Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant

Preach Amy Poehler GIF by Sisters

It’s weird that so many people don’t get that.

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It’s a great tactic to prevent people from criticizing awful people who are trying to harm others and ruin the country.

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Um. Really? Cause they FINALLY deplatformed Trump, and he still seems to have a large influence on the GOP… but sure.

Once again, we ignored white supremacists for a long time, and here we are. They very nearly pulled off a successful coup.

BTW, it’s kind of insulting for you to completely dismiss people who are engaging you in good faith.

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Yeah, I don’t get the angle there. The fact that Fox News, Breitbart and OANN aren’t covering despicable anti-trans language by a sitting congressperson does not mean what they think it means…:face_with_monocle:

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Exactly. I suspect at least SOME of the viewers if they heard how they are talking about marginalized groups might actually care about that. But unlike actual journalist, they do not print facts, but pure propaganda.

A congress person making bigoted statements is in fact newsworthy and needs to be reported on. :woman_shrugging: But some people who are not directly impacted by this don’t seem to give a shit about having a political party in this country that is platforming bigotry. That is not politics, that’s just hate.

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Trump’s ability to control the narrative has diminished hugely since deplatforming. The piss-off-the-libs-for-votes contingent, MTG, Boebert, DeSantis et al have picked up his shitposting mantle.

BTW, it’s kind of insulting for you to completely dismiss people who are engaging you in good faith

I meant the Boebert quote. The next sentence was “There was one yesterday, there will be one tomorrow.” Here’s today’s drop! Jesus should’ve had an AR-15:

It will be an unavoidable outrage on the left for a day or so, then there will be a new drop on Friday. It’s information warfare, and we keep falling into their trap, year after year.

To be fair to journalists, any intern making $12.50 an hour can write a “Can you BELIEVE they said THIS on twitter??!?” post in 15 minutes and get those sweet sweet clicks. An obsessively researched Seymour Hersh or Bob Woodward book is quite a bit more cost and effort.

It is fair to ask: what’s better than the left blasting out the right’s message, then filling furious comment sections?

I’m a fan of the redditors who are infiltrating and ruining right-wing spaces like Voat, Parler, Truth Social etc. This is where the right organizes their actions, and is the best place to observe and report, and get advance warning for actions like the the planned Idaho Pride riot.

Presumably the FBI is doing the same, but who really knows where their loyalty lies.

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Ignoring her is not deplatforming her. I had to take a long break from most of the internet because my health is suffering, but those who hate me did not also take a break.

This is the reality I face

As I have pointed out before, I have a bugout bag. I never felt the need to have one just a few years ago.

I don’t need some gaslighting pollyanna bullshit about how if I ignore the TERs then they will go away. People’s lives are literally in danger and we need to know what threats we are facing.

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Miss me with the duplicitous questions of ‘fairness’; I’m a Black woman living in America - in all my existence here, I have never known ‘fairness’ or ‘equality,’ and neither have most people who are not Cis-het, male, and White.

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It’s also a dubious strategy to try and limit discussion of dangerous people by engaging in walls of text about them.

That intern won’t type.

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Agreed; we’ve seen it time and time again:

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It isn’t fair to ask and I’m tired of seeing it. Because it’s a false dichotomy to pretend that people who pay attention to what the fascists are saying can’t do anything else. To the contrary, they’re probably the people who most care to.

This thread is full of people who have a lot more at risk here, LGBTQ people and non-white people and women. Why are you supposing they don’t know what’s going on or what to do instead of listening to them?

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I could be wrong- maybe he’s telling us to get armed and defend ourselves by any means necessary?

He might be bolder than I gave him credit for.

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Not entirely. He is STILL dominate the GOP. A miniscule number of Republicans have stood up to him, even NOW, when his crimes are being revealed to the public.

Once again, these people are dangerous and we need to know what they are doing and saying. They are coming for trans people, for POC, for women. You might not fit into any of those categories, and so aren’t concerned for YOUR personal safety, but lots of people are.

