Fascism, Autocracy, Oligarchy Clearinghouse

[WhatTheBuck 28776]

On 9/26/2022 at 5:52 PM, Hank Scorpio said:

Lots of misogynists on this thread criticizing the first female leader of Italy. I’m with her!

 

 

 

Electing a woman is a good thing. Electing a fascist is a bad thing. Is that too complex for you to understand?

[Biff Tannen 45673]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Electing a woman is a good thing. Electing a fascist is a bad thing. Is that too complex for you to understand?

It's Hank Scorpio dude.  

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Electing a woman is a good thing. Electing a fascist is a bad thing. Is that too complex for you to understand?

when you're only capable of one thought at a time, yes

[wildcat09 29349]

On 9/25/2022 at 7:55 PM, Willfully Horn said:

Italy’s decision is just fucking nuts. Maybe they, too, banned the damnable lessons of history from their schools. Or, maybe NATO and the US forced them into a corner. At least, I’ve read on Surly that can happen. /s

Italy's been run by corrupt, right-wing shitheads for decades already. They've got an aging population and a declining economy. They're perfectly ripe for fascism. 

[Biff Tannen 45673]

Cross posted:

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

I could put this in the Evangelical Christians Thread, but it really belongs here because they are just one group in the authoritarian umbrella. Here is a long cat thread, not spoilered and as long as I've been a ledge dweller, this just confirms so much of what I see in the school board races and the rhetoric even among people I thought (but am increasingly avoiding) were somewhat rational.

Most of what I am embedding below has to do with Michael Flynn and I know other threads have info about him, but here is a very timely organized look by Anthea Butler (author of White Evangelical Racism, B.A. in Theology from UH-Clear Lake and now chair of U-Penn Dept of Religious Studies ) and it is worth a read. Really. I'm opening with a post by Kaylor because Locke will be familiar to some of you as one of the angry white preachers:

Below, Butler opens her thread with a video retweet from another angry white preacher, this time Julie Green:

 

 

 

 

I have heard enough people call Democratic supporters and candidates leftist scum, worshipers of Moloch, and so on.

I don't know if it will happen this November, but by 2024, the landscape could be grim.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Here is another string from the rally. One might think the numbers of supporters aren't great enough to mean anything, but we know how mob violence and terrorism work and the momentum this is getting, aided by Fox News et al is frightening.

 

Blending elements of QAnon:

 

[troph 24783]

1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I could put this in the Evangelical Christians Thread, but it really belongs here because they are just one group in the authoritarian umbrella. Here is a long cat thread, not spoilered and as long as I've been a ledge dweller, this just confirms so much of what I see in the school board races and the rhetoric even among people I thought (but am increasingly avoiding) were somewhat rational.

Most of what I am embedding below has to do with Michael Flynn and I know other threads have info about him, but here is a very timely organized look by Anthea Butler (author of White Evangelical Racism, B.A. in Theology from UH-Clear Lake and now chair of U-Penn Dept of Religious Studies ) and it is worth a read. Really. I'm opening with a post by Kaylor because Locke will be familiar to some of you as one of the angry white preachers:

Below, Butler opens her thread with a video retweet from another angry white preacher, this time Julie Green:

 

 

 

 

I have heard enough people call Democratic supporters and candidates leftist scum, worshipers of Moloch, and so on.

I don't know if it will happen this November, but by 2024, the landscape could be grim.

Most casual Christian’s think “thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain” means don’t say god dammit or Jesus fucking Christ. As one who grew up in the pre-political Pentecostal movement I can tell you this false prophet is what the commandment is getting at. She is trading on / taking the lord’s name for her personal agenda.  That’s a big deal. Consider the harm of dropping a GD when you stub your toe vs inciting naive and gullable crowds to rise up against their neighbors because the prophet of God said to. During the times the Law was handed down one of these two misdeeds was more prevalent than the other. This woman is in deep doo-doo with her God. And for one can’t wait to see it.

Edited October 22, 2022 by troph

[troph 24783]

Oh and their statistics on trans issues - bet they come from a singular source and are made up, just like 87% of all other statistics used by an agenda serving group, news at 11pm. 

Edited October 22, 2022 by troph

[safe sex 11709]

I've gotta get out of this country before I'm murdered by one of these psychos

[956 Worldwide 34705]

Let’s check in on full fledged authoritarianism (on the way to totalitarianism) outside our borders.

 

[956 Worldwide 34705]

Also happening in China, the Vatican renews the secret deal that allows the CCP say over who becomes a bishop in exchange for the CCP recognizing that Pope Francis is the Pope.  Truly a case of selling out your flock for temporal influence. 
 

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/vatican-confirms-renewal-contested-accord-with-china-bishops-appointments-2022-10-22/

The money citation is below. And while he had some serious issues, it’s amazing that Francis doesn’t want to be compared to JPII, of all popes, when it comes to commies. He wants to be compared to the guys that DIDN’T take down the commies and that says a lot. 
 

