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How everything became a ‘psyop’ for conservative media
Lately, it’s become popular in conservative media circles to brand certain things as a psychological operation, or “#psyop.”
Climate change, for example. Or covid. Or the media coverage of Donald Trump. Or even the prosecution of Hunter Biden.
Technically, “psyop” is a U.S. military term, referring to various kinds of campaigns to get inside the heads of adversaries.
In a classic psychological operation during the Vietnam War, the U.S. government blasted messages over loudspeakers that were meant to urge Viet Cong soldiers to defect.Ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was millions of leaflets dropped on cities to undermine support for then-President Saddam Hussein.
“Who needs you more? Your family or the regime?” one flier asked.
But conservative media personalities have begun using the term in vaguer and wilder ways, seemingly to allege government conspiracies targeted at American citizens — something that would be illegal, even if any of these theories were remotely plausible.
Actual experts in real-life psyops are unconvinced by this latest wave of claims.
“Most people realize it’s just baloney,” said Herbert A. Friedman, a retired sergeant major who worked in psychological operations for the Army.Fox News host Jesse #Watters is perhaps the most influential superspreader of the term.
In January, Watters used a just-asking-questions formula to suggest that Taylor Swift is a psyop asset of the Defense Department.
How so? He didn’t exactly connect the dots for viewers, but he did note that Swift, who endorsed Joe Biden in 2020, had urged her fans to vote.
The Pentagon shot it down with a punny statement: “As for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off.”
Watters acknowledged that his show “obviously has no evidence” for the claim, but he tied it tangentially to a comment made at a 2019 NATO cybersecurity conference, where a speaker mentioned Swift’s social media influence.However, the speaker never claimed that the pop star was a government asset, and the event was not held by the U.S. government.
On other occasions, Watters has seemed to repurpose the word into a fancy way to call something a myth or a falsehood or simply a sinister PR campaign he happens to disagree with.
Last summer, he claimed that climate change is “a psyop against the American people by big business and the Democratic Party to worry you into giving you more of their money,” and separately referred to a “decades-long liberal media social psyop that marriage is a broken and dated institution.”
In November, though, it was an even murkier argument about how “control freaks” in the FBI and liberal-leaning Twitter employees constituted an anti-Trump psyop of some kind
— though he not only presented no evidence, but he also failed to explain what any of that meant.Watters’s Fox News colleague Greg #Gutfeld has also expressed concern about psyops.
In November, he asked panelists on his nightly show whether media coverage of Trump’s potential second term is a “psyop,” though he acknowledged, “I hate using that word, because it puts you in a conspiracy realm.”
Nonetheless, a month later, he declared on the panel show “The Five” that social media is a “psyop.”
The fact that none of these personalities seems particularly committed to any firm definition of the word may be the point.
“It has connotations of malign influence, and so it’s a scary word they can use to negatively brand the things they want to negatively brand,” said Todd C. Helmus, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND.
The cynical genius of calling something a “psyop” is that such accusations “don’t really need to have any evidence, because there’s not going to be any evidence: It’s a secret operation.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/22/psyop-conspiracy-theory-conservative-media/ -
The point to consider is that there is only me trying to inform (or rather I used to) the adults in the village about the medical & enviro evidence
But, the industries spread disinfromation on a, well, industrial scale. For example, the local wood fuel businesses post leaflets containing disinformation to local people's addresses. The politcians that many local folk watch on TV talk nonsense. The adverts sell stuff, not inform folk about a product's negative effects
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#DailyBloggingChallenge (25/25)
One of the niche topics in #OpenStreetMap is depicting the genus of a tree. The current #botany hardship is to learn the differences between mountain ash (aka rowan) and European ash (aka ash).
One would think they are both from the same genus Fraxinus, since they both have the word “ash” in their name, but actually rowan is from the genus Sorbus.
The next step is to learn how to depict these two species and it comes down to how the leaf stem is connected to the branch, one is compound (ash), whereas the other is staggered (rowan). To add to the trickiness, the leaf of both species consists of compound leaflets. These leaflets are arranged along the leaf stem to create the leaf and each leaflet has its own leaflet stem.
(Of course there are many other differences like leaflet shape and count or bark shape, though trying create a method that can withstand dim lit scenarios like night.)
To imagine the differences between compound and staggered, imagine wearing a shirt that uses buttons vs one that uses a zipper. The buttons need to be aligned with their holes to comfortably wear the shirt, so they are compound. Whereas if you have a zipper, the teeth are alternating, so they are staggered.
In summary:
- rowan (genus: Sorbus) has staggered leaves,
- ash (genus: Fraxinus) has compound leaves, and
- both have compound leaflets
Fun fact: The Fraxinus genus is the predominant genus that has compound leaves.
#gardening #tree #herbalism #foraging #wildcrafting #fieldguide #flora
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"Respected academic and High Peak resident, Professor Michael Corcoran, is disgusted. He likens the appropriation of these titles to the practice of undercover officers taking the names of dead children from gravestones to construct false identities."
@troyella #Bylines #FakeNews https://centralbylines.co.uk/true-blue-news-or-party-propaganda-conservative-leaflets-ape-local-press/
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Lib Dem local government spokesperson Helen Morgan called on #Tory chairman Greg Hands to launch an inquiry.
She said: “Not content with #disenfranchising people through their divisive and unnecessary voter ID plans, it appears the Conservatives have been wrongly telling people they don’t need photo ID to vote. It shows they are treating voters with total contempt.
Not surprising the #LibDems are taking this very seriously - they are defending #Eaton the area where the leaflets were delivered.
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Former Labour Party chair Jeremy Corbyn has written a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman about allowing Spanish neo-Nazi Isabel Medina Peralta into the UK. He's right to complain about it, of course, and there's no good reason why Peralta should've been let in. But as damning as his letter is, I think he actually doesn't go far enough and partly misses the point about why Peralta is a dangerous figure and why she should be banned everywhere.
Corbyn argues, correctly, that she's a vicious antisemite and stresses that she was detained in Frankfurt for possession of "a swastika flag, neo-Nazi propaganda leaflets and a copy of 'Mein Kampf'". Bad enough, right? Her own personal website, in both Spanish and English, identifies her in big letters, right at the top, as "Isabel Peralta -- National socialist -- My honour is loyalty", applying a translation of the old SS slogan "Meine Ehre heisst Treue". So there's really no second guessing who she is and what she believes in, if you take just a few seconds to look her up.
But just being a lone Nazi is one thing. Peralta is something even worse. She's a growing international figure working to build an international network of neo-Nazis across Europe. Her own group, Bastión Frontal, has been around for three years and is made up largely of young members of the Falange Española (which still exists!) and Hogar Social, a knock-off of Italy's CasaPound that's largely defunct now. The whole reason she was in Frankfurt is because she was given a kind of "scholarship" by neo-Nazi microparty III. Weg (Third Path) to get some training from them. (Incidentally, Searchlight reports that members of III. Weg were apparently also in the UK for the same event Peralta was speaking at -- by all means, they should also be banned everywhere and hounded any time they show their faces.) Bastión Frontal's social media boasts of its connections with Poland's National Radical Camp (ONR) and Tenesoun in France (a successor group of the banned Bastion Social). I've definitely seen at least one video implying a connection between Bastión Frontal and a group in Ukraine, but I can't find it now, and I haven't seen any further evidence of contact between them. And, of course, Peralta's contacts now include people from the UK's Patriotic Alternative, Blood & Honour, and even the Creativity Movement.
