TL;DR: "Making democratic threats legible," i.e. spreading the word about how every action Trump takes is a threat to our democracy. It has been proven in several other countries run by authoritarian governments to be effective at stomping out fascism before it can take hold.
Saved you a click.
I really appreciate the TLDR, as I like to know the point before I start reading the support of it. However "legible" is a horrible word for this as precise as it might be.
Once a threat becomes legible — primarily, by an elected authoritarian beginning to act in authoritarian ways once in office — people start prioritizing democracy in a way they didn’t beforehand.
Which I would rephrase as saying: 'When politicians act like dictators, document it, yell it out, and call them out."
And even that's to long and not direct enough.
Seems like they stopped shy of the good stuff:
Worse, in the examples they give, the legislatures and/or judiciaries stood against the dictators.
Here, we have decades of propaganda fueled by the oligarchs that has removed the world view of a third of our population from reality, and it's not just Trump - the Republican party is in on the deal, from Congress to SCOTUS.
It's not the same battle. It's not the same order of magnitude. It's at least two orders of magnitude harder.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fight; rather, we should fight all the harder.
But that's why I'm not certain partition / civil war type solutions are off the table.
So the populace has to be intelligent enough to grasp that their democracy is being threatened?
Yup. We're fucked.
But that’s been met with “you have Trump derangement syndrome” or “that will never happen, you’re exaggerating” or 1000 variations for over a decade now.
If the horse won't drink, you just keep leading it to water until it eventually gets thirsty.
The horse will eventually drink as it must to survive.
You're better off helping those that want to be helped
The metaphor meant that, as Trump continues to injure his own supporters, reminding them that he is behaving as a dictator may eventually stop them from resolving cognitive dissonance by being defensive and instead by blaming the culprit. Basically, every time you lead the horse to water is a new opportunity to drink, increasing in urgency over time.
But by all means, help those who want to be helped first.
Ive observed the Polish "fight for democracy" in recent years up close and I call bullshit. I've worked as a tech for a key "democratic" NGO behind some of the biggest protests, and Ive been on the front-lines providing security to the Women's Strike as it was assaulted by pigs and fascist militia. Most people, particularly here, don't care about abstract ideas. They care when they feel their freedom, their money, their chances are being taken away.
We had pro-democratic marches of liberal parties mobilizing mostly middle class for years and it changed nothing. Crossing the line on abortion laws did that, as it affected the working class.
digression
Personally I believe people love talking about ideals, but they are either in the ideological fan-base/larping niche, or they can afford considerations higher then securing their roof and food for the next month or they use it as a cover for what they believe will benefit or injure them personally. Most fascist supporters will claim they actually only support the "economic program" of the far right, most wont be able to give any specifics of it. Most people calling themselves left are not even members of a trade union. However we fancy ourselves deep in our brains we are still tribalistic aggressive apes fighting for resources, and trying to use as little energy for that as possible. But we love to make up justifications for it.
Every major opposition strike in "communist" Poland happened after the prices of meat went up.
Don't get me wrong; people fight for the cause, commit their life to it. This is necessary for any change to the better to be possible. Organizing is key. Mobilizing the actual working class is key. No one cares if the middle class is unhappy when the power is solidified. And trumpists will have much more votes than anyone expects again, if they manage to disappear enough people from the system for wages in some low income sectors to go up. Or even just give some people a sense of pride or a new shared enemy.
Woman's Strike was a failure in many ways, but it did mobilize enough people to vote to bring back any actual left into the parlament and slightly grow liberals margins. Barely enough to take over the parliament, after which conservatives won the presidential elections (and we got this). This american style conservative-liberal duopoly has been going strong for the last 20 years. Democracy did not win, and whoever claims so is not watching closely. We might slide down hardcore right wing, we might stay at benevolent neocon liberals, or we get a friendly visit for an old occupier, you never know.
edit: spellcheck
Step 1
Step 2 DONE
So basically stupid people cause democracies to fail and the solution is basically to kill stupid people???
To always prioritize funding of education.
Ha that's never going to happen. In think my option is more realistic. You can't educate stupid. Especially willfully stupid.
First of all, relevant username. Second of all.............. to quote a litle youtube vid I love^[see 45 seconds in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iQRlUWPj4A], "You are not wrong. But also, you are very wrong."
Education is one of the critical tools to fix this, although that will take 2-3 gererations of hard work and full control of the process, so probably even longer.
Education, however, is not the short-term tool, it is one of the long-term tools. But it is one of the tools. More of a preventative of it taking root again after we root it out.
In itself, the answer is really simple, at least for the remaining democracies, and a solution would be entirely possible: people would have to switch to decentralized media apps, such as those provided by the Fediverse, and stop attributing so much credibility to legacy media. This would significantly reduce the scope for concerted disinformation, which is the main reason for any autocratic form of government being possible, which is of course never in the interests of citizens.
How this can be achieved is the question, and the answer can of course only be education, because the majority of people are obviously unaware of how they are being duped.
In itself, the answer is really simple, at least for the remaining democracies, and a solution would be entirely possible: people would have to switch to decentralized media apps, such as those provided by the Fediverse, and stop attributing so much credibility to legacy media. This would significantly reduce the scope for concerted disinformation, which is the main reason for any autocratic form of government being possible, which is of course never in the interests of citizens.
