Three years after the January 6 attack, propaganda about the insurrection is poisoning the American public

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 739 points – Three years after the January 6 attack, propaganda about the insurrection is poisoning the American public | CNN Business
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The U.S. will mark the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection on Saturday, a milestone that will confer upon the reality-dwelling citizenry a grim reminder of the potency of propaganda and how quickly it can warp perception when introduced into the public square.

Just three years ago, most of the country watched with dismay and horror as a violent MAGA mob beat back authorities and stormed the country’s citadel of democracy. The Donald Trump-incited crush of disillusioned rioters, fueled by a stream of fantastical lies, believed that the 2020 election had been stolen by sinister forces working to undermine the democratic election.

Of course, not only was their belief flatly incorrect, but evidence later emerged indicating that it was Trump who, in fact, had tried to subvert democracy.

Facts, however, have little bearing on the sentiment inside the Republican Party, which has been fed a steady diet of lies and half-truths by Fox News and the rest of the sprawling right-wing media machine. To wit, the false notion that Joe Biden nefariously stole the 2020 election is now widely shared inside the GOP. A CNN poll conducted over the summer found that nearly 70% of Republicans believe Biden’s win was not legitimate, a number that has continued to tick up.

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It's a matter of degrees .... American establishment wants fascism, they are just taking their time getting there.

The problem isn't Trump, Trump is an idiot and dime a dozen, once he dies, there will be another idiot just like him that the establishment will court and push into our faces every day.

The problem are the millionaires and billionaires of America that are funding all this crap and keep maintaining it all. If all this relied on Trump's charisma, it would have died out a long time ago ... it's just a huge marketing machine that keeps it afloat.

As long as we keep seeing these headlines, no matter if it's Trump or someone else ... it's just a sign that the wealthy want fascism to keep growing because they know it will mean a win fall for them at the cost of all of us.

Thanks America ... you're doing a bang up job.

As an American. You are 100% spot on. Had Republicans not enabled and helped trump at every step. He would have gotten nothing accomplished. They were there every hour of every day ready to lick his greasy taint in an effort to please their voters. It could be any idiot. It just happened to be Trump

And what's sad is blatant and unapologetic mass murdering warhawks like Cheney's daughter opposed him, and the idiot MAGA flock call her a traitor. Unbelievable.

With many other countries I could agree. But America is the global reserve currency and basically the world’s police. For the theocrats pushing a takeover it wouldn’t end well. F35s and other highly technical defense system would crumble. Our soft power would evaporate overnight. Many Billionaires would wake up only to find their billions are worth a fraction. Sounds Improbable.

This is a pretty solid take imho, but I’m not sure the ultra wealthy see it that way. Look at how deluded they show themselves to be when there isn’t a PR handler in the mix to filter their thoughts on platforms like Xitter. Their ego and hubris from living in the alternate reality their great wealth affords them presents tremendous risk in this situation.

I believe this.

I'm a bit older (40+) and when I was in college, it was pretty popular for students from more prestigious colleges to be paying students at my college and other less prestigious colleges to do original research for them. Plagiarism with extra steps and pay. The poor student gets paid, and the rich student gets to put their name on it and get the grade.

I think the elite have been buying their credentials for too long and fully believe their own lies. They love the smell of their own farts, as it were.

They are so many generations removed from real knowledge about international markets and so on that there is real possibility that they will make the whole house of cards collapse in hubris.

Well, you saw it recently with the two actresses who were charged with paying a fixer to get their children into Ivy League schools. They are rich. Very rich. Their kids didn't need to go to any school. It's about the PRESTIGE and CONNECTIONS.

That drunken date rapist Kavanaugh would've had an easy life, regardless of anything he did. But his family wanted bragging rights. That's the way all these fucks are.

There are two types of wealthy people ... those who have all the power and those that want all the power

Those already in power probably don't want change .... but those that don't have it all certainly would like to see change and a reshuffling of wealth and the chance of gaining control of more, or even everything.

Every major change in history never really changed anything ... all it ever does is change the actors and players - old wealth gets removed by new wealth - old elites are replaced by new elites

American political and military power will probably always stay the same for the foreseeable future ... the question is who will get the chance to sit at the top and rule the world.

What confuses me is that they seem to miss that historically fascists or authoritarians more generally don't actually pander to the wealthy once they have power, and many wealthy suddenly end up dead or missing. Look at Xi and Putin for instance. Or history.

