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.
Their continued refusal to acknowledge that it was a crime, and the normalization of criminal conspiracy and use of political violence to chill efforts to hold people accountable… all amounts to organized crime masquerading as legitimate politics
I’m still shocked to this day that police weren’t mowing people down as they tried to force their way in. By not doing so, they basically said, “this is fine” IMO.
Some of them on camera got caught removing the barriers and ushering them in.
“Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses”
It’s clear some people haven’t seen the videos that have come out: quite a few people were let in by police. There is also some number of “arrested” people who turned out to be police and there is some evidence of them agitating the crowd.
I’ve got to admit, having seen similar tactics at the G20 protests in Toronto that resulted in total authoritarian overreaction, I’m now reading this telling of Jan 6 as an insurrection with skepticism.
LoL. This is the stupidity that you get from watching Fox News and their ilk. Totally debased from reality.
I don’t watch Fox News, nor am I American.
It doesn’t take a genius to see Jan 6 is more complicated than “chuds attacked the capitol”. “Lefty” mainstream media in America is just a different flavour of neoliberal shit slung by an opposing oligarch. American politics and media are just IRL WWE but with actual stakes and these psychopaths on all sides don’t care who they hurt.
Examples of the IRL WWE in action on the “left”: Kyle Rittenhouse, Nick Sandmann, Johnny Depp. On the “right”: election interference, welfare queens, Planned Parenthood rumors.
As hard as this will be for you to accept, you’re being sold lies just the same as the people you mock for being uninformed.
I’d rather take a principled stance here and protect people’s rights even if I find those people and their actions distasteful, than create a precedent and make those rights harder to protect and uphold later. Some of what happened here is entrapment and its bullshit.
That’s a lot of words to say nothing
God you people are morons
Ok let me simplify it for you: the story you’ve been told is just as fake as the Fox News story. Hope that helps.
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And you have some truth you want to lay on us, or is this just a broadly conspiratorial statement?
Fuck Putin. Ask him how Democracy’s Dick tastes, and how civilian volunteers with drones kicking his ass feels.
This may be an ESL thing, but your comment communicated no information. Seems to be randomly chosen words with small chunks of your opinion peppered in. But the comment itself makes absolutely zero sense.
Fuck Putin. Ask him how Democracy’s Dick tastes, and how civilian volunteers with drones kicking his ass feels.
So this was a left wing plot and for the first several hours, as Republicans begged Trump to do literally anything and he refused, he was actually doing what in your mind? Fighting a hidden battle against the deep state? All evidence suggests that Trump was more than OK with what was happening as it furthered his goals and supported his many other schemes of fraud, deception, and intimidation in order to remain in power.
no one is saying it was a left wing plot
Sure lol. Plenty of Republicans have blamed Antifa. But call it what you want, left wing plot, deep state plot, whatever. Whatever it is, it must be a master class in false flag operations considering it played right into everything that Trump had been broadcasting, desiring, and preparing for. They got him to play right along, vocally support the rioters, and withhold any assistance for the targets? Truly the greatest conspiracy of all time.
no one in this thread is saying it was a left wing plot. you’re tilting at windmills.
Like I said, call it whatever you want. It’s still stupid.
Fuck Putin. Ask him how Democracy’s Dick tastes, and how civilian volunteers with drones kicking his ass feels.
Fuck Putin. Ask him how Democracy’s Dick tastes, and how civilian volunteers with drones kicking his ass feels.
I have a flat earth to sell you!
I can’t tell if you’re agitating on the side of the insurrectionist traitors, or just stating facts. But there were collaborators on the side of the defenders. Multiple law enforcement and active military members have been arrested and charged for their participation of the insurrection.
So you’re saying the Police are complicit with Trump and his violent right wing extremists?
I watched it live. the more aggressive chuds are bad guys, but so are Congress and the capitol police and federal prosecutors and the fuckin media. letting the chuds go is good precedent for my freedom. siding with the police state is bad for my freedom. I don’t need to agree with the chuds to keep shouting “fuck the police”
I don’t need to agree with the chuds to keep shouting “fuck the police”
This is exactly where I’m at. Taking a principled stance here means we protect our own rights down the road, which I think are far more valuable than jailing some gullible idiots.
If it had been a liberal mob, we’d be marking the anniversary of the January 6 massacre, and it’d be a holiday for Republicans.
This. When I first heard I imagined they’d set up a few MG nests and show they weren’t fucking around. I was quite surprised by how little a reaction, especially from the most gun happy country
They were the right colour.
