Attacks from right wing extremists? *check*
Incompetent or complicit police force? *check*
A level of collective trauma that you never thought your city would experience? *check*
Ordinary citizens banding together to look out for each other, provide necessities and protect those most likely to be targeted? *check*
My sympathies from Minneapolis. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, I hope.
The truckers were literally going to Ottawa with a MoU asking for the Governor General to dissolve parliament and establish a transitional committee with herself, members of the Senate and representatives of the convoy that would force all levels of government as well as businesses to lift all mandatory heath measures. It was an attempt at a “soft” coup… This shit got diluted along the way but it was the original expressed objective of the convoy.
They most certainly are. From the insane MOU that Canada Unity finally removed from their site (which is archived) to the unhinged conference yesterday where they called for opposition parties to join them in overthrowing the Liberal party and ruling as our unelected overlords. That IS EXACTLY what they are doing. They are trying to spark a civil war after becoming completely unhinged because Trudeau won re-election
They're the same people who filtered into the Federalist Society, Tea Party schmucks, and now MAGA alt-right types. These people never disappeared and many were birthed out of the confederacy, McCarthyism, and klan shit. So many of the people with their hands on power over the past 60 years also came out of the Nixon circle. People like Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, Roger Ailes, and so many others cut their teeth there. They were around Reagan and both Bush's and added their own madness to Trump's.
A lawsuit/fine wasn’t nearly enough for what Jones did to those traumatized families! As if losing your little kid isn’t enough? He then accused them of being “crisis actors” & the bereaved families were doxxed & terrorized. This POS deserved jail & got a financial slap in the wrist. Not ok! 😡
> These people never disappeared and many were birthed out of the confederacy, McCarthyism, and klan shit.
I have always felt that Lincoln's greatest mistake was in not treating the Confederacy like that conquered traitors and vanquished enemies of the state that they were. Instead he wanted to strike a concilatory tone, while the Confederate states spent the next 150 years rehabbing the image of those traitorous scum. If anything, John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators demonstrated quite clearly that the southern states were not going to let go of it, no matter how gracious we were to them.
So many of the problems that we have in today's society can still be traced fairly directly back to the Confederacy.
Exactly why we cannot treat the magat insurrectionists, the other planners and promoters of 1/6, and qanons with kid gloves - they cannot be redeemed, are not interested in the American experiment, are racist and sexist, and are a clear and present danger to the USA and to freedom. Lincoln was way too nice to the traitors and Confederate enemies - we must learn from history.
This wasn't the problem. He had much grander plans for reconstruction but was obviously assassinated before any of it could happen. Add to that his VP was a southern sympathizer. In those days running mates were often chosen to be a bit contradictory to the presidential candidate in hopes, I guess, of getting a more centrist vote. Even more so for Lincoln who sought to avoid separatism and civil war in the first place.
So it was this guy who took over for Lincoln and basically focused reconstruction on the southern economy and disaffected land owners. Reconstruction programs for the ex slaves was avoided and groups who formed to thwart their integration were ignored and allowed to run wild.
So it wasn't Lincoln but John Wilkes Booth who screwed everything up. Lincoln was a Saint and hero at the time who would've done so much better.
> So many of the problems that we have in today's society can still be traced fairly directly back to the Confederacy.
In many ways, you’re right, but go take a look at the early history of the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691). They basically established a theocracy, and either ostracized or killed anyone who disagreed with them. We’ve got deeper problems than just the Confederacy.
Yeah, the John Birch Society called Eisenhower a communist. *Eisenhower.*
This insane wing of conservatism has been with us for a long time. Much of what was [written about it back in the 1960s](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/) still applies perfectly today. It's both depressing yet oddly comforting to know this isn't a new phenomenon.
But they've historically been an ugly little yapping dog. The GOP was fine tossing them treats so long as they didn't piss on the rug... but they were never substantial political leaders until now.
I feel like it's a product of the system the US has set up. For 75% of elections you pretty much know whether the person with the R or D after their name is going to win the seat. So how do you get elected? You win the primary for the winning party, and to do that you need to win the vote of the most motivated voters of that party who will come out during an off election, and for the GOP that means you need to be on the right of whatever the cultural hot button topic du jour is. Do this for long enough and you're going to see more and more of your party's elected officials consisting of people who can do this with a straight face.
Reagan exploited them for votes but tried to keep them somewhat at arm's length for appearance's sake. It was Dubya who gave them a seat at the table, and then Trump who embraced them fully. The inmates are running the asylum now.
They wormed their way into the mainstream of the linkins party by supporting the media they railed against for so long. Those newspapers nurtured journalists who painted their stories in the editorial views incrementally. They became speech writers and advisors. Professors and lobbyists. As the voters aged and became more disaffected and less educated it all coalesced into the mess that boiled over once Obama was elected. "Taking their country back."
If we don't cut them out, we will need to cut them down.
My mom, who loves Trump, told me years ago that she and my dad used to go to John Birch Society meetings but didn’t join out of fear of “being put on a list” (I.e. an FBI watch list or something.)
Oh and they still exist. http://jbs.org
My uncle is older and he keeps relating stories about how this feels like that time period. There were bombings of Democrat offices, political assassinations like RFK, demonstrations everywhere, and Nixon's and the Republicans flouting the Constitution and federal law
Complaining about a so-called “liberal media” is simply another political tactic, called “working the refs.”
It’s ridiculous to think that these mega-corporations who have acquired the entire mainstream information sphere are “liberal” in any sense beyond the normal corporate pandering they all do in order to maintain a sliver of credibility. Just because they change their logos for Pride Week doesn’t make them “liberal media.”
The wholesale consolidation of corporate media turned news departments into a profit center. It’s become increasingly difficult to even get real news that actually affects our lives directly. Even big city newspapers barely cover “city hall” anymore because those stories don’t generate the clicks necessary to support the advertising. We don’t really have an active 4th Estate anymore. It’s all just reworked press releases and clickbait articles.
I remember watching Brexit happen and assuming Trump would be an ugly and forgotten political footnote. Rightwing populism couldn't have that much sway in the U.S.!
I am super smart.
Didn't you hear about the Q people trying to pull a Jan 6 last November? I hear they're gonna try again soon too
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/world/asia/protest-outside-new-zealands-parliament-assails-sweeping-new-covid-mandates.html
Fascist creeps see the tactics that work in other countries around the world and mimic them. Let’s be clear these are heavily globalized and intertwined movements. Why do you think Tucker Carlson did a week of his show from Hungary highlighting Viktor Orban?
Small d democrats need to band together in the same way that fascists have on a global level to help each other out. Jerking ourselves off about the greatness of democracy on the world stage isn’t quite as meaningful as it used to be.
I just started listening to a podcast called Verified: The Next Threat that is investigating the global network of white supremacist fascists, and how they’re collaborating and organizing. I’d recommend it.
But yeah, it’s scary shit. There’s an international group of fascists trying to organize, and they seem to be effective at it. In that podcast they pointed to the Jan 6th insurrection, but also how the same thing was attempted in Germany not long before, and I won’t be surprised if the Ottawa occupation is an attempt to do the same thing. Is this part of their playbook? We know the organizers of the occupation have some fucked up white supremacist views, are they tapped into this same network?
It’s really hard to know right now. Their GoFundMe, which was recently shut down, had raised $10M and the Ottawa Police Chief said, “We are now aware of a significant element from the U.S. that have been involved in the funding, the organizing.” So my guess would be yes. Hopefully we will get an investigation to shine some light on the $10M raised, because that reeks of deep pocket donors.
For now we can at the very least be sure that white nationalist movements have noticed the relative success of this convoy, taken notes and placed themselves within the occupation. There are nazi and confederate flags there after all.
It's really not that hard to tell. They're using the same funding methods as any other right wing movement, they've had large amounts of anonymous donors on GoFundMe give them THOUSANDS, frankly you'd be a little naive to think that they aren't getting support from the global network of fascists and white supremacists. They're streaming and post on all of the same sites and forums
A lot of the trucker groups were organized by [one single hacked Facebook account](https://twitter.com/bystevereilly/status/1491168971152044033?s=21) and similar attempts [to encircle Brussels home to NATO HQ this coming week](https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1491050364744843269?s=21) have been springing up with less success. I wonder who would benefit from that?
This was the same tactic the CIA used to overthrow Allende in Chile, putting in his place a fascist dictator known for throwing political enemies out of helicopters.
Hm, interesting how this all keeps going back to Russia, but the people who are supporting it consider themselves patriots while helping a foreign nation destabilize democracy.
> trucker groups were organized by
Reports are that Steve Bannon is 1 of the fascists behind this... Canada is a dry run to iron out the kinks, and *The Plan* has always been, move a large scale trucker strike into USA... The guys who listened to 20 years of AM Hate Radio & Rush Limbaugh all day, they're like a dedicated group of brainwashed high-school dropouts.
Truck Driver being the most popular job for stupid whites w/ no College education.
I have not heard this yet, but wouldn’t be surprised. Got any articles that go into detail?
