#Conservative Media Apparatus

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

A near-majority of American voters willingly reelected Donald Trump. This harsh reality is a collective moral failure, but it’s also not a choice made in sound mind. Consider that voters believed Trump’s first presidency was a roaring success and Joe Biden’s only term a Carter-level catastrophe. It’s an upside-down Bizarro World view that ultimately played a key role in dooming Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 2024 platform was rooted in an obvious lie — that the nation under Biden’s leadership is a flaming dumpster fire and everyone was much better off when Trump was president. Democrats challenged this false reality with facts, but they ultimately lost the messaging war. Their best efforts were no match for the most powerful weapons in Trump’s propaganda arsenal — a timid press and a right-coded social social media environment. Greg Sargent reports in the New Republic that the Harris campaign’s own internal polling revealed an alarming trend: “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency — even if they saw these things negatively — were his fault.” According to exit polls, Trump decisively won the questions “who do you trust more to handle the economy?” and “who do you trust most to handle a crisis?” Of course, in reality Trump utterly botched the 2020 pandemic response, which researchers concluded resulted in 40 percent more deaths than necessary. And yet swing voters are willing to risk it all again in hopes of cheaper eggs and cruelty against outgroups.

Disinformation on demand

Legacy media shoulders significant blame for their “sanewashing” of Trump’s incoherency and deteriorating mental state. Voters believed Trump could fix a steadily improving economy despite his promotion of inflationary tariffs. The media even presented Trump’s rants as cogent discussions of economic theory.

It’s worth noting, however, that an NBC poll from April revealed that voters who received news primarily from legacy media (newspapers, cable news, etc.) still overwhelmingly supported Biden. Trump owes his victory in great part to low-propensity voters of all races, including young men, and those voters don’t necessarily form their views based on mainstream media reporting. Rather, far too many are stuck in an online social media bubble where they are delivered a steady diet of rightwing propaganda. The median age of a Fox News viewer is 68, and liberals have joked about the network “brainwashing” their conservative parents. But rightwing social media content has effectively targeted and radicalized younger people, who — unlike the typical Hannity-obsessed grandpa — can vote for the next several decades. TikTok, which Trump joined in June, has 170 million users in the United States, and according a Pew Research survey, more than half of them said they regularly get their news from the platform. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2020. This is a serious concern because the far right uses TikTok to advance unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies.

[...]

Lower income Americans, particularly young people, do spend more of their income on groceries, rent, and gas. That’s why Republicans were so laser focused on the price of eggs. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of liberal content countering the negative vibes. Of course, explaining the post-pandemic economic recovery is complex and requires more than a punchy one-minute video can convey. Although people might idly scroll TikTok all day, consuming 60-second quick hit videos like potato chips, they will balk at reading an extensive, well-reported news article. That’s too filling a meal.

According to a University of Oregon study, 40 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans surveyed said they’d become more conservative from their TikTok usage. Half of the Democrats surveyed said they’d grown more liberal, but a lot of far-left content on TikTok is downright alienating and can sound like MAGA’s idea of a strawman leftist. For instance, one user boasted that she “didn’t care” if liberal economic and social policies “hurt the economy,” thus conceding that those policies are in fact harmful to economic progress. TikTok’s artificial “vibecession” dominated the discourse, while abortion-related content was actively suppressed even while pregnant women were bleeding out in parking lots. Users of the platform resorted to disguising the word “abortion” as “aborshun” or “ab0rti0n” in order to reach an audience. TikTok has a longstanding policy against promoting abortion services, which it classifies as “unsuitable businesses, products or services.” However, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta have allowed users to spread and monetize anti-abortion misinformation. Studies have shown an interesting gender gap in where young people receive their news on social media: For most women, it’s TikTok, while most men learn about the world from YouTube, X, and Reddit, all of which have become havens of crude masculinity.

On YouTube, 56 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 44. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that researches extremism, conducted a four-part research project this year that determined YouTube’s algorithm consistently steers users to rightwing and Christian content. The algorithm does this even with seemingly apolitical search terms, like “male lifestyle guru,” which YouTube reflexively associates with conservative ideology. Rightwing news content was also more frequently recommended, including anti-vaxxer videos. As far back as 2019, both YouTube and Facebook’s autofill search boxes would return content that promoted anti-vaccine misinformation.

[...]

Why rightwing content has the edge

When Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alexandra Cooper told her listeners, “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” Left-leaning podcasters/social media content creators often avoid politics for fear of turning off their right-leaning fans. Joe Rogan and Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports don’t bother with such apologies when they have rightwing guests because it doesn’t compromise their brand. They are rightwing cultural influencers. Liberal podcaster Hasan Piker recently commented on the impact rightwing influencers have on young men of all races.

“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces. Everything is completely dominated by rightwing politics,” he said. “If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to [the] Trumpian right. Everything they see is rightwing sentiment.”

Rogan and Portnoy might not present as overtly political as Walsh and Shapiro, but their edgy, hyper masculine personas are pure MAGA. Even billionaire CEO Elon Musk likes to present himself as a “disrupter,” an agent of change who boldly confronts the status quo. Anyone who’s seen the more popular indie films of the 1970s would realize how compelling this narrative is to young men. The subtle way that Rogan and Portnoy infuse politics into their personas presents a contrast with left-leaning social media content. The liberal TikToker or YouTuber who releases videos about home makeovers might endorse Democratic politicians during election season while wearing their “just voted” sticker, but rightwing influencers prime their audience on a daily basis. Young men marinate in a stew of rightwing sentiment and end up resenting the libs.

Stephen Robinson wrote in Public Notice a very valid case that a right-coded media environment gave Donald Trump the decisive boost to get elected, such as praising the disastrous Trump reign as a “success.”

Social media algorithms heavily favored right-coded and pro-Trump content, despite the never-ending whining about “censorship” from conservatives.

[justinssportscorner]

Noah Dowe at MMFA:

Right-wing media have amplified conspiracy theories and bigotry from Ultimate Fighting Championship figures including UFC President Dana White and a number of high-profile fighters.  In doing so, these media platforms have mirrored former President Donald Trump's efforts to use the prizefighting league to boost his 2024 campaign. They’ve also provided a megaphone for White and his current and former fighters — some of whom have expressed support for QAnon and claimed the U.S. government orchestrates mass shootings — to espouse racism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, false claims of election fraud, and a claim that Pfizer-sponsored athletes are “taking handouts from the devil.” 

UFC fighters have delved into right-wing politics and fringe conspiracy theories like QAnon, finding allies in conservative media

An MMA journalist noted that a number of UFC fighters have repeatedly used their public platforms to court conservative fans and endorse extreme right-wing conspiracy theories, including QAnon. MMA journalist Karim Zidan has reported that dozens of MMA figures have embraced fringe beliefs like QAnon, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, mass shooting denialism, and even 9/11 trutherism. He has written: “MMA's embrace of outsider sports fans and right-wing politicians has helped create a wave of athletes activating around extremist causes and conspiracies.” [Bloody Elbow, 9/15/20; Global Sport Matters, 10/20/22]

Former President Donald Trump employed endorsements from UFC fighters in the 2020 election and now sees the organization as a major component of his 2024 campaign, as his team hopes to target “young male audiences with little interest in politics.” During the 2020 election cycle, a number of fighters endorsed Trump and joined campaign events like the Trump Jr.-led “Fighters Against Socialism” bus tour; the former president’s 2024 campaign is now doubling down on this strategy, which Trump aides say “puts him in front of potential voters who may not closely follow politics or engage with traditional news sources.” [Politico, 10/29/20; The Guardian, 8/5/23; The Associated Press, 12/15/23]

Right-wing media have previously defended bigoted commentary from UFC fighters, even backing middleweight Sean Strickland after he described being transgender as “a mental fucking illness” and suggested he would have “failed as a man” if he reared a gay son. A number of right-wing figures, including podcaster Steve Bannon and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, also championed UFC star Conor McGregor after his anti-immigrant commentary came under investigation by Irish authorities last year; Fuentes notably told McGregor to “rise up” because “it’s either going to be the Irish or it’s going to be the blacks. Only one side is going to come out of this alive.” [Media Matters, 11/30/23, 1/31/24; Sports Politika, 11/30/23]  

Outside of direct interviews with these fighters and figures, some right-wing media have attempted to harness what Bannon’s War Room called “one of the last patriotic sports left” for political gain. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, for example, has advocated for the Republican Party to embrace “the alpha male culture of Joe Rogan, Dana White, and the UFC” in order to “win over millions of other voters,” even suggesting he would contact White in an effort to “get voter registration and ballot chasing at every one of these UFC fights.” [Bloody Elbow, 4/14/21; Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 7/10/23, 6/3/24]

Dana White

UFC President Dana White is a Trump ally and donor who has repeatedly used the organization to benefit the former president’s political ambitions. Besides directly endorsing Trump at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Karim Zidan reported in September 2020 that “White, along with a select group of UFC fighter[s],” had “spent the last few months advocating for the incumbent president in an attempt to ensure his re-election. From campaign rallies and bus tours, to TV appearances and ad spots, the UFC went to great lengths to campaign for Trump.” [The Guardian, 8/23/20; Bloody Elbow, 11/11/20; The New York Times, 5/12/20]

The UFC continues to be a bastion of right-wing extremism, conspiracy theories, and bigotry. Dana White, Joe Rogan, and co. set the tone for that style.

