#Pro-Trump extremism

[don-lichterman]

Rep. Zoe Lofgren on what to expect in this week's Jan. 6 hearing

Rep. Zoe Lofgren on what to expect in this week’s Jan. 6 hearing

The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol will hold at least one more public hearing this week before concluding its work. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of that committee, joins Geoff Bennett to discuss. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel:…

[sher-ee]

Women - WAKE UP!

This will not be the end of their tirade.

They will come for birth control.

They will come for LGBTQ and marriage.

They will come for civil rights.

[queerism1969]

[tomorrowusa]

While Arizona Republicans pretend that they are really not anti-abortion extremists, the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature dissolved into chaos on Wednesday when an attempt was made to repeal the 1864 pre-statehood law banning almost all abortions in the state. Before the measure could be taken up, the House was gaveled into recess.

Arizona Democrats tried to repeal abortion ban, but Republicans blocked them

Republicans are trying to have it both ways: Restrict abortion as much as possible but make it appear to voters that they are "moderate" on the issue. What happened in the Arizona legislature on Wednesday reveals how MAGA Trump Republicans actually feel deep down inside.

[theamazingannie]

What really confuses me about a lot of pro life people is that they just genuinely seem to think pro choice people are monsters. What’s more likely, that a whole bunch of people just love killing babies left and right for no reason at all other than their own enjoyment, or that a whole bunch of people think that everyone should get a choice in whether or not they become parents and shouldn’t be forced to be an incubator for nine months and have their body forever altered and potentially be at risk for longterm health issues and even death and then have to either raise that child to adulthood despite not wanting to or being in any way ready for it or send it through the adoption system where the child will grow up wondering why their birth parents didn’t want them all because someone else valued the “life” of an undeveloped clump of cells over the life of a fully grown person with wants and fears and feelings?

[ahaura]

i saw someone point out the frequency with which liberals back social justice movements... how, for instance, when ferguson happened under obama it was not popular and there were many, many liberals who found the blm movement, in a sense, "in violation of [liberal] sensibilities" (when liberalism as a rule does not challenge the status quo, only maintains it and sees any call for revolution or real change as disruptive or 'bad for optics' and therefore not acceptable) but then when trump became president and he opposed blm a lot more liberals decided that the blm movement had merit because they viewed it from a team-sports perspective rather than a worldview based on morals and an understanding of the systems in place in the U.S. - that it was more comfortable for them to operate from a "trump bad" basis rather than "the american justice system and the police are inherently white supremacist, which are inherently, automatically, and always violent"

+ that, if trump was president while israel is carrying out its genocide, liberals would have NO problem denouncing israel and demanding for a ceasefire because they're comfortable operating from the 2-party system basis, NOT from a framework based on material conditions or factors or any acknowledgement or analysis of imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism. but because biden is a democrat, and democrats are supposed to be "the decent party" "the lesser evil" "more respectable" when, in functionality - in real practice, they don't want to disrupt the status quo. (internally, maintaining systems of white supremacy and capitalism; externally, furthering U.S. imperialism by maintaining hegemony and continuing the practice of exploitation and extraction of labor+capital+resources from the global south)

which is why we're here, a month into a genocide, and liberals are so cowardly and gutless that, in the face of our democrat president allowing and funding the genocide of palestinians in order for the U.S. to maintain its military base in the middle east, liberals IMMEDIATELY jump to "well, you HAVE to vote for him still, because trump will be worse!" and go "well im powerless there's nothing i can do", immediately folding like a wet paper bag in the face of the american empire rearing its ugly head in the most blatant, naked way in years, instead of thinking "this is unacceptable, i should pressure my elected officials and do everything i can - be it combating propaganda, contacting my congresspeople or senators, protesting, or engaging in direct action - to ensure this stops as quickly as possible".

