DocWatts

The Trump presidency was like that alternate timeline in Back to to the Future where Biff found the Sports Almanac... As far as Joe Rogan, the amount of respect I've had for the guy has been plummeting over the past year or two. I'm all for having a dialog with diverse political voices, but the fact that he can't see the harm of giving a platform to someone like Alex Jones is troubling... That and the false equivalencies he sometimes draws between Biden and Trump, and some of the Conspiracies over Covid he's been parroting... And thing is this is probably more on me for not being cognizant to this aspect of Rogan's personality earlier, as I don't think he's substantially changed over the past few years so much as the world has changed, and some of the problematic aspects of Rogan are more readily apparent...

In Hitler's case the community he did latch onto was the camaraderie he developed for his fellow soldiers during the horrific conditions of World War 1, which was a formative experience not only for him but for an entire generation of Germans. When the news broke that Germany lost the World War, Hitler was in a hospital bed recovering from wounds he received during a chemical weapons attack. He was informed that Germany had lost the war because 'socialists had taken over the state' and 'stabbed the army in the back', and the news broke him. The extent of how badly the war was going for Germany was hidden from the population, and the idea that the German army was stabbed in the back was a popular Conspiracy Theory going around which absolved the military leadership of its responsibility for losing the war. Add to this the fact that Allied armies never advanced into Germany, and the news of Germany's defeat came as a shock to many people. Not hard to see how the bitterness and resentment from that could develop into a Toxic Life Purpose.

Omg i'm laughing out loud to this

Kaiser Wilhelm might be a more apt Historical comparison. Or to get more granular, if you perhaps put the Kaiser into a blender with Kanye West and Boris Yeltsin, along with a few cans of Spray Tan...

My reaction when I see anyone claiming Nazis were left-wing:

This might be the most frustrating historical misconception I come across semi-frequently, both for how pervasive it is, and also how easily verifiable it is to debunk this claim. That and completely misunderstanding the reasons for the rise of a regime that led to the deaths of 70 million people is profoundly dangerous.

Hitler didn't take over the government in a coup, at least not in the traditional sense that you're likely referring to. They tried going that route in the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, which ended in fiasco and embarrassment for the Nazis, who afterwards decided that using electoral politics to gain power and end Democracy would be more successful. The widespread suffering caused by the Great Depression, which hit Germany especially hard due to the Treaty of Versailles and also to the withdrawal of the American financial support which was keeping the German economy afloat, finally presented conditions which were conducive to Nazi political aims. The Nazi Party won enough seats in the 1932 election to make them the largest party in the Reichstag, allowing Hitler to become chancellor, ruling alongside president Paul Von Hindenburg (the Conservative former military dictator of Germany during WW1, who hated Hitler, yet decided to appoint him chancellor under political pressure in the mistaken notion that moderates in the government would restrain him). It was the burning of the Reichstag building in 1933 that provided Hitler with opportunity to declare a State of Emergency which ended all civil liberties and banned other political parties in Germany, putting the last nail in the coffin of the Weimar Republic. When Hindenburg died in 1934, the last person who could have potentially opposed Hitler was gone, and his consolidation of political power complete. As to Hitler's political beliefs, he despised the Social Democracy of the Weimar Republic, which for its brief existence was one of the most Progressive and Left leaning Democracies in the world up until that point. Just because he shares similar personality defects to other SD-Red leaning individuals (such as Stalin), does not make him a Leftist.

Hitler was in no way, shape or form a Leftist. This is a profound misunderstanding of literally everything about Hitler and the Nazis. The Socialist part of National Socialism was there purely for marketing, the same way that the world Republic is used in The People's Republic of China. The reason for this is because Socialist Parties were popular at the time, and the Nazis cynically used this in their bid to rise to power and then end Democracy. The number of people with no knowledge of history who believe that Hitler was a Leftist is stupefying.

He was using what's known in politics as a Dog Whistle : It's political shorthand for a phrase that may sound innocuous to some people, but which also communicates something more insidious either to a subset of the audience or outside of the audience’s conscious awareness — a covert appeal to some noxious set of views. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/7/13549154/dog-whistles-campaign-racism So basically if you want to communicate something insidious (such as racism or violence) but want plausible deniability, you use Dog Whistle language to accomplish that.