At any rate, it's really dangerous when these kinds of radical reactionary and neo-Nazi groups organize internationally to share ideas, contacts, rhetoric, tactics, and training. In addition to allowing them to build support for one another, it's also a kind of propaganda coup that allows otherwise marginal groups to present themselves as representing a much larger constituency. Bastión Frontal claims a membership in the low 100s -- hardly a mass movement unto themselves -- but through slick video production and the stated support of international groups, they can also claim to be pan-European and assert a kind of authority in pursuit of additional recruits. And all in the service of, in Peralta's own words, "normalizing National Socialism".
Peralta is now banned from entering Germany, and for good reason. The problem with a person like her isn't just that she's a hateful scumfuck, but that she's an organized, networked hateful scumfuck. People like her need to be impeded and combated at every opportunity.
#isabelperalta #iiiweg #patrioticalternative #bloodandhonour #fcknzs #bastionfrontal #tenesoun #ONR
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@mhoye
In #Australia, Goo' advertise #Chrome with #legacyMedia commercials.What is remarkable is just how much these #technoFascists must spend on #advertising, to stop the press from reporting on thr abuses. A regular person will never hear about these abuses because of this #bribery.
If only we were organised with fun leaflets to print and share.
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This CBC article on the Israel/Hamas war is very telling in its anti-Israel bias:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-hamas-truce-eighth-day-1.7045904
1. The headline does not mention Hamas' truce violation
2. The article starts off with Israel's retaliation, but treats it like a preemptive attack
3. The article uses the phrase "Israel claims" when it comes to Israel but not when it comes to Hamas
4. It says Israel and Hamas accuse each other, treating a government and a terrorist organization as being on the same moral footing
5. It similarly "both sides" Israel and Hamas, and again places Israel first in its description
6. It fails to mention that the US, EU, and several Arab nations also want Hamas removed
7. It discusses leaflets but doesn't mention that they were sent by the IDF to warn the population and reduce casualties!The CBC's "anti-Israel" bias couldn't be any clearer here.
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@dei I love visiting these rocks. I notice something different every time.
For anyone interested in geology, I recommend a visit to the #GeoMôn Geopark visitor centre in #Amlwch. It's tiny but the people there are very knowledgeable and they have a good range of books and leaflets etc.
https://www.geomon.co.uk/geopark-activities/visit-the-geopark-centre/
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Been researching the 43 Group today; a London-based militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in March 1946 by 43 Jewish ex-servicemen to combat fascist and anti-semitic organisations.
We have some of their papers that include alphabetical lists and car registration plate numbers of suspected fascists, and a few leaflets and agendas of meetings.
#AntiSemitism #43Group #fascism #antifa #histodons @histodons #fascist
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Former Labour Party chair Jeremy Corbyn has written a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman about allowing Spanish neo-Nazi Isabel Medina Peralta into the UK. He's right to complain about it, of course, and there's no good reason why Peralta should've been let in. But as damning as his letter is, I think he actually doesn't go far enough and partly misses the point about why Peralta is a dangerous figure and why she should be banned everywhere.
Corbyn argues, correctly, that she's a vicious antisemite and stresses that she was detained in Frankfurt for possession of "a swastika flag, neo-Nazi propaganda leaflets and a copy of 'Mein Kampf'". Bad enough, right? Her own personal website, in both Spanish and English, identifies her in big letters, right at the top, as "Isabel Peralta -- National socialist -- My honour is loyalty", applying a translation of the old SS slogan "Meine Ehre heisst Treue". So there's really no second guessing who she is and what she believes in, if you take just a few seconds to look her up.
But just being a lone Nazi is one thing. Peralta is something even worse. She's a growing international figure working to build an international network of neo-Nazis across Europe. Her own group, Bastión Frontal, has been around for three years and is made up largely of young members of the Falange Española (which still exists!) and Hogar Social, a knock-off of Italy's CasaPound that's largely defunct now. The whole reason she was in Frankfurt is because she was given a kind of "scholarship" by neo-Nazi microparty III. Weg (Third Path) to get some training from them. (Incidentally, Searchlight reports that members of III. Weg were apparently also in the UK for the same event Peralta was speaking at -- by all means, they should also be banned everywhere and hounded any time they show their faces.) Bastión Frontal's social media boasts of its connections with Poland's National Radical Camp (ONR) and Tenesoun in France (a successor group of the banned Bastion Social). I've definitely seen at least one video implying a connection between Bastión Frontal and a group in Ukraine, but I can't find it now, and I haven't seen any further evidence of contact between them. And, of course, Peralta's contacts now include people from the UK's Patriotic Alternative, Blood & Honour, and even the Creativity Movement.
At any rate, it's really dangerous when these kinds of radical reactionary and neo-Nazi groups organize internationally to share ideas, contacts, rhetoric, tactics, and training. In addition to allowing them to build support for one another, it's also a kind of propaganda coup that allows otherwise marginal groups to present themselves as representing a much larger constituency. Bastión Frontal claims a membership in the low 100s -- hardly a mass movement unto themselves -- but through slick video production and the stated support of international groups, they can also claim to be pan-European and assert a kind of authority in pursuit of additional recruits. And all in the service of, in Peralta's own words, "normalizing National Socialism".
Peralta is now banned from entering Germany, and for good reason. The problem with a person like her isn't just that she's a hateful scumfuck, but that she's an organized, networked hateful scumfuck. People like her need to be impeded and combated at every opportunity.
#isabelperalta #iiiweg #patrioticalternative #bloodandhonour #fcknzs #bastionfrontal #tenesoun #ONR
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Former Labour Party chair Jeremy Corbyn has written a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman about allowing Spanish neo-Nazi Isabel Medina Peralta into the UK. He's right to complain about it, of course, and there's no good reason why Peralta should've been let in. But as damning as his letter is, I think he actually doesn't go far enough and partly misses the point about why Peralta is a dangerous figure and why she should be banned everywhere.
Corbyn argues, correctly, that she's a vicious antisemite and stresses that she was detained in Frankfurt for possession of "a swastika flag, neo-Nazi propaganda leaflets and a copy of 'Mein Kampf'". Bad enough, right? Her own personal website, in both Spanish and English, identifies her in big letters, right at the top, as "Isabel Peralta -- National socialist -- My honour is loyalty", applying a translation of the old SS slogan "Meine Ehre heisst Treue". So there's really no second guessing who she is and what she believes in, if you take just a few seconds to look her up.