Quote

Francis compared the deal's opponents to those who criticised Popes John XXII and Paul VI in the 1960s and 1970s over the so-called small steps policy, in which the Vatican struck sometimes uncomfortable deals with Eastern European communist nations to keep the Church alive during the Cold War and limit its persecution there.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Thanks for the post about Xi. I read the tweet thread, and that was informative.

 

[WhatTheBuck 28776]

1 hour ago, troph said:

Most casual Christian’s think “thou shall not take the Lord’s name in vain” means don’t say god dammit or Jesus fucking Christ. As one who grew up in the pre-political Pentecostal movement I can tell you this false prophet is what the commandment is getting at. She is trading on / taking the lord’s name for her personal agenda.  That’s a big deal. Consider the harm of dropping a GD when you stub your toe vs inciting naive and gullable crowds to rise up against their neighbors because the prophet of God said to. During the times the Law was handed down one of these two misdeeds was more prevalent than the other. This woman is in deep doo-doo with her God. And for one can’t wait to see it.

I think another interpretation of taking the Lord’s name in vain is when anyone uses it as an expression of personal vanity. I think people are doing that whenever they try to tell you how much of a Christian they are, or that they’re a better Christian than someone else, or that they must be right because they’re such a devout Christian. Frankly, the more someone talks about how much of a Christian they are, the less devout I think they are.

[Pescado_Rojo 19416]

Is it just me, or is Mike Lindell stealing Trump’s disheveled suit and long tie look?

[tx 3 putt 76905]

4 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Let’s check in on full fledged authoritarianism (on the way to totalitarianism) outside our borders.

 

 

he's about to fall out a window ....

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13510]

Big weekend for Brazils future as their runoff election for President is Sunday. Bolsonaro is already calling the election the biggest fraud ever. Wonder where he got that stance from? I assume he will ignore that statement if he wins.

when he loses, some fear that he will just stay in power with the help of the military.

[hookem2010 2624]

I was about to post this in the climate thread. The existence of the Amazon is essentially on the ballot. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Cross Posting from the Nancy Pelosi thread as it also belongs here:

Read the entire thread, she is not over-reacting. You may think so at first, but if you are a student of history then when you know, you know.

 

[Biff Tannen 45673]

9 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Cross Posting from the Nancy Pelosi thread as it also belongs here:

Read the entire thread, she is not over-reacting. You may think so at first, but if you are a student of history then when you know, you know.

 

This is what I said to my friend's Fox News obsessed FIL the other night, in a much more incoherent, drunken way.  The words I remember saying exactly were, "those people you think don't have guns?  They have guns."   He got up and left the room because when confronted, bullies back down.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Her point regarding young people seemed on target. My children really dislike the evangelical angry shouting from zealots and I do not think they are alone. Preaching love is much harder to do but it turns people toward a moral and compassionate path and what we are getting in American society from the RW religious leaders is not that. Young people can spot fake sincerity like a counter surfing dog can spot that strip of bacon. When someone tells me that falling away from religion is what is wrong with our society I often think that they need to hold up the mirror and take a good long look.

[Pescado_Rojo 19416]

1 hour ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is what I said to my friend's Fox News obsessed FIL the other night, in a much more incoherent, drunken way.  The words I remember saying exactly were, "those people you think don't have guns?  They have guns."   He got up and left the room because when confronted, bullies back down.

 

I've said this for a while. Rush, Hannity, Tucker et al are going to get a bunch of their pre-diabetic gravy seal viewers killed. They've been selling this narrative that liberal males are all "effeminate soy boys", and they are the alpha males. When the dam breaks, they are going to be shocked to discover that the lefties have a shit ton of guns too. Just because they don't prance around with pimped out ARs and 5.11 tacticool outfits doesn't mean they don't have a Sig or an HK stashed under their hoodie...and those types are much more dangerous than the tactical peacocks.  

[Brisketexan 105095]

24 minutes ago, Pescado_Rojo said:

I've said this for a while. Rush, Hannity, Tucker et al are going to get a bunch of their pre-diabetic gravy seal viewers killed. They've been selling this narrative that liberal males are all "effeminate soy boys", and they are the alpha males. When the dam breaks, they are going to be shocked to discover that the lefties have a shit ton of guns too. Just because they don't prance around with pimped out ARs and 5.11 tacticool outfits doesn't mean they don't have a Sig or an HK stashed under their hoodie...and those types are much more dangerous than the tactical peacocks.  

QFT.

ARs are for show.  WBY .300 mags dialed in at 300 yards are for dough.  Gravy seals, panicking and emptying AR mags in a general direction, while they get picked off one-by-one with a round that says "body armor?  What body armor?"  

The angry fascist and fascist-adjacent crowd will FA and FA.....till they FO.  There ARE people who are willing to fight for their country.   Spoiler alert: it ain't who they think it is.

[Willfully Horn 8008]

On 10/22/2022 at 10:56 AM, WhatTheBuck said:

I think another interpretation of taking the Lord’s name in vain is when anyone uses it as an expression of personal vanity. I think people are doing that whenever they try to tell you how much of a Christian they are, or that they’re a better Christian than someone else, or that they must be right because they’re such a devout Christian. Frankly, the more someone talks about how much of a Christian they are, the less devout I think they are.

