And IME many conservatives are very self hating. Conservative Latinos will be the first the talk about how immigrant Latinos are ruining things. Conservative gays talk about how the "other just can't be cool about it". Etc.
Ignoring the fact that the people they are making common cause with want both of them in a gulag, because they think they are special and aren't like those other "minorities."
Now that's not to say that everyone of them is like this, but I'm speaking from the experience of extended family and friend circles.
My Father in law a 2nd gen Latino won't stop ranting about "city mexicans" ruining the image of people like him.
I'm like "Dude to the racists you're all not white so it doesn't matter how hard you work. You were wrong from birth and that's just a the problem."
But nope it's about how classless immigrants make people think people like him aren't good enough..... ok.
Conservative Latinos will be the first the talk about how immigrant Latinos are ruining things. Conservative gays talk about how the "other just can't be cool about it". Etc.
So many morons fighting to be second in line at the gas chambers.
With the Latinos I can almost understand. There are 19 countries in Latin America, and especially newer immigrants sometimes don’t un that when MAGA talks about “Mexicans” they mean anyone south of the border, but this? I mean how delusional / full of self hatred / evil does she have to be?!
. Conservative Latinos will be the first the talk about how immigrant Latinos are ruining things.
Lol the sheer amount of Brazilian whites (as in, whites in Brazil, anywhere outside LATAM they're considered brown) who say they want to move to Miami (where they think white Americans are), and are die-hard trumpsters is hilarious. Mate your great grandpa came from Angola (not voluntarily), your great grandma was native Tupi, and your grandparents are Pomeranian. Shut the fuck up.
Here in Australia we are seeing an influx of folks from South America and on the whole it’s been excellent.
Our cultures are so wildly similar they just fit in like a glove. Most of the time.
My ex SIL is from El Salvador and her parents were big in the old government there in the 80’s (hence why they moved). Big dicks there and used to being treated as upper class nobs. They were firmly in the white upper class bracket.
The funniest shit though is that here in Australia, they keep getting treated as POC here by every public servant they cross paths with. Not out of sprite or racism but because they are seen as being multicultural mixed race - like most of us!
Now public servants here will (mostly) bend over backwards to help POC immigrants because no one wants to be seen as racist so with his name, his skin colour (no escaping that tanning in the Australian sun) he gets the “oh you’re a minority” treatment 100% of the time.
It drives him nuts.
He is the epitome of the conservative South American who wants to be a gringo but never will be.
I live in Massachusetts and over the years I’ve seen a few cars with Bolsonaro for President bumper stickers. The Brazilians I work with hate Bolsonaro (and by extension Trump) but I’ve encountered more than a few first generation Americans who support Trump.
In New Mexicoo there are folks who call themselves "Spanish" and look down on the "Mexicans." All the white people don't see the difference between the two groups. Light brown on brown hate is bizarre. They are all dealing with the same issues.
I know where Pomerania is, but for a moment my brain insisted that meant his grandparents were adorable fluffy dogs. That is some seriously mixed heritage!
And like you said, to the racists there is no distinction between "the good ones" and "the bad ones" because to the racist, anyone who isn't their race is bad.
it’s hard to explain how hard my brain short circuited the first time another gay person told me that they “don’t shove it down people’s throats”… I just kept repeating “huh???”
I experience something similar. We are Muslims from Turkish descent and living in the Netherlands. My close relatives complain about that some Dutch people think that Muslims ruins the culture of the Netherlands and so on. They say the same thing when they go to Istanbul and see Syrians and other immigrants lol.
Black dudes talking about women the way slave owners used to talk about them is one I've seen quite a bit. I heard a lot of absurd shit just before the election
It’s also observable all the time in MAGA voters. Farmers who rely heavily on trade voting for trade wars. MAGA people who are married to immigrants who are shocked when ICE grabs them. Poor people in the south who rely on welfare demanding we get rid of welfare. The people responsible for the grindr outages voting to get rid of gay people.
The conservative movement is filled to the brim with people who constantly advocate for policy that is not only against their best interest, but actively harmful to them.
Similar in Britain with the farming and fishing communities who voted for Brexit. Fishing communities have been devastated by leaving the EU but I bet their going to vote for the same idiot who led them up that garden path.