It's a rat cage and everyone is chasing after the hunk of cheese above our cage ..... the ones closest to the top believe that by climbing on those below them, they can reach higher .... and those close to the top are desperately trying to pull down the one just above them to gain that extra bit of chance of going up one more level.

The ultra wealthy at the top may or may not want fascism ... but those just below them might because they believe in changing the guard, reshuffling the wealth and giving a new group of a privileged people a chance ... like you say, every big political authoritarian change came at the cost of removing many wealthy people, but it also meant a new crop of people to fill the gaps.

They finally found their useful idiot who was capable of energizing a portion of the population who previously didn't believe voting was important.

The majority of the GOP in office will continue to bend the knee to anyone they view to have the same power. And I fear eventually we will see the same action taken on the left.

Power is the most addictive drug.

People don't realize they tried this 100 years ago, with Smedley Butler. It was called "The Business Plot." But Butler was honorable, and snitched. Absolutely nothing was done, and most people don't know who Butler is. He was at the time THE most decorated Marine in history. But he fucked with the money, and they buried him and his legacy. I tweeted Oliver Stone 10 years ago that he should make a biopic about Butler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

I agree ... more people should know more about this story ... fortunately a 2022 film does highlight it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_(2022_film)

Thanks! Didn't know about this fim.

Neither did I. After watching what I thought was just another fiction thriller, I realized it was based on actual events ...

Robert De Niro plays the character 'Gilbert Dillenbeck', a Marine veteran based on Marine Corps General Smedley Butler

And after just reading the cast list again ... holy crap this film has a big list of familiar actors - Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Zoe Saldana, Rami Malek, Robert DeNiro

And like I mentioned, you are right, more people should know about this important bit of history which is probably why all these big actors wanted to play in this to promote this film and its story.

It's so stupid though. The German conservative aristocracy wanted fascism (mainly because they were incredibly unsettled by the post WWI shake ups and terrified of bolshevism) and thought they could control the Nazis to their own ends. That pretty much immediately backfired on them. These people have to see that...

99% of our voting population is going to vote team color no matter what. They don't care that Biden hasn't done anything meaningful to put a stop to this, and they'll argue with me tooth and nail that electing him is a moral imperative anyway.

Fascism is inevitable now.

Seriously though, what other choice do I have with my vote? The reality is we live in a two party system, I have zero power to change it by voting random 3rd party candidates that will never get the support, and the other guy is even worse.

This is the logic that's given us a 40-year slide into fascism and a near total loss of power.

I'm sorry, but if you're unwilling to change, you can't expect things to change. You can look at the last two decades and see the results of electing do-nothing Democrats.

In fact, read up on Idaho for the next step in crises that Democrats are simply going to ignore.

This is the logic that got us Bush.

Nader’s vote total was several times higher than Bush’s margin in both Florida and New Hampshire. Him off the ballot in either of those states would’ve made Gore v Bush unnecessary as Gore would’ve been a clear winner.

It also earned Clinton’s election with Perot being the Republican spoiler for Dole in 96, though I don’t remember which states.

Third parties will always be a spoiler until voting reform happens and plurality winner-takes-all ends.

>This is the logic that got us Bush.

gore won. Bush's daddy's friends made him peesident

Gore should’ve won. It’s plainly obvious that there were multiple plan-Bs to assure Bush’s win, between his brothers obviously flawed ballots and the Supreme Court and who knows what else never made national news.

It’s like gerrymandering, voter suppression (by means of strategically making polling places in predominantly Democratic areas more crowded making and blocking mail ballots/early voting difficult if not impossible), and voter purges aren’t enough of a leg up for them…we then find out that they actually have multiple layers of plans to help get a victory one way or the other.

We saw it in 2000, and we saw it in 2020. And we saw how deep the rabbit hole goes when we realized that by crippling the USPS to prevent mail voting, they managed to delay getting their own fake ballots into DC in time.

At what point do we stop calling what the GOP does “politics” and start actually calling it “organized crime”?

Got it, my problem is I'm not applying enough hopes and dreams that the entire system changes because I voted for a write-in.

My plan is to keep voting in local candidates for local offices that are working to make the changes I'd love to see, but until then there's absolutely nothing I can do at a national level but try to keep the openly evil guy from winning by voting for the most likely other option. If you have a better plan that has a chance of changing anything THIS election cycle, I'd love to hear it and be educated. Honestly, I would!