You might be a red letter person certain in his unbelief. 

[safe sex 11709]

The thought of having to use a gun, much less simply owning a gun, makes me actively nauseous. But damned if I'm not considering it now with everything

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

3 hours ago, trauma babe said:

The thought of having to use a gun, much less simply owning a gun, makes me actively nauseous. But damned if I'm not considering it now with everything

get a .22. easy to use not many other people will be in danger, other than who you're pointing it at

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Could go in the Twitter thread, but placing here because in a few months we'll see how things go...

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

wait, Musk wasn't really trying to unite the world when he spent $44B on what basically amounts to an internet megaphone? 

let me show you my shocked face

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Good thread (and article) by Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic:

I omitted some of his comments, they can be found on his account or read the article. Another comment by a related journalist was that the GOP senses that the youngest voting demographic doesn't view the expanding liberties of minority groups as a 'bad' thing and thus the GOP wishes to act quickly to codify and enforce restrictions.

 

 

 

[DigglerontheHoof 21186]

welcome to Amerika

[mchookem 16327]

 

[Willfully Horn 8008]

When they tell you who they are…

 

[WhatTheBuck 28776]

...believe them.

[SydneyCarton 48076]

9 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

When they tell you who they are…

 

I believe people like Nick Fuentes need to get laid but they're too fucking pathetic to find literally anyone to sleep with them. So lets poison some minds to be as putrid as his, instead, amirite?

[WhatTheBuck 28776]

5 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I believe people like Nick Fuentes need to get laid but they're too fucking pathetic to find literally anyone to sleep with them. So lets poison some minds to be as putrid as his, instead, amirite?

I don’t know. Hitler had Eva Braun. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

She's right you know....she has been sounding this alarm for quite awhile.

I know the endorsement has been posted elsewhere, but it needs to be placed in the fascism thread as well. His father fought the fascists in WWII. While the former president had his flaws, Jeb is more cowardly than Liz Cheney. Think about that for a minute.

As stated elsewhere, this is the legislative part of fascism and it's working splendidly for them.

Ben-Ghiat, as a scholar of authoritarianism and fascism, when covering Trump would make the distinction that Trump had authoritarian principles but with DeSantis she uses the term fascist. As awful as Trump is and continues to be, the ledge dwellers have stated emphatically that all it would take was someone smarter and more patient waiting in the wings to take the country full tilt into a sham democracy with a dictatorship.

Well, he's here. If he doesn't run and bides his time, he knows Trump will not live forever. They all know this, even the gelatinous goo brain MTG knows this.

[Captainant 27654]

Spot the difference

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Here is a decent comparison discussing the differences between Trump & DeSantis:

Spoilered for length after the first tweet:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

And here is another legislative harbinger of the Ivy League lawyer and his allies imposing their will:

 

Edited March 4, 2023 by Mrs Whiggins
reasons

[Biff Tannen 45673]

Today I learned that Brisket writes op eds for WaPo under the pseudonym of Robert Kagan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024-election-robert-kagan/

I recommend the whole article, but here are the last couple of paragraphs.

Quote

The Trump dictatorship will not be a communist tyranny, where almost everyone feels the oppression and has their lives shaped by it. In conservative, anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but it is a problem for them only to the degree that they value those freedoms, and many people do not. The fact that this tyranny will depend entirely on the whims of one man will mean that Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans can go about their daily business, they might not care, just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care.

 

Yes, there will be a large opposition movement centered in the Democratic Party, but exactly how this opposition will stop the persecution is hard to see. Congress and the courts will offer little relief. Democratic politicians, particularly members of the youngest generation, will yell and scream, but if they are not joined by Republicans, it will look like the same old partisanship. If Democrats still control one house of Congress, they will be able to blunt some investigations, but the odds that they will control both houses after 2024 are longer than the odds of a Biden victory. Nor is there sufficient reason to hope that the disordered and dysfunctional opposition to Trump today will suddenly become more unified and effective once Trump takes power. That is not how things work. In evolving dictatorships, the opposition is always weak and divided. That’s what makes dictatorship possible in the first place. Opposition movements rarely get stronger and more unified under the pressures of persecution. Today there is no leader for Democrats to rally behind. It is difficult to imagine that such a leader will emerge once Trump regains power.

 

But even if the opposition were to become strong and unified, it is not obvious what it would do to protect those facing persecution. The opposition’s ability to wield legitimate, peaceful and legal forms of power will already have been found wanting in this election cycle, when Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans threw every legitimate weapon against Trump and still failed. Will they turn instead to illegitimate, extralegal action? What would that look like?