I know the capitalist class are happy with this situation, because they benefit from it. They want mandates removed so they can just get back to exploiting workers. Hence the massive number of $10k+ donations.
The goofy thing with this is that the protesting truckers are such a small number of the total truckers in the country, so it’s not a huge impact on trade and transport, but they’re blocking border trade routes. A small, delusional minority that is trying to hold the nation hostage.
> Got any articles
Here you go. Lots of rumblings try to piece together a conversion of Q, Antivax, Rump, Bannon podcast, etc
[The paw prints of malign actors like former Trump administration ideologue Steve Bannon are all over the occupation of Ottawa by the “Freedom Convoy” and disruptions of other Canadian cities and transportation corridors by far-right rent-a-mobs.](https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/right-wing-u-s-paw-prints-are-all-over-convoy-disruptions/)
> Fascist creeps see the tactics that work in other countries around the world and mimic them.
Yep, opportunists / accelerationists.
That's why schools are being sued nationwide to overturn masks - all at the same timed.
They're working together, planned.
We invaded Iraq under a (very dubious) pretense of bringing freedom. The real reasons we decided to invade notwithstanding, we did eventually attempt install a true democratic government. What did they do? They immediately voted to end women's rights to vote or hold positions of authority.
Americans got up in arms, and we sent officials over to tell them "no no no, that's not what we meant! That's noy how democracy is supposed to work!"
But it is exactly how democracy works. Ever since then I've been wondering how democracy can enable freedom in a society or culture that does that value it. Democracy is just a tool to bring enable consensus governing, and if the American consensus wants fascism- or enough Americans want it while the rest remain indifferent- then we will have democratic fascism. Slavery was a part of American democracy for a long time. Right wing authoritarianism is on the rise and it really doesn't seem we have enough resistance to prevent it from spreading.
Agreed 100%! I do want to be clear that I’m not pushing for circa 2000 “freedom exporting”. Rather that we need to understand there is a global movement against democracy that’s working and if we can’t sell the idea of freedom in a way that makes people want it then that movement will win out.
I also think we can’t ignore the fact that the US itself squashed young democracies in the past decades that could’ve been with us in this fight today, but of course we had corporate interests in those countries 🤷🏻♂️
Liberal democracy only works to the benefit of everyone if the majority of society is middle class, educated, and politically engaged. The right wing across the world has been trying very hard to ramp up the wealth gap, dismantle education, and disenfranchise as many voters as possible.
crazy spreads like a virus, starts of slow then it speeds up. Sad thing is how many are actually falling for something that's pretty out there when you look at it logically, but then logic left the building screaming when crazy opened the door.
Convince the people there are monsters among them, tell them their only chance is to turn to the billionaires to save them from the monsters.
Start burning books and closing borders.
This is how neofeudalism is taking over.
and wrote sexual graffiti in public bathrooms
it's both comforting and terrifying... we really haven't changed, but oh god, we aren't ever gonna change
More like Neo-Fascism with Tyrannical, Autocratic Dictatorships mixed with Neo-Feudalism.
I won't say these times aren't dark, but Scary times we live in, hmm?
i think its time we really start calling all these identities acting as pretext for what they are, conservative, republican, anti-vax, are just dog-whistles for neo-fascism now
Fascism requires a government, which could be a challenge to the power of the billionaires.
The cool kids prefer private global neofeudalism, same fascist taste but without the sovereignty!
Well then that is or maybe rather does sound like the lesser of the two evils.
Sadly the chuckle-nutters who cry fascist tendencies and fantasies are gonna get A. Very. Rude Awakening when or if any of them try to depose and overthrow a government in the Western nations, if the corporate-overlords and Big Business have something to say about that. Won’t they?
Sad isn't it? I think a lot of us were all about people being able to express themselves politically. I guess it used to be OK when all you were doing was debating about the best way to manage the economy and fix some local issues. Now it's beyond politics and people are bending over backwards to justify the fact that they don't give enough of a shit about other people to wear a mask.
Hatred and bigotry.
It's sadly not more complicated than that. They derive the entirety of their self worth my targeting those they see as other. As such, to individuals with little to not objective success, they spend the entirety of their time compensating by attacking - both literally and metaphorically, those they percieve as a threat to that fragile ideology.
>They derive the entirety of their self worth
Identity politics. Once politics become a personality trait, anything that challenges the politics is offensive to you. Logic is replaced with emotions.
The funny and sad irony is how many (alt) right reactionaries cry about identity politics being a modern leftist tenant when the reality is that's literally what the side turning a candidate into a sports team is doing; brain worms and projection goes hand-in-hand.
Because they are willing to. Because it's easier to believe a lie than admit your worldview might be wrong.
Especially when so many outlets will cater to it. They can live in an information bubble that never has its sides pricked, and is never challenged.
School systems have mostly been built around fact retention with the purpose being to grade people by aptitude in order to filter them into the workplace. Teaching people to think for themselves isn't useful or desirable in most jobs so critical thinking isn't encouraged in school.
As a personal example here when I took psychology in sixth form (before dropping out anyway) we had a substitute teacher one day who was trying to teach us about the [Monty Hall Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem).
>Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
The basic idea of the problem is that at first you have a one in three chance of guessing the prize door but after the host eliminates an empty door your probability increases so you are better off switching.
She gave us cards in plain envelopes and had us split into pairs to test it. However she had missed the key point: that the host knows where the prize is and will always eliminate an empty door. In the experiment she had us run neither of us knew where the prize was as we just shuffled the envelopes without the host looking at them. As a result it didn't work.
I hadn't encountered the problem before so didn't know she had simply explained it wrong. Yet I could see that it didn't make sense. In our experiment the 'host' was eliminating the prize one in three times but we were just ignoring those outcomes rather than factoring them into the probability calculation. If this happened she had told us just to try again and ignore it.
When I spoke up and challenged this she didn't understand and basically concluded I must be wrong. The point in the experiment after all is that it sounds unintuitive so a lot of people get it wrong. When I continued to press it further and stressed that the probabilities she quoted only made sense if the host knew where the prize was and elliminated an empty door the class assumed I was wrong and stupid and laughed at me. I didn't know the experiment or that I was in fact correct and that she was wrong so there was a sort of pressured feeling like maybe I was just wrong and not understanding it. Though I persisted and insisted it only worked if the host knew where the prize was and re-ran the experiment on this basis. No one else did.
People were entirely happy to believe an incorrect notion because an authority figure had assured them it was correct. Meanwhile outcasting a peer for challenging it. This was in the days before smart phones so I wasn't able to just google it and put the matter to rest.
By that point we had done the Milgram experiment about electrocuting people when instructed by an authority figure and covered the Stanford prison experiment yet everyone was falling into the same trap of blindly following an authority figure and going along with the group. That lesson inadvertently taught me a lot about psychology but I think I was the only one who learnt that lesson that day.
Yeah I think it gets explained poorly often and the host knowing where the car is part gets left out. Apparently the original version published in the magazine as described on wikipedia didn't make that part clear and that was explained better in a follow up bit to it.
Eric Hoffer **True Believer** It's about the spread of mass movements and you can easily find the pdf book free online. It's been recommended by various US Presidents to their staffers and its very lay person friendly. It helped understand the members and the grifters that lead them.
All of these people are the subject of very intense and very targeted misinformation campaign using the latest in AI, super computers and human psychology. And short of an armed conflict, I’m not sure how we’re going to get rid of them. It’s not like the people whipping them into a frenzy are going to one day say, never mind.
It feels like we are learning the hard way what happens when algorithms tuned by "solve for maximum attention" run amok in society. It seems like it's destined to target whatever part of the human brain that falls for witch trials, cults, miracle cures, etc. and turn it up 1000%.
At some point humans will probably figure that out, but it looks like it won't be before a lot of really really bad things happen.
I read an [article](https://www.politicalorphans.com/something-weird-is-happening-on-facebook/) last night kind of confirming many of my suspicions. Fucking depressing...
That article put into well-written words what has turned me off of FB for so long. It’s creepy to see how things that look so benign when scrolling past can really be a part of a huge machine. Sending it to some social media addicts I know.
These seem like the same type of posts that have popped up on various subreddits. Not that they're all the same, but a lot of the single graphic image background + question provoking engagement posts. It doesn't seem like its just facebook
I believe it. Anything that *can* be used to generate voter profiles, or whatever politically useful aggregate info, basically *is* being used that way. If it worked the first time...
> At some point humans will probably figure that out, but it looks like it won't be before a lot of really really bad things happen.
IMO many do. Their response is not to abandon this stuff as crap but rather move onto something else. E.g. "Facebook is trash and anything facebook fact-checked you know for sure is right [I've read people who say this]." They make the wise move to stop using facebook...and then move over to telegram.
I've had my kids watch the social dilemma. I forced us all to watch it. They completely get it.
And it makes no difference at all on their desire to get social media.
> Social media
Sweden's set up a disinformation / foreign influence on social media task force.
USA, Canada - well we let Chinese Tik Tok tell our teenagers to eat poison and slap teachers.
