South Florida Republicans brag about how multicultural their coalition is, and it’s true that it’s much more diverse than average GOP electorates. But a bombshell report from the Miami Herald (gift link) reveals how their campus youth leaders talk when they think no one else is listening:
The secretary of Miami-Dade County’s Republican Party started a group chat primarily for conservative students last fall — and within three weeks it was filled with racist slurs, someone wrote dozens of ways of violently killing Black people and the chat was renamed after what one member described as “Nazi heaven.”
In WhatsApp conversations leaked to the Miami Herald, participants used variations of the n-word more than 400 times, regularly described women as “whores,” used slurs to talk about Jewish and gay people and mused about Hitler’s politics.
The conversations included some of the campus’ top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter president and the former College Republicans recruitment chair. The group chat — verified by two people in the group — reveals the extent of racism and extremism within the highest ranks of campus Republican Party leadership in Miami at a time Florida’s Republicans are reckoning with an increasingly emboldened far right.
If you’re keeping score at home, this isn’t the first Young Republican group chat leak that suggests the party’s youth organizations have a Nazi problem. In October, Politico published an article exposing thousands of similar private comments from Young Republicans in multiple states.
Even though most of the chat participants in that incident were grown men, a few with jobs in the Trump administration or working as GOP operatives, JD Vance brushed it off:
JD Vance sought to downplay the revelation that leaders of a group called the Young Republicans exchanged hundreds of racist, sexist text messages – including one in which rape was called “epic”, and another in which someone wrote “I love Hitler” – as youthful indiscretions…
“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke – telling a very offensive, stupid joke – is cause to ruin their lives.”
As a tech fascist’s protégé, it’s possible Vance has a more visceral understanding of the vital role Nazi edgelords play in the GOP coalition than, say, Donald Trump does. Trump is a hardcore bigot, but he seems to mostly form transactional rather than ideological ties.
But maybe he’ll get schooled on how the “neo” in neo-Nazism works if his endorsed candidate in the upcoming Florida gubernatorial primary hits the rising Nazi youth buzzsaw.
Leading Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, who is Black, denounced what he called the “woke right” during a speech in Miami last fall, a phenomenon he said has risen in the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Donalds seemed to be using the term as a stand-in for the far right, describing it as those that oppose all immigration and espouse “soft bigotry” on social media.
His opponent James Fishback — a relative political unknown who has used racist and white nationalist rhetoric throughout his campaign — is highlighting the generational divide around extremism on the right in Florida.
One University of North Florida poll found that while only 6% of likely GOP primary voters supported Fishback, he had the support of 32% of 18-34 year olds, four times what Byron Donalds got among that age group.
Ouch.
To be clear, I don’t think Fishback’s mostly virtual campaign will ultimately go anywhere. But if Donalds gets the nod as expected, maybe the combined effect of old school bigots and Nazi youth sitting out the election might allow someone like David Jolly to squeak into the governor’s mansion if he’s the Democratic nominee.
Nationally, Trump’s Iran war is unpopular with the GOP’s neo-Nazi faction, which is why Vance, usually a prolific troll, has been mostly mum so far. It’s also why Trump is now publicly excommunicating former dining companions like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly via tweet.
Normally, evidence of infighting among this large group of deeply terrible people would cheer me up, but I’m not feeling it today. It underscores anew the scale of the problem, which isn’t just a GOP Nazi problem but a problem for every one of us.
Open thread.
Baud
The GOP’s Nazi Problem or their Nazi Solution?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Being a Nazi is no longer a problem even for Dems. Look at the Maine race. All the podcasting bros are pushing the nepo baby Nazi
The Thin Black Duke
Nazis aren’t afraid to be Nazis in White America.
Old Man Shadow
It’s not just the GOP’s problem. The mainstreaming of Nazism is America’s problem now. And yeah, we can point to our past and say it’s always been a problem and where the Nazis got their racial law ideas from, but the country was swinging one direction and now it’s swinging back and threatens to tear American society apart.
Betty Cracker
@Old Man Shadow: Yes. Well said.
Old School
Miami-Dade County Republican Party Chairman Kevin Cooper:
I guess he doesn’t attend many meetings.
Hoodie
@schrodingers_cat: Don’t get the Plattner love. Listened to his interview on PSA and he seemed to bullshit a lot. I sense the “Mills is too old” narrative is driving his candidacy.
A Ghost to Most
Calling them Nazis lends an air of Teutonic competence that isn’t there
Danielx
Not a coincidence this is cropping up more and more now that all the wwii folks are gone. Those folks had their share of racist assholes, but they generally held very decided views on Nazis.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
And yet a lot of people oppose Platner because if his Nazi issues. It is a still a problem for Democrats; that’s why people who support him keep having to try to explain away the tattoo, etc. For the GOP, Hegseth’s tattoos are, if anything, a selling point.
cmorenc
One overlooked factor in the rise of neo-nazi adherence among the younger and even middle-age RW of the GOP is the final passing off the stage of WW2 veterans (a substantial portion of which were conservative-leaning, Reagan who vividly, viscerally remember what Hitler and Nazi-ism were really about, and Russian totalitarianism too. Reagan would be horrified at what the GOP and what purports to be conservatism have been pathologically warped and transformed into by Trump’s domination.
Eunicecycle
@cmorenc: my dad was one of those. WW2 and Korea vet, he hated Nazis. He passed right before the election of 2016.
oldster
“The conversations included some of the campus’ top conservative leaders: the county GOP secretary, FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter president….”
But this is impossible! Turning Point USA is Charlie Kirk’s organization, and Charlie Kirk was such a saintly, upstanding, All-American hero that everything he touched was sanctified by his presence!
Why, if Turning Point turns out to be a nest of pernicious Nazi trolls, then that might mean — oh no, it would be blasphemy against Saint Charlie even to say it out loud!
Baud
They are cultivating Nazis but they still have to lie about how they feel about Nazis when the Nazism is exposed. The OG Nazis were never ashamed to be publicly seen as Nazis until they were defeated.
mappy!
A recurring muse after I’m out and about, groceries etc., is that probably 50% of the people I’m in the midst of voted for Trump. Make that 60% if it’s mostly males… And this is a safely, though not solidly, blue state.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes Ds are better than Rs overall. But we can’t just ignore the bigotry within our ranks.
By we I mean non-white people like me who can’t unsee this trend.
Old School
I guess Trump wants to amend the bill.
Baud
@Old School:
EVERYONE MUST SHOW GENITALIA TO VOTE!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Hoodie: I don’t get it either. His mother owns a fancy restaurant, he is hardly a working class hero. She is one of the biggest buyers of his oysters.