Sorry, but I don't think this will do it. We got into this situation because social media in general allows for fine-tuning manipulation and propaganda to specific audiences, not because they're centralized. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica were probably a but-for cause (and there are many) of Trump's first win. But it wasn't because Facebook was actively trying to help Trump, as much as it was because social media both democratized and bastardized journalism.
If everyone switched to Lemmy, Russia and others would now just focus (as I think they already have here in election years, but to a larger extent) their resources on Lemmy disinformation campaigns instead of X and Facebook. If the userbase splintered to 100 different apps instead of any centralized one, likewise targeted misinformation would follow. And viral misinformation would cross platforms, just like it already does.
Yes, education is the long-term answer.
Yes, that's true. The Fediverse is also susceptible to manipulation. That's why I'm not a fan of broad rules such as "no politics" in the largest communities, as their breadth would make it easy to buy off a few moderators, which shouldn't be a problem at all if you have even a little capital.
Nevertheless, traditional journalism is dead because its business model is simply no longer financially viable today. Investigative journalism is very expensive and, with the loss of advertising revenue (wnet to search engines and mainstream social media apps), it is simply an impossible business model today. In fact, most of the traditional media today is run at a loss by billionaires like Bezos (Washington Post, among others).
I'm not saying that the Fediverse is a promise of salvation. I'm just saying that it's the only option left.
The internet as such was originally designed to be decentralized, but it was taken over by big capital, for which we are now being presented with the bill in all the remaining democracies of the world.
In my opinion, the only response can be to do everything possible to return to decentralization, in order to at least put obstacles in the way of the powerful of this world.
I understand the sentiment and agree with the diagnosis. I just worry that the proposed cure won't address the illness. Decentralization is a band-aid at best.
I think the traditional journalism business model is just a proxy for "truth" in the sense that fact-checking and reliability is really what's at stake versus social media "news." And the substituted point is still valid - truth as a business model is no longer financially viable - but the cure I feel should be to make truth financially viable. One way to do that is to depress demand for misinformation (laws prohibiting misinformation and enforcement, creating boycott campaigns against platforms that algorithmically incentivize misinformation like Facebook and X). The other is to reward truth (educate the populace to support it, sure, but also keep funding as a social good journalism like NPR, PBS).
It's not great, but I don't feel just pushing into decentralized media will do anything except create even more competing "truths" and hasten information exhaustion. That path leads to Russia, where the populace seems mostly nihilistic and too jaded to act.
This would significantly reduce the scope for concerted disinformation
You don't think if Lemmy became large enough to be a target that it wouldn't be targeted with overwhelming bots and paid people posting propaganda?
I'd like to borrow your rose-coloured glasses, please. It'd be nice to have such a rosy worldview for a moment.
Do you think fascism happens when a critical number of people have been tricked into doing fascism? Fascism is not the result of some nebulous, nationwide hoodwink, but a response to measurable deterioration of wages, education, infrastructure, wages, healthcare, etc...
If you truly believe this, your only recourse is fact checking, appeals to logic, and information campaigns. How have those worked over the past decade?
It is pure liberalism to think that we just need to sit our best politicians and philosophers down, have them draft up an absolutely banger explanation of why fascism is bad, and then every fascist American yokel will see the error in their ways and renounce fascism. Liberalism is the idea that people are fascist simply becsuse they haven't been presented with the "right" ideas yet.
Yep. You need to present them a better alternative that will fix the real (or imaginary) problems in their lives, most of which are truly caused by rampant capitalism.
So you need specific, concrete strategies about how you're going to get them better wages, better education, better infrastructure, better healthcare, etc.
Because if you don't offer this, the fascists will. The fascists say all the problems are due to Outgroup and the solution is to give unlimited power to Ingroup so they can get rid of Outgroup and then all the problems will be solved.
That is, obviously, very stupid. But so are a lot of voters. And it that's the only solution to their problems that they're hearing, that's what they're going to gravitate toward. To win them over, you need to acknowledge their problems, paint a convincing picture that capitalist oligarchs are the source of those problems, and present clear and concrete steps toward solving those problems. You are NOT going to win them over by telling them that their problems aren't real, or that their problems aren't as bad as other people's problems.
How this can be achieved is the question
Just fucking vote. Engage in all local, state, and federal elections. Be invested in the results. Everyone, all the time, vote on everything. Believe in democracy.
the problem the guy above is trying to call out is that traditional social media (read: algorithms dictated by the ruling class) spread misinformation and control the narrative in ways we never thought possible. voting works, yes, but without addressing the root cause—misinformation—we will end up right back where we are.
Just fucking vote.
You are correct.
However, this doesn't work so well if certain groups of people are disenfranchised at a higher rate. It doesn't work if ballots are stolen and manipulated. It doesn't work if judges stop counts or recounts of votes. It doesn't work if there are fewer polling stations or drop boxes in certain areas. It doesn't work with gerrymandering. It certainly doesn't work with propaganda that encourages voter apathy.
That goes without saying, but the choice of information media that people use influences their decision. As long as these information media are controlled by billionaires, which is absolutely the case for the majority of voters, not only in the US, the outcome of the elections is a foregone conclusion.
One should not assume that even obvious misinformation has no effect if it is spread widely enough. It is, of course, commendable to believe in people, but this hope is clearly dashed by the US.
Do not believe for a moment that something like this cannot happen in your home country.
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News