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yeah its called capital accumulation, here's how it works:
A ~~cabal~~ conservative institution of international rich people don't want to pay taxes on their enormous wealth so they're spending some of their money to prop up nazis, religious freaks, and insane conspiracy theorists to drown out common sense economic policy and pin the blame on minorities and a departure from religious orthodoxy.
Obviously persecuting people on these grounds makes the situation worse and people don't want to be the next scapegoat so they fall in line (face eating leopard logic, etc.) but because we're removing the most exploitable workers from the economy the economy spirals, creating the need for more scapegoats. Fascism in a nutshell.
In the long term its self destructive to every society that allows it but in the short term they get another hour of power.
The slightest bit of material analysis exposes the whole thing, but the minute you add "Marxist" to that sentence everyone shuts their brain off because of over a century of red scare nonsense. As designed.
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We were watching Rings of Power and my wife kept being like "How can Celebrimbor be so stupid? How can he not see the war waging around him? This is so fake. Nobody is this dense."
I legitimately cannot even. These themes were distilled into fiction 100 years ago, and that is just the version on my TV today. The danger of populism, the deception of the demagogue... It's all fucking right there... Impossible to ignore. Yet here we are, dealing with the same shit in a different age.
The danger of populism
The wacko conspiracies aren't due to populism, it's the opposite.
People understand they have an antagonistic relationship with the government, but they don't have the theory and historical knowledge to understand the systems at play due to centuries of anti-communist propaganda, so they latch onto conspiracies that match their prejudices and don't threaten any of their beliefs.
We saw the same thing with nazi germany.
You've basically defined populism:
Say whatever rhetoric you believe to be currently popular at this very moment, with absolutely no coherent or consistent policies, within the framework of 'all us normal people' vs 'those degenerate elites.'
This is actually precisely in line with appealing to latent rhetoric and amplifying and creating conspiracies.
Trump did/does this, the Nazis did this.
Basically all populists say whatever the fuck they want and then their actual policies are almost always in line with whatever helps out them and their immediate friends/allies the most. But these can also turn on a dime.
Instability and erratic decision making are the hallmarks of basically every populist leader in the modern era.
Mostly only in the US does the term 'populist' have connotations of actually popularly supported policy positions, as mostly only in the US is 'Libertarian' a right wing, pro business ideology instead of a left wing, socialist ideology, and mostly only in the US does communism/socialism mean 'whenever the government spends money on stuff I don't want it to.'
You are correct though that populism works best in a very stupid, uneducated, angry population.
... Which is why the Republicans actual 'masterful political strategy' of the last 30 or 40 years was:
Make everyone stupid and uneducated by destroying public education, and angry via bombastic fear and hate spread via talk radio, tv news, and more lately the internet.
Mostly only in the US does the term ‘populist’ have connotations of actually popularly supported policy positions
That explains it, that's the only way I've seen it used when referring to modern America. NYT opinion columnists like it because it allows them to paint leftwing policy that is popular because it helps everyone and rightwing policy that is popular because most American have unexamined white supremacist beliefs with the same brush.
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We were watching Rings of Power
My condolences
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Elon Musk, who owns X, claimed—without evidence—that FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own.
Oh, you mean like how the orange turd's administration in 2020 was ~~legitimately~~ very literally seizing shipments of critical PPE in 2020 at the height of COVID and selling it to fellow grifters for them to auction off to hospitals?
Your use of "legitimately" might be construed by some as "acceptably"
Only because he sold off all the emergency reserves (and never replaced it) when he took office
Well, and also to enrichen himself, too. Obviously.
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First they politicized a pandemic, now they're politicizing a hurricane.
When will it end?
"Never let a good catastrophe go to waste"
when the deep state turns off the chemtrail plants and stop pumping microchip vaccines into the air.
/s
The article mentions people are willing to suspend their belief in understandingthe truth in order to further their "team" or party objective, but I think this whole thing is simply foreign adversaries vying to destroy us from within by sowing contempt and spreading lies on social media and news outlets.
Occam's Razor.
Occam's Razor would suggest this is largely a domestic problem, perhaps exacerbated by foreign adversaries but far from being all their work.
Por que no los dos?
A meek, terrified populace is ripe fruit for the picking for actors both internal & external.
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While riding home with my son this evening, I found myself apologizing to him. This world today--the people--are a profoundly unbelievable mess. He brought up things he's read in the news and I hardly know what to say. We both understand how insane it all is, but people still believe it... truly...
I get it. The world has always been a mess. This mess today is simply uniquely ours at this time in history.
But...
My gods...
What...
The...
sighs
I'm approaching my sixties now. I've been through a lot of the messes of recent history. The world today (and it is the world, its not just the US although that is the most flagrant example) feels genuinely different. Just the sheer amount of misinformed hate and self-destructive uber capitalism feels like its reaching a crescendo. What comes after that is worrying to think about.
50 something also chiming in.
I think the nutcases have always just been there. Hiding in plain sight. They just never had a platform. It was always "uncle jerry in the back, spilling nonsense while drinking his beer. Dont mind him."
And that was the end of it.
Uncle Jerry now has twitter , facebook and all those other bullshit channels for furthering his bullshit. And some of us just eat it up.