there are liberals STILL IN MY NOTIFICATIONS who go "well you'll be electing a fascist if you vote for trump" not realizing that YOU CAN'T SIMPLY VOTE FASCISM AWAY. (which is not to say you should vote for republicans; that's not what i'm saying. none of us have said it.) we're pretty much already there. it's 2003 all over again, with the patriot act and all. the american war machine is pumping out racist, orientalist, pro-colonial, pro-genocide propaganda on behalf of the ethno-state america and its allies have backed since the so-called state's inception. people are being doxxed, fired, harassed, and attacked for visibly supporting palestine/opposing israel. islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise; a 6 year old boy was murdered not one month ago, an arab doctor in texas was stabbed to death. antisemitism is on the rise as well, thanks to the conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism (which nazis have and will attempt to co-op in order to 'justify' + then act on their antisemitism, racism, and genocidal worldviews). our government is silencing people, brutalizing protestors, and arming and funding an ethno-state committing genocide - everything that would have been called fascist if it was under trump. but because it's a *democrat* liberals place "vote blue no matter who" and "optics" over the extremely basic moral stance that "genocide is wrong and people have the right to self-determination, autonomy, and life". arabs and muslims are already so dehumanized in the west that liberals (whether they consider themselves liberals or not) consider it an inconvenience to talk about the ongoing genocide that is happening with the blessing of OUR government. in this they expose their selfishness, the shallowness of their morals, their chauvinism, and their racism/orientalism/islamophobia/et cetera.

for example, if you see israeli troops waving a gay pride flag and the israeli state touting its support of gay people while said iof soldiers are murdering men, women, and children en masse every single day and you somehow????? think that because gay people are the ones doing the killing or a state claims to support gay people is doing the killing is ok then 1) you have fallen for pinkwashing propaganda and 2) that you find the murder of palestinians, or any people, permissible by a colonial force that uses causes liberals may genuinely care about in order to disguise, whitewash, or "lessen" the severity of the injustices it does unto usually black and brown people outside of the U.S., then you are just as bloodthirsty and depraved as anyone you would personally assign those descriptors of.

once again, it goes back to resorting to a team-sport understanding of the world rather than approaching it from a material one.

[robertreich]

No Labels Isn't What It Claims to Be

The “No Labels” Party is not what it pretends to be. It’s a front group for Donald Trump.

Now I understand, if you’re sick of the two major parties, you might be intrigued by a party that claims to be a “common sense” alternative that finds the middle ground.

But if you or anyone in your life is planning to vote for No Labels — or any third party — in 2024, please watch and share this video first.

Here are three things you need to know.

First, No Labels is a dark money group with secret far-right donors. Investigative reporting has revealed that they include many of the same Republican donors who have pumped huge sums of money into electing candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis. They also include the rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, who spent years secretly treating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a lifestyle of the rich and famous.

If the No Labels Party is backed by Trump donors, in an election where Trump is on the ballot, there’s actually a label we should give to “No Labels.” Clearly, they’re a pro-Trump group.

Second, the premise No Labels is based on — that Donald Trump and President Biden are at equally extreme ends of the political spectrum — is preposterous.

Trump has been impeached twice, found by a jury to have committed sexual assault, is facing 91 criminal charges in four separate cases — two of them in connection with an attempt to effectively end American democracy.

There is no “equally extreme” candidate as Trump!

Finally, the structure of the Electoral College means that as a practical matter, a third party only draws votes away from whichever major party candidate is closest to it. No third party candidate has ever won a presidential election.

And in this particular election, when one of the major parties is putting up a candidate who threatens democracy itself, we cannot take the risk.

Donald Trump has already tried to overturn one election and suggested suspending the Constitution to maintain power. It is no exaggeration to say that if he takes the White House again, there may not ever be another free and fair election.

Democracy won by a whisker in the last presidential election. Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — less than one tenth of 1 percent of the total votes cast nationwide — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the Electoral College that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.