But just being a lone Nazi is one thing. Peralta is something even worse. She's a growing international figure working to build an international network of neo-Nazis across Europe. Her own group, Bastión Frontal, has been around for three years and is made up largely of young members of the Falange Española (which still exists!) and Hogar Social, a knock-off of Italy's CasaPound that's largely defunct now. The whole reason she was in Frankfurt is because she was given a kind of "scholarship" by neo-Nazi microparty III. Weg (Third Path) to get some training from them. (Incidentally, Searchlight reports that members of III. Weg were apparently also in the UK for the same event Peralta was speaking at -- by all means, they should also be banned everywhere and hounded any time they show their faces.) Bastión Frontal's social media boasts of its connections with Poland's National Radical Camp (ONR) and Tenesoun in France (a successor group of the banned Bastion Social). I've definitely seen at least one video implying a connection between Bastión Frontal and a group in Ukraine, but I can't find it now, and I haven't seen any further evidence of contact between them. And, of course, Peralta's contacts now include people from the UK's Patriotic Alternative, Blood & Honour, and even the Creativity Movement.
At any rate, it's really dangerous when these kinds of radical reactionary and neo-Nazi groups organize internationally to share ideas, contacts, rhetoric, tactics, and training. In addition to allowing them to build support for one another, it's also a kind of propaganda coup that allows otherwise marginal groups to present themselves as representing a much larger constituency. Bastión Frontal claims a membership in the low 100s -- hardly a mass movement unto themselves -- but through slick video production and the stated support of international groups, they can also claim to be pan-European and assert a kind of authority in pursuit of additional recruits. And all in the service of, in Peralta's own words, "normalizing National Socialism".
Peralta is now banned from entering Germany, and for good reason. The problem with a person like her isn't just that she's a hateful scumfuck, but that she's an organized, networked hateful scumfuck. People like her need to be impeded and combated at every opportunity.
#isabelperalta #iiiweg #patrioticalternative #bloodandhonour #fcknzs #bastionfrontal #tenesoun #ONR
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Former Labour Party chair Jeremy Corbyn has written a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman about allowing Spanish neo-Nazi Isabel Medina Peralta into the UK. He's right to complain about it, of course, and there's no good reason why Peralta should've been let in. But as damning as his letter is, I think he actually doesn't go far enough and partly misses the point about why Peralta is a dangerous figure and why she should be banned everywhere.
Corbyn argues, correctly, that she's a vicious antisemite and stresses that she was detained in Frankfurt for possession of "a swastika flag, neo-Nazi propaganda leaflets and a copy of 'Mein Kampf'". Bad enough, right? Her own personal website, in both Spanish and English, identifies her in big letters, right at the top, as "Isabel Peralta -- National socialist -- My honour is loyalty", applying a translation of the old SS slogan "Meine Ehre heisst Treue". So there's really no second guessing who she is and what she believes in, if you take just a few seconds to look her up.
But just being a lone Nazi is one thing. Peralta is something even worse. She's a growing international figure working to build an international network of neo-Nazis across Europe. Her own group, Bastión Frontal, has been around for three years and is made up largely of young members of the Falange Española (which still exists!) and Hogar Social, a knock-off of Italy's CasaPound that's largely defunct now. The whole reason she was in Frankfurt is because she was given a kind of "scholarship" by neo-Nazi microparty III. Weg (Third Path) to get some training from them. (Incidentally, Searchlight reports that members of III. Weg were apparently also in the UK for the same event Peralta was speaking at -- by all means, they should also be banned everywhere and hounded any time they show their faces.) Bastión Frontal's social media boasts of its connections with Poland's National Radical Camp (ONR) and Tenesoun in France (a successor group of the banned Bastion Social). I've definitely seen at least one video implying a connection between Bastión Frontal and a group in Ukraine, but I can't find it now, and I haven't seen any further evidence of contact between them. And, of course, Peralta's contacts now include people from the UK's Patriotic Alternative, Blood & Honour, and even the Creativity Movement.
At any rate, it's really dangerous when these kinds of radical reactionary and neo-Nazi groups organize internationally to share ideas, contacts, rhetoric, tactics, and training. In addition to allowing them to build support for one another, it's also a kind of propaganda coup that allows otherwise marginal groups to present themselves as representing a much larger constituency. Bastión Frontal claims a membership in the low 100s -- hardly a mass movement unto themselves -- but through slick video production and the stated support of international groups, they can also claim to be pan-European and assert a kind of authority in pursuit of additional recruits. And all in the service of, in Peralta's own words, "normalizing National Socialism".
Peralta is now banned from entering Germany, and for good reason. The problem with a person like her isn't just that she's a hateful scumfuck, but that she's an organized, networked hateful scumfuck. People like her need to be impeded and combated at every opportunity.
#isabelperalta #iiiweg #patrioticalternative #bloodandhonour #fcknzs #bastionfrontal #tenesoun #ONR
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Former Labour Party chair Jeremy Corbyn has written a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman about allowing Spanish neo-Nazi Isabel Medina Peralta into the UK. He's right to complain about it, of course, and there's no good reason why Peralta should've been let in. But as damning as his letter is, I think he actually doesn't go far enough and partly misses the point about why Peralta is a dangerous figure and why she should be banned everywhere.
Corbyn argues, correctly, that she's a vicious antisemite and stresses that she was detained in Frankfurt for possession of "a swastika flag, neo-Nazi propaganda leaflets and a copy of 'Mein Kampf'". Bad enough, right? Her own personal website, in both Spanish and English, identifies her in big letters, right at the top, as "Isabel Peralta -- National socialist -- My honour is loyalty", applying a translation of the old SS slogan "Meine Ehre heisst Treue". So there's really no second guessing who she is and what she believes in, if you take just a few seconds to look her up.
But just being a lone Nazi is one thing. Peralta is something even worse. She's a growing international figure working to build an international network of neo-Nazis across Europe. Her own group, Bastión Frontal, has been around for three years and is made up largely of young members of the Falange Española (which still exists!) and Hogar Social, a knock-off of Italy's CasaPound that's largely defunct now. The whole reason she was in Frankfurt is because she was given a kind of "scholarship" by neo-Nazi microparty III. Weg (Third Path) to get some training from them. (Incidentally, Searchlight reports that members of III. Weg were apparently also in the UK for the same event Peralta was speaking at -- by all means, they should also be banned everywhere and hounded any time they show their faces.) Bastión Frontal's social media boasts of its connections with Poland's National Radical Camp (ONR) and Tenesoun in France (a successor group of the banned Bastion Social). I've definitely seen at least one video implying a connection between Bastión Frontal and a group in Ukraine, but I can't find it now, and I haven't seen any further evidence of contact between them. And, of course, Peralta's contacts now include people from the UK's Patriotic Alternative, Blood & Honour, and even the Creativity Movement.
At any rate, it's really dangerous when these kinds of radical reactionary and neo-Nazi groups organize internationally to share ideas, contacts, rhetoric, tactics, and training. In addition to allowing them to build support for one another, it's also a kind of propaganda coup that allows otherwise marginal groups to present themselves as representing a much larger constituency. Bastión Frontal claims a membership in the low 100s -- hardly a mass movement unto themselves -- but through slick video production and the stated support of international groups, they can also claim to be pan-European and assert a kind of authority in pursuit of additional recruits. And all in the service of, in Peralta's own words, "normalizing National Socialism".