I work in IT, which is more then anything else, a business of truths. Its binary. It works or it don't. 0 or 1. Yes or no. A lot of highly trained and educated people work in IT, which is a field which only exists because of science... and blatantly ignore that same science about society, environment, immigration, economy, chem trails and god knows what else.
It's baffling. There are a lot, i would say 1 in 10, who will spout the most insane bullshit after a few beers. About stuff "the government doesn't want you to know." what exactly is the government ? I work for the government but apparently I'm excluded. Im good government?
we haven't been on the moon. Chem trails are real. Climate change is just a fad, covid is a way to control us, vaccines give cancer, polio isn't a real disease, its made up.
Da fuq.
I truly believe that social media, and I mean all social media should be banned. People should not be allowed to spew their bullshit. We as a people are really not ready for this. Maybe China is right with their "social score" system. Maybe stuff like the bilderberg group is really needed. We seem to need guidance. We, the normal civvies, seemingly are too hell bend on watching it all burn. And are too stupid to stop it. People like trump, inciting hate, spraying unlimited bullshit, should be thrown in jail. That's not politics. That's rage baiting.
The path we're on leads to 2 things: the capitalist dystopia, think blade runner and a total melt down of our ecosystem which, ultimately, will lead to our dinosaur moment.
We are living, this moment, in a great filter event. I truly believe that. Wanna know why we don't see, hear other planet wide civilisations? Look around you. See where this leads. Connect the dots. "do your own research." ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I agree, mostly, young people start with tiktok (or whatever the platform du jour is) and the algo pushes Andrew Tate at them. Xitter is now a cesspit of hate. There are FB Groups and Insta accounts monetising 'news' and YT accounts pushing hate as 'news'.
Simplistic populism is easy to digest and easy to understand. No matter how ludicrous it is, the idea that the root of your problems is muslims/the dems/women/trans folks/the gays/whatever is simple, easy to understand and easy to communicate. Its made for algorithm driven content.
I don't want to be that old cunt at the back of the room harping on about the good old days but we live in an age when truth is irrelevant and easy to understand but utterly wrong information gets spread far and wide. Facts are usually complex, nuanced and not easy to present in a soundbite type way and nobody listens to explanations that last more than 5mins.
People of my generation invented this info hellscape and are profiting from it. The young are the ones paying the price.
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I don't think there's more disinformation as before in terms of % of info being wrong, but a lot of people have gotten really good at calling it out. The best example on-hand is the "cigarettes are good for you actually" and "we will buy tramways put of every city in North America and tear them out, then sell you a car!"
It's always been like this.
we’ve entered the “‘Fuck It’ Era” of AI slop and political messaging
yea
Is anyone else starting to wonder whether Orwell was a time traveler trying to warn us?
It couldn't possibly be that Trump and his handlers are using it (edit: 1984) as a road map and his followers are stupid enough not to notice.
Orwell wrote that book based on his personal observations from how the government already worked decades prior. All he did was 1+1=2 and he was visionary because of it. Same with Marx. Or Verne.
There's a reason dystopian fiction has reigned supreme for over a decade now. We're obsessed with our inevitable fate.
It's more that Trump read a book:
Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler's speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
"Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?" I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. "Who told you that?"
"I don't remember," I said.
"Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew." ("I did give him a book about Hitler," Marty Davis said. "But it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish.")
Edit: I'll note that this appears to the only time Trump has been observed reading a book.
No time travel, it is just that Orwell and the Repubs are both basing their content partially on observations about Nazi Germany.
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This runs in parallel to tribalism and being part of an "in" crowd. Some people are so bound by their tribalism that they'll stare at facts and cry that it's not true because their tribe told them differently; they will reject the facts to continue to be a part of the tribe.
To them, being "in" is more important than being right, or even being logical.
Tribalism can take all sorts of different forms, from politics, to your local sports ball team. Even religion is a form of tribalism.
When everyone you know is a part of the conservative/republican/christian/whatever tribe, even if you don't agree with any of it, it's difficult to face the consequences of being ostracized or excluded from the only tribe you've ever really been a part of, by following what your mind and heart actually believe. In time, you might actually convince yourself of the bullshit you have to say you believe, in order to maintain your status in the tribe.
Tribalism is a survival trait. It's what has divided us into nations, countries, states, provinces, cities, towns, etc. Looking back, if we need to do something that will screw over the survivability of the neighboring village, so that we can ensure the continued prosperity of our village, then the answer is yes, do it. It's rewarded to be greedy and selfish in those circumstances.
Tribalism in the form of villages and towns like that is basically non-existent today, so instead we divide ourselves along other boundaries for what tribes we partake in. Whether that's religion, sports teams, political ideologies, conspiracy bullshit..... It doesn't really matter, the tribes are all still present, they've just taken a very different, more abstract form.
All of the MAGA hats, Trump flags, big trucks rolling coal on "hapless" EV drivers.... It's all just parading around your tribes colors, announcing your affiliations so others will know (the same way that marine vessels sail under a countries flag, or an army marches carrying the flag/colors of a country or whatever). All this showboating is the same as a peacock trying to attract a mate. All these fancy colors, and not a hell of a lot more going on.
They're baboons waving their big red buttocks around so everyone knows their butt is more red than yours.
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I believe the framework Warzel is looking for is something like:
'Mass Delusional Narcissistic Sustained Psychosis at a Societal Level'
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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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