Month: October 2022

He successfully intimidated legal voters into not voting

Another Florida experiment getting the desired results:

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a press conference in August to announce illegal voting charges against 20 Floridians with prior felony convictions ― all of whom seem not to have intentionally broken the law, but rather fallen victim to a confusing voter registration system ― a chill went over the state.

As a result, some would-be voters who actually are qualified to register, thanks to a constitutional amendment to restore former felons’ voting rights that Florida voters approved four years ago, are nevertheless passing on the opportunity because they’re worried they’ll go back to prison.

“We’ve already encountered other individuals who have said, ‘Look, I’m afraid to vote,’” said Mike Gottlieb, a Democratic state legislator who’s on the legal defense team for one of the men facing charges.

“I have not encountered in the past this many voters calling, concerned that they may be prosecuted or what-have-you for voter fraud,” Mark Earley, Leon County’s supervisor of elections, told News Service of Florida this week. “And these are all eligible voters that have contacted me.”

Gottlieb said he believed that DeSantis’ press conference, held in a courtroom in Florida’s bluest county, Broward, was “specifically designed to disenfranchise Democratic voters in Broward County” ― an accusation that a Florida Department of State spokesperson called “blatantly false.”

Nonetheless, news of the arrests quickly reverberated across the state.

“It’s had a major chilling effect,” Gottlieb said. “I think they’ve accomplished their goal. There are going to be people who are not interested in voting because they are concerned that they’re going to be arrested.”

It turns out that when you stage flamboyant arrests of people for fake voter fraud, it sends the message that voting may not be something you want to risk. Imagine that.

Look for more of this.

It’s working

The reason we know it’s working is because of the GOP reaction to the attack on Pelosi’s husband. Or rather the lackadaisical response. Donald Trump has not said a word. But he did re-post this on his Truth Social feed yesterday:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat on the current moment:

Autocrats and those who wish to join their ranks know that polarization is rarely enough to get people to commit unprecedented acts. To encourage political violence and exceptional measures — harming Pelosi or Capitol rioters chanting that they wanted to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence — you need to get people to feel like they are facing an existential threat. Survivalism goes beyond the “us or them in power” of polarization to a state of “it’s us or them, and only one of us will survive the encounter.” Its extreme rhetoric deliberately evokes fear and dread at losing something irreplaceable, at the obliteration of America.

Yes, polarization is on the rise around the world, thanks to disaffection with liberal democracy, rising economic inequality and social media’s exposure of billions to disinformation. But when illiberal politicians and their media allies move to destroy democracy, the creation of enemies and the fomenting of hostility enter a different phase. Political opponents are depicted as existential threats who must be stopped by any means possible.

One typical move, as practiced by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other authoritarians, is to designate pro-democracy nongovernmental organizations, investigative journalists and opposition politicians as “terrorists.” Another is to demonize those who hold different opinions about politics. With polarization, you move further apart but can still “agree to disagree.” That’s not an option in the survivalist universe. A political opponent becomes an enemy who threatens your freedoms and way of life. As dialogue disappears, violence becomes more likely.

In the U.S., Jan. 6 further radicalized the Republican Party and broke taboos about the use of violence against police and lawmakers. Trump’s speech was part of a concerted effort to make armed insurrection seem not just acceptable, but also patriotic — a way to save the country from the massive fraud he claimed without evidence was perpetrated by Joe Biden. The propaganda worked: A survey by the American Enterprise Institute conducted a month after the attack on the Capitol found that 39% of Republicans agreed that “if elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.”

Keeping people in a state of fear and agitation about losing everything is essential to strongman strategy.

Survivalism is also central to many Republican messaging campaigns around immigration and the dire consequences of demographic change. The “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that white people will be extinguished in terms of birth and status in a minority-majority state, is now a mainstream belief among Republican lawmakers and media figures. Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News’ highest-rated show, has featured it in more than 400 episodes.

Survivalist fears related to population trends also motivate prominent Republicans. Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp, while hosting a conference that had a keynote address by Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, hailed the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade as a solution to America’s “population problem” — the argument being that abortion bans mean more white births. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., called the same ruling “a historic victory for white life.”

