#trump's nazi plans for a second term

[tomorrowusa]

Even people in red states think that Trump is deranged.

Over the last few months, as his future life of incarceration becomes increasingly more apparent, Donald Trump has lost his grip on whatever fragments of sanity he possessed previously. And he is now firmly in the land of crazy dictator.  Oh, you disagree?  Well, let me remind you that on Veterans’ Day, Trump’s message to the country was not one of gratitude and inspiration for the troops. Instead, it was a promise that, if elected in 2024, he would rid the country of his political opponents, which he referred to as “vermin.”  You know who else called political opponents vermin?  Hitler and Mussolini.  They also denigrated certain groups of people, claiming that their mere existence within their countries tainted bloodlines and made the countries weaker. They painted these groups as enemies and used the vermin rhetoric to reduce them to subhuman species that deserved to be mistreated and killed. 

And here we have a former U.S. president doing the same. As people, including thousands of Bible-thumping, constitution-waving Christians in this state, cheer him on. Buy swag with his face on it. Fly flags with his name on them. 

If you heard somebody on the street screaming about "vermin" and threatening to crush his enemies, you'd rightfully assume that person is bonkers and possibly dangerous. That's what Trump is: deranged and probably dangerous.

Trump's demented threats have been normalized in public discourse and in the media. Sorry, but when a politician starts talking concentration camps and using the government to punish his enemies, that's not normal; and there's plenty of history to show what happens when such people are entrusted with power.

And people who listen to such politicians are themselves lacking in the normalcy department.

Look, if you want to vote for a Republican for president, while I think that’s insane unless you’re ultra-wealthy, go for it. Maybe something will trickle down for you eventually. There are probably a couple of candidates in the ongoing debates who could beat Joe Biden.  But we’ve got to stop this cult-like following of Trump. There’s more than enough evidence at this point that he’s broken dozens of laws, violated the constitution and cares way more about himself and his personal ambitions than he does about this country.  Your continued support of such an individual makes you as crazy as he is.

Trump belongs in a treatment center – not the Oval Office.

Don't let idiot MAGA relatives go unanswered at holiday gatherings when they sympathize with Trump's Nazi-style plans for a second term. Of course you won't change their minds, but it's important to let others hear that such views are unhinged as well as un-American.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Anna Merlan at Mother Jones:

At an event late last week in Arizona, anti-vaccine activist and Donald Trump transition team member Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he’d fire and replace 600 people from the National Institutes of Health on “day one” of a second Trump term. The NIH is one of the public health agencies Kennedy loathes the most—and despite still lacking any defined role in a new administration, he’s clearly relishing the opportunity to promise retribution against them.  In comments that were first reported by ABC News, Kennedy declared, “We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on January 20, so that on January 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave.”  Kennedy, a long standing opponent of vaccines, has consistently been critical of the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control, and other federal agencies that are part of the basic infrastructure of public health. His The Real Anthony Fauci attacked Fauci, a former NIH director, at book length, albeit with what one physician reviewer called “many errors and gross misrepresentations.”

The remarks offering some concrete details about Kennedy’s Trump-aligned and so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda came during an onstage interview at an entrepreneurship event in Scottsdale, which included discussions of Kennedy’s workout routine and his relationship with the once and future president.

[...]

(Experts believe that autism was underdiagnosed until recent decades; the earliest prevalence weren’t conducted until the 1960s and ‘70s. Autistic adults have a range of abilities and autistic self-advocates have said that Kennedy uses offensive and ableist language to talk about autism: rather than “full blown,” public health experts would generally say “profound autism.” Kennedy also still uses the term “Aspergers,” an outdated phrase referencing a scientist who worked with Nazis during the Holocaust.)

This anti-public health bozo plans to fire 600 NIH workers.

[reformedowo]

Vote Like Lives Depend on It.

The Republican party wants you dead. Trump is calling people who don't openly support him "the enemy within." He has called immigrants "vermin" who are "poisoning the blood of our country." This is straight out of the Nazi playbook and is one of the key steps in enabling a genocide in the eye of the public: dehumanization.

I know this is an intense introduction, and I apologize, but those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, so just take a moment to remember before we look to the present, if you'll indulge me.

Thank you.

Starting on just page 5 of Project 2025, the whopping 900+ page guide about how to dismantle the American democracy and install Donald Trump as the authoritarian emperor with no guardrails, lies the first topic so innocuously titled "PROMISE #1: RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN", and is all about and explicitly mentions the banning of pornography while continuing on to include "woke," queer, and transgender ideologies within that definition, stating those "who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders." Page 5, as in you literally just opened this thing, skimmed through the table of contents, and it's already calling for the direct and express prohibition and marginalization of the entire LGBTQ+ community, to be placed alongside real criminals while further muddying the waters for justice to be served against actual abusers. Now if you will, jump 549 pages forward. To the death penalty. Yes, the death penalty, where it states under new Republican rule the government should enforce capital punishment against sex offenders. Now, maybe your brain has melted after reading or being passively exposed to 554 pages of intensely racist, dangerous, hateful Fascist rhetoric thus far, but I think the book practically opened with something about that quite intently. Do not be mistaken: this is not a coincidence. This is not poor wording. This is a direct threat, and as it says in the title, it is a promise. The first, #1, most important promise, apparently. I truly insist that you look at it with your own eyes to believe it, if you're willing to be exposed to the political equivalent of toxic waste.

Trans or queer folk, of any kind, as well any vague notion of "immigrants" in particular are a few of the main talking points of the Republican party and their ads this election season for a reason: Fascism needs an enemy, preferably a minority for its followers to target and be whipped into a frenzy over to keep their following alive. If you'll note, this follows the same logic Trump used when making a call to Senate Republicans, while out of office, to kill the bipartisan border bill, a bill that would have solved an issue Trump was planning on running on, while simultaneously expanding access to legal immigration to begin with. That logic being: you can't sell a solution if there's no problem. Now maybe to you this isn't your cup of tea regardless, legislation and whatnot. But that's not what's important to them, what is important is that they want problems. Any non-white, non-straight, non-Christian, non-Trump loving, non-cis-man is always going to be up next on the chopping block to feed the machine of hate. They want you, or your family, or your friends, or your neighbors to be that problem. Where do you draw the line? However, zooming back out for a moment, this is just skipping 5 pages in, plus some forward for full context, and we've seen only one of the many insane, Fascist concepts concealed within the pages of Project 2025, and it's already a beyond thinly veiled call for genocide. Though Trump denies his connection to the project, the document was penned by over 140 people who have previously worked for him, several members confirmed to be returning, has a running mate who penned a foreword to an architect's book, not to mention he already implemented many of the concepts in his first term. With a second Trump term he will make the rest of this doctrine a reality, with the help of the Supreme Court he installed, without any proper government authorization mind you, the same court who stripped women across the country of their rights to life saving medical treatment, and under that reality you or somebody you know can and will be made their next problem.