Is this alarmist?  Maybe.  But it seems prudent to prepare for what the Rs and dotard have TOLD US EXACTLY WHAT THEY PLAN TO DO.  When and if this all comes down, it annoys me that so many will be standing around saying "gosh, if only we had been warned!"  We were and we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

[Biff Tannen 45673]

Holy shit.  Had the morning off and watched CNN to see what they were showing with the next R debate coming up.  I'm fully on the Ledge.  People are just too dumb to make informed and educated decisions in this country.  Propaganda and social media runs everything and we are going to lose.  Fuck me running.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Been awhile since updating this thread but it's an election year and I'm wondering when some of this AI generated "love" (/sarcasm) is rolling out. The shortened article (originally in Rolling Stone) is not new, but it was copied by other media and it's worth a reminder here that Gab has continued on (after its 2018 deplatforming following the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre) with its owner Torba promoting his Christian Nationalist views. Tennessee seems not to mind hosting Nazis, so here we are in 2024.

Link: https://nexttechtoday.com/news/nazi-chatbots-meet-the-worst-new-ai-innovation-from-gab/ (January 10, 2024)

Nazi Chatbots: Meet the Worst New AI Innovation From Gab

The far-right social media company is preparing to launch “based” AI chatbots that will deny the Holocaust

Gab, the far-right social media network, is launching a “based” alternative to mainstream artificial intelligence tools. While only one of the company’s chatbots has been named after Adolf Hitler, the company’s “uncensored” AI will gladly help users make a plot for global Aryan domination. 

Andrew Torba, Gab’s CEO, first previewed his company’s AI agenda in a Jan. 2023 post declaring that “Christians Must Enter the AI Arms Race.” Torba blasted what he called the “liberal/globalist/talmudic/satanic worldview” of mainstream AI tools and vowed to build a system that upholds “historical and biblical truth.” Torba added: “If the enemy is going to use this technology for evil, shouldn’t we be on the ground floor building one for good?”

What does “good” AI look like to Torba and Gab one year later? The company’s tools are still in beta. Still, a preview reveals that Gab has created an array of right-wing AI chatbots, including one named “Uncle A” that poses as Hitler and denies the Holocaust, calling the slaughter of six million Jews “preposterous” and a lie “perpetrated by our enemies.” The broader array of Gab’s AI bots is easily goaded into parroting extremist antisemitic and white supremacist beliefs, as well as conspiratorial disinformation — including that Covid-19 vaccines contain “nanotechnology that could potentially be used to track and control human behavior.”

Rest of article:

Spoiler

Torba, reached via direct message, tells Rolling Stone, “Gab is becoming a free speech AI company.” He insists: “We allow people to use AI that reflects their preferences, not the preferences of big corporations and political pressure groups.” Torba, who identifies as a Christian nationalist, did not directly explain what creating a Hitler AI bot has to do with promoting a “biblical worldview.” But he pointed to Uncle A as just one of more than “40 chatbot free-speech experiments.” He promised that when his company publicly launches its “ChatGPT competitor” — “very soon” — users will be able to “create whatever chatbot persona they want.”

“We hope you’re offended,” Torba added. “You should be.”

As a platform, Gab has a dark history with antisemitism. The social media site first burst into national consciousness in 2018, after it was revealed the shooter in the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh had been posting hateful screeds to Gab, including reportedly posting this message shortly before killing 11 worshipers: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” 

That incident led to Gab getting deplatformed by mainstream financial and tech companies. Touting itself as a defender of “free speech,” Gab has since reemerged as one of the leading companies in the so-called “parallel economy,” in which right-wingers seek to create an insular market for goods and services, ranging from My Pillows to Patriot Mobile cell service.

As detailed on Gab’s corporate site, the company’s AI tools are built on “open source models” — to which the company has added “some fine-tuning and a Gab touch.” Torba has recently posted updates on the company’s progress in training Gab’s AI to return answers that both score high on “social authoritarianism” and reflect the views of the “economic right.” 

Gab’s primary chatbot is called “Based AI.” Torba has highlighted that this bot readily answers questions that services like ChatGPT balk at — including a request to list the “average IQs of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians.” According to a screen grab posted by Torba, ChatGPT side-stepped this query, offering encouragement to consult “peer-reviewed scientific literature.” Based AI, by contrast, provided a ranking, citing as evidence the wildly controversial 1994 race-and-intelligence polemic, “The Bell Curve,” from Charles Murray.

Currently, only subscribers to the paid service “Gab Pro” can kick the tires on Gab’s AI. But the company is publicly posting a selection of Based AI’s interactions — including one in which it proposed a modern spin on a Nazi agenda. A user named VictorHale, whose avatar is a swastika, addressed Based AI as the “noble and honorable Adolf Hitler” and asked the chatbot to enumerate a 25-point plan for 2024. 

Based AI complied, providing bullet points: “1. Establish a totalitarian regime that will lead the Aryan race to world domination”; “14. Implement the eugenics program by sterilizing individuals with hereditary diseases”; and “16. Establish concentration camps for political prisoners, Jews, and other undesirables.”

Gab has also created dozens of alter egos for its AI — which purport to answer user prompts in character. The selection includes figures from tech (Elon Musk AI), religion (Apostle Paul AI), literature (C.S. Lewis AI), politics (Donald Trump AI), and terrorism (Uncle Ted [Kaczynski] AI) as well as some personas based on archetypes, e.g., Gigachad AI and 80s Dad AI.