That “us or them” mindset can encourage actions like the May 14 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in which a white gunman who fatally shot 10 Black people intended to kill as many of “them” as possible. Similar motivations were cited in mass shootings in Pittsburgh in 2018 and El Paso, Texas, in 2019 (as well as shootings in Norway and New Zealand).

Polarization may earn headlines, but it does not in itself prompt a turn to action. An NBC News poll that tells us “70% agree with the statement that America is so polarized that it can no longer solve major issues facing the country” stops short of spelling out what may come next.

Keeping people in a state of fear and agitation about losing everything is essential to strongman strategy. It prepares the masses to accept violence as a means of solving problems — from elections that don’t go well for their party to living with a changing democratic reality. Where survivalism takes root, political violence can follow.

See the pattern below the fold

The pernicious notion that we no longer settle policy disagreements with elections but with violence is dismantling the American experiment, boiling frog-style.

Republicans have been targeted as well, to be honest. Not that Republicans have been honest. Or even Republicans.

I’ll say it again; The only thing American about them is their birth certificate.

It was Trumpism

Most of us are not policemen. Or politicians. When January 6 joined September 11 as a day we remember where we were, for most of us the events were experienced at a remove. They did not happen to us. We were not there. Perhaps we know someone who was in a “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” way.

Mass shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Las Vegas, a Walmart in El Paso, or a Pittsburgh synagogue somehow feel more personal. It could have been us. Our children.

In Paul Pelosi’s case, it could have been our house broken into at 2 a.m. by a stranger meaning to main or murder us for our political associations or religious beliefs (New York Times):

The assault came as threats and violence against political figures have surged in America, especially after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, which brought the Democratic speaker, other lawmakers and the Republican vice president within feet of rioters threatening their lives.

“This was not a random act,” said William Scott, San Francisco’s chief of police. “This was intentional.”

Let’s stop dismissing attacks like these and threats against public servants as products of garden-variety mental illness. This was not a boat accident, propeller, coral reef, or Jack the Ripper.

It was Trumpism.

ISIS radicalized budding terrorists online. MAGA, QAnon, Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, Infowars, Reawaken America and more — the entire conspiracy industrial complex, and now Twitter — do so in public view. And with the explicit or implicit approval of Republican politicians. Including their presumptive 2024 nominee and his likely primary challenger.

Dana Milbank’s rabbi reflected recently on what the toxic atmosphere fostered by the far right means for American Jews.

“How many people in the last few years have been at a dining room conversation where the conversation has turned to where might we move? How many of us?”

Many. Most?

Milbank observes (Washington Post):

The United States has until now been different because of our constitutional protections of minority rights: our bedrock principles of equal treatment under law, free expression and free exercise of religion. Now, the MAGA crowd is attacking the very notion of minority rights. Ascendant Christian nationalists, with a sympathetic Supreme Court, are dismantling the separation between church and state. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), for example, calls the principle “junk that’s not in the Constitution” and claims “the church is supposed to direct the government.” Red states, again with an agreeable Supreme Court, are rolling back minority voting rights and decades of civil rights protections. And leading it all is Trump, threatening violence and going to “war with the rule of law,” as Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) puts it.

The only thing American about them is their birth certificate.

A dog festival in Nepal!

The Tihar Festival is a five-day event that takes place in the fall as part of the Hindu celebration of Diwali. In Nepal, the second day of the festival, known as Kukur Tihar, is devoted exclusively to the celebration of dogs.

To celebrate dogs, animal lovers all over Nepal put brought orange garlands around their necks, gave them lots of treats, and showed them some extra special love and attention.

The tradition began in Nepal, where there are many street dogs, and dog welfare is a huge concern. The Sneha Care shelter in Lalitpur, a city outside of Kathmandu, celebrated the ceremony with volunteers, residents, and tourists, Reuters reported. The shelter cares for around 170 dogs, many of which have been abandoned.

