Aral Balkan

Elon Musk is launching the presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis, the man working to make The Handmaid’s Tale a reality in the US.

At least the Germans had guns to their heads if they opposed the Nazis. What exactly is your excuse for continuing to support this man and his social network?

https://www.inkl.com/a/XYJygRUYwaY

#ElonMusk #RonDeSantis #Twitter #fascists #fascism

With DeSantis campaign event, Musk seeks to shore up a sinking Twitter

The social network has floundered since the tech billionaire took over – political live streams may give the platform relevance

inkl
May 24, 2023 at 5:28amWeb
Show threadEarthworm 🐌May 24, 2023

To be fair, in Germany at the equivalent point in late 1920s-early 1930s, there were not yet the guns pointing at our (great-)grandparents heads (besides some SA street violence, fascists had still not seized political power).
The crazy thing is that the playbook is so surprisingly similar.
Until some months ago, I was arguing (also here on Mastodon) against labeling these people as fascists.
But 'fascists is as fascist does'.
And the playbook is so obvious. 😢
Additionally, we can observe in realtime how powerhungry politicians promote fascists-friendly discourses and, when their bases sucked in the ideas, get replaced by guys that really believe the stuff.

I hope always that in thr US it turns out like in Italy, where a fascist leader, once in charge, does only marginally more inhumane politics than their liberal-conservative counterparts (tells a lot about the so-called lesser evil parties...).

And it's always the bystanders. The media that want to be neutral and give endless hours of screentime to fascist ideas and concerns. The conservative liberals that don't want to appear leftist and maintain the system until they dug their own grave.

Be fucking aware. And organize effectively on many levels and with many different circles.
Vote if you must, but don't think that this solves anything substantial.

Take care  

@aral

Show threadTC Won't Give In To LiesMay 24, 2023

@aral
Musk's purchase of Twitter makes more sense now.

So does his technical changes to allow boosting his personal tweets.

He wants to control the narrative that wins the White House in 2024.

We must abandon Twitter and rebuild our communities on safer sites.
#TwitterMigratíon

Show threadTeeJay HardinMay 24, 2023
@TCatInReality @aral a doctored picture, multiple tw**ts likes and such, and *BLIP* 500 BILLION dollars simply disappeared (into someone’s account)shows that manipulation can be quite profitable. That 44bn dumpster fire may yet pay off for someone with bad intentions and zero empathy for humanity (pelican I see what you did there.gif)
Show threadMove forward or die!May 25, 2023

@TCatInReality @aral @FalconFive yeah, been saying this for a while. This guy is determined to influence elections (globally) and financial markets to serve his interests.

#TwitterMustDie

Show threadTC Won't Give In To LiesMay 25, 2023

@lrreynolds @aral @FalconFive
True! We've seen Musk routinely manipulate securities with his pronouncements. Now, he's just aiming higher.

I'm sure his foreign backers will absorb any financial losses for him.

The only solution is #TwitterMigration

Show threadMove forward or die!May 25, 2023

@TCatInReality @aral @FalconFive this guy owns a solar utility/EV firm, is dominating access to space, has a worldwide ISP, invested heavily in AI, working on brain implants now single-handedly operates what was once the most influential social media platform. The irony is if he actually lived in an autocracy (that he seems to want to create) he’d never have been able to build up this empire but if he did he’d likely fall out of a window and the state would take everything!

#TwitterMustDie

Show threadTC Won't Give In To LiesMay 25, 2023

@lrreynolds @aral @FalconFive
All I see is a bunch of companies that only make profits from government subsidies/incentives.

No wonder he wants more direct control over government.

Show threadMove forward or die!May 25, 2023
@TCatInReality @aral @FalconFive agreed many of his company’s do benefit from government subsidies but I think he is more interested in avoiding regulation (worldwide) and of course taxes. The guy has drunk his own coolaid and wants to become the puppet master… unfortunately he has many people either convinced he’s the second messiah or so addicted to there own need for social followers that they are willingly drinking it with him.
There is only one solution…
#TwitterMustDie
Show threadPhilip KreißelMay 24, 2023
@aral you might have some wrong ideas about how hitler came to power. He was quite popular, as were his ideas.
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛May 25, 2023
@pkreissel @aral So is the current flavor of the GOP.
Show threadTeeJay HardinMay 24, 2023

@aral when you own the airline you don’t care who flies as long as the tickets are paid for… "Falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on."