If candidates from No Labels— or any other third party, like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party —  peel off just a fraction of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, while Trump voters stay loyal to him, Trump could win the top five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office. And No Labels’ own polling shows they would do just that!

Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups like No Labels are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.

The supposed “centrism” No Labels touts is nonsense. There is no middle ground between democracy and fascism.

Please share this video and spread the word.

[serialunaliver]

liberals are doing the same thing with joe biden that trump supporters do with trump where everything he does is okay as long as it's him doing it. it's absolutely fucking insane to defend joe biden from any angle right now and he doesn't even need your defense in the first place, he's in an extremely powerful position (unfortunately)

and of course trump would do the same, but so would every US president, there's no way you'd get elected president while holding an anti israel stance in the first place when the US military needs it to pursue its foreign policy. ultimately this is not a democrat vs republican issue, in fact the only competition here is both parties competing on who can be more pro-israel ...

[mariacallous]

On Boxing Day pro-Palestine demonstrators met customers at the Zara sale in the Westfield shopping centre, in Stratford, east London. They were not there to wish them the compliments of the season.

‘Bombs are dropping while you’re shopping,’ they chanted, as police stood by to make sure the protests did not turn violent. ‘Zara is enabling genocide,’ their placards read.

Quite what they wanted bargain hunters to do about the Israeli forces bombing the Gaza Strip, they never said. Lobby their MPs? Politicians are on their Christmas holidays. Join the Palestinian armed struggle?  It was unclear whether the shopping centre had a Hamas recruitment office.

But on one point the demonstrators were certain: no one should be buying from Zara. Even though the fashion chain has not encouraged Israel’s war against Hamas, earned income from it, or supported Israel in any material way, it was nevertheless “exploiting a genocide and commodifying Palestine's pain for profit”.

Zara, in short, has become the object of a paranoid fantasy: a QAnon conspiracy theory for the postcolonial left.

The Zara conspiracy is an entirely modern phenomenon. It has no original author. Antisemitic Russians sat down and wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the early 20th century. There was an actual “Q” behind the QAnon conspiracy: a far-right activist who first appeared on 4chan message boards in 2017 to claim that a cabal of child abusers was conspiring against Donald Trump.

The Zara conspiracy was mass produced by social media users: an example of the madness of crowds rather than their supposed wisdom. The cause of the descent into hysteria was bizarre.

In early December Zara launched an advertising campaign featuring the model Kristen McMenamy wearing its latest collection in a sculptor’s studio. It clearly was a studio, by the way, and not a war zone in southern Israel or Gaza. McMenamy carried a mannequin wrapped in white fabric. The cry went up that the Spanish company was exploiting the suffering of Palestinians and that the mannequin was meant to represent a victim of Israeli aggression wrapped in a shroud.

The accusation was insane. No one in the photo shoot resembled a soldier or a casualty of war. Anyone who thought for 30 seconds before resorting to social media would have known that global brands plan their advertising campaigns months in advance.

Zara said the campaign presented “a series of images of unfinished sculptures in a sculptor’s studio and was created with the sole purpose of showcasing craft-made garments in an artistic context”. The idea for the studio setting was conceived in July. The photo shoot was in September, weeks before the Hamas assault on Israel on 7 October.

No one cared. Melanie Elturk, the CEO of fashion brand Haute Hijab, said of the campaign, ‘this is sick. What kind of sick, twisted, and sadistic images am I looking at?’ #BoycottZara trended on Twitter, as users said that Zara was ‘utterly shameful and disgraceful”’.

To justify their condemnations, activists developed ever-weirder theories. A piece of cardboard in the photoshoot was meant to be a map of Israel/Palestine turned upside down. Because a Zara executive had once invited an extreme right-wing Israeli politician to a meeting, the whole company was damned.

Astonishingly, or maybe not so astonishingly to anyone who follows online manias, the fake accusations worked. Zara stores in Glasgow, Toronto. Hanover, Melbourne and Amsterdam were targeted.