Now, sidestepping to an extremely important note, there are horrible things happening in Gaza right now as you read this, and I implore you to please send any donations you can afford to the countless families afflicted, and feel free to go and express your right to protest from now until the Palestinian people are free of Israeli occupation. The right to protest and your right to speak against the government is one of the truly undeniable great things about living here, whether you realize it or not. Donald Trump and Project 2025 want to take away those rights. His illegal use of the National Guard against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, American people exercising these very rights, during his previous presidency speaks volumes to this regard, amongst others such as his blatant hatred toward non-white Americans having said rights. Now with that I say this: please do not think, even for a second, that Donald Trump is the solution to the conflict in Gaza. This is a man who has openly admitted, himself, to having met Netanyahu multiple times in violation of the Logan Act to kill the Biden administration's ceasefire agreements, the same man who when asked if he was "on board" with the way Israel was “taking the fight to Gaza” responded: “You’ve got to finish the problem." Do not award Trump the presidency for making Palestinians suffer, do not act like willingly sitting this one out in protest gives you the moral high ground, because in actuality it makes you complicit. Netanyahu is counting on disinformation and the suffering of the Palestinian people to convince you to not vote for the people doing everything in their power to end his invasion, and if Trump loses, he has no ground left to stand on. However, if Trump wins, he will allow Netanyahu to continue his genocide and you could very well have no voice left to speak up for the Palestinian people.

Do not think that it is a choice between anyone other than Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. The broken and antiquated electoral college established ensures a two party system, whether we like it or not, and we don't since despite losing the popular vote in 2016 we were still subjected to the first unfortunate Trump term, it is the system. And while that may dissuade or discourage you from voting, even a whisper is better than sitting in silence when it's time to let yourself be heard. Hell, if it makes you feel any better on the matter, vice-president candidate Tim Walz is on the record wanting to abolish the electoral college for any future elections, which would not take place under Project 2025. And while Harris may not be your personal perfect dream candidate, we've worked with and fought through worse than imperfect for over 200 years, and she's miles better than a number of the people we've had in charge then, and an unimaginable degree better and more qualified than a second Trump term. Her website has a list of policies and she has appeared on many news networks talking about her vision for the country, if you're at all inclined or inspired to look, please do, and compared to what Project 2025 has in store for both the American people as well as its disturbing foreign policies, it's a breath of fresh air.

Do not let democracy backslide, do not let years of blood, sweat, and tears be in vain because you took that democracy for granted. It's much easier to make progress one step at a time than trying to course correct in free fall. This is the Republican party's last chance to steal everything from you and the American people, and they've been giving it their all because they know that the mask is off and there's no going back for them. You can no longer say "both sides are the same" to convince yourself it's okay that you're not voting. From the world's richest man openly giving millions of dollars away to bribe voters after announcing his support for Trump to stay out of prison, to complex voting disenfranchising schemes on both the state and federal level, to rampant disinformation being blown out of control by the unregulated use of AI by foreign nations with only yours and others worst interests at heart, even if Harris wins the electoral vote they will do whatever it takes steal the election any other way they can. But if you or anyone you know is not willing to take the first, easiest, most crucial step in fighting to preserve and grow your rights, and the rights of others, can you trust they'll be willing to fight for those rights when things get ugly, when it's time to fight? And if Donald Trump is elected to the White House, it's only a matter of time before things get ugly, and we'll have to fight like Hell.

And to all those who are still not convinced, my last and final plea is simply this: Only one of these people will win. Clench your fist, grit your teeth, hold your breath if you need to, but please vote for Kamala Harris. If not for her, if not for yourself, for everybody else whose lives depend on it. Don't be on the side of history that kills us.

Vote like lives depend on it, because they do. Thank you.

[mariacallous]

For the apotheosis of his entire “poisoning of the blood” campaign, Donald Trump has planned a spectacular extravaganza in Madison Square Garden on 27 October, a week before the election. When JD Vance sings Trump’s fulsome praises to introduce him, his ominous tribute will not inspire comparison to the night in the Garden of 19 May 1962, when Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday, Mr President to John F Kennedy.

Trump’s climactic rally will not be in the spirit of any past presidential event ever held there. His gathering for the great racist replacement theory will be the culmination of his spiraling descent since the Charlottesville rally in 2017 when neo-Nazis chanted, “Jews will not replace us.” “Fine people on both sides,” Trump said then. Now, at his night at the Garden, Trump will revive the memory of the infamous American Nazi mass rally held there on 20 February 1939 through his reflected Hitlerian rhetoric.

In the last week, Trump has pledged to deploy the military against “the enemy within”, domestic opponents he claims are worse than foreign adversaries – those Hitler called “Feind des Volkes”, or “enemy of the people”. Trump has threatened to destroy CBS, ABC and the New York Times. About ABC, after it conducted the debate in which he performed disastrously, he called to “take away their license”. After Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview, having refused his own, he tweeted on 10 October: “TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.” About the Times, he said on 9 October: “Wait until you see what I’m going to do with them.” He has singled out by name journalists for the Times and the New Yorker as “FAKE OBAMA LOVING ‘JOURNALISTS”. At every rally he denounces the “fake news”, a drumbeat for years, echoing Hitler’s pejorative slur, “die Lügenpresse” – “the lying press”.

Trump traveled on 11 October to Aurora, Colorado, where he claimed a Venezuelan gang had seized control, “scum” and “animals” who have “invaded and conquered” and “infected” the town, a description dismissed as false by its Republican mayor. “We have to clean out our country,” said Trump. His language represented the Nazi idea of “Rassenhygiene” – “race cleansing” that required purification, not an academic interest in genetics but a program of eugenics for designating inferior races to be isolated or eliminated.

As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “A people that fails to preserve the purity of its racial blood thereby destroys the unity of the soul of the nation in all its manifestations. A disintegrated national character is the inevitable consequence of a process of disintegration in the blood.”

The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, retired general Mark Milley, according to Bob Woodward in his new book War, told the veteran journalist: “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country.” Trump had stated that for Milley’s communication with his counterparts in China on January 6 to reassure them that the US military was stable, he deserved “DEATH” – to be executed.

On 14 October, retired general Mike Flynn – Trump’s former national security adviser, whom he pardoned for failing to register as a foreign agent and obstructing justice – was asked at a Christian nationalist rally for Trump whether he would preside over military tribunals in a second Trump term to “not only drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp, and on a few occasions, execute the swamp”. “Believe me,” Flynn replied, “the gates of hell – my hell – will be unleashed.”

Trump has been inevitably drawn to the Garden, in the city that made and unmade him. He is irreversibly entrapped in his endless neurotic syndrome of desperately seeking approval there that he constantly repels and success he inexorably undermines, a cycle of failure, rejection and humiliation. He wants New York to love him unreservedly, but his relationship with the city has been one long unrequited romance. His true love affair has always and only been with himself. When he does not receive the adoration he feels he deserves, he hates New York. Then, he tries to win its love again by performing a disgusting act, which, when he is predictably rejected, triggers his anger once again. And, then, he engages in gestures of infantile defiance, like holding a Nazi-esque rally. Trying to show himself triumphant over the city, he invites its scorn once again, and again, and again. He never comprehends that he is the cause of his continuing narcissistic injuries.