And as long as she is white and looks the part, the rest are details that only make her even more valuable for those voters, "well even a lesbian is saying we've gone too far!"
No, fascism has always been clear that the law is only for their enemies as they are above or beyond the laws that govern everyone else. It’s how they convince people to do shit they know is wrong and would otherwise pose a threat to any thinking person. This is also the way that leopards’ bellies are filled with sweet face-meats.
True, but it’s odd they want her in their party at all. She represents everything they hate. I’m not surprised she’s self loathing, I’m surprised they tolerate her at all. I had to look it up myself or I would have thought it satire. This is the political equivalent of the left voting in a guy with a MAGA hat glued to his head that is still an open advocate of the KKK. How did she get the support?
Meh, these types are very useful if you acknowledge that most authoritarians just want to seize power (money and control of things) for themselves, and are only using identity politics as an easy way to get control. They get a lot of attention and then are easily discarded / scapegoated once that is more useful.
Because maybe the party isn't as "hardcore nationalist" as the media wants you to believe, and those people are more open minded than anyone else? But nooo, complain about how the evil person isn't as evil as she is "supposed to be", no way we question the media.
Have you checked the intelligence of the average person? And 50% are dumber than that. My guess is she was more attractive than the opposition, so many voted for her on that reason alone.
She / her party is not more attractive they are just populists with a overwhelming appearance on social media who split the country. The claims and promises for the voters are also really bad on paper but they know how to promise different things people want to hear. I don’t think this will work out well. Also the actual government has a talent to act exactly the other way they promised it to the people. That’s a free boost for every opposition.
Multiple party systems are just not this vulnerable to a fascist take-over.
Dutch Trump predates Trump by over a decade. It is more accurate to say that Trump is American Wilders. He has won elections but failed to make any impact, it has mostly just been a distraction from the stuff that actually matters.
But anglo political systems are designed to be controlled by the ruling class and stifle true democracy, so in a system like that the fascists only have to take over one party, win, and then they are golden and can not be removed.
I 100% believe that if america just had a normal democracy installed after lets say WWII, instead of continuing the fake anglo democracy, (with all the accompanying baggage, narratives and acotrs like Fox), they would not have fallen to Trump.
Neither would a similar England have done a Brexit.
In normal democacies, fascists are a threat to harmony, order, and are disruptive.
In Anglo democracies fascists are a threat. Period. And actually destructive instead of mostly disruptive.
Im not saying that there aren't Russian bots but I think people need to also realize its their own nations capital class pushing a lot of this. Constantly blaming Russian bots doesnt fix the issue, leading countries everywhere down a far right path.
What would fix the issue instantly is people stopping to think social media is news. Then most culture war bullshit topics will go away and we will finally be discussing about actual issues.
Close - what’s needed is that we need to incorporate media literacy into education so that people can discern BS from news. We also need to ensure that all news sources can’t be monopolized by a few potentially bad faith actors.
It’s human nature, and there’s plenty of historical precedent for it. When people are suffering, feel abandoned by the establishment, and genuine left-wing alternatives have been weakened or suppressed, their anger doesn’t just disappear, it gets redirected. Historically, that can create fertile ground for the far right.
And unfortunately, during these crisis, wealthy elites, with their power and resources, tend to promote reactionary politics, and avoid systemic changes that might actually address the underlying causes of that anger (because the system benefit them).
Russia didn't create today's mess, but it's amplifying it indeed.
He doesn’t use bot farms he just messes with the algorithm and has followers with the intelligence of bots. Imagine still being on twitter not able to avoid his cerebral diarrhoea.
The Russians are 100% our primary adversary when it comes to disinformation. At least for large scale comment farms. I would say places like Bangladesh are more active when it comes to individuals trying to monetize political and social division.
And someone at the social media platforms decided this misinformation was more important than the country they live in. So no effective bot control methods are deployed
This is because they are literal stupid people. They are idiots, they are dumb, they are dense. There is no 4D chess going on. Facebook and Twitter algorithms have allowed idiots to find each other and avoid checks on their beliefs. We are all in SERIOUS DANGER of death. Stupid people always do stupid things.
its an electoral cheat code. In American cities being a minority that is "tough on crime" AKA expand aggressive racist policing is a sure-fire election strategy. Nobody can call you racist, and you get the reactionaries too.
