Funny events in anti-woke world

[Hades]

If it actually bothered you that neo-nazis were excited about Musk, you'd seek to disconnect the two, you might call for Musk to clarify his intentions and apologize for the misunderstanding and condemn those who would be excited by such a thing.

what good would that do? If Musk is asked the clarify he’d just say “I was stretching my arm. The wokies are so far gone you can’t even shake your arm” while frantically winking to the camera.

This is what extremists have done since the advent of nazism, they deliberately elevate the opposite extreme as a pretense to attack the middle, even at the risk of empowering the opposite extreme all the way to the Holocaust.

Trump and Musk are not, and have never been the middle. They’re much farther to the right. They’re also much farther right than the right itself. Far right one might even say. And if that gets then named in the same breath as fascist they have only themselves to blame.

We can give the far right extremist the benefit of the doubt and say they’re not fascists. Okay. But while (theoretically) not every far right extremist is a fascist, every fascist IS a far right extremist. This makes overlap between the two inevitably. And rather than play victim about it the far right should just accept it’s a cost of their business model. No one forced them to be on the far right.

And as such when far right conduct, “jokes” or “unfortunate angles” start resembling fascism it’s just not realistic to assume its all a funny misunderstanding. Elon does not have the credibility to suggest he just accidental moved his arm that way…twice.

 

[Agema]

Given that they are now running the American government their lack of credibility matters little.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the current US government views fascist sentiments with a certain degree of sympathy, which whilst at a level probably not seen in many decades, is still relatively modest.

I would perhaps at most say that the US government is "fascist adjacent" or "proto-fascist". Like much of the Western world, the mainstream right has effectively disintegrated and/or surrendered to the further right's populism, xenophobia and authoritarian leanings, but it's some significant way from totalitarianism (yet). It's still some way from Poland under PiS, never mind Orban's Hungary. As per all the billionaires, there's still a strong element that the Republican Party is in effect just going to be the same old facilitator for the richest and most powerful that it's been for decades; all the populist conservativism remaining more the facade keeping the plebs' votes in line rather than the meat of policy output.

I prefer avoidance of terms like "fascism" and "Nazism", because if you keep telling people they are Nazis and fascists when they aren't, maybe what you actually do is render the accusation ineffectual rather than persuasive.

 

[tstorm823]

what good would that do? If Musk is asked the clarify he’d just say “I was stretching my arm. The wokies are so far gone you can’t even shake your arm” while frantically winking to the camera.

The wokies are so far gone that you can't even shake your arm, and that's a real problem. You make accusations that are wrong, and stand by them even once they are shown to be wrong, and that makes all your accusations worthless. If you want a culture that condemns that salute, you have to approach situations in a way that allows for that condemnation. If he says all the right things, you will call him a liar. If he rejects your premise, you will call it a dog whistle. If he says "yeah, I did that, nazism is the future", you'd say you knew it the whole time. You create a scenario where your opinion is set regardless of his behavior, and that makes your view of his behavior both meaningless and unreliable.

Trump and Musk are not, and have never been the middle.

Trump is quite demonstrably in the middle. His appeals to nationalism are right-wing. His criticism of the social hierarchies (the elite) are left-wing. He cooperates and even absorbs some of the furthest left political figures (of reasonable prominence) in the country while being the leader of the center-right party. The man has been a Democrat, he considered running for the Reform Party at one point, a party defined by deliberate populist centrism.

You think he's far right because you treat that left-right scale as just a measure of how much you hate someone. The more you hate them, the further right you think they are. You're not giving any consideration to what policies are pursued and why.

 

[tstorm823]

all the populist conservativism remaining more the facade keeping the plebs' votes in line rather than the meat of policy output.

I don't know, stricter immigration policy seems highly popular and objectively bad for the richest and most powerful, it seems to run against this explanation.

 

[Cicada 5]

The television ratings for President Donald Trump’s second inauguration are in, and they dropped 27% from President Joe Biden’s in 2021 and were nearly 20% lower than Trump’s first swearing-in in 2017.

Unsurprisingly, Fox News dominated the ratings for the festivities in the nation’s capital, beating out both their broadcast and cable competitors, and drawing in the second-highest ratings for Inauguration Day coverage in the network’s history, according to a Fox News press release. An average of 10.3 million viewers tuned into Fox News from 11:30 am to 1:00 pm ET Monday, including 2 million in the advertiser-coveted demographic of ages 25-54.

CNN averaged 1.7 million viewers during that same time period, MSNBC 848,000 viewers (the network has traditionally come in third for Inauguration Day coverage), ABC 4.7 million viewers, CBS 4.1 million viewers, and NBC 4.4 million viewers, according to early viewing numbers from Nielsen reported by The Wrap’s Loree Seitz.

Altogether, Trump’s triumphant return to the White House drew an average total viewership for the day (tracking from 10:30 am to 7:00 pm ET) of 24.59 million viewers, reported The Wrap. That figure is based on combining viewer numbers from fifteen networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, Merit Street Media, Telemundo, Univision, CNBC, CNN, CNNe, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, Newsmax, NewsNation, and PBS.

That number of 24.59 million viewers was 27% lower than Biden’s 2021 inauguration (33.76 million viewers tracked from 17 channels) was 19.75% lower than Trump’s first inauguration in 2021 (30.64 million viewers across 12 networks: ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, Univision, Telemundo, CNBC, Fox Business Network, Galavision, and HLN).