What on earth could Zara do? PR specialists normally say that the worst type of apology is the non-apology apology, when a public figure or institution shows no remorse, but instead says that they are sorry that people are offended. Yet Zara had not sought to trivialize or profit from the war so what else could it do but offer a non-apology apology? The company duly said it was sorry that people were upset.

“Unfortunately, some customers felt offended by these images, which have now been removed, and saw in them something far from what was intended when they were created,” it said on 13 December, and pulled the advertising campaign

That was two-weeks ago and yet still the protests in Zara stores continue. On 23 December activists targeted Zara on Oxford Street chanting , 'Zara, Zara, you can't hide, stop supporting genocide', even though Zara was not, in fact,  supporting genocide. On Boxing Day, they were at the Stratford shopping centre.

Zara has apologised for an offence it did not commit. There is no way that any serious person can believe the charges against it. And yet believe them the protestors do. Or at the very least they pretend to believe for the sake of keeping in with their allies.

Maybe nothing will come of the protests. One could have argued in 2017, after all, that QAnon was essentially simple-minded people living out their fantasies online. Certainly, every sane American knew that there was no clique of paedophiles running the Democrat party, but where was the harm in the conspiracy theory?

Then QAnon supporters stormed the US capitol in January 2021. Will the same story play out from the Gaza protests? As far as I can tell, no one on the left is challenging the paranoia. I have yet to see the fact-checkers of the BBC and Channel 4 warning about the fake news on the left with anything like the gusto with which they treat its counterparts on the right.

To be fair, the scale of disinformation around the Gaza war is off the charts, and it is impossible to chase down every lie. But when fake news goes from online fantasies to real world protests, from 4chan to the Capitol, from Twitter to the Westfield shopping centre, it’s worth taking notice.

Sensible supporters of a Palestinian state ought to be the most concerned. No one apart from fascists, Islamists and far leftists believes that Israel should not defend itself. And yet the scale of its military action in Gaza is outraging world opinion. Mainstream politicians, who might one day put pressure on Israel, remain very wary about reflecting the anger on the streets.

They look at the insane conspiracy theories on the western left and see them as no different from the insane conspiracy theories that motivate Hamas, and they back away.

The Palestinians need many things: an end to the Netanyahu government, and an end to Hamas. But they could also use allies in the West who do not discredit their cause with dark, gibbering fantasies.

[wilwheaton]

Of course, it's clear that she wasn't talking about forced reeducation camps or anything like that. She was musing over how those "formal" deprogramming techniques might translate into political strategies for defeating Republican extremism—because the solution isn’t clear. Naturally, this sent the exact people she was talking about into absolute fits. "Deplorable Moment times 10!" tweeted former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEneny, whose career depends on ratcheting up panic inside the extremist Republican base. As for evidence that Trumpism remains a cult, look no further than Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel (née Romney), who confusingly called Democrats "chaos and pro-criminal" as the Fox News chyron screamed, "HRC CALLS FOR 'DEPROGRAMMING' OF TRUMP SUPPORTERS." McDaniel is the chair of a party currently on its way to nominating a man facing 91 charges in four jurisdictions, a man whose attempts to retain power after losing an election resulted in violence inside the U.S. Capitol. With all due respect, shut up.

Hillary Clinton: ‘Maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming’ of Trump’s extremist cult

[hero-israel]

I think there needs to be a reckoning about how so many white (passing) American secular/nonpracticing antiZionist Jews can say "Not in my name, Israel doesn't speak for us!" and then think they can speak for Israel. How so many of them can have a limited familial connection to Israel, have such a disdain for Israelis, Israeli culture and society, and Israel as a concept, and then have the gall to act like their opinions matter?

I see their attitudes be described as fear, but to me it strikes me as more than just fear. A lot of them, I suspect, have incorporated antiZionism as a fundamental part of their Jewish identity. It's not just a disagreement, they're not just saving face. Take away the Goyim and talk to them privately and they still believe what they believe, and express it in the same way. They hate Israeli Jews.