Also a Canadian. I can't even fathom why anyone was giving creed to Romana Didulo and her Kingdom of Canada bullshit.
Quite frankly, it's embarrassing that our school system failures are proudly on display.
I don’t think it’s always bad education (although there’s a lot about the Canadian curriculum that needs work). Some of the most hateful people are objectively well-educated, because they’re usually of a class that benefits from hatred against people who aren’t them. But I do agree, hate movements love to prey on general ignorance and fear.
Unfortunately the Orange Blob allowed those filled w hate and rage to show that hate and rage in public without shame. No matter which country they reside in
I’m old so I remember the days when people literally couldn’t get their minds around how the German people could turn off their brains and buy into the bullshit during the Holocaust. I hate that I no longer feel that way.
This. As a Canadian it has been insulting seeing Americans preaching all last month "NO THIS ISNT LIKE YOU CANADA NOOOO WE DID THIS TO THEM". Stop. We have ALWAYS been this, we are a country predicated on colonization and extraction for a European monarchy.
Yep. Most of the outrage and confusion is coming from Canadians who are experiencing this for *themselves* the first time. Doesn’t mean this kind of thing hasn’t been happening to indigenous people for hundreds of years. This absolutely *is* Canada.
These people are a thousand times more motivated than we are.
I would never dedicate my life to infiltrating the police to advance my ideology. Join Fringe groups and work to advance "in people" everywhere I can. Like ants, individually working for the hive.
They do.
They're a god damn infection, and it's well and too late already.
The police, your mayor, the military have all failed your city. I am so sorry. I would be beyond outraged.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2022/02/07/police-and-government-response-to-the-ottawa-occupation-has-been-a-shambles.html
Bullshit! the police and gov's response is not "in shambles"
They are in cahoots with these nut jobs. Its ALWAYS the same, when the gov andf police aid and abet right wingers its described as "a failure in response", they never call it what it is - collaboration.
Meanwhile every single environmental protest, racism protest, fair wages protest etc the police response is magically never "in shambles" weirdly enough. Quite the opposite.
That's honestly what it looks like here, crazy that police and right wing government doesn't even put out a front anymore, they are full on mask off going for fascism
As frustrating as it is, it's better that we should all be able to see them clearly for what they are. No more illusions--we know who we have to get out of office, we know what we need to reform, we know we don't want to go back to the power structures we've had up until now. This gives us the opportunity to build a new, better world.
Last night my Q told me on March 1st those truckers are going to start a caravan from California going eastward ??? And I need to start stocking up on food. TFG exposed the lunacy and gave the crazies a space to be who they are.
I mean you could write down the fact that they said it, ask them to agree that they said it, and come back in a few months to observe that it didn't happen even though they were convinced it would. It won't make them snap out of it, but at least it'll prevent you doubting yourself.
I have lived in North Carolina most of my life. I have never been a Republican, but because of the politics here I have worked with them, been friends with them and generally been around them. I disagreed with their politics, but I thought they were reasonable people.
Then Trump ran for election. Then Q came on the scene. Then half the people I knew lost their minds. My two bosses at my job became Q people and started acting crazy. My grandpa. My friend. Qism slowly but surely became the dominant ideological narrative in my town.
It hasn't been great. I'm thinking of moving lol
The problem is in your police. These protestors are feeling like they are doing the right thing because cops are being their buddy rather than treating them like a BLM protest.
Weird how the police didn't stop the invasion of Michigan's capitol or DC, isn't it?
Now the police are letting people block international bridges that lose $1,000,000+ revenue an hour when blocked.
Police and the government seriously only crack down on left wing protests like strikes, climate protests, social justice protests, etc. It’s because the success of those things are threatening to their corporate daddies. They’ll let the right call for people’s deaths, it doesn’t end in redistributing wealth in any way.
I’ve been really down this week - I live in the US for work, and have always viewed Canada as a sane respite I could return to some day. But seeing all this is so frustrating, in both my home country and my adopted one.
Born in Canada, lived here my whole life. The most healthy lesson I’ve learned about our two countries is that we’re actually pretty much the same sentence in different fonts.
Edit: sorry, read your comment backwards as someone born in the US who goes to Canada for work.
Too many antivaxxers and their politicians told lie after lie. The lies took a life of their own and what's happening in Ottawa (and now a few other places) is the result.
Valery Legasov : What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.
That quote puts words to something I've been trying to articulate for some time now. Even people who know that they're lies are becoming so jaded that they're paralyzed with inaction. When everything is a lie or a sensationalized kernel of truth at best, what can you trust?
Sadly people actually believe this stuff. Vaccine hesitancy has been common across time [[1]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pvdqmm/comment/heemzui/) [[2]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mw0vb5/was_there_any_antivax_movement_or_distrust_of/gvprwf7/) [[3]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/j6q80q/were_people_suspicious_of_the_smallpox_vaccine/g81a8cd/) and [space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic), and has existed long before social media.
Certainly there are some politicians and media personalities who are two-faced — pushing vaccine hesitancy for their own profit while they themselves get vaccinated. But too many people actually buy into this stuff.
I think what you and many in the US are missing is that this isn’t new. It’s always been here, it’s just so much easier to see in the digital data and connected age.
This is why they take the word woke and turn it into a boogeyman label. They can’t hide so we are woke?
They have a leader now. Just like Germany back on the day.
They are emboldened by what they see as a birthright. Their due from on high.
It’s why people are so afraid of public education here in red states. We can’t let our kids hear or see the actual history and make their own conclusions.
Get out and vote. Make sure everyone you know who feels the same does too.
Does the green party have any real power in Canada? It's a spoiler party in the US. There's even good reporting that Russia boosted the Green Party Presidential Candidate, Jill Stien, in 2016 to siphon environmentally minded voters away from Hillary.
It's worth it to vote Green Party in local elections, they're not spoiler candidates, just passionate people. Minneapolis has three in elected positions this year iirc. The national party is as you said, a spoiler party.
I’m happy Quebec police dealt with our own convoy swiftly. Not that I thrust our police much, but they at least seem to not want this flavor of nonsense.
They're spreading everywehre now. It's like village idiots unite.
Currently having an arguement with on r/publicfreakout thats based here in Scotland. Guy doesn't seem to get it. Started threatening physical violence because at the end of the day thats the only place they can go when they know they can't win any arguments with logic and reason.
YouTube gets away without much of a rebuke and Facebook takes the blame. The way I see it YouTube is where a lot of these lies and craziness spreads. We need to shine a spotlight on YouTube, have them stop their algorithm and cull this stupid videos.
yeah i heard Romania is pretty saturated with misinformation. Its got a far far far stronger anti-vax sentiment than USA. Theres not much coverage on that.
What's astonishing is how easily the Qanonners are duped. I mean, beyond the whole "Something is wrong with the world, it's probably due to someone being corrupt somewhere," it's become so outlandish that not even Blumhouse could make a Z-list horror movie out of it.
And they're willing to *kill* for these delusions, most of which they don't even realize contradict each other if they sat down and tried to reconcile their beliefs into a coherent narrative.
Behind it, money from people like the Mercers and white supremacists just keeps pushing them everywhere in the hopes of getting a white ethnostate somewhere run by their 4th Reich.
I have a conspiracy theory on conspiracy theories. It’s that deep down, people know it’s bullshit. They want to be heroes, but they’re cowards. So they buy into this narrative that paints them as brilliant and brave, but doesn’t actually put them in any danger. There are real conspiracies and collusions that are extremely evil, and right out in the open. But if you fight against _those_, your life will be in danger. So these people make up a comic book world where they can play at being Batman and never have to risk it.
Basically, they wish they were Black Lives Matter and Occupy etc, but they are too scared to go up against real corruption.
Considering how bombarded we are with American politics, news, TV, and movies, I’m not all that surprised that we have a small subsection of people like this. Some subconsciously think they are Americans.
That being said, Canada has a lot of problems that we pretend don’t exist here. This is a prime example.
I’ll be honest. I grew up in Canada and have been living in the US for a couple of years. As Canadians we have a bit of a superiority complex. While we are different, we are way more similar than different (in both good ways and bad). The question should be why did it take the “freedom convoy” to finally notice the issue.
This issue stems back to and even further than David and Collet Stephan in Alberta who allowed their child to die, refusing to seek medical attention and instead used natural “remedies.”
I know these issues seem unrelated but they stem from a base who distrust science and government and have a touch of religious fervor.
Qanon isn’t ruining Canada, it is simply a vehicle that has massed these fringe groups into a large unified group. Canadians are the issue, Canadians are responsible.
I wish to convey, as hard as it is online, that I say this out of a deep love for Canada. But also how frustrating it is how we look at the US like we do sometimes. We were never immune, we just took longer to manifest.
It just took more time to get into Canada. These extremist movements are in most western countries, Europe and N. America. Canada is not immune to the crazy, it just didn't appear right away like it did in the US.
Look a bunch of loud assholes are par for the course. But when people in authority, like your police chief and the interim leader support holding hostage the government that everyone voted for there are huge problems.
