Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

[Lesh]

https://twitter.com/MarkJacob16

With all the arguments over whether MAGA Republicans are fascists, I reread William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to see how much the rise of Hitler and the rise of MAGA smell similar. Conclusion: They do. This thread lists 10 ways. Please take a look.

1. A big lie about treachery is used to foment resentment. Nazis: We didn’t really lose World War I. It was a “stab in the back” by Jews and other "November criminals." MAGA: We didn’t really lose the 2020 election. It was a “steal” by politicians and Blacks in big cities.




2. There’s an obsession with purity of the culture. Nazis: “Racial mixture” was a threat to Aryan culture, Hitler wrote. MAGA: “Great replacement theory” says immigrants threaten white culture.



3. Chaos is something to be exploited, not addressed. Nazis: Economic distress is a great political opportunity. MAGA: Economic distress is a great political opportunity.



4. The super-rich bankroll the right-wing seizure of power. Nazis: Thanks to I.G. Farben, Deutsche Bank, Thyssen, Krupp, etc. MAGA: Thanks to the Mercers, Uihleins, DeVos, Thiel, etc.



5. Some people think the fascist threat is overblown. Nazis: While Hitler posed a major threat, some said he "ceased to be a political danger.” (2 weeks later, he was chancellor.) MAGA: While Trump poses a major threat, many people think it’s “just politics,” no worries.


6. There’s a cult of personality. Nazis: The German army made a pledge of loyalty to Hitler personally. MAGA: Trump’s supporters bill him as “the most moral president” in U.S. history.



7. Christianity is used to legitimize the movement. Nazis: “The party stands for positive Christianity.” MAGA: Trump is described as the “Chosen One” protecting American Christianity.





8. Books are the enemy. Nazis: Any book that “acts subversively on our future” must be burned. MAGA: “I think we should throw those books in a fire,” says a Virginia school board member.




9. An independent news media is the enemy. Nazis: Any newspaper that “offends the honor and dignity of Germany” must be banned. MAGA: The press is the “enemy of the people.”



10. Educators are pressured to be politically compliant. Nazis: Teachers took an oath to “be loyal and obedient to Adolf Hitler.” MAGA: Florida’s DeSantis accuses teachers of “indoctrination” and pressures them to avoid references to America’s racist history and LGBTQ people.



I'm not saying that MAGA will end up as horrifically as Nazism. I am saying that America 2022 feels too much like Germany 1932, and I don't want to take the risk of watching MAGA cultism play out. We have to stop it now.



Why did Twitter put a “sensitive” warning on this thread? Who knows? My only theory is that it has a “hateful symbol”—a swastika on the cover of Shirer’s book about Nazism.

There are uncomfortable similarities

 

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A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny. – Thomas Jefferson

That well-informed citizenry doesn’t just happen. It takes public schools. It takes public libraries. It takes an openness of heart and mind that embraces new ideas, even if they are counter to your own beliefs.

In their efforts to tear down both public schools and public libraries, Republicans are causing direct harm to people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and in particular, trans kids. But the bigger goal is the destruction of public schools and public libraries.

The VisiGOPs are here to sack institutions that have defined civilization as long as there has been civilization, and which the Founders rightly identified as essential to the character of America. And somehow, they call that conservative.



(full article online)

'Conservatives' out to destroy an institution that has defined civilization for 3,000 years

When an exiled Athenian philosopher brought an idea for a new building to one of Alexander the Great’s successors around 300 BC, the proposal met with almost immediate approval. When that building finally opened a few decades later, the Great Library...

www.dailykos.com

 

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[Republicans - forcing honest election officials to quit by harassing and threatening them....since 2020]

Hounded by baseless voter fraud allegations, an entire county's election staff quits in Virginia

In Buckingham County, four people quit their jobs after a feud between local Republicans and the general registrar consumed the small community.

www.nbcnews.com

 

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“The president knows I have always been a Trump loyalist, and that I’m committed to helping him win re-election in 2024. He likes me very much. And it’s a shame that he’s surrounded by some people that run to a publication that is notorious for attacking him in order to try to cut me at the knees instead of being loyal to President Trump and respecting their confidentiality agreements.”