And Israel is only going to become less Ashkenazi (aka less "white") as time marches forward. The bad faith hysterical Israel bashing and condescension is only going to look more and more like Orientalism, and frankly, racism.

I think it's very possible that calling something antisemitic can't just be a catchall term when this chicken comes home to roost. I think if there aren't already, there will be distinct forms of antisemitism, some that only Diaspora Jews face and some that only Israeli Jews face. And if this is true or will end up being true, it's pretty important that we not speak over each other's experiences. To do that we have to recognize these experiences and respect them. Do some Israeli Jews disrespect the Diaspora experience? Yes, from what I've seen. Is it nearly as vitriolic and is it growing nearly as quickly as the disrespect for the Israeli experience among antiZionist American Jews? Not even close.

All this divisive language to say: sometimes when Israelis say "so and so is antisemitic!" in the context of antiZionism, they're talking about themselves, their experiences, the stakes for them, and not Americans. So maybe we should all learn to stay in our lanes sometimes.

A lot of Israeli Jews disrespect, or at least are unable to grasp, diaspora existence, particularly when it comes to Americans. I can't even count the number of times I read Israelis say "Why are you American Jews so upset about Trump? Don't you see how good he's been for Israel?" Which is the worst damn argument a person could possibly use - it feeds into both left-wing and right-wing antisemitism, while ignoring that American Jews live HERE and are at risk from Trump's fascist cult and general lawlessness. And it is bad FOR EVERYBODY to have "pro-Israel" become the position of stroke-babbling grotesque racist criminals, and also for America to be too focused on anarchic decomposition and Yugoslav-style street warfare to be able to support Israel like it traditionally has.

And because turds of a feather flush together, Netanyahu wants ALAN DERSHOWITZ to be Israel's advocate if the ICJ case proceeds. I knew Netanyahu was a senile failure undermining all the strengths he had ever built for the country and this is just the shit cherry on top of the shit sundae. Alan Dershowitz is the ultimate stereotype of a Boomer who was kind of useful in the 1980s-90s and became awful and embarrassing now, Trump is surrounded by them (i.e. Rudy Giuliani). Your grandma in Florida remembers Alan Dershowitz for writing "Chutzpah" and being tough and quick-witted, and everybody under 40 knows Dershowitz as a Trump cultist and Epstein fuckbuddy. Big "Vladek Spiegelman can only compare his artist son to Walt Disney" energy. There are surely thousands of lawyers better-suited for the role, just off the top of my head I'd prefer Eugene Kontorovich and so should anyone who is more aware of the world as it actually is than how it was in 1994.

I say all that to parallel your original point, not to contradict it. Yes, the American Jews who performatively loathe Israel are by and large just an Extremely Online phenomenon of the most college-town bubble-protected, least observant, least affiliated, and least aware of non-Ashkenazim. It is not so hard for American Ashkenazim to stay protected from antisemitism as long as they totally unplug from their Jewish identity and any public-facing aspects of it. Can't be killed in a synagogue or JCC or kosher store if you never go in, head tap.

[tomorrowusa]

The murder attempt on Paul Pelosi by a far-right supporter is part of the broader picture of violent extremism which has grown since Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

The suspect in the Pelosi attack, David DePape, has a record of spouting fringe conspiracy theories.

The suspected attacker, David DePape, who has a history of sharing conspiracy theories on social media, said he would wait “until Nancy got home,” according to a source briefed on the attack. DePape was taken into custody on suspicion of attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and several additional felonies, according to SFPD Chief William Scott.    

Women like Speaker Pelosi have especially been targeted by violent extremists.

And Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York receives so many threats that she has a round-the-clock security team and, at times, sleeps in different locations. Her own colleague, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, tweeted an altered anime video of himself appearing to kill her last year. (Gosar deleted the video and did not apologize. An hour after the House voted to censure him and remove him from two committee assignments last year, he retweeted a tweet that included the video.)  