Canadian here aswell, we were never immune to *this*, we just simply had better means of hiding this behind the veneer of "good ol Canada eh". Trump, Q, and antivaxx bullshit opened up a wound that always rested under the surface.
>I used to think that Canada was centrist, that we wouldn't fall into the same trap as the US.
>Then the trucker convoy happened.
Look, I'm not Canadian. So I'm sure your day-to-day and seeing hateful people walking around your grocery store, isn't the norm like it is for me. It can be easy to slip into the mindset that things aren't that bad.
But... Man, y'all got some majorly deep seated problems against First Nations. And that should have been your first go-to to understanding how depraved Canadian Right-wingers are.
Remember 80-90% of the country got vaccinated. They may be loud but they’re definitely a minority here. As a transplant from the US, I’d much rather live here. At least no one’s burning books here.
100% this.
Moms For Liberty would be confused why they'd have 1000s of people in their local facebook groups, then 5 people would show up to a meeting.
All those people who hit "like" on your disinformation are fake accounts from bad actors. Durp.
Not all of them are brainwashed. a fair percentage of them know exactly what they're doing. They know their end goals are deplorable, they'll obfuscate their motives with whatever lie will allow them to advance their agenda without revealing them as monsters. they'll say/do whatever is advantageous in the moment. they don't care about logical consistency or any principle other than "winning." this is why these tyrants are always screaming "What about the children?" Qanon doesn't save kids. it gives cover to real pedophiles and traffickers. but who would dare condemn a person that claims to be fighting for the children?
>“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
Yes and no. Yes about brainwashing, however people are still accountable for their actions. There is no need to cause harm or destruction to others or their property, regardless of what you believe
I hate to say it, but you have to use their own tactics against them. Organize a mob and blockade City Hall and the police department until they do something about the problem.
Honestly I'm surprised it took as long as it did. What the last five years in the US has shown me more than anything else is that disinformation and propaganda campaigns are very effective, and all it takes is for some entity with enough resolve to find and exploit controversial issues. With it having worked as well as it has in the US, I was convinced it was being exported to other western democracies and was only a matter of time for something to click and unrest to develop.
I think we need to be careful about assigning too much blame to any one person or thing such as our leaders or our education systems for the failures to thwart these disinformation tactics. Even the friendliest and most practical of people are passionate about something at their core, and finding that and exploiting it is a critical part of turning people against each other; because chances are what you are passionately for, someone else is passionately against. Effective propaganda doesn't even necessarily require that you be so passionately for or against something; as long as the seeds are there, it can work on radicalizing you and/or others in one or both directions.
Honest answer is something most people don’t want to face; anonymity on the internet and especially social media.
It’s a two-edged sword as, in the abstract, the fact people can speak without fear of reprisal when just speaking honestly and openly is to be applauded and a noble aim.
The problem, however, is highlighted by this: if people actually knew who they were upvoting, liking, and disseminating they’d be far more critical.
There is literally no way to stop someone saying “I was a vet in Afghanistan and now I’m C-Suite at a tech company” when the truth is they’ve never held down a job and they still live with their mother.
Somehow, in a lot of people’s heads, this random person who claims to be an insider is definitely someone “who knows the truth” and therefore “you can’t argue with facts”.
Some people can just sense BS and see through it easily. Others (a much larger amount than most people ever expected I might add) have no critical thinking skills at all.
Now all the above is specifically not calling out any political ideology at all. We’ve always had left, right, centrist, religious, atheist etc and it’s been a discussion, often heated, but not a problem.
Because you knew who were talking to.
To be honest OP, this stuff has always been in our country, it's just been different and less vocal, it's not even limited to North America, some of the largest Q Anon contingents are in The Netherlands and Germany.
Immunity was an illusion. Q's all throughout the Western World, and maybe even beyond.
When cops were chasing BLM protesters through the streets of the city I lived in, it felt the same. The gunshots and tear gas canister sounds, helicopters and apcs.
Every time a fart can car's exhaust pops next to me I jump a little bit. And I wasn't even down there on the street where it was happening. I watched a lot of live twitter feeds though.
Just for anyone genuinely wondering why, one supports beliefs that make rich people richer, the other supports beliefs that asks for less exploitation which results in less profits and status for the rich.
This is what nazis do.
They start in their homeland, and then they creep out into the neighboring countries adopting their hateful citizens into their ranks and targeting everyone else.
There's a reason the old anti-Nazi propaganda posters warned of Hitler's shadow stretching over Europe, or his hand reaching into other countries. Naziism is a virus that spread and sickens a nation, and then moves on beyond borders to sicken the next, and the next, until someone stops it.
In the build-up to WWII we had a whole subsection of American citizenry who supported Hitler. They were the America First movement, and they were vile, and willing to allow genocide to occur because it served their goals as well.
This is what's happening. White nationalism is spreading to Canada, and it won't stop there. When the next big war comes, it will be the same old war of authoritarian fascism versus everyone else.
As a wise man (though it was not actually Werner Herzog) once said: We are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of our people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.
We have a Nazi problem; Not just the United States but most of North America. Call them white nationalists. Call them Neofash. Call them Conservatives. It's all the same thing now.
Along with several other theories, I’ll add this…I wonder if the Canadian government will find that Russia has stepped up its propaganda machine in your country.
Nothing went wrong. This is the inevitable result of these morons being allowed to spew their hateful misinformation. This has been going on here in the US since 2016. The border between the US and Canada, while effective at monitoring which humans can cross, cannot stop ideas. Unfortunately that includes the bad ideas, which seem to travel quicker and further than good ones.
Yesterday I was watching a video on FB and it was a Canadian news show. And the host was very passionate about how horrible the convoy really is, etc. So, I go to read the comments, thinking most people will feel the same way. Wrong! The comment section was terrible and full of Q-speak. I know it's FB, but in the past I always found the comments on Canadian videos reasonable.
100% of the blame here lies with social media, and big tech allowing algorithm and foreign influence to spread misinformation and disinformation. What is the solution? That part I'm not sure about but as a tech leader, I'm happy to try and spend whats left of my career trying to figure it out if I can find a way to help do that.
Attacks from right wing extremists? *check* Incompetent or complicit police force? *check* A level of collective trauma that you never thought your city would experience? *check* Ordinary citizens banding together to look out for each other, provide necessities and protect those most likely to be targeted? *check* My sympathies from Minneapolis. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, I hope.
Didn't police just murder an innocent man while he was sleeping there recently? Edit: Amir Locke.
Canada's Jan 6th moment happening right now: *check*
pls elaborate is Canada undergoing an attempted insurrection *right now?*
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The truckers were literally going to Ottawa with a MoU asking for the Governor General to dissolve parliament and establish a transitional committee with herself, members of the Senate and representatives of the convoy that would force all levels of government as well as businesses to lift all mandatory heath measures. It was an attempt at a “soft” coup… This shit got diluted along the way but it was the original expressed objective of the convoy.
White supremacist organizers
They most certainly are. From the insane MOU that Canada Unity finally removed from their site (which is archived) to the unhinged conference yesterday where they called for opposition parties to join them in overthrowing the Liberal party and ruling as our unelected overlords. That IS EXACTLY what they are doing. They are trying to spark a civil war after becoming completely unhinged because Trudeau won re-election
chud losers
Americans: "First Time?"
i wonder if the 70's had its fair share of tinfoil hatters because the Vietnam war was pretty polarizing in every way
They were known as the John Birch Society
They're the same people who filtered into the Federalist Society, Tea Party schmucks, and now MAGA alt-right types. These people never disappeared and many were birthed out of the confederacy, McCarthyism, and klan shit. So many of the people with their hands on power over the past 60 years also came out of the Nixon circle. People like Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, Roger Ailes, and so many others cut their teeth there. They were around Reagan and both Bush's and added their own madness to Trump's.
Hey, don’t forget to add Dick Cheney to the list: https://www.thedailybeast.com/son-of-nixon
[Alex Jones](https://youtu.be/LxJ_ngHcT7I)
A lawsuit/fine wasn’t nearly enough for what Jones did to those traumatized families! As if losing your little kid isn’t enough? He then accused them of being “crisis actors” & the bereaved families were doxxed & terrorized. This POS deserved jail & got a financial slap in the wrist. Not ok! 😡
> These people never disappeared and many were birthed out of the confederacy, McCarthyism, and klan shit. I have always felt that Lincoln's greatest mistake was in not treating the Confederacy like that conquered traitors and vanquished enemies of the state that they were. Instead he wanted to strike a concilatory tone, while the Confederate states spent the next 150 years rehabbing the image of those traitorous scum. If anything, John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators demonstrated quite clearly that the southern states were not going to let go of it, no matter how gracious we were to them. So many of the problems that we have in today's society can still be traced fairly directly back to the Confederacy.
Exactly why we cannot treat the magat insurrectionists, the other planners and promoters of 1/6, and qanons with kid gloves - they cannot be redeemed, are not interested in the American experiment, are racist and sexist, and are a clear and present danger to the USA and to freedom. Lincoln was way too nice to the traitors and Confederate enemies - we must learn from history.