[uboat53]

You know, there's been a lot of liberal critique of The New York Times and other mainstream outlets lately accusing them of "normalizing" Trump. These outlets have generally responded that, in the interest of covering all sides, they need to publish pieces from a conservative viewpoint that liberal readers disagree with. They're both right and wrong when they say this and, to understand why, I need to explain how they're repeating exactly the same mistakes they made in 2016.

In 2016, you have to remember, Trump took the GOP by storm. The party itself tried to stop him with both the official party apparatus and peripheral apparatus like FOX News doing their best to diminish his support, but none of it worked. Instead, Trump won the primaries despite never winning more than a plurality in any contested state even while he was still opposed by a huge number of Republicans.

Of course, if you read or watched political news outlets in October of 2016 you wouldn't know any of that, because the immediate action of just about every political news outlet to Trump's nomination was to fire all of their conservative commentators who opposed him and hire a bunch of conservative commentators who supported him. By the time the general election debates were happening, you could be forgiven for thinking that all Democrats supported Clinton and all Republicans supported Trump.

(Note: Nothing similar happened on the Democratic side because nearly all liberal commentators already supported Clinton. Sanders' support in the primaries was surprising, but not overwhelming. He tended to win primaries or caucuses that limited turnout in some way to more enthusiastic supporters while Clinton tended to win primaries that were more broad-based and that was reflected in most of the coverage.)

In other words, by removing the many anti-Trump conservative voices from their air/pages, news organizations gave the impression that all Republicans supported Trump, effectively activating partisan loyalties and subtly encouraging Republicans with doubts about Trump to fall in line. This is what we mean by "normalizing."

They're doing the same thing today. They're not publishing articles where they examine the claims of their MAGA columnists (or their liberal ones for that matter!) and they're not publishing articles about the divides that still remain in the Republican Party and the conservative movement generally (Trump was consistently losing 30%-40% of the vote in 2024 even after it became clear he was going to win), they're just publishing articles arguing for/against Harris and Trump with no deeper analysis whatsoever.

This is why liberals are correct that mainstream political news organizations, even those like The New York Times which are often seen a liberal, are complicit in "normalizing" Trump. These outlets are correct that they need to cover conservative points of view which their liberal readers may find uncomfortable, but they don't have to present them as "the one true conservative" point of view.

By presenting Trump as if he represents all of conservatism rather than just the MAGA faction of conservatism which is staunchly opposed by more traditional conservative factions, these media organizations have fed fuel into a narrative us "us vs. them" which has done as much or more than partisan media to build the partisan polarization of this country.

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON – Four weeks before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes power, all his rhetoric and appointments are indicating that his campaign's vow to crack down on pro-Palestinian sentiment in America will be a defining factor of his administration's early days.

Throughout the campaign, both Trump and the Republican Party insisted that such a clampdown would be quick and complete. After Trump's speedy cabinet appointments and ahead of a Congress ruled by a GOP majority, the fight against the pro-Palestinian movement might be one of the only things that has a clear path across the government.

Once Trump's picks for the top diplomatic positions are in place, such as Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador, the harshest step – the deporting of pro-Palestinian protesters who have student visas – could be the first move. Both Rubio and Stefanik are well-known proponents of such a step, one of Trump and the GOP's few solid policy commitments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the campaign.

In October, Rubio wrote to the current secretary of state, Antony Blinken, urging him to "immediately perform a full review and coordination effort to revoke the visas of those who have endorsed or espoused Hamas' terrorist activity."

Stefanik, meanwhile, has doubled down on her star-making turn as university-president interrogator by calling for students' deportation. She told Fox News in May that these students "are pro-Hamas members of a mob who are calling for the eradication of Israel. They are calling for genocide against Jews around the world and in America. It is unthinkable that we are allowing this to happen at U.S. universities."

The blueprint is there

Other nominees more focused on domestic matters have also suggested that the pro-Palestinian protest movement will be a key issue. Among them is Pam Bondi, Trump's second attempt at a nominee for attorney general. The former Florida attorney general has called for a revocation of visas and condemned the campus protests.

The thing that's really the most troubling to me [are] these students in universities in our country, whether they're here as Americans or if they're here on student visas, and they're out there saying 'I support Hamas,'" she told Newsmax last year.

Bondi added: "Frankly they need to be taken out of our country or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away."

Trump's choice to lead the FBI is controversial loyalist Kash Patel. While the former federal prosecutor doesn't have much of a record on campus protests, he is most notorious for his desire to remove any of Trump's critics and doubters from the national security apparatus.

Further, Patel's experience as the National Security Council's senior director of counterterrorism during Trump's first term positions him to crack down on pro-Palestinian sympathizers. A blueprint for this is detailed in Project Esther, a plan to combat antisemitism unveiled by the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, the 922-page paper outlining conservatives' plans to fundamentally alter the government.

The underlying thesis of Project Esther – a more tractable 33 pages – is that "America's virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American 'pro-Palestinian movement' is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)."

The task force's mission statement calls for a coalition to "dismantle the infrastructure" that purportedly sustains the alleged network. This would take one to two years. "Supported by activists and funders dedicated to destroying capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America's overseas enemies," the document states.

It adds that this network "seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community's complacency."

The document suggests how a potential Trump administration would crack down on protesters, something he has promised. It also calls for the deporting of protesters in the United States on student visas and the targeting of universities' tax-exempt status. It notes laws that might "exploit [the network's] vulnerabilities," require representatives of foreign entities to disclose their connections, and target organized crime and racketeering.

Hardliner Harmeet Dhillon

One bill that will not be in the law books anytime soon is the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which is aimed at combating campus antisemitism. It also requires the Education Department to take the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into account when determining if an action or practice that violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was motivated by antisemitism.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the act earlier this year, despite concerns on the left that criticism of Israel would be conflated with antisemitism and on the right that the bill had dramatic implications on freedom of speech. There were also tropes from far-right Republicans that the bill would state that Jews killed Jesus.

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has kept the bill off the Senate floor for a vote by attaching it to various other packages that he hopes to push through.

Amid this stalemate, another notable opponent has emerged: Harmeet Dhillon, Trump's choice to lead the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which will play a major role in enforcing federal action combating antisemitism.

Dhillon, one of Trump's top legal minds behind his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results, slammed the Antisemitism Awareness Act upon its House passage. "I have been a First Amendment and religious liberties lawyer for minority and majority faith communities for decades and this bill is knee-jerk anti-constitutional dreck," she wrote on X.

She added: "Do better, think harder, and be smarter, Congress. 'Hate speech' laws are a liberal concept." But Dhillon has joined her new colleagues in being a vocal advocate for cracking down on the campus protest movement.

"Sue Yale," she wrote on X in April. "Sue every university that refuses to keep students safe based on their religion. Make them regret their choices. Deplete their endowments. Sue each and every violent protester and organizers. Drain their bank accounts. Sow salt in their career plans."

Dhillon followed that post by laying into a protest at UCLA: "I defend the right of these jackass terrorist apologists to protest, but they do NOT have the right to block access to other students or prevent them from going to class. My tax dollars are subsidizing UCLA and the Regents need to get their act together ASAP or be sued!"