They also had the right political views.
I feel like there’s a major attribute of most of the crowd that affected this…
What police? Law enforcement was really sparse that day… for some reason.
The smartest man in the building backed away in the wrong direction so the mob would follow him.
The seditionists were likely well armed, so firing at them might have felt like suicide.
If they weren’t lily white, it would have be a bloodbath, Tianemen Square style.
Even the Republicans who admit Trump was at fault for the events of 1/6 still say they’ll vote for him.
It isn’t about right and wrong to them, its about getting a fascist in the White House to reorder society into their prescribed hierarchy. Different factions have their grudges: trans people & other sexual minorities, POCs, foreigners, religious minorities, and leftists.
The hatred is what unites them, but they’re too goddamn stupid to see that fascism always eats itself in the end because it constantly needs a new target upon which they can focus their blinding rage.
It’s extremely blatant at this point and they aren’t trying to hide it. Support for Republicans is support for American fascism and Christian nationalism at this point. We really need to start acting like it. You wouldn’t hire a Nazi. You wouldn’t go on a date with one, or allow one in your bar or invite them to thanksgiving. America could defeat Nazis again without lifting a finger, but everyone is too fucking afraid that uncle Marty might get upset to take direct action in their own lives. So we’ll end up back to fighting them in the streets one day.
“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labelled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism’.”
My MAGA dad keeps telling me it was an inside job by the Democrats. He’s saying everything was filmed way in advance by actors and everything was peaceful because of this mystical “new evidence” coming out; all the cops were a-part of the FBI, CIA, ect.
QanonCasualties. I’m sorry for your loss.
my parents are like this. i have never taken them seriously regarding anything
My sister was a medical lab tech for over 40 years, in a hospital, and she’s a vaccine denier. I can’t understand that. It’s all Fauci’s fault. But she fills her head with fear and hate from Fox every night.
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The article correctly identifies Fox News and right-wing media as spreading propaganda about Jan. 6th. However, we’ve known Fox News is not a legitimate news source since at least 2000 or earlier. For every article like this, I am internally screaming: ok, but how do we do to fix this?
The biggest problems seem to be:
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Fox News and related right-wing media inoculates viewers against non-extremist sources. They explicitly and implicitly, constantly, tell viewers that other news sources are lying to them and cannot be trusted. When the audience is exposed to actual facts by actual objective reporting, the inoculation kicks in and they immediately reject those facts as liberal lies and conspiracy. Right-wing media frequently also accuses democrats of doing what the GOP is in fact doing in bad faith. Even without evidence, that further undermines legitimate complaints about the GOP’s tactics.
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Politicians exploit the audience this propaganda has created, to scapegoat and harden voting habits. The same propaganda outlets constantly find liberal boogeymen - immigrant criminals, “woke” nonsense stories, minor issues with liberal programs in America that they amplify and distort, international stories of left-wing failures of governance. A combination of 1984-style 2-minutes-of-hate, and “but for the grace of God and the GOP go we” fear-mongering.
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The GOP has successfully tied itself to religion for a huge voting population, and religion for most people is non-negotiable. “Gods, guns and Trump” signs are not just an anecdotal type of supporter - that marriage is the core of the GOP. Religion awards value based on faith, and that actually means the less these voters question Trump and accept him as part of their faith, the better they feel about him. That’s a huge problem.
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There is no required critical thinking training or teaching in schools to help kids understand how to form their own opinions in the midst of essentially information warfare. Schools can’t appear partisan, but to call a spade a spade: Kids are growing up bombarded by propaganda, and by the time they have the facilities to decide for themselves what they think, that environment usually has decided for them.
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My best thoughts for fixing:
- For #s 1-2, voters need to keep the senate and presidency and take the house this year (no big deal!), and implement a “news” media fact-checking law. Defamation/libel laws are not enough to stop this type of propaganda. It would be difficult within the First Amendment, but I think a law formalizing what is considered “news” that sets a cap on opinion pieces, unsupported speculation, and reporting of non-verifiable facts would be a start and not unconstitutional. No speech would be prevented, but Fox News’ brand of trash couldn’t be called “news” any longer. The challenge is creating a legal tool that can’t easily be misused to enforce the very authoritarian propaganda it’s trying to prevent.
- For #s 1-2 and 4, state governments could introduce a comprehensive critical thinking curriculum for kids. It’s objectively non-partisan to help kids critically assess information in the internet/social media age, so this seems sellable as long as it isn’t politicized.
