consultants and vendors.

The Koch network includes groups such as Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together, i360, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the State Policy Network, the CATO Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Atlas Network, the Heritage Foundation, the Independent Women’s Forum, the Manhattan Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and many more.

 The organization’s LIBRE initiative even campaigns in favor of amnesty for illegal migrants.

 The co-option of the Tea Party movement was spearheaded by the Kochs, who turned it from a citizen-led organization into a pro-corporate, libertarian shell, before dumping it when press attention became too inconvenient.

“The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade,” Trump tweeted in 2018. “I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas.”

Not only has Chris Lawrence worked for the Koch Network for the past 9 years, he is also the Senior Field Director for the Koch group Americans for Prosperity.  In essence, Lawrence is a political operative planted in the group by Fox News to support Ron DeSantis and make it appear like he is an innocuous voter.  Fox News and Martha MacCallum should be embarrassed, but they won’t be. 

Don’t forget, Ron DeSantis supporters Eric Erickson and Guy Benson sit on the Koch Network AfP Advisory Board (see here).

It’s all one big game of illusion, and Fox News is once again a big part of the Republican fraud.  Proving yet again, that everything in the Ron DeSantis orbit is astroturf, phony, manufactured and made up."

[millionmovieproject]

HELLO COUSINS!!

In a further act of stupidity, Twitter now restricts live streaming to premium accounts. We ordinarily stream to YouTube and Twitter, then post next day on Tumblr and Rumble, and there's pretty much no way we're going to give Twitter any money, so when we know where our next destination for live episodes are going to be, we'll let you know!

In this episode, the implications of Trump's assassination attempt, picking JD Vance as a running mate, as Biden continues to meltdown in public, while Dems go into fundraising mode, and why we need to form unions beyond labor, are discussed.

[kinialohaguy]

Caucus Training

Aloha kākou and Happy Lunar New Year. East Hawai’i County Republican Party held a caucus training session with precinct and delegate elections at Wailoa River State Park today. We learned a lot of interesting information. We got there early to help with the setup and potluck lunch for the afternoon. Met a lot of like-minded new friends. Volunteered to be a precinct Capt’n. Live music during the…

[wilwheaton]

"The decision to jettison McDaniel’s preparations for a robust ground game that was similar in scope and strategy to the RNC’s efforts to boost Trump in 2016 and 2020 appears to have originated at the top," said the report. "Trump repeatedly told McDaniel in conversations before he pushed her out of the chairmanship that he did not need the RNC to focus on 'get-out-the-vote' activities. Rather, knowledgeable Republican sources told us, the former president informed McDaniel he wanted the committee to prioritize 'election integrity' efforts."

GOP's 2024 'ground game' in limbo after Trump's MAGA coup

Shitler and his allies know they can’t win this election, so they aren’t even trying. They’re going to put their money, their resources, and all of their energy into stealing the election by using violence and corruption.

It’s concerning that I can see this, just by following where they are spending their money and where they are putting their dwindling resources, yet none of the national media or dedicated political reporters are even talking about it.

[captain-price-unofficially]

The wildest part to me is how blindly loyal both party conventions are to their guys.

The DNC has a sundowner losing it who shouldn’t have run a second time

Meanwhile the RNC has a sundowner losing it who shouldn’t have run a second time who is also a convicted felon who got doxxed as a pedo

Bottom line, seniority based political parties are breeding grounds for corruption. I think the Epstein files would be taken more seriously if we released ALL OF THEM. Of course a good number of Dems would go down, but no real big loss.

[darkmaga-returns]

FBI Director Kash Patel has made good on his promise to restore integrity within the Bureau. Patel has officially turned over explosive documents related to the mysterious pipe bomb incidents on January 6th to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and his investigative committee.

(…) In a detailed letter dated March 7, 2025, the FBI explicitly committed to transparency, declaring, “Under Director Patel’s leadership, the FBI remains committed to working with Congress to ensure transparency and the accountability the American people deserve.

