I’m not at all convinced, because the poor aren’t the ones who elected Trump. Both the rich and the poor voted for Harris. Here’s the data:
Edit: This is not the most up-to date poll, although it is substantially correct. See my post below.
Ordinary people don’t keep track of billionaires. Almost no one even knows how many billionaires there are, or how many billions they have. I don’t know and I bet that even most people who blame billionaires for everything don’t know. If there are twice as many now as there were before and each one has twice as much money, the public won’t even notice.
IMO Trump support is due to envy and resentment, but it’s not the resentment of the rich by the poor. It’s the resentment of the middle class by the working class. Look at the results by college education:
(Note that while income and education are correlated, my first plot shows that the people without a college education who are voting for Trump aren’t voting for him simply because they’re poor.)
It used to be the case that mass media was controlled largely by people with middle class values. The people who opposed vaccination and supported renaming the Gulf of Mexico were called crackpots and they wouldn’t appear in most mainstream newspapers or TV news. Neither the Democrat nor the Republican candidate for President would agree with them.
Now, thanks to the internet, these people have been able to organize into a mass movement and they want to smash the institutions built by the middle class that looks down on them. They voted for Trump because he’s culturally one of them, despite the fact that he’s a college-educated billionaire.
Do experts say Trump is a fascist? Do experts say vaccination is essential for public health? Do experts say tariffs will wreck the economy? Now Trump will make those experts cry delicious liberal tears…
This isn’t how Presidents are elected either. Even though Trump narrowly won the popular vote, at the state level you might see a different picture. We’re all Americans but the concerns of a Floridian aren’t the same as the concerns of a Californian.
Tim Walz gets that you need to humiliate fascists engaging in bad faith and promote progressive policies to engage populist leftist support, hopefully the rest get the message for midterms
In the debates Walz said, “But the expansion of Israel and its proxies is an absolute, fundamental necessity for the United States”
Expansion huh.
No to Walz, forever. “Expansion” there is done through murder and theft from civilians. Walz and genocide-dems like him can all can go eff themselves.And he also told Israelis in a visit to Israel and Syria in 2009 that expansion into the West Bank is preventing peace, and supported the 2015 Iran nuclear deal against AIPAC. I don’t think his position is as clear as you’ve made it seem based on one debate quote.
TW: Well, I think first and foremost what we saw on October 7th was a horrific act of violence against the people of Israel. They have certainly, and the vice president said it, I’ve said it, have the right to defend themselves and the United States will always stand by that, but we can’t allow what’s happened in Gaza to happen. The Palestinian people have every right to life and liberty themselves. We need to continue, I think to put the leverage on to make sure we move towards a two state solution. I think we’re at a critical point right now. We need the Netanyahu government to start moving in that direction. But I think those folks who are speaking out loudly in Michigan are speaking out for all the right reasons. It’s a humanitarian crisis. It can’t stand the way it is. And we need to find a way that people can live together in this and we’ve said it and continue to say it, getting a ceasefire with the return of the hostages and then moving towards a sustainable two state solution is the only way forward.
Well lets judge him by his actions, not words meant to play well with both sides during an election. He was in congress, we have actual voting data on the guy:
And it shows that he is always on Israels side. The facts show he is just another zionist.
This is the lesson that the political left needs to learn. Relying on our “better nature” is not an effective strategy. People remain vulnerable, now more than ever, to the tactics of propaganda. If we want to create a better future, we need to accept that we need to wield those tactics better than our enemies.
If we want a fair and just society, the idea needs to be sold to the populace. Collectively, we cannot be trusted to independently choose a better future for ourselves.
Beating our enemies by lying better to the public? No thanks.
I’d rather beat my enemies by being better then them and showing it, and simply breaking the ability of my enemies to lie.
Fox news, for example, should never have been allowed to be what it is today. A judge literally ruled that they don’t have to be factual. That right there was when things started going sideways. For the longest time, people laughed at Fox for being the bunch of mentally challenged idiots that they are and all the ridiculous lies they were spouting all day every day, but nobosy though of the influence it had. Nobody realized that there was a huge amount of people listening to these lies, all day, every day.
Fox news should be outlawed, and it’s pundits should literally be strung up in the streets for the harm they’ve caused. I don’t say that lightly, I would never say that about any journalist, or person, really, but these guys and gals are the cream of the crop, the Himmler of the 2000’s, they are the reason why millions of useful idiot sheep voted for trump.