Earlier this week, the New York Post said they fired a rogue employee who changed the headline of an online editorial to read, “We must assassinate AOC for America.” 

The Speaker was a target of the terrorists who assaulted the US Capitol last year during Trump’s coup attempt. 

Pelosi is a particular target of hatred among the right. In 2019, the House Speaker, who has famously clashed with Former President Donald Trump, became the subject of manipulated videos that made her appear as if she were stumbling over and slurring her words. Those videos were then amplified by both Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani on social media, where they went viral. During the January 6 attack on the Capitol last year, Trump supporters ransacked her office and yelled, “Where are you, Nancy?” – a chilling echo of the words DePape uttered on Friday: “Where is Nancy?”

Bloomberg News reports that DePape had many views rather typical of Trumpist extremists.

 On one website registered to a David DePape, posts, some from as recently as this week, took aim at immigrants, “climate hysteria,” “trannies” and promoted “pedo gate,” the long-debunked conspiracy theory about prominent Democrats being involved in child-sex trafficking. “This is what the gas chamber doors at Auschwitz look like,” he wrote in one post. “So feminists are always talking about how they want equality,” another post read. Using the research site DomainTools.com, Bloomberg News found several websites registered to a David DePape. Those include "FrenlyFrenz," a blog containing affronts against immigrants, Jewish people and women. Another site registered under the name David DePape hosts the blog of Gypsy Taub, DePape's friend and former housemate. A WordPress blog with posts under the David DePape name contains identical spellings of his targets, such as "wamen" for "women."

[ ... ]

The  more current blog was wide-ranging, packed with videos, memes, colorful drawings and categorized into sections with titles such as “voter fraud” and “groomer schools.” “Ya I remember the backlash and insults when you came out in support of Trump,” he posted about the rapper Kanye West on Oct. 17. Days earlier, West posted antisemitic rants — including wanting to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” — that led to Adidas, the talent agency CAA and others to cut ties with him.

A an article in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2013 mentioned DePape’s associations with Taub, a nude activist who organized protests against the city’s proposed public nudity ban in 2012. Taub also pushed conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. DePape lived with Taub across San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, according to the Chronicle, and was the best man at her wedding. Online records show DePape owned as many as 12 Internet domains, including Taub’s blog.

DePape is part of the far-right ecosystem linked to political violence in the US such as the January 6th attack.

The GOP has been soft on domestic terrorism because its leaders fear offending snowflake Nazis who vote for the party. This is a violent crime issue which has been growing but largely ignored by Trump Rupublicans. When there’s a high profile incident like this they might issue a generic “thoughts and prayers” statement and then quickly get back to supporting candidates who refuse to condemn Trump’s election denial and other conspiracy fantasies.

If you think domestic terrorism is bad, Vote Democratic and urge your friends to do so as well. 

[spacelazarwolf]

i looked up the current candidates for the 2024 presidential election in the usa and it is. really fucking bleak.

democrats:

joe biden - current president. doing...ok. he's pro trans rights and has been doing some good stuff to fight climate change, but he's like a hundred years old and

robert f kennedy jr - seems to have decent opinions on a lot of policy, but thinks that chemicals in the water are making kids transgender and has suggested that covid is a conspiracy by ashkenazi jews and chinese people

marianne williamson - anti vaxxer apparently, also i guess thinks love is the only thing that will defeat trump

republicans:

ryan binkley - conservative pastor that thinks marriage is "between one man and one woman", anti choice, wants to Build A Wall

doug burgum - republican governor that has actively passed anti trans legislation, anti regulation (unless what you're regulating is trans people ig????)

