Lol saying “radical democrat” is like saying “radical centrist”
i’m old enough to remember when they called quakers terrorists and saddam lovers for being against the iraq war.
That’s been a minute.
I remember kids in my school wearing shirts with tanks running over Saddam with the caption, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” I remember how happy my mother was about it.
Wow, I have to say that is fascist as fuck.
1991, with Limbaugh really gaining popularity. Conservative radio had found the secret sauce and this was arguably the first big win. The goals were certainly fascist.
I’m from a particularly backwards place. Thinking back on it, this may be when the big change started happening.
I think I would point to 9-11 2001 as the actual tipping point.
AOC is basically the anti-Trump: it’s like she has to be on the correct, moral side of every issue…
how dare she
Quiet, Gretta.
Newspapers: We can’t say things because they might be misconstrued and we could get in trouble for even insinuating anyone is to blame for anything.
This shit: Look at this terrorist motherfucker right here that we hate.
We need to send these people to Gitmo.
I want politicians focused on who they can help more than who they can hurt. Like fundamentally, ignoring all of modern politics, thats what healthy societies are supposed to look like.
That’s why the Zoran Mamdani Campaign is so successful
From their perspective that’s what they’re doing though. The means to help their kind just involves more collateral damage and what ends up indistinguishable from targeted pain.
…human empathy is not a team sport…
It’s a co-op pve
As I grow older, I find pvp less enticing, and long for a helpful community. PvE is the GOAT
Single player experience supremacy
It still works that way in a lot of places. The US has definitely lost its way a long time ago though.
How sweet that you think the US ever had its way.
Skipping the obvious bullshit of the last 25 years, there was Anita Hill, and Rodney King, Reaganomics, Reagan racism, Nancy “I don’t give a fuck about this until it affects me” Reagan, then Kent State and our military just straight up murdering our kids, Nixon, CIA killings of prominent activists, murder of a president, McCarthyism, that whole anti-immigration/racism era where white Americans rammed god and their view of patriotism in everything (people today STILL think those things were there since the beginning), union and strike busting, child labor, failed reconstruction era, more president’s killed, “compromises” over fucking slavery, wannabe King Jackson not giving a shit about other human beings nor any possible check on power or anyone else’s ideas, a fucking Vice President shot a guy (the first time), begging the first president to be King, and failed attempts at presidency and democracy before that (pre-constitution).
I really glossed over a lot too.
Minor omission: exterminating the people who had the unmitigated gall to be living here already.
Which time?
There’s so much. Another one I learned more about in recent years is the horrible testing on Puerto Ricans, including the sterilizations.
For anyone interested, today there are excellent graphic novels about some of these topics, like Kent State and Puerto Rico Strong. I would encourage people as these are excellent ways to learn more about these topics. Some local libraries have them sometimes.
Honest to god, the U.S. propoganda sphere is unmatched. So much of that list is fully kept out of American schools, and the few bits they acknowledge are so whitewashed and sanitized that we could realistically call them fictional accounts. The average American legitimately does not know half of the fucked up things this country has done, which is why most of them still think the problem is Donald Trump, and not all of U.S. society.
Perhaps the greatest kicker is that Americans will criticize regimes like Russia and China for brainwashing their citizens with a straight face, so blissfully unaware of their own conditioning.
This is a great summary but you made me lol with “(the first time)”
Gotta give VP Dick his credit where due.
I tried to read it to the tune of we didn’t start the fire, and it kinda works you just gotta put some flavour in it and you can be the next weird Al
You mean it’s lots it’s way of importing slave labor and exterminating the natives?
No. We need on the left need to focus a hell of a lot more on people we can hurt. Aka, who we can bring to justice and hold accountable for their crimes against the nation. This whole “live and let live, all is forgiven” attitude that Obama and Biden practiced led us directly to our current moment. Dick Cheney should have died in prison, not been featured in the campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate.