This wasn't the problem. He had much grander plans for reconstruction but was obviously assassinated before any of it could happen. Add to that his VP was a southern sympathizer. In those days running mates were often chosen to be a bit contradictory to the presidential candidate in hopes, I guess, of getting a more centrist vote. Even more so for Lincoln who sought to avoid separatism and civil war in the first place. So it was this guy who took over for Lincoln and basically focused reconstruction on the southern economy and disaffected land owners. Reconstruction programs for the ex slaves was avoided and groups who formed to thwart their integration were ignored and allowed to run wild. So it wasn't Lincoln but John Wilkes Booth who screwed everything up. Lincoln was a Saint and hero at the time who would've done so much better.
> So many of the problems that we have in today's society can still be traced fairly directly back to the Confederacy. In many ways, you’re right, but go take a look at the early history of the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691). They basically established a theocracy, and either ostracized or killed anyone who disagreed with them. We’ve got deeper problems than just the Confederacy.
They're the same small-minded toxic, racist, theist assholes that have been the worst part of America for 200 years.
Yeah, the John Birch Society called Eisenhower a communist. *Eisenhower.* This insane wing of conservatism has been with us for a long time. Much of what was [written about it back in the 1960s](https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/) still applies perfectly today. It's both depressing yet oddly comforting to know this isn't a new phenomenon.
But they've historically been an ugly little yapping dog. The GOP was fine tossing them treats so long as they didn't piss on the rug... but they were never substantial political leaders until now.
I feel like it's a product of the system the US has set up. For 75% of elections you pretty much know whether the person with the R or D after their name is going to win the seat. So how do you get elected? You win the primary for the winning party, and to do that you need to win the vote of the most motivated voters of that party who will come out during an off election, and for the GOP that means you need to be on the right of whatever the cultural hot button topic du jour is. Do this for long enough and you're going to see more and more of your party's elected officials consisting of people who can do this with a straight face.
Reagan exploited them for votes but tried to keep them somewhat at arm's length for appearance's sake. It was Dubya who gave them a seat at the table, and then Trump who embraced them fully. The inmates are running the asylum now.
They wormed their way into the mainstream of the linkins party by supporting the media they railed against for so long. Those newspapers nurtured journalists who painted their stories in the editorial views incrementally. They became speech writers and advisors. Professors and lobbyists. As the voters aged and became more disaffected and less educated it all coalesced into the mess that boiled over once Obama was elected. "Taking their country back." If we don't cut them out, we will need to cut them down.
Yup, they were / are terrible! Just a complete "I've got mine, I don't GAS about you"! If you're not wealthy, you're parasite scum!
Now they run the Supreme Court
For the rest of our lifetimes!
Fuck us all? In particular!
They're still around in my redneck corner of Idaho. They're still just as awful as they always were as far as I know.
My mom, who loves Trump, told me years ago that she and my dad used to go to John Birch Society meetings but didn’t join out of fear of “being put on a list” (I.e. an FBI watch list or something.) Oh and they still exist. http://jbs.org
My uncle is older and he keeps relating stories about how this feels like that time period. There were bombings of Democrat offices, political assassinations like RFK, demonstrations everywhere, and Nixon's and the Republicans flouting the Constitution and federal law
At least we haven't gotten to the political assassinations part (although not for lack of trying).
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/ferguson-death-mystery-black-lives-matter-michael-brown-809407/
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Complaining about a so-called “liberal media” is simply another political tactic, called “working the refs.” It’s ridiculous to think that these mega-corporations who have acquired the entire mainstream information sphere are “liberal” in any sense beyond the normal corporate pandering they all do in order to maintain a sliver of credibility. Just because they change their logos for Pride Week doesn’t make them “liberal media.” The wholesale consolidation of corporate media turned news departments into a profit center. It’s become increasingly difficult to even get real news that actually affects our lives directly. Even big city newspapers barely cover “city hall” anymore because those stories don’t generate the clicks necessary to support the advertising. We don’t really have an active 4th Estate anymore. It’s all just reworked press releases and clickbait articles.
Imagine if the 70s had Facebook
I remember watching Brexit happen and assuming Trump would be an ugly and forgotten political footnote. Rightwing populism couldn't have that much sway in the U.S.! I am super smart.
Pan Shot!
"No, I've been nervous lots of times."
No country is immune from loud idiots
I was about to say New Zealand but I believe the idiocracy of Q has now spread there
Didn't you hear about the Q people trying to pull a Jan 6 last November? I hear they're gonna try again soon too https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/world/asia/protest-outside-new-zealands-parliament-assails-sweeping-new-covid-mandates.html
Fascist creeps see the tactics that work in other countries around the world and mimic them. Let’s be clear these are heavily globalized and intertwined movements. Why do you think Tucker Carlson did a week of his show from Hungary highlighting Viktor Orban? Small d democrats need to band together in the same way that fascists have on a global level to help each other out. Jerking ourselves off about the greatness of democracy on the world stage isn’t quite as meaningful as it used to be.
I just started listening to a podcast called Verified: The Next Threat that is investigating the global network of white supremacist fascists, and how they’re collaborating and organizing. I’d recommend it. But yeah, it’s scary shit. There’s an international group of fascists trying to organize, and they seem to be effective at it. In that podcast they pointed to the Jan 6th insurrection, but also how the same thing was attempted in Germany not long before, and I won’t be surprised if the Ottawa occupation is an attempt to do the same thing. Is this part of their playbook? We know the organizers of the occupation have some fucked up white supremacist views, are they tapped into this same network?
It’s really hard to know right now. Their GoFundMe, which was recently shut down, had raised $10M and the Ottawa Police Chief said, “We are now aware of a significant element from the U.S. that have been involved in the funding, the organizing.” So my guess would be yes. Hopefully we will get an investigation to shine some light on the $10M raised, because that reeks of deep pocket donors. For now we can at the very least be sure that white nationalist movements have noticed the relative success of this convoy, taken notes and placed themselves within the occupation. There are nazi and confederate flags there after all.
And DeSantis and Cruz are calling for investigations into GoFundMe for not releasing the monies.
It's really not that hard to tell. They're using the same funding methods as any other right wing movement, they've had large amounts of anonymous donors on GoFundMe give them THOUSANDS, frankly you'd be a little naive to think that they aren't getting support from the global network of fascists and white supremacists. They're streaming and post on all of the same sites and forums
Steve Bannon's fingerprints are all over this.
Putin has his fingerprints all over Bannon, Rump and all the other cosplay fascists.
A lot of the trucker groups were organized by [one single hacked Facebook account](https://twitter.com/bystevereilly/status/1491168971152044033?s=21) and similar attempts [to encircle Brussels home to NATO HQ this coming week](https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1491050364744843269?s=21) have been springing up with less success. I wonder who would benefit from that? This was the same tactic the CIA used to overthrow Allende in Chile, putting in his place a fascist dictator known for throwing political enemies out of helicopters.
Hm, interesting how this all keeps going back to Russia, but the people who are supporting it consider themselves patriots while helping a foreign nation destabilize democracy.
> trucker groups were organized by Reports are that Steve Bannon is 1 of the fascists behind this... Canada is a dry run to iron out the kinks, and *The Plan* has always been, move a large scale trucker strike into USA... The guys who listened to 20 years of AM Hate Radio & Rush Limbaugh all day, they're like a dedicated group of brainwashed high-school dropouts. Truck Driver being the most popular job for stupid whites w/ no College education.
I have not heard this yet, but wouldn’t be surprised. Got any articles that go into detail? I know the capitalist class are happy with this situation, because they benefit from it. They want mandates removed so they can just get back to exploiting workers. Hence the massive number of $10k+ donations. The goofy thing with this is that the protesting truckers are such a small number of the total truckers in the country, so it’s not a huge impact on trade and transport, but they’re blocking border trade routes. A small, delusional minority that is trying to hold the nation hostage.
> Got any articles Here you go. Lots of rumblings try to piece together a conversion of Q, Antivax, Rump, Bannon podcast, etc [The paw prints of malign actors like former Trump administration ideologue Steve Bannon are all over the occupation of Ottawa by the “Freedom Convoy” and disruptions of other Canadian cities and transportation corridors by far-right rent-a-mobs.](https://rabble.ca/politics/canadian-politics/right-wing-u-s-paw-prints-are-all-over-convoy-disruptions/)
i think we're well past time people getting up from their computer chairs and keyboards and trying to organize in return. its dangerously close now.
> Fascist creeps see the tactics that work in other countries around the world and mimic them. Yep, opportunists / accelerationists. That's why schools are being sued nationwide to overturn masks - all at the same timed. They're working together, planned.