chris christie - is apparently opposed to bans on gender affirming care, but vetoed a bill allowing trans people to change their gender marker, anti choice

ron desantis - i feel like i don't need to explain

larry elder - denies systemic racism and wants police to be harder on crime, anti crt and dei, pretty solidly anti trans

nikki haley - anti choice, extremely anti trans, anti immigrant, supports israel while also having an evangelical pastor who has a history of antisemitism and racism and queerphobia open for one of her events

will hurd - doesn't seem too horrendous, not noticeably anti trans, but supports 15 week abortion ban

asa hutchinson - great value brand trump

perry johnson - was republican candidate for governor of michigan but was disqualified due to fraudulent ballot signatures

mike pence - yeah

vivek ramaswamy - "anti wokeism", would pass a law requiring teachers to disclose to parents if they found out their kid is trans, supports bans on gender affirming care, wants to end sanctuary cities and address mental health through "faith based approaches", hedge fund bro

tim scott - said that america is not a racist country and the biggest problem facing black people is "fatherlessness incentivized by welfare", opposes same sex marriage and gender affirming care and thinks democrats are using school to "indoctrinate children"

corey stapleton - montana secretary of state, couldn't find much abt him

donald trump - donald trump

independent

cornel west (green party) - seems really cool actually but two party system will fuck him over

i hate the two party system so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

also congrats to the dems for yet another milquetoast kennedy, and congrats to the republicans for having the most racially diverse list of racist and transphobic candidates!!!

[androgynousspace]

For any of you who even DARE to think about voting for trump just because of the war happening in Israel, this post is for you.

-First off trumps opinion on Israel is pretty much the same as Biden, in terms of sending money to them and being anti-gaza, https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna141905

-Let us not forget project 2025, I know a solid portion of palestine supporters are in the LGBTQ+ community, a vote for trump, is a vote to put your fellow queers in jail, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

-Another section of pro-palestinian people are POC, not only does project 2025 include the killing and jailing of POC just in general trump has a long history of hating POC, ex: he used to pay hotels and casinos to get rid of any black people who were currently there, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/trump-casinos-black-employees/

-Now let's talk about Jews for palestine, trump is also extremely anti-semetic and has a history of being anti-semetic, atleast Biden cares about the Jewish people, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/trump-history-antisemitic-tropes/

-Muslims for palestine, trump wants to ban the ability for hijabis to wear the hijab, and for muslims in general to work and be in public, https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/17/trump-muslim-ban-gaza-refugees

Last if this has convinced you to not vote for trump I'm glad, this also applies to any republican running. DONT. VOTE. THIRD. PARTY. I don't know how many times I have to say this, it splits the leftist vote and gives trump or any republican for that matter a WAY better chance of winning the election, as much of anti-semetic you may be towards Israel, the only valid vote is for Biden.

[triviallytrue]

Were there Russian Chaos Agents on tumblr in 2016?

First things first:

Things I got wrong in earlier posts on this:

@ms-disinformation didn't identify these accounts ahead of time, this blog started posting in 2019 and is focused on accounts that are likely to be bot-run

Relatedly, the accounts accused of being Russian state actors were accused of being trolls, not bots - they were almost undoubtedly human-run

Tumblr didn't announce the mass ban of these accounts until several months after they did it - they banned the accounts in fall of 2017 and announced them in March 2018.

What actually happened?

The Internet Research Agency is a Russian company accused of creating fake social media accounts to attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. On March 23, 2018, tumblr posted a list of accounts they claimed were linked to the IRA that they had terminated the previous fall. On November 16, 2018, they posted a second list of accounts given to them by law enforcement of other IRA-related accounts (unrelated to any election interference) that were also terminated.

How did tumblr identify these accounts?

tumblr has been extremely vague about the methodology used to find these accounts, but we do have another source: the Buzzfeed News journalist who wrote about the termination of these accounts back on February 6, 2018 (over a month before tumblr's post) identified them by cross-referencing tumblr accounts with twitter's list of IRA-affiliated accounts, finding similar or identical usernames and profile pictures.