Linda McMahon, Trump's education secretary nominee, has also publicly committed to prioritizing the issue, even if the incoming president has vowed to dismantle her department.

"Certainly. I don't think we should have any kind of discrimination anywhere, and I absolutely abhor any kind of violence that we have seen on campus. It should not be allowed," she told Jewish Insider without specifying what plan she supports. "We have lots of priorities that I'm going to be dealing with, and certainly anything that is against the safety and welfare of any of our students will be a priority."

The proposed defunding of the Education Department is perhaps the plank in Project 2025 that most concerns the American-Jewish community. The Office of Civil Rights, which is responsible for investigating and adjudicating allegations of antisemitism, is part of this department and has opened at least 145 investigations into such complaints.

Hardliner Brian Mast

This past summer, a rare coalition of nearly two dozen Jewish organizations across the political and denominational spectrum urged Congress to "provide the highest possible funding" for the Office of Civil Rights, despite the deep disagreements regarding antisemitism on Capitol Hill and in the Jewish world.

House Republicans, though they deemed the office's funding insufficient, voted to cut $10 million more after accusing it of failing to prioritize antisemitism. Several Trump-allied Republicans have also highlighted the office's role in culture war issues like Title IX and what they call "forcing women to compete against males in sports."

Holding a razor-thin majority and already plagued by infighting, the House GOP might find that advancing legislation relating to the Palestinians is the only influential work it can get done in the next session of Congress.

In a surprise development, Rep. Brian Mast has been slated to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee after Trump advocated on his behalf. The Florida congressman has long been considered the U.S. lawmaker most hostile to the Palestinians. He has decried efforts to bolster humanitarian aid for Gaza and dismissed the notion of innocent Palestinian civilians.

"I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term 'innocent Nazi civilians' during World War II. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians," he said in remarks that led to an unsuccessful effort in the House to formally rebuke him.

Mast, an evangelical Christian, once volunteered with the Israeli military, and he wore his uniform in Congress in the days after the October 7 attack. That was a way to protest Rep. Rashida Tlaib's placing of a Palestinian flag outside her office.

Mast has also condemned the concept of a two-state solution while spearheading legislation to permanently cut U.S. funding for the UNRWA refugee agency, among other hostile bills. He has also slammed U.S. efforts to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and advocated for expedited and expanded weapons sales to Israel.

[tomorrowusa]

It's the media, stupid!

No, I'm not talking about specifics of various news media outlets or nitpicking about particular stories or attitudes. The problem is the vast overall state of the media environment in the United States.

Kate Riga is on target with her blog entry at TMP. (emphasis added)

Democrats Just Can’t Compete In This Media Environment

[T]here’s one leading factor that Democrats absolutely need to respond to as quickly as possible to avert this kind of electoral disaster in the future: the media environment unequivocally favors Republicans. We don’t have a ton of data yet, and much of it is partial. But we can already tell that Harris performed best — that is, underperformed least — in the battleground states. In the places where her campaign flooded the airwaves with her messaging, put her on TV shows and radio stations and in local newspapers, scattered driveways with information flyers, positioned her beside local celebrities, she improved on the repudiation of Democrats that infected nearly every other state. In other words: In the states where she set up a temporary but pervasive media apparatus, she negated some of the nationwide drag. That speaks to the reality that most of the country is awash in right-wing propaganda all the time. For the olds, it’s Fox News and conservative radio; for the youths, it’s the right-wing manosphere podcasts and streams that Trump so assiduously courted all campaign long (plus soothing TikToks promoting retrograde gender roles, evangelical values and distrust of government regulation — think the trad wives and crunchy so-far-left-they’ve-looped-around-to-the-right content — aimed specifically at women). It helps explain Biden’s prodigious unpopularity, despite passing a ton of legislation that not only polls well, but has meaningfully improved people’s lives. It helps elucidate the consistent claims that people don’t know what Harris stood for, before and after she released her policy proposals. It’s a playing field that Republicans not only dominate; Democrats don’t even compete. They still depend heavily on traditional media sources that simply don’t operate the same way these right-wing PR arms do. And we know that these forms of media are powerful; they reach tons of people, and are seen as useful enough pawns that Russia has invested in some of them. This isn’t a novel observation. The Obama alums who started Pod Save America and the greater Crooked Media family did so after Trump won in 2016 specifically to try to build up a Fox News of the left. There are structural problems with mimicking this right-wing content beat-for-beat. The Pod Save guys, while open about their political allegiances, often criticize the party and its politicians. It would be much more difficult to recreate the fawning adoration of Donald Trump Fox News and those podcasts produce for, say, Joe Biden on the left. It requires creativity and investment, but I think Democrats and those aligned with them could do it. Voters say over and over that they prefer Democratic policies — even Republicans often vote for them when they’re standalone ballot initiatives. It’ll require a cultivation of talent, a saturation of these spaces, finagling how to wrest back the counter-cultural bad boy persona from those who are espousing a way of life most people consider retrograde, confining, divisive and exhausting, not to mention solely in service of the plutocratic elites that run the party. Obama was such a revelation because he hijacked technology in a way that was new and exciting for people, and it helped him micro-target low propensity voters. Trump has since taken that mantle. In the two and then four years ahead, Democrats have to find a way to get in people’s eyes and ears, to figure out how to make an affirmative case in these spaces that people would likely respond to if they were exposed to it.

It's not just Fox News – which is bad enough by itself. There are the rightwing talk radio stations dating back to the 1980s. They joined Christian fundamentalist stations which had been pushing social conservative positions since the 1930s. And now there are countless bro types who talk rightwing shit for hours at a time on their podcasts.

Apart from Obama's skillful use of social media when it was still new, Democrats have fallen behind with digital media. Most recently, Elon Musk bought Twitter simply to use it as a propaganda machine. Facebook and its sister sites like Instagram use algorithms which promote rightwing talking points.

There had been attempts to set up liberal talk radio. But they have been sporadic and met with mixed success. Al Franken set up a liberal radio network called Air America Radio in 2004. But it had only modest reach on mostly medium powered stations and ultimately filed for bankruptcy during the Great Recession.

We need to increase our news and information footprint in a major way and on multiple media platforms – and fast. Obviously that takes money and business talent. So if you find yourself next to Mark Cuban, Bill Gates, or Michael Bloomberg on a flight or in an elevator, have your pitch ready. If that doesn't happen, we need to start raising money on our own. Nobody said that freedom is free.

[vanessalocke]

do you think that Francis and Arthur trade their roles a little in the way that Francis is apparently the more masculine and stronger but actually feels more soft and feminine than Arthur while Arthur brings more of that patriarchal feeling? I don't know I think it's fun to play with those subjects and it fits several of their moments from the french being considerated effeminated to the English overtly gay

That's why I ship both FrUK and UKFr. Both are reasonable, Arthur and Francis can both take on top and bot roles with each other.

I have a headcanon that Francis is actually quite a patriarch. To be more precise, in his youth he was a very patriarchal person (more so than Arthur). I say this not only because the Salic code only allows male heirs, but also because French men are actually notoriously conservative. Yet as time has honed the harshness of his personality, he has become calmer and more peaceful.

However, Francis is a patriarch, but Francis does not hold too many stereotypes about women. He believes that men should lead the family and take the lead in politics, but that does not mean that he denies women's abilities. He will not encourage women to participate in politics (in the sense of participating in the state apparatus) because he feels the harshness of politics will erode women and he doesn't want that, but he will encourage women to develop themselves in the field of science and technology, and will not prevent women from contributing to culture, art and poetry.

France is the birthplace of many brave and outstanding women. Jeanne d'Arc is legendary. Besides Jeanne d'Arc, I quite like Louise Michel and Simone Weil, both of whom are known as the Red Virgin, they went to prison many times without fear, and they gave away all their wealth to the poor. France has Jeannette Guyot, one of the women who received the most medals in World War II. France also has Jacqueline Auriol, one of the first female pilots. She underwent 33 surgeries, set five world airspeed records, and was a member of the Académie de l'air et de l'espace. Ines de la Fressange is the most beautiful and gorgeous woman I have ever known. With the exception of Jeanne d'Arc and Fressange, these are women who (in my opinion) are underrated compared to the French women always mentioned in the media like Brigitte, Coco Chanel or Simone de Beauvoir.

