I continue to find @interfluidity's notion of "fascism as triage"* a good way to understand the rise of the far-right in the US and globally. Fascism finds fertile soil where people have given up on the idea there's enough for all of us to live well together. Insofar as you are in a scarcity mindset, that's when us-vs-them becomes appealing.
*https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/08/14/fascism-as-triage/index.html
@mmasnick sees Mastodon, Bluesky, and the rest of the open social web as an antidote to the AI-generated decline of the internet:
"decentralized social media could offer an alternative to the world in which all the information we consume is intermediated by a single centralized player, whether it’s a search engine like Google, or a social media service like Meta [...] one in which you get to build the experience you want, rather than the one a giant company wants."
Is Google signaling the end of the open web? That’s some of the concern raised by its new embrace of AI. While most of the fears about AI may be overblown, this one could be legit. But it doesn’t m…
@Natanael_L Yes, and I am pretty sure that this was originally kicked off in Scotland where Putin's people have become rather upset that after a decade of financing the SNP, they completely lost control of it with the Salmond's fall.
I have several friends who happen to be Edinburgh lesbians and I suddenly noticed they were accusing Trans folk of demanding things that just sounded completely bizarre and turned out that there was someone actually making the demand but not...
One of the people J. K. Rowling 'credits' with radicalizing her on this issue fits the Putin's people profile. And she is probably the only person in the city with a global profile so not at all hard to believe she would receive targeted attention.
REMINDER FOR AMERICANS:
The US Constitution and common law are rooted in pre-18th century *English* legal jurisprudence and traditions.
And the "presidential immunity" bullshit is an attempt to rewind the clock to before 1649, when Parliament got fed up with the King's bullshit, put him on trial, and beheaded him.
Y'all: Trump wants to revive the divine right of kings.
You know who pulled the German equivalent of that stunt? Hitler.
(I will summarily block anyone who raises Godwin's law.)
Are MAGA supporters defending their fossil-fuel-heavy exurban lifestyles (huge houses that take a lot of energy to heat or air-condition, monster SUVs/pickup trucks), and seeing the Russian petrostate as a potential anti-green champion?
And the extreme hostility to immigration may also be driven by expectation of a climate refugee influx!
Kunstler in 2005 said "Americans will vote for cornpone Nazis before they will give up their entitlements to a McHouse and a McCar."
Why do MAGA supporters (along with many European RW populists) support Russia, even though the propaganda image of "based Christian Russia" doesn't stand up to the most basic scrutiny?
It got me thinking about @[email protected] when he said that right-wing demagogues don't expect anyone to actually _believe_ the bullshit they spout, and that the purpose of it is to be an alibi to occlude the true (unspeakable) motivations of their supporters.
scott f
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