The people pushing his candidacy are not our friends. PodSave My Trustfund and MY I am looking at you.
Old School
Citizen_X
“Woke” to what? That tomorrow belongs to me? Christ.
Ksmiami05
@A Ghost to Most: and fashion sense. Actually the only good Nazis are dead ones so…
p.a.
… They never read those pamphlets in his bottom drawer
They never read that tattoo on his arm
Theythought that it was just a boys-club badge he wore
They never thought he’d cause folks any harm…
…
And all the while, Graham slept onDreaming of a world where he could do just what he wanted to
No thugs in our houseAre there, dear?We made that clearWe made little Graham promise us he’d be a good boy, whoa
No thugs in our houseAre there, dear?We made that clearWe made little Graham promise us he’d be a good boy
No thugs in our houseNo thugs in our houseNo thugs in our house, dear…
Suzanne
Back in MY DAY, our “youthful indiscretions” involved sex and weed. One dude shoplifted. Not rape and Hitler.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe a lot oppose him, but if his continued support and poll numbers are any indication, not nearly enough do. That’s a problem, and of course, as with all problems like these, it won’t even be confronted until it’s far too late to actually do anything about it and the people responsible for perpetrating it will skate and be off to create new, even bigger problems.
JML
Well, the GOP has been enabling and encouraging hate for decades, and this is what you get. The previous generation of white dudes used to code the language, but it was always sitting there, and they and their GOP elected enablers always just bloviated in outrage about how dare anyone call them on their shit. It’s hardly a shock that the people who were raised on right-wing performative outrage and embraces of hate and blame and grievance took the next step and more openly embraced Nazi evil, especially when they discovered they could push it on the internet with no editorial oversight.
So now you have an increasingly racist white youth movement for whom the Nazis aren’t a real entity, who grew up on hate and grievance, have no real understanding of the actual evil of the Nazis and have never met anyone who even remembers WWII. Embraces of conspiracy theories and jokes about the Holocaust.
Fertile breeding ground that the GOP has been fine with so long as they vote for them. Scary shit.
Vance continually proves he’s utter scum. This isn’t harmless, this isn’t normal “kids experimenting” with edgy jokes and ideas…this is an embrace of evil. Was totally unacceptable in my house, that’s for sure. But it’s ok in JD’s world, which is how it continues to proliferate.
Neldob
On my Nextdoor foray the right-wing is getting more agro suddenly, swearing, calling people names more, private messaging mean misives. Does that signify they think(?) they have the upper hand? Or that their media is encouraging it? I only point and mock.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne:
And Boone’s Farm.
Belafon
@Hoodie: That, and he’s a hard working white guy, if you ignore that his mom gave him money to get started. His support is nearly the Bernie support, the idea that if we can appeal to working class whites everything will be better.
WTFGhost
Dude, be specific. Do you know what nonspecificity will do to the sex toy and dirty magazine business in the area?
Belafon
@schrodingers_cat: People on bsky were not happy when I pointed out that the appeal to the “working” class is designed to ignore all of the other people Democrats represent.
schrodingers_cat
@Belafon: Bsky commentary on US politics is worse than what I see on Twitter. And self declared “progressives” can’t even blame Musk for the abundance white privilege and outright bigotry that I see.
laura
It’s not Republicans I’m concerned about, because they are already a loat cause. If you scrape the top crust off the nazi, what you’ll find is a heap of racism. Lots and lots and LOTS of anti-Black sentiment in eliminationist language. And it’s leaking into the democratic party and if not stopped dead in its tracks, we’ll be a shit ass neo Confederate country through and through. Anti semitism and racism should have no home amongst the Democratic party, and I’m looking right at DSA as the accomodators of this bullshit. Accommodate Grant Planter, allow him to run on a democratic party ticket and now, you’re a nazi party. No fucking quarter for this.
Belafon
@WTFGhost: You can’t vote unless you have a baby picture showing everything, that they’ll hold onto just for evidence obviously. /sarc
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Belafon: Bluesky is just left-wing Musk-owned Twitter at this point, infested with large amounts of people who never should have been allowed to leave the predecessor in the first place.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: I still haven’t forgiven the pod bros for pushing Biden out and wanting a fun snap primary to pick a replacement. I haven’t listened to them since. Underpants Gnome is no way to strategize.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@laura: All of this.
“Why are people continually demeaning progressives and leftists?”, it’s been asked here recently. Look to Maine for your answer, folks. If you’re willing to stoop so low there, it’s not very hard to make the final descent from that point.
West of the Rockies
You know, we talk about mean girls a fair bit, but this seems like mean boy stuff. (Mean, ignorant, racist, sexist, homophobic).
And maybe I’m way over-simplifying matters, but it seems to me that such behavior comes from deep, personal insecurity (and racist-ass parents maybe).
Why do humans raise so many insecure, nasty, brutish young people?
schrodingers_cat
@laura: Don’t forget the xenophobia too. That was BS of Vt’s calling card since he was a Congressman. I have followed his career since the 90s.
Emily B.
Meanwhile, students who spoke out on behalf of Gaza got doxxed, lost job offers—and in some cases were kidnapped by ICE.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: And don’t forget he was supported by the NRA when he ran for that seat.
Shalimar
@Gretchen: I haven’t forgiven them either, though I didn’t listen to any of their anti-Biden crap so I might be wrong about it. My feeling was that Biden was an active policy voice in the Obama administration like most VPs are not, and at least some of these aides had bitter memories of being on the opposite side of internal disputes. Which is fine. We don’t agree on everything. But to still hold that against him in 2024 amidst a must-win reelection race was unforgiveable.
Same for Jen Psaki. I know she was a prominent spokesperson for years, but I never heard of her before Biden made her Press Secretary. That job is how she got on MSNBC. For her to be anti-Biden during that critical 2 months in 2024 was unforgiveable too.
laura
The racism, the xenophobia and the misogyny- it’s so casually acceptable these days. Why, it’s almost fashionable.
Hilbertsubspace
@mappy!: Many people didn’t vote. Only about a quarter of the population voted for T#$^*, and a full third of those had no idea what they were doing, and they are currently very confused about what is happening.
laura
@Shalimar: that hard shell exterior of Biden hate was intended to protect the gooey, interior of Harris distain because that was what That was the whole time. Once you see that, you’ll see it everywhere.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Bluesky has been a disappointment, at least when it comes to politics.
Shalimar
@laura: Harris was my 2nd choice in 2020 after Warren. I had no problem with the moving-on-to-Harris part of it, though I think Biden was an excellent president, far more liberal when it actually mattered than I thought he would be. But 5 months before the election was not the time to even consider switching candidates. That crap should have been worked out the year before.