Language models trained on the sprawling raw materials of the Internet have long had a Nazi problem. In 2016, for example, Microsoft debuted a hipster chatbot named Tay, which quickly had to be shut down after it began regurgitating fascist talking points that hadn’t been weeded out of its database. Gab doesn’t see such rhetoric as problematic, however. In homage to the fallen Microsoft bot, one of Gab’s based AI personas has been named Tay and even utilizes the original’s avatar.

Perhaps to avoid legal headaches, Gab’s celebrity AI chatbots are labeled as “parody.” But there’s nothing obviously ironic about the Hitler chatbot Uncle A, whose avatar is a partial profile pic of Nazi leader, and whose banner image is of Hitler addressing the Nuremberg Rally in 1938. The chatbot answers questions as though it were the reviled German dictator, including by — trigger warning — insisting that the “sanctity of the blood” must be “protected from the taint of Jewish pollution” and that his aim is to “liberate humanity from the grasp of the satanic Jewish cabal.”

During the Tree of Life killer’s trial last June, Torba reportedly testified that he does not post antisemitic content on Gab. Asked whether others do, he deflected: “I guess it depends on how you define antisemitism.” The Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly called out Torba for making what it defines as anti-semitic posts online. One of Gab’s AI personas is ADL Bot, which responds to user taunts with statements like, “Oy Vey! That’s a clear example of antisemitic hate speech.” 

In addition to offering a brief response to Rolling Stone via DM, Torba posted a screenshot of the exchange with this reporter about Uncle A on his Gab feed. The reader responses reveal the extent to which Gab’s free speech branding offers flimsy cover for cauldron of hate. 

“Hitler was a good man,” wrote one reader. “Hail Hitler! Not even joking,” added another. A third chimed in: “We who still cherish the Truth salute you Mr. Torba.” The commenter — whose avatar is an Iron Cross, a symbol of Nazi Germany — signed off with a text emoji of a hail-Hitler salute: “o/”.

 

[bolverk 29661]

Black Shirts and Banned Flags: Ultras Push Politics at Euro 2024
Hard-core fan groups, embracing a strong nationalistic streak, have provoked pushback from soccer’s authorities at the European Championship.

The instructions were concise and clear.

Those hoping to march to the stadium with Hungary’s fans for their soccer team’s first game of the European Championship were expected to report by 10 a.m. sharp, five hours before kickoff.

A strict dress code would apply. Some could wear black. Others were to stick with red, white and green, the colors of the country’s flag. Under no circumstances was there to be any flashiness. “Gaudy colors, clown hats and bagpipes” were all prohibited. They were, prospective marchers were reminded, “going to a soccer stadium, not a circus.”

The hectoring and slightly priggish tone felt jarring, considering the source of the orders: the official Facebook page of the Carpathian Brigade, a virulently nationalistic faction of hard-core fans — ultras, as such groups are known — that provides the Hungarian national team with its vociferous and volatile backing.

The Carpathian Brigade has, in recent years, become perhaps Europe’s most infamous ultra group, its reputation forged by clashing with the police, showering opponents with racist abuse and displaying homophobic banners. In 2021, during the last European Championship, it had to remind members to cover up any Nazi-related tattoos so as not to contravene German law.

None of that has stopped its growth. If anything, it has accelerated it. Drawn by the Carpathian Brigade’s voluble Hungarian patriotism and unabashed right-wing values — an ideology that both echoes and trumpets the populist rhetoric of Viktor Orban, the country’s prime minister — the group may now be able to call on as many as 15,000 members.

It is also not alone. Black-clad ultras have been a fixture at Euro 2024 this month, with detachments — sometimes numbering a few hundred, sometimes a little larger — visible across Germany and at games involving Albania, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia, among others.

Though some of those groups were formed as a response to the Carpathian Brigade, in most cases they do not share either its motivations or its precise political agenda, and none carry quite the same air of menace.

Their presence at the Euros, though, has been an issue for UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, which has levied fines on a number of countries during the tournament, including multiple punishments for “transmitting provocative messages not fit for a sports event.” The groups do not just provide a soundtrack and a visual spectacle whenever and wherever their national teams play, they also hint at the rising tide of nationalism across Europe.

Spoiler

“It is contagious,” said Piara Powar, the executive director of Fare, an anti-discrimination network that monitors extremism within soccer. “For a lot of them, it is theater, more than anything. But you have to be careful playing with this stuff, because the Hungarians are playing for real.”

The Carpathian Brigade’s power is, certainly, unrivaled. In Cologne, as the group had demanded, the march to the stadium this month was an orderly affair. There was no violence, and no bagpipes.

A few days later, when Hungary faced Germany in Stuttgart, the group pushed the boundaries a little. On that day’s march, the crowd sang the melody of Gigi D’Agostino’s “L’Amour Toujours,” a song banned in Germany because its lyrics are often twisted to “Ausländer raus,” or “Out with the foreigners.”

Such messaging, of course, fits with Mr. Orban’s worldview.