@Marten@Marten The higher ups of the Capitol Police didn't take the threat of violence from Trump supporters seriously, and thus didn't prepare, making it impossible for even the police who wanted to do thier job to contain the mob. Democratic lawmakers are calling for Investigations for white supremacist ties within the Capitol Police, as it seems very likely that the fiasco came as a result of sympathies between Trump's coup aims and the Capitol Hill Police, beyond just simple incompetence. Beginning to sound like a broken record here, but the FBI has been warning about ties between Police Departments and far right extremist groups for years...

D.C. National Guard to be mobilized for 30 days, including for Biden inauguration https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/national-guard-mobilized-for-30-days-including-biden-inauguration.html

We literally just saw a reenactment of the beer hall putsch happen at the behest of a sitting President. Calling for his immediate removal is not an over-reaction.

CNBC : Pelosi and Schumer call for Trump’s immediate removal from office for ‘insurrection’ https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/07/chuck-schumer-calls-for-trumps-removal-from-office.html

Still doesn't excuse the Capitol Police for not taking the threat of disruptive MAGA mob violence seriously and taking the necessary precautions, since the possibility of something like this happening was painfully obvious for quite some time now. Where were the rows of police in Riot Gear that were standing in front of the Capitol during the BlackLivesMatter protests? The police budget for defense of the Capitol building is something like a half a billion dollars a year, they obviously had the resources (if not the willingness) to prevent this from happening. This is far from the first time something like this has happened, with Trump's Cult trying to force thier way into government buildings to disrupt electoral proceedings. Did these people just forget the recent violent riots in DC by the Proud Boys, or armed MAGA protesters forcing thier way into the Michigan Capital building, or the recent foiled plot to kidnap and execute the governor of Michigan? Trump was explicitly encouraging this kind of behavior, it has not been a secret. Negligent failure to make necessary preparations for an obvious threat is still a form of complicity, and it's more than evident that the Capitol Police were sympathetic to the aims of Trump's Coup attempt. Otherwise the threat of violence from the far right would have been taken more seriously.

And as evidence for what a precarious situation we now find ourselves in, 'moderate' in this context seems to mean 'agrees to abide by basic democratic principles' and 'is not a fascist', two things that should be a given in a democratic country.

The reason that the MAGA rioters were able to get into the building is because the Police in charge of guarding the Capital building were sympathetic to the aims of the Trump's armed mob, and literally let them walk into the Capital Building. The only reason that was able to happen is because Police departments sympathies lie more with White Supremacists than say Civil Rights protestors. Not to sound like a broken record, but the FBI has been warning us about this for years. https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/ks0bu1/police_letting_trump_rioters_into_capitol/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/us/police-response-black-lives-matter-protest-us-capitol/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2f6azSV6xG5JbvApofVVtYIQwAyjzwsyNVuPtXo5XtIPuYFXuTsMPWm2c

Yup, well said.

Notice how countries plagued by crime are also countries with high levels of Income Inequality (just look to the United States, South Africa, or Russia for example). That's not a coincidence, the two are correlated.

Or a far more reasonable and likely explanation is that the USCP Officers guarding the building were sympathetic to the MAGA Rioters, and just let them in. The FBI has been warning for years that far right extremist groups have had ties with Police Departments, and what is QAnon but a far right extremist group?

So apparently the United States Capitol Police (USCP) has a budget of around $500 million ...to protect one building. To put that into perspective, that's larger than the budget for some cities. Yet a bloated budget doesn't translate into effecting policing when its evident that the organization's (or at least some portion of its officers) sympathies lie with domestic terrorists. After all, it was the USCP that let the MAGA Rioters into the damned Capital Building.

Also: Trump blocked by Twitter and Facebook https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/technology-55569604

Trump acknowledges end of presidency after Congress certifies Biden win https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/533066-trump-acknowledges-biden-win-after-congress-certifies-election

Yeah, but it's already to the point where Trump supporters are storming the Capital, and a majority of his supporters believe in thier bones that the election was fraudulent. Seems like we're already past that point, no?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/pence-not-trump-activated-the-national-guard-report.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/06/politics/25th-amendment-explainer/index.html Not sure how much credence to give this, but I'm hearing talk of the 25th Amendment being invoked and Trump being removed from Office for the few weeks he has remaining. Pence, not Trump, was apparently the one to call in the National Guard tonight, which is highly unusual because under normal circumstances only the President has the authority to do so. Not really sure what to make of this in all honesty.

I actually like this one quite a bit. Of course the challenge is to come up with a memorable phrase that conveys the spirit of what the movement is about, while simultaneously making it harder for that phrase to be used as ammunition for right wing propaganda