And yeah, the opposition to the only obvious alternative once they had gotten Biden out made it clear most of these assholes were motivated by racism.
Ruckus
@JML:
Well stated.
I’m an old and my parents were born at the start of WWI. They remembered war, and dad served in WWII.
I was born not long after WWII ended. IOW I have at least some connection to that war and to the next one. My war was Vietnam, which I served during. I joined because I could not stand coming home any longer and possibly having to read that letter. And yes I took my draft physical like every other male of that time between 18 and 30 years old. Very good physical. If you could walk in the building, were between 5’8″ and 6’3”, weighed less than 250 lbs and knew your own name you passed. One also took a test to see if you could pass 4th grade. A yes qualified you. A no qualified you. You didn’t have to have a good score, you had to finish and answer enough questions. They wanted bodies, everything else they could stuff in and if your brain didn’t explode you passed. If it did – well sorry not sorry.
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
Kind of a broad brush there, no? And it is a problem for that guy.
Geminid
James Fishback does make personal appearances and draws small crowds. Fishback has to drive his mother’s car to get them though, because he has a large outstanding civil judgement against him that he can’t pay.
Soprano2
I’m always gobsmacked that people think these kind of chats will always stay private. I certainly wouldn’t count on that!!
Melancholy Jaques
@Hoodie:
Maybe the fact that she is a she, also too.
Soprano2
@Old School: HAHAHAHAHA, they can keep saying it but the things they actually do show the truth, which is that those thing definitely have a comfortable home in the Republican Party.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: I haven’t forgotten.
2 of T2.0’s cabinet picks came for the BS fold.
RFKJr and Tulsi Gabbard. But we are supposed to have amnesia about it because shutup that’s why.
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: Which popular podcaster has come out against Platner, tell me because I would follow them on their socials in a heartbeat.
WTFGhost
@Belafon: Nah, it’s just, if you’re foreign born, they’ll arrest you on CSAM charges.
stacib
@Gin & Tonic: Strawberry Hill is the reason I don’t drink wine today. :-)
Old School
Potlucks can save America!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yep. I have slowly moved back to Twitter. Its not perfect by far. But it has many more viewpoints than Ds suck. And my network is wider and better on there. One reason is that I have been on Twitter since 2019.
prostratedragon
@JML: Vance is all in:
Like 🤡, he doesn’t seem to know when he needs the off-ramp someone is pointing him to.
AxelFoley
@oldster:
I like the cut of your jib.
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know why you think I would know about popular podcasters and I don’t understand why that would matter.
One guy running for a Democratic nomination has a Nazi tattoo and now it’s a problem for Democrats generally? We have a Nazi problem? I’d say it’s that guy’s problem, not mine as a Democrat living in southern California, not Democrats all over America.
prostratedragon
@Baud: WHOSE?
Tim C.
@A Ghost to Most: The OG Nazi’s weren’t particularly competent either.
Baud
@Tim C.:
Hogan’s Heroes taught me that.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Melancholy Jaques: It may not be your problem yet, but how long do you think that’ll last if he’s successful?
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Eh, even that shame is pretty much in the rear view mirror with
somea lot of these shitbirds. For many, only fear of getting fired from their jobs is holding them back.Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Well, some people have been showing us all of their ass in the past several elections.
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: Way to not understand what I was saying.
Let me restate. Our left flank, the self anointed progressives are comfortable with bigotry as well. Platner in ME is but one example.
Antisemitism, racism, ageism and xenophobia to name but a few.
tam1MI
@Emily B.: Meanwhile, students who spoke out on behalf of Gaza got doxxed, lost job offers—and in some cases were kidnapped by ICE.
I’m not following your line of reasoning here. Are you saying or suggesting that, because some guys are protesters were ill-treated, it is therefore okay to vote for a Nazi? Because that seems kind of nonsensical to me.
WTFGhost
@Old School: “Look, I swore he said eating each other, not eating with each other!”
@stacib: Well, for another cheap wine story, one day, my wife got the need to try Mad Dog 20/20. So we got some, and it was awful, but better once your taste buds numbed, but we were watching this movie, see, Jumping Jack Flash.
So I’ve had my third cup of Mad Dog, and suddenly, Whoopie Goldberg is threatening a man with a giant toothbrush.
I dunno about the rest of you normal people, but I had to go back and re-watch that movie to see if had all been some extremely vivid hallucination. (yes, it really happened. Thank goodness!)
NaijaGal
Unfortunately, it’s America’s Nazi problem, not just the GOP’s.
satby
@Melancholy Jaques: she’s hardly the only one saying it. There are even people being more vociferous than her.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Mr. Blackwater with a Nazi Tatoo.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: IMO, Bluesky is what you make of it, i.e., who you follow, etc. That used to be true of Twitter before a far-right Nazi bought it and started screwing with the algo in a way that moves users to the right whether they are aware of that or not.
Baud
Even if Platner wins the primary and beats Collins, and goes on to be an excellent Senator, I think the fact remains that white dudes that criticize Democrats are given more leeway to be “impure” than other types of candidates.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t know about podcasters, but Charles Gaba has been hitting Graham Platner hard on BlueSky.
Gaba addressed the question of whether Platner knew what his totenkopf tatoo was with a long, multipart post. It showed a series of scenes from different war movies where the totenkopf was prominently shown on the hats of various Nazi villains.
There must have at least 15 scenes; there was even one from the TV show “Hogan’s Heros”! You might not have watched that one and it was before Platner’s time. But the guy is a military history buff so he might have watched reruns. Most of the movies were from this century.
And there are other reasons Platner must have known what his tatoo was besides the prevalence of the totenkopf in popular culture. Gaba talks about them too, and about the rest of Platner’s voluminous baggage.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, I suppose I should curate more based on new information about what the people I currently follow are saying. I just sort of gave up.
satby
@tam1MI: not to speak for her, but it seems obvious that the baby NAZIs of the GOP saying hideously racist things are getting excused (free speech!) while student protesters against Israel’s decimation of Gaza got severe consequences for their exercise of the same right of free speech.
satby
@Geminid: It seems obvious Platner knew what the tattoo symbolized. We need to make “publicly uttering lies that insult our intelligence” a career ending event in politics again.
NaijaGal
@satby: That’s how I read it as well. Free speech for some.
Baud
Baud
“Mr. Pahlavi to the white courtesy phone, please.”
NaijaGal
Some of the most vicious, racist language in the chats came from Latino College Republicans who regard themselves as white.