Peralta is now banned from entering Germany, and for good reason. The problem with a person like her isn't just that she's a hateful scumfuck, but that she's an organized, networked hateful scumfuck. People like her need to be impeded and combated at every opportunity.
#isabelperalta #iiiweg #patrioticalternative #bloodandhonour #fcknzs #bastionfrontal #tenesoun #ONR
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Jim Fitzpatrick, creator of the Che icon and Thin Lizzy artwork offers this for non-commercial use:
"Time to take the racists and fascists on.
Free usage. RT RT RT and use.
Print out for your mates, kids, family -and for posters or leaflets, no editing or commercialism allowed.
Thanks everyone."
#PhilipLynott #ThinLizzy #NoToRacism (see https://jimfitzpatrick.com/ ) -
DeSantis increasing irrelevancy doesn't bode well for the old #rondesantisisacunt thread.
I only mention it because I was in Florida the other day and I saw Ron DeSantis, or somebody who looked like him and, in fact, was him. He was wearing an open-faced crash helmet while standing, stark bollock-naked, atop one of those coin to-and-fro rides you used to see outside the shops.
It wasn’t even a motorcycle one, it was an airplane. He was screaming, “I could’ve been somebody Mommy, I could’ve been a big boy,” while an alligator furry shoved Disney leaflets up his ass.
I wouldn’t mind, but I was waiting in line so the kid I was with could use the ride. I got to say that Ron is a selfish so and so but then #rondesantisisacunt
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#Piraeus, #Greece: Bomb hits Greek office of Israeli shipping company #ZIM https://www.tradewindsnews.com/containers/bomb-hits-greek-office-of-israeli-shipping-company-zim/2-1-1584390
Excerpt: "Unknown, pro-Palestinian activists set off a small explosive device outside offices in Piraeus where Israeli container liner company Zim is located.
Two gas canisters were used in the pre-dawn blast which caused slight material damage to a wall and a fuse panel, according to a police source.
...police sources said the attack most likely targeted Zim and that its perpetrators were motivated by Israel’s war against the Palestinian Hamas group in #Gaza.
Protest leaflets were found at the entrance of the building reading “Freedom for #Palestine”."
#DirectAction #FreePalestine #FreeGaza #GlobalizeTheIntifada
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Been researching the 43 Group today; a London-based militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in March 1946 by 43 Jewish ex-servicemen to combat fascist and anti-semitic organisations.
We have some of their papers that include alphabetical lists and car registration plate numbers of suspected fascists, and a few leaflets and agendas of meetings.
#AntiSemitism #43Group #fascism #antifa #histodons @histodons #fascist
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Been researching the 43 Group today; a London-based militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in March 1946 by 43 Jewish ex-servicemen to combat fascist and anti-semitic organisations.
We have some of their papers that include alphabetical lists and car registration plate numbers of suspected fascists, and a few leaflets and agendas of meetings.
#AntiSemitism #43Group #fascism #antifa #histodons @histodons #fascist
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Been researching the 43 Group today; a London-based militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in March 1946 by 43 Jewish ex-servicemen to combat fascist and anti-semitic organisations.
We have some of their papers that include alphabetical lists and car registration plate numbers of suspected fascists, and a few leaflets and agendas of meetings.
#AntiSemitism #43Group #fascism #antifa #histodons @histodons #fascist
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Been researching the 43 Group today; a London-based militant anti-fascist organisation, founded in March 1946 by 43 Jewish ex-servicemen to combat fascist and anti-semitic organisations.
We have some of their papers that include alphabetical lists and car registration plate numbers of suspected fascists, and a few leaflets and agendas of meetings.
#AntiSemitism #43Group #fascism #antifa #histodons @histodons #fascist
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DeSantis increasing irrelevancy doesn't bode well for the old #rondesantisisacunt thread.
I only mention it because I was in Florida the other day and I saw Ron DeSantis, or somebody who looked like him and, in fact, was him. He was wearing an open-faced crash helmet while standing, stark bollock-naked, atop one of those coin to-and-fro rides you used to see outside the shops.
It wasn’t even a motorcycle one, it was an airplane. He was screaming, “I could’ve been somebody Mommy, I could’ve been a big boy,” while an alligator furry shoved Disney leaflets up his ass.
I wouldn’t mind, but I was waiting in line so the kid I was with could use the ride. I got to say that Ron is a selfish so and so but then #rondesantisisacunt
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DeSantis increasing irrelevancy doesn't bode well for the old #rondesantisisacunt thread.
I only mention it because I was in Florida the other day and I saw Ron DeSantis, or somebody who looked like him and, in fact, was him. He was wearing an open-faced crash helmet while standing, stark bollock-naked, atop one of those coin to-and-fro rides you used to see outside the shops.
It wasn’t even a motorcycle one, it was an airplane. He was screaming, “I could’ve been somebody Mommy, I could’ve been a big boy,” while an alligator furry shoved Disney leaflets up his ass.
I wouldn’t mind, but I was waiting in line so the kid I was with could use the ride. I got to say that Ron is a selfish so and so but then #rondesantisisacunt
-
DeSantis increasing irrelevancy doesn't bode well for the old #rondesantisisacunt thread.
I only mention it because I was in Florida the other day and I saw Ron DeSantis, or somebody who looked like him and, in fact, was him. He was wearing an open-faced crash helmet while standing, stark bollock-naked, atop one of those coin to-and-fro rides you used to see outside the shops.
It wasn’t even a motorcycle one, it was an airplane. He was screaming, “I could’ve been somebody Mommy, I could’ve been a big boy,” while an alligator furry shoved Disney leaflets up his ass.
I wouldn’t mind, but I was waiting in line so the kid I was with could use the ride. I got to say that Ron is a selfish so and so but then #rondesantisisacunt
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@dei I love visiting these rocks. I notice something different every time.
For anyone interested in geology, I recommend a visit to the #GeoMôn Geopark visitor centre in #Amlwch. It's tiny but the people there are very knowledgeable and they have a good range of books and leaflets etc.
https://www.geomon.co.uk/geopark-activities/visit-the-geopark-centre/
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@dei I love visiting these rocks. I notice something different every time.
For anyone interested in geology, I recommend a visit to the #GeoMôn Geopark visitor centre in #Amlwch. It's tiny but the people there are very knowledgeable and they have a good range of books and leaflets etc.
https://www.geomon.co.uk/geopark-activities/visit-the-geopark-centre/
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@dei I love visiting these rocks. I notice something different every time.
For anyone interested in geology, I recommend a visit to the #GeoMôn Geopark visitor centre in #Amlwch. It's tiny but the people there are very knowledgeable and they have a good range of books and leaflets etc.
https://www.geomon.co.uk/geopark-activities/visit-the-geopark-centre/
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Everything is Awful, As Usual
Good Afternoon!!
