US Election 2020

[Cunt]

The Americans should just do what twitter tells them to do. Sheesh.

[Hermit]

The Americans should just do what twitter tells them to do. Sheesh.

It's not Twitter's purpose to tell Americans anything. Its purpose is to make money for its owners.

[Cunt]

...but I saw Jack Dorsey interviewed, at length, by the Fear Factor guy, with his twitter-lawyer, and Tim Pool. It was very clear that they have noble goals, and are motivated by fairness, clarity and honest journalism.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[Hermit]

It was very clear that they have noble goals, and are motivated by fairness, clarity and honest journalism.

Yeah, I note the sarcasm, and no, I don't believe a word of it either. Jack Dorsey is lying his arse off. He does not have noble goals and he is not motivated by fairness, clarity and honest journalism. His only goal is to make as much money as he possibly can. Nothing else motivates him.

There is nothing you or I can do about it. Governments can't do anything about it either. At least not the ones subscribing to the concept of free enterprise. In capitalist countries free enterprise is free. That means they can't tell Twitter to lift the suspension of twitters the company has decided to suspend.

[pErvinalia]

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a small sliver of ethics thrown in there. Not even Jack Dorsey can be too happy with his app being used to potentially overthrow a government.

[Animavore]

Trump violated the T&C. Pure and simple. He clicked "I Agree", even if he didn't read it like nobody does, he has no legal leg to stand on.

[Seabass]

Neo-Nazis Boast About Participation In Capitol Hill Invasion


While congressmen and conservative media pundits continue to blame the violent storming of Capitol Hill on “antifa,” neo-Nazi accounts online have been busy posting photos documenting their intimate involvement in yesterday’s actions.

“I was there as it happened,” posted a known American neo-Nazi account with close to 5,000 followers on Telegram, an encrypted chat app popular with organized racists. The account posted a video of the violent infiltration of Congress.

“I was in D.C and I can tell you this is the beginning of the start of White Revolution in the United States!” read another of its posts. “The System fired upon Whites approaching (Capitol)l Hill and calling out the treason which has been going on too long here in America.”

One violent white supremacist street gang, which calls itself the “Nationalist Social Club” and is led and was founded by Chris Hood—a former member of neo-Nazi terror group the Base—bragged online that it not only showed up to the protests on Wednesday afternoon, but were there to “ensure white safety.”

Following the riots, one of the group’s Telegram accounts posted photos of a police riot helmet it claimed to have acquired as a trophy from the day’s events. During the summer, the same group violently intimidated Black Lives Matter protesters.

An online neo-Nazi store, popular among adherents of the violent terroristic accelerationist ideology, posted a photo of a skull-masked follower in front of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History. (Skull masks are worn by adherents of Siege, an insurgency manual penned in the 1980s that became the founding document of terror groups like the Base and Atomwaffen Division.)

“Dear American brothers and sisters, you'll never get a better shot at ending the globalist menace in your country. It's now or never!” said the post accompanying the photo. It shows a masked man wearing a Black Sun patch—an image synonymous with global neo-Nazism and popularized by the Christchurch shooter who wore it as he massacred 50 worshippers in a mosque.

While there is overwhelming evidence that neo-Nazis, QAnon conspiracists and others on the right-wing fringe were responsible for yesterday’s violence, lawmakers continue to hawk ludicrous narratives of an “antifa” conspiracy. Republican congressmen Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks, both have baselessly claimed that antifascist activists were really the ones responsible for the violence on Capitol Hill.

“They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa,” said Rep. Gaetz on the House floor.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wnja/ ... l-invasion

[Seabass]

[Cunt]

That's the group who defeated all the security Pelosi et al , could muster?

Wow, I guess this is what they mean, when they say the government should fear the people.

[Hermit]

That's the group who defeated all the security Pelosi et al , could muster?

No. This is:





Probably antifa, though. I recognise the faces. Pelosi let them in to make Trump's peace loving freedom fighters look bad.

Wow, I guess this is what they mean, when they say the government should fear the people.

"They" do not say the government should fear the people who refuse to accept that the incoming president beat the incumbent by 9 million votes.

