A good New York Times piece on Portland nevertheless demonstrates how the conventions of objective reporting fail to accurately capture the bad faith driving pro-Trump propaganda.
A good New York Times piece on Portland nevertheless demonstrates how the conventions of objective reporting fail to accurately capture the bad faith driving pro-Trump propaganda.
Given how often headlines claim that Maga has imploded, melted down, or been slammed, one would think that nothing would be left of it by now—but unfortunately, none of this has any consequences.
New Republic is a tabloid. As are Newsweek and Raw Story, which are all uncritically posted to this community multiple times a week.
They’re tabloids that often appeal to my political sympathies, but tabloids nonetheless. We shouldn’t treat them like real journalism. If I had my way they’d be banned and/or ignored on Lemmy.
I wonder if I can block posts from certain domains. I think that was a feature on Reddit or RES.
It is really uncanny how pretty much the moment Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 every single tabloid rag in existence became credible news sources overnight.
I wish I could upvote this more than once. The “implodes”, “loses their minds”, “in a panic” headlines are getting tiresome.
“Implodes” means “1 or 2 people said something negative about a MAGA action then went back to being shit heels”
I feel like MAGA just runs half molten down by design at this point
As with most authoritarian groups, I think that Maga is primarily driven by fear: on the one hand, fear of the fictional enemies that their demagogues constantly conjure up (foreigners, Antifa, etc.) and, on the other hand, fear of retaliation by their own people or exclusion from the sect if a Maga follower dares to express even the slightest criticism of the leaders of this idiotic movement.
Only the second threat, i.e., fear of persecution by their own people, is justified, because it actually stems from reality. This allows for the control of both the foot soldiers, whose interests are of course not represented by the leadership at all, and the higher-ranking members, who actually benefit directly from the sellout of the US through nepotism and, in particular, corruption.
Now that their leader is in office, it is difficult to say what role the fictional enemy images still play. I think the fear of their own people now prevails by a long shot.
One example that suggests this is the fact that during the election campaign, the MAGA leadership propagated the conspiracy theory of child molesters in influential positions. Now that the election has been won, this topic is being avoided at all costs. The reason is clear: there is some truth to this conspiracy theory—but contrary to what the MAGA leadership has portrayed this ominous group of evil, it is obviously the conservatives themselves who are the child abusers, who are this ominous group of infuencial criminals. This should also have become clear to many MAGA supporters by now, as the administration is, for obvious reasons, doing everything in its power to prevent the announced prosecution of Eppstein’s customers and partners from taking place.
Now, however, MAGA supporters are too afraid of being targeted by their own people if they demand that the election promise be fulfilled and insist that the influential child abusers finally be stopped, because that would mean making enemies of the MAGA leadership, who are obviously the ones responsible.
So in short, I think Maga is now mainly operating on the basis of fear of persecution by its own people—as was already the case with the Nazis in the Third Reich. So it’s quite the traditional Nazi strategy really.
I was thinking exactly the same thing.
Words like those used all the time completely destroy their impact. ‘Meltdown’ now is just a dummy spit.