Shared Reflections, by Rebecca Aldernet
I can’t find any good news this morning–what else is new? The “president” is dangerously demented, his cabinet is full of kooks, his economy is going down the tubes, and he seems determined to start a war in Venezuela. Anyway, here are the stories that caught my attention today.
Venezuela Boat Strikes
I’m sure you’ve heard the reports about Pete Hegseth’s campaign of war crimes against alleged drug boats. Yesterday, The Washington Post published an exclusive report by Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima (gift link): Hegseth order on first Caribbean boat strike, officials say: Kill them all.
The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraftfollowed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.
The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.
Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.
The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any ofthe men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.
Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.
Use the gift link to read the rest. We’re going to need prosecutions if we ever get rid of Trump and his goons.
Phillip M. Bailey at USA Today: Pete Hegseth lashes out at ‘kill them all’ report on boat strikes.
U.S Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is lashing out at a report that he ordered military officials to “kill them all” during one of the Trump administration’s strikes in the Caribbean aimed a boat allegedly carrying drug cargo.
Nataliya Bagatskaya, Echo of the black cats
“As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland,” Hegseth, 45, said in a Nov. 28 post on X.
The defense secretary was responding to a Washington Post story citing two anonymous sources that claimed he ordered troops to leave no survivors after a missile struck the vessel, which was traveling off the Trinidad coast, as two individuals were clinging to the smoldering wreckage.
Since September, the Trump administration has attacked at least 21 boats traversing international waters, killing 83 people. Trump and other officials defend the boat strikes as an attempt to crackdown on illegal narcotics flooding into the U.S., but lawmakers from both parties have criticized the administration for providing no intelligence briefings or other evidence about what the vessels are carrying.
“At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during an Oct. 26 appearance on Fox News Sunday. “This is akin to what China does, what Iran does with drug dealers − they summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public. So it’s wrong.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who shared the story about Hegseth’s alleged order, raised similar concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes in an Nov. 28 post on X.
“If you want to know why Hegseth is panicking about reminders that there is accountably for giving or carrying out illegal orders, it’s likely because he knows he has given illegal orders to murder people,” Murphy said.
Victoria Bisset, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson at The Washington Post: Senate committee vows ‘vigorous oversight’ in killing of boat strike survivors.
The head of the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has pledged “vigorous oversight” after a Washington Post report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken order to kill all crew members during the first U.S. strike against suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean earlier this year.
A live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat following the initial missile attack on Sept. 2, The Post reported on Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, killing both survivors. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Late Friday, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), the committee’s ranking Democrat, issued a statement saying that the committee “is aware of recent news reports — and the Department of Defense’s initial response — regarding alleged follow-on strikes on suspected narcotics vessels.”
The committee, they said, “has directed inquiries to the Department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances.”
If Trump is so concerned about drugs coming into the U.S. from Latin America, why did he just pardon a Honduran drug kingpin?
The New York Times: Trump Announces Pardon for Honduran Ex-President Convicted in Drug Case.
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
By Louis Valtat
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
The prosecution stretched across Mr. Trump’s first term and concluded during Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s time as president. In the end, Mr. Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison in Federal District Court in Manhattan, capping what prosecutors had presented as a sprawling conspiracy.
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international operations at the same agency, also reacted with disbelief to the news of the pardon. Mr. Vigil said the move imperiled the reputation of the United States and its international investigations into drug trafficking.
“This action would be nothing short of catastrophic and would destroy the credibility of the U.S. in the international community,” Mr. Vigil said on Friday.
Mr. Trump’s vow to pardon such a high-profile convicted drug trafficker appeared to contradict the president’s campaign to unleash the might of the American military on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that his administration says, without evidence, are involved in drug trafficking. That campaign has so far killed more than 80 people since it began in September.
There’s probably a bribe involved.
War in Venezuela?
Kelly Rissman at The Independent: Trump tells airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed as US military buildup continues in region.
President Donald Trump told airlines to consider Venezuela’s airspace closed, days after he vowed to take action on land “very soon.”
Following dozens of strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that have killed more than 80 people since September, Trump suggested to military service members in a Thanksgiving Day phone call that the U.S. would soon take action “on land.”
On Saturday, he urged the clearing of the airspace near the South American country. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the U.S. president wrote on Truth Social Saturday morning.
Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration also warned airlines to “exercise caution” when flying over Venezuela “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity.”
Several airlines cancelled their flights as a result of the FAA’s warning.
By Salah Hefney
Can he do that? A bit more from the Independent story:
Last week, the White House was reportedly considering having U.S. military planes drop leaflets — containing details about the $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Nicolás Maduro — over Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, the Washington Postreported.
For months, the U.S. government has been building up a military presence in the region to curb what Trump administration officials call “narco-terrorists” and has also made it clear it wants to oust Maduro.
Maduro has been in power since 2013, following the death of Hugo Chavez. The U.S. is among more than 50 countries that have refused to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s head of state, claiming he lost the 2024 presidential election. The State Department has offered rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the Venezuelan president since 2020; the Trump administration raised the reward to $50 million this year.
The U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels, which Trump alleges are fueled by Maduro’s government. Last month, the State Department designated Cartel de los Soles as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” claiming it’s headed by Maduro and other high-ranking members of his “illegitimate” regime.
There’s more at the link.
Attacks on National Guard in DC
Jenny Gathright, Emily Davies, and Olivia George at The Washington Post: D.C. police to begin patrolling with National Guard after fatal attack.
National Guard troops patrolling in D.C. will be paired with local law enforcement personnel, at least temporarily, in the wake of the Wednesday attack that killed one National Guard member and critically injured another, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post and two D.C. police officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning that is still in progress.
“Officers will conduct high-visibility patrols with the National Guard and provide assistance as needed,” said the email, which was sent to D.C. police leadership Wednesday evening. The email said the situation was “fluid,” and adjustments to the staffing plan could be made in the coming days.
Fabrice Backès, Sandie
If enacted on a long-term basis, the change would significantly shift the way National Guard troops have worked with local and federal law enforcement in the District since their arrival in August. Trump administration officials have credited the troops for helping reduce crime in the city — in part, they argued, because the troops’ presence at Metro stations and on National Park Service lands frees up law enforcement to police other areas of the city. Diverting local police to accompany Guard members would do essentially the opposite by siphoning them from other tasks in D.C. neighborhoods.
The email said the new pairing would start Thursday and Friday.A D.C. police official said some officers had been temporarily detailed to accompany the troops, and a more long-term policy change was under discussion.
The official, who stressed that the discussions were still preliminary, said D.C. police, Metro Transit Police, U.S. Park Police and several other law enforcement agencies were having conversations with the National Guard task force in D.C. about pairing the troops with police officers while they are on city streets. Since their deployment to D.C., groups of National Guard troops have largely operated unaccompanied by police, the official said.
A judge has already said that putting National Guard Troops in DC was illegal, but Trump filed an “emergency appeal.” Meanwhile, two members of the West Virginia National Guard have been shot. One has died and the other is still in critical condition.