[Seabass]

Senior Trump Official: We Were Wrong, He’s a ‘Fascist’

On Friday afternoon, 48 hours after the U.S. Capitol was stormed by violent insurrectionists encouraged by Donald Trump in an attempt to overthrow the government in protest of his election loss, a senior member of his administration spoke to me while he was driving to work.

“This is confirmation of so much that everyone has said for years now — things that a lot of us thought were hyperbolic. We’d say, ‘Trump’s not a fascist,’ or ‘He’s not a wannabe dictator.’ Now, it’s like, ‘Well, what do you even say in response to that now?’”

For four years, people like this official — lifelong Republican operatives — have convinced themselves that Trump’s obvious faults were worth tolerating if it meant implementing a conservative policy agenda. These officials believed the benefits of remaking the courts with conservative justices, or passing tax reform, outweighed the risks that a Trump presidency posed to democracy and to the reputation of the country in the world. Now, at the eleventh hour, with twelve days left before Joe Biden is sworn into office, it’s clear to some that it was always a delusion.

“This is like a plot straight out of the later, sucky seasons of House of Cards where they just go full evil and say, ‘Let’s spark mass protests and start wars and whatever,’” the senior administration official said.

“I went through Access Hollywood, Charlottesville — all of these insane things. There’s some degree of growing accustomed to the craziness. It’s not like my heart is racing, like, Oh, God, how am I supposed to react to this? It’s just more that I’m depressed. For people who devoted years of their lives to dealing with the insanity in an attempt to advance a policy agenda that you believe in, all of that has been wiped out. The legacy of the Trump administration is going to be that the president sparked an insurrection and people died because he tried his best to not abide by the Constitution and the tradition of a peaceful transition of power that’s been the norm since our founding. Nothing else is even going to be a side note.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01 ... scist.html

Duh...

[Seabass]

This adviser, who spoke to Trump on Wednesday amid the siege, said Trump watched the events on television intently. CNN reported that he was so excited by the action, it “freaked out” some staffers around him. The adviser told me that Trump expressed disgust on aesthetic grounds over how “low class” his supporters looked. “He doesn’t like low class things,” the adviser said, explaining that Trump had a similar reaction over the summer to a video of Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager, shirtless and drinking a beer in his driveway during a mental health emergency in which police tackled him and seized his weapons. “He kept mentioning, ‘Oh, did you see him in his beer shirt?’ He was annoyed. To him, it’s just low class, in other words.”

[Cunt]

"They" do not say the government should fear the people who refuse to accept that the incoming president beat the incumbent by 9 million votes.

The quote I was misremembering was "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny"

But democratic authoritarianism sounds nice too. Wasn't there another about 4 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner?

Anyway, they should bravely scrub social media of the posters who promoted meanness to politicians. They need to be protected from the consequences of their actions.

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

[Cunt]

I think the reason 'news companies' promote riots, is mostly explained in that old saw 'if it bleeds, it leads'

Trigger Warning!!!1! :

...of course, that doesn't explain why they only promote certain riots...to understand that, it would probably require some mental gymnastics.

[Hermit]

"They" do not say the government should fear the people who refuse to accept that the incoming president beat the incumbent by 9 million votes.

The quote I was misremembering was "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny"

But democratic authoritarianism sounds nice too. Wasn't there another about 4 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner?

Bon mots, platitudes, catchphrases and clichés have their place - if they can be mapped to the situation under discussion. So, let's try that, shall we? We're talking about last Wednesday's storming of the Capitol. How do you map any of the three you just mentioned to that event? Is the violent reaction to Trump having lost an example of the people's liberty? Who and where are the wolves? If you chose to answer, please try to keep on topic.

And now a comment about democratic authoritarianism. Democratically made decisions can of course be problematic. In principle it would be possible for a majority of voters to elect a majority of representatives who promised to re-establish apartheid. Or who promised to dissolve the institution of Congress/Parliament after passing an Enabling Act granting their President/Monarch plenary powers to rule their nation. Extremely problematic indeed. That said, what makes democratic authoritarianism as bad as the alternative - undemocratic authoritarianism?

I'll leave the issue of rioting itself to another post.