- For #3, I don’t know the best way. I think at least introducing cognitive dissonance showing how different religion tells us to act versus how Trump and company act would be a start, but it’s probably impossible to untangle politics and religion to most on the right.
In fact the whole “parents choice” movement is very openly and explicitly about making sure that children are not taught critical thinking or exposed to ideological diversity in school.
I enjoyed reading your take on this.
As for point #3, is there not already a separation of church and law in the US?
To continue upon others threads. In theory, on paper. You are correct. In practice, that was left behind decades ago. Back in the 1940s the Christian Right began to coalesce. In the 70s it became a prominent voting bloc. Cut to present day and you have preachers telling their congregation who to vote for because they have a wink and a smile contract. Hurt the people we hate and we will give you power.
It’s more than that - you have none other than the Church of Scientology to blame, partially. Thanks to their Operation Snow White back in the 70s, where Scientologists obtained key positions within the IRS and effectively doxxed thousands of IRS members (with the implicit threat of violence), they managed to maintain tax-free status despite operating as a political entity, and killed an entire investigation into their organization in one fell swoop. This spooked the IRS so goddamn much that it changed their entire approach to dealing with religious organizations entirely, and led to the hands-off approach that got us the Moral Majority in the 80s, and the marriage of the GOP to the American religious right.
Unfortunately, “separation of church and state” is a nice goal but leaves a lot to be desired.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a particular religion (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”). However, even that relatively narrow prohibition has been interpreted even more narrowly by conservative Supreme Court justices who only thinly veil, if at all, their favoritism to their particular religion.
Additionally, non-profit orgs are technically prohibited from endorsing candidates and campaigning. However, conservative churches and their pastors frequently give (again) thinly-veiled instructions to vote for Trump or the GOP, without repercussions.
For point 1, that’s absolutely not getting past the 1st amendment, and it really doesn’t matter that it’s called news. People treat their crazy uncle’s conspiracy Facebook posts as “news” and labeling doesn’t really do much if anything to discourage this behavior.
For the idea of critical thinking and education, this is something that democrats should be campaigning on and promising, although obliquely. It should probably come in the form of increasing funding for schools (MASSIVELY) and then add in media literacy courses and such to the curriculum. Although, that said, there are already schools that do this in some form or fashion, but the problem is that far too many school boards are overrun with nuts, and this ties into point 3…
Religion being tied to governance is a real, real problem. Teaching kids critical thinking is going to teach a lot of them, especially Republicans and Evangelicals, that they are being fed a steady stream of bullshit. We still have enough religious association that even getting this across to Democrats and left leaning in a major way is going to be tricky.
On a hopeful note, the most zealous of this population is dying out. Levels of religion have been steadily dropping for a while now. I think as more of this magical thinking dies out, we’re more likely to see positive improvement. Of course, we have to not become a fascist state in the meantime.
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Look for Republicans to make a holiday of January 6th. It’s only a matter of time.
Just like they won’t let go of the Confederate Memorial Holiday.
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They have Civil War re-enactments in the confederate states. They also fly the confederate flag and say since it was just a battle flag and not the actual confederate flag it isn’t anti American. Refusing to acknowledge that it was a battle flag… against the U.S.
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They didn’t lose. They got beat but they haven’t lost. They’ve just changed tactics and are taking the long game. Really long but starting to pay off. The ideas survived because America failed to provide the education and opportunities that prevent that type of extremism from flourishing…
No it’s just poisoning the people that have no logical thinking and believe anything Trump says.
You’d be surprised. I know personally people who traditionally support the GOP but despise Trump who believe a bunch of the bullshit around January 6 because they hear it from their circles. Like how Antifa was involved.
Have you asked them why antifa would want to delay kicking Trump out of the white house?
They would just claim it was to ‘make the them look bad’ or something similar. That’s the beauty of bullshit; it’s like a perpetual avalanche. It’s overwhelming and incredibly difficult to counter.
Logic has nothing to do with it. It’s pure racism. They’ve been conditioned their whole lives to fear and hate “The Other,” instead of recognizing who’s really fucking them. I.E., the ultra rich.
I’m not a conservative republican, but I do agree not all right wingers are bad, we have a representative democracy because what works for me in my medium sized city dosent work for Matt in New York, or Jerry in BFE Montana. It’s the division that the partisan politics thats truly hurting us all.
Consider that you inevitably consume some propaganda yourself, but one never can see it, until maybe many years after.