It’s weird how Trump fans feel so justified about it all. They can look at people being completely disappeared, to never be heard from again and say, “Hell Yea!”. It’s not just evil, it’s stupid evil. They don’t understand that if they can do that to someone else, it can happen to them, and they like to march around with weapons…guess who’s next. True conformity can’t be achieved with those that believe in freedom.
But don’t worry, the guillotines will only be used on the bad people.
They like suffering for some reason. They’ve been told they’re victims for such a long time - not that their own choices helped put them where they are - that it’s everyone else’s fault they aren’t living the American Dream. So they lash out like angry toddlers and take happiness from someone else’s suffering, they actively seek to increase it. Doesn’t matter if it’s taking away LGBTQ rights and actively encouraging discrimination against them, ripping kids away from brown-skinned parents, or letting women die thanks to the lack of abortion services. So because Billy Bob can’t afford a lifted F150, the government won’t let him have a full-auto AR variant, and he can’t stand a school that might read his kids a story about a gay couple, everyone else has to suffer worse to make his lot look better.
It’s never been about conviction or honest concern about “freedom” etc. It’s been a grift for a loooong time - the only difference is that the grifters are in the White House now.
I listen to a podcast that’s been dealing with Alex Jones and Infowars for a long time. Of course that isn’t as hot now as it was, say, 10 years ago, but they make it interesting. One of their recurring statements is that Jones used to cheer for values that his current hero - Mango Mussolini - is diametrically opposed to, which kinda proves that he never believed in any of that anyhow. He’s just a grifter.
And then they go back in history and find out that Jones himself was influenced by earlier radio grifters. Rightwing media outrage has a looong tradition in the USA, and it’s fair to say that it’s never been honest.
Believing anything that comes out of teir mouths is like believing that raspberry flavored chapstick represents actual raspberries and their flavor.
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Is it just me or does “white people twitter” now have a whole different meaning with Nazi Musk owning it….
Now you freaking mention it…
the sub only criticizes him, and people on it. musk like chronically online he is, has ask whitepeopletwitter to be banned.
To be… Uh… Fair??? they didn’t say “terrorist” in that tweet.
AOC prescribes to the idea that Hamas is exclusively a terrorist group.
Question honestly from a place of ignorance: is it not?
I don’t know much about that group other than the attack a couple years ago. I do know that IDF is a terrorist org because they’re currently committing a genocide.*
Hamas is the government of the Gaza strip. They have a military and they do military operations. If you call them terrorists, you might hold that same opinion about other governments
i don’t consider Hamas to be a legitimate government since they haven’t held any elections in Gaza since 2006, nor do they provide services or international negotiations. Fatah, comparatively, is a legitimate government but lacks the ability to resist Israeli genocide
Israel has not allowed any elections in Gaza since 2006* FTFY
I think this might be a legitimate use of “both sides” but I don’t know enough about them to say for sure.
One side has all of the power and uses it to make elections illegal 🤷
Joke’s on you, I already thought most governments were terrorist organizations ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
based
I mean… Yeah, a lot of governments are.
In any case that shouldn’t justify the genocide of those countries’ civilians.
Hmmmm I won’t call them terrorists then but I DO hold that opinion about many other governments, especially the US hahaha
Lol at that genuine typo
Oh dear hahaha. I’m glad folks got what I meant, at least!
Fair, but they said “Hamas supporter,” not just “Hamas”. I’m just nitpicking, but yeah.
Terrorism is just a propaganda word for common military strategies, which “civilized” nations like to pretend they don’t do.
EVERY nation with a military is automatically a terrorist organization by definition. That’s literally the primary job of the military - to terrify the opponent into surrendering, or not getting froggy in the first place.
Warfare is when a western country does it, terrorism is when an enemy of the US does it.
Then why was he arrested?
Because fascists don’t care about the law? What even is this question?
The party line is that he is a terrorist. It is implied by the arrest, not by the tweet.
They never implied that he’s a terrorist, only that he supports terrorists.
Arresting him says otherwise.