Nobody, and then I mean NOBODY would have voted trump had they had access to actual factual news. Nobody would have walked in a pizza place with an assault rifle, demanding to see the non existent basement with the non existent children being not sacrificed. Some of it is conspiracy theories from Facebook (yet another player that should have been fined into a shallow grave) but a lot of this trash has been, and continues.to be spouted by fox news, oan, etc .
These are propaganda systems that should have been prohibited 30 years ago. Now its too late but better too late then never, i guess? Prohibit Fox news, prohibit news that is proven false, prohibit news made by political parties. We need journalists, we need good journalism, but it must be independent from political bias and influence.
We should get independent news organizations that are funded and monitored by independent foundations which get their money from the government. Each of these foundations should be monitored by yet another layer of independent foundations. They must, by law, report facts with ad little bias as possible.
Use the tools that will work in the world we have. Not the world we wish we had.
Yeah and it’s not like behaving unlike your enemy ever back fired or anything.
This is the wrong direction. If it succeeds (it won’t), it will become the very thing you’re fighting now. Don’t think you can control it, you can’t. Come on dude, read some history, this happened time and again
Propaganda is just marketing for political ideology. Most people are unprincipled homunculi and need to have these ideas sold to them.
Yeah, no.
Propaganda is very specifically lyit or telling half truths to mold your masses to support you. You can call it marketing, or anything else, but it’s evil and it’s what got us here in the first place. Two wrongs don’t make a right
Taking the high road is what got us into this mess. The heart and mind is a battlefield just like the physical battlefield and cyberspace. If you forfeit one front to the enemy you unnecessarily put yourself at a disadvantage in the war.
Uh huh, and by becoming exactly like your enemy you expect to defeat how, how? By competing?
Do you really believe that IF this would turn people back that you’d stop? Nah, you’d go on exactly the same, be exactly the same.
Left wing fascism is NOT the answer to right wing fascism
Propaganda is a weapon. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need weapons at all. But when an enemy is using a weapon against you–whether it is a spear, crossbow, gun, cannon, tank, nuke, or propaganda–you need to do one of two things:
- Deploy a defensive solution to neutralize the weapon
- Use the weapon yourself to even the battlefield
History is littered with examples of conflicts that were lost due to the inability to adapt to contemporary warfare. I’ve not aware of any feasible solutions to defend against propaganda. Many solutions would be deemed autocratic themselves (e.g., banning the sources of the propaganda, such as Fox News).
The “high road” solution would be to educate and deprogram the affected individuals. But deprogramming 10s of millions of people is a monumental undertaking, would likely take generations, and would be met with resistance the entire way. The logical conclusion for someone looking to improve the situation in their lifetime is to pursue (2) and deploy counter propaganda.
Left wing fascism is NOT the answer to right wing fascism
I get what you are trying to say, though I think it would be more accurate to phrase it as “left wing authoritarianism is not the answer to fascism” because “left wing fascism” is an oxymoron.
That said, I don’t think the use of propaganda by the left in a battle against the forces of chaos would inevitably lead to a left wing autocracy. But even if there was a chance it did, I would still prefer it to the certainty of a fascist takeover that comes from completely neglecting one of the war fronts. I imagine we would both agree that right wing propaganda has done massive damage to our society. Why would we let that continue unchecked?
Once you start with propaganda lies you make yourself unreliable and untrustworthy.
You could help the world to trust more by exposing propaganda for what it is, and educate people with facts
Or you can just become that which you oppose and make excuses for it. I don’t need your excuses, I need you to be truthful and reliable.i need you to fight propaganda, not add to it
He’s not wrong.
We’re still a bunch of greedy monkeys, and no amount of education or “proper parenting” can fully override the base biology all the time for every person.
As much as it would be great to be better, we aren’t even close.
Wasn’t it better in the 90’s already, and it got worse in the last 20 years?
Better? Define better…
There was still plenty of poverty in the 90s, and the violence situation was actually worse than it is currently.
brutal, blunt and true.
It isn’t simply wanting to destroy that which excludes you. They want to destroy what they fear. They fear exclusion. They fear those different from them. They fear having to change. They fear losing what they have.
Conservative media and politicians stole these fears and create new ones. Migrant caravans, CRT, FEMA camps, Antifa. These people will run to anyone who indulges their fear and says they can fix it.
