#plus as the nazis had more and more influence the last elections that did happen were not what i would call democratic

[catgirlstalin]

the SPD (social democratic party) was actively pushing for people to vote for the conservative hindenburg and discouraged people from voting for the communist thälmann because they believed that only hindenburg could realistically beat hitler in the elections (which he did - it just didnt help, in the end). here's a poster by the SPD from the 1932 presidential election

the text says

"Who votes for Thälmann gives his vote to Hitler! Those who want to defeat Hitler, vote Hindenburg!"

they were explicitly telling people that voting for thälmann was throwing your vote away (and therefore equivalent to voting for hitler). the strategy of the SPD was to throw their entire support behind a conservative they believed could realistically win in order to prevent hitler from winning. and it very much didnt work out in the end

ultimately communists aren't even telling you not to vote, the point is that it is completely ineffective action. when you ask 'why shouldn't we vote? we can vote and do other stuff' it is as if you had been proposing prayer as a solution to fascism and scolding anyone who said otherwise - even if your argument is 'there's no reason not to try', it implies an incredible and grave misunderstanding of what is and is not an effective means of political action. like... sure. go ahead and pray, to god or to Democracy, and buy fair-trade while you're at it, but if we're being honest, here, I think the defensiveness over it shows not genuine faith, but a desperation to engage with a system that clearly does not work, but whose alternative appears scary and unclear to you.

[printedword]

In December, a couple of months after Lt. Bob Kroll, the head of the Minneapolis police union, stood onstage with President Donald Trump at a campaign rally and praised the “wonderful president” for “everything he’s done for law enforcement,” he received a short Facebook message from a disgruntled city resident: “Nazi piece of shit,” the man wrote to him.

Kroll fired off a reply, pointing out his family’s record as defenders of the Allied forces during both World Wars, and then launching into a series of insults: “Keep spewing uniformed [sic] shit from your computer in your moms [sic] basement, loser,” he wrote to the man, according to a report by the Minneapolis City Pages, a local newspaper. “If you hate me so much, why don’t you stop by and beat the shit out of me?…My bet is it won’t happen, because you are a cowardly cunt.”

It might not have been the response you’d expect from a public official who represents 800-plus rank-and-file police officers. But Kroll, who has led the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis for five years, has a reputation for inflammatory remarks. Now, his brash leadership and influence over the police department’s culture are in the spotlight amid protests over police violence in the city after George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white officer on Monday. 

Kroll, who has been accused of using excessive force and making racist remarks in the past, is standing behind his colleague as the public backlash mounts. “Now is not the time to rush to judgment and immediately condemn our officers,” he said on Tuesday, before the department fired Chauvin and three other officers who did not intervene in Floyd’s death.

The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis union became powerful in the 1970s, after one of its former leaders, Charles Stenvig, was elected mayor. Kroll became president of the union in 2015. Today, protesters and other activists in the city say the union, not the police chief, holds the most sway over officers and their behavior on patrol. “The only authority they respect is Police Federation President Bob Kroll,” Tana Hargest, a Minneapolis-based artist and activist, tweeted a day after Floyd’s death. “[T]here’s nothing our elected representatives can or will do to bring them to heel.”

Through a series of controversies over the years, Kroll has been a staunch defender of the police. In 2015, after two white officers shot 24-year-old Jamar Clark in the head, Kroll spoke on television about Clark’s “violent” criminal history; later, when the officers were cleared of wrongdoing, he referred to Black Lives Matter as a “terrorist organization,” according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In 2007, Kroll also referred to former US Rep. Keith Ellison, who is Muslim and Black and has pushed for criminal justice reforms, as a terrorist, according to a lawsuit filed by now–Police Chief Medaria Arradondo alleging racism within the police department. The lawsuit accused Kroll of wearing a motorcycle jacket with a white-power patch sewed into the fabric, and said he had “a history of discriminatory attitudes and conduct.” He has told reporters he was part of the City Heat motorcycle club, some of whose members have been described by the Anti-Defamation League as displaying white supremacist symbols. Kroll did not respond to a request for comment but has denied the allegations in the past.

A year after Clark’s death, in 2016, Kroll again showed his disdain for protests about racial inequality. That December, four off-duty officers walked off their job working security at the Lynx basketball game after the players denounced racial profiling at a press conference and wore Black Lives Matter warmup jerseys before the game. “I commend them for it,” Kroll said of the officers.