Arthur is in the opposite situation. He is very partriarch (and has a lot of testosterone), but in the opposite direction compared to Francis. He has no problem with women holding power in the family and leadership in politics, provided that the woman proves she is capable of doing so. However, he always thinks that those women are "exceptions", and his view of women in general is that women are naive and incompetent creatures. Although he has many prejudices about women, his chivalry will cause him to sacrifice his life to protect them. And if you can prove to him that you are capable, he will recognize you fairly. He feels there was no problem with women having economic and political power, but he strongly dislikes the idea of ​​women fighting in force. Arthur would rather die than fight a woman. The queens of England are so famous that I won't list them here.

In the AUs where both Francis and Arthur are homosexual, they are both still patriarchal but very respectful and tend to protect women. They even love and protect women much more than some straight guys. I always thought they were very pampered and protected Belgium and Seychelles together (in HumanAU).

Both Arthur and Francis considered themselves responsible for providing for their families. Arthur did not cede that position of provider and protector to anyone. Francis in his youth would have been just like Arthur, but as he became older, he relaxed and felt it didn't matter who was on top/the head of the family. If his spouse wants to provide and protect him voluntarily, he will let that person do so (in case he finds them capable). This allows Arthur to satisfy his patriarchy when he is with Francis.

TL; DR: whether FrUK or UKFr, Arthur will still be the head of the family.

[acti-veg]

i know this might sound like a stupid question but how does capitalism keep going if so many people are against it?

It isn’t a silly at all, it is a question debated by sociologists and political philosophers to this day. Personally, I see the most relevant factors being the disempowerment of the working class, and the apparatus of the state.

Under capitalism, the capitalist class are empowered by the perpetuation of this economic system. They gain the ability to politically lobby, to ‘donate’ to parties who promise to serve their interests, to dictate economic policy and continue to enrich themselves through the alignment of public policy with their own interests. Meanwhile, the working class become more disenfranchised and disempowered, the unions are broken up, and there is a vast media empire hell-bent on turning us into mindless consumers who lack the time or energy for political engagement.

Related to this is the fact that the state and its apparatus mainly function to prop up the capitalist class. State-sponsored violence is used to keep the people in check, public funding taken from our taxes is used to subsidise low wages, to maintain critical infrastructure that corporations depend on, to protect o enforce policies that disproportionately benefit the rich and to educate the people to be docile consumers and workers.

The state also helps moderate some of the worst excesses of capitalism, at least in rich countries. The welfare system theoretically cushions against absolute poverty, it can hinder the abilities for corporations to just murder people in broad daylight, and can enforce some basic human rights. This is all secondary to the goal of capitalism though, and none of these things are ever allowed to interfere with profit.

Consider the fact that anti-capitalism is never on the ballot. Nobody gets a referendum on capitalism. In the UK election we had Labour and conservatives, but both candidates were pro-capitalists pushing a neoliberal agenda. Much was made of the difference between Kamala and Trump, but they are also both neoliberalist politicians who favour the interests of the rich. The rare occasions where we do see a truly anti-capitalist option, the media, trade organisations and global powers collude to crush them.

So the only option left is revolution. But the market and the state have broken up traditional communities, and convinced everyone that we’re are individual consumers instead. The social safety net is gone, but with that, so have worker communities and the power they once wielded. Organsing is harder now than ever, and new protest laws and redefining of ‘terrorism’ means that the state can intervene before you can ever get a movement off the ground. Capitalism is self-perpetuating.

It cannot last forever though. Growth cannot continue indefinitely, finite resources cannot be consumed indefinitely, and living standards cannot be pushed down indefinitely before people start to crack. We are already seeing the beginning of this now. Too many people have no stake in society, no property, no job security and no hope for the future. We are in late stage capitalism, it just depends if we destroy it or it destroys us.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

I don't understand people sometimes. I was scrolling through a little earlier and saw someone call Trump a fascist which isn't uncommon but it wasn't from someone I'd have expected to it come from. But nothing about Trump is fascist. Sure he's nationalistic but fascistic and nationalistic are not the same.

What's more when it comes to Dems v Reps I don't see how anyone can vote for Dems especially when they've gone full Neo Progressive. What do I mean? Well let's look at the most general of what the parties have represented across the US.

The right has been pro border security and this has been exemplified by Rep states either reinforcing their own borders, or sending them to sanctuary states.

The right has been historically and still is anti abortion. And while I didn't personally fully after with the stance, it SHOULD be left to the states to decide.

The right are for protecting the second amendment and even IF not all politicians on the right are for it, the SCOTUS justices that do understand the conservative values of the Constitution have given us more freedoms back. Many red states in fact now have constitutional carry.

Also of note those same justices have removed the Chevron act. Meaning that 3 letter agreements etc can't just wildly interpret the law as they please.

Now having said all this yes, there are war hawks on the right. There are racists on the right there are sexists on the right. But those same people very much exist on the left with no shortage at all

The left supports full term abortion and doesn't even consider the child alive until it's outside the womb.

The left is STAUNCHLY anti gun and anti second amendment.

The left is staunchly anti first amendment as seen by their calls to "hate speech".

The left is mostly pro open borders

The left is and has been pro war for a long time. Need proof? Obama started almost 5 new wars.

The left has proven recently they are ABSOLUTELY above the law and will manipulate every word in existence to jail their political rivals.

The left is actively racist and actively promotes white supremacist ideology with stuff like affirmative action and DEI.

The left has gone out of their way to allow kids to transition and get surgeries before the age of 16 even and want kids introduced to and TAUGHT LGBT themes, and have pushed for graphic pornographic books to be in elementary schools.

Leftists states and federally have demanded higher taxes, reduced potentialities for crimes, have sold you out to China, and aim to replace you with illegals they can buy off.

Is this a commentary on ALL of the Left and Dems and ALL of the Right and Reps? No. There's good and bad on both sides. But if we look at policies pushed, and the media apparatus who's been lying non-stop for years who are very clearly leaving left we see the real pattern of behavior. And it bothers me. I'm a left of center, small l, libertarian. You'd think the Dems world actually be "my side" and yet, they aren't. Biden insists on being a tyrant and ignoring SCOTUS ruling WAY outside of his power, trying to forgive loans that he doesn't have the right to forgive since it comes out of the taxpayers dime. And what bothers me even more, is the fact that he has also repealed all of the legislation that Trump pushed forward that kept our border safe. Specifically remain in Mexico. Which was very reasonable legislation.

Looking at all of this objectively no sane person can go with Biden or the Democrats. And as far as I am concerned, if at this point you are on the side of the Democrats then you're in favor of anarcho tyranny. You're in favor of lawlessness. And your favor of being manipulated by the media Non-Stop and watching the dollar crater in value.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Project 2025 :: blueprint for a second Trump term of office]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 4, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 05, 2024

Monday, July 1, was a busy day. That morning the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States that gives the president absolute immunity for committing crimes while engaging in official acts. On the same day, Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon began a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Before he began serving his sentence, he swore he would “be more powerful in prison than I am now.” 

“On July 2, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, went onto Bannon’s webcast War Room to hearten Bannon’s right-wing followers after Bannon’s incarceration. Former representative Dave Brat (R-VA) was sitting in for Bannon and conducted the interview.  

“[W]e are going to win,” Roberts told them. “We're in the process of taking this country back…. We ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday. And in spite of all of the injustice, which, of course, friends and audience of this show, of our friend Steve know, we are going to prevail.”

“That Supreme Court ruling yesterday on immunity is vital, and it's vital for a lot of reasons,” Roberts said, adding that the nation needs a strong leader because “the radical left…has taken over our institutions.” “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution,” he said, “which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts took over the presidency of the Heritage Foundation in 2021, and he shifted it from a conservative think tank to an organization devoted to “institutionalizing Trumpism.” Central to that project for Roberts has been working to bring the policies of Hungary’s president Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, to the United States. 