“On the day of the Festival of Dogs, I want to convey the message that humans should show compassion and love to dogs and feed them as much as we can,” Lalitpur Mayor Chiri Babu Maharjan said.

They no longer think Brexit was such a hot idea

Imagine that:

Britons would now vote to rejoin the EU in a second referendum by a record 14-point margin, a new poll has found.

A tracker poll found support for reversing Brexit is now at 57 per cent, compared to just 43 per cent who want to keep it.

Support for rejoining has steadily ticked up since the start of this year – with ‘out’ still ahead as recently as May this year.

But the survey by Redfield and Wilton Strategies for the UK in a Changing Europe think-tank shows the picture has changed quickly amid economic and international turmoil.

Professor Sir John Curtice, a respected political scientist at the University of Strathclyde, said that the shift may be down to changes in the economic situation – and suggested the trend may continue.

“In reporting on the poll in February we noted that evaluations of the economic consequences of Brexit were particularly strongly related to changes of mind about being inside or outside the EU. This pattern is replicated in the latest poll,” he wrote in an analysis of the findings.

The professor said it seemed “highly likely that a darkening of the public mood on the economic consequences of Brexit helps explain the increase in support for joining the EU” and added that it should not be ruled out “that the financial turbulence of recent weeks may at least have helped to reinforce that mood”.

I suspect that ship sailed. After all the disruption they caused with this silly tantrum, the UK is on its own.Maybe in 50 years or so …

This is what comes from people ascribing all their problems to foreigners. There’s a lesson in that.

Drop-box tailgate parties are the latest rage

Ben Collins, on the NBC wingnutbeat has this:

By now, you’ve seen some of these “tailgate parties,” where Trump supporters hang around ballot drop boxes standing watch for “mules,” some in tactical gear.

My colleague @VaughnHillyard and I spent the week finding out the origin of this plan.

We found it. It was Truth Social.

These “drop box tailgate parties” took off earlier this month when a Truth Social influencer named Trumper Mel tweeted a picture of a man dropping off a single ballot at a Mesa, Az. drop box. Trump “retruthed” it.

But “mule parties” were in the works on Truth Social for months.

On July 22, in advance of the Arizona primary, a TruthSocial user with less than 100 followers suggested “tailgate parties” outside of drop boxes.

2020 election denial influencer named Seth Keshel was the only person to “retruth” it to his more than 50k followers. He added this:

Keshel’s post immediately caught fire on Telegram and Truth Social in July.

Within days, users were bragging they had “ran off mules” from casting ballots in the Arizona primary.

They called them “mule parties,” a reference to the discredited propaganda film 2,000 Mules.

Suddenly, “drop box tailgate parties” were everywhere on the pro-Trump internet. Gateway Pundit wrote it up.

But drop box intimidation for the primary wasn’t the main goal.

One Telegram influencer vowed a “future pow-wow in Arizona, come October early voting.”

Within weeks, Truth Social influencer Trumper Mel started propping up her group Clean Elections USA to “party” with “patriots” outside of drop boxes.

Her group has been haranguing people for such crimes like… backing their car up.

This was “retruthed” by Donald Trump.

Clean Elections USA and Trumper Mel, really a Tulsa-based preacher named Melody Jennings, are now being sued by the Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Voto Latino for engaging in “conduct that is clearly meant to intimidate” voters.

This is Jennings’ excuse.

What started as a meme on Truth Social now has conspiracy theorists haranguing voters and officials at drop boxes nationwide.

In PA, “concerned citizens went with the sheriff to open sealed boxes” and found ballots by people who used the drop box before its official opening.

The explanation is simple, according to local election officials: “We had a handful of voters who were a bit too eager and prematurely deposited their voted mail-in or absentee ballot.”

Those ballots are being put aside to be adjudicated by election workers. No conspiracy.

The “drop box tailgate parties” continue apace throughout the US, keeping watchful eye on voters who Trump supporters think look funny.

@VaughnHillyard counted 9 people outside one Arizona drop box on Wednesday night alone.

This guy was from the failed “freedom convoy.”

I can’t believe I still have to say this:

How and where people organize on the internet matters. It has direct, traceable real-world consequences.

