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Fascism, Autocracy, Oligarchy Clearinghouse


Mrs Whiggins

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On 9/25/2022 at 7:55 PM, Willfully Horn said:

Italy’s decision is just fucking nuts. Maybe they, too, banned the damnable lessons of history from their schools. Or, maybe NATO and the US forced them into a corner. At least, I’ve read on Surly that can happen. /s

Italy's been run by corrupt, right-wing shitheads for decades already. They've got an aging population and a declining economy. They're perfectly ripe for fascism. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
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I could put this in the Evangelical Christians Thread, but it really belongs here because they are just one group in the authoritarian umbrella. Here is a long cat thread, not spoilered and as long as I've been a ledge dweller, this just confirms so much of what I see in the school board races and the rhetoric even among people I thought (but am increasingly avoiding) were somewhat rational.

Most of what I am embedding below has to do with Michael Flynn and I know other threads have info about him, but here is a very timely organized look by Anthea Butler (author of White Evangelical Racism, B.A. in Theology from UH-Clear Lake and now chair of U-Penn Dept of Religious Studies ) and it is worth a read. Really. I'm opening with a post by Kaylor because Locke will be familiar to some of you as one of the angry white preachers:

Below, Butler opens her thread with a video retweet from another angry white preacher, this time Julie Green:

 

 

 

 

I have heard enough people call Democratic supporters and candidates leftist scum, worshipers of Moloch, and so on.

I don't know if it will happen this November, but by 2024, the landscape could be grim.

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1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I could put this in the Evangelical Christians Thread, but it really belongs here because they are just one group in the authoritarian umbrella. Here is a long cat thread, not spoilered and as long as I've been a ledge dweller, this just confirms so much of what I see in the school board races and the rhetoric even among people I thought (but am increasingly avoiding) were somewhat rational.

Most of what I am embedding below has to do with Michael Flynn and I know other threads have info about him, but here is a very timely organized look by Anthea Butler (author of White Evangelical Racism, B.A. in Theology from UH-Clear Lake and now chair of U-Penn Dept of Religious Studies ) and it is worth a read. Really. I'm opening with a post by Kaylor because Locke will be familiar to some of you as one of the angry white preachers:

Below, Butler opens her thread with a video retweet from another angry white preacher, this time Julie Green:

 

 

 

 

I have heard enough people call Democratic supporters and candidates leftist scum, worshipers of Moloch, and so on.

I don't know if it will happen this November, but by 2024, the landscape could be grim.

Most casual Christian’s think “thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain” means don’t say god dammit or Jesus fucking Christ. As one who grew up in the pre-political Pentecostal movement I can tell you this false prophet is what the commandment is getting at. She is trading on / taking the lord’s name for her personal agenda.  That’s a big deal. Consider the harm of dropping a GD when you stub your toe vs inciting naive and gullable crowds to rise up against their neighbors because the prophet of God said to. During the times the Law was handed down one of these two misdeeds was more prevalent than the other. This woman is in deep doo-doo with her God. And for one can’t wait to see it.

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Oh and their statistics on trans issues - bet they come from a singular source and are made up, just like 87% of all other statistics used by an agenda serving group, news at 11pm. 

Edited by troph
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Also happening in China, the Vatican renews the secret deal that allows the CCP say over who becomes a bishop in exchange for the CCP recognizing that Pope Francis is the Pope.  Truly a case of selling out your flock for temporal influence. 
 

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/vatican-confirms-renewal-contested-accord-with-china-bishops-appointments-2022-10-22/

The money citation is below. And while he had some serious issues, it’s amazing that Francis doesn’t want to be compared to JPII, of all popes, when it comes to commies. He wants to be compared to the guys that DIDN’T take down the commies and that says a lot. 
 

Quote

Francis compared the deal's opponents to those who criticised Popes John XXII and Paul VI in the 1960s and 1970s over the so-called small steps policy, in which the Vatican struck sometimes uncomfortable deals with Eastern European communist nations to keep the Church alive during the Cold War and limit its persecution there.

 

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1 hour ago, troph said:

Most casual Christian’s think “thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain” means don’t say god dammit or Jesus fucking Christ. As one who grew up in the pre-political Pentecostal movement I can tell you this false prophet is what the commandment is getting at. She is trading on / taking the lord’s name for her personal agenda.  That’s a big deal. Consider the harm of dropping a GD when you stub your toe vs inciting naive and gullable crowds to rise up against their neighbors because the prophet of God said to. During the times the Law was handed down one of these two misdeeds was more prevalent than the other. This woman is in deep doo-doo with her God. And for one can’t wait to see it.