In 2023, Roberts brought the Heritage Foundation into a formal partnership with Hungary’s Danube Institute, a think tank overseen by a foundation that is directly funded by the Hungarian government; as journalist Casey Michel reported, it is, “for all intents and purposes, a state-funded front for pushing pro-Orbán rhetoric.” The Danube Institute has given grants to far-right figures in the U.S., and, Michel noted in March, “we have no idea how much funding may be flowing directly from Orbán’s regime to the Heritage Foundation.” Roberts has called modern Hungary “not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.”

Orbán has been open about his determination to overthrow the concept of western democracy and replace it with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” He wants to replace the multiculturalism at the heart of democracy with Christian culture, stop the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture, and reject “adaptable family models” in favor of “the Christian family model.” He is moving Hungary away from the stabilizing international systems supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

No matter what he calls it, Orbán’s model is not democracy at all. As soon as he retook office in 2010, he began to establish control over the media, cracking down on those critical of his far-right political party, Fidesz, and rewarding those who toed the party line. In 2012 his supporters rewrote the country’s constitution to strengthen his hand, and extreme gerrymandering gave his party more power while changes to election rules benefited his campaigns. Increasingly, he used the power of the state to concentrate wealth among his cronies, and he reworked the country’s judicial system and civil service system to stack it with his loyalists, who attacked immigrants, women, and the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals. While Hungary still holds elections, state control of the media and the apparatus of voting means that it is impossible for the people of Hungary to remove him from power.

Trump supporters have long admired Orbán’s nationalism and centering of Christianity, while the fact that Hungary continues to have elections enables them to pretend that the country remains a democracy.

The tight cooperation between Heritage and Orbán illuminates Project 2025, the blueprint for a new kind of government dictated by Trump or a Trump-like figure. In January 2024, Roberts told Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times that Project 2025 was designed to jump-start a right-wing takeover of the government. “[T]he Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start,” Roberts said. “And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”

Project 2025 stands on four principles that it says the country must embrace: the U.S. must “[r]estore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children”; “[d]ismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people”; “[d]efend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats”; and “[s]ecure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls ‘the Blessings of Liberty.’”

In almost 1,000 pages, the document explains what these policies mean for ordinary Americans. Restoring the family and protecting children means using “government power…to restore the American family.” That, the document says, means eliminating any words associated with sexual orientation or gender identity, gender, abortion, reproductive health, or reproductive rights from any government rule, regulation, or law. Any reference to transgenderism is “pornography” and must be banned. 

The overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that recognized the right to abortion must be gratefully celebrated, the document says, but the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision accomplishing that end “is just the beginning.” 

Dismantling the administrative state starts from the premise that “people are policy.” Frustrated because nonpartisan civil employees thwarted much of Trump’s agenda in his first term, the authors of Project 2025 call for firing much of the current government workforce—about 2 million people work for the U.S. government—and replacing it with loyalists who will carry out a right-wing president’s demands. 

The plan asserts “the existential need” for an authoritarian leader to dismantle the current government that regulates business, provides a social safety net, and protects civil rights. Instead of the government Americans have built since 1933, the plan says the national government must “decentralize and privatize as much as possible” and leave “the great majority of domestic activities to state, local, and private governance.”

It attacks “America’s largest corporations, its public institutions, and its popular culture,” for their embrace of international organizations like the United Nations and the European Union and for their willingness to work with other countries. It calls for abandoning all of those partnerships and alliances. 

Also on July 1, Orbán took over the rotating presidency of the European Union. He will be operating for six months in that position under a slogan taken from Trump and adapted to Europe: “Make Europe Great Again.” The day before taking that office, Orbán announced that his political party was forming a new alliance with far-right parties in Austria and the Czech Republic in order to launch a “new era of European politics.”

Tomorrow, Orbán will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. On July 2, Orbán met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, where he urged Zelensky to accept a “ceasefire.” In the U.S., Trump’s team has suggested that, if reelected, Trump will call for an immediate ceasefire and will negotiate with Putin over how much of Ukraine Putin can keep while also rejecting Ukraine for NATO membership and scaling back U.S. commitment to NATO. 

“I would expect a very quick end to the conflict,” Kevin Roberts said. Putin says he supports Trump’s plan. 

Roberts’s “second American revolution,” which would destroy American democracy in an echo of a small-time dictator like Orbán and align our country with authoritarian leaders, seems a lot less patriotic than the first American Revolution. 

For my part, I will stand with the words written 248 years ago today, saying that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[osmanthusoolong]

“A former Conservative MP who says he left the party because of his "convictions" claims that the number of anti-abortion Conservative members of Parliament is growing, and that anti-abortion activists have influence within the party apparatus.

Richmond-Arthabaska MP Alain Rayes made the comments in a new documentary, "La peur au ventre," directed by Quebec filmmaker Léa Clermont-Dion, which explores the anti-abortion movement in Canada following the reversal of Roe v. Wade in the United States.

"I left the Conservative Party for reasons of values and convictions," he said in French. "What I noticed was an increase in the number of pro-life MPs inside the organization."”

…

“Poilievre has said that if he's elected prime minister, his government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion.

"As the Party's policy book, adopted by Party members, has said for years, 'a Conservative Government will not support any legislation to regulate abortion,'" said Poilievre's spokesperson, Sebastian Skamski, in a media statement.

"When Canadians elect Pierre Poilievre as Prime Minister, no laws or rules will be passed that restrict women's reproductive choices. Period."

Rayes told Clermont-Dion the party's position on abortion "is sort of curious."

If you ask the leader, they'll tell you they're pro-choice," said Rayes. "They'll affirm it, in an attempt to placate people who feel strongly, people trying to attack the Conservative Party.

"But that's not where the problem is. The problem is that you have, inside the organization, extremely powerful groups, members who are at the conventions and who influence the policies."

He said those members put the party in a position where it has to publicly reject calls to legislate abortion while making room for people within the party who are working hard to restrict it.

He said that even if party leaders don't attend anti-abortion rallies on Parliament Hill, Conservative MPs often do.”

They maintain an official plausible deniability, while still openly courting and supporting/being supported by antichoicers, which is obvious to anyone who actually looks even superficially. It’s also worth pointing out that the people astroturfed in into New Brunswick to try to drive trans kids into the closet or grave were all anti-choice activists as well. While I don’t trust this guy for a second, especially his feigned shock at what we all knew, it is worth officially documenting

@allthecanadianpolitics

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

Some scattered thoughts, fellas... Not looking to debate anything, just some raw thoughts born out of initial despair, anger, and determination...

To say the least, life looks to get harder for me now for the forseable future. As a queer autistic enby. For a multitude of reasons, in and around the election of Orange Nightmare and his brigade of evil. As the hours roll by, it all starts to make a little more sense to me at least. Now that the shock of Election Day night is over and the day after defeat has eased... In that, the Democratic Party as it is seems unfit at the moment against the massive misinformation apparatus of the right, and the utterly wide reach that it has across the country AND across several age groups... At least in this very moment... We could very well rebound in the next midterms and put some roadblocks up, and NO, I am not here for your "no more elections ever again". I'm not a "lay down and take it"-type person. I did that once many years ago when I had a severe mental health crisis as a teenager, and yeah... NEVER again. I try to be resilient.

And yeah, we have to do more than just vote in order to keep our rights and some sense of stability. I do know that there has to be more effort building communities and backup systems for all of us out there, and how we as a people can make things right when our leaders can't or refuse to. Hopefully this accelerates more of that, and hopefully I find IRL community I can feel safe with in case something were to go wrong for me.

We're right now hearing about how despite their "best" efforts, the Kamala Harris campaign just could not compete with that ecosystem of grievance, hate, and complete detached-ness. In addition to other issues with which the Harris campaign and incumbent Biden administration were failing on. The way I see it, the way they try to get people enthusiastic... it's old-fashioned and kinda hokey, while the right courts Gen Z with podcasts and Joe Rogan-type shit, and gets everyone else through the ever-reliable Fox News and Sinclair-owned media. Plus a legacy media collection that has shifted right for many years, publications and networks that coddle the right and take plenty of time to constantly fry the Dems over the littlest things. The New York Times a CHIEF offender among them. The late great Frank Zappa - one of my favorite musicians and often spot on in his indictment of the right - accurately pointed that out in an interview in 1988, that the media back then even was "turning right". That tells you a lot, doesn't it? And that's a base that's been mobilized since the '70s, told to diligently vote in every single election from presidential to midterms to local. And they did, and continue to do so, and it's why so many institutions are gummed up with these clowns and why they hold all this power. Any of us who aren't subscribing to that unified authoritarian ideology are still at the base of a massive mountain, it seems.