Unfortunately, this only kicks the can further down the road - how did twitter identify these accounts? These sites don't want to reveal their methods, but this study offers some insights into the behavior of these accounts and possible tools used to identify them.

Why should we believe tumblr's narrative?

There are a lot of reasons I'm convinced that tumblr is being honest with us about this, the simplest of which is that they don't have a good reason to lie about this. tumblr nukes accounts all the time without disclosing its reasons - if they wanted to get rid of an arbitrary list of accounts they dislike, they could do that and none of us would know. They deleted these accounts months before posting any explanation at all, and the only backlash they received was in articles like the Buzzfeed News article above slamming them for not talking about the Russian troll problem, instead of accusing them of terminating activists.

It's also not like this is some tactic that tumblr has employed frequently - the list of IRA-affiliated accounts has been untouched since 2018. This was a once-off, not part of any organized strategy to suppress certain types of posters.

Moreover, tumblr users with similar post content were left untouched, including many that reblogged heavily from the IRA accounts - the Buzzfeed News article identifies one such blog (alwaysbewoke) who posted more or less the same type of antiracist, pro-Sanders activism (albeit without the eventual support for Trump) who wasn't deactivated.

It's also worth noting that the IRA is a real company and not a US boogeyman (even if some subsection of liberals use the phrase "Russian bot" as such) - recently, the leader of the Wagner group came forward and confirmed that he founded it and still finances and runs it, and he's relatively direct about the fact that it was used to interfere in US elections:

“Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere,” Prigozhin said in November, one day before the US midterm elections.

Finally, and most convincingly in my opinion, no one behind any of the over a hundred accounts on the tumblr IRA list or the thousands on the twitter one have come forward in the past six years to claim that they were wrongfully associated with the IRA and banned as a result.

Isn't that fascinating? Can you imagine what a story it would be, if social media sites were not only terminating activists but lying about why they were doing it? Do you think that not a single one of these hundreds of alleged activists thought of calling a sympathetic journalist, showing them their US driver's license, and asking them to a run a story? What about messaging their old mutuals, or making a new account, or finding a federated platform that won't delete them on sight? I can't find a shred of evidence that any of this ever happened, and that's pretty telling.

The funny part is, there's no real evidence that these accounts ever achieved anything, and indeed, reasons to doubt that they did. They operated in preexisting echo chambers and circulated mostly true stories with a specific slant to them, with the occasional dash of outright lies. Certainly, it's hard to argue that they were less reliable or more biased than your average Fox News article. But arguing that they weren't Russian propaganda seems pretty difficult.

[captainjonnitkessler]

full offense intended to people who hate voting— they literally don’t know how government works. youre not just voting for the politician youre voting for their ability to make political appointments. like if you claim to be pro-labor and pro-union and you take a dump all over voting, it’s just crystal clear you don’t know what the National Labor Relations Board is. But most people just do not know labor law. Like understandable, it’s a complex field. I just have to roll my eyes at “both parties are the same”. On some issues, yea. On others no the fuck they’re not. Embarrassing behavior imo.

Yeah actual labor leaders are EXTREMELY clear that they want people to vote and vote Democrat. I've heard union presidents talk about how much progress they've made and how much easier it's been with the Biden administration as opposed to Trump. And on a local level, my state Democrats got me paid sick time when my union wasn't willing to fight for it, while multiple Republicans states are repealing their labor laws left and right. And sure, Democrats as a whole aren't great at labor - but negotiating is a hell of a lot easier when the starting position isn't "unions should all be burned to the ground and the organizers run out of town on a rail".

And that's just labor - I've heard similar stories from people involved in climate change stuff and I'm willing to bet it's the same with a lot of other issues. The problem is that people assume if it's not big, splashy front-page news then it's either not important or didn't happen, when a lot of the most important stuff is quieter. The New York Times isn't going to report on every judge appointed to the NLRB but it's still an incredibly important issue that the parties are extremely different on!