“The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic #demagogues. It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these #totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.”
Chris #Hedges, “Death of the Liberal Class” 2010.
#endstage #capitalism = #fascism + #racism is ONLY the #symptom: IT'S NOT LEFT VS RIGHT: IT'S TOP (RICH) VS DOWN (POOR) AND IF THERE ARE ENOUGH (!) STUPID POOR, THE RICH WILL WIN (UNFORTUNATELY)
#DEMOCRACY WITHOUT EDUCATION IS DEADLY DANGEROUS! (SEE BELOW VIDEO)
REALIZE THIS: #BANKS PRINT #MONEY "#QUANTITATIVEEASING" AND BUY REAL THINGS = #INFLATION
at the end of the day Jill + Joe can not afford a home #realestate #speculation #madness
after DECADES of #corruption (revolving door #private and #government in #USA but also #EU #Germany) people feel (rightfully) exploited and are looking for answers (the easy answers are usually NOT the right answers X-D)
"what? i am poor because private banks robbed my purchasing power?" is way more complicated than "foreigners out" and let's switch on #nuclearpower and #bigoil again X-D
check out this VERY FUN AND EDUCATIONAL 4min VIDEO about #demagogues and how #democracy dies ancient greece had THE SAME problems as today #wtf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk
check here for possible reform solutions https://infosec.exchange/@Linknation/113940039337493666
@koehntopp
#endstage #capitalism = #fascism + #racism is ONLY the #symptom: IT'S NOT LEFT VS RIGHT: IT'S TOP (RICH) VS DOWN (POOR) AND IF THERE ARE ENOUGH (!) STUPID POOR, THE RICH WILL WIN (UNFORTUNATELY)
#DEMOCRACY WITHOUT EDUCATION IS DANGEROUS!
REALIZE THIS: #BANKS PRINT #MONEY "#QUANTITATIVEEASING" AND BUY REAL THINGS = #INFLATION
at the end of the day Jill + Joe can not afford a home #realestate #speculation #madness
after DECADES of #corruption (revolving door #private and #government in #USA but also #EU #Germany) people feel (rightfully) exploited and are looking for answers (the easy answers are usually NOT the right answers X-D)
"what? i am poor because private banks robbed my purchasing power?" is way more complicated than "ausländer raus" ("foreigners out") and let's switch on nuclear power again X-D
check out this VERY FUN AND EDUCATIONAL VIDEO about #demagogues and why ancient greece also had MASSIVE trouble with em https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk
The ultimate root of #antisemitism is the #Judeophobia that springs from #Christian theological #AntiJudaism. These #ChristianNationalist pastors are nothing more than #neofascist scum -- dangerous #bigots and #demagogues. FYI, there are zero Israelis in federal office in the US.
https://bsky.app/profile/asa.tsbalans.se/post/3laxqtykypk2e
"The ability of demagogues & autocrats to surprise, to create a new scandal every day, is their superpower. It diminishes attention to the previous day's transgressions & normalizes them. It slowly numbs the senses, including outrage. Values are the only defense. Hold them dear."
-Garry Kasparov
The Plan to Silence Dissent
Building off a bipartisan push to punish pro-#Palestine protesters, #Trump has a broad crackdown ready to implement—including deportations.
by Sophie Hurwitz
November 15, 2024
"Donald Trump has made it clear that there are groups he’d like to punish.
"Much attention has been paid to the president-elect’s planned crusades for his next term against #immigrants and #transgender people. But less discussed has been another group on the list: #protesters. Building off the bipartisan crackdown on #AntiWar student dissent last year, Trump has made clear he hopes to discipline, and potentially prosecute, #CivilDisobedience with increased force.
"In May, he promised a group of donors that 'any student that protests, I [will] throw them out of the country.' Trump hoped this would serve as a warning. 'You know, there are a lot of foreign students,” he continued. “As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”
"This is more than just bluster. Reuters reported that sources said Trump hopes to follow through on the promise on day one of his administration, by signing an executive order prioritizing deporting 'international students who support Palestinian militant group Hamas and have violated the terms of their student visas.'
"In Trump’s first term, 'his instincts were to bring as much federal power as he could to bear on essentially peaceful protests,' Jamie Kalven, founder of Chicago’s Invisible Institute and a journalist who has studied First Amendment law for decades, told me. This time, there will be fewer guardrails. 'It was complicated enough before Trump was elected. Now you’re going to have various #demagogues in Congress and the Trump administration actually bearing down in various ways on universities and on university students, seeing it as the bastion of the #EnemyWithin.'
"Given how it’s been under #Biden, it unfortunately normalizes what Trump is then allowed to do.
"Many of the plans for targeting protesters are taken from tactics employed by Democrats in recent years. For years, #PalestinianRights activists in the US—and Palestinians in the US, whether activists or not—have often been smeared as terrorists and threatened with deportation and imprisonment. In 2023, a wave of protest was met with a #crackdown. The Department of Education pressured schools to stop pro-Palestine student organizing, as Mother Jones reported in September. Dozens of universities across the nation instituted strict new disciplinary codes prohibiting many forms of public assembly. Over 3,600 protesters were arrested."