“Dropbox tailgate parties” started as a meme on Truth Social. Now there are conspiracy theorists intimidating voters in real life.

Here’s my whole story with @VaughnHillyard on how “drop box tailgate parties” went from a meme on Truth Social to armed men standing watch over ballot boxes nationwide.

It happened because the platform allowed it. This platform might allow it soon.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/mule-watchers-evolved-truth-social-meme-ballot-drop-box-patrol-rcna54406

Originally tweeted by Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) on October 28, 2022.

Feel the magic

Much chatter is focused on whether or not Donald Trump is going to be allowed back on the platform as Musk has promised. Here’s Trump on the issue:

Lol. That would be sad if it was anyone but him. He had over ten times the followers on twitter than he has on his sad little knock off. I’m sure he enjoys it more because it’s almost 100% worshipful memes about him. The cult is very into memes. But it’s a pathetic platform and he knows it.

I think he will return to twitter if he runs for president. He loves the action too much.

Meanwhile, everyone waits with bated breath to see what Musk has in mind. It’s almost assured that he will be inviting all the Russian bots and propaganda back on since he agrees with it. And I imagine the community will be overrun with right wing assholes before too long and eventually that will take a toll on the whole thing and it will fade.

Maybe it was inevitable anyway. There seems to be a shelf life for all the platforms. (Look at the demise of blogging! lol…) But Facebook is quickly losing altitude while TikTok is becoming the phenomenon of the young. It’s just the way it works.

Pro tip for those of you who like twitter: download tweetdeck. It spares you all the ads and the porn and allows you to easily create your own timelines which saves a lot of time. It makes twitter much more manageable. At least until Elon decides to take it down…

Update — Here we go. From the Washington Post:

A wide range of anonymous Twitter accounts celebrated Musk’s takeover and argued it meant the old rules against bigotry no longer applied.

“Elon now controls twitter. Unleash the racial slurs. K—S AND N—–S,” said one account, using slurs for Jews and Black people. “I can freely express how much I hate n—–s … now, thank you elon,” another said. […]

One account, created this month, included a Nazi swastika as its profile picture and retweeted quotes from Musk alongside antisemitic memes. Another tweet, showing a video montage glorifying Nazi Germany with the comment, “I hear that there have been some changes around here,” was liked more than 400 times.

Racial slurs were posted rampantly overnight. One single-word tweet, showing a single racial slur in all capital letters, was retweeted more than 500 times and liked more than 4,000 times. It was tweeted at 9 p.m. Thursday night and remained online nearly 12 hours later.

Yeah …

Somebody took all those threats seriously

As I write this, we don’t know yet the motivation for the person who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco house last night and assaulted her husband with a hammer. We do know that the man was looking for Nancy, reportedly yelling “where’s Nancy, where’s Nancy?”And according to his social media he was a big time conspiracy theorist, antivax, election denier and 1/6 conspiracy believer. So I think we know that he was a right winger. You do the math.

It reminds you of this, doesn’t it?

Of course they’re going to do it

With Republicans convinced that they have the midterm elections in the bag they are hauling out their big guns. As I’ve mentioned before, they have unveiled plans to hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to force President Biden to give tax cuts to their wealthy benefactors (which explains why so many of them are pouring late money into the campaign) and also to reestablish their old-time conservative movement bonafides by gutting Social Security and Medicaid.

In that article, I also mentioned in passing that a GOP House majority will have investigations and impeachments on the front burner. Yes, I do mean plural. They’ve got a long list of Biden administration official they believe should resign or face impeachment. They’ve been talking about doing this since Biden’s first few months in office when the Freedom Caucus (which should just rename itself the MAGA Caucus at this point) held a press conference to announce its plans.

First on the list for impeachment is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, for alleged failures at the border, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for the withdrawal in Afghanistan. (I’m not sure why they hold Blinken responsible for that military botch-up, but whatever.) They’ve also called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, as well as Biden himself, of course. They didn’t actually mention impeaching Biden in that initial press conference, which was slightly odd. But by then their illustrious colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, had already filed the first of her five impeachment resolutions — on Biden’s first day in office, in fact — claiming that he had abused the power of his office by allowing his son Hunter “to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept benefits from foreign nationals in exchange for favors.” Did that happen sometime between the parade and the inaugural address?