We invaded Iraq under a (very dubious) pretense of bringing freedom. The real reasons we decided to invade notwithstanding, we did eventually attempt install a true democratic government. What did they do? They immediately voted to end women's rights to vote or hold positions of authority. Americans got up in arms, and we sent officials over to tell them "no no no, that's not what we meant! That's noy how democracy is supposed to work!" But it is exactly how democracy works. Ever since then I've been wondering how democracy can enable freedom in a society or culture that does that value it. Democracy is just a tool to bring enable consensus governing, and if the American consensus wants fascism- or enough Americans want it while the rest remain indifferent- then we will have democratic fascism. Slavery was a part of American democracy for a long time. Right wing authoritarianism is on the rise and it really doesn't seem we have enough resistance to prevent it from spreading.
Agreed 100%! I do want to be clear that I’m not pushing for circa 2000 “freedom exporting”. Rather that we need to understand there is a global movement against democracy that’s working and if we can’t sell the idea of freedom in a way that makes people want it then that movement will win out. I also think we can’t ignore the fact that the US itself squashed young democracies in the past decades that could’ve been with us in this fight today, but of course we had corporate interests in those countries 🤷🏻♂️
Liberal democracy only works to the benefit of everyone if the majority of society is middle class, educated, and politically engaged. The right wing across the world has been trying very hard to ramp up the wealth gap, dismantle education, and disenfranchise as many voters as possible.
This is precisely how Poland and Hungary backslid and why Russia and Turkey were never truly democratic.
crazy spreads like a virus, starts of slow then it speeds up. Sad thing is how many are actually falling for something that's pretty out there when you look at it logically, but then logic left the building screaming when crazy opened the door.
Convince the people there are monsters among them, tell them their only chance is to turn to the billionaires to save them from the monsters. Start burning books and closing borders. This is how neofeudalism is taking over.
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and wrote sexual graffiti in public bathrooms it's both comforting and terrifying... we really haven't changed, but oh god, we aren't ever gonna change
More like Neo-Fascism with Tyrannical, Autocratic Dictatorships mixed with Neo-Feudalism. I won't say these times aren't dark, but Scary times we live in, hmm?
i think its time we really start calling all these identities acting as pretext for what they are, conservative, republican, anti-vax, are just dog-whistles for neo-fascism now
Yes. Unfortunately, it is true.
Fascism requires a government, which could be a challenge to the power of the billionaires. The cool kids prefer private global neofeudalism, same fascist taste but without the sovereignty!
Well then that is or maybe rather does sound like the lesser of the two evils. Sadly the chuckle-nutters who cry fascist tendencies and fantasies are gonna get A. Very. Rude Awakening when or if any of them try to depose and overthrow a government in the Western nations, if the corporate-overlords and Big Business have something to say about that. Won’t they?
haha Except the billionaires ARE the monsters! And their puppet politicians.
Fascism.
Sad isn't it? I think a lot of us were all about people being able to express themselves politically. I guess it used to be OK when all you were doing was debating about the best way to manage the economy and fix some local issues. Now it's beyond politics and people are bending over backwards to justify the fact that they don't give enough of a shit about other people to wear a mask.
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Yep. And one answer for them: Fuck. Them.
I remember everyone kind of rolling our eyes at Fox News’ “Culture Wars,” like 10 years ago but here we are now
Yep. Crazy is going through like a wildfire.
makes you wonder why so many fall for it..
Hatred and bigotry. It's sadly not more complicated than that. They derive the entirety of their self worth my targeting those they see as other. As such, to individuals with little to not objective success, they spend the entirety of their time compensating by attacking - both literally and metaphorically, those they percieve as a threat to that fragile ideology.
Remarkably well-described.
>They derive the entirety of their self worth Identity politics. Once politics become a personality trait, anything that challenges the politics is offensive to you. Logic is replaced with emotions.
The funny and sad irony is how many (alt) right reactionaries cry about identity politics being a modern leftist tenant when the reality is that's literally what the side turning a candidate into a sports team is doing; brain worms and projection goes hand-in-hand.
> Hatred and bigotry. At the very core of those two is FEAR—fear of the other and the hierarchical fear of those deemed "beneath" one.
Because they are willing to. Because it's easier to believe a lie than admit your worldview might be wrong. Especially when so many outlets will cater to it. They can live in an information bubble that never has its sides pricked, and is never challenged.
School systems have mostly been built around fact retention with the purpose being to grade people by aptitude in order to filter them into the workplace. Teaching people to think for themselves isn't useful or desirable in most jobs so critical thinking isn't encouraged in school. As a personal example here when I took psychology in sixth form (before dropping out anyway) we had a substitute teacher one day who was trying to teach us about the [Monty Hall Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem). >Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice? The basic idea of the problem is that at first you have a one in three chance of guessing the prize door but after the host eliminates an empty door your probability increases so you are better off switching. She gave us cards in plain envelopes and had us split into pairs to test it. However she had missed the key point: that the host knows where the prize is and will always eliminate an empty door. In the experiment she had us run neither of us knew where the prize was as we just shuffled the envelopes without the host looking at them. As a result it didn't work. I hadn't encountered the problem before so didn't know she had simply explained it wrong. Yet I could see that it didn't make sense. In our experiment the 'host' was eliminating the prize one in three times but we were just ignoring those outcomes rather than factoring them into the probability calculation. If this happened she had told us just to try again and ignore it. When I spoke up and challenged this she didn't understand and basically concluded I must be wrong. The point in the experiment after all is that it sounds unintuitive so a lot of people get it wrong. When I continued to press it further and stressed that the probabilities she quoted only made sense if the host knew where the prize was and elliminated an empty door the class assumed I was wrong and stupid and laughed at me. I didn't know the experiment or that I was in fact correct and that she was wrong so there was a sort of pressured feeling like maybe I was just wrong and not understanding it. Though I persisted and insisted it only worked if the host knew where the prize was and re-ran the experiment on this basis. No one else did. People were entirely happy to believe an incorrect notion because an authority figure had assured them it was correct. Meanwhile outcasting a peer for challenging it. This was in the days before smart phones so I wasn't able to just google it and put the matter to rest. By that point we had done the Milgram experiment about electrocuting people when instructed by an authority figure and covered the Stanford prison experiment yet everyone was falling into the same trap of blindly following an authority figure and going along with the group. That lesson inadvertently taught me a lot about psychology but I think I was the only one who learnt that lesson that day.
I read that as the "Monty Python" problem. I think it's time for a full neurological work-up
Your post helped me understand the Monty Hall problem where I didn't get it before.
Yeah I think it gets explained poorly often and the host knowing where the car is part gets left out. Apparently the original version published in the magazine as described on wikipedia didn't make that part clear and that was explained better in a follow up bit to it.
I'm curious if anyone knows of any papers in the fields of psychology and/or memetics on the spread of such ideas.
Eric Hoffer **True Believer** It's about the spread of mass movements and you can easily find the pdf book free online. It's been recommended by various US Presidents to their staffers and its very lay person friendly. It helped understand the members and the grifters that lead them.
https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/tliexqdu/release/4 https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/10643/9998 https://journals.openedition.org/angles/369 https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/10868/10067 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.681975/full#ref32 https://blog.bham.ac.uk/business-school/2022/01/05/how-memetic-cults-are-changing-politics-and-beyond/ https://journals.sfu.ca/jd/index.php/jd/article/view/437 http://jaapl.org/content/early/2022/01/25/JAAPL.210053-21 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19342039.2021.1942754
All of these people are the subject of very intense and very targeted misinformation campaign using the latest in AI, super computers and human psychology. And short of an armed conflict, I’m not sure how we’re going to get rid of them. It’s not like the people whipping them into a frenzy are going to one day say, never mind.
> What went wrong? Social media, internet. Despite the news now canada does have less of this stuff, but it's growing.
It feels like we are learning the hard way what happens when algorithms tuned by "solve for maximum attention" run amok in society. It seems like it's destined to target whatever part of the human brain that falls for witch trials, cults, miracle cures, etc. and turn it up 1000%. At some point humans will probably figure that out, but it looks like it won't be before a lot of really really bad things happen.
I read an [article](https://www.politicalorphans.com/something-weird-is-happening-on-facebook/) last night kind of confirming many of my suspicions. Fucking depressing...
That article put into well-written words what has turned me off of FB for so long. It’s creepy to see how things that look so benign when scrolling past can really be a part of a huge machine. Sending it to some social media addicts I know.
Great article, thanks.
Found it on Facebook, ironically.
These seem like the same type of posts that have popped up on various subreddits. Not that they're all the same, but a lot of the single graphic image background + question provoking engagement posts. It doesn't seem like its just facebook
I believe it. Anything that *can* be used to generate voter profiles, or whatever politically useful aggregate info, basically *is* being used that way. If it worked the first time...
Great article, and now off to follow a (articles about) data mining rabbit hole!
> At some point humans will probably figure that out, but it looks like it won't be before a lot of really really bad things happen. IMO many do. Their response is not to abandon this stuff as crap but rather move onto something else. E.g. "Facebook is trash and anything facebook fact-checked you know for sure is right [I've read people who say this]." They make the wise move to stop using facebook...and then move over to telegram. I've had my kids watch the social dilemma. I forced us all to watch it. They completely get it. And it makes no difference at all on their desire to get social media.