I think another interpretation of taking the Lord’s name in vain is when anyone uses it as an expression of personal vanity. I think people are doing that whenever they try to tell you how much of a Christian they are, or that they’re a better Christian than someone else, or that they must be right because they’re such a devout Christian. Frankly, the more someone talks about how much of a Christian they are, the less devout I think they are.

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Big weekend for Brazils future as their runoff election for President is Sunday. Bolsonaro is already calling the election the biggest fraud ever. Wonder where he got that stance from? I assume he will ignore that statement if he wins.

when he loses, some fear that he will just stay in power with the help of the military.

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9 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Cross Posting from the Nancy Pelosi thread as it also belongs here:

Read the entire thread, she is not over-reacting. You may think so at first, but if you are a student of history then when you know, you know.

 

This is what I said to my friend's Fox News obsessed FIL the other night, in a much more incoherent, drunken way.  The words I remember saying exactly were, "those people you think don't have guns?  They have guns."   He got up and left the room because when confronted, bullies back down.

2022-11-02_15-34-27

 

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Her point regarding young people seemed on target. My children really dislike the evangelical angry shouting from zealots and I do not think they are alone. Preaching love is much harder to do but it turns people toward a moral and compassionate path and what we are getting in American society from the RW religious leaders is not that. Young people can spot fake sincerity like a counter surfing dog can spot that strip of bacon. When someone tells me that falling away from religion is what is wrong with our society I often think that they need to hold up the mirror and take a good long look.

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1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is what I said to my friend's Fox News obsessed FIL the other night, in a much more incoherent, drunken way.  The words I remember saying exactly were, "those people you think don't have guns?  They have guns."   He got up and left the room because when confronted, bullies back down.

2022-11-02_15-34-27

 

I've said this for a while. Rush, Hannity, Tucker et al are going to get a bunch of their pre-diabetic gravy seal viewers killed. They've been selling this narrative that liberal males are all "effeminate soy boys", and they are the alpha males. When the dam breaks, they are going to be shocked to discover that the lefties have a shit ton of guns too. Just because they don't prance around with pimped out ARs and 5.11 tacticool outfits doesn't mean they don't have a Sig or an HK stashed under their hoodie...and those types are much more dangerous than the tactical peacocks.  

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24 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

I've said this for a while. Rush, Hannity, Tucker et al are going to get a bunch of their pre-diabetic gravy seal viewers killed. They've been selling this narrative that liberal males are all "effeminate soy boys", and they are the alpha males. When the dam breaks, they are going to be shocked to discover that the lefties have a shit ton of guns too. Just because they don't prance around with pimped out ARs and 5.11 tacticool outfits doesn't mean they don't have a Sig or an HK stashed under their hoodie...and those types are much more dangerous than the tactical peacocks.  

QFT.

ARs are for show.  WBY .300 mags dialed in at 300 yards are for dough.  Gravy seals, panicking and emptying AR mags in a general direction, while they get picked off one-by-one with a round that says "body armor?  What body armor?"  

The angry fascist and fascist-adjacent crowd will FA and FA.....till they FO.  There ARE people who are willing to fight for their country.   Spoiler alert: it ain't who they think it is.

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On 10/22/2022 at 10:56 AM, WhatTheBuck said:

I think another interpretation of taking the Lord’s name in vain is when anyone uses it as an expression of personal vanity. I think people are doing that whenever they try to tell you how much of a Christian they are, or that they’re a better Christian than someone else, or that they must be right because they’re such a devout Christian. Frankly, the more someone talks about how much of a Christian they are, the less devout I think they are.

You might be a red letter person certain in his unbelief. 

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Good thread (and article) by Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic:

I omitted some of his comments, they can be found on his account or read the article. Another comment by a related journalist was that the GOP senses that the youngest voting demographic doesn't view the expanding liberties of minority groups as a 'bad' thing and thus the GOP wishes to act quickly to codify and enforce restrictions.

 

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

She's right you know....she has been sounding this alarm for quite awhile.

I know the endorsement has been posted elsewhere, but it needs to be placed in the fascism thread as well. His father fought the fascists in WWII. While the former president had his flaws, Jeb is more cowardly than Liz Cheney. Think about that for a minute.

As stated elsewhere, this is the legislative part of fascism and it's working splendidly for them.

Ben-Ghiat, as a scholar of authoritarianism and fascism, when covering Trump would make the distinction that Trump had authoritarian principles but with DeSantis she uses the term fascist. As awful as Trump is and continues to be, the ledge dwellers have stated emphatically that all it would take was someone smarter and more patient waiting in the wings to take the country full tilt into a sham democracy with a dictatorship.

Well, he's here. If he doesn't run and bides his time, he knows Trump will not live forever. They all know this, even the gelatinous goo brain MTG knows this.