What reason did they give for arresting him?
I know they think he’s a terrorist, but I just wanted to point out that technically the tweet never actually calls him a terrorist or Hamas or anything of the sort. It’s more of a minor nitpick than anything.
I know they think he’s a terrorist
Do they? According to Marco Rubio, he supports terrorists, but that isn’t the same thing.
I would argue AOC was addressing the situation generally, rather than the tweet specifically.
That’s fair. As I said I was nitpicking, not making any sort of serious argument.
Maybe she should get off a platform ran by a Nazi
As a politician trying to reach members of the public, including those who could possibly be swayed by you, the last thing you want to do is entirely remove yourself from a platform with a very large reach.
Wanting people to leave Twitter is all well and good, but you can’t discount the fact that so many people are still on there, and refuse to spend the time setting up new profiles on entirely different sites with smaller userbases. For politicians, reach is key, and Twitter still has the users.
You guys are mostly being civil, but I’m giving you guys a strong reminder to hate the argument but don’t shit on the user. Warning.
I appreciate your comment but largely disagrees. Communicating on a platform you don’t own and can’t control seems very shortsighted. She should publish on her (or her party’s infrastructure) first and a bot is largely sufficient for Twitter.
Communicating on a platform you don’t own and can’t control seems very shortsighted.
I feel like this would be a much more realistic take if social media more broadly was all federated, and anyone’s independent instance could still communicate with the others, but that’s unfortunately not the case.
For a politician, which is better for their campaign? Starting an independent platform they entirely own and control, but with no local users to start out with, or having an account on an existing platform with millions and millions of users?
Obviously, even though in the first example they would have 100% control over their infrastructure, they wouldn’t exactly be spreading their message very far. They could always publish simultaneously on both platforms, but that still doesn’t mean much if the second platform has no users. However, the platform that has many millions of users can instantly grant them reach, which is kind of the point of them being on social media in the first place.
On your point about a bot, I’m assuming you mean more like a bridge mechanism that cross-posts from one platform to another. You could correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe AOC at least posts a lot of similar messaging on both Twitter and Bluesky, rather than staying isolated to one or the other. It’s not exactly the same thing, but it has a similar effect.
In an ideal world, everyone could easily host their own Mastodon server and just communicate with others without being tied to a platform, but unfortunately we still live in a world where the network effect is keeping people trapped in corporate social media silos, and there’s only so much an individual politician can do to change that without harming their own ability to message to the public.
I kinda agree with you. By bot I meant not only the technical posting of an identical message from one platform to another but also communicating that one is the official channel where answers will be read and replied to. The other is just a read-only pasted version.
There is no point in arguing over Twitter.
Back when Playboy was “the men’s magazine you read for the articles,” they always had an extensive interview with a major public figure. Often it would be someone with a moral component to their careers, like religious figures or politicians, and they would be criticized for lending their credibility to what many felt was pornography.
Inevitably, every one justified it by saying, “If you want to reach the sinners, you can’t wait for them to come to you, you have to go to them.”
Hugh Hefner was a suspected rapist at the time, but Elon is a confirmed Nazi right now.
They shouldn’t have been using it at all for official government posts
they need to establish on bluesky while it still fresh.
Nobody left on that platform is going to be convinced of anything anymore. If being bought by a literal Nazi saluting is not enough to change their minds, nothing she can say will sway the right wingers and bots left in that cesspool.
She is literally helping keep that Nazi shithole afloat and legitimate. Should bail and see who really listens.
Nobody left on that platform is going to be convinced of anything anymore.
I’d beg to differ. Although it’s true that the ratio of neo-Nazis and generally just far right freaks has far surpassed the number of everyday people, that doesn’t mean those people don’t exist anymore.
I always bring this up in conversations about leaving social networks, because if you don’t understand it, it will warp your entire perspective of why people stay on shitty platforms in the first place. The Network Effect is what keeps people hooked on these platforms, even when the owner becomes a literal neo-Nazi.