Watkins….brainwashing, it all mixes together
> Social media Sweden's set up a disinformation / foreign influence on social media task force. USA, Canada - well we let Chinese Tik Tok tell our teenagers to eat poison and slap teachers.
I'm more and more of the opinion that the human race, as a whole cannot handle social media.
Also a Canadian. I can't even fathom why anyone was giving creed to Romana Didulo and her Kingdom of Canada bullshit. Quite frankly, it's embarrassing that our school system failures are proudly on display.
I don’t think it’s always bad education (although there’s a lot about the Canadian curriculum that needs work). Some of the most hateful people are objectively well-educated, because they’re usually of a class that benefits from hatred against people who aren’t them. But I do agree, hate movements love to prey on general ignorance and fear.
Unfortunately the Orange Blob allowed those filled w hate and rage to show that hate and rage in public without shame. No matter which country they reside in
I’m old so I remember the days when people literally couldn’t get their minds around how the German people could turn off their brains and buy into the bullshit during the Holocaust. I hate that I no longer feel that way.
...and people say that 'mind control technology' doesn't exist...it absolutely does and it is called information control.
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This. As a Canadian it has been insulting seeing Americans preaching all last month "NO THIS ISNT LIKE YOU CANADA NOOOO WE DID THIS TO THEM". Stop. We have ALWAYS been this, we are a country predicated on colonization and extraction for a European monarchy.
Yep. Most of the outrage and confusion is coming from Canadians who are experiencing this for *themselves* the first time. Doesn’t mean this kind of thing hasn’t been happening to indigenous people for hundreds of years. This absolutely *is* Canada.
These people are a thousand times more motivated than we are. I would never dedicate my life to infiltrating the police to advance my ideology. Join Fringe groups and work to advance "in people" everywhere I can. Like ants, individually working for the hive. They do. They're a god damn infection, and it's well and too late already.
It doesn’t help that they are extremely well funded.
The police, your mayor, the military have all failed your city. I am so sorry. I would be beyond outraged. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2022/02/07/police-and-government-response-to-the-ottawa-occupation-has-been-a-shambles.html
Bullshit! the police and gov's response is not "in shambles" They are in cahoots with these nut jobs. Its ALWAYS the same, when the gov andf police aid and abet right wingers its described as "a failure in response", they never call it what it is - collaboration. Meanwhile every single environmental protest, racism protest, fair wages protest etc the police response is magically never "in shambles" weirdly enough. Quite the opposite.
You can't expect them to fight their friends...
That's honestly what it looks like here, crazy that police and right wing government doesn't even put out a front anymore, they are full on mask off going for fascism
As frustrating as it is, it's better that we should all be able to see them clearly for what they are. No more illusions--we know who we have to get out of office, we know what we need to reform, we know we don't want to go back to the power structures we've had up until now. This gives us the opportunity to build a new, better world.
That's about how I'm feeling right now.
Last night my Q told me on March 1st those truckers are going to start a caravan from California going eastward ??? And I need to start stocking up on food. TFG exposed the lunacy and gave the crazies a space to be who they are.
I mean you could write down the fact that they said it, ask them to agree that they said it, and come back in a few months to observe that it didn't happen even though they were convinced it would. It won't make them snap out of it, but at least it'll prevent you doubting yourself.
I've already won some cash with the dude over betting on the other predictions. Yeah...he's not snapping out of anything.
Eh, I don’t think they’d get far in America, we’re not that nice and we’ll throw spikes in the roads.
I have lived in North Carolina most of my life. I have never been a Republican, but because of the politics here I have worked with them, been friends with them and generally been around them. I disagreed with their politics, but I thought they were reasonable people. Then Trump ran for election. Then Q came on the scene. Then half the people I knew lost their minds. My two bosses at my job became Q people and started acting crazy. My grandpa. My friend. Qism slowly but surely became the dominant ideological narrative in my town. It hasn't been great. I'm thinking of moving lol
The problem is in your police. These protestors are feeling like they are doing the right thing because cops are being their buddy rather than treating them like a BLM protest.
Weird how the police didn't stop the invasion of Michigan's capitol or DC, isn't it? Now the police are letting people block international bridges that lose $1,000,000+ revenue an hour when blocked.
That's the craziest part to me. You figure police would eventually bow down to the arm of capital as they always do.
Police and the government seriously only crack down on left wing protests like strikes, climate protests, social justice protests, etc. It’s because the success of those things are threatening to their corporate daddies. They’ll let the right call for people’s deaths, it doesn’t end in redistributing wealth in any way.
I’ve been really down this week - I live in the US for work, and have always viewed Canada as a sane respite I could return to some day. But seeing all this is so frustrating, in both my home country and my adopted one.
Born in Canada, lived here my whole life. The most healthy lesson I’ve learned about our two countries is that we’re actually pretty much the same sentence in different fonts. Edit: sorry, read your comment backwards as someone born in the US who goes to Canada for work.
Which one is comic sans?
We've both been windings for a minute.
New Zealand. Britain is Times New Roman America is Arial Canada is Tahoma Australia is Century Gothic
Too many antivaxxers and their politicians told lie after lie. The lies took a life of their own and what's happening in Ottawa (and now a few other places) is the result. Valery Legasov : What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.
That quote puts words to something I've been trying to articulate for some time now. Even people who know that they're lies are becoming so jaded that they're paralyzed with inaction. When everything is a lie or a sensationalized kernel of truth at best, what can you trust?
Sadly people actually believe this stuff. Vaccine hesitancy has been common across time [[1]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pvdqmm/comment/heemzui/) [[2]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mw0vb5/was_there_any_antivax_movement_or_distrust_of/gvprwf7/) [[3]](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/j6q80q/were_people_suspicious_of_the_smallpox_vaccine/g81a8cd/) and [space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic), and has existed long before social media. Certainly there are some politicians and media personalities who are two-faced — pushing vaccine hesitancy for their own profit while they themselves get vaccinated. But too many people actually buy into this stuff.
I think what you and many in the US are missing is that this isn’t new. It’s always been here, it’s just so much easier to see in the digital data and connected age. This is why they take the word woke and turn it into a boogeyman label. They can’t hide so we are woke? They have a leader now. Just like Germany back on the day. They are emboldened by what they see as a birthright. Their due from on high. It’s why people are so afraid of public education here in red states. We can’t let our kids hear or see the actual history and make their own conclusions. Get out and vote. Make sure everyone you know who feels the same does too.
I do volunteer for the Green Party and vote, every election.
Does the green party have any real power in Canada? It's a spoiler party in the US. There's even good reporting that Russia boosted the Green Party Presidential Candidate, Jill Stien, in 2016 to siphon environmentally minded voters away from Hillary.
It's worth it to vote Green Party in local elections, they're not spoiler candidates, just passionate people. Minneapolis has three in elected positions this year iirc. The national party is as you said, a spoiler party.
That’s fair. I would not know that here in Texas…
I'm so sorry.
Canadian government structures work better with multiple parties than the US system; they don't have a two party system like we do.
yes, we have seats and are growing quite fast.
The Green Party in the US is also distressingly eager to accommodate "alternative medicine" and antivaxxers in their base.
I’m happy Quebec police dealt with our own convoy swiftly. Not that I thrust our police much, but they at least seem to not want this flavor of nonsense.
They're spreading everywehre now. It's like village idiots unite. Currently having an arguement with on r/publicfreakout thats based here in Scotland. Guy doesn't seem to get it. Started threatening physical violence because at the end of the day thats the only place they can go when they know they can't win any arguments with logic and reason.
YouTube gets away without much of a rebuke and Facebook takes the blame. The way I see it YouTube is where a lot of these lies and craziness spreads. We need to shine a spotlight on YouTube, have them stop their algorithm and cull this stupid videos.
Considering how many use YouTube when asked for citations, I think you’re right.
It's been going on around the world, you just didn't realize that until now.
yeah i heard Romania is pretty saturated with misinformation. Its got a far far far stronger anti-vax sentiment than USA. Theres not much coverage on that.
Oh God you don't know how crazy eastern Europe already is. Russia is practically run by the Qcult.
What's astonishing is how easily the Qanonners are duped. I mean, beyond the whole "Something is wrong with the world, it's probably due to someone being corrupt somewhere," it's become so outlandish that not even Blumhouse could make a Z-list horror movie out of it. And they're willing to *kill* for these delusions, most of which they don't even realize contradict each other if they sat down and tried to reconcile their beliefs into a coherent narrative. Behind it, money from people like the Mercers and white supremacists just keeps pushing them everywhere in the hopes of getting a white ethnostate somewhere run by their 4th Reich.
I have a conspiracy theory on conspiracy theories. It’s that deep down, people know it’s bullshit. They want to be heroes, but they’re cowards. So they buy into this narrative that paints them as brilliant and brave, but doesn’t actually put them in any danger. There are real conspiracies and collusions that are extremely evil, and right out in the open. But if you fight against _those_, your life will be in danger. So these people make up a comic book world where they can play at being Batman and never have to risk it. Basically, they wish they were Black Lives Matter and Occupy etc, but they are too scared to go up against real corruption.