Kroll joined the Minneapolis police department back in 1989. According to a Star Tribune investigation, he has been the subject of at least 20 internal-affairs complaints during his three decades there, though all but three were closed without discipline. As a young officer in 1994, he was suspended for five days for excessive force, according to a report by City Pages, but that decision was later reversed by the police chief. The next year, he fought a lawsuit that accused him of “beating, choking and kicking” a biracial 15-year-old boy while saying racial slurs, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported, but a federal jury cleared him of wrongdoing. In 2003, the department demoted him for three months for “code of ethics” violations.

One of the most egregious allegations took place in 2004, while Kroll was off-duty. Kroll and another officer were accused of beating a man whose backpack bumped against their car while walking out of a bar on a Friday night; when the man’s friends came to help, the officers allegedly punched and kicked them. The Civilian Review Authority, a board that investigates complaints against Minneapolis police officers, sustained the complaint against Kroll. He was suspended for 20 days. “How can he even still be on the force with behavior like this?” the assaulted man’s father told City Pages. Kroll denied wrongdoing and said the man’s friends attacked them.

“The persona of me is that I’m some big boogeyman,” he said. “I’ve been told I’m racist, and I’m violent. I’m aware of that. I’ve had more complaints than most, but I’ve had much higher contacts, and a much higher number of arrests.” He claimed he had been cleared of wrongdoing on almost every occasion.

As head of the union, Kroll has pushed for aggressive policing. Last year, Mayor Jacob Frey banned a “warrior-style” training for officers that has been linked with other officer-involved killings, including of Philando Castile in 2016 in Minnesota. As Mother Jones revealed in an investigation, the training promoted a “killology” view of law enforcement that urged officers to be prepared to use more force, not less. Kroll described the mayor’s ban as illegal and vowed to continue making the training free through the union for any officers who were interested. “It’s not about killing, it’s about surviving,” Kroll said of the training at the time.

For Kroll, Trump has been a natural ally. “The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” Kroll told CBS Minnesota after speaking at the president’s rally last year. “The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around…he decided to let cops do their job, put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of us.” Before the rally, Kroll’s union sold “Cops for Trump” T-shirts, which brought in close to $100,000, as a way to protest the mayor’s prohibition on officers wearing their uniform to political events. Kroll wore one of the red shirts to the podium as Trump introduced him as “the great gentleman on television.”

[7newx1]