Trump’s rally, through the rhyme of history, will be a rebuke to the greatest campaign speech delivered by Franklin D Roosevelt, which, though given 88 years ago in the Garden on 31 October 1936, rings remarkably contemporary, a speech for “the restoration of American democracy” and its “preservation”.

“We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle,” FDR said. “We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me – and I welcome their hatred.”

Three years after FDR spoke at the Garden, another rally was held there, on 20 February 1939, under the sponsorship of the German American Bund, raising the slogan of “America First”, to advance the great replacement theory that Jews and other “inferior races” were displacing white Aryans. The Nazis claimed the mantle of true Americanism and Christian nationalism. Swastikas framed a gigantic portrait of George Washington as the backdrop to the stage. From the balcony hung a banner: “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.” “Wake up!” shouted the Führer of the Bund, Fritz Kuhn, “you, Aryan, Nordic and Christians, to demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!”

Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the Bund’s public relations director, declared that white supremacy was the essential basis of the nation. “The spirit which opened the west and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man,” he said, citing racial segregation and immigration quotas as its bulwarks. “It has then always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation.”

In 2019, a seven-minute documentary about the Nazi rally of 1939, A Night at the Garden, was nominated for an Academy Award. To promote it, a 30-second TV ad was produced with the tagline: “It Can Happen Here.” The line was a reference to Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, about a populist demagogue defeating FDR and imposing a fascist regime. Lewis’s wife, the famous journalist Dorothy Thompson, a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, who had reported on the rise of Hitler, pointedly attended the Nazi rally. “I saw an exact duplicate of it in the Berlin Sports Palast in 1931,” she wrote.

When the film distributor of A Night at the Garden sought to buy time for a spot on Fox News, its CEO, Suzanne Scott, rejected it as “not appropriate for our air”. After the 2020 election, during Trump’s ramping up to the January 6 insurrection, she ordered that Fox News suppress factchecking his lies because it was “bad for business”.

Now, in his announcement of his night at the Garden, Trump advertised a clipped version of the replacement theory, declaring that New York was “reeling” from “Kamala’s reckless open-border policies”, “flooding” the city with criminal “illegal migrants”. For nearly a $1m contribution to attend the event, the top tier, donors are promised an “Ultra MAGA Experience”, details to follow.

Trump’s Maga rally will be the first time since the 1939 Nazi rally that the same themes of the replacement theory will echo in the Garden. But his closing argument is more than Nazi cosplay. He cannot help but reveal his deepest desire to be loved and then to fling the middle finger to the city whose unconditional admiration he has sought since he first crossed the Queensboro Bridge.

Trump’s permanent physical move to Palm Beach after his failed coup in 2020 has not transformed him into a contented Florida Man. To the inveterate New Yorker, the Sunshine state is strictly for snowbirds, God’s waiting room for shuffleboarders. Mar-a-Lago, his winter escape, has become his unnatural embittering palace-in-exile. Florida represents disgrace to Trump.

Trump’s emotional journey back to the White House must travel through New York. He has nothing but contempt and indifference for Washington. He despises policy, flaunts his ignorance and detests anyone who has ever tried to temper him, from four-star generals to Republican congressional leaders. He wants the pomp without the circumstance. January 6 played out Trump’s true view of the capital.

Trump plots his night at the Garden as the climax of his comeback tour. He may have been president, but never top of the heap. Roy Cohn could tell him how to skirt the law and ingratiate himself with the mob, but Cohn was not a Virgil to guide his protege to respectability. Trump’s lowlife publicity antics, tutored by Cohn, made him into one of the revolving cast of characters populating tabloid trash. The larger the headline of the sordid story about himself, the bigger Trump’s delusion that kitsch burnished his class. He was always crestfallen when his frolics did not win his admission into the club.

Trump has only been truly comfortable strutting in his old New York, conning and threatening, greasing the palms of the mafia, stiffing his contractors and workers, while trying to buy his way into society affairs. Time and again, the city spat him out. He was ridiculed and reviled. He went bust six times. He defaulted on the Trump Shuttle. The banks denied him loans. He had to sell his yacht named for his daughter, The Princess. His brutish father, who financed his wild ventures, throwing good money after bad, had to buy chips illegally to momentarily float his sinking Atlantic City casino. He dumped two wives. He allegedly sexually assaulted dozens of women. When he tried to lowball Frank Sinatra, an idol, Ol�� Blue Eyes told him, “Go fuck yourself.”

After Trump had plunged in what seemed to be his final bankruptcy, he was rescued by a TV producer, Mark Burnett, who created the reality TV show The Apprentice, which depicted Trump as a business genius reigning over the Manhattan skyline. The sheer fiction was the veneer that enabled his grubby lucrative product placement side deals. His motive for running for president was a branding scam gone haywire.

Now, he has returned to the city on his road to redemption. Yet, so far, he has been held accountable for his vast crimes only in New York. He has been found liable for defamation and sexual assault and termed an adjudicated rapist by the judge in the E Jean Carroll case, and ordered to pay $83.3m in damages plus continuing interest; found liable of widespread financial fraud and ordered to pay $364m for ill-gotten gains plus continuing interest; and convicted of 34 felony counts of financial fraud for hush-money payments, to a porn star and Playboy model with whom he had affairs, in order to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

Once again, he intends to prove himself in the city that never sleeps, the city that will give him another shot at murdering someone on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it. A star is reborn.

These little town blues are melting away I’m gonna make a brand-new start of it in old New York And if I can make it there, I’m gonna make it anywhere It’s up to you, New York, New York

Trump now says that if he loses he will blame the unappreciative Jews – he hasn’t been “treated right” by the Jews and their support for Democrats is a “curse”. But Trump, who has picked up a few Yiddish words, uses them unconsciously like a native New Yorker. On 2 January 2021, he displayed his proficiency in his notorious telephone call with the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he sought to intimidate him into committing election fraud to switch the state’s voting results.

“So look,” said Trump. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

Raffensperger resisted Trump’s strong-arming, the Georgia outcome stood, and four days later Trump incited the assault on the Capitol in a last-ditch effort to thwart the certification of the election: “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump has since been indicted in Georgia for election fraud, a case in legal purgatory until after the 2024 election.

Twice, during his call with Raffensperger, Trump derided the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, who refused to be complicit in Trump’s scheme, by calling him a “schmuck”. Perhaps the word was lost on Trump’s listeners. According to Leo Rosten’s The Joy of Yiddish, it carries several meanings, including “penis” and “a dope, a jerk, a boob, a clumsy bumbling fellow”. Rosten wrote that “few impolite words express comparable contempt”.

Now, New Yorkers can only wonder, what kind of schmuck holds a Nazi-esque rally in Madison Square Garden?

[xdeepinyoux]

US ELECTION Breakdown and the American Neo Nazi flood.