Of course, not everyone is happy with this news. Specifically, Georgia bigot Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene responded on Twitter, writing, “Laura Loomer is mentally unstable and a documented liar. She can not be trusted.” But what do you really think, Rep. Greene? Greene added about 500 more words to what she thought. And then Laura Loomer responded. And then even more wretched MAGA right-wingers got into it.


(full article online)

Trump hire causes civil war between MTG and another white nationalist

On Friday, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump’s brain trust wants anti-Muslim bigot, former failed congressional candidate, and all-around far-right troll Laura Loomer to join his ...

www.dailykos.com

 

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[ Waco learned its lesson ]

The contract also noted that the campaign would “be responsible to repair any damages to the property.” Such responsibilities included “rutting, replanting of wildflowers and trash collection and litter removal.” Seems they thought of everything, except the fact that Mike Lindell would be there—and now the Waco Regional Airport will forever be a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone forbidden to anyone with allergies to meat sweats and/or mustache dander.

As Raw Story notes, Waco’s Trumpian experience is starkly different from that of El Paso, which is still waiting for a payment of a baffling $569,204.63 from Trump—and will be doing so until the heat death of the universe. The reason? It was a lot easier for Trump to steal from El Paso, and so he did.

Trump conducted his 2019 rally at the El Paso County Coliseum, which is controlled by the nonprofit El Paso Sports Commission, not the City of El Paso. Nevertheless, City of El Paso officials provided police and other resources for the event, but — unlike Waco — had no power to compel the Trump campaign to pay beforehand.

Meanwhile, other municipalities across the country continue to wait for their reimbursements—even in far smaller amounts than the half-mill owed El Paso. As the Sioux City Journal reported in January, the Iowa city sent hundreds of emails to the campaign, all just to get paid a fraction of Waco or El Paso’s bills. Little Chicago wanted just 11 grand to compensate the cops and emergency medical specialists who worked Trump’s November 2022 rally—and it took over two months to get it.

And as The Daily Beast noted in March:

For all the “back the blue” merchandise one can buy at a Trump rally, finding an event where the cops actually working it had their overtime covered by the campaign is surprisingly difficult. But there’s a cost for Trump, too; the hefty bill that he tends to leave with local governments means the ex-president may have to search for even smaller, more obscure rally venues for his 2024 campaign.
[...]
Of the 30 counties and municipalities The Daily Beast contacted to ask whether they’d been reimbursed for local cops and firemen supporting a Trump rally, just one—the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania—responded to confirm they got any money back.
[...]
By the end of his presidential term in 2021, Trump still owed more than $2 million in overtime reimbursement and other expenses, according to an Insider and CTV News analysis.

(full article online)

How the city of Waco forced serial deadbeat Trump to actually pay his rally expenses

Donald Trump takes so little accountability for anything—whether it’s paying for his crimes, paying his bills, or explaining why his son is on the internet nearly every night doing Kafkaesque anti-drug commercials—that it feels like a small win for...

www.dailykos.com

 

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Hired after TV appearances or brief phone calls, lawyers for the former president can come and go, as he demands they defend him first in the court of public opinion


(full article online)

Trump and His Lawyers: A Restless Search for Another Roy Cohn

Hired after TV appearances or brief phone calls, lawyers for the former president can come and go, as he demands they defend him first in the court of public opinion.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Tiffany has a medical condition which makes her faint if she experiences any pain, from a vaccine needle, or anything else. But her fainting after being vaccinated was turned into a tool for the anti vaccine crowd. How many people ended up dying because a minority is against something which saves lives? ]


Amber said they accused her of “participating in the biggest cover-up in history.” They called her a traitor to her country, to her profession and to her friend. They invoked her son. They harassed members of her extended family. They threatened to show up at her house.

“It was very scary and frustrating,” Amber said. “Tiffany and I had lots of conversations about, what do we do? Where do we go from here? How do we approach this? Do we need a lawyer?”

Amber, who left CHI Memorial in 2021, said administrators recommended that she not say anything publicly, but offered little additional help. Amber said her employer suggested she file a police report over the threats, but she never did because she felt like the threats were “just a lot of talk,” and she didn’t have evidence of a crime.
Of the hospital’s response, Amber said, “It was not very supportive.”