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trumps-inauguration-ratings-down-bigly-from-bidens/

I don't know, stricter immigration policy seems highly popular and objectively bad for the richest and most powerful, it seems to run against this explanation.

Well, Musk made it clear it would be bad for him.

 

[Cicada 5]

It is not charitable to defend a criminal with false pretenses.

And yet, that's what Trump's base has been doing for years.

They aren't running the American government, and all of you are working overtime trying to empower neonazis. You are so determined to demonize your enemies, you don't hesitate to normalize the demons. If it actually bothered you that neo-nazis were excited about Musk, you'd seek to disconnect the two, you might call for Musk to clarify his intentions and apologize for the misunderstanding and condemn those who would be excited by such a thing.

What about Elon Musk makes you even consider that this is an option people can take with him? if disconnecting Musk from neo-nazis were possible, he would not have made that salute - twice - in the first place. If someone asked him to apologize and condemn neo-nazis, his most likely response is to tell them to go fuck themselves.

That you are insistent that he was actually acting as a nazi shows that it doesn't bother you that neo-nazis were excited, you're happy that they were, you want that avenue to attack Musk and you want it to stick around. This is what extremists have done since the advent of nazism, they deliberately elevate the opposite extreme as a pretense to attack the middle, even at the risk of empowering the opposite extreme all the way to the Holocaust.

Well you just leaped to the moon with this.

 

[Cicada 5]

Trump is quite demonstrably in the middle. His appeals to nationalism are right-wing. His criticism of the social hierarchies (the elite) are left-wing. He cooperates and even absorbs some of the furthest left political figures (of reasonable prominence) in the country while being the leader of the center-right party.

You are saying this about a man whose cabinet members' combined net worth exceeds $460 billion, with at least 13 billionaires set to take government positions. A man who criticizes only members of the elite he considers his enemies while embracing the ones kiss his ass.

The man has been a Democrat, he considered running for the Reform Party at one point, a party defined by deliberate populist centrism.

Trump's political position has always been swayed by whatever will give him validation. He left the Democratic party because they didn't make him their king and now he's found the cult he wants among the Republicans.

 

[Hades]

Trump is quite demonstrably in the middle. His appeals to nationalism are right-wing. His criticism of the social hierarchies (the elite) are left-wing. He cooperates and even absorbs some of the furthest left political figures (of reasonable prominence) in the country while being the leader of the center-right party. The man has been a Democrat, he considered running for the Reform Party at one point, a party defined by deliberate populist centrism.

Um...okay that's the first time I've heard political leanings described as a buffet where if you just pick a little of everything you're suddenly in the center. I'm not sure a political teacher would give that idea a passing grade. There's also the fact that some of the above mentiond point are entirely performative. An openly corrupt bussinessman teaming up with the world's richest man automatically isn't against the elite and he certainly didn't legislate as an anti elite president last time. I doubt Trump would ever believe a corrupt bussinessman really isn't superior to the plebs.

Also Republicans aren't center right. They're just right wing. Hardline right wing even. Center right is the Democrats, or the tories, VVD, Christian Democrats. Those sorts of parties. And in many cases Trump has always been far more to the right than the traditional Republican.

You think he's far right because you treat that left-right scale as just a measure of how much you hate someone. The more you hate them, the further right you think they are. You're not giving any consideration to what policies are pursued and why.

Not really. I've never liked Christian Democrats or regular conservatives much. I'd not call them far right though, because its not about me liking them or not. Its about having certain consistent traits. Authoritarianism, being anti judiciary, anti media, anti minority, strongly insisting they alone have any legitimacy.

Now I know you'd say ''But insert far right candidate isn't really against the judiciary'', and you might believe that. But like clockwork whenever a judge points out their plans don't hold up in court the response is always that they're fake or corrupt judges. Same with the media who whenever they expose a flaw or crime immidiately get their legitimacy questioned. And when talking about ''the people'' they typically seem to suggest some completely united group they alone represend, which they use as justification to attack and sideline the aforementioned groups, as well as the other parties.

Those are all very recurring traits, and when found in politicians alongsides policy primarely favoring the rich I'm going to deem them far right. But look for posts of me calling saint Omzight, Cameron even Bush far right and you likely won't find it.

 

[Agema]

His criticism of the social hierarchies (the elite) are left-wing.

I can see what you're trying to argue here, but you are completely wrong.

Attacking "the elites" isn't left wing, it's populism. As plenty of history can demonstrate, populism can be effectively deployed by the right wing to defend their social order and the existing privileges of the advantaged.

When Trump says he is attacking "the elites", he's actually attacking two things. Firstly, a subset of the elites where he deems that subset insufficiently obesiant to him, but whilst the vast majority are lauded. Secondly, he's attacking what are technically elites in a certain way (e.g. academics as intellectual elites, high ranking civil servants as political elites) that don't actually represent societal hierarchy. Not least given the proposal is that the disloyal are replaced with ideologically approved equivalents. At the other end, he's making out that a flood of disgusting, poor brown people entering American will degrade the comfortable wealth of middle class and professional whites. He's explicitly saying he will protect their status, wealth, place, etc.

Thus Trump is absolutely not attacking social hierarchies.

He's offering a vision where the social hierarchies are all still present and correct, they're just expected to obey him. That's why he's an authoritarian.