As of 5:34 this morning on November 6th, the 2024 candidate for the next president was announced. While many are celebrating, there are many like myself who are terrified. I am fortunate enough to live in a Blue state (Democrat) but many are not. There will be many people who claim it’s because of the economy that they voted for Trump, unfortunately this is not true. It saddens me to say that as Americans, understanding different aspects of the candidates main running points can be misunderstood and or entirely wrong. Let’s correct and breakdown these misconceptions.

Understanding Trumps Economic Plan:

Trumps plan will endanger, if not entirely bankrupt the American economy. His plan is to raise the taxes of lower class (low income) and middle class taxes while giving a massive tax breaks to those in the 2-1% (those who make a minimum of $900,000 annually).

Nobel prize winners, people who are awarded the Nobel prize for their incredible contributions to humanity:

More than half of the living economist Nobel prize winners (all with different backgrounds and political beliefs) voiced support for Kamala’s plan and labeled it as superior to Trumps. Trump added over 8 trillion dollars worth of debt to the US during his first term in office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/science/kamala-harris-nobel-winners.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/science/kamala-harris-nobel-winners.html

Tariff’s:

Definition- a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country to influence it, raise revenues, or protect competitive advantages

Trump plans to impose Tariff’s which would be paid for by the American people, not the country whose goods are being imported. Adding this tax on imported goods will raise our country’s inflation higher. The purpose of this is to create market distortions that can actually harm domestic consumers over time.

The American Economy is Built on Immigrants:

Immigration, specifically undocumented immigrants, are constant talking points in which Trump uses to manipulate and induce fear into MAGA and other voters. By using derogatory language and racial stereotypes, he has created a harmful, dangerous and false narrative of undocumented people. Where Trump claims they are “taking American jobs”, the truth behind the matter is that undocumented migrants are working jobs that Americans do not want and will not work for the pay that is given. This was reconfirmed when Florida Govern, Ron Desantis, exiled and deported thousands of undocumented immigrants in Florida which left American citizens to complain and refuse to work those labor intensive jobs even after food shortages occurred in 2023.

Mass Deportation and what it means for the American Economy:

Mass deportation and demonization of immigrant people will lead to the downfall of the American Economy. Adding to his economic plan, the topic of deporting over a million migrants back to there birth countries would not only cost hundreds of billions of dollars but also cause labor and food shortages that have only been seen in the years 1929 – 1939 (The Great Depression).

What does this mean overall for the American People?

With a deadly combination of mass deportation, higher taxes and tariff’s the American economy will crash. Along with targeting minority groups, inflation will also bring us back to the philosophical question; would you steal bread to feed your family? The question at hand seems simple, yet statistics show the correlation between high crime rates and poverty levels time and time again. As American citizens we will see the rise of Trumps violence for a second term in office. Violent crimes against women and children, hate crimes and other violence against minorities and those who are apart of the LGBT+ community.

Trump has also spoken openly about his desire to rid Americans of their right to choose ranging from topics of abortion to voting. He has recently stated that when he wins American citizens won’t have to vote again after four years. While some may interpret this as it being his second term and therefore no longer being eligible to run again, it may have a much darker meaning. Trump has shown in the past that he has no issues with disregarding the American constitution and overturning democracy. If he were to succeed in overturning future election and voting laws then he would become Americas first Dictator. Furthermore, Trump is a convicted felon with 34 counts including but not limited to: Rape, selling national security secrets to enemy nations, staging a coup to overturn the 2020 election, election interference and voter fraud. Though we have a glimpse of what the next four years will look like it is unsure as Trump is dangerous and unpredictable. Voting for Trump in 2024 is Voting against America.

Final Note:

To anyone living in a red state where you are not safe please see the resources below:

LGBTQ+ INCLUSIVE CRISIS LINES:

Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386

or text START to 678-678 or online chat

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860

Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988

[meret118]

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Wednesday warned that “one of the most alarming things” in the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” handbook is the admission that Donald Trump didn’t accomplish all he wanted to in his first administration.

“They got a slow start […] so their codeword is ‘day one,’” Ben-Ghiat told MSNBC’s Katie Phang of the think-tank’s proposal document that is widely expected to form the basis of a potential second Trump term’s policies.

. . .

“One thing that’s very important for people to realize,” she said, is that undocumented immigrants won’t be the only ones who end up being targeted.

“It’s always more people,” said Ben-Ghiat.

“They use one group to have the justification to build the repressive infrastructure like the camps, the transit camps, whatever they’re going to do,” she added. “But be assured, and this is the history of authoritarianism, many groups of people will be targeted to be in that.”

-------

If you are transgender, perform in drag, or openly queer, apply for a passport now. They will come for you.

If you're a Muslim American, you very probably need to do the same.

Did you always wonder why Jewish people and others didn't just leave once Hitler took power? (Some couldn't, and others were in denial about how bad it would get.) If he wins, we will be in a similar situation. These people are literal nazis. It can take months to get a passport. Apply now! What can it hurt? If the Democrats win, no problem. But if trump wins, you'll be ready.

[ausetkmt]

Commentary: Trump is using his racism to regain power. Silence will let him ride bigotry to another term

Donald Trump's closing campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was a stunningly racist display where speakers mocked Latinos, Jews and Palestinians, likened the event to a "Nazi rally" and called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage." It was capped by a 78-minute speech in which the former president repeatedly attacked the intellect of the first woman of color to lead a major party presidential ticket, calling Vice President Kamala Harris "a vessel” who “can’t put two sentences together."

In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Trump is treading dangerously familiar ground, spewing a torrent of racist and xenophobic insults, threats and lies as he escalates his attacks on immigrants and non-white Americans.

As a U.S.-born Latino and white man whose father came from Central America, I am angry and disappointed that so many Americans, from everyday people to the most powerful figures, are willing to ignore or downplay Trump's dehumanizing language and behavior. It is incredibly distressing that so many in our country still don't think that Trump's litany of racist remarks, his embrace of neo-Nazi conspiracies, his dictatorial plans for a second term and his vile attacks on immigrants are enough to disqualify him.

As a member of The Times' editorial board, which has repeatedly and fearlessly made the case that Trump is uniquely dishonest and dangerous to American democracy, it especially stings to see The Times now among those institutions that have chosen the cowardly path of silence.

I am writing this under my own name, and not on behalf of The Times' editorial board, because of Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. A five-part series of editorials making the case against Trump that was supposed to be published with the Harris endorsement was also spiked. I agree with Mariel Garza, who wrote in her resignation letter as editorials editor last week that in these dangerous times, silence is complicity.

Now is the time to stand resolutely against Trump's racism and xenophobia, which flows more freely than ever, from the falsehoods he has spread about Haitian migrants eating pets, his calling Harris “retarded” and "low IQ," and his threats to use the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime statute, to get rid of migrants. His former chief of staff, John Kelly, revealed that while in office, Trump repeatedly made comments praising Adolf Hitler, such as, “You know, Hitler did some good things, too.” Kelly recently warned that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and would rule like a dictator. That should set off every conceivable alarm bell.

Despite it all, Trump is polling within a few points of Harris, who, as a former senator, state attorney general and prosecutor, has spent her career upholding American ideals and is exceptionally qualified to lead. It's infuriating that so many neighbors, coworkers and peers support a man who has called his political enemies “vermin" and said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” the same language that Hitler and the Nazi Party used to justify the Holocaust.