Baud
@NaijaGal:
Or want to fit in with the whites.
Suzanne
@Baud: You are touching on something that I consider an interesting question. (Platner I do not find interesting, fuck that guy.)
But….. what heterodoxy are we willing to accept? What are the “red lines” that can’t be crossed? We used to have a fair number of pro-life Democrats. Some Democrats are far more interventionist than I’m comfortable with. (In fact, this is, for me, a huge and bitter pill.) I’m currently of the opinion that crypto is deeply, deeply sus and I’m uncomfortable with candidates who take money from that industry.
I ask because I think this is an unresolved question for Dems right now.
NaijaGal
@Baud: That has always been the way, it seems.
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic:
Boone’s Farm is not “involved in” youthful indiscretions; it is a youthful indiscretion.
Chetan Murthy
@satby: If he were truly anti-Nazi, anti-white supremacist, he would use this as a teachable moment to educate voters and the public about the importance of this issue. He wouldn’t be claiming that “I didn’t know, noOoOooo”, he’d be saying that it doesn’t -matter- whether I knew or not, it’s a bad thing, and of course I’m sorry that I did this thing, even if it was without knowledge, and this sort of imagery is bad, and we should condemn it! And he would apologize for having done it, and take concrete steps to do better.
There’s a standard dance you do when you’re actually repentant, actually want to put the issue behind you, and it involves -doing the work- to remedy any possible harm you might have caused.
AFAIK, he hasn’t done any of that. But I could be wrong.
Baud
@Suzanne:
There’s the question of what red lines we have, and then there’s the question of whether those red lines are being selectively applied.
To my point, I think Platner would have been received differently if he were a blue dog candidate with the exact same background, and things that are currently not relevant would have been treated as red lines.
To you points, red lines do change as times change, as well as our popularity. We can’t afford to have too many red lines right now.
prostratedragon
@WTFGhost:
“Look, I swore he said eating each other, not eating with each other!”
I had to check.
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: Her biggest problem is that she’s a governor, and has a record. And having a record is dangerous.
satby
@Chetan Murthy: if you think for a nanosecond that Platner didn’t know, then I have a binder full of bridges to sell to you.
Anyone who utters such a lame-assed, obvious lie should be treated with contempt, not endless speculation about the content of his soul. He decided to display that with his tattoo.
Old School
@Baud:
…
Chetan Murthy
@satby: 100% agreed.
Baud
@Old School:
Heh.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I do follow him on Twitter and bsky and yes I have seen those posts. Good for Gaba!
Suzanne
@Baud: I can agree with that observation that red lines are selectively applied.
I am worried about getting away from red lines, though. Valued commenter Matt McIrvin notes that “politics is for something”.
Old Man Shadow
I’m just still not sure how Maine Democrats got to where their choice of Senator was either a 78 year-old or a dudebro who only recently had Nazi tattoos removed.
NaijaGal
@Chetan Murthy: This is why I worry that electing him could be way worse than having a Fetterman 2.0 in the Senate.
Is the Dem party big enough to hold Nazis who support the right of almost everyone to have universal healthcare and a $20 minimum wage for most?
Jackie
Who is this idiotic ____?🤦🏼♀️
Beat by Old School.
Suzanne
@Belafon: Apparently Mills has pissed off unions in Maine and UAW has endorsed Platner. They have also said that they will support Collins over Mills if Mills wins the primary.
Baud
@Suzanne:
No one is suggesting no red lines.
Old Man Shadow
@Jackie: Oh, just add the title to Marco Rubio’s list, eat your burger fried in lard, and call it a day, grandpa.
NaijaGal
@Suzanne: I guess that answers my question.
Chetan Murthy
If Platner retains hidden Nazi sympathies, then his other positions are going to be lies. A Nazi isn’t going to support rights for ethnic and gender minorities. So “universal”? Nopes.
Baud
@Old Man Shadow:
There are plenty of other good people. Those two are just the most dominant because Mainers don’t reject them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: I agree. It requires maintenance. And blocking.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Yes of course, I am being moved to the right without my awareness, since I don’t possess your smarts and native intelligence. I am a slave to the algo.
I can’t just disagree with you, I also have to be stupid. Am I right?
Some on the left are only happy with non-white cheerleaders. Exhibit # n
where n>>1.
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: First, I don’t use any of these social media. So maybe I don’t know better. But from what I understand, bsky doesn’t -have- an algorithmic feed. it’s up to you to decide which creators you follow. Now, maybe that means you get replies (to skeets from people you follow) from people that you find unacceptable: which is why, from what I’ve read, people who use bsky aggressively (-aggressively-) block anybody they find objectionable.
But (again) from what I understand, there is no “algorithmic” feed: just the amalgam of the creators you follow. I might be wrong, and would ask you to correct me if so.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: She is talking about Twitter and how it steers people to the right.
NaijaGal
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah that’s why I said “almost everyone” and “most.”
I’ve been told I worry too much.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: Something very stupid is in the wind.
Belafon
@Chetan Murthy: We have two problems here, one being a guy with questions about what he will do if elected, and the other being a president that we need to stop. We don’t really have the opportunity to wait for his votes to see what he will do. Imagine if he’s the 51st or 52nd vote.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Is that wrong? I think the NYT makes people overly focused on criticizing Dems, even though I’m not personally affected by the stories I see. Twitter might be the same.
Chetan Murthy
@NaijaGal: haha, well, I’ll just say: the Democratic Party is a party that will not exist if it abandons those universal principles. It’s one thing to argue for some level of immigration enforcement. It is another thing -entirely- to argue for differential treatment of citizens based on ethnicity or gender.
That’s dynamite, and I’m sure that the leaders of the Democratic Party know it. Heck, I’m sure the vast majority of Dem electeds know it. My guess would be that if Platner retains Nazi sympathies and is elected, he rapidly transitions to a Republican.
Archon
I genuinely don’t understand how a member of the human race can look back at what the Nazis did and what they represented and be like, “yeah I want that”.
Suzanne
@Baud: Understood. But what are the red lines? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself in the last few months.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Also Hunter Walker, a TPM reporter.
I’ll probably get called stupid for the following admission, but if someone had showed me a photo of that tattoo before this year, I wouldn’t have realized it was a Nazi symbol.
But the case against Platner doesn’t begin or end there. He keeps making exactly the same kind of “mistake,” e.g., oops! appearing on a podcast hosted by an antisemite, oops! retweeting a prominent antisemite, etc.