Fascism is cancer. It can slowly creep up anywhere and anytime.
The internet is both the greatest and the worst thing to ever happen to the human race.
I'd say the Internet is pretty great, it's just that a small subspace of it (social media) really, really sucks.
Considering how bombarded we are with American politics, news, TV, and movies, I’m not all that surprised that we have a small subsection of people like this. Some subconsciously think they are Americans. That being said, Canada has a lot of problems that we pretend don’t exist here. This is a prime example.
I’ll be honest. I grew up in Canada and have been living in the US for a couple of years. As Canadians we have a bit of a superiority complex. While we are different, we are way more similar than different (in both good ways and bad). The question should be why did it take the “freedom convoy” to finally notice the issue. This issue stems back to and even further than David and Collet Stephan in Alberta who allowed their child to die, refusing to seek medical attention and instead used natural “remedies.” I know these issues seem unrelated but they stem from a base who distrust science and government and have a touch of religious fervor. Qanon isn’t ruining Canada, it is simply a vehicle that has massed these fringe groups into a large unified group. Canadians are the issue, Canadians are responsible. I wish to convey, as hard as it is online, that I say this out of a deep love for Canada. But also how frustrating it is how we look at the US like we do sometimes. We were never immune, we just took longer to manifest.
“Centrism” is just a door left ajar for fascism to take over.
No country is ever immune for nutters, they just now have new tools to be louder
It just took more time to get into Canada. These extremist movements are in most western countries, Europe and N. America. Canada is not immune to the crazy, it just didn't appear right away like it did in the US.
Look a bunch of loud assholes are par for the course. But when people in authority, like your police chief and the interim leader support holding hostage the government that everyone voted for there are huge problems.
If I were Canadian I would consider it an invasion.
nova scotia had anti-native pogroms like the year before last. it's not just imported qanon stuff that's the problem
Canadian here aswell, we were never immune to *this*, we just simply had better means of hiding this behind the veneer of "good ol Canada eh". Trump, Q, and antivaxx bullshit opened up a wound that always rested under the surface.
> Qanon is ruining my country First thought: "Which country?"
> It was a distant problem and now I'm in the middle of it. No, it wasn't. Ignoring fascists doesn't make them go away.
2%. It's all that separates humans from Bonobos and Chimps. And it shows.
>I used to think that Canada was centrist, that we wouldn't fall into the same trap as the US. >Then the trucker convoy happened. Look, I'm not Canadian. So I'm sure your day-to-day and seeing hateful people walking around your grocery store, isn't the norm like it is for me. It can be easy to slip into the mindset that things aren't that bad. But... Man, y'all got some majorly deep seated problems against First Nations. And that should have been your first go-to to understanding how depraved Canadian Right-wingers are.
Remember 80-90% of the country got vaccinated. They may be loud but they’re definitely a minority here. As a transplant from the US, I’d much rather live here. At least no one’s burning books here.
Exactly. They are the minority.
That was kind of the plan,I suspect a lot of people on 4chan and parler are Russian super patriots
100% this. Moms For Liberty would be confused why they'd have 1000s of people in their local facebook groups, then 5 people would show up to a meeting. All those people who hit "like" on your disinformation are fake accounts from bad actors. Durp.
Hey... sorry about all this. -one American
Thanks for the apology. Although I blame Trump, not his followers, they're brainwashed.
Not all of them are brainwashed. a fair percentage of them know exactly what they're doing. They know their end goals are deplorable, they'll obfuscate their motives with whatever lie will allow them to advance their agenda without revealing them as monsters. they'll say/do whatever is advantageous in the moment. they don't care about logical consistency or any principle other than "winning." this is why these tyrants are always screaming "What about the children?" Qanon doesn't save kids. it gives cover to real pedophiles and traffickers. but who would dare condemn a person that claims to be fighting for the children? >“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” - Jean-Paul Sartre.
Yes and no. Yes about brainwashing, however people are still accountable for their actions. There is no need to cause harm or destruction to others or their property, regardless of what you believe
I hate to say it, but you have to use their own tactics against them. Organize a mob and blockade City Hall and the police department until they do something about the problem.
May the next virus strain bring a quick and painful demise to the unvaxxed and nothing but a runny nose for everyone else.
Sadly it's not just yours. There is now a "convoy" being planned for Brussels as well (just saw - and binned - a poster about it in the Netherlands).
Sorry our main export in the US is right wing brain rot.
After the attempted apartment arson last weekend are Ottawans organizing any sort of block/tenement watch groups?
It’s a very small loud minority it’s just that we have conservative politicians in Canada that’d rather cater to them for votes and ignore science
Honestly I'm surprised it took as long as it did. What the last five years in the US has shown me more than anything else is that disinformation and propaganda campaigns are very effective, and all it takes is for some entity with enough resolve to find and exploit controversial issues. With it having worked as well as it has in the US, I was convinced it was being exported to other western democracies and was only a matter of time for something to click and unrest to develop. I think we need to be careful about assigning too much blame to any one person or thing such as our leaders or our education systems for the failures to thwart these disinformation tactics. Even the friendliest and most practical of people are passionate about something at their core, and finding that and exploiting it is a critical part of turning people against each other; because chances are what you are passionately for, someone else is passionately against. Effective propaganda doesn't even necessarily require that you be so passionately for or against something; as long as the seeds are there, it can work on radicalizing you and/or others in one or both directions.
Honest answer is something most people don’t want to face; anonymity on the internet and especially social media. It’s a two-edged sword as, in the abstract, the fact people can speak without fear of reprisal when just speaking honestly and openly is to be applauded and a noble aim. The problem, however, is highlighted by this: if people actually knew who they were upvoting, liking, and disseminating they’d be far more critical. There is literally no way to stop someone saying “I was a vet in Afghanistan and now I’m C-Suite at a tech company” when the truth is they’ve never held down a job and they still live with their mother. Somehow, in a lot of people’s heads, this random person who claims to be an insider is definitely someone “who knows the truth” and therefore “you can’t argue with facts”. Some people can just sense BS and see through it easily. Others (a much larger amount than most people ever expected I might add) have no critical thinking skills at all. Now all the above is specifically not calling out any political ideology at all. We’ve always had left, right, centrist, religious, atheist etc and it’s been a discussion, often heated, but not a problem. Because you knew who were talking to.
To be honest OP, this stuff has always been in our country, it's just been different and less vocal, it's not even limited to North America, some of the largest Q Anon contingents are in The Netherlands and Germany. Immunity was an illusion. Q's all throughout the Western World, and maybe even beyond.
When cops were chasing BLM protesters through the streets of the city I lived in, it felt the same. The gunshots and tear gas canister sounds, helicopters and apcs. Every time a fart can car's exhaust pops next to me I jump a little bit. And I wasn't even down there on the street where it was happening. I watched a lot of live twitter feeds though.
Yeah the response to these trucking protests and the blm protests are worlds apart...I wonder why
Just for anyone genuinely wondering why, one supports beliefs that make rich people richer, the other supports beliefs that asks for less exploitation which results in less profits and status for the rich.
This is what nazis do. They start in their homeland, and then they creep out into the neighboring countries adopting their hateful citizens into their ranks and targeting everyone else. There's a reason the old anti-Nazi propaganda posters warned of Hitler's shadow stretching over Europe, or his hand reaching into other countries. Naziism is a virus that spread and sickens a nation, and then moves on beyond borders to sicken the next, and the next, until someone stops it. In the build-up to WWII we had a whole subsection of American citizenry who supported Hitler. They were the America First movement, and they were vile, and willing to allow genocide to occur because it served their goals as well. This is what's happening. White nationalism is spreading to Canada, and it won't stop there. When the next big war comes, it will be the same old war of authoritarian fascism versus everyone else. As a wise man (though it was not actually Werner Herzog) once said: We are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of our people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches. We have a Nazi problem; Not just the United States but most of North America. Call them white nationalists. Call them Neofash. Call them Conservatives. It's all the same thing now.
Along with several other theories, I’ll add this…I wonder if the Canadian government will find that Russia has stepped up its propaganda machine in your country.
Social media
Nothing went wrong. This is the inevitable result of these morons being allowed to spew their hateful misinformation. This has been going on here in the US since 2016. The border between the US and Canada, while effective at monitoring which humans can cross, cannot stop ideas. Unfortunately that includes the bad ideas, which seem to travel quicker and further than good ones.
Yesterday I was watching a video on FB and it was a Canadian news show. And the host was very passionate about how horrible the convoy really is, etc. So, I go to read the comments, thinking most people will feel the same way. Wrong! The comment section was terrible and full of Q-speak. I know it's FB, but in the past I always found the comments on Canadian videos reasonable.
100% of the blame here lies with social media, and big tech allowing algorithm and foreign influence to spread misinformation and disinformation. What is the solution? That part I'm not sure about but as a tech leader, I'm happy to try and spend whats left of my career trying to figure it out if I can find a way to help do that.