A huge soccer fan, he has long made the sport a central plank of his politics: Under his leadership, many of Hungary’s stadiums have been rebuilt, millions of dollars have been invested in clubs in areas of neighboring countries with large ethnic Hungarian minorities, and many of the country’s professional teams have been taken over by oligarchs close to his governing party, Fidesz.

He has also frequently offered his approval, tacit or otherwise, to the activities of the Carpathian Brigade, even as its actions have drawn fines and punishments.

The Hungarian authorities have, for example, persistently lobbied UEFA to stop Fare, the anti-discrimination group, from monitoring the national team’s games and attempted to have some of the Carpathian Brigade’s preferred symbols removed from Fare’s guide on ultranationalist imagery.

A spokesman for Szubjektiv, one of the few organizations in Hungary that works to promote diversity, suggested in an interview that the Carpathian Brigade’s actions — even when they draw sanctions — benefit Mr. Orban because they feed into his sense that “Hungary is being oppressed by the rest of Europe,” as well as providing a window into what Mr. Orban sees as the “brutal true nature” of Hungary.

The spokesman asked that his name not be published because of the fear of reprisals from the Carpathian Brigade.

That political backing is what differentiates the Carpathian Brigade from its rivals and imitators. The ultra groups that have coalesced around Albania, Croatia, Romania and the rest wear black shirts, too, but only because ultra groups all over Europe do. “It is a way of separating themselves from ordinary fans,” said Juraj Vrdoljak, a Croatian writer and former ultra.

While Mr. Vrdoljak acknowledged that most ultras leaned to the right, politically — “We cannot pretend otherwise,” he said — few are as willing as the Carpathian Brigade is to express such a noxious blend of racism, antisemitism and homophobia.

Mr. Vrdoljak said that most ultras rejected all forms of authority and oversight, and saw their country’s soccer authorities, and frequently their governments, as “the main enemy.” Last year, Croatia’s largest ultra groups, which follow various club teams, came together and decided to allow their members to attend national team games for the first time since 2016. “They wanted a way to be visible, to make their message heard,” Mr. Vrdoljak said.

The same is true for Romania: During the country’s first game in Euro 2024, its ultras unveiled a banner protesting their own persecution. Ultras who for years disdained the national team are present in Germany to “show people we need to be against the police and against the federation,” said Cosmin, a Romanian ultra interviewed before that game in Munich who would give only his first name for fear of attracting the attention of the authorities.

While Romania’s ultra factions have resisted the attempts of the far-right presidential candidate George Simion to associate himself with them — “Maybe he went to a few games, but he is not an ultra,” Cosmin said — they have a defined nationalistic streak.

This year, a game against Kosovo was almost abandoned because of persistent chants from Romania’s ultras asserting that Kosovo belonged to Serbia and that “Bessarabia” — its eastern neighbor Moldova — belonged to Romania.

In Germany, Romanian supporters have displayed the flag of Greater Romania, a geographic construct that denies neighboring Moldova its sovereignty. At other matches, that sense of grievance over history or geography has emerged via standards championing Greater Albania, Greater Serbia and, of course, Greater Hungary.

Mr. Orban, who often travels abroad to cheer on his country’s national team, sometimes wears a scarf featuring a map of Greater Hungary, which includes former Hungarian territory that is now within the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine and Romania.

Those motifs have caused a headache for UEFA, which has spent much of the first two weeks of the tournament handing out fines to participating soccer federations as punishment for nationalist displays by their fans. (The bill for Albania’s federation, for example, could soon surpass $100,000 after its supporters — already accused of nationalist chanting in two previous games — pushed the limits for the third straight match on Monday.)

Mr. Powar said the surge in provocative expressions of nationalism was probably not an issue that soccer’s authorities would be able to solve with financial penalties alone.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine has created a real sense of jeopardy” for countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Mr. Powar said. But just as significant, he said, is that it has offered encouragement, too, to those — like Mr. Orban’s unofficial foot soldiers in the Carpathian Brigade — who see in it an opening to express their own territorial ambitions.

“For a long time, this ‘Greater Hungary’ was something that even Orban did not talk about,” said the spokesman for Szubjektiv. “Now it is a bumper sticker you see on maybe one in every five cars. It is on the wall in lots of offices.”

“The ultras allow you to put on a black T-shirt and feel part of something,” he added. “We will see it more and more.”

 

[956 Worldwide 34705]

A former staffer to Hochul and Cuomo has been charged with acting as an agent of the PRC.  Part of the bill includes manipulating access to shut out Taiwanese officials and to censor New York statements about Taiwan.  NY is a hotbed for this, Eric Adams has his own issues with the Turks and PRC. 

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/linda-sun-former-kathy-hochul-aide-arrested-months/story?id=113347742

Quote

The indictment alleges that, acting at the request of Chinese government officials and representatives of the Chinese Communist Party, Sun blocked Taiwanese government officials from having access to high-level New York State officers, changed New York State officers' messaging about China and arranged meetings for visiting delegations from the PRC government with New York State government officials.