I also think that too many Americans of many stripes just "relate" to that guy.

A lot of my family is MAGA, and thus I know other MAGA/conservative-types as well, and the sentiment with Orange Turdgoblin is ALWAYS stuff like "he's NOT a politician!", "he's NOT like all those OTHER politicians!", "he came in and rocked the boat!", "he ran America like a BUSINESS"... It's vibes. That's mostly what it is amongst the population that isn't necessarily conservative or right-wing. A bumbling buffoon who you can have a beer with, I guess. He has that, Kamala doesn't, and certainly not our soon-to-be VP, and several other actual politicians. Yes, our politicians and leaders are deeply flawed, even on side blue. Biden's administration hasn't always been great for me, as I've often felt the effects of late-stage capitalism and the aftermath of COVID's first two years. But I'm also not stupid or uninformed enough to just throw everything to a guy who literally said he wanted generals not dissimilar to the ones Hitler had, in addition to all the other heinous stuff he has said and done over the course of... Well, forget his presidency for a second, his whole goddamn career stretching back to the '70s.

That there is a huge problem. That after his disastrous first term, he somehow got 12M MORE votes than he did in 2016. And that's WITH COVID-19's first months factored in... And only lost about 1M this election, despite everything he had done after losing in 2020. Americans just seem to have collective amnesia, don't they? Some hardships during the Biden administration? Yeah sure, let's bring that even worse guy back! It boggles me, and yet it doesn't. And the kids won't save us, again, the right got them. They know how to do this shit, and it's the rest of us who need to not only catch up, but best it.

These past couple of years have been pretty big for me. I came out as queer and non-binary by mid-2022, I conquered A LOT of my driving fears and I get around more, I started committing to a webcomic after years of trying to find a simpler idea to turn into something that would put me out there, and I finally moved out of my home at the age of 30 in early 2023. Massive developments for me, in addition to being more who I want to be and feeling generally happier than ever. Feeling like I can really do this adult thing on my own, and go on lots of adventures. There were hardships, financially, and I'm not fully out of the closet yet. I had big plans for later this year and into next year, but because of what has happened, that may have to be put aside for a bit as I reroute and figure out ways to protect myself should something go completely wrong for me.

And that first day, I was scrambling, frantic, like it was going to be over the minute he's inaugurated. I have little to fall back on, no safety net whatsoever... But I'm here and still functioning... And there's a lot at play between now and the midterms, and even at the end of his first year of his second term. This is not dissimilar to how COVID-19 knocked the wind out of the sails I was putting up by early 2020, and that this will just be another setback that I have to get around. After all this personal progress that I made. But because it happened once, I know what it feels like. I'm still not entirely sure about the situation, but there has to be a way. And it's helped by slowly abandoning what was once Twitter... Or at least, locking what used to be my main account. No longer participating in endless misery there, nor having to hear a barrage of shit.

On Bluesky, it's not as bad. I joined Bluesky a year or so ago, and while it's imperfect in many ways, the vibe is different and there's way less of twitter's usual "lay down and take it" bullshit. All these wild even-worse-future scenarios that get laid out in these multi-tweet essays, with NO solution or way to even stop it. I've had it with that. That was a thing on there since 2016, and it only got worse and worse with each election and cataclysmic world event. Algorithms love to shovel shit in your face, and it's nice to get away or slowly start disengaging. Tumblr's also deeply imperfect and has more or less become its own kinda shitty, but it's great for me to use as a diary for longer-form posts.

I don't know where the road goes from here, but I have to keep going. At least I have somewhat surveyed the situation, as have many others, and it doesn't seem like all is completely over... Like people on that other app often say it is.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic:

I’ve had a lot of conversations since Tuesday revolving around the question of why Donald Trump won. The economy and inflation. Kamala Harris didn’t do this or that. Sexism and racism. The border. That trans-inmate ad that ran a jillion times. And so on. These conversations have usually proceeded along lines where people ask incredulously how a majority of voters could have believed this or that. Weren’t they bothered that Trump is a convicted felon? An adjudicated rapist? Didn’t his invocation of violence against Liz Cheney, or 50 other examples of his disgusting imprecations, obviously disqualify him? And couldn’t they see that Harris, whatever her shortcomings, was a fundamentally smart, honest, well-meaning person who would show basic respect for the Constitution and wouldn’t do anything weird as president?

The answer is obviously no—not enough people were able to see any of those things. At which point people throw up their hands and say, “I give up.” But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question. And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess.

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win. Let me say that again, in case it got lost: Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backwards to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by all the outlets I listed in the above paragraph. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often. If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.

[...]

This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter. And that is why Donald Trump won. Indeed, the right-wing media is why he exists in our political lives in the first place. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment. Imagine Trump coming down that escalator in 2015 with no right-wing media; no Fox News; an agenda still set, and mores still established, by staid old CBS News, the House of Murrow, and The New York Times.

That atmosphere would have denied an outrageous figure like Trump the oxygen he needed to survive and flourish. He just would not have been taken seriously at all. In that world, ruled by a traditional mainstream media, Trump would have been seen by Republicans as a liability, and they would have done what they failed to do in real life—banded together to marginalize him. But the existence of Fox changed everything. Fox hosted the early debates, which Trump won not with intelligence, but outrageousness. He tapped into the grievance culture Fox had nursed among conservatives for years. He had (most of the time) Rupert Murdoch’s personal blessing. In 2015-16, Fox made Trump possible. [...]

The fake story about Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs, for example, started with a Facebook post citing second- and third-hand sources, Gertz told me; it then “circulated on X and was picked up by all the major right-wing influencers.” Only then did Vance, a very online dude, notice it and decide to run with it. And then Trump said it himself at the debate. But it started in the right-wing media. Likewise with the post-debate ABC “whistleblower” claims, which Gertz wrote about at the time. This was the story that ABC, which hosted the only presidential debate this election, fed Team Harris the questions in advance. This started, Gertz wrote, as a “wildly flimsy internet rumor launched by a random pro-Trump X poster.” Soon enough, the right-wing media was all over it.

Maybe that one didn’t make a huge difference (although who knows?), but this one, I believe, absolutely did: the idea that Harris and Joe Biden swiped emergency aid away from the victims of Hurricane Helene (in mostly Southern, red states) and gave it all to undocumented migrants. It did not start with Trump or his campaign or Vance or the Republican National Committee or Lindsey Graham. It started on Fox. Only then did the others pick it up. And it was key, since this was a moment when Harris’s momentum in the polling averages began to flag.

[...]

To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply “the news.” This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country. I trust that you’ve seen in your travels, as I have in mine, that in red or even some purple parts of the country, when you walk into a hotel lobby or a hospital waiting room or even a bar, where the TVs ought to be offering us some peace and just showing ESPN, at least one television is tuned to Fox. That’s reach, and that’s power. And then people get in their cars to drive home and listen to an iHeart, right-wing talk radio station. And then they get home and watch their local news and it’s owned by Sinclair, and it, too, has a clear right-wing slant. And then they pick up their local paper, if it still exists, and the oped page features Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro. Liberals, rich and otherwise, live in a bubble where they never see this stuff. I would beg them to see it. Watch some Fox. Listen to some Christian radio. Experience the news that millions of Americans are getting on a daily basis. You’ll pretty quickly come to understand what I’m saying here.

[...] The reason? The right-wing media. And it’s only growing and growing. And I haven’t even gotten to social media and Tik Tok and the other platforms from which far more people are getting their news these days. The right is way ahead on those fronts too. Liberals must wake up and understand this and do something about it before it’s too late, which it almost is.

Michael Tomasky of TNR explains it perfectly: Donald Trump won due to the right-wing media apparatus feeding lies to the voters.

[justinssportscorner]

Alicia Sadowski at MMFA:

On January 17, the New England Patriots introduced Jerod Mayo as the organization’s new head coach, the first Black head coach in the history of the franchise. After Patriots owner and Trump ally Robert Kraft claimed he was “colorblind” at the introductory press conference, Mayo discussed the significance of his promotion and the importance of acknowledging diversity. In response to Mayo’s comments, right-wing media retaliated by questioning Mayo’s ability to lead the team and decrying the Patriots’ future as a “woke” football team. The attacks come on the heels of a campaign to villainize corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, as well as repeated meltdowns over Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce’s relationship.