(…) It can be recalled that a report released by the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight into the January 6 pipe bomber shows the FBI stopped looking for the suspect in 2021 and covered up the evidence.

The FBI, under Chris Wray’s leadership, refused to cooperate with congressional investigators.

In September, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino said, according to a whistleblower, after the pipe bombs were found at the RNC and DNC headquarters, “assets on the ground, including a whistleblower, was briefed about the pipe bombs the next day and show a picture of a guy in a hoodie.”

However, according to the whistleblower, the law enforcement agents were told to stand down two days later.

“Nearly four years later, federal law enforcement has yet to identity the individual responsible for planting the pipe bombs, which remains one of the unanswered questions from that day. In the early weeks of the investigation, the FBI took significant investigative steps, identifying multiple persons of interest, issuing search warrants, reviewing hours of security camera footage, and analyzing the components of the pipe bombs. Despite the threat the pipe bombs posed to Congress and the public and the role they played in diverting resources away from the Capitol, federal law enforcement has refused to provide substantive updates to Congress about the status of the investigation,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s report stated.

Loudermilk’s report said there has been conflicting information whether the FBI received “corrupted” cellular data from cell carriers.

“There is conflicting information as to whether the FBI received “corrupted” cellular data from the major cell carriers. A former senior FBI official testified that the major cell carrier companies provided “corrupted” cell data to the FBI and suggested that that “corrupted” data may have contained the identity of the pipe bomber; however, in responses to letters from the Subcommittee, the major cell carriers confirmed that they did not provide corrupted data to the FBI and that the FBI never notified them of any issues with accessing the cellular data,” the House report stated.

Also, FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin reported in May 2023 that the technicians who worked on the program told him the devices were inoperable.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

With Donald Trump’s victories on Tuesday, he has moved to the cusp of securing the 1,215 delegates necessary to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. The rest is a formality. The party has become a vessel for the fulfillment of Mr. Trump’s ambitions, and he will almost certainly be its standard-bearer for a third time.

This is a tragedy for the Republican Party and for the country it purports to serve.

In a healthy democracy, political parties are organizations devoted to electing politicians who share a set of values and policy goals. They operate part of the machinery of politics, working with elected officials and civil servants to make elections happen. Members air their differences within the party to strengthen and sharpen its positions. In America’s two-party democracy, Republicans and Democrats have regularly traded places in the White House and shared power in Congress in a system that has been stable for more than a century.

The Republican Party is forsaking all of those responsibilities and instead has become an organization whose goal is the election of one person at the expense of anything else, including integrity, principle, policy and patriotism. As an individual, Mr. Trump has demonstrated a contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law that makes him unfit to hold office. But when an entire political party, particularly one of the two main parties in a country as powerful as the United States, turns into an instrument of that person and his most dangerous ideas, the damage affects everyone.

Mr. Trump’s ability to solidify control of the Republican Party and to quickly defeat his challengers for the nomination owes partly to the fervor of a bedrock of supporters who have delivered substantial victories for him in nearly every primary contest so far. Perhaps his most important advantage, however, is that there are few remaining leaders in the Republican Party who seem willing to stand up for an alternative vision of the party’s future. Those who continue to openly oppose him are, overwhelmingly, those who have left office. Some have said they feared speaking out because they faced threats of violence and retribution.

In a traditional presidential primary contest, victory signals a democratic mandate, in which the winner enjoys popular legitimacy, conferred by the party’s voters, but also accepts that defeated rivals and their competing views have a place within the party. Mr. Trump no longer does, having used the primary contest as a tool for purging the party of dissent. The Republican candidates who have dropped out of the race have had to either demonstrate their devotion to him or risk being shunned. His last rival, Nikki Haley, is a Republican leader with a conservative track record going back decades who served in Mr. Trump’s cabinet in his first term. He has now cast her out. “She’s essentially a Democrat,” the former president said the day before her loss in South Carolina. “I think she should probably switch parties.”