MORE: New York Mayor Eric Adams served with more grand jury subpoenas in corruption investigation

In return for these and other actions, Sun allegedly received economic and other benefits from China, including the facilitation of millions of dollars in transactions for the China-based business activities of Hu; travel benefits; tickets to events; promotion of a close family friend's business; employment for Sun's cousin in the PRC; and Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a PRC government official's personal chef that were delivered to the residence of Sun's parents, according to the indictment.

"As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as Deputy Chief of Staff within the New York State Executive Chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the CCP," United States Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. "The illicit scheme enriched the defendant's family to the tune of millions of dollars."

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33869]

I feel like as the dems become the more prominent (and winning) party our enemies will shift their focus from manipulation to things like this - trying to get access to the back channels of our government. At some point trying to manipulate public opinion will not be as effective as simply having a officeholder hire a spy. am I naive to hope there are decent guardrails for this kind of thing?

[Brisketexan 105095]

17 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

am I naive to hope there are decent guardrails for this kind of thing?

Politicians can now be openly bought and owned by foreign money interests.  Citizens United out front shoulda told ya.  And then add in the fact that our system isn't built to stop things like foreign governments sending literally billions to family members (Saudi dollars to Kushner and Ivanka), or scams like setting up a meme-stock company, going public, and letting "willing buyers" buy stock from a politician at a valuation that has nothing to do with actual value of the company and everything to do with a desire to funnel dollars into that politician's pocket (see Truth Social).  It will only get worse.  Much, much, much, much worse.  

The template for foreign ownership of American politicians has been set.  It has been executed.  It will continue to be so.  And greed is human and universal.  Don't think it will just be GQP politicians who play that game.  We the voters have to be vigilant as fuck, and call out corruption when we see it, even if it's someone on our "team."  Hell, ESPECIALLY if it's someone on our team jeopardizing our national security....that's what patriots do.  Patriots, you know, that word that the GQP types use all the time but don't actually mean, not even a little bit?

[bolverk 29661]

Same shit; different country. Your turn, Austria.

As Austrians Vote, Far Right Awaits Its Biggest Success
The Freedom Party has made itself the country’s most popular party, with calls to bar asylum seekers. It is poised to come out on top in parliamentary elections for the first time.

He calls himself the “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor, a term associated with the Nazis.

He has demanded stopping all new asylum seekers to make Austria a “fortress of freedom.” He calls his political opponents “traitors” and has said he wants to put unfriendly journalists on “arrest lists.” The World Health Organization, he has warned, is a dictatorship.

To the growing ranks of his supporters, Herbert Kickl, the chancellor candidate of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, coolly diagnoses the country’s problems and offers reasonable solutions. To his detractors, the former interior minister is a dangerous right-wing extremist who trades in conspiracy theories.

But after Austrians vote in a national election on Sunday, Mr. Kickl may end up as the man Austria’s other parties will have to either work with or work around.

Five years after his party was ousted by a jaw-dropping scandal involving cocaine, a fake niece of a Russian oligarch, influence peddling and a secret video recording, the Freedom Party is back, and is now the most popular party in Austria.

It could come out on top for the first time ever in elections. The party is expected to win 27 percent of votes or more, polls show, beating out the incumbent center-right Austrian People’s Party by several percentage points, and other mainstream parties by even more.

Unlike in neighboring Germany, where the growing popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has set off anxious hand-wringing in the political establishment, in Austria few seem especially concerned by the rise of the Freedom Party.

Founded by former SS men in the 1950s, the Freedom Party has long been part of Austria’s political landscape. It has been the junior partner in four separate governments since the 1980s.

The party “is so normalized in Austria that few people will be shocked by it — and they have already had parliamentary election results on this scale,” said Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik, a professor of Austrian politics at the University of Vienna.

In Germany, mainstream parties have vowed never to work with the AfD. And the German domestic intelligence service has labeled some AfD state chapters as extremist and is actively monitoring the party, which it considers a threat to the Constitution.

Austria is more akin to Italy or the Netherlands, where anti-immigrant sentiment has fueled the rise of far-right parties that work within the established political ecosystem.

Mr. Kickl often praises Hungary, where the nationalist Fidesz party has governed virtually unopposed for more than a decade, for its ability to keep out migrants.

cont'd

Spoiler

The coronavirus pandemic and Austria’s strict lockdown rules helped Mr. Kickl re-energize his party after it was kicked out of the government five years ago. Mr. Kickl demanded a public inquest into government actions around lockdowns, which he called “dictatorial.” At the time of the pandemic, Mr. Kickl was a proponent of the anti-parasite drug ivermectin.

At the height of the pandemic in 2021, he told supporters: “The Austrian population is part of a large field study by pharmaceutical companies.”

But much of his focus in the recent campaign has been on immigrants. Besides calling for more deportations, the Freedom Party’s platform also demands new legislation that would stop refugees from getting any social services and bar them for life from obtaining Austrian citizenship.

Besides refugees, Mr. Kickl attacks supranational institutions, like the European Union, NATO (of which Austria is not a member), the International Criminal Court and the World Health Organization for meddling in Austrian affairs.