Given the cast of characters involved, especially Greene, it’s easy to dismiss this as backbench folderol. But Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who seems to think he’s got a second career as a stand-up comic or late-night talk show host in his future, told his podcast audience in late 2021 that there was a good likelihood that a Republican House majority would seek to impeach Biden. He admitted there was no specific high crime or misdemeanor he could point to, admitting that it would simply be an act of raw partisan power:

And whether it’s justified or not… the Democrats weaponized impeachment. They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that… is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Yes, we’re into the dreary old cycle of “you started it.” In fact, impeachment articles have been filed against every president, of whichever party, since Richard Nixon. The first of those that actually got off the ground was the impeachment of Bill Clinton, which I’ve always seen as the long-delayed retaliation for Nixon (who was not technically impeached but only avoided it by resigning). Republicans hadn’t really had a chance to take their pound of flesh, since they held the presidency for 12 years under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, but when they finally got a Democratic president to attack they went for it.

It was an exceedingly thin case, consisting of a charge of perjury against Clinton for lying in a deposition — in a case that had been dismissed — and obstruction of justice for his feeble attempts to cover up the affair with Monica Lewinsky. The public rallied to the president’s side and the Republicans lost seats in the next election. If anyone weaponized impeachment it was the Republican Party of the 1990s, and it backfired.

Donald Trump’s two impeachments were of an entirely different order, and were definitely not meant to avenge Bill Clinton, whom Democrats, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, would just as soon let pass into history without further comment. But the revenge cycle was bound to continue after the Trump impeachments. Vengeance forms the core of his psyche, as he has proudly admitted for years. Here’s what Trump told the supposedly devout Christian student body of Liberty University in 2012:

Since he remains the de facto leader of the Republican Party and 2024 frontrunner, it’s easy to see where this is heading. Trump will demand, in no uncertain terms, that House Republicans impeach Biden. I have never doubted this for a moment.

The Atlantic’s Barton Gellman, who correctly predicted Trump’s Big Lie strategy and the national strategy to manipulate the electoral system going into 2022 and 2024, reported this week that impeachment looks almost certain. He spoke with a number of GOP officials and political advisers and they believe it’s inevitable, even though Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the presumptive House speaker if Republicans win the majority, clearly considers it risky. Apparently McCarthy can see that Republicans behaving like lunatics while Trump eggs them on, in the months leading up to the presidential campaign might not be a good look. (Maybe someone reminded him how things turned out in 1998.) As Gellman puts it:

But there is little reason to think that McCarthy can resist the GOP’s impulse to impeach once it gathers strength. He is a notably weak leader of a conference that proved unmanageable for his predecessors Paul Ryan and John Boehner. If he does in fact reach the speakership, his elevation will be a testament to his strategy of avoiding conflict with those forces.

Watching McCarthy flail about, trying (and failing) to control the wild beasts of the Republican caucus, will be one of the few enjoyable aspects of GOP House rule.

Gellman asked around to see what House Republicans might come up with to rationalize their impeachment revenge strategy, and nobody was quite sure. It could be about Hunter Biden, which seems to be the favorite, although impeaching a president over something he allegedly did years ago as vice president seems like a stretch, especially when there’s no tangible evidence he did anything wrong. (Which certainly won’t stop them.) Some GOP members suggested the Afghanistan withdrawal, the border crisis or Biden’s extension of the eviction moratorium, all of which have already been mentioned by Marjorie Taylor Greene in her various articles of impeachment — which may reveal who’s really running this show.

As Gellman points out, these are policy disputes which in vaguely normal times would never be considered high crimes and misdemeanors. But as Gerald Ford said when he was House minority leader, there is no clear constitutional standard for impeachment, and “an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”

With this crowd there is only one reason that matters. Biden’s impeachable offense was the high crime of winning the election, and it will not go unpunished.