History is full of examples of authoritarian leaders who used xenophobic and racist rhetoric to stoke fear and hatred and fuel their rise or return to power. Trump is turning up his bigotry because it works.

Trump launched his political career by stoking the embers of white racial resentment. He announced his candidacy 10 years ago by attacking Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” He then called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” and he used his executive authority to begin carrying it out one week after taking office. President Biden revoked those actions on his first day in office.

A second Trump term would be worse, with fewer checks on his power. He's already said he would bring back his Muslim ban, including barring refugees from Gaza and other "terror-infested areas" and he wants to round up and deport millions of immigrants and even target the removal of people who entered the country legally. He wants to end birthright citizenship.

One-quarter of the U.S. population is either foreign-born or has at least one immigrant parent. That figure, by the way, includes Trump himself — his mother was an immigrant from Scotland — his first wife and his current wife and four of his five children from three marriages. But when he blames immigrants for society’s woes, he’s not referring to white people.

He has questioned why the U.S. should accept Black immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” in Africa rather than from “nice” majority-white countries like Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. U.S. citizens, and even members of Congress or the U.S. military, are not spared. He has told four American congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries, and according to recent reporting in the Atlantic, complained in an Oval Office meeting about fulfilling his promise to help pay for the funeral of murdered U.S. Army Private Vanessa Guillén, saying “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f— Mexican!”

Trump has a decades-long record of racism and discrimination, and of belittling and demeaning non-white people as dumb, inferior and not real Americans. His political rise came from peddling the racist "birther" lie that the nation’s first Black president was not a natural-born citizen, forcing Barack Obama to release his long-form birth certificate. He has followed the same pattern with the insults he has flung at Harris and by questioning whether she is really Black.

I fear deeply for our country if Trump succeeds in fanning the flames of racial resentment and hatred to regain power. And it pains me that still others remain undecided or stay silent at a such a perilous moment for our nation. With the race alarmingly close, it's time for all Americans of conscience to use their votes and their voices and to stop a hateful demagogue.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

CNN aired Trump's town hall meeting in the interest of "hearing both sides" and I want I remind everyone that's how Trump got elected in the first place.

He ran, and everyone thought it was a joke that this billionaire that can't even maintain a successful business is trying to become president, so all the news media outlets aired his speeches with the intent to point and laugh at his blatant bigotry resulting in him getting hundreds of hours of free air time and him being seen as a legit candidate.

And when he won on the platform of giving a voice to the willfully ignorant bigots, everyone acted so suprised that he won "despite" the hundreds of hours or free airtime because the bigots watching didn't get the memo that they were supposed to point and laugh at the guy saying what they've been too afraid to say because of "wokism" (as the conservatives call it).

Like "How could this happen. How could this happen."

And then he didn't win a second term because leftists realized what they were up against and voted literally the first guy that wasn't Trump into office, and the Trump supporters planned an insurrection and you're suprised the first guy that gave a voice to the Klan members that burned crosses in people's yards caused a fucking attempted insurrection.

And now CNN is mad that people are calling them out because they're doing it AGAIN by giving Trump free airtime to be a voice for literally Nazis.

You know what. I'd like to apologize. I'd like to apologize for all the times I said in school "How could the people let Nazis take over Germany."

Because I was too young and naive and optimistic to realize that people play wilfully ignorant like it's a giving Olympic sport just giving gahddamn Klan Members and Nazis gahddamn platforms in the millions.

"Oh I want people to see this to that racism still exists." You're emboldening the fucking bigots that semds death threats to literal children every time a major cinematic company decides to hire a non-white actor because you're airing his speeches in length as if he's got a legitimate opinion that needs to be heard.

I can't even humor the thought that they don't know what they're fucking doing. Because airing speeches in length is what you do for legitimate people whose opinions needs to be heard. That's just not how you handle "What a fucking bigot. Please don't listen to this guy." Airing speeches in length is literally a message "You need to listen to this guy."

If your fucking message is "You need to hear this guy and understand why this is a threat to our democracy" you air clips with lengthy commentary in-between about how this is white supremacy shit, and why our country shouldn't be following people that have these values.

And yes. I used the words "listen" and "hear" intentionally because "listen" is for intaking the words and internalizing it and processing it. "Hear" is for just knowing what words been said but not actually internally processing the words because that's the fucking point. You only hear it not listen. You can hear without listening but you can't listen without hearing.

This isn't a fucking joke. When one side is literally advocating for the genocide of people, you don't "listen to both sides". Because that only emboldens them and gives legitimacy to their claims. You hear that they're being a bigot and tell them to shut the fuck up because you've gotta send a goddamn message to everyone that their claims aren't worth listening to and any attempt to will result in ridicule and scorn.

Fucking hell.

I'm so fucking pissed off that CNN is acting like they don't know what they're doing that I can't fully articulate all of the thoughts running around in my head into one fucking post.

-fae

[dertaglichedan]

Scaramucci: Trump Will Use FBI Like the ‘Gestapo’ in Second Term

Former Trump administration communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Friday on CNN’s “The Lead” that former President Donald Trump plans to use the FBI like Nazi Germany’s “Gestapo.”

Scaramucci said, “The Biden messaging is fantastic. The Biden legislative agenda has work. He’s done more for working class people, then Donald Trump did 2017 to 2021 but you’ve got an issue there.”

He continued, “Unfortunately in our society now, these elections are popularity contests and not hiring decisions. And so they have to come up with a strategy to expand the net of the Biden Independants.”

***This guy lasted what?? A week on the job?? Yeah going to use the FBI, because that worked so well the first time around, right Anthony??

[samueldays]

You know that joke about the Jew who enjoys reading Nazi newspapers because they're talking up the power and influence of the Jews?

Well,

A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024.

Chunks of the article gives me a similar feeling of "Yeah, I hope/wish that were true". Trump better organised? Trump can find loyal personnel? Sounds good!

Because maga Republicans have been planning his second term for months, Trump 2 would be more organised than Trump 1. True believers would occupy the most important positions. Mr Trump would be unbound in his pursuit of retribution, economic protectionism and theatrically extravagant deals. No wonder the prospect of a second Trump term fills the world’s parliaments and boardrooms with despair. But despair is not a plan. It is past time to impose order on anxiety.

You'd have to be a complete idiot to think Trump would be unbound in a second term, and the Economist writers aren't complete idiots, so I must conclude this is hyperbole verging on outright lies, which I could get in almost any internet comment section.

The greatest threat Mr Trump poses is to his own country. Having won back power because of his election-denial in 2020, he would surely be affirmed in his gut feeling that only losers allow themselves to be bound by the norms, customs and self-sacrifice that make a nation. In pursuing his enemies, Mr Trump will wage war on any institution that stands in his way, including the courts and the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice is part of the executive branch and obliged to answer to the President. If it stands in his way, he is right to make war on it, and it should be punished for treason. The "norms" implied here appear to be norms in favor of the Deep State doing whatever it likes and disregarding the President.