Those people don’t want to be fools too, but they don’t see it happening.
The narrative around this event has been downplayed so much that it feels like a non factor for Trump. If it was anyone else in trouble for this there wouldn’t be so much debate.
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It was horrifying. It was treasonous.
But the most in all of world history? I dunno.
I can’t think of another act so heinous, maybe some that come close. But what makes this one the worst is that it continues to spread poisonous lies throughout our world.
I’m pretty sure Hitler’s takeover of Germany was worse. You still have idiots marching in the streets today claiming to be NAZIs
Or the insurrection that actually managed to kill thousands of Americans, our Civil War.
This was horrific, but getting hyperbolic about it just feeds the right wing propaganda machines further.
I don’t disagree, but to me Hitler at least had a shred of vision. Trump just wants destruction for all of humanity. To me, trump is much worse in every way. And I not a fan of hitler at all. But I’d rather have Hitler as president, or Jeff Dahmer, instead of that sick mass of putried filth that calls itself trump.
I get the sense you’re a bit biased here lol. If you think any of these politicians at the top give a shit about you, you’re wrong.
Trump is just selfish (like most big politicians). You can’t have no vision and a vision for how to destroy mankind at the same time.
It’s a bit illogical to say you hate insurrectionists and people trying to alter society for their own benefit, and also say “id rather have Hitler as a president”.
Do you see the irony here?
Oh more than a bit biased, I’d say extremely so. I realize no politician gives a flying shit about me (why should they). But if I’m going to have a lord and master, I want one that I can predict and understand. I don’t have to love them (and I won’t). All politicians are selfish, all people are selfish.
Yes I see the irony totally, the point i’m making is that at least with Hitler, you know what you’re getting. It’s horrible and miserable, but you know what you’re getting. And of course I’m being more than little facetious to make a point about how awful trump truly is.
The dangerous thing about Hitler is at least in the beginning he was competent. Trump wasn’t - and so far hasn’t done anything to make me think he’s changed. The thing that has saved us from Trump was his sheer incompetence.
Fair enough, I see where you’re coming from. Id suggest though, that selfishness and greed are easy to predict - moreso than radicals whose country was backed into a corner of starvation and depression by the rest of the world.
“say what you like about Hitler, at least he had vision”
Damn, that’s a really silly thing to have said.
And absolutely accurate. The truth always sounds silly the first time you hear it.
The night of the long knives comes to mind.
Not by a long way, come on man.
I think 1861 was worse than 1/6.
I think people are too literal when trying to understand each other. If someone says they believe in god, it means they identify as someone who believes in god. If someone says they think the election was stolen, it means they identify as someone who thinks the election was stolen. You don’t defeat this with direct education / facts, you give these people an out. They need identities that are constructive and based in reality. Friends, family, culture… it all needs to be rewritten. Then they’ll “believe” in reality.
So why don’t they adopt an identity based in reality like the rest of us?
Is it because they want to hate demographics and the one media that supports that pushes irrational thought because their core components are irrational and it’s easier to control them like that? I’m actually asking, because that’s my best guess.
Unfortunately, yes. Main Street never came back with Wall Street and Hillary never set foot in the rust belt. They’re hurt and afraid. I’m compassion fatigued to give a pass on Nazism but this is their explanation.
Nazis don’t get a pass. People who advocate for violence against people they don’t like don’t get a pass. IDGAF. I’ve tried being open and receptive and all that (this “offramp” idea,) but at least here in the Bible belt all the bigotry and hate is tied directly into the religious suspension of disbelief and they’re not interested in entertaining any ideas that aren’t from their Fox News (or wherever) prophets.
They think we’re doing what they’re doing.
They think that’s all there is.
Because reality is a neverending nightmare.
Nobody has the time for that.
That’s an excellent point and probably why things only continue to get worse
It’s because we have multiple propaganda channels masquerading as news.
You have to drink the poison willingly.
Not necessarily.
Or maybe it was just another glaring reminder that the public are that fucking braindead. Enough to truly buy into said propaganda. I guess it’s just boredom anymore.
Need to start dealing with these people like nazis
Give them good jobs at NASA and other government agencies?
They aren’t that smart sadly. At least the SS officers were insanely smart. Though they should have been gassed or shot.
The dude who ran the SS was what is basically a D&D nerd with the right connections and subservient personality.
I think we’d have enough bullets to just shoot them all, we wouldn’t need to use gas chambers for them, that would be much less convenient.