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Shortly after his election victory in December, it was reported that Boris Johnson wanted the word “Brexit” retired. Not just retired, but expunged as a matter of urgency once the U.K. has left the European Union on Jan. 31.This would be like Donald Trump telling White House staff that they need to drop the “Make America Great Again” thing. Without Brexit — and his “Get Brexit Done” campaign — we’d mainly know Boris Johnson as just another former mayor, a talented politician who wrote amusing newspaper columns.This attempted change of language seems trivial, but it’s not. For nearly four years, the neologism “Brexit” has dominated British politics, and resonated around the world. Why try to retire it now? I can see two reasons: The word is a constant and powerful reminder of the division and open wounds in British society; and while it was a weapon Johnson wielded successfully against his opponents, it might easily be used against him in future. The first concern is honorable, the other more Orwellian. But how successful Johnson is in changing the language of British politics might prove as important as anything he gets around the trade negotiating table with the European Union and the U.S. this year.The word “Brexit” appeared back in 2012. Peter Wilding, a former lawyer and aide to former Prime Minister David Cameron, had little idea of its impact when he coined it in a May 2012 blog, inspired by the Greeks:Unless a clear view is pushed that Britain must lead in Europe at the very least to achieve the completion of the Single Market, then the portmanteau for Greek euro exit [Grexit] might be followed by another sad word, Brexit.A few years later, it spread like bush fire. By 2016, it had a place in the Oxford English Dictionary and was later named “word of the year.” But Wilding was appalled to find his invention used as a tool of destruction. Now chairman of the British Influence think tank, he sees Brexit as a “narcissistic victim syndrome ignited by charlatan nostalgists.” He has said it might do to Britain what the Treaty of Versailles did to Germany.Brexit, in Johnson’s hands, wasn’t a flaccid noun but a powerful verb. One might argue that you could have called Britain’s EU departure campaign pretty much anything and the result would have been the same. Perhaps, but something happened when those two words — British exit — fused. It became a rallying point for a passionate, but small, euroskeptic core of Johnson’s ruling Conservative party. It anchored a Leave campaign whose language invoked national pride, appealed to people’s bias for action over inaction and their preference for simplicity.In his book, “The Language of Brexit,” the linguist Steve Buckledee shows how skillfully this was done. Brexit stirred passion and represented action; Remainer language was limp by comparison and passive. The British Twitter poet Brian Bilston captured the power of the word in the last stanzas of a poem titled Meaningful Vote, which was the name given to the attempts of Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, to win parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal:How foolish, it seems; How senseless, absurd,To re-define a nation In pursuit of a word.Johnson, of all politicians, understands the mobilizing and seducing power of language. He’s probably the most prolix (and prolific) political leader Britain has had since Winston Churchill. He loves words that pack heat. He famously denied an affair by calling the allegations an “inverted pyramid of piffle.” He often invents words where a conventional formula won’t do — such as “backstop-ectomy” to denote his determination to remove an element of May’s Brexit deal known as the Irish backstop, which he and other Brexiters disliked.But now that the war is over, the weapon looks unsightly. Brexit represents a heroic and victorious campaign for freedom to one side of the divide, but a perfidious act of self-harm to the other. RELATED: Why Brexit Opponents Lost the Vote and the ArgumentEven many Brexiters are battle-weary and spent, no doubt worried about how well things will go from here for Britain. Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, a vocal Brexiter, is holding back on the mirth. Sarah Vine, the columnist wife of cabinet member Michael Gove, says being on the winning side has left her numb. “I think, like many Leave voters the length and breadth of the country, I have found the hatred and vitriol of the past few years ultimately very brutalizing,” she wrote for the Daily Mail (not exactly a bastion of temperateness). “We Leavers have been accused of innumerable crimes, cast as racist, short-sighted, xenophobic and, above all, thick and uneducated. We’ve been compared to the Nazis, been blamed for the actions of every lunatic extremist, accused of lying — not to mention held responsible for every stock market fluctuation (downwards, naturally) or passing economic squall.” If that’s how the victors feel, spare a thought for the losers. Johnson won the war, but he won’t succeed in keeping his new Conservative coalition together (which includes plenty of Remain voters who were fearful of allowing Labour’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn into power) if the loaded language of Brexit frames all discussion.But burying “Brexit,” the word, is a way of shirking responsibility too. If everything that happens from now is just another tick on the plus or minus side of the Brexit ledger, the divisions will eventually tear away at Johnson’s power and every concession over fish or drop in GDP growth will be seen as an indictment of the Brexit campaign that swept him into Downing Street.By getting rid of the Department for Exiting the EU and rechristening the U.K. negotiating side something positive like Taskforce Europe, Johnson is saying “nothing to see here but some tedious trade negotiations.” Why should voters worry about such minutia as will be discussed when Britain and the EU sit down to work out their future trade relationship? If the word “Brexit” is a call to battle, “trade taskforce” is an invitation to snooze. That must be the hope, anyhow: That if Brexit is only muttered occasionally, somewhat apologetically, or better yet, not said at all, there will be less scrutiny — and criticism — of what lies ahead. Separating Britain from the EU is bound to be painful. Johnson’s ultimate political survival may depend on whether he can denuclearize the domestic conflict he waged so successfully with Wilding’s B-bomb.To contact the author of this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

[beautytipsfor]

Boris Johnson’s Plan to Kill ‘Brexit’

