Thomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
It’s really hard to overstate how acutely dangerous this is: All strands of the Right - leading Republicans, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base - are openly and aggressively embracing rightwing vigilante violence.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023

Not that more evidence was really needed, but the mask has fully slipped in the reactions to the killing of Jordan Neely.

Look at this, for instance, from a rightwing “thinker”: Very difficult to construct a plausible version of who “these people” are supposed to be that’s not brutally racist.

Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
This sends a clear message: It encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to “fight back” against anything and anyone associated with “the Left” by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
The Right is defined by a political and social culture of white grievance, ethno-religious nationalism, gun fundamentalism, toxic masculinity, and glorified militancy - it is bound to produce many iterations of Kyle Rittenhouse. Very hard to sustain democracy under such circumstances.
Show threadCJ Paloma

@tzimmer_history

In the past few decades as wealth inequity has widened, 50 trillion has been stolen from these guys... not by POC or women or the gays, but by billionaires.

Back in reality, these billionaires look a LOT like the very demographic they then rile up and tell lies to ...about who is to blame.

For real swaths of the population: the old ruse of distract, divide and conquer STILL WORkS...like a charm.

https://www.businessinsider.com/wealthiest-1-percent-stole-50-trillion-working-americans-what-means-2020-9

The wealthiest 1% has taken $50 trillion from working Americans and redistributed it, a new study finds. Here's what that means.

If it feels like you're working harder for less money than your parents' and grandparents' generations, that's because you are.

Business Insider
May 14, 2023 at 1:56pmWeb
Show threadCJ PalomaMay 14, 2023

@tzimmer_history

and yes it is immensely dangerous... AND, this danger is especially heightened with the help of so many forms of corporately owned media.

One thing I've found really disturbing among liberal leaders (since maybe about 2000 or so) is the excruciating slowness to really grasp that propaganda in the US in the 21st century is done by COMBINING good reporting with utter lies and spin.

Agenda setting has been occurring for decades in so called prestige news without most people realizing at all, but somewhere in the past few decades it got and remained sooooo much worse and malignant than it had been.