Without a sufficient number of Republicans holding positions of power who have shown that they will serve the Constitution and the American people before the president, the country takes an enormous risk. Some of the Republicans who are no longer welcome — such as Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney — tried to hold their party’s leader accountable to his basic duty to uphold the law. Without such leaders, the Republican Party also loses the capacity to avoid decisions that can hurt its supporters. John McCain, for example, voted to save Obamacare because his party had not come up with an alternative and millions of people otherwise would have lost their health coverage.

A party without dissent or internal debate, one that exists only to serve the will of one man, is also one that is unable to govern.

Republicans in Congress have already shown their willingness to set aside their own priorities as lawmakers at Mr. Trump’s direction. The country witnessed a stark display of this devotion recently during the clashes over negotiations for a spending bill. Republicans have long pushed for tougher border security measures, and Mr. Trump put this at the top of the party’s agenda. With a narrow majority in the House and bipartisan agreement on a compromise in the Senate, Republicans could have achieved this goal. But once Mr. Trump insisted that he needed immigration as a campaign issue, his loyalists in the House ensured that the party would lose a chance to give their voters what they had promised. Even the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who pushed for the bill for months, ultimately abandoned it and voted against it. He is now considering endorsing Mr. Trump, a man whom he has not spoken to in over three years, according to reporting by Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher of The Times. And last week, Mr. McConnell announced that he would step down from his leadership post.

Similarly, the party appears ready to ditch its promises to support Ukraine and its longstanding commitment to the security of our NATO allies in Europe. When Mr. Trump ranted about getting NATO countries to “pay up” or face his threats to encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to them, many Republican leaders said nothing.

The Republican Party has long included leaders with widely different visions of America’s place in the world, and many Republican voters may agree with Mr. Trump’s view that the United States should not be involved in foreign conflicts or even that NATO is unimportant. But once competing views are no longer welcome, the party loses its ability to consider how ideas are put into practice and what the consequences may be.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, for example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo persuaded him not to abruptly withdraw from NATO. If Mr. Trump were to try in a second term, Congress could, in theory, restrain him; in December lawmakers passed a measure requiring congressional approval for any president to leave NATO. But as Peter Feaver pointed out recently in Foreign Affairs, such constraints mean little to a party that has submitted to the “ideological mastery” of its leader. Marco Rubio, one of the authors of that legislation, now insists that he has “zero concern” about Mr. Trump’s comments.

It may be tempting for Americans to dismiss these capitulations as politicians doing whatever it takes to get elected or to ignore Mr. Trump’s bullying of other Republicans and tune out until Election Day. In one recent poll, two-thirds of Americans said they were “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.”

But tuning out is a luxury that no American, regardless of party, can afford. Mr. Trump in 2024 would be the nominee of a very different Republican Party — one that has lost whatever power it once had to hold him in check.

This subservience was not inevitable. After Mr. Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, some party leaders, especially in Congress, suggested that they were ready to break with him. The Republican Party’s disappointing results in the 2022 midterm elections appeared to further undermine Mr. Trump’s support, adding doubts about his political potency to the longstanding concerns about his commitment to democracy.

But after Mr. Trump announced his candidacy and it became clear that the multiple indictments against him only strengthened his support, that resistance faded away. He is now using these cases for his own political purposes, campaigning to raise money for his legal defense, and has turned his appearances in court into opportunities to cast doubt on the integrity of the legal system.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the federal Jan. 6 trial, imposed a gag order on him to prevent him from intimidating witnesses. She noted that Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers did not contradict testimony “that when defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed.” The leadership of the Republican Party has been silent.

With loyalists now in control of the Republican National Committee and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, in line to become its co-chair, the party may soon bend to Mr. Trump’s insistence that the party pay his legal bills. His campaign spent roughly $50 million on lawyers last year, and those expenses are mounting as the trial dates approach. One prominent Republican, Henry Barbour, has sponsored resolutions barring the committee from doing so, but he conceded that the effort can do little more than just make a point.