Portland Gazette, 5 September 1820

Show threadgavinisdie May 24, 2023
@aral if Ron wins 2024 there most likely will be no 2028
Show threadBindestrichMay 24, 2023
@aral the danger to one's life is a legend Germans told afterward as an excuse. Esp during the beginning. The Problem was, and the Problem is: many people follow willingly
Show threadSlimer!May 24, 2023

@aral

Elon in 2022: I want to make my platform into a town square where everybody is welcome.

Elon in 2023: I’m going to use my platform to help get Nazis elected.

Show threadMetafrastisMay 24, 2023
@aral A regular reminder that Ron DeSantis is a fascist #usa #florida #handmaidstale
Show threadFrazell ThomasMay 24, 2023

@aral As much as #DeSantis is a monster. This is a reminder of why decentralized systems are so important. #Twitter was a sitting duck for someone like #Musk. Hoping to create a propaganda machine that would make any authoritarian regime blush.

We absolutely have to keep countering centralization to make sure the costs of propaganda are high.

Show threadKaiyalaiMay 24, 2023

@aral I don’t know if you count ‘supporting’ as paying for Blue (which, ick, no) or just using the hellsite.

I still use it because I have community there. Trans community. Furry community. Neurodivergent community. Personal relationship community.
I cannot make them all move, less so move to the same new home, and cannot bring myself to abandon them.

Show threadAsbjørn UlsbergMay 26, 2023
@Kaiyalai @aral Are you able to dissect the thought process that keeps your communities from moving somewhere else? How far does it have to go before they move, you think? Are they even talking about it?
Show threadKaiyalaiMay 26, 2023

@bitbear @aral not really, too many communities and too many individuals for me to effectively do that without devoting more time to it than I can spare.

Different people have other pulling them in different directions. Here. BlueSky. Cohost. Tumblr. Discord - beyond that, specific discord servers.

None of these is a single destination, and thus many are kept in place by too many choices, but debating who they are willing to leave behind.

Show threadKaiyalaiMay 26, 2023
@bitbear @aral and yeah, some aren’t even talking about it, though I imagine even they must be thinking about it, perhaps waiting to see where the majority of their cohort leaps to, if anywhere.
Show threadJoseph FingerMay 24, 2023

@aral We didn't ! We were just ... lazy ? I suppose ?
I wouldn't know I wasn't born then. See democracy is cumbersome and the idea of minority protection is counterintuitive. But in some character trait or the other we're all minorities ! And the only way to protect us is through solidarity with one another.

The Americans put that quite nicely: https://archive.org/details/0022_Dont_Be_a_Sucker_22_33_53_00

#ElonMusk #RonDeSantis #Twitter #fascists #fascism

Don't Be a Sucker : U.S. War Department : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Like The House I Live In, this film warns that Americans will lose their country if they let themselves be turned into suckers by the forces of fanaticism...

Internet Archive
Show threadNafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦May 25, 2023
@aral Handmaid's Tale and Nazis are a pretty mixed metaphor.
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛May 25, 2023
@nafnlaus @aral Are they really? It's all about control.
Show threadNafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦May 25, 2023
@clacke @aral um, no. It's abour religious extremism vs. extreme racism. Nazi Germany wasn't anything like The Handmaid's Tale. Hitler wasn't even very religious (though the Nazis had sort of an alliance with the Catholic church.. though also dabbled in paganism). And contrarily, The Handmaid's Tale wasn't about a conspiracy that Jews are a mind virus causing races to ignore interests essential to their survival in an upcoming resource panic.
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛May 25, 2023

@nafnlaus @aral They are not the same, but they are not unrelated. "Aryan" women were supposed to be ovens for baking the next generation of "pure" soldiers.