Two nations in one country: the Harvard and the Amerikaner. Read Moldbug, etc.

Yet a Trump victory next year would also have a profound effect abroad. China and its friends would rejoice over the evidence that American democracy is dysfunctional.

No more dysfunctional than re-electing Figurehead Joe.

If Mr Trump trampled due process and civil rights in the United States, his diplomats could not proclaim them abroad.

Unfriendly reminder that Trump issued a "no racial scapegoating" executive order and Biden revoked it so he could engage in racial scapegoating, racial privilege and racial quotas.

US civil rights law as currently executed by Democrats is an evil system which tramples on other rights like freedom of speech, freedom of association, and presumption of innocence. Saying "civil rights" in contemporary law is a hefty motte-and-bailey term.

[mitchipedia]

It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk

Michael Tomasky at The New Republic:

To announce that the real enemy is domestic and then to speak of that enemy in subhuman terms is Fascism 101. Especially that particular word.

Tomasky says Trump is “not going to be throwing anybody in the gas chamber,” but:

The Nazis did a lot of things from 1933 to 1941 (when the Final Solution commenced) that would shock Americans today, and Trump and his followers are capable of every one of them: shutting down critical voices in the press; banning books, and even burning some, just to drive the point home; banning opposition organizations or even parties; making political arrests of opponents without telling them the charges; purging university faculties; doing the same with the civil service….

Many Americans would not be shocked by those measures. Many would cheer—until the Republican Gestapo came for them.. And don’t be sure that Trump isn’t going to throw anybody in the gas chamber. Trump is already talking openly about building concentration camps.

Trump invoked “vermin” on the very day that The New York Times broke yet another harrowing story about his second term plans, this time having to do with immigration. “He plans,” the Times reported, “to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.” And he wants to build huge—yes—detention camps. There’s much more. And all of this, by the way, appears to have been fed to the paper by his own people, who are obviously proud of it. They want America to know. And just before this, remember, Trump told Univision that he would use the Justice Department and the FBI to go after his political enemies.

[tomorrowusa]

"Fool me once..."

Don't get fooled again!

[papirouge]

American muslims voting for Trump are too ignorant to read history. The US is apathetic towards genocide unless it directly affects them. They didn’t care about the holocaust or nazi Germany until they were attacked. The us hosted Nazis in their own country then brought those that survived in to be scientists in the government after the war ended. Seriously, I cannot understand my friend who voted for Trump believing that by writing to him and protesting for Palestine to be free is easier than Kamala being president

Trumps plans are to deport protesters and his government choices are all serious zionists that are already meeting with Israeli leaders to completely wipe out Palestine, then give that land and homes to Israeli citizens. And she’s crying because she thought Palestine would be protected because “the us is strong- Trump could save Gaza” I just can’t understand 😵‍💫

People are entitled to vote for anyone they want, period. But that's indeed stupid for a MUSLIM to expect Trump doing anything for Palestine or the benefit of the Muslim LMAO

In my country Muslims are known for not being very politically involved. They'd rather organize through association (Muslims schools, hallal food chain, etc.) Which is somehow smart bc why expect anything from politicians when you can have shit down by yourself?

Political islam is a menace though and places with strong Muslim demographics are known to have women bullied into "covering themselves". That's why I don't mind a Muslim ban. Those men are DANGEROUS (I don't mind Muslim women tho)

I know it's easy for me to say this as an European, but you guys may find solace in realizing that Trump probably won't do a third of what he promised he will. He already did a first term. Never built that wall. Didn't ban abortion... The only significant thing he did was the Muslim ban and tbh as a non Muslim that's non of my business.

Trump's edge was being "against" the system. This second term may be the opportunity the show everyone he's no Messiah and that he will profit off that system once he's at the top LIKE EVERYONE BEFORE HIM. Him winning already disproved the conspiracy of a cabal against him to not let him win. If Trump was really a threat to the system they would have never let him win.

Didn't he already start nominating his buddy, like Musk? Now that he's from the other side of the mirror, he won't be able to pull out the "the sySTem FEarS uS cOz We sAy tHe tRuTh" THEY ARE THE SYSTEM NOW.

[bllsbailey]

It's No Mystery What Caused Kamala to Get Walloped By Trump

Donald J. Trump has been reelected president of the United States. Kamala Harris got throttled in the 2024 election, once again toppled by the average American voter. It was a working-class uprising buoyed by a shift in suburban white women and Hispanics. It’s not accurate to say this election was a red wave—this was the red tsunami that was brewing in 2022. How Latinos voted in this election should be the final sign for liberals to realize that open borders, lax immigration enforcement, and mass amnesty are losing arguments. We can discuss that later, but again, Democrats got thrashed because they don’t know how to talk to working-class voters anymore. 

To boot, they don’t have these voters, the former backbone of the Democratic Party, within their ranks anymore. CNN might be awash with liberal tears, but they’ve had some moments of clarity where the divide on education is explicitly clear: Democrats are viewed as too elite and educated and, therefore, cannot relate or communicate with working families. The irony of the 2024 cycle is that the Democrats are the 'weird' people. 

You cannot win the election with just white college-educated voters, single women, and some black folks. The initial base is too small; most Americans don’t have college degrees. To compound the communication issue, Democrats view the less educated as less than at best and neo-Nazis as worst. These people had enough of these white, wealthy, college-educated elites telling them their concerns aren’t necessary because they lack a higher education degree. Even worse, how many times have you heard these blue-haired freaks say, ‘I have a degree,’ to shut down debate? That means nothing, child. It means you likely wasted a home mortgage on a worthless degree. It also doesn’t give you a leg up in any debate. 

Some were rather prescient in their observations about a Harris loss. If that were to happen, it would be because the Democratic Party and their consultant class have totally lost the ability to communicate with the average voter, who views these people, rightly, as aliens from space (via The Guardian): 