Mr. Trump has also taken over the party’s state-level machinery. This has allowed him to rewrite the rules of the Republican primary process and add winner-take-all contests, which work in his favor. That is the kind of advantage that political parties normally give incumbents. But in the process, he has divided some state parties into factions, some of which no longer speak to each other. Democrats may see the dysfunction and bickering among Republicans as an advantage. But it also means that for Democrats, even state and local races turn into ones against Mr. Trump. Rather than competing on the merits of policy or ideology, they find themselves running against candidates without coherent positions other than their loyalty to Trumpism.

Republican voters may soon no longer have a choice about their nominee; their only choice is whether to support someone who would do to the country what he has already done to his party.

[icubud]

[undergroundusa]

"All claims of calamity coming out of the political and ideological Left about Trump or what they intend to do with government to “save democracy” are nothing more than a stinking pile of horseshit…."

ORIGINAL CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/the-lies-are-getting-obnoxiously

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, SHARE & EDUCATE

The Lies Are Getting Obnoxiously Pathetic

[ryachu]

Judge Cannon dismissing the documents case on the first day of the RNC is so corrupt that it's comical

[iamnmbr3]

I'm part of the MENA diaspora and I also think that many of the newly minted Palestinian rights activists (especially the very online ones) will abruptly lose interest in the cause for the rights of Palestinians whenever a ceasefire is declared. :/

I'm sending this anonymously because I don't need Hamas stans on this site screenshooting my blog right now and calling me a Zionist apologist or whatever, even though I absolutely cannot stand Israeli's government.

Absolutely. I would argue that even now a lot of them aren't interested in the cause of Palestinian rights. People who waste energy protesting outside of synagogues or barring Jews from college campuses in countries thousands of miles away from Palestine are not genuinely interested in the cause of rights and dignity for Palestinian people or serious about taking part in real activism to build a peaceful future in the region.

They are appropriating the suffering of the Palestinian people and the work of real activists to center themselves and shield hateful actions and terrorist apologism. The way they have attacked and tried to silence Palestinian people who have condemned Hamas (because guess what? terrorists are everyone's enemy) is so telling. A lot of them haven't even bothered to get educated about basic facts and spew a lot of hateful and harmful misinformation - for example confusing Hamas with the PLO or equating Gazan civilians with the Hamas terrorists who oppress them. Hamas claims to speak for and represent Palestinian people but they do not and anyone saying every day Palestinian people are the same as or represented by terrorists is a raging bigot and on the side of oppressors and murderers.

Literally wtf. I just look at these fake "activists" and I'm at a loss. Wow you yelled antisemitic slurs at some random Jews in a country on the other side of the world from Gaza. Literally what does that accomplish? Do you think people in Gaza who just want to live in peace are thanking you? Do you think that helps them in any way? Of course it doesn't. The only people who that helps are Hamas terrorists. Because Hamas wants to spread hate. The leaders of Hamas brutalize and murder the people of Palestine every day and became billionaires by robbing the people of Gaza. They don't care about the Palestinian people at all. These corrupt Hamas leaders are the only people who are served by spreading hate and attacking random people abroad.

Actual activism that would help the victims of this conflict takes work and compromise. And these so-called terminally online fake "Leftists" just want a movement to treat as a fandom where they can get attention and have an excuse to be bigoted. Like in the US they literally protested the DNC but not the RNC and are threatening not to vote for Harris even tho the Democrats and Harris support a ceasefire (and are actively working towards one) and the Republicans are virulently bigoted and Trump hates Palestinian people so much he literally uses "Palestinian" as a slur against people he doesn't like. It's appalling.