NPR: Where things stand with the National Guard shooting in D.C.
Sarah Beckstrom, 20, of Summersville, W.Va., joined the service in 2023. Beckstrom’s father, Gary, called her his “baby girl” and said she had “passed to glory” in a Facebook post on Thursday.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey on Friday called for residents to hold a moment of silence for the two victims of the shooting, as both were deployed as part of that state’s National Guard.
Morrisey said in a statement Friday that Beckstrom had made the “ultimate sacrifice” in service to her state and the nation. He added that both Beckstrom and Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, had stepped forward and volunteered for the mission in D.C.
Morrisey also said that Wolfe remains in “very critical condition.”
“These two West Virginia heroes were serving our country and protecting our nation’s capital when they were maliciously attacked,” Morrisey said. “Their courage and commitment to duty represent the very best of our state.”
Trump’s Attacks on Woman Journalists
Corbin Bolies at The Wrap: Trump Calls CBS News Correspondent ‘Stupid Person’ in 4th Attack on Female Reporters in 2 Weeks.
President Donald Trump attacked another female reporter on Thursday after she asked him about the vetting of the suspect in a Washington, D.C., shooting that killed a National Guardsman, calling her a “stupid person.”
CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes questioned Trump about reports that Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the alleged gunman who entered the U.S. as part of a Biden-era program for Afghan refugees who fled the nation in 2021, was vetted before he allegedly shot at the National Guardsmen on Wednesday.
By Rebecca Aldernet
Reports indicated that Lakanwal was vetted either through his time working with the CIA in Afghanistan, during the removal process from Afghanistan or during his 2024 asylum application, which the Trump administration approved earlier this year.
Cordes, therefore, asked Trump why he blamed the Biden administration if U.S. officials confirmed vetting of the refugees took place. Trump didn’t enjoy the line of questioning.
“Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?” Trump asked. “Because they came into on a plane along with 1000s of other people that shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person. And we — there’s a law passed that it’s almost impossible not to get to get them out. You can’t get them out once they come in. And they came in and they were unvetted. They were unchecked. There were many of them, and they came on big planes, and it was disgraceful.”
The attack was the latest in a series of swipes at female reporters. Trump on Wednesday described a New York Times reporter as “ugly, inside and out” over a reported story on his age. He also called a Bloomberg News reporter a “piggy” and an ABC News reporter a “terrible person” for her questioning of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Catherine Bouris at The Daily Beast: Trump’s Niece Exposes Why Her Uncle Keeps Attacking Female Reporters.
Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, says one of the reasons the president seems to be increasingly lashing out at female reporters is because he is “rattled.
Mary, 60, discussed the rise in incidents on the Wednesday edition of her show, Mary Trump Live. She noted the 79-year-old president calling a reporter “piggy” while telling her to be quiet during a gaggle aboard Air Force One, and a Truth Social post in which he insulted a New York Times reporter’s looks.
“His misogynistic attacks against reporters in particular are increasing and that means a couple of things,” she explained. “It means that he’s increasingly comfortable lodging such attacks, as he’s been openly misogynistic, as he’s been openly racist and openly Islamophobic and openly anti-immigrant and openly antisemitic. There’s no hiding it anymore.”
”I think it’s also a sign that he’s a little rattled. He’s also never clearly heard of the Streisand effect,” Mary said, referring to the internet phenomenon where somebody inadvertently draws further attention to something while attempting to hide it from the public.
“When you call attention to the thing you want people to ignore, it’s probably a terrible idea.”
Trump’s Ballroom Obsession
Luke Broadwater at The New York Times (gift link): Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible.
I posted about Trump’s conflicts with his architects on Wednesday. This is an extension of that story. After he met with architect James McCreary in August,
McCrery Architects got to work on the initial drawings for the project, sketching out a design with high ceilings and arched windows reminiscent of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors. It would have the latest security features, including bulletproof glass. Gold furniture, known to please the president, was added to the renderings.
Black cat with cat lady, Dee Nickerson
It was flashy enough to impress a man of Mr. Trump’s tastes, while largely matching the style of the historic White House without overshadowing it.
That’s when things got tricky.
In offering up his initial design, Mr. McCrery could not have known that Mr. Trump’s vision for the project was growing. What started as a 500-seat ballroom connected to the East Wing grew to 650 seats. Next, he wanted a 999-seat ballroom, then room for 1,350. Even as Mr. Trump assured the public in July that the ballroom would not touch the existing structure, he already had approved plans to demolish the East Wing to make way for something that could hold several thousand people, according to three people familiar with the timeline.
The latest plan, which officials said was still preliminary, calls for a ballroom much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. Mr. Trump has said publicly that he would like a ballroom big enough to hold a crowd for a presidential inauguration.
The size of the project was not the only issue raising alarms. Mr. Trump also told people working on the ballroom that they did not need to follow permitting, zoning or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds, according to three people familiar with his comments. (The firms involved have insisted on following industry standards.)
In recent weeks, Mr. McCrery has pulled back from day-to-day involvement in the project, two people familiar with the matter told The New York Times. They emphasized that Mr. McCrery was still involved as a consultant on the design and proud to be working for Mr. Trump.
Trump has destroyed our government; now he’s working on destroying the White House. Use the gift link to read the whole awful story.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think?
#andrewWolfe #donaldTrump #honduras #juanOrlandoHernandez #nationalGuardInDc #nicolasMaduro #peteHegseth #sarahBeckstrom #trumpAttacksOnWomenJournalists #trumpsBallroomObsession #venezuela #venezuelaBoatStrikes
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Fwd: Trump’s free speech back flip was 250 years in the making – CNN – What Matters
October 10, 2025
: Trump’s free speech back flip was 250 years in the making
“If we don’t have FREE SPEECH, then we just don’t have a FREE COUNTRY,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in a campaign video.
But less than nine months into his second term, he was explaining his administration’s stance this this way:
“We took the freedom of speech away,” he said at a White House event Wednesday as he tried to explain his call to put people who burn the American flag behind bars for years despite a very clear Supreme Court decision that lists flag burning as free speech.
Trump’s complete turnabout on speech is indicative of the contradictions and ironies in the bedrock principle of the American liberties in the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment.
While Trump came to office promising to restore free speech, particularly on college campuses and on social media, he’s now engaged in a multi-front war over what people can say in the US:
► A Ronald Reagan-appointed judge accused Trump’s administration of a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment” for targeting and deporting pro-Palestinian academics.
► Conservative Supreme Court justices were skeptical at oral arguments over a Colorado law that bans debunked LGBT conversion therapy, suggesting it may step on the free speech rights of therapists.
► Trump wants colleges and universities to clamp down on campus speech in exchange for federal funding.
► He applauded his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, for trying to get Jimmy Kimmel’s show canceled by ABC, an effort that backfired.
► His lawsuits against media companies and law firms, none of which appear to stand on firm legal ground, have nonetheless been wildly successful in extracting settlement payments and sending a message to firms that would oppose him.