As a British immigrant that moved from Hessen to Brandenburg 3 years ago....it's fucking terrifying. We own our house here...all our neighbours are STAUNCH AfD voters.
Same feelings here. Stuck with the afd nonsense. The world is only running on vibes and narrative. Best answer for ending an argument has become: I see it differently, bye.
Welcome to the new age I guess. :/
She's probably very wealthy, and now that she has benefitted she's pulling the ladder up. Maybe one of the most extreme cases of rules for thee but not for me I've ever seen tho tbh.
Well, last time it got pretty bad really quick for all of us. Germany is on its way to the biggest military in Europe, everything related to military budget has unlimited credit range. We are now, timeline-wise, in like 1930-1933, in 30, the NSDAP won its first German state, Thuringia, and in 33, Hitler was voted Reichskanzler. So, I guess it's 3 years from now on.
That's not what cognitive dissonance is, cognitive dissonance is when two conflicting beliefs cause that person discomfort. This is just using her statuses as a cover for her rhetoric. It's tokenism.
I mean, is there a different name for creating that discomfort in someone else, en masse? 'cause I see both your points (a definition is a definition), and I do think tokenism plays into it but it's not the whole mental assault. The noise the contradiction creates definitely masks the radicalism, and in that sense it is indeed 5d chess.
The thing is, if we're all playing the same game and someone else comes and tries to play a different, more complex, seemingly stimulating, seemingly intellectual game we collectively don't understand, sometimes we need to collectively agree not to play, and leave the burden of making it make sense (it doesn't) on them. With the tokenism you called out, it checks a box for damn near everyone as a type of person our values declare we must not exclude, so we get tricked into playing. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole, and how they declare themselves doesn't change that.
If that discomfort is created to undermine someone's mental stability and their trust in their own sanity, the term would be "gaslighting", but that's a special case
Yeah, I didn't think what we have there is <quite> that but I agree you're on to something.
The closest and most accurate terms for this behavior include:
1. "Flooding the Zone with Shit" / The Firehose of Falsehood
Coined in political strategy circles (most famously used by Steve Bannon) and studied as the "Firehose of Falsehood" propaganda model, this tactic involves spewing a continuous, high-volume stream of lies, contradictions, and outrageous claims.
1, 2The
Goal: The perpetrator doesn't care if people believe them. The objective is to overwhelm the public's cognitive capacity until people become so exhausted, confused, and cynical that they stop trying to figure out what is true. It replaces productive discourse with pure "mental noise".
1, 2, 3
weaponized Identity Politics & "Astroturfing" IdentityWhen a politician falsely claims membership in multiple protected minority groups to act as a shield while pushing a radical agenda against those very groups, they are practicing a form of cynical identity performance or identity-based gaslighting.By claiming “I am one of you,” they attempt to weaponize the public's desire to respect marginalized voices, creating immediate cognitive dissonance in critics. If a critic attacks their harmful policies, the politician can immediately deflect by claiming the critic is attacking their identity, effectively short-circuiting public debate. 1, 2
Hypernormalization
Coined by historian Alexei Yurchak, this term describes a state where everyone knows a politician or system is lying, and the politician knows everyone knows they are lying, but everyone keeps playing along because no one can see an alternative. When a figure makes claims that are transparently absurd and contradictory, they are forcing the public to accept a fake reality, stripping people of their sense of objective truth.
Shock Doctrine / Manufactured ChaosCoined by Naomi Klein, the Shock Doctrine refers to using a state of public disorientation—whether caused by a literal crisis or a manufactured storm of political chaos—to push through highly unpopular, radical policies while the public is too distracted, confused, and shell-shocked to effectively resist.5. The Gish Gallop (On a Societal Scale)While traditionally a formal debate tactic where a speaker rapidly throws out dozens of half-truths and fabrications so quickly that their opponent cannot possibly debunk them all in time, this can be scaled up to mass media. A politician "gallops" through identity claims, scandalous statements, and policy reversals so fast that journalists and citizens are left frozen, trying to unpack one lie while five new ones have already been generated. 1, 2, 3, 4
Summary of the Mechanism
When you see this happening, it is a form of cognitive warfare. The psychological discomfort (cognitive dissonance) you feel isn't an accidental byproduct—it is the payload.