…Harris reminded her supporters of Project 2025, the “detailed and dangerous plan” that she believes an “increasingly unstable and unhinged” Trump will follow to cement “unchecked power”. She sounded the alarm about the dire threat Trump poses to “your fundamental freedoms” and how in his second term he would be “essentially immune” from oversight.  This is hair-raising stuff. And the campaign thinks that menacing warnings like these will motivate some urgency to march to the polls for Harris. The only problem is that voters, especially working-class voters, seem uniquely uninspired by the appeal.  The Center for Working-Class Politics (CWCP) recently tested a variety of political messages on voters in Pennsylvania, a key battleground for both campaigns, to determine what kind of rhetoric is working to nudge blue-collar voters toward Harris. In collaboration with the polling firm YouGov, we polled a representative sample of 1,000 eligible voters in Pennsylvania between 24 September and 2 October 2024. We asked respondents to evaluate different political messages that they might hear from Harris and Trump, and to score them on a scale of favorability.  In line with our past research, we found that economically focused messages and messages that employed a populist narrative fared best relative to Trump-style messages about Biden’s competence, immigration, corrupt elites, critical race theory, inflation, election integrity and tariffs. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Harris’s messages on abortion and immigration fared worse than any of the economic or populist messages we tested.  Yet no message was as unpopular as the one we call the “democratic threat” message. Much like Harris’s recent rhetoric, this message called on voters to “defend our freedom and our democracy” against a would-be dictator in the form of Trump. It named Trump as “a criminal” and “a convicted felon” and warned of his plans to punish his political enemies. Of the seven messages we tested, each relating to a major theme of the Harris campaign, the “democratic threat” message polled dead last.  It was the least popular message relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And it was the least popular message among the working-class constituencies Harris and the Democrats need most.  Among blue-collar voters, a group that leans Republican, the democratic threat message was a whopping 14.4 points underwater relative to the average support for Trump’s messages. And among more liberal-leaning service and clerical workers, it was also the least popular message, finishing only 1.6 percentage points ahead of the Trump average. Even among professionals, the most liberal of the bunch and the group that liked the message the best, the message barely outperformed Trump’s messages.  The exact opposite is true for the “strong populist” message we tested. This message, which combined progressive economic policy suggestions with a strong condemnation of “billionaires”, “big corporations” and the “politicians in Washington who serve them”, tested best with blue-collar workers, service and clerical workers and professionals.  […]  …the distaste for the democratic threat message among working people, and the total obliviousness to that distaste among campaign officials, is evidence itself of the huge disconnect between Harris and the working-class voters she desperately needs to win. Worse, every ad or speech spent hectoring about the Trumpian threat is one less opportunity for Harris to focus on her popular economic policies; one less opportunity to lean into a populist “people v plutocrats” narrative that actually does resonate with the working class.  If Harris loses, it’ll be because the campaign and the candidate represent a party that is now fundamentally alien to many working people – a party that has given up on mobilizing working people around shared class frustrations and aspirations.

The ballots have been counted, which is exactly what happened on November 5. The Democrats have been here before with Hillary Clinton in 2016, but it was largely ignored, possibly because the former first lady won the popular vote. Trump won the Electoral College and the popular vote, while the GOP retained the House and reclaimed the Senate. The working-class voter had to smash the Democrats over the head with a sledgehammer again. Will they get the point? Or will they wallow and drown in more anti-Trump hysterics? It’s more of the latter right now, as the Left is incapable of self-reflection due to the cancer of self-righteousness and nauseating arrogance.

Trending on Townhall Videos

[mariacallous]

When the Kansas City Chiefs romp to a Super Bowl victory on February 11, tight end Travis Kelce will bring his superstar girlfriend onto the field, drop to one knee, and propose. Their engagement will unleash a media maelstrom and create the conditions for Taylor Swift’s hugely significant endorsement of embattled president Joe Biden.

That is, according to a network of prominent conspiracy theorists, the plan hatched inside the Pentagon to keep the president in power.

The far-right broadcasters behind this very specific prediction have offered no proof for it, nor do they have the most sterling track record. Jack Posobiec, a longtime booster of white supremacist and neo-Nazi figures and a key figure in the outlandish Pizzagate theory, tweeted in December that Swift and her “vaccine shill boyfriend” were being weaponized by the Democrats to ensure Biden’s victory.

Posobiec had a very specific way of describing it: “The Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated.”

Swift may not have actually waded into the 2024 election cycle, beyond a generic appeal to register to vote, but the fury around her supposed deep-state-backed influence operation has the Trump campaign plotting “holy war” against the “Blank Space” singer.

The allegation that Swift is a “psyop” is ludicrous, and it showcases a complete lack of understanding of what psychological operations actually are and how they work.

If there is a psyop going on, it’s being run by those crying wolf.

A Short History of the Psyop

Fixation on psychological warfare dates back at least to Sun Tzu: “The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”

But the field really came into its own in the 20th century, when the great powers turned to modern psychology to understand and defeat their adversaries through propaganda and trickery.

As Paul Linebarger explained in his seminal 1948 book on psychological warfare, there are two main types of psychological operations: white propaganda, which is honest and direct, and black propaganda, which “purports to emanate from a source other than the true one.” Linebarger, who died in 1966, served in the Office of War Information during the Second World War and helped establish the US Army’s psychological warfare section.

“The Army focused on the white and gray,” Jared Tracy, the deputy command historian at the US Army Special Operations History Office, tells WIRED. Initially, the military’s psychological operations focused on how best to deliver information—”leaflet warfare” and “loudspeaker propaganda,” he says. But the military soon found creative new ways to speak to the enemy. That included the tactical, meant to gain a specific and immediate benefit on the battlefield; and the strategic, which has a longer-term, more general aim.

Black propaganda can be effective, but it is notoriously hard to do right, Linebarger writes, as it “needs to be written so as to fit in with what the enemy is reading, listening to, or talking about in his home country.”

During the Vietnam War, Trịnh Thị Ngọ—known commonly as Hanoi Hannah—delivered regular broadcasts aimed at American GIs. Her shows, written by the North Vietnamese Army, mixed popular Western music with clunky and clumsy propaganda about the futility of the war. While Hanoi Hannah’s shows may have contributed to low morale, it is unlikely she prompted any more than a handful of desertions or defections. The US later scaled up this technique through Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which broadcast news and culture behind the Iron Curtain, with some covert help from the CIA—millions listened to the jazz programs and news broadcasts, but the broadcasts utterly failed at spurring open rebellion.

Public perception of psychological operations soured in a big way in the mid-1970s, when details of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program were first released, detailing a plot—more based in science fiction than science—to brainwash subjects using psychoactive drugs. Further revelations that the US had supplied Nicaraguan death squads with psychological warfare guides would not help that public relations problem.

A lot of the paranoia about psychological operations stems from “misapprehensions of what it is, what it is capable of,” says Tracy, who wrote one of the definitive books on the subject.

While there may be grandiose ambitions of changing “hearts and minds,” Tracy says, the actual effect of this work is more modest: “Really, what you’re looking to do is affect peoples’ decisions of what to do and what not to do.”

In 1994, reports emerged of one particularly musical innovation from the Pentagon: During the Gulf War, the US military would boost morale by cranking up Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” when responding to Iraqi SCUD missile attacks, for example.

These techniques would later be adapted by the CIA to torture inmates captured in the War on Terror, a program now widely regarded as a complete failure.

What Makes a Good Psyop?

“Which is more effective: Tokyo Rose, in lovely, clear English, but … very much falsehood-based; or Voice of America and Radio Free Europe?” asks Christopher Paul, USMC chair for information at the Naval Postgraduate School and a senior social scientist at RAND Corporation. He answers his own question: “You can also be effective and persuasive with the truth.”

In recent decades, the Pentagon has even tried to rebrand these operations with a more mundane, but more accurate, name—Military Information Support Operations, or MISO. The name hasn’t caught on.

Paul has spent years studying the effectiveness of psychological and information operations, particularly nefarious and covert propaganda efforts. Fears over how these techniques could be used against Americans are long-standing, he notes, and are exactly why this work is forbidden domestically.

“The Department of Defense has an influence capability,” Paul says. “But by statute, law, habit, authorization, and permission: It is only ever pointed at selected foreign audiences.” Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, for example, are expressly prohibited from broadcasting to domestic audiences in the US.