Fascism is about the subservience of the individual to the state, whether the dominant tool is racism, sexism or class war.

Show threadNafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦May 25, 2023

@clacke @aral They were not forced into it.

If to you the essence of Naziism and The Handmaid's Tale is both "Women are encouraged to raise large families", then you have no clue about either of them (but *especially * Naziism*).

Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛May 25, 2023

@nafnlaus If you believe the Nazi breeding programs were simply about "encouraging" women, then there isn't much more to say.

@aral

Show threadNafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦May 26, 2023

@clacke @aral Okay, if a person ***actually accepts facts*** then there isn't much more to say indeed.

Nazis were NOT mass forcing women to have children. Any assertion otherwise is 100% ahistorical. They encouraged women to marry with propaganda, awards (such as the Mother's Cross), social organizations (such as NS-Frauenschaft), etc. And even still, women worked - just in "traditional feminine jobs" (nurses, teachers, secretaries, etc).

Show threadNafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦May 26, 2023
@clacke @aral And even then, there were prominent single women. For example, though she eventually married (briefly) in 1944, the single Leni Riefenstahl was the most famous film propagandist of the Nazi regime, directing such infamous films as The Triumph of Will. Or for a more extreme example, the youngest woman to ever be executed under British law was Irma Grese, a brutal and sadistic Auschwitz guard, sentenced to death at the Belsen trial.
Show threadclacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛May 26, 2023
@nafnlaus Your analysis is that Handmaid's Tale and Nazism are a mixed metaphor, because Nazis empowered women to become propagandists and death camp guards?
Show threadNafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦May 26, 2023
@clacke Because they were *entirely different unrelated things*.
Show threadsj_zeroMay 25, 2023
I'd argue both are unrelated to outlawing abortion.

There may be people who want to ban abortion because they just want to control women, but my moment was seeing my 10 weeks in gestation son kicking on the ultrasound. I saw this human with arms and legs moving around on its own, and I watched that little human and watched his beating heart and the thought that popped in my head was a sardonic "it's just a clump of cells" -- it clearly wasn't just a clump of cells. That was a tiny living human. Wilfully killing such a thing because it's inconvenient or defenseless or because you can't see it since it's behind a layer of skin didn't seem acceptable at that point. My right to swing my fist ends before it hits your face.

On a completely different track, historically there are examples where different cultural values led to completely different outcomes. For example, in imperial Japan, babies weren't considered people at all and children came to exist in the real world on a spectrum as they aged, so there was an extremely common practice of killing babies when they were born for the good of the community. In one famous story, a person who was considered moral had a relatively grown child and his mother, but not enough food to feed both, and killed the child so the mother could eat and that was considered just because the mother could have more children in the future. That goes to show that changes in underlying cultural assumptions does make a big difference in the outcomes of the moral calculus.

That being the case, we reach an ought-is problem. We can largely agree on the objective facts, but our interpretation of those facts, and the principles upon which the facts are judged against change, and so similarly two people in the same society can come to wildly different conclusions. In my case, I spent 12 years trying to have a child fully ready to have one, finally succeeded, and raising my son is one of the most deeply existentially fulfilling experiences I've ever had. Of course I'll come to much different conclusions than someone who doesn't want a child, can't support a child, is sure they'd be miserable if they had a child, and has no idea what that baby looks like.

It's important to realize that just because you deeply disagree with someone doesn't mean they're necessarily evil people. The moment you start dehumanizing people by making them into the personification of evil, that's actually when you start seeing things like the Nazis because when you're fighting pure evil the ends always justify the means.
Show thread🌻 Welcome Back 🌻May 25, 2023
@aral Even in Germany, it was a gradually escalating process. That's how fascism takes hold. Slowly. People are threatened and intimidated. Others think it isn't happening or won't happen to them. People also decide not to resist because of intimidation. They don't have to use guns. Their lackeys do their dirty work
Show threaddibi58May 26, 2023

@aral

guess those have jeebus in their head which gets the same result ...

Show threadcounterintuitMay 26, 2023
@aral There is no excuse.