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Shortly after his election victory in December, it was reported that Boris Johnson wanted the word “Brexit” retired. Not just retired, but expunged as a matter of urgency once the U.K. has left the European Union on Jan. 31.This would be like Donald Trump telling White House staff that they need to drop the “Make America Great Again” thing. Without Brexit — and his “Get Brexit Done” campaign — we’d mainly know Boris Johnson as just another former mayor, a talented politician who wrote amusing newspaper columns.This attempted change of language seems trivial, but it’s not. For nearly four years, the neologism “Brexit” has dominated British politics, and resonated around the world. Why try to retire it now? I can see two reasons: The word is a constant and powerful reminder of the division and open wounds in British society; and while it was a weapon Johnson wielded successfully against his opponents, it might easily be used against him in future. The first concern is honorable, the other more Orwellian. But how successful Johnson is in changing the language of British politics might prove as important as anything he gets around the trade negotiating table with the European Union and the U.S. this year.The word “Brexit” appeared back in 2012. Peter Wilding, a former lawyer and aide to former Prime Minister David Cameron, had little idea of its impact when he coined it in a May 2012 blog, inspired by the Greeks:Unless a clear view is pushed that Britain must lead in Europe at the very least to achieve the completion of the Single Market, then the portmanteau for Greek euro exit [Grexit] might be followed by another sad word, Brexit.A few years later, it spread like bush fire. By 2016, it had a place in the Oxford English Dictionary and was later named “word of the year.” But Wilding was appalled to find his invention used as a tool of destruction. Now chairman of the British Influence think tank, he sees Brexit as a “narcissistic victim syndrome ignited by charlatan nostalgists.” He has said it might do to Britain what the Treaty of Versailles did to Germany.Brexit, in Johnson’s hands, wasn’t a flaccid noun but a powerful verb. One might argue that you could have called Britain’s EU departure campaign pretty much anything and the result would have been the same. Perhaps, but something happened when those two words — British exit — fused. It became a rallying point for a passionate, but small, euroskeptic core of Johnson’s ruling Conservative party. It anchored a Leave campaign whose language invoked national pride, appealed to people’s bias for action over inaction and their preference for simplicity.In his book, “The Language of Brexit,” the linguist Steve Buckledee shows how skillfully this was done. Brexit stirred passion and represented action; Remainer language was limp by comparison and passive. The British Twitter poet Brian Bilston captured the power of the word in the last stanzas of a poem titled Meaningful Vote, which was the name given to the attempts of Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, to win parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal:How foolish, it seems; How senseless, absurd,To re-define a nation In pursuit of a word.Johnson, of all politicians, understands the mobilizing and seducing power of language. He’s probably the most prolix (and prolific) political leader Britain has had since Winston Churchill. He loves words that pack heat. He famously denied an affair by calling the allegations an “inverted pyramid of piffle.” He often invents words where a conventional formula won’t do — such as “backstop-ectomy” to denote his determination to remove an element of May’s Brexit deal known as the Irish backstop, which he and other Brexiters disliked.But now that the war is over, the weapon looks unsightly. Brexit represents a heroic and victorious campaign for freedom to one side of the divide, but a perfidious act of self-harm to the other. RELATED: Why Brexit Opponents Lost the Vote and the ArgumentEven many Brexiters are battle-weary and spent, no doubt worried about how well things will go from here for Britain. Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, a vocal Brexiter, is holding back on the mirth. Sarah Vine, the columnist wife of cabinet member Michael Gove, says being on the winning side has left her numb. “I think, like many Leave voters the length and breadth of the country, I have found the hatred and vitriol of the past few years ultimately very brutalizing,” she wrote for the Daily Mail (not exactly a bastion of temperateness). “We Leavers have been accused of innumerable crimes, cast as racist, short-sighted, xenophobic and, above all, thick and uneducated. We’ve been compared to the Nazis, been blamed for the actions of every lunatic extremist, accused of lying — not to mention held responsible for every stock market fluctuation (downwards, naturally) or passing economic squall.” If that’s how the victors feel, spare a thought for the losers. Johnson won the war, but he won’t succeed in keeping his new Conservative coalition together (which includes plenty of Remain voters who were fearful of allowing Labour’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn into power) if the loaded language of Brexit frames all discussion.But burying “Brexit,” the word, is a way of shirking responsibility too. If everything that happens from now is just another tick on the plus or minus side of the Brexit ledger, the divisions will eventually tear away at Johnson’s power and every concession over fish or drop in GDP growth will be seen as an indictment of the Brexit campaign that swept him into Downing Street.By getting rid of the Department for Exiting the EU and rechristening the U.K. negotiating side something positive like Taskforce Europe, Johnson is saying “nothing to see here but some tedious trade negotiations.” Why should voters worry about such minutia as will be discussed when Britain and the EU sit down to work out their future trade relationship? If the word “Brexit” is a call to battle, “trade taskforce” is an invitation to snooze. That must be the hope, anyhow: That if Brexit is only muttered occasionally, somewhat apologetically, or better yet, not said at all, there will be less scrutiny — and criticism — of what lies ahead. Separating Britain from the EU is bound to be painful. Johnson’s ultimate political survival may depend on whether he can denuclearize the domestic conflict he waged so successfully with Wilding’s B-bomb.To contact the author of this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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[saadullah-faisal-world]

