“Democracy sustains capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And, right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant,” she said, referencing her rally last year on the White House Ellipse in Washington. “We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump. And these titans of industry are not speaking up,”
I mean so close, I do understand what she’s trying to get across with things like Intel, yet absolutely dumb messaging.
Kamala going back to american basics: all communist = bad --> all bad = communist.
Yeah, completely overloaded and missed used term at this point that doesn’t reflect the realities of anything in today’s world outside of antiquated boomer speak.
She needed to grow a spine and say fascist.
Half this country was exposed to 30+ years of Cold War Propaganda; it’s a very powerful force to draw upon, especially when they are under the spell of the current propaganda. It’s useful to try to get one propaganda to overwhelm the other propaganda inside their brains. It’s like saying something about Palestine to your generation. Or about communism lmao. Over rides the thinking side of your brain even decades later. It’s just emotionally charged and full of false imagery that you perceive as an individual. But the fact remains is he very much running a Stalin like government. Calling him a commie and pointing to the 30 years of commie propaganda is useful politically. Ironically, it upsets, your keyboard communists.too which is magical.
Even when attacking Trump, Democrats can’t resist taking swipes at leftists…
It’s too easy lmao look at these comments. I’m so disappointed in all of you commies I thought you had more fight in ya! Poor you! Utopia delayed!
Misleading, editorialized title. Any worthwhile journalist wouldn’t quote somebody on words they didn’t literally say.
bad journalism for sure… however, you can infer the meaning here. i don’t think she’d separate ‘tyrant’ and ‘communist’ for distinction. still, hate how this shit passes as acceptable writing.
She did literally say that
She literally didn’t.
We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump.
Can it be presumed it’s what she meant? Arguably. But presumptions are not quotes, and it’s not acceptable to attribute a quote to someone that didn’t say the words you are claiming they did.
That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump.
What could this quote be referring to if not the prior sentence
Your inference on what she meant doesn’t change what she literally said.
You are defending her comments like MAGA would be Trump’s or Kirk.
It seems like you don’t remember what regular journalism used to be, because it was absolutely proper journalism to splice together pieces of sentences that make a shorter version for a title, as long as it was clear that the original really did mean that - which is the case here. The only issue here is the quotes, it would typically be “we’re dealing with (…) a communist dictator” or “we’re dealing with” “a communist dictator.” Your nitpick that the exact sentence wasn’t sliced up this exact way is misplaced, you’re not advocating for precise quotes, you’re just advocating for plausible deniability, like someone’s going to say “I didn’t say that, you don’t have a soundbite of me saying Trump is a communist dictator.” That’s just legalese, and that’s denying the meaning of the job, because actual journalism isn’t supposed to be a parrot job, this is exactly what it should be. It is, in fact, what she literally said.
Nope. Quotes don’t work like that either. You don’t get to just piecemeal the words in whatever order you want and claim “They literally said that!”.
Actual journalism deals with and communicates facts without distortion. Sometimes that’s a “parrot job”, and many times that includes personal insight, but it can never compromise on accuracy in reporting what actually happened. That’s lazy, unprofessional, and a threat to the medium as a whole. Similarly, you insisting falsehood is “fact” doesn’t make it so. It just erodes any credibility or merit your words carry, weakening your future statements that much more. You discredit yourself and everyone else that shares your stance.
And, again, nothing I’ve said has anything to do with what she meant. I’m not saying your claims of her intent are wrong. This has nothing to do with “deniability” or “legalese”, and trying to frame my point with some sort of counter-agenda is entirely unfitting.
For what an actually credible title could look like -
Harris Likens Trump to “communist dictators”
Accurate, and even shorter. Took me all of 2 seconds. Whoever wrote the title of the article is a hack that’s not worth the effort being put in to defend here.
