Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 Profile picture
Aug 26, 2019 7 tweets 2 min read Read on X
My point about voters is that everyone you EVER interact w on political twitter, at political events falls into the tails of this distribution (2.5%). Most people who watch mainstream major networks news, read @nytimes or @WAPO,watch Sunday shows would fall within the 13.5% bands
Although there are certainly some primary voters who hail from the two 34% areas, the bulk of the two party's primary electorates come from the right & left flank of this graph, which means the far left & right are far more extreme than average & even the center and mods are more
conservative and liberal than the average electorate. For all the convo about the Dem primary, polling consistently shows only about 40% of all people who plan to cast ballots in it, people who as a group are already non-representative of the whole country, have watched a debate
Much of the people sitting in those two 34% bands are America's "disengaged" (as @pewresearch calls them). They aren't particularly ideological, but bc of that, they aren't all that inclined to participate (although this is NOT the only thing driving our low participation rates).
So when I give public lectures and interviews I try to remind my audiences that if they are hearing me talk, they are in the 1%. And when they look around confused I clarify, "no, no, not the income 1%, the information 1%. Th engagement 1%. And this is the crisis that underlies
every other crisis we have in American politics."
I want to add this follower Q to the thread in case other people need this frame of reference. Very good Q!

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More from @RachelBitecofer

Aug 13
🧵The Nazi War on “Asocials”

You Can't Cure Crime Without Crushing Freedom

When the Nazis sold themselves to Germany in the early 1930s, they didn’t just promise jobs, glory, and a return to greatness—they promised a national makeover. And like all authoritarians, their definition of “cleaning up” had less to do with fixing the economy and more to do with purging poor people.Image
The Reich was obsessed with visual order. Cities were to be spotless, streets safe, public behavior disciplined, and every human being was expected to conform to the Nazi ideal: healthy, hardworking, racially “pure,” and loyal to the state.
If you didn’t fit, you were labeled Asozial—“asocial.” This was not just a slur; it was a bureaucratic category, written into policy and enforced with police power. And it covered a broad swath of people the regime saw as “blight”: the homeless, the jobless, alcoholics, drug users, petty criminals, beggars, the mentally ill, sex workers, and even some single mothers and LGBTQ people.
Read 21 tweets
Aug 10
🧵🔥👇
Appeasement Didn’t Work Then.

It Won’t Work Now.

While he was in prison, the German version of Club Fed, for trying to execute a coup, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf — part autobiography, part revenge manifesto, part how-to guide for dismantling the post–World War I order. Image
It wasn’t subtle. He said, outright:

“The reunification of German-Austria with the Motherland… must be carried out.”

And he was clear the borders of Germany should expand:

“It is not the preservation of peace, but the expansion of the people’s living space that is the most pressing task of our time.”Image
That’s “living space” (Lebensraum) — for Germans only — at the expense of anyone already living there. In fact, you may not know this, but once they killed off all the Jews in Eastern Europe their next step was supposed to be turning the death camps onto the rest of Eastern European-another 40 million people who they saw as racially inferior.
Read 17 tweets
Aug 7
🧵STAT(S) of the Week: Tariffed Enough Already

Trump’s New Tax on America

Trump’s tariffs are finally here—and they’re hitting your wallet like a second income tax. He promised China would pay. Instead, American families and small businesses are footing the $29.6 billion bill. Here’s what he’s not telling you.Image
In July 2025, the U.S. government brought in $29.6 billion in tariff revenue. That’s not a typo. That’s nearly $30 billion in a single month—triple the average from previous years. It’s the kind of hockey-stick spike that should set off alarms. But to hear Donald Trump tell it, this is a triumph. “We’re making money again,” he crows at rallies. “Other countries are finally paying!”

Except they’re not. We are.
That money isn’t coming from China. It’s not coming from Mexico. It’s not being extracted from globalist trade cartels or shady overseas middlemen. It’s being paid by American families. By small businesses. By Etsy sellers, knife makers, Hallmark, Walmart, and yes—by you.
Read 19 tweets
Aug 6
🔥🧵Different Party, Same Ideology

The South Switched Teams but Kept the Same Ideology

There’s a favorite talking point on the American right: “Democrats were the party of slavery. Democrats were the party of Jim Crow.”

If you're sick of that, this 🧵is for you. Image
There’s a favorite talking point on the American right: “Democrats were the party of slavery. Democrats were the party of Jim Crow.” They throw it out like a grenade in political arguments, as if it were a trump card that delegitimizes any modern conversation about race, justice, or the parties’ respective commitments to equality. And yes, it’s true — the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. It was the party of Jim Crow.

But that was then. And this is now.
The part they always leave out — intentionally — is the political realignment that took place in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. Because if you follow the story of what happened after Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, you’ll find a transformation not of values, but of party. The party label changed. The ideology didn’t. And the South — always the stronghold of racial hierarchy — found a new political home in the Republican Party.
Read 22 tweets
Aug 4
🧵The Anatomy of “Othering”:
How Authoritarians Build Permission for Violence

All autocratic regimes need enemies. Authoritarians invent them to seize power.

If there’s one universal truth in the history of authoritarianism, it’s this: violence doesn’t begin with bullets—it begins with words. It begins with a process. A framework. A campaign to paint certain people as dangerous, alien, corrupt, or diseased. To make them “other.”Image
Once a group is defined as outside the moral circle of society, anything becomes permissible. Ostracization. Censorship. Persecution. Deportation. Detention. Extermination. The list evolves, but the logic remains the same: they are not like us. And because they are not like us, they must be stopped.
Recurring Themes in Authoritarian “Othering”

Dehumanization – Comparing people to animals (vermin, cockroaches), diseases, or machines.

Collective Blame – Holding a whole group responsible for societal ills or conspiracies.

Conspiracy Theory – Framing others as part of secret plots (e.g., Jews, Deep State, Soros).
Read 20 tweets
Jul 23
🚨🔥🧵👇Herding Cats:
The Problem Isn’t Just Structural. It’s Behavioral.

Democrats are not just losing the information war because the other side has Fox News and a billion-dollar propaganda ecosystem. That’s a big part of it, sure—but it’s not the whole story. The comms asymmetry