And yeah I hope Netanyahu and his government are kicked out soon. Before October 7 there were mass protests in Israel against Netanyahu and his whole government because he is so bad as a leader and so corrupt. He probably would've been forced out by now if not for this conflict. He wants to be a dictator and is absolutely terrible for regional stability and peace and ending his rule would benefit everyone in the region - Israelis as well as Palestinians. All these so-called activists just focusing on being antisemitic helps him a lot because they are taking attention away from the very deserved and legitimate criticisms that should be focused on him and his government.

But anyway, Hamas is absolutely the enemy of the Palestinian people (as well as of Israel) and acting like criticizing Hamas means you are against the people of Gaza or against Palestinian people or in support of Netanyahu is literally just repeating Hamas propaganda...aka the propaganda of the people who have terrorized and oppressed the people of Gaza every single day since Israel withdrew in 2005. Supporting Hamas doesn't make you woke or progressive or an activist. It makes you a fascist terrorist apologist and supporter of the oppressor.

So many Palestinian people have been forced to flee Gaza because of the brutality of the Hamas regime and then all these Western online "Leftists" cosplaying as activists attack them and shout them down because they don't want to hear that this conflict affects real people and is more complex than a cartoon drama. Real solutions involve work and compromise and nuance. And they aren't interested. Some even say that Palestinian civilians dying should be glorified because it makes them "martyrs." No. Palestinian people are not toys to be played with. They are human beings.

They deserve to live long and peaceful and happy lives - not to be fed into a meat grinder to be "martyred" for the benefit of Hamas's corrupt billionaire leaders or for the entertainment of Twitter warriors.

[hasufin]

You've probably seen clips from this. This is Sen. Josh Hawley's speech to the RNC, in which he directly calls for Christian Nationalism.

I watched the entire thing. It's... it's a ride.

The weird thing is, sandwiched in the middle of his ahistorical bullshit and his Christian Nationalism, is an economic proposal which would fit right in at the DNC. It's weird.

Anyway, below is my complete reaction to it:

So, against my better judgement, I did listen to the speech.

Now, I’ve been reluctant to do so. It has been my experience that American Rightwing Christians tend to speak in a sort of dialect; that they tend to say things which – to an outsider such as myself – seem terribly incendiary, aggressive, and deeply unpersuasive. I’ve had Christian friends explain to me, of preachers “Yes, I know that sounds horrible to you, but that’s just how they talk in the Church”. And thus, I did ask this question [on Quora] to among other things give those within that community an opportunity to explain his words. I have, I confess, been disappointed: what I’ve received instead has been dismissal; just refusal to acknowledge that the things being said would reasonably be interpreted as threatening to one not steeped in that culture. Dismissal, I will say, serves to affirm our concerns: it’s like how Kavanaugh claimed that Roe was “settled law”… until he voted to overturn it. We don’t trust dismissal, because it has been a lie in the past and we expect it to be a lie in the future.

Now, the first few minutes of Hawley’s speech present me with a conundrum.

You see, he gives a brief historical recount of the fall of the Roman Empire, and of the Puritans (whom I have never before heard referred to as Augustinians, but again, I’m just not fluent in this particular patois.)

And the problem here is, his narrative is simply false. I mean, he pinpoints the early 400s as the fall of the Western Roman Empire – fair enough – but that’s also when Christianity became the majority religion of that empire; characterizing them as pagans as that point, and “paganism” as the cause of the fall of the Empire is quite ridiculous. But I’ll come back to that later, and why it’s deeply disturbing to me.

And then the Puritans. Again, I’ve never really heard them called Augustinians but that’s reasonably an oversight on my part – I’m of the opinion that their influence on the American colonies is somewhat overstated, but that’s just my opinion. His characterization of them is I think somewhat lack in nuance and reality, but the how and why of that seems important.

So I’m left with a bit of a conundrum. Do I assume his actual knowledge of history is that of a disinterested high schooler? Do I assume he just plain doesn’t know what he is talking about? If that’s the case, I – and everyone else - really ought to disregard whatever he says of policy: he is a fool, and we oughtn’t be led by fools.