They are not going to “go away” because they don’t get attention. They’ll just further radicalize people on their OWN platforms. People are literally being KILLED because of this. It’s not an interesting thought experiment or a philosophical problem. It’s REAL life that’s happening here and pretending like it isn’t happening is not a luxury many people can afford. YOU might be able to, but many people here can not.

People HERE who are in the direct line of fire are telling you that their lives are being directly impacted by these people and that they can’t afford to ignore them. NONE of us can afford to ignore them.

Meme Reaction GIF by Robert E Blackmon

Last, we know how to get rid of these assholes, because people have done it. Ignoring them is not the answer. Here is a podcast about how the Portland police and city government did just that - ignore the fascists and how immigrant communities, punks, and anti-racist skinheads did the exact opposite, and drove these fuckers out of town.

They are NOT playing by the same rules as the rest of us. They will do whatever they can to win and people WILL keep being killed for them to get their way. We ignore the vocal face of this at our peril.

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Most of the replies including this one are more to the question: “should we ignore the facists so they’ll go away?” The obvious answer is NO – they’re quite literally destroying the world and their terror and murder is ever-escalating.

I’m a gay white guy with a black boyfriend, both of us from red states. We’re in Chicagoland now thankfully, but we remember. And we still have to worry when traveling.

My posts have been trying to answer the much narrower question: “should the lefty media ignore these outrage-of-the-day quote stories”? My initial comment was moved here from one such thread.

The tl;dr for why I’d argue “no” to the narrower question is:

  1. The left sees these, not the right
  2. It’s what the right wants us focusing on instead of, say, the 1/6 commission hearings or their many crimes (hello, Matt Gaetz!)
  3. Removing this noise is helpful to discourse, e.g. deplatforming Trump

Realistically this is an internet comment thread, the best we can hope for is a slight editorial change from BB. The above is why I’d argue for it.

“They’ll just further radicalize people on their OWN platforms” ← this is what’s happening. The right has been fully trained to ignore anything left of Fox News, and even Fox is now suspect.

For this I suggest quality investigative journalism, infiltration, monitoring and disruption of their media ecosystem.

Imho, the outrage-out-of-the-day stories are their disruption of our media ecosystem.

I never understood this idea that people can only pay attention to one thing at a time.

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And yet you KEEP arguing against that very basic idea. :woman_shrugging: Even in the rest of this reply…

To basically ignore what ELECTED OFFICIALS are saying about various oppressed peoples, including YOU and YOUR partner. How does that make any sense if you’re for keeping the fascists in view.

I don’t know… maybe some people can’t?

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Exactly!
I read and support accountability journalism like Popular Information, the local paper, and plenty of other news sources. Most of them don’t report on the outrageous, bigoted views being spewed by the right on their podcasts and niche platforms, so I’m glad to see them posted here to keep in mind how far off the rails those folks are willing to go.
And when I see it posted here on the bbs, I like that we can connect as a community and remind ourselves (if needed) that, no, this is not normal and we don’t have to pretend it is. :woman_shrugging:t2:
That in no way diminishes my ability to pay attention to the latest SCOTUS ruling or Jan6 proceedings. If people have limited attention or find this news demoralizing to such an extent it hinders their ability to take positive political action, they shouldn’t click through. But I’m so tired of them telling the rest of us it’s wrong to report it.

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Meme Reaction GIF by Robert E Blackmon

If we ignore stuff like this, they keep getting away with it, and it gets worse. If we call it out, their viewers might not hear us, but people with power might very well and they might also be willing to speak out and take action. I know we have a very fragmented media landscape, but it’s not that fragmented. Stuff gets in from the other side.

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Regardless of your claimed status as a member of the non-dominant group, you still don’t get to dictate how the rest of of us fight our fight.

Silence is the tool of the enemy; and ignoring peril doesn’t make it disappear, it just enables it.

Knowing what the assholes are up to does not equate into enaging in hysterics about it.

Are you volunteering?

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