Right-wing media propagandists had a meltdown over new Patriots HC Jerod Mayo's acknowledgment of the significance of being hired the first Black HC in the franchise's history.

[beardedmrbean]

Is it worth crippling freedom of the press, from conservative stings and factory-farming exposes to citizen journalism and local watchdogs, to hide the public conversations of politicians?

That's one framing of the issue confronting the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as the 29-member court, minus two unexplained recusals, reviews the constitutionality of an Oregon law that prohibits "unannounced audiovisual recording" in public – unless the speaker being recorded is an on-duty cop, or a "felony that endangers human life" is taking place.

A majority of non-recused judges voted in March to overturn a divided three-judge panel that knocked down the statute last year as a content-based restriction that is "not narrowly tailored to achieving a compelling governmental interest," failing the high judicial bar of "strict scrutiny."

The panel majority specifically faulted the law for privileging "a state executive officer’s official activities" over "a police officer’s official activities," while the dissent argued the law would be content-neutral if the panel let the Beaver State sever the exceptions. The state didn't seek that, and the majority said a general ban would create "significant constitutional issues."

Short supplemental briefs are due Tuesday to address two specific questions as well as "any other properly raised issue concerning the merits," the full court said May 13.

The first is whether the section of the law that prohibits obtaining or trying to obtain "any part of a conversation by means of any device, contrivance, machine or apparatus," unless "all participants are specifically informed" what's happening, "triggers First Amendment scrutiny" – in other words, any First Amendment relevance to a ban on audio recording.

The second is whether the law's exceptions constitute content-based speech regulations, which would trigger strict scrutiny. 

That would likely doom the statute unless Oregon can show it has a compelling interest in the privacy of public conversations and the law is the least restrictive way to protect that privacy, attorney Gabe Walters of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief last month, wrote in an email.

"The government will be unlikely to carry that burden because, for example, a party to a conversation could roughly transcribe it from memory immediately afterward without the consent of the other parties to the conversation," Walters said.

The case has drawn surprisingly little interest beyond plaintiff Project Veritas, whose bread-and-butter is unannounced audiovisual recording, and defendant Oregon. (Project Veritas parted ways with its founder James O'Keefe two months after oral argument.)

Not one mainstream media organization or press freedom group filed friend-of-the-court briefs, nor the ACLU, according to the docket going back to the 9th Circuit's original agreement to review U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman's 2021 ruling upholding Oregon's law.

The ACLU did express concerns about the FBI raiding O'Keefe's home in 2021 in connection with the diary of President Biden's daughter Ashley, which Project Veritas said it obtained legally during the 2020 campaign but tried to return to law enforcement.

The only outside brief submitted before the panel ruled came from Portland lawyer Bert Krages, whose legal handbook for photographers came out shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He became a louder activist for photographers' rights in public amid post-attack crackdowns by "overzealous law enforcement officers, security guards" and others.

Krages filed again in April, saying the law personally restricts his ability to advocate for environmental restrictions on "wakesurfing" because he makes videos in public that unavoidably contain "conversations that are extraneous to the subject matter I am trying to record."

For example, he was once recording on the Willamette River "when an unseen person on the other side began using a bullhorn to communicate to unseen listeners." The law functionally shuts down recording wherever "a multitude of conversations are taking place."

The law isn't even limited to "face-to-face conversations," Krages told the full court, requiring that "the person making the recording must inform any silent listeners to a conversation as well as those who speak." 

He said it was "often impossible and sometimes ill-advised" to announce when recording "hate speech, criminal activity, [or] child abuse," and the full court can't save the overbroad law simply by assuming "prosecutorial discretion will be exercised."

The conservative Liberty Justice Center urged the full court to takes its cues from Supreme Court decisions on sign codes in 2015 and 2022, striking down one that "treated ideological signs more favorably than political signs" and upholding the other while clarifying that "swapping an obvious subject-matter distinction for a 'function or purpose' proxy" has the same problem.

The public interest law firm rattled off a long list of specific situations in which the law doesn't apply to illustrate how thoroughly content-based it is, showing the law is not a permissible "time, place, or manner restriction." ____________________________

Submitted by @brosef

This just feels like all kinds of fascist nonsense to me

FIRE's joint brief is signed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has a "long history of conducting undercover investigations to expose cruelty to animals," and Animal Outlook, which shares undercover agribusiness recordings with "law enforcement officials so they have proof of crimes against animals."

University of Denver law professors Alan Chen and Justin Marceau, who wrote a "monograph studying the historical role of undercover investigations in promoting democracy," also signed. They received PETA "Justice for Animal" awards for assisting a legal challenge to Idaho's so-called ag-gag law in 2018.

"The gathering and dissemination of information about matters of public concern is no longer exclusively or even primarily the province of a small number of newspapers, journalists, or authors," they wrote. 

What's at stake is nothing less than the continued viability of the "citizen-journalist," whose interest is at the heart of the founders' conception of freedom of the press and whose work has never been less expensive to produce and find an audience, their brief says. 

The Supreme Court ruled conclusively that "audiovisual recording is speech," according to the groups, when in 2011 it struck down a Vermont law that prohibited pharmacies from disclosing and pharmaceutical companies from using "prescriber-identifying information for marketing purposes without a doctor’s consent." 

The state allowed use of the information for medical research and its own "prescription drug education program," however.

The 6-3 ruling confirmed that governments cannot regulate speech based on its content "even if the speech is commercial in nature," as then-Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. 

He quoted from its 1996 ruling that prohibits states from enacting "total bans on truthful commercial advertisements," which said the First Amendment "directs us to be especially skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be their own good."

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press backed the healthcare services provider challenging the law in a friend-of-the-court brief, citing the law's negative implications for "data gathering, analysis and publication … in journalism today."

The new instructions from the full court May 13 suggest it may revise a divided panel's precedent from the 2018 ruling against portions of Idaho's ag-gag law, which the Animal Legal Defense Fund challenged.

The Legislature passed the law following outrage about a "secretly-filmed exposé of the operation of an Idaho dairy farm" that went viral for its "disturbing" depiction of how cows were treated, but it impermissibly criminalized "misrepresentations to enter a production facility" and prohibited "audio and video recordings of a production facility’s operations," the court found.

The panel determined, however, that it permissibly criminalized "obtaining records … by misrepresentation" and "employment by misrepresentation with the intent to cause economic or other injury."

RCFP, American Society of News Editors, Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones, broadcasting giant E.W. Scripps, Society of Professional Journalists and many other media organizations and associations backed ALDF in a joint brief at the time.

[mariacallous]

The winner of the 2024 US presidential election will confront complicated questions about whether the government is doing enough to protect the country from cyber threats. But one leading conservative group is sidestepping those questions and pushing to shrink the government’s main cyber agency, calling it a bastion of far-left tyranny.

Project 2025, a widely circulated playbook from the influential right-leaning Heritage Foundation, takes aim at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on several fronts, especially its efforts to reduce dangerous online misinformation. If former president Donald Trump wins the election and appoints officials who follow the playbook’s recommendations for CISA, the five-year-old agency could face an unprecedented crisis.

Trump has disavowed Project 2025—a 900-page document full of controversial proposals—but its authors have close ties to his former administration and his campaign, and many of its recommendations align with Trump’s agenda. If he wins a second term, Trump is likely to embrace Project 2025’s combative approach to CISA, whose director he fired for debunking his lies about the 2020 election. That makes the 2024 election an existential moment for CISA.

“If every recommendation in this proposal were accepted, this would significantly weaken CISA as an agency,” says Steve Kelly, a former special assistant to the president and senior director for cybersecurity and emerging technology at the National Security Council.

“It would essentially see CISA cease functioning as a principal element of cybersecurity,” says John Costello, a former chief of staff to the national cyber director at the White House. “It really takes out many of its central functions.”

Missing the Mark on Misinformation

No aspect of CISA’s work has sparked as much GOP ire as its efforts to combat online falsehoods destabilizing American society, and Project 2025’s most substantial recommendation for CISA concerns this work.