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Shortly after his election victory in December, it was reported that Boris Johnson wanted the word “Brexit” retired. Not just retired, but expunged as a matter of urgency once the U.K. has left the European Union on Jan. 31.This would be like Donald Trump telling White House staff that they need to drop the “Make America Great Again” thing. Without Brexit — and his “Get Brexit Done” campaign — we’d mainly know Boris Johnson as just another former mayor, a talented politician who wrote amusing newspaper columns.This attempted change of language seems trivial, but it’s not. For nearly four years, the neologism “Brexit” has dominated British politics, and resonated around the world. Why try to retire it now? I can see two reasons: The word is a constant and powerful reminder of the division and open wounds in British society; and while it was a weapon Johnson wielded successfully against his opponents, it might easily be used against him in future. The first concern is honorable, the other more Orwellian. But how successful Johnson is in changing the language of British politics might prove as important as anything he gets around the trade negotiating table with the European Union and the U.S. this year.The word “Brexit” appeared back in 2012. Peter Wilding, a former lawyer and aide to former Prime Minister David Cameron, had little idea of its impact when he coined it in a May 2012 blog, inspired by the Greeks:Unless a clear view is pushed that Britain must lead in Europe at the very least to achieve the completion of the Single Market, then the portmanteau for Greek euro exit [Grexit] might be followed by another sad word, Brexit.A few years later, it spread like bush fire. By 2016, it had a place in the Oxford English Dictionary and was later named “word of the year.” But Wilding was appalled to find his invention used as a tool of destruction. Now chairman of the British Influence think tank, he sees Brexit as a “narcissistic victim syndrome ignited by charlatan nostalgists.” He has said it might do to Britain what the Treaty of Versailles did to Germany.Brexit, in Johnson’s hands, wasn’t a flaccid noun but a powerful verb. One might argue that you could have called Britain’s EU departure campaign pretty much anything and the result would have been the same. Perhaps, but something happened when those two words — British exit — fused. It became a rallying point for a passionate, but small, euroskeptic core of Johnson’s ruling Conservative party. It anchored a Leave campaign whose language invoked national pride, appealed to people’s bias for action over inaction and their preference for simplicity.In his book, “The Language of Brexit,” the linguist Steve Buckledee shows how skillfully this was done. Brexit stirred passion and represented action; Remainer language was limp by comparison and passive. The British Twitter poet Brian Bilston captured the power of the word in the last stanzas of a poem titled Meaningful Vote, which was the name given to the attempts of Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, to win parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal:How foolish, it seems; How senseless, absurd,To re-define a nation In pursuit of a word.Johnson, of all politicians, understands the mobilizing and seducing power of language. He’s probably the most prolix (and prolific) political leader Britain has had since Winston Churchill. He loves words that pack heat. He famously denied an affair by calling the allegations an “inverted pyramid of piffle.” He often invents words where a conventional formula won’t do — such as “backstop-ectomy” to denote his determination to remove an element of May’s Brexit deal known as the Irish backstop, which he and other Brexiters disliked.But now that the war is over, the weapon looks unsightly. Brexit represents a heroic and victorious campaign for freedom to one side of the divide, but a perfidious act of self-harm to the other. RELATED: Why Brexit Opponents Lost the Vote and the ArgumentEven many Brexiters are battle-weary and spent, no doubt worried about how well things will go from here for Britain. Hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, a vocal Brexiter, is holding back on the mirth. Sarah Vine, the columnist wife of cabinet member Michael Gove, says being on the winning side has left her numb. “I think, like many Leave voters the length and breadth of the country, I have found the hatred and vitriol of the past few years ultimately very brutalizing,” she wrote for the Daily Mail (not exactly a bastion of temperateness). “We Leavers have been accused of innumerable crimes, cast as racist, short-sighted, xenophobic and, above all, thick and uneducated. We’ve been compared to the Nazis, been blamed for the actions of every lunatic extremist, accused of lying — not to mention held responsible for every stock market fluctuation (downwards, naturally) or passing economic squall.” If that’s how the victors feel, spare a thought for the losers. Johnson won the war, but he won’t succeed in keeping his new Conservative coalition together (which includes plenty of Remain voters who were fearful of allowing Labour’s hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn into power) if the loaded language of Brexit frames all discussion.But burying “Brexit,” the word, is a way of shirking responsibility too. If everything that happens from now is just another tick on the plus or minus side of the Brexit ledger, the divisions will eventually tear away at Johnson’s power and every concession over fish or drop in GDP growth will be seen as an indictment of the Brexit campaign that swept him into Downing Street.By getting rid of the Department for Exiting the EU and rechristening the U.K. negotiating side something positive like Taskforce Europe, Johnson is saying “nothing to see here but some tedious trade negotiations.” Why should voters worry about such minutia as will be discussed when Britain and the EU sit down to work out their future trade relationship? If the word “Brexit” is a call to battle, “trade taskforce” is an invitation to snooze. That must be the hope, anyhow: That if Brexit is only muttered occasionally, somewhat apologetically, or better yet, not said at all, there will be less scrutiny — and criticism — of what lies ahead. Separating Britain from the EU is bound to be painful. Johnson’s ultimate political survival may depend on whether he can denuclearize the domestic conflict he waged so successfully with Wilding’s B-bomb.To contact the author of this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: James Boxell at jboxell@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.Therese Raphael writes editorials on European politics and economics for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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