Local level

This is the only power you have now, and you should absolutely vote progressive locally if a candidate actually has a progressive record. (And many Dems don't there either.)

At the national level, it's too late. It doesn't matter how you vote now. The simple fact is that Biden needs many people to vote for him that are finding it too expensive to live under his governance, and as we saw with Obama trying to hand of the reins to Hillary, that kind of record isn't something the public is going to buy. When Obama ignored the middle class, they didn't care that Trump was a racist piece of shit. They only cared that he was the candidate of change.

They're not going to care that Trump or DeSantis are fascist. They're going to care that they're not Biden, and therefore (in the minds of these voters) more likely to make a change that makes their individual lives easier.

Right, so I suck it up and vote Biden so my vote can at least try to counter someone voting the actual proclaimed dictator in the meantime, correct? We're back to square 1 until any of my preferred local candidates can get to the national level and hopefully push some real change. In the meantime I do the best I can and talk to people about what we could be doing better. Democracy yo. 🤷‍♂️

If you think that's best, sure. Your vote is your business.

If democracy is your issue, though, I wouldn't vote Democrat, though. They cast themselves as stewards of democracy but they fight harder to keep Greens off the ballot than they do to beat Republicans in elections.

They are overtly anti-democratic, and that tendency has moved fascism along, not helped to stifle it. Democracy doesn't mean 'freedom to vote Democrat'. It means freedom to vote the party you want, and as a Green party supporter, they actively work to suppress my voice.

Believe it or not, Greens are a bigger threat to Democrats losing than republicans are.

Democrats are a larger threat to Democrats losing than Greens or Republicans. 'We are not Trump' is not a platform

It absolutely is. Trump isn’t a person. As long as most of the GOP is emulating him, Trump, himself, is an ideology.

“We are not Trump” is shorthand.

Not that that is literally a part of anybody’s campaign. Biden has had a pretty accomplished first term given the split Congress and the stacked court. That “we are not trump” is some phrase coined against dems by some right wing blogger years ago.

You wouldn’t know that from watching the news, since every channel picks and chooses what they show and they are building their brands not just through the news that they are airing, but also by the news they are not.

Yeah but one half went to college and formed their opinions in open debate and discussion, graded work, with accomplished authors and scholars, the professors, and their peers. Republicans did their own research or went to the school of "hard knocks."

It's supposed to be that in the land of the blind, the one eyed man his king. In the land of Republicans they would poke out the man's eye and claim sight is deep state propaganda. "Don't look up!"

I would argue that those who graduated from the school of hard knocks are why we have labor laws and unions. It wasn't college educated people who were the drive behind unions.

Strike: Strikes in the United States

The first nationwide strike occurred in 1877, when railroad workers struck in the middle of an economic depression. With the advent in the 1880s of such labor organizations as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, strikes became more frequent. Some of the more important industry-wide strikes in the United States have been those waged by the railroad employees in 1877 and 1894, by the United Mine Workers in 1902 and 1946–47, by the steel workers in 1919, 1937, 1952, and 1959, and by the auto workers in 1937 and 1946. Important local strikes have included those of the Western Federation of Miners in the early 20th cent. and of the Teamsters Union in Minneapolis in 1934.

I highly doubt railroad workers, miners, steel workers, and auto workers all had post-secondary education. If it wasn't for them striking and pushing for better wages. We would be far worse off. Without better wages, post-secondary education would be a pipe dream for money.

National Association for the Protection of Labour

The National Association for the Protection of Labour was one of the first attempts at creating a national trade union centre in the United Kingdom. The organization was established in July, 1830 by John Doherty, after an apparently unsuccessful attempt to create a similar national presence with the National Union of Cotton-spinners.

John Doherty (trade unionist)

Doherty began his career as a cotton spinner as a child worker just ten years old in his home town of Buncrana...Following Doherty's relocation to Manchester, it was not long before he was involved with the factory workers' growing movement for higher wages and better conditions. In 1818 he was a leading figure in the spinners' strike and was imprisoned for two years. Rather than deterring Doherty this merely enhanced his desire to obtain better conditions for himself and his fellow workers and he continued to be an active member of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners following his release.

I doubt someone who had been working since ten years old in 1800s would have any education other than an extremely basic one. Yet, John Doherty pushed to create a national union to fight for a better future.