Baud
Capital gains
Chetan Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: Uh, that’s true. I mean, it’s -true-. I would think it’s true for two reasons:
(1) AFAICT, it is -difficult- to coax twitter to stick to showing you your home timeline as the amalgam of the people you follow, and -not- show you an “algorithmic feed”; repeatedly Skum has disabled some mechanism that existed for choosing the “follows timeline”, reverting everybody to the algorithmic feed.
(2) and that algorithmic feed is definitely pro-Nazi.
Both of these are pretty much settled fact, are they not?
cain
@Old School: “no place” looks, like they found a place and it’s overrun.
prostratedragon
Charles Gaba today:
Baud
@Suzanne:
I think they’re in flux. It’s the nature of political realignment.
Chetan Murthy
@Belafon: If Platner were the Dem candidate for office in CA and I had a vote, I would vote for him. Of this, there is no doubt. In that same vein, it is ….. malpractice in the extreme for the UAW to state that they will support Collins over Mills. I mean, just criminally stupid.
So: we agree. But that doesn’t prevent me from wondering about why Platner has done the things he’s done.
schrodingers_cat
@Chetan Murthy: Maybe that’s what the algoritm does but it does not follow from that every account on Twitter is a rightwing account. Or susceptible to rightwing propaganda.
I haven’t been a fan of Twitter since Musk bought it, but even in its current degraded state it is better than any alternative that’s come up. YMMV.
It has been indispensible for me for following news about India. Bsky has little reach outside the US. I have many Indian mutuals on Twitter who are writers, grassroots activists. I can read what they write in Marathi and Hindi, not just English.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Nazi is a line in the sand for me. I plan on it being so for my entire life. I think that one should be pretty simple.
jonas
Anyone who thinks that the GOP will go back to being a mainstream center-right party after Trump is gone is going to be sorely disappointed. It’s going to be a far-right, anti-liberal, White nationalist party for probably the rest of my lifetime, a la the Front National in France, AfD in Germany, or Freedom Party in Austria. Those parties have — until fairly recently — remained rather marginal in their respective countries, but when one of the only two major parties in the US is basically out-and-proud fascist, that’s going to be not just an American, but a global, problem for a very long time. If the next Democratic administration dismantles ICE and CBP, watch a bunch of those guys go and turn into the Republican brownshirt militia regiments, which they basically are now, but getting a federal paycheck for it.
Suzanne
@Baud: I know they’re in flux.
But — as an example — I can understand why the UAW is pissed at Mills. For voters who are strong supporters of organized labor, they don’t have a great option here.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Nazi is an easy line in the sand. But they get harder.
LAC
@laura: It is also deeply exhausting and offensive. To have to put up with the in your face stuff is hard enough, but to have swallow the casual verbal abuse and “get over it” attitude from our side in the name of so called empathy for broken people or to embrace that slight chance they might vote with us stinks. It is having a yoke tied to your back with someone patting you on the head and going “Okay? It is for the greater good! Gooooo team!”
Fucking exhausting…
prostratedragon
The international dimension:
Last night:
cain
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
The same leftists are out there now using AIPAC money to attack folks like Wyden and Merkeley using false narratives. You know it is the same assholes who called Biden “Genocide Joe”. I call them out on it. Still using the same kind of tricks and language.
Fuck them. They got ZERO moral high ground while we’re in this incendiary war with Iran.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Cryptocurrency is an out and out scam, its only real application is criminality
[ETA of course it also enables financial speculation and many people have profited from it. Tulips worked too for a while.]
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Suzanne: They don’t have a great option, but they have a simple one. Don’t vote for the Nazi. There’s two of them in this race – one’s really good at hiding it (Collins) and the other would be the first victim of a Scorsese murder montage (Platner).
If they need to think about it any further than that, then I have to question just how far down the Nazi slippery slope they’ve already skated. But I’ve had questions like that about the UAW and other unions for a while now.
laura
@Chetan Murthy: well, here’s the deal, he is a republican. He’s voted republican in recent past elections. He’s also a nazi. He’s intending to run as an Independent within the democratic party, and he’s said so, repeatedly. Bernie Sanders thinks he’s swell, and campaigns on his behalf. Neither are Democrats, but both believe that they are entitled to use the democratic party as a vehicle for their personal fuckery. Make no mistake, Platner is a republican.
prostratedragon
@Interesting Name Goes Here: Coppola?
To your point, we’re at the stage where if the momentum isn’t stopped now, the rest won’t matter. Disconcerting that a union doesn’t see this and figure a better way yo work things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Is it though?
That being said, the point of a coalition is that you have broad strokes of agreement and a few red lines, but everything else is more fluid. Human rights and fairness should be at the heart of the broad strokes. Nazis and Klan shit as a couple of redlines. Mind your own business if no one is getting hurt… Beyond that, it’s a crap shoot.
Captain C
@prostratedragon: I have to wonder if the current Pope is having some research done on high profile excommunications.
Anyway
This is tangential to the main conversation but OT _ I am so MAD at the disrespect shown to Pres Biden by the deeply unprofessional Leavitt and her Piggie boss. Has there been another administration where such name-calling went on — No need to answer . I just had to vent
Interesting Name Goes Here
@laura: Remember how Madison Cawthorn got drummed out of public life for being an idiot?
Bernie Sanders should have gotten the same treatment a decade ago after his role in bringing about this never-ending nightmare. Progressives have needed to sit themselves down in a dark, empty room and clean house until they expunged all of their racist and bigoted elements. Instead, they’re embracing them.
Suzanne
@Interesting Name Goes Here: So, for Democratic-leaning voters who deeply care about labor issues and consider that a core, animating part of their politics….. we are essentially telling them that the Democratic Party doesn’t share their values.
I’m sure you can see why that sucks.
Geminid
@Belafon: My biggest objection to Graham Platner is that I don’t believe he could ever be our 51st or 52nd vote in the Senate. I think he’s unelectable. The Collins campaign will bury Platner with attack ads based on the Reddit posts he tried to delete. The tatoo is the least of it. Although, his lying about when he found out what it was is disqualifying in my opinion.
prostratedragon
@Captain C: It must have crossed his mind. Guess there’s some history there, as well as canon law.
ArchTeryx
These arguments tire me out, because politics, in the final analysis has one principle and one priciple only.
Power.
The fascists get that. Without power, you’re just relegated to yelling from the sidelines. Take a look at the state of the GOP in single party D states like California. They can scream and yell all they want, but nobody listens to them because they have all the power of a mouse fart in that state.
The good people of Maine will determine who they want facing Collins. And she’s been damn near impossible to beat, because she has the fake moderate schtick down stone cold and knows how to say what Mainers want to hear. She’s cunning enough to pick her own opponents, too, which makes that task even harder.