The people who have already left are the ones that are capable of and willing to sacrifice the scale, reach, and history that Twitter has, in the hopes that whatever platform they move to will treat them better. Leaving Twitter means deleting your digital history, erasing every connection you’ve made on the platform, and entirely cutting all of your messaging off from anyone who hasn’t yet left.
AOC is already on alternative platforms like Bluesky, so people who are willing and able to move, that would otherwise have stayed solely because she was still on Twitter have already done so. The people that remain do not remain because of her, they remain because of everybody else.
Yes, there are still quite a few neo-Nazis outnumbering the average person on there, but there are still quite a few average people that are still on Twitter. Don’t forget that the average person doesn’t seem to care when the companies they buy products from exploit child labor, fund wars that keep oil prices low, and suppress the wages of the workers in their own communities. The average person simply does not have the will to sacrifice what they must give up by leaving a large platform like Twitter, so they remain there.
If AOC didn’t benefit politically from being on Twitter, then she would have entirely left and deleted her account a while ago.
Oh look, a bunch of mental gymnastics justifying staying at the Nazi table.
It’s pathetic and attempting to rationalize with Nazis is a waste of time and energy. She should stop playing games with fashists and have auto posts telling people to leave.
How about people get the fuck over the corporate fomo and do something like getting up and walking away from a Nazi platform instead of being apathetic.
Since 2015, after decades of smearing the Mainstream Media, the MAGA Nazis have been coming on the very shows they have been disparaging, and spewing their propaganda alternative facts to regular Americans who haven’t discovered, or avoid the Conservative Propaganda Machine. They realized the power of getting on the enemy’s platform, and poisoning the water.
That’s why AOC, and anyone else who wants to fight back, goes on Twitter. To force the enemy to see the other side, whether they like it or not. If they are totally immersed in the Conservative Propaganda Machine, then this might be the only way they’ll ever hear an alternative view.
You don’t listen to the other side when you are as brainwashed as trump supporters are.
You have to kill the platform, not keep it legitimate. Every single reasonable human has left at this point.
One method used to reduce radicalisation in a group session is to have one person ask awkward questions.
As demonstrated by research by Milgram’s obedience study and Ash’s line study having a single descenter is a powerful tool for helping people resist social pressure.
There is one reason to be at a nazi table which is to be disruptive
You can keep arguing that “nobody left on that platform is going to be convinced of anything anymore,” but the fact of the matter is there are hundreds of millions of active users there, the vast majority of whom don’t give a shit about Musk, and aren’t as in-the-know about a lot of the current goings on that most Lemmy users whine about. As a politician trying to push progressive causes, AOC is on there for the same reason Musk is: it’s the platform with the most reach. It would be stupid of her to leave the platform. She has tons of followers, only a few of which would follow her to a different platform. It’s also the platform her opponents are on, and that’s the only place she can realistically call them out on their bullshit and her message be seen.
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Does AOC have poor intel/analysts on this?
(Posting under assumption you & I believe AOC dislikes Musk, dislikes Nazis, would wave a magic wand to poof! Twitter if she found one under her pillow; nvm if assumption is misfounded)
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Yes, now you are getting it.
its call hate-engaging, hatewatching shes is enabling it to be honest. or engaging just to argue with people like AOC.
Honestly it would be better if she simply had enough conviction to say the shit that would get her removed from that platform
To then never have her words be seen by those that don’t look outside their own bubble? And also probably hear she got removed for her speech and be like ‘hell yeah no wonder’ without researching why or what was said.
Its okay to, and I encourage everyone to move to a different venue if their current one is hosted by a nazi. If you had a spine you would take that sacrifice not only out of principle but because you know you are currently restricted by that relationship.
hella agree, US democrat basics = don’t make waves!
musk wont remove her, because she is useful propaganda for the right. much like how putin maintains opposition or westerners so they can be used propaganda for internal comsumption. pretty much that playbook.
Absolutely agree! Would show more spine than playing games with Nazis