What you’re asking for is state propaganda, that’s where it goes, that’s where it is right now. It teaches politicians to spin longer phrases that clearly sound like promises and denouncing bad things so they can then deny everything the next day, because “that’s not what I said.” And on the other hand, it punishes those who make a short, blunt comment and then get hounded about the exact word they use, not allowing for any explanation - or any mistake. That’s how you get nations refusing to call something a genocide, and Nazis pretending to be upset at getting called Nazis, that’s how you get any left winger denigrated because they used a word you decided was not right, while denying the meaning of a word that a right winger said. You erase the importance of meaning by focusing on the importance of an exact quote while denying an interpretation. It teaches the media that asking questions and making editorial interpretations is forbidden because only the exact phrase from the press release is permitted, making it easier to manipulate the message being put out, because copy-pasting is easier than interpreting, and it reduces variations that expose the gaps and underline the problems.
You yourself right now are denying that this is really what she said because that’s not her exact words, leaving an opening to deny the entire comment - because that’s how it goes, not necessarily from you, but from anyone who comes after that. Hell, you’re already dismissing whoever wrote this as a hack because you don’t like that they didn’t use an exact quote, even though the meaning is absolutely right and you know it. Even your suggestion will be met with “but what was the exact quote” from people who will promptly ignore everything you say that’s longer than one sentence, and what you thought was more correct than this title will be deemed not correct enough. Like it or not, this is historically how journalism did things right, this absolutely was how quotes worked, until Fox News had to argue in court that only an idiot would believe they were news, and then nothing came out of it except Fox getting more power. This is how people keep moving toward more autoritarianism, that is what they have been doing, and that is what is happening now. Diversity in journalism is a good thing, and what you are defending only pushes toward uniformity.
We’re dealing with a fucking menace of a president. That’s the important thing to focus on, goddammit!
This is the akin to the pedantic gymnastic arguments that people keep using trying to protect themselves from accepting Kirk’s fascist bullshit. He literally said a bunch of heinous fascistic shit, and people will argue “context”. You’re arguing pedantics for no good goddamned reason.
Her first sentence involves the second, and vice versa. They are not exclusive of each other. They are two clauses of a singular thought. Stop. FFS
For someone so against meaningless arguments, you are quite insistent on continuing the argument about things I’m not talking about. For the fourth time now - it doesn’t matter what she meant. Quotes in journalism (especially in headlines) are for verbatim statements, not paraphrased inferences.
Double quotes are distinct from single quotes in some journalistic style guides and can be used this way.
You are not interpreting this correctly, and neither is TheHill / Independent / whatever.
Think about it step by step.
- Some time ago, America was hardcore opposed to the USSR and the Communist bloc. Americans like her grew up hearing comparisons with Communist dictators and how they did X, Y, and Z. The bogeyman many people grew up with was a communist dictator who hated free speech, co-opted the state and therefore personally controlled industry, cracked down on artistic expression…
- That’s what we’re dealing with now. Not from the perspective of a McCarthy Boogeyman; Kamala isn’t saying he’s a communist. But from the adult perspective where we’re supposed to care about free speech, a private industry, liberal art… Trump is the thing people grew up hearing about.
Tldr; Kamala didn’t say this. This never happened. Watch the interview and think about what she means. Journalism strikes again~
Edit: Here’s a simpler example: “We went years hearing from the right about demonic liberals abusing kids. Well Trump is that—that’s what we’re dealing with now.”
That isn’t saying Trump is a demonic liberal. It means “the thing everyone hated is here in a different form”
Maybe she needs to be more careful about her words then.
Propaganda against socialism and communism still going strong in the usa
Never went away, never will.
The country is founded on personal gain, it’s the foundation that it was bloodily built on from the very beginning. It would undermine everything that our current beneficiaries of this legacy stand for to even remotely embrace socialism.
The idea was to pump “rugged individualism” until there were no communities left, and then everyone who managed to shave off the most cash can fuck off to other countries or their own yachts in the ocean.
Well. That tells me all I need to hear. The DNC had decided to lose. Again.
Good luck. You’re gonna need it.
Fucking hell did she really need to throw in the red scare bullshit?
So the headline is misleading at best but i still feel like the ambiguity raised by inserting a term like that was just piss poor form and just about par for the course on both journalism and the messaging clarity of the DNC.