At this point “more Democrats” are our only choice. Arguments about whether Platner is a Nazi or not are just navel-gazing at this point. That won’t be a popular opinion but at this point, who do you want in the Senate: Someone that votes for Schumer as Majority Leader, or Thune? What about Jeffries vs. Pastor Mike?
You get the former, you get some say in what Congress does. If you get the latter, you get no say whatsoever.
Churchill aligned with fucking Josef Stalin to defeat Hitler. So did we. And he was a monster that made even Hitler look like an amateur. After the war, THEN we dealt with the Russian Problem. But during the war, it was Hitler or Stalin: Take your pick. We chose the lesser (barely) of two evils. Learn to get along with extremely dirty bedfellows if you don’t want a total fascist takeover of the country. I was raised by a WWII combat veteran and I carry his stories. War is a dirty business, and we’re right in the middle of a civil war right now.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Suzanne: If they’re willing to back Nazis because they make mouth noises that sound vaguely appealing, then yes. I don’t share their values and I’ll take my chances elsewhere, because I know that the first chance they get, they’ll sell me down the river (perhaps literally) to ensure their own personal comfort. Unfortunately, I have personal experience with things like that.
JML
@Baud: I can see that. Of course Scott & Cruz would want to set it up so that rich fucks could cash out faster and easier while the market is high. Make sure the only people left exposed in the market are retirement plans, classic GOP scumbag oligarchical thinking.
Paul in KY
@Old School: Did he say that with a straight face?! He has some self-control if he did.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Maybe. Just like not everyone who reads NYT is anti D, not everyone Twitter is a RWNJ or susceptible to becoming RW because of the algorithm.
The algorithm that could have made me a Sangh supporter is far stronger than anything Musk can put out. I am not out here making excuses for kin folk who vote for Modi. Unlike some of our progressive betters here who always tell us how we need to be gentle with R voters.
Ruckus
@cmorenc:
Dad served in WWII.
I served during Vietnam.
I see today’s rethuglican party, at least swaths of it as being the replacement for a lot of parts of WWII.
Both Dad and I served during wars. Dad never talked about it but he also supported me during the war of my time.
My point is that humans fight. Either in very few people at a time or in a lot of people at a time.
I do believe that given our current concept of living, (a lot different than 70+ years ago) we can see a hell of a lot more of the world around us, we can do what we are doing here, and still there are humans that really, really seemingly do not want to fit in, in any way, shape or form. And a not insignificant percentage seem to want the world to resemble only the vision of life that they seem to have picked up out of a trash bin in a dark alley. But then it wouldn’t be humanity if it didn’t have all the possible/impossible/asinine concepts of human existence. The concept of controlling power seemingly can be overwhelming for some. Usually the insane/asshole/jackass some. Same for the need to prove, in living color, that they are 100000% correct about every damn thing. Which possibly could be true, but very likely smells like that trashcan they found the concept in.
Soprano2
@Chetan Murthy: Evidently Mills has vetoed some legislation that was pro-union, so they’re mad at her. That’s what I heard on a podcast the other day, which would explain them not wanting to support her no matter what.
Paul in KY
@Danielx: My dad’s brothers were (in general) racist assholes, but they killed a bunch of Nazis in WW II.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t think we’ve historically even cleared the human rights and fairness bar.
prostratedragon
@ArchTeryx:
Not while a non-nazi Democrat is available.
Paul in KY
@Baud: They loved strutting around in their natty uniforms.
Melancholy Jaques
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
@schrodingers_cat:
@satby:
Maybe a
littlelot less time on the internet might help. The online left isn’t really representative of what is happening with Democrats. And I’m defining Democrats as people who volunteer for, donate to, and vote for Democrats all the time. I don’t mean people who claim to be Democrats who post provocative bullshit on the internet because they have nothing better to do.The actual left wing of the party includes me and pretty much everyone I’ve met in the SW Riverside County Democratic Club. We are working to elect Democrats of various hues & intonations. We are “the left of the Democratic Party” in the sense that we support broad range social programs to prevent things like poverty, homelessness, and disease. We want to make the country inclusive for all kinds of people, even ones we don’t particularly like that much like fundamentalist religious fanatics. We want tax rates to be higher on higher incomes. We want to protect the earth and all it’s flora & fauna. We are not Nazis or racists or any of the other things you are ascribing to “the left.”
That guy in Maine is not a trend or a sign of anything. He is one guy. He is not “the left.” He is a guy with a Nazi tattoo who has enough money to put on a campaign. If he loses the primary, it will be because of his tattoo & everything it says about him. If he wins the primary, he will lose the general and it will be because of his tattoo & everything it says about him.
ArchTeryx
@prostratedragon: Unfortunately, unless we live in Maine and are registered Ds, we don’t get a say in that. They ain’t reading BJ.
If you do, then get out there and start stumping for Mills yesterday. Or write postcards, whatever it takes. Primary activism isn’t a waste of time, but debating whether or not you’ll vote for the guy if he wins the primary is a waste of time. Do you want to live in a fascist dictatorship or no? If not, you better be prepared to compromise a LOT of your values.
zhena gogolia
@Anyway: I feel you.
Apart from everything else, this administration is deeply EMBARRASSING
Captain C
@Betty Cracker:
Kind of reminds one of this famous Onion story.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Melancholy Jaques: Tell all of that to David Hogg. He’s the one trapising around the country on Bernie’s dime trying to remake the Democratic party in their image. And he backs Platner.
Betty Cracker
@Melancholy Jaques: Amen.
tam1MI
Several non-Nazi Dems available. It wasn’t like Platner was the only other choice.
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques:
Sing it.
Paul in KY
@West of the Rockies: College Republicans have always (since mid 70s by personal observation) been the most douchy, jerky, assholish smartasses you can imagine. Alot of the ones I ran across at UK came from huge Catholic HS in Louisville (Trinity, St X). Generally, parents were wealthy. Classic examples of ‘Born on 3rd base and think they hit a triple’.
ArchTeryx
@Melancholy Jaques: And then you’ll get Collins back, who is just a nazi in a skirt even if she doesn’t have a Totenkopf tattoo. She just is extremely good at hiding it. But her votes tell you everything you need to know. She wants a fascist dictatorship. Even a fake D is better than that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Anyway: It’s infuriating.
Paul in KY
@Ruckus: The one thing I’ve ever admired about Ted Nugent was how thouroughly he fixed it so they failed him (crapped/pissed in his jeans for entire week and then showed up wearing them).