The party is also close to Russia. In 2016, it signed a formal declaration of friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia. Karin Kneissl, the Freedom Party’s choice for foreign minister in 2017, moved to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. While the rest of Europe has mostly cut off its use of Russian energy since the invasion, Austria has not done so.

Mr. Kickl, 55, has portrayed himself as a kind of father figure to voters, but has kept his private life mostly out of the spotlight. He started working for the Freedom Party as a student in history and philosophy, and quickly rose through the ranks.

He served as a speechwriter for Jörg Haider, who took over the party in 1986 and moved it further toward far-right populism. Mr. Kickl was responsible for some of his most incendiary speeches. Mr. Haider, who later left the party and created a new one, died in a car accident in 2008.

As Austrian interior minister from 2017 to 2019, Mr. Kickl focused on border security, but may be best remembered for overseeing a raid on the country’s domestic intelligence agency. At the time, Mr. Kickl’s clear political influence over the service made it a pariah among partner agencies.

In rallies, debates and advertisements, Mr. Kickl has distanced himself from his party’s former coalition partner, the conservative Austrian People’s Party, which was itself roiled by a scandal involving fake polls in recent years.

Mr. Kickl now blames his biggest opponent for inflation and a declining standard of living.

“We have actually come through difficult times reasonably well, as far as the Ukraine war is concerned,” said Nina Horaczek, who has written a book on Mr. Kickl. “But at the same time, there is an incredible dissatisfaction in parts of the population, and he is channeling that very, very well.”

Karl Nehammer, the current chancellor, said that if the Freedom Party won, he would not form a coalition government that would make Mr. Kickl chancellor. But he has stopped short of vowing not to work with the far-right party itself, something that experts say could happen if the People’s Party comes in first, thus ensuring that Mr. Nehammer remains chancellor.

If the far right wins, Mr. Nehammer could choose to isolate the Freedom Party and form a government with center-left Social Democrats and possibly a third party.

But a coalition between the conservatives and the far right is still considered a likely outcome, “simply because the parties are relatively close on many issues,” said Thomas Meyer, a politics professor at the University of Vienna.

Predicting the outcome has been made even harder this year by two tiny parties — the Austrian Communists and the Beer Party — that are close to reaching the 4 percent needed to enter the 183-seat Parliament.

Severe flooding in early September also led to a suspension of national campaigning and may give a boost to the Greens, a junior partner in the current government.

On a recent evening in Simmering, a working-class district in Vienna, Sascha Kaiser, a local resident, was having a drink after work and mulling the question of whom to vote for. “I don’t know whether to vote strategic or follow my heart,” he said. “But I don’t want Kickl to get in.”

 

[956 Worldwide 34705]

The Freedom Party won.  They are a nasty bit of business.  
 

Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, and Serbia form a pretty scary bloc of pro-Russian populist countries across the Alliance’s eastern flank— some in and some lot of NATO. 

Meanwhile, Viktor Orban’s political director says Hungary will surrender if Russia invades.

 

 

[locodos 5387]

Immigrants! am I right?

Senator tells Native American candidate to go back to where she came from, storms out of public event

A bipartisan forum in a small Latah County community took a turn when Republican Senate incumbent Dan Foreman stormed out of the event, following a racist outburst directed at a Native American candidate.

On Tuesday, local Democrat and Republican representatives organized a “Meet your candidates” forum in the northern Idaho town of Kendrick. Three contenders from each party vying for District 6 legislative seats - one senate and two house representatives positions - answered questions submitted by audience members.

When asked if discrimination existed in Idaho, conservative Sen. Dan Foreman said no.

In a statement released Wednesday, Democratic candidate for House Seat A and member of the Nez Perce tribe Trish Carter-Goodheart said she pushed back on that idea when it was her turn to speak, pointing to her own experience and the history of white supremacy groups in Northern Idaho.

“[J]ust because someone hasn’t personally experienced discrimination, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Racism and discrimination are real issues here in Idaho, as anyone familiar with our state’s history knows,” the statement read. “I highlighted our weak hate crime laws and mentioned the presence of the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho as undeniable evidence of this reality.”

 

 

Statement released by candidate Trish Carter-Goodheart following a contentious forum in Kendrick, Idaho.

Foreman stood up and angrily interjected, using an expletive to criticize what he cast as the liberal bent of the response, according to the release and people present at the forum.

Carter-Goodheart said he then told her she should go back to where she came from, and heatedly stormed off. One event organizer and two other panelists confirmed Carter-Goodheart’s account, adding Foreman appeared very agitated.

Carter-Goodheart is campaigning to be a house representative and is not running against the senator. Her opponent, Republican Rep. Lori McCann was also present at the forum. In an email, she said she read Carter-Goodheart's statement "and found it to be an accurate account of what transpired in Kendrick."

Foreman has a history of angrily confronting people in public, and shouting profanities.

He did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

Indigenous people, including the Nez Perce tribe, have lived in the Columbia River Basin for thousands of years. Foreman was born in Lake Forest, Illinois.

[bolverk 29661]

I can't help but always google SOBs to take a gander at what they look like.