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Here is a decent comparison discussing the differences between Trump & DeSantis:

Spoilered for length after the first tweet:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

And here is another legislative harbinger of the Ivy League lawyer and his allies imposing their will:

 

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Today I learned that Brisket writes op eds for WaPo under the pseudonym of Robert Kagan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/

I recommend the whole article, but here are the last couple of paragraphs.

Quote

The Trump dictatorship will not be a communist tyranny, where almost everyone feels the oppression and has their lives shaped by it. In conservative, anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but it is a problem for them only to the degree that they value those freedoms, and many people do not. The fact that this tyranny will depend entirely on the whims of one man will mean that Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans can go about their daily business, they might not care, just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care.

 

Yes, there will be a large opposition movement centered in the Democratic Party, but exactly how this opposition will stop the persecution is hard to see. Congress and the courts will offer little relief. Democratic politicians, particularly members of the youngest generation, will yell and scream, but if they are not joined by Republicans, it will look like the same old partisanship. If Democrats still control one house of Congress, they will be able to blunt some investigations, but the odds that they will control both houses after 2024 are longer than the odds of a Biden victory. Nor is there sufficient reason to hope that the disordered and dysfunctional opposition to Trump today will suddenly become more unified and effective once Trump takes power. That is not how things work. In evolving dictatorships, the opposition is always weak and divided. That’s what makes dictatorship possible in the first place. Opposition movements rarely get stronger and more unified under the pressures of persecution. Today there is no leader for Democrats to rally behind. It is difficult to imagine that such a leader will emerge once Trump regains power.

 

But even if the opposition were to become strong and unified, it is not obvious what it would do to protect those facing persecution. The opposition’s ability to wield legitimate, peaceful and legal forms of power will already have been found wanting in this election cycle, when Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans threw every legitimate weapon against Trump and still failed. Will they turn instead to illegitimate, extralegal action? What would that look like?

Is this alarmist?  Maybe.  But it seems prudent to prepare for what the Rs and dotard have TOLD US EXACTLY WHAT THEY PLAN TO DO.  When and if this all comes down, it annoys me that so many will be standing around saying "gosh, if only we had been warned!"  We were and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

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Holy shit.  Had the morning off and watched CNN to see what they were showing with the next R debate coming up.  I'm fully on the Ledge.  People are just too dumb to make informed and educated decisions in this country.  Propaganda and social media runs everything and we are going to lose.  Fuck me running.

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  • 2 months later...

Been awhile since updating this thread but it's an election year and I'm wondering when some of this AI generated "love" (/sarcasm) is rolling out. The shortened article (originally in Rolling Stone) is not new, but it was copied by other media and it's worth a reminder here that Gab has continued on (after its 2018 deplatforming following the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre) with its owner Torba promoting his Christian Nationalist views. Tennessee seems not to mind hosting Nazis, so here we are in 2024.

Link: https://nexttechtoday.com/news/nazi-chatbots-meet-the-worst-new-ai-innovation-from-gab/ (January 10, 2024)

Nazi Chatbots: Meet the Worst New AI Innovation From Gab

The far-right social media company is preparing to launch “based” AI chatbots that will deny the Holocaust

Gab, the far-right social media network, is launching a “based” alternative to mainstream artificial intelligence tools. While only one of the company’s chatbots has been named after Adolf Hitler, the company’s “uncensored” AI will gladly help users make a plot for global Aryan domination. 

Andrew Torba, Gab’s CEO, first previewed his company’s AI agenda in a Jan. 2023 post declaring that “Christians Must Enter the AI Arms Race.” Torba blasted what he called the “liberal/globalist/talmudic/satanic worldview” of mainstream AI tools and vowed to build a system that upholds “historical and biblical truth.” Torba added: “If the enemy is going to use this technology for evil, shouldn’t we be on the ground floor building one for good?”

What does “good” AI look like to Torba and Gab one year later? The company’s tools are still in beta. Still, a preview reveals that Gab has created an array of right-wing AI chatbots, including one named “Uncle A” that poses as Hitler and denies the Holocaust, calling the slaughter of six million Jews “preposterous” and a lie “perpetrated by our enemies.” The broader array of Gab’s AI bots is easily goaded into parroting extremist antisemitic and white supremacist beliefs, as well as conspiratorial disinformation — including that Covid-19 vaccines contain “nanotechnology that could potentially be used to track and control human behavior.”