► Companies like YouTube have reinstated accounts or made plans to do so for members of his administration, such as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who were suspended for spreading misinformation during the pandemic.
► His attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised to go after “hate speech” by people who she perceived as celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.
The hate speech element is particularly concerning to experts because in recent decades, it has become a tenet of Supreme Court cases and free speech advocates that “hate speech” is such a nebulous term that leaving it unprotected would invite exactly the type of selective viewpoint-policing that the administration now stands accused of.
The hate speech in question was not any obviously repugnant White supremacist or racist ideology, but rather comments related to Kirk’s death, potentially including those who celebrated it. But we don’t really know since Bondi has not been specific.
Congress undercut the First Amendment almost immediately
US history is full of pendulum swings back and forth between freedom and restriction of speech.
The First Amendment, adopted shortly after the Constitution, guarantees Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
But within a few years, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the president, then John Adams, during the undeclared Quasi War between the US and France.
“The sad truth is, free speech has always been a weaponized slogan, right from the outset, when it’s first invented in the early 18th century,” according to Fara Dabhoiwala, a historian at Princeton University and author of the recent book “What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea.”
Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache was among those arrested for “libeling” Adams under the law. Federalists also threw a Vermont publisher and congressman, Matthew Lyon, in jail for criticizing Adams in print.
(Among other things, Lyon wrote that Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp,” and, separately, started a fight on the House floor over Adams’ foreign policy. Lyon, attacked with a cane after he spat tobacco juice at a fellow lawmaker, defended himself with fire tongs.)
Far from silencing Lyon, however, the Sedition Act backfired. Lyon ran a successful campaign for Congress from jail. The unpopularity of the clampdown on speech helped lead to Adams’ defeat in the election of 1800.
Running for president from prison
Another wartime restriction on speech, the Sedition Act of 1918, led to the conviction and sentencing to 10 years in prison of the socialist Eugene Debs for his criticism of the draft during World War I.
The Supreme Court upheld his conviction, but Debs ran a presidential campaign from his jail cell in 1920 and got nearly 1 million votes. President Warren G. Harding later commuted Debs’ sentence.
Marketplace of ideas
Courts and people have complex and nuanced views on free speech. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the unanimous majority opinion upholding Debs’ conviction, but he also wrote a key dissent in a case involving the conviction of Russian immigrants who distributed leaflets calling for a general strike in the US to interrupt the war effort.
In that 1919 dissent, he espoused what would become a more absolutist view of the benefits of free speech. “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” he wrote.
Free speech and civil rights
In the US, the evolution of speech has also turned on issues of race.
“If you go to the 1830s you would see that abolitionism was brutally suppressed in many Southern states,” according to Jacob Mchangama, executive director at the Future of Free Speech, a think tank at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“You would face jail if you spread abolitionist writings, so that was an attempt to try and contain abolitionists in the North from spreading their ideas to the South,” he told me in a phone interview.
Generations later, it was the civil rights movement that helped secure more and more protections for speech.
“The steady expansion of the First Amendment was to a very large extent accomplished by civil rights groups; you had the NAACP and Jewish organizations who were persuaded that adopting laws against group libel, as hate speech was often called, was detrimental to minorities,” Mchangama said.
Those protections have also helped protect the type of hateful speech that civil rights groups would abhor. Thurgood Marshall argued in favor of school desegregation at the Supreme Court as an NAACP lawyer in the Brown v. Board of Education case.
Later, as a Supreme Court justice, he ruled against an Ohio law in favor of KKK member Charles Brandenburg’s right to free speech.
It’s an important distinction between the US and much of the rest of the world, where laws are more likely to restrict speech. Mchangama points to people in European countries who have been jailed over Facebook posts, for instance.
Those cases are why Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both sought to lecture European countries about free speech — lectures that have not aged well as the Trump administration now tries to clamp down on dissent on college campuses and on television, among other places.
A third Red Scare
Dabhoiwala fears the US is entering a disturbing new period where speech is in danger.
Protections we enjoy today, he said, come out of the Red Scares of the late 1910s and the 1950s, “when government was trying to shut down socialist and communist speech and the speech of homosexuals and the speech of other kind of progressives.”
“And yet what we’re seeing is really a third Red Scare where once again, we have an authoritarian government trying to shut down political voices that it disagrees with,” Dabhoiwala said.
Flaw in the First Amendment?
The larger issue may be what Dabhoiwala sees as a major flaw in the First Amendment, which protects speech from the government but is narrowly drawn.
“The government may not censor you, but any private corporation can sack people for putting a bumper sticker on their car or for posting something online, and that’s that,” he said.
To that point, Kimmel was put back on the air not because of a definitive government action, but because ABC’s parent company, Disney, made a business decision.
ABC needs its broadcast licenses, although fewer and fewer people watch TV over the air. Tech companies jealously guard their exemption from liability for what’s posted on their platforms, a relic of telecommunications law that was passed in the 1990s before the Internet was much of a thing. If you’ve heard the term “section 230,” that’s what people are talking about.
“We’re in such a mess because these providers don’t have any legal responsibility to the truth or to the common good, and they are happily monetizing and making giant amounts of profit out of spreading lies and untruths alongside truth and deliberation of a serious kind,” Dabhoiwala said.
The problem of misinformation vs. the problem of misinformation correction
Mchangama agrees that untruths can spread quickly online, but he thinks the effects can be blown out of proportion and would be impossible to stop through content moderation.
“If you believe that everyone with an internet connection should be able to participate in the public sphere, then I think it’s impossible to try and combat mis- and disinformation through content moderation, because what constitutes mis- and disinformation is often very difficult to determine,” he said.
Dabhoiwala sees things differently. He wants more out of social media platforms because misinformation spreads quickly, but fact checking takes time.
“The moment we say this is all just the same and free speech, say what you like, you open the door to vast quantities of misinformation, to manipulation by hostile outside actors, by politicians just bullshitting their way to power,” he said.
Mchangama, on the other hand, hopes the American left will look at the Trump administration today and dial back on efforts to control speech.
“Power changes hands,” Mchangama said.
New leaders have new ideas about which groups are worthy of protection, and which should be targeted, which is what we’re seeing right now with Trump.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s free speech back flip was 250 years in the making.
#2025 #America #CNN #CNNWhatMatters #DonaldTrump #Education #FirstAmendment #FreeSpeech #Health #History #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Technology #Trump #TrumpAdministration #USConstitution #UnitedStates #WhatMatters
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Fwd: Trump’s free speech back flip was 250 years in the making – CNN – What Matters
October 10, 2025
: Trump’s free speech back flip was 250 years in the making
“If we don’t have FREE SPEECH, then we just don’t have a FREE COUNTRY,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in a campaign video.
But less than nine months into his second term, he was explaining his administration’s stance this this way:
“We took the freedom of speech away,” he said at a White House event Wednesday as he tried to explain his call to put people who burn the American flag behind bars for years despite a very clear Supreme Court decision that lists flag burning as free speech.
Trump’s complete turnabout on speech is indicative of the contradictions and ironies in the bedrock principle of the American liberties in the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment.