Baud
@Anyway:
Agreed
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: I think they don’t mind, as they are all steeped in GQP politics and hope these comments get them noticed by their evil/Nazi superiors (otherwise known as the current TACO administration).
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: That doesn’t mean that it’s not something we should all be agreed on aiming for, does it? Trying for fairness and excluding Nazis seems like a pretty good place to start.
Paul in KY
@stacib: I don’t think it was/is technically ‘wine’.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
I’m not a fan of unions but I believe that we really need unions to make work better. We all have to work or inherit a lot of money, to exist. Unions have more power than just the businesses that have them, they hold the concept that people that work for others, which makes money for the others, need to be paid fair wages, a not unreasonable amount – which is the cost of that business owner(s) making money from their labor, be it manual or service labor. As a prior owner of 2 entirely different types of business I understand payroll and that it has to be understood as a significant percentage of the overall cost of doing business. Or you are doing it wrong.
Paul in KY
@Baud: How did they never figure out that the coffee pot was a radio?!?! Col. Klink should have gotten sent to the Russian Front for that.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I personally think we should have more red lines, not fewer.
Paul in KY
@WTFGhost: I tried Mad Dog in college and had the nastiest hangover evah! This after puking all over the place. Good times…
Paul in KY
@Geminid: The Totenkopf does predate the Nazis. Was a symbol used by some elements of the Prussian military. The Nazis gleefully appropriated it, though.
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: Ironic a commenter on a blog is admonishing others to spend less time on the internet.
Alright let’s pretend that this is only an online problem. BS and his politics of white grievance doesn’t exist. IRL we elected HRC in 2016.
Yeah I won’t worry about it and defer to you and my progressive betters
Taking your advice and muting this thread.
p.a
Noem out, Markwayne in.🙄
Via Acyn via trumptweet
Paul in KY
@Archon: They think ‘if only he hadn’t attacked the USSR…’
Suzanne
@p.a: Markwayne Gary Wayne.
Mr. Suzanne just texted me, “Christ, how awful do you need to be to get fired by him”. A decent question.
Captain C
@Suzanne: You need to make FFOTUS look bad, and Noem was starting to do that (plus, being a woman, I’m sure she was more expendable in his eyes).
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: I wasn’t talking to or about you, and I don’t give a shit which platforms you use. Please leave me out of your weird psychodramas.
Paul in KY
@Interesting Name Goes Here: Ole Cawthorn also started spilling the beans on GQP orgies and sexytimes, if I recall. That was 2 torpedoes to the side.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: She won’t mention that tattoo, as that would be a plus for some of her voters. Those who don’t really like uppity wimmens in the Senate.
RevRick
@West of the Rockies: Why do humans raise so many insecure, nasty, brutish young people?
Speaking as a former insecure, nasty, brutish young boy, the reasons for this are overdetermined. But let’s start with the reality of the transformations wrought by agriculture and then into agrarian tribute city-states/empires. The first led to the subordination of women, who had to birth children as workers in the fields. The second led to hierarchies of class, maintained by coercion, and a hostile, defensive posture to those on the other side of the walls/borders.
Now, on top of all the ways we are trained into this system/ideology add some dysfunctional parenting. And voila, we get broken humans.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: She is monomaniacal at times :-)
p.a
@Suzanne: They’re creating a new position for her. Wingnut welfare is now USG policy. More at new post
GF says Noem giving speech, apparently might not know she’s out!!!
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Of course you weren’t. I am sure you just happened to comment about how Twitter algorithm works out of the blue. My bad.
Miss Bianca
@Shalimar:
Bingo.
WTFGhost
Just to note all possibilities: one of my concerns is whether or not Platner really will vote for the D majority leaders… if Ds pickup Maine, that might be the one that puts them at 51. If Platner really, honest-to-goodness, for reals, is a Nazi, and, like a real Nazi, why wouldn’t he decide to return to his native home, the Rs? The Rs would give him anything a newbie Senator could ask for.
I mean, yes, if Platner wins the primary, vote for Platner, with him, at least you have a chance. I’d just be much happier (insofar as it’s my business to be happy or sad! :-)) if Mills won.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: You are correct. You get the feed you create. If you don’t like it, it is in your power to change it. Many people have neither the nor the inclination to curate their feed. For them, BlueSky may not be a valuable resource.
Captain C
@Paul in KY: Back when this happened (including Cawthorn mentioning key bumps of blow) in the pre-hellsite Xitter days, I remember a tweet to the effect that in general, only people who do key bumps (or have done them) know what they’re called and use that terminology.
Gretchen
@Baud: Blue Gal of the Professional Left Podcast added that up. Her loyal Democrat dad thought Biden was too old, out of it, and needed to step down. He was a loyal reader of NYT. She pointed out that she found 70+ NYT articles on Biden’s age, one about Trump’s did he think that might have affected his perception? He was shocked but agreed that probably influenced him.
Geminid
@Melancholy Jaques: I think that tatoo would be one of Platner’s lesser problems in a general election, especially against a candidate as well-funded as Susan Collins’ will be. His Reddit posts about sexual assaults in the military would be the worst.
Platner made a number of disturbing posts earlier this decade that he tried unsuccessfully to hide. Like this one from 2020:
Platner’s a strange bird. It seems like he was addicted to warfare and could not quit it. He was out for a couple years after three Marine enlistments and he wanted to go back. He says the Marines wouldn’t take him back because of his tatoos, but I have to wonder if there were the other reasons.*
But the Army National Guard took Platner and he got another tour overseas. Then, after he got his degree from George Washington University, he went back again. This time it was to Afghsnistan, as a highly paid security guard for Acadamii, the Blackwater spinoff. He left after six months and I wonder what the reason was.
That’s something else Platner tried to conceal. He and his team left it out of his campaign biography. It only came out because he had made a $2500 campaign contribution to Rep. Jared Golden. Somebody found it with a simple search of FEC records. The FEC requires people making contributions of more than $200 to list their employer, and there it was: Academii. So Platner had something else to explain away.
* I’m just speculating about the reasons the Marines wouldn’t let Platner reenlist. He did tell an anecdote about his service that I thought was revealing as to character, though.
His unit was stationed in an Iraqi city, and an order came down to stop firing mortars; to engage the enemy with direct fire only. The reason was that if you fire a mortar round in crowded city, you don’t know what it will hit. It might come down on a jihadi fighter, but it come down on an old lady walking home from the market, or on some kids kicking a ball around.
So what did Graham Platner do? He rigged up a grenade launcher with a bipod so he could fire grenades into the neighborhood. He did that when he was in his twenties, but he told the story in his late thirties like he was proud of it. It showed his McGyver side for sure. It also showed a lot of “You are Not the Boss of Me” energy; or as the Marines might put it, insubordination. I think it showed a certain amount of sociopathy too.