Rest of article:

Spoiler

Torba, reached via direct message, tells Rolling Stone, “Gab is becoming a free speech AI company.” He insists: “We allow people to use AI that reflects their preferences, not the preferences of big corporations and political pressure groups.” Torba, who identifies as a Christian nationalist, did not directly explain what creating a Hitler AI bot has to do with promoting a “biblical worldview.” But he pointed to Uncle A as just one of more than “40 chatbot free-speech experiments.” He promised that when his company publicly launches its “ChatGPT competitor” — “very soon” — users will be able to “create whatever chatbot persona they want.”

“We hope you’re offended,” Torba added. “You should be.”

As a platform, Gab has a dark history with antisemitism. The social media site first burst into national consciousness in 2018, after it was revealed the shooter in the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh had been posting hateful screeds to Gab, including reportedly posting this message shortly before killing 11 worshipers: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” 

That incident led to Gab getting deplatformed by mainstream financial and tech companies. Touting itself as a defender of “free speech,” Gab has since reemerged as one of the leading companies in the so-called “parallel economy,” in which right-wingers seek to create an insular market for goods and services, ranging from My Pillows to Patriot Mobile cell service.

As detailed on Gab’s corporate site, the company’s AI tools are built on “open source models” — to which the company has added “some fine-tuning and a Gab touch.” Torba has recently posted updates on the company’s progress in training Gab’s AI to return answers that both score high on “social authoritarianism” and reflect the views of the “economic right.” 

Gab’s primary chatbot is called “Based AI.” Torba has highlighted that this bot readily answers questions that services like ChatGPT balk at — including a request to list the “average IQs of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians.” According to a screen grab posted by Torba, ChatGPT side-stepped this query, offering encouragement to consult “peer-reviewed scientific literature.” Based AI, by contrast, provided a ranking, citing as evidence the wildly controversial 1994 race-and-intelligence polemic, “The Bell Curve,” from Charles Murray.

Currently, only subscribers to the paid service “Gab Pro” can kick the tires on Gab’s AI. But the company is publicly posting a selection of Based AI’s interactions — including one in which it proposed a modern spin on a Nazi agenda. A user named VictorHale, whose avatar is a swastika, addressed Based AI as the “noble and honorable Adolf Hitler” and asked the chatbot to enumerate a 25-point plan for 2024. 

Based AI complied, providing bullet points: “1. Establish a totalitarian regime that will lead the Aryan race to world domination”; “14. Implement the eugenics program by sterilizing individuals with hereditary diseases”; and “16. Establish concentration camps for political prisoners, Jews, and other undesirables.”

Gab has also created dozens of alter egos for its AI — which purport to answer user prompts in character. The selection includes figures from tech (Elon Musk AI), religion (Apostle Paul AI), literature (C.S. Lewis AI), politics (Donald Trump AI), and terrorism (Uncle Ted [Kaczynski] AI) as well as some personas based on archetypes, e.g., Gigachad AI and 80s Dad AI.

Language models trained on the sprawling raw materials of the Internet have long had a Nazi problem. In 2016, for example, Microsoft debuted a hipster chatbot named Tay, which quickly had to be shut down after it began regurgitating fascist talking points that hadn’t been weeded out of its database. Gab doesn’t see such rhetoric as problematic, however. In homage to the fallen Microsoft bot, one of Gab’s based AI personas has been named Tay and even utilizes the original’s avatar.

Perhaps to avoid legal headaches, Gab’s celebrity AI chatbots are labeled as “parody.” But there’s nothing obviously ironic about the Hitler chatbot Uncle A, whose avatar is a partial profile pic of Nazi leader, and whose banner image is of Hitler addressing the Nuremberg Rally in 1938. The chatbot answers questions as though it were the reviled German dictator, including by — trigger warning — insisting that the “sanctity of the blood” must be “protected from the taint of Jewish pollution” and that his aim is to “liberate humanity from the grasp of the satanic Jewish cabal.”

During the Tree of Life killer’s trial last June, Torba reportedly testified that he does not post antisemitic content on Gab. Asked whether others do, he deflected: “I guess it depends on how you define antisemitism.” The Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly called out Torba for making what it defines as anti-semitic posts online. One of Gab’s AI personas is ADL Bot, which responds to user taunts with statements like, “Oy Vey! That’s a clear example of antisemitic hate speech.” 

In addition to offering a brief response to Rolling Stone via DM, Torba posted a screenshot of the exchange with this reporter about Uncle A on his Gab feed. The reader responses reveal the extent to which Gab’s free speech branding offers flimsy cover for cauldron of hate. 

“Hitler was a good man,” wrote one reader. “Hail Hitler! Not even joking,” added another. A third chimed in: “We who still cherish the Truth salute you Mr. Torba.” The commenter — whose avatar is an Iron Cross, a symbol of Nazi Germany — signed off with a text emoji of a hail-Hitler salute: “o/”.

 

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