“Of the utmost urgency,” the plan says, “is immediately ending CISA’s counter-mis/disinformation efforts.”

During the 2020 election, amid conspiracy theories and hoaxes about Covid-19 and the presidential election, CISA flagged state and local officials’ concerns about online falsehoods to social media companies. This practice, dubbed “switchboarding,” outraged conservatives, who accused CISA of suppressing their speech. House Republicans produced a report on what they called “the weaponization” of the agency, two GOP-led states sued the government (the US Supreme Court dismissed the case), and CISA and its federal partners all but froze their conversations with social media firms.

“CISA has devolved into an unconstitutional censoring and election engineering apparatus of the political Left,” Project 2025 declares. After dismissing Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “dirty trick” by Hillary Clinton’s campaign (despite it being extensively documented, including in a lengthy bipartisan Senate report), Heritage’s policy proposal recommends that the military and the intelligence community take over the responsibility of combating foreign propaganda.

CISA and its defenders maintain that the agency never pressured tech companies to delete posts, but regardless, the agency’s current counterpropaganda operation is a shell of its former self. Talks with tech firms have resumed, but in the election space, the agency is now relying solely on its “Rumor vs. Reality” fact-checking page.

Cybersecurity experts say the government needs to be debunking harmful lies, especially those spread by foreign adversaries.

“There's a role for CISA in mis- and disinformation, but they'd be wise to keep it cabined and narrow,” says Kelly, who is now the chief strategy officer at the nonprofit Institute for Security and Technology.

Costello calls Project 2025’s proposal “deeply problematic.”

The report fails to acknowledge the seriousness of adversaries’ efforts to sow chaos in the US, according to Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative-leaning think tank.

The document “appears blind to the fact that Russia, China, and Iran are weaponizing social media networks to create a false narrative that weakens US national security,” Montgomery says.

Project 2025’s leaders did not respond to inquiries for this story. Ken Cuccinelli, a top Department of Homeland Security official in the Trump administration and the author of the report’s DHS chapter, declined an interview request.

Vague and Contradictory

Most of Project 2025’s proposals for CISA are difficult to decipher and reflect what experts say is a misunderstanding of the agency’s activities.

The plan envisions CISA helping local election officials “assess whether they have good cyber hygiene,” but it warns that “CISA should not be significantly involved closer to an election” and should not engage in any “messaging” work.

“It's unclear to me what a statement like that would mean,” says Kiersten Todt, a former chief of staff to CISA’s director, “because as the elections approach, the need to ensure the safety and security of those elections is even more urgent.”

Indeed, Costello says, the run-up to Election Day is “when misinformation [and] disinformation upticks the highest” and when it’s most important to debunk lies about things like polling places and voting times. “That's when [we’re] most vulnerable. And we saw that in 2016.”

Muzzling CISA during this crucial period, Costello says, “runs the risk of creating a bubble where Russia or China or any other nation-state threat actor could have a safe space for a massive disinformation campaign.”

If Trump wins and adopts this approach, Todt worries that CISA’s locally deployed election security advisers will be pressured not to offer help in a campaign’s closing stage. CISA’s empowerment of its field force is “one of the great achievements and successes of the past few years,” she says.

Project 2025 also vaguely decries what it characterizes as CISA’s overlap with other agencies. The report says CISA “should refrain from duplicating cybersecurity functions done elsewhere at the Department of Defense, FBI, National Security Agency, and US Secret Service,” but no cyber experts consulted by WIRED could figure out what that means.

If the idea is that the military, not CISA, should be defending critical infrastructure operators from hackers, that’s “a fundamental misreading of US law … about who's allowed to do what,” Costello says. “CISA helps facilitate things domestically that DoD can't touch and NSA can't touch.” That includes direct monitoring of intrusion-detection sensors on critical infrastructure networks.

If anything, the military has impinged on CISA’s territory—not the other way around—out of exasperation with the civilian agency’s constrained resources, says Montgomery, a retired Navy rear admiral.

“The Department of Defense would say, ‘We're having to do things that we think CISA should be doing,’” Montgomery says, which has meant “slowly creeping outside the base fence to make sure that electrical power grids, water systems, [and] telecom systems [near bases] are properly protected in case of a crisis.”

Department of Dubious Moves

Of all the CISA proposals in Project 2025’s plan, the most ambitious one is highly unlikely to succeed: moving the agency into the Department of Transportation as part of a broader initiative to dismantle DHS.

The recommendation reflects conservatives’ desire to shrink the overall size of government, but it may also suggest a belief that moving CISA would curtail its scope and make it “a little more manageable,” says Brandon Pugh, director of the cybersecurity and emerging threats team at the center-right think tank R Street Institute. Pugh says some Republicans believe the agency “went beyond its original mandate and [has] become too bloated.”

But this idea is a virtual nonstarter because the congressional committees with oversight of CISA won’t give up their power in a rapidly growing domain. “There's no way that would ever work,” Costello says.

Apart from being infeasible, the proposal would undermine CISA’s effectiveness.

Cybersecurity fits squarely into DHS’s homeland-security portfolio, so moving CISA into a department with a different mission “doesn't make a lot of sense” and “would undermine some of the organizational logic,” Kelly says. “I don't actually understand the rationale of that.”

DHS is also better-suited to facilitate the kind of cross-government collaboration that CISA relies on for its twin missions of protecting federal computer systems and helping companies and local governments defend themselves.

“Giving CISA to Department of Transportation would reduce the cybersecurity of our national critical infrastructure for some period of time,” Montgomery says, adding that Transportation is “one of the last places” he’d put CISA and calling the proposal “nonsensical.”

Still, observers say it might be worth reviewing the structure of DHS, which has steadily accumulated functions since its post-9/11 creation and is now considered something of a Frankenstein department. But that review has to be “well thought out,” Todt says. “Reorganization of government should never be taken lightly.”

Squandering a Moment

Even as Project 2025 appears to misunderstand some aspects of CISA’s mission and focus disproportionately on others, the document also misses opportunities to recommend meaningful reforms.

Congress has spent years waiting for CISA to complete a “force structure assessment” that would better define its mission and the resources and organization needed to accomplish it. But even beyond CISA, there are serious concerns that the government as a whole isn’t coordinating well on cyber issues.

Pugh says it’s worth examining whether the system is working well. “Do we need to take a harder look at who's responsible for different leadership aspects of cyber?”

For now, though, experts agree that Project 2025 misses the mark. The document, Montgomery says, is “full of little tantrums” and “shows a lack of understanding of how federal government works.”

Costello says it’s “embarrassing” to see Project 2025 “call for essentially the hollowing out of CISA,” and he worries that its implementation could create a perilous feedback loop for the agency.

“If you were to reduce the mission scope and importance of CISA,” he says, “morale is going to drop, people are going to want to leave, and Congress is going to be less willing to fund [it].”

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

What’s behind the attack against Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement?

The Chamber of Deputies, dominated by the right, has set up a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to investigate “the real purpose” of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement

The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), Brazil’s largest social organization and a major force for land reform, is under attack from the country’s conservative forces in the parliament and the mass media.

On April 26, the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress, dominated by right-wing opposition parties, approved the establishment of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) to investigate “the activities,” “the real purpose,” and “the means of funding” of the MST.

The announcement came amid the movement’s National Commemoration of Struggles in Defense of Agrarian Reform. On this occasion, the movement organizes activities to “reaffirm the centrality of the struggle for land in Brazil and the importance of implementing an Agrarian Reform project to develop the countryside, produce healthy food, and combat hunger.”

As part of this month of struggle, which the mainstream media has termed “Red April,” the movement carries out peaceful occupations of abandoned and unproductive areas in the countryside with the objective of converting them into a place to live and grow food. Land occupation is a tactic used by the movement throughout the rest of the year to push for agrarian reform and settle landless families on unproductive land. This April, the MST carried out 33 land occupations.

These actions have unsurprisingly provoked the ire of the country’s large landowning right-wing and the media apparatus, and the movement has been subject to slanderous media campaigns, vitriolic diatribes by right-wing politicians, and the victim of criminalization and legal processes, including four prior CPIs. The latest attack on the MST is thus nothing new.

Continue reading.