But, perhaps he does know better? Yet, that’s worse. If he knows that the Roman empire did not fall due to “Paganism”; that the Puritans were a particularly intolerant sect of Reformationists who found freedom overly threatening and ultimately declined largely due to the infighting which is characteristic of rightwing authoritarian groups. If he knows this, and offers an ahistorical alternative instead, then he is a liar, and should be directly opposed.

One can slice that Gordian knot by realizing he offers these not as history, but as mythology. It’s not whether they’re true, but what they’re meant to communicate. However, as a non-Christian, that’s… that’s actually worse.

His decision, then, to attribute the downfall of Rome to corruption, to loving pleasure and self-indulgence, is important. Now, I think we all know that Rome did not fail because their soldiers were just too busy drinking and having sex. But that claim appeals to a disgust-based morality: it indulges in a visceral hatred of those excesses. And that same disgust-based morality can be used to justify any number of horrors. It’s a disgust-based morality which ties a gay man to a fence and leaves him to die; that beats a transwoman to death; that decides Jews are baby eaters and condemns them to ghettoes and them to death.

His ahistorical account ignores the entire history of Christian internal warfare. It pretends that the Puritans were an inclusive society – rather than one which executed their own on the mere allegation of them being people like me.

And I’m hearing him proceed further, to claim all things good… indeed, the utter ridiculousness of claiming specifically secular achievements as Christian. This is a fact-free speech, which is intended to appeal to a particular audience of which I – and any other non-Christian – is not a member. He proclaims that as a non-Christian I should embrace Christianity… after having lied and said many of distinctly non-Christian things are Christian. I mean, if you define Christian as “the stuff I want to claim” and non-Christian as “everything else” then sure… but that’s not what those things mean, and we’re back to that conundrum: is he a liar or a fool?

And then he gets back to his disgust-based morality, his appeal to hatred, his lies about his opposition, and just outright about what is going on right now.

Ah, and here we are: “the left” is evil, “the left” wants to destroy. And… wait, did he just claim that liberals like Ayn Rand? What??? And Milton Friedman? How… how does anyone buy this? I’m sorry, what the hell is this?

He is literally saying that the left is against god. This speech very literally demonizes his opposition. He lies about people, and and paints them as simply being against good. I wonder how anyone considers this as acceptable at all. This is Blood Libel.

Now, wait, he’s deriding other republicans? And saying that it was republicans who spearheaded DEI? I’m just confused here. Basically, it seems like he’s saying literally anyone who opposes him is evil, and he will make up Any Damned Thing to paint them that way.

Being honest, I’m not sure I am all that interested in the second half of this. Hist first half, in which he very literally calls everyone who isn’t on his side evil; in which he says the left is against love and god. I recognize that he doesn’t directly say “let’s put all the liberals in camps and kill them”, but this is the rhetoric which is used to justify these things. The policies he puts forth afterwards are less incendiary – and it’s kind of weird that he had to open a policy proposal which matches rather well with the liberal platform, with demonization of liberals, and I don’t know how anyone can reconcile that. But, y’know, he also claimed that liberals like Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, so there’s a lot of contradiction there.

Oh, wait now he’s directly speaking against religious liberty. He’s saying directly that religious liberty is only valuable because it lets us all practice the same religion, and that Christianity is our national religion. So we’re back to Deeply Disturbing here. “More civil religion, not less”. Atheists are evil, they hate Christianity, this other not-religious thing is religion, trans people are evil… yeah. And he wants direct endorsement of Christianity. Now, I don’t think that taking down a pride flag is directly oppression, but I definitely see it as a first step: establishing that not-Christianity is a religion, and should be supplanted with Christianity by the state. So, having listened to this… I would dismiss him as a madman if he weren’t giving a speech at the RNC. But he is. And I see what he’s saying as setting the foundation for much worse. There’s nothing good to come of defining Everyone Else as being evil.