While Trump came to office promising to restore free speech, particularly on college campuses and on social media, he’s now engaged in a multi-front war over what people can say in the US:
► A Ronald Reagan-appointed judge accused Trump’s administration of a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment” for targeting and deporting pro-Palestinian academics.
► Conservative Supreme Court justices were skeptical at oral arguments over a Colorado law that bans debunked LGBT conversion therapy, suggesting it may step on the free speech rights of therapists.
► Trump wants colleges and universities to clamp down on campus speech in exchange for federal funding.
► He applauded his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, for trying to get Jimmy Kimmel’s show canceled by ABC, an effort that backfired.
► His lawsuits against media companies and law firms, none of which appear to stand on firm legal ground, have nonetheless been wildly successful in extracting settlement payments and sending a message to firms that would oppose him.
► Companies like YouTube have reinstated accounts or made plans to do so for members of his administration, such as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who were suspended for spreading misinformation during the pandemic.
► His attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised to go after “hate speech” by people who she perceived as celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.
The hate speech element is particularly concerning to experts because in recent decades, it has become a tenet of Supreme Court cases and free speech advocates that “hate speech” is such a nebulous term that leaving it unprotected would invite exactly the type of selective viewpoint-policing that the administration now stands accused of.
The hate speech in question was not any obviously repugnant White supremacist or racist ideology, but rather comments related to Kirk’s death, potentially including those who celebrated it. But we don’t really know since Bondi has not been specific.
Congress undercut the First Amendment almost immediately
US history is full of pendulum swings back and forth between freedom and restriction of speech.
The First Amendment, adopted shortly after the Constitution, guarantees Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
But within a few years, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the president, then John Adams, during the undeclared Quasi War between the US and France.
“The sad truth is, free speech has always been a weaponized slogan, right from the outset, when it’s first invented in the early 18th century,” according to Fara Dabhoiwala, a historian at Princeton University and author of the recent book “What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea.”
Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache was among those arrested for “libeling” Adams under the law. Federalists also threw a Vermont publisher and congressman, Matthew Lyon, in jail for criticizing Adams in print.
(Among other things, Lyon wrote that Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp,” and, separately, started a fight on the House floor over Adams’ foreign policy. Lyon, attacked with a cane after he spat tobacco juice at a fellow lawmaker, defended himself with fire tongs.)
Far from silencing Lyon, however, the Sedition Act backfired. Lyon ran a successful campaign for Congress from jail. The unpopularity of the clampdown on speech helped lead to Adams’ defeat in the election of 1800.
Running for president from prison
Another wartime restriction on speech, the Sedition Act of 1918, led to the conviction and sentencing to 10 years in prison of the socialist Eugene Debs for his criticism of the draft during World War I.
The Supreme Court upheld his conviction, but Debs ran a presidential campaign from his jail cell in 1920 and got nearly 1 million votes. President Warren G. Harding later commuted Debs’ sentence.
Marketplace of ideas
Courts and people have complex and nuanced views on free speech. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the unanimous majority opinion upholding Debs’ conviction, but he also wrote a key dissent in a case involving the conviction of Russian immigrants who distributed leaflets calling for a general strike in the US to interrupt the war effort.
In that 1919 dissent, he espoused what would become a more absolutist view of the benefits of free speech. “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” he wrote.
Free speech and civil rights
In the US, the evolution of speech has also turned on issues of race.
“If you go to the 1830s you would see that abolitionism was brutally suppressed in many Southern states,” according to Jacob Mchangama, executive director at the Future of Free Speech, a think tank at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“You would face jail if you spread abolitionist writings, so that was an attempt to try and contain abolitionists in the North from spreading their ideas to the South,” he told me in a phone interview.
Generations later, it was the civil rights movement that helped secure more and more protections for speech.
“The steady expansion of the First Amendment was to a very large extent accomplished by civil rights groups; you had the NAACP and Jewish organizations who were persuaded that adopting laws against group libel, as hate speech was often called, was detrimental to minorities,” Mchangama said.
Those protections have also helped protect the type of hateful speech that civil rights groups would abhor. Thurgood Marshall argued in favor of school desegregation at the Supreme Court as an NAACP lawyer in the Brown v. Board of Education case.
Later, as a Supreme Court justice, he ruled against an Ohio law in favor of KKK member Charles Brandenburg’s right to free speech.
It’s an important distinction between the US and much of the rest of the world, where laws are more likely to restrict speech. Mchangama points to people in European countries who have been jailed over Facebook posts, for instance.
Those cases are why Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both sought to lecture European countries about free speech — lectures that have not aged well as the Trump administration now tries to clamp down on dissent on college campuses and on television, among other places.
A third Red Scare
Dabhoiwala fears the US is entering a disturbing new period where speech is in danger.
Protections we enjoy today, he said, come out of the Red Scares of the late 1910s and the 1950s, “when government was trying to shut down socialist and communist speech and the speech of homosexuals and the speech of other kind of progressives.”
“And yet what we’re seeing is really a third Red Scare where once again, we have an authoritarian government trying to shut down political voices that it disagrees with,” Dabhoiwala said.
Flaw in the First Amendment?
The larger issue may be what Dabhoiwala sees as a major flaw in the First Amendment, which protects speech from the government but is narrowly drawn.
“The government may not censor you, but any private corporation can sack people for putting a bumper sticker on their car or for posting something online, and that’s that,” he said.
To that point, Kimmel was put back on the air not because of a definitive government action, but because ABC’s parent company, Disney, made a business decision.
ABC needs its broadcast licenses, although fewer and fewer people watch TV over the air. Tech companies jealously guard their exemption from liability for what’s posted on their platforms, a relic of telecommunications law that was passed in the 1990s before the Internet was much of a thing. If you’ve heard the term “section 230,” that’s what people are talking about.
“We’re in such a mess because these providers don’t have any legal responsibility to the truth or to the common good, and they are happily monetizing and making giant amounts of profit out of spreading lies and untruths alongside truth and deliberation of a serious kind,” Dabhoiwala said.
The problem of misinformation vs. the problem of misinformation correction
Mchangama agrees that untruths can spread quickly online, but he thinks the effects can be blown out of proportion and would be impossible to stop through content moderation.
“If you believe that everyone with an internet connection should be able to participate in the public sphere, then I think it’s impossible to try and combat mis- and disinformation through content moderation, because what constitutes mis- and disinformation is often very difficult to determine,” he said.
Dabhoiwala sees things differently. He wants more out of social media platforms because misinformation spreads quickly, but fact checking takes time.
“The moment we say this is all just the same and free speech, say what you like, you open the door to vast quantities of misinformation, to manipulation by hostile outside actors, by politicians just bullshitting their way to power,” he said.
Mchangama, on the other hand, hopes the American left will look at the Trump administration today and dial back on efforts to control speech.
“Power changes hands,” Mchangama said.
New leaders have new ideas about which groups are worthy of protection, and which should be targeted, which is what we’re seeing right now with Trump.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s free speech back flip was 250 years in the making.
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