Conspiracy theories were once built almost exclusively around public figures: presidents and popes and the powerful “elite.” While this genre of conspiracy theory still exists, another has emerged out of the internet age: the kind that ropes in ordinary people, making them main characters in dreamed-up nefarious plots.

Rank-and-file election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, have been turned into culpritsin a conspiracy to steal an election away from Donald Trump. A senseless killing in a robbery gone wrong in Washington, D.C., was spun up into an assassination, ordered by Hillary Clinton. And grieving parents from every school shooting since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary have had their children stolen twice, first by a gunman and then by conspiracy theorists who deny the existence of their slain children.
No one has figured out the perfect way to respond to this phenomenon or how to react to a pile-on from conspiracy theorists. But Tiffany Dover’s example might provide a road map — for what not to do.

For decades, the conventional internet wisdom of “don’t feed the trolls” has dictated that it’s best to ignore online agitators who are hateful, cruel or trying to get a reaction. But in Tiffany’s case, falling off the social map only increased public fascination with her disappearance.

“Any aberration from the normal is just evidence for these conspiracy theorists,” said Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

Likewise, in media and crisis communications, a related tactic known as “strategic silence” suggests that often the best response to rumors or conspiracy theories is to do nothing or risk amplifying the very things you hope to deflate. That, too, may be outdated.

“The hospital is operating under old assumptions that their role is to control the narrative, when really, they’re not in control of these narratives at all,” Moran said. “PR just doesn’t understand how to operate in the world of misinformation.”

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Beyond anti-vaccine activists, Tiffany got the attention of QAnon followers, who accused Tiffany of being involved with a pedophile ring. In private messages and comments on her family’s social media posts, they claimed photos of pizza at her daughter’s birthday party and an old Halloween costume where Tiffany dressed up as the Little Caesars mascot proved her guilt. (The “pizzagate” conspiracy theory predated QAnon and posits that pizza is a secret code for child sexual abuse.)

In 2022, Christopher Key, an anti-vaccine activist who goes by the moniker “Vaccine Police,” came to Tiffany’s home. She was babysitting her 3-month-old nephew at the time. Tiffany called the police, and Key later posted a video online that he made from outside her home.

“It was scary,” Tiffany said. “I don’t know what these people want from me.”

In the last year, Tiffany quit her job at CHI Memorial. But the obsession with Tiffany hasn’t waned. The #WheresTiffanyDover hashtag pops back up every few weeks, whenever someone dies or collapses for any reason — especially when it’s caught on camera. Tiffany has become the canary in the coal mine for those who falsely believe that vaccines are killing and injuring people in droves.

Tiffany hasn’t watched all the content made about her. And most of what she has seen, she has brushed off as obviously untrue and unreasonable. Tiffany knows she’s not dead, and she did what she could to show the world as much.

But some people on the internet have criticized Tiffany for not speaking out and have laid blame on her for the conspiracy theories that were built up around her. Tiffany feels those.

“People have said I’m responsible for people not getting the vaccine,” Tiffany says. “That was hard to process. If people are using my name and my story to say, ‘Don’t get the vaccine,’ how many people didn’t receive it because of me? That’s hard.”

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So two years and three months after she fainted, Tiffany would respond the way she had wanted to all along: She’d record a video telling the world she was fine and advocating for the vaccine she believed in.




(full article online)

She became an anti-vaccine icon, and vanished. She’s finally ready to talk about it.

The Tennessee nurse stayed quiet in hopes that her silence would quiet false claims of her death. Now, she says it only hurt.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ Tylenol, next? ]

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[ Some gun owners clearly dreamed of being back around 150 years ago, when people would shoot at each other.......because they had guns.....because there were no laws as to who could or should own a gun ]

Road Rage Gunshot Exchange Between 2 Florida Dads That Left Their Daughters Wounded Now Attempted Murder Case

 

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[ Beware who one calls an idiot ]

 

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'Top of the line': Trump praises 'brilliant' Xi, Kim Jong-Un, Putin

In a Tuesday interview with Fox News, former President Trump praised authoritarian figures like President Xi, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un. The Morning Joe panel discusses Trump's fondness for these figures and what i says about him.

news.yahoo.com