What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History

Despite the ultimate surrender, one of the many bits of Blair Mountain history that continues to stick out is the diversity of the miner’s army. In 1921, coal company towns were segregated, and Brown v. Board of Education was decades away. However, Wilma Steele, a board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, says Matewan was one of the only towns in the United States where Black and white children, most commonly Polish, Hungarian and Italian immigrants, went to school together. Other miners were white Appalachian hill folk. Most all were kept apart in order to prevent organization and unionization. It didn’t work. Keeney recalls one incident during the Mine Wars, Black and white miners held cafeteria workers at gunpoint until they were all served food in the same room, and refused to be separated for meals.

Seems like uneducated coal miners were far more progressive.

I will agree that post-secondary education has been a overall boon for progressive politics and for a better society. It can be argued that the chance to get post-secondary education would never be possible if it wasn't those who graduated from the school of hard knocks. It wasn't until the uneducated working class fought for better a living, post-secondary education was allowed for those with money.

Yeah, you're right, some. It was trial lawyers and Ivy Leaguers who won labor rights in America, they argued the cases in courts and in public, and in Congress. Upton Sinclair went to Columbia. FDR went to Harvard and Columbia Law. Who organized the strikes?

Union Activists such as:

César Chávez - Folk hero and symbol of hope who organized a union of farm workers.

Chávez attended more than 36 schools before dropping out after eighth grade.

Eugene V. Debs - Apostle of industrial unionism.

Debs was born on Nov. 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Ind., the son of Marguerite Bettrich and Jean Daniel Debs, Alsatian immigrants and retail grocers. At 16, he left school to work as a paint scraper in the Terre Haute railroad yards and quickly rose to a job as a locomotive fireman.

William Green - Former AFL president who moved the federation toward "social reform unionism."

Born in Coshocton, Ohio, in 1873, into an English and Welsh immigrant coal-mining family, Green began working as an underground coal miner when he was 16.

Mother Jones - "The most dangerous woman in America."

In her early 20s, she moved to Chicago, where she worked as a dressmaker, and then to Memphis, Tenn., where she met and married George Jones, a skilled iron molder and staunch unionist.

Lucy Randolph Mason - Social reformer dedicated to workers' rights and racial justice.

Mason began her social reform work in Richmond, Va., where she had spent her childhood. As a young girl in her 20s, she supported herself by working as a stenographer but devoted much of her free time to volunteer social service work and political activities on behalf of women's suffrage.

A. Philip Randolph - Organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and fought discrimination in national defense.

Asa and his brother, James, were superior students. The Randolph brothers attended the Cookman Institute in East Jacksonville, for years the only academic high school for African Americans in Florida. Asa excelled in literature, drama and public speaking; starred on the school's baseball team; sang solos with its choir; and was valedictorian of the 1907 graduating class. After graduation, Randolph worked odd jobs and devoted his time to singing, acting and reading.

None of these people had any post-secondary education yet were major players of the labor movement.

Post-secondary education doesn't always equal progressive politics. There is the Chicago School of Economics, which according to Paul Douglas:

"…I was disconcerted to find that the economic and political conservatives had acquired almost complete dominance over my department and taught that market decisions were always right and profit values the supreme ones… The opinions of my colleagues would have confined government to the eighteenth-century functions of justice, police, and arms, which I thought had been insufficient even for that time and were certainly so for ours. These men would neither use statistical data to develop economic theory nor accept critical analysis of the economic system… (Frank) Knight was now openly hostile, and his disciples seemed to be everywhere. If I stayed, it would be in an unfriendly environment."

There is also conservative post-secondary educational institutes such as: Brigham Young University, Liberty University, Bob Jones University, etc.

While post-secondary education has been a tremendous boon. I really don't care if they have post-secondary education or dropped out of elementary school. What metric we should be using is are people able to see the injustices in the world.

Yeah but one half went to college

And then they sat through 2-4 decades of Democrats actively voting against the interests of their constituents, ignored it, and vote for them anyway despite the evidence right in front of their eyes.

Democrats aren't our friends. They stab us in the back while Republicans stab us in the front.

We vote for Democrats because the alternative is getting Republicans. The voting system doesn't let third parties win. I wish it did. The lesser of two evils is still less evil inflicted on me at the end of the day.

If Democrats lost because people on the left refused to vote for them, they would be forced to change. Problem is everyone claims each election is an existential crisis (doubtful) so you're never allowed to withhold a vote or vote third party.