Russia-linked Facebook ads and Twitter accounts from 2016 campaign released by House Intel Committee
Speaking of Russia and social media, check out the #TeamPatriot hashtag at the moment.
It looks like massive infighting craziness happening within the centrists, but I’m not familiar enough with that crowd to disentangle it. Accusations of Russian agent-ness getting thrown all over the place.
This is definitely where we differ: from my (albeit highly privileged*) position on the ground in the U.S., from my following the news in greater depth than most Americans as part of my job, and from the historical perspective I’ve gained from formal academic training and decades of reading about this very subject, I just don’t think that fascism has yet taken control here to the degree you think it has.
Do not mistake that view for complacency. The spectre of right-wing populism is certainly menacing liberal democracratic institutions throughout the West, and while many of those institutions are undeniably broken or compromised they still stand in the way of fascism and should be defended and improved. For the moment the U.S. still has an independent judiciary, for the moment there are still checks and balances preventing the current executive branch from turning fascist Tweets into policy, for the moment there are still elections, for the moment there is still a free press and free Internet. So, for the moment, my focus is defending those institutions and calling out the attempts by domestic bad actors (and a foreign autocrat who gives them material aid) who want to further degrade them further, reduce public confidence in them, and exacerbate the dire economic and climatic conditions that are also beseiging them – not only in the U.S., but throughout the industrialised West.
[* obviously PoCs, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, etc. are more under the gun and living in an America closer to fascism than my own]
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Also, this post:
By the time it is obvious to everyone, it is far too late to respond.
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