Gretchen
@Soprano2: And anyone who thinks that Collins would be better for unions than Democrats is the same idiot who thinks that Trump would be better for Gaza and Middle East peace than Harris. Why do we have to let idiots vote?
Paul in KY
@Captain C: Good point there!
Paul in KY
@Geminid: If there’d been any real leadership in his Battalion, he’d have been in the brig. Sounds very callous and bloodthirsty.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Somebody broke down the Biden/Collins voters in 2020. They were 14 percent of voters that year. The numbers-cruncher thought it was relevent to the theory of Platner’s candidacy: that he would win by bringing in working class voters. But the largest group of Biden-to-Collins voters were college educated women. I gotta wonder if he can bring them over considering his posts about sexual assault, and how the military treated claims of sexual assault. I mean, I’m a guy and his comments pissed me off.
Like I said above, I think the tatoo story is one of Platner’s lesser problems. It’s actually helped him to an extent, by taking the spotlight off his other baggage.
But the Collins campaign will have money to put the spotlight wherever they choose. They might have a problem picking out the best lines of attack because there are so many, but that’s what focus groups are for.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Maybe Platner did do time in the brig, and that’s why the Marines wouldn’t take him back a fourth time. I would bet real money though, that the Collins campaign will hunt up Platner’s Marine Corps associates to see what they have to say about him.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: It was a reply to another comment and directly relevant in that context, so no, it wasn’t “out of the blue.” Again, please stop projecting your bullshit onto me. It’s weird.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: Which is, frankly, what I hope to see Mills’s oppo research team do as well.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Sounds like Mills is the better choice. I wish she could make up a bit with the unions.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: I’m sure they have a heaping helping of oppo stuff on him. The Furrowed Brow seems like an I dotter and T crosser. Especially when her Senate seat is at risk.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Republicans really need to hold that seat and they’ll spend whatever it takes. Mills has some problems too that they’ll highlight, but nothing like Platner’s.
Melancholy Jaques
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
David Hogg & Bernie – Not Democrats.
Emily B.
@tam1MI: Apologies for not being clear. I meant to point out that Vance and others make excuses for young Nazis on the grounds that “kids say stupid things,” but would never grant a similar allowance to young activists on the left whose speech they disagree with.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Melancholy Jaques: They identify as Democrats and hold sway over the Progressive wing of the party. Maybe you out there in Southern California have the wherewithal to tell those two to kick rocks, but that certainly appears to not be the case in Maine. And if they continue to be successful, your ability to do so is going to come under increasing restrictions. Gallego certainly seems to be trying to get in good graces with Platner and Co., and there’s even a little bit of what I pray is rampant speculation that Schumer may end up backing him too.
Odie Hugh Manatee
This quote:
I wish some enterprising reporter (yeah, I know they’re an endangered species) would ask some Republican like JD Couchfucker:
“Why do Republicans like to excuse the fascist, racist, misogynistic behavior by the men in their college Republican groups as “boys being boys” and yet these same Republicans look at little girls and think of them as women and fantasize about fucking them?”
Because that’s what they do, don’t they?
If real children are talking NAZI then the parents are failures, or conservative. Same diff…
mappy!
The phrase “beware the echo chamber” started bubbling up (cf. yard signs don’t vote) and then this joyfully comes along…
You have to know what’s happening when you stop noticing the smell…
Gvg
@Interesting Name Goes Here: Progressives isn’t a clear label. Right now in this conversation it seems to mean Bernie Sanders aligned mostly white privileged liberals who spend more effort attacking the Democratic Party than getting practical accomplishments done, with a streak of racism and misogyny that comes from thinking only their causes matter.
A few years ago many here on this blog identified as progressive and didn’t mean anything like that. They meant they were very devoted liberals who were practical and interested in making progress a little at a time instead of …I guess hippy pie in the sky dreamers of the past. They also said they had stopped calling themselves liberals because of all the attacks on that word made it not useful anymore.
I never stopped calling myself a liberal. Too stubborn. But I also rarely talked politics. I was taught don’t bring it to work, nor religion, and I still think that’s good advice. I never felt like I knew what a progressive was too, so I couldn’t say I was one. It never got really defined.
The “type” SC is calling progressive today I think was labeled purity pony, tote bag liberals, or Jill Stein greens a few years ago. And I never liked or trusted Bernie either and resented him “using” the Democratic Party multiple times when running, but not having any loyalty. I think he is a dishonorable creep. But the promise of more universal affordable healthcare really resonated with a lot of people. He doesn’t even know how to do it, but the point is that is what the fans I know wanted to hear. I am perfectly willing to use those words of his for the party.
With what we have learned since, we are now all deeply suspicious of those who attack democrats only, even if they claim they are more left. Some of them are liars and some are just idiots. Naturally some are also racist and the other flaws because people, and because it’s in the culture. We are just going to have to keep dealing with it. It’s always been there and we always had to make choices. If we had a big certain majority, we would be able to get rid of planter even if it would lose the seat. As it is….the primary voters in that state are going to decide. If they don’t like Mills, what’s another good candidate that some money or postcards might help?
Also union members don’t always vote the way leadership says. Seems like that union needs smarter leaders and could use an election itself. I have noticed some unions lately seem out of touch with their own peoples best interests.
The Republic of Stupidity
@West of the Rockies:
“Why do humans raise so many insecure, nasty, brutish young people?”
Because so many humans happen to be insecure, brutish parents?
The kids learn it from somewhere, starting at an early age, too.
Now days, I guess you could also point to the internet as an incubator, too.
The Republic of Stupidity
Tom Nichols wrote about this last month for The Atlantic…
‘How did the GOP become a haven for slogans and ideas straight out of the Third Reich?’
I personally have been worried about this since the mid-ninties…
If you had asked me ‘Will there ever be a fourth reich in this world?’ I would have said said ‘Absolutely! And it will be right here in the US!’
I got tired of being told to fuck off by far too any people years ago, and this is not an argument I’m glad I finally won.
What triggered me at the time was reading ‘Fuhrer-Ex’ by Ingo Hasselbach, back in 1996.
I recall a point in the book where he said the leading purveyor of Neo-Nazi material in the world was an American in the midwest (Gary Lauck?)…
I started ‘testing’ people (trying to read them emotionally – I have a fantastic, built-in emotional sonar) and for my tastes far too many of them came across okay with what could be described Neo-Nazi sentiments.
What we’re looking at now has been building in the shadows for decades… it’s just out in the open now.