#Trump’s Night at the Garden: #Racist Campaign Rally Evokes Infamous 1939 #Nazi Gathering in NYC
#DemocracyNow, October 29, 2024
"We take a close look at Donald Trump’s campaign and racist rally at #MadisonSquareGarden with filmmaker Marshall Curry, who attended the rally and also directed the short film 'A Night at the Garden,' about the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, and notes, 'The #demagogues in 1939 used the same tactics that we see today.'"
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/29/a_night_at_the_garden_marshall
Though this quote is 90 years old, it is a prescient observation about how the worst instincts of #societies surface in their #demagogues:
“#Hitler is only the ghost of our own past rising against us. He stands for the extension and perpetuation of our own methods, just at the moment when we are beginning to be ashamed of them.” —George #Orwell, Notes on the Way. Time and Tide, 30 March 1940
the price we pay for #disinfo #troll farms from malicious states, endless lies by domestic #demagogues after the attention of morons, manufactured outrage from legacy #media "#infotainment," #centralized #socialmedia run by #plutocrats who don't care or feed the lies on purpose, and millions of ignorant and indecent #racist #bigots:
'A majority (52 percent) of #Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats”'
It's a funny quote, but it also makes light of serious differences among two candidates in what I believe is the first US election where the two major candidates we're deciding between have already been President. It says both are not qualified, and some would say "equally unqualified", under the prism it offers.
Worse, once one shrugs off the uselessness of that criteria, they're left realizing that both candidates have historical data voters can look at. Many pundits have used this almanac approach, but it's VERY dangerous.
If the past were predictor, we could elect that almanac. I've seen many say "I liked it when he was President before, I want more if that". But it will not be a repeat in either case.
First the backdrop will be different. Climate will be worse, to take one example. Trump and GOP try to see Climate as a political concoction, but it's not. More like a progressing cancer. They want to undo preparation even as the world situation metastasizes. By contrast, while I happen not to think that Biden has done nearly enough, he's done materially better, and would still move forward, even if too timidly. Centrism can be dangerous here. BUT if my choice is move backward or move forward way too slowly, there's a HUGE difference there, andcthe choice is clear, even as neither of those choices will be a replay of the past.
Also, Trump tried to dismantle democracy. Many in GOP joined that goal, and some support him because they are oblivious tribal members or they are terrified of his wrath or dazzled by hopes of riches. But Democracy is a tree halfway chopped down. A repeat of that won't leave us in the same place as we think we saw before. It willl leave us with an autocracy. Democracy would finish falling under Trump. Biden wouldn't fix all I'd wish, but he'd do better.
In spite of the Adams quote, which has an element of truth, Biden has spent a lifetime trying to be of service. He's not my perfect candidate, but he IS qualified. Especially compared to the alternative.
We live in a world full if contradiction, having learned in school that a contradiction is the key to disqualifying a logical argument, including an argument about why someone should be President. We are led by hucksters to too easily disqualify good candidates, and to too easily tolerate bad ones. We must stop looking to easy jabs and think more deeply.
I get that this was just a joke, but beware the power of jokes to dismiss good people and sustain horribly evil ones. Seriously.
@chicagotribune 
Demagogues in power have never been productive for the common good.
@jackLondon it’s not just the hatred of strangers. Antisemitism is a specific kind of hate — one of the most reductivist there is. For thousands of years, when people’s lives have changed beyond their control, the fallback attitude has been to blame the Jews. Usually, societal norms keep the vitriol private, but with the rise of #demagogues in recent history, those norms have changed, as they have in other eras of strife. The only solution is to be an active ally, not a bystander.
"I kind of wish America’s elite liberal institutions would be elite liberal institutions, because they seem to spend a lot of time helping bad actors thrive. Harvard and Yale, to take two examples, have a lot to answer for. (Vivek and DeSantis and J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and so many of the worst people in public life these days.)"
~ Jonathan V. Last
Big amen. And all those ivy-league schools: all north of Richmond.
Senator, may we not drop this?
We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild.
Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.
You’ve done enough.
Have you no sense of decency, sir?
At long last,
have you left no sense of decency?
Joseph N. Welch destroys
#JoeMcCarthy
9 June 1954
#demagogues #fascists #witchhunts
@stevesilberman Did you ever notice, that suspect figures like DeSantis love to play with aggressions/ emotions, lies, fantasies & prejudices, but are completely bare of any useful accomplishments benefitting the American electorate & all Americans?
Con artists ore of no benefit to society.
@zazzoo Agree with you! It's a mental issue, fueled by manipulatively suggesting imaginary threats or boosting existing fears in people unable or unwilling to conceive available information through scientifically proven facts, when the information is out there for everyone, but perceived as being too uncomfortable to consume.
As the folie à deux definition already proposes: Groups of people hit with shared psychosis at the end of the day just need to be separated from the source fueling their psychosis.
Or even more simple: The source of their psychosis needs to be separated *from them*.
It’s not that these voters couldn’t discern the obvious crowd size difference at Trump’s inauguration.
It’s that their choice was an act of “participatory propaganda,” Lewandowsky said, a way of expressing their support for their champion in the moment.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/11/how-demagogues-wield-social-media/
There appears to be a #symbiotic relationship between #social #media and #demagogues,” said Stephan Lewandowsky, chair of the Department of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol in England.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/11/how-demagogues-wield-social-media/
Bewickwren 