Tracy and Paul agree that psychological operations work when they are targeted, clear, and—ideally—honest.

Paul points to the Russian effort to sway the 2016 presidential election. “Did it change electoral outcomes? No, not as far as we can tell, Did it cause or prevent conflicts? No, not as far as we can tell,” Paul says.

It was equally ineffective when the Pentagon tried it.

In 2022, social media companies identified a fear-reaching campaign, run by the Pentagon, to use dummy social media accounts to spread propaganda targeted at Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow. The effort prompted a backlash and led to a full-scale review of these operations. (That, seemingly, hasn’t prevented the Pentagon from exploring the possible use of deepfakes.)

But when researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory and social media monitoring firm Graphika looked at the campaign, they found this astroturf social media campaign was wildly ineffective.

“The vast majority of posts and tweets we reviewed received no more than a handful of likes or retweets,” the researchers found. Fewer than one in five of the dummy social media accounts had managed to amass more than 1,000 followers, with most of the content receiving no interaction at all. “Tellingly, the two most-followed assets in the data provided by Twitter were overt accounts that publicly declared a connection to the US military.”

The Pop-Op

The US government has certainly tried to use popular music for its own ends. And it wasn’t always forthright about its efforts—as Linebarger noted: “The conviction of the propagandist that he is not a propagandist can be a real asset.”

In the early Cold War, the Congress on Cultural Freedom—a CIA front group—bankrolled American musicians’ tours, including jazz legends Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong, in hopes of countering Communist influence and promoting American values.

“Those who already have established credibility can be a real asset [in psychological operations],” Tracy says. “If your purposes align.”

But Gillespie and Armstrong made clear that the CIA couldn’t even control its own people: Frustrated with Jim Crow laws back in the US, Gillespie refused to attend briefings with US officials. Armstrong quit one of his tours in disgust. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,” Armstrong said in 1957.

In 2020, journalist Patrick Radden Keefe investigated the possibility that the CIA had a hand in writing “Wind of Change,” an enormously popular song by a West German band called the Scorpions that became an anthem for independence movements in the USSR. (The Scorpions deny the theory.)

So there is ample history of the US government leveraging, or at least trying to leverage, celebrities and cultural icons to amplify its message. But Tracy laughs off the idea that there is a shadowy psychological operations unit inside the Pentagon managing musicians from obscurity to stardom for nefarious ends—and rigging the NFL playoffs while they’re at it.

“That’s not a thing,” he says. Organizationally, practically, logistically, the theory falls apart at every turn. Someone in the Democratic Party may well approach Swift for an endorsement, and they don’t need the Pentagon’s help.

One Good Psyop Deserves Another

The real psyop may have been staring us in the face all along.

For years, Trump’s supporters have levied the accusation of psyop at anything that contradicts their worldview. Q, the pseudonymous leader of QAnon, cryptically asked their followers in 2017: “What is brainwashing? What is a psyop?” Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has told listeners of his War Room podcast that by listening “you will never succumb to psychological warfare.” Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who helped Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, has said that efforts to deny that the 2020 election was stolen are “all a psyop.”

Mike Benz, a former Trump official who has a history of posting racist conspiracy theories under a pseudonym, helped popularize the Swift theory. He alleges psyops are everywhere, from the Covid-19 vaccine effort to anti-disinformation programs to climate change education campaigns. He has become a go-to voice for some Republican politicians, including Representative Jim Jordan.

In that respect, Benz has stumbled onto one of the most effective psyop tactics: Discredit everything.

Linebarger, in his book, offers a prime example of this strategy: “The dropping of a few hundred tons of well counterfeited currency would tend to foul up any fiscal system.” This kind of black propaganda doesn’t seek to convince anyone of anything, but merely hopes to foment distrust of everything.

Paul says Moscow is particularly good at this kind of work. “Russian propaganda can be characterized as a war on information, this kind of nihilistic campaign to make everyone skeptical of everything.”

While influencers like Posobiec have a habit of sharing Russian disinformation, there’s no reason to think they’re being directly managed by the Kremlin. More likely, they’ve simply picked up on the same tactics.

So while Swift may well be an excellent psyop if America ever goes to war with Gen Z, it is more likely that the real psychological operation was the distrust we fomented along the way.

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump: Kamala has destroyed our country. Impending Bedlam. Israel expects counterattack. Russia's economy may face catastrophic downturn. The Green New Scam Is Dying

Lioness of Judah Ministry

Oct 28, 2024

Trump in NYC: Kamala has destroyed our country

Trump speaks at election rally at Madison Square Garden in New York: I will stop the chaos in the Middle East…we will build a massive defense shield, all made in the USA.

Former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Sunday accused his rival, Kamala Harris, of destroying the United States. “Next Tuesday, you have to stand up and you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve done a terrible job, that Crooked Joe Biden has done a terrible job. You've destroyed our country, we’re not going to take it anymore. Kamala, you’re fired! Get out! Get out!” said Trump during a rally at Madison Square Garden arena in New York.

Roughly A Quarter Of Americans Believe A Post-Election Civil War Is Likely

Around 27% of Americans believe a civil war is likely to break out after the upcoming US presidential election, according to a recent YouGov poll, with supporters of both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris expressing similar concerns.

The following report is by RT: A significant number of Americans fear the upcoming election could lead to political violence, with 6% stating that a second civil war is “very likely” and 21% saying it is “somewhat likely.” Roughly equal proportions of Trump and Harris supporters thought a civil war was at least somewhat likely, according to the survey conducted between October 18-21 for The Times and the SAY24 project.

Impending Bedlam: The Pentagon Has Already Begun Preparing To Suppress Mass Unrest On The Streets During And After The November 5 Elections

With so many stories out there about how election results may be delayed, or rather, WILL be delayed, such as Arizona saying it will take at least two weeks to get the results, and Pennsylvania saying “several days”, and many localities blaming very poor service by the United Sates Post Office for their expected delays.

 “‘For the love of God, vote early,’ one election official says.” Some states count votes quickly while others take weeks and therein lies the problem; there should be a mandated time when ALL results are announced, and that should be the next day after voting as things used to be before we implemented all of these efficiency plans that have done exactly the opposite of the announced goal of those plans.

NYC Mayor Says Trump Not A Fascist, Urges Politicians To 'Dial Down The Temperature'

Mayor Eric Adams said he disagrees with the notion that Trump’s rally should be scrapped over Kelly’s comments.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams rebuffed recent claims that former President Donald Trump is a fascist and said that Trump’s Madison Square Garden event should go ahead. “I have heard those terms hurled at me by some political leaders in the city, using terms like [Nazi leader Adolph] Hitler and fascist,” the Democratic mayor said at a news conference in New York City on Saturday. “I know what Hitler has done, and I know what a fascist regime looks like. I think, as I have called for over and over again, that the level of conversation, I think we can all dial down the temperature,” Adams said at the conference in which he also detailed a significant police presence planned for Trump’s event at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan Sunday.