“We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump.
It isn’t that ambiguous.
Her calling a fascist capitalist a communist shows how she is not equipped to deal with America’s problems though.
She’s comparing the current big baddy with the old big baddy not calling a fascist a communist. It’s the same message from her just IMO your understanding of it shows how the ambiguity plays out. It creates a narrative that undermines her point because people aren’t gonna get it.
I am able to read thanks.
Completely agree
It’s the dumbest scare tactic "you want the government to provide for you rather than corporations?! Shame!
Ma’am, with the greatest possible respect, Trump is as much a communist as the Nazis were socialists.
He’s redistributing wealth among the people, it’s just you’re not people
Harris is certainly well educated enough to know that Trump is not a communist; presumably these dipshit comments are for right-wingers, because she’s trying to appeal to them again.
Goddamned neoliberals
They literally exist just to kill leftism in the united states now. No other benefits offered
I think she’s parroting her donor’s concerns. They don’t like the direction the wind is blowing. Mamdani has them spooked.
Trump is exhibiting classic dictator behaviors. Dictatorships are not exclusively right or left. History is full of dictators who use “communism” or fascism as a base.
This is where people conflate and confuse things like the FL Cubans who didn’t like Kamala because “she’s a socialist/Communist and I came from a country with a bad leader like that!”
They can’t distinguish a ruling style from the underlying governing structure.
A dictator is a dictator is a dictator.
And you can look at dictatorial regimes across the spectrum and it’s the authoritarianism and the dictator that is the common thread.
Did she actually say the quote in the title? Or is that the editor’s work? In context it seems like she was causing Trump a tyrant, as are communist dictators, but not a communist:
She was pressed on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” about why she didn’t anticipate such action and responded that she believed “titans of industry would be guardrails for our democracy.”
“And one by one by one, they have been silent, they have been … feckless,” Harris said. “It’s not like they’re going to lose their yacht or their house in the Hamptons.”
“Democracy sustains capitalism. Capitalism thrives in a democracy. And, right now, we are dealing with, as I called him at my speech on the Ellipse, a tyrant,” she said, referencing her rally last year on the White House Ellipse in Washington. “We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump. And these titans of industry are not speaking up,”
Maybe I’m being too charitable. But that’s how I read it, perhaps because I don’t want to believe that senior Democrats can’t tell a communist from a fascist.
hilarious to hear Americans use terms like Socialist, Communist, Fascist even at the levels of supposedly highly educated and clearly they have no idea what they are talking about.
Fascist
weeeeelllllll… If you’re in a place where you could throw a rock and hit one, maybe? /s BTW
She still doesn’t get it. Capitalism inevitably leads to fascism. It’s a core feature.
Unregulated capitalism CAN lead to fascism.
It doesn’t have to.
Just like communism all around the world has similarly basically always led to fascism and dictatorship, but it doesn’t have to.
Humans are always the problem. Plans don’t meet humans well.
Fascism is a tool that capitalists use when capitalism is threatened by rising class consciousness. It’s not something that a society just “falls into.” Also, fascism is ideologically the opposite of communism. You can have a communist dictatorship, but you’re not going to find a fascist version.
And capitalism has killed millions more than the other ideologies too, even more than theocracies, all because people can’t afford food and medicine
No I don’t think your AND should be added to what I’m saying. You can say that elsewhere as it’s own standalone. Ty.
Capitalism leads to corporate monopolies leads to fascism.
Yes. I really don’t get it. Everybody has played monopoly but it seems like nobody has learned the lessons of the game.
No one ever finished playing monopoly. Everyone always quit in boredom and frustration before the end.
She was never a good pick for the role. She should have faded into obscurity after losing the primary in 2020.
Wow and Harris just airballs it. Jesus.
In point of fact, capitalism is demonstrably quite enamored with authoritarianism in more places than just the US.
A fascist dictator, not a communist dictator.
Oh my fucking god shut the fuck up Kamala.