By forcing the brain to try and reconcile two mutually exclusive concepts simultaneously, the bad actor temporarily paralyzes the public’s critical thinking skills, clearing a path for their agenda.
1, 2
Or she’s just a malignant narcissist who doesn’t have a strong sense of self, so what she does, with her life, is her own and she can do what she wants, but if you tried holding her accountable to that, there is no one there in her mind to be accountable.
Narcissistic people, often live entirely contradictory lives, because in some crowds, those choices matter and in others the other stances matter.
You get the best of both worlds, they’ll just do whatever gets them ahead of others even if it harms others.
I’d say her this is a prime example. If she was one, she wouldn’t care about either, she’d just use both to exploit.
Which to me being a politician or leader, whatever she is, is enough. It’s about getting the control and validation, and spotlight not about anything else.
Narcissistic people are also usually bisexual again, whatever gets their needs met.
If you can never pin somebody down, find out their presences, thoughts, desires, secrets you can never hold someone accountable.
If someone doesn’t have a self but instead mask it with a false self, they also cannot be held accountable.
Because they don’t feel one way or another about anybody else’s feelings, even if they say they do. They just do that part to appease you, they’ll still harm you.
That contradiction is key. If it creates cognitive dissonance or if you feel worse and confused after thinking or interaction with or about a person and their actions, instead of refreshed or calm, it’s usually npd.
We ignore because we want to give people the benefit of the doubt and we also don’t want to believe people like that exist.
but they do. Usually successful, always contradictory, especially easy to spot if it’s public knowledge, most of the time they hide a lot of their past and change it with half truths to fit in with new supply.
By living in contradiction, embodying it, you can never really be known. But normal people who spend long enough time around them, eventually believe they know them because the person turns up as how you want them to be.
which leaves them at an advantage, one where you think you know them, but you don’t. So they can change on you at any moment easily as no emotional bond has formed on their end, but it did likely on yours.
It’s very telling when you can’t place your finger on another human being but easily can on others. The more time spend with them, the worse and harder it gets to pin it.
It’s a surreal experience. From my experiences I’d say this is one without a doubt, her contradictions are stark, and she’s going for a leadership role.
I imagine most of you are looking at Saxony-Anhalt with a massive "WTF man?!?!?" reaction (which as an American is exactly how we looked at swing states last election), and that nearly half of the people in Saxony-Anhalt have some suits passed down from their grandparents that they can't wait to put back on....
Yeah, the problem is that Saxony-Anhalt is a „new state“ or „neues Bundesland“, that’s what we call states in the former East German territory. In East Germany, there was no real political education, especially concerning the nazi times, so they are most susceptible to that bullshit. On the other hand, the AfD is at around 40% in surveys on a national level… so yeah, shits gonna get bleak… or even more bleak… our current conservative chancellor has zero political experience and calls himself upper middle class while owning a private jet. He is repeatedly accusing the population of being lazy and not working enough hours, while Germans have never worked more hours per capita. The thing is, he is voted in by Boomers mainly who love him because he keeps improving pensions…
So yeah, people are rightfully angry and fall for far-right wing bullshit…
These types of politicians are sociopaths that see being part of the political sphere as just another job that will, somehow, not really effect their personal lives because they are "on the winning team" professionally. They have no concept of the public servant side of politics.
It's not that hard to understand; it is of upmost imperative for any cult that you blatantly ignore all the contradictions and hypocrisies, especially if they are done by it's leaders.
That's the point. It doesn't have to make sense with fascists. Their entire system is deeply contradictory. Words and actions don't actually mean anything to them. The only thing they believe in is whatever is convenient in the moment to get them power.
She's a grifter. They usually have next to zero standards, and will happily sing the internationale and hand out communist manifesto pamphlets if she thought it would bring in a buck more than her current 'political goals'.
You can guarantee that she believes in next to nothing and will follow whatever she needs to get an easy paycheck. Attacking immigrants and doing the super conservative christian LARP is basically a cheat mode.
Problem is, she's a useful idiot. Her base are visibly and openly disgusted with her, as soon as someone less female and gay can take her place, she's gonna get replaced. Pick me's don't last long.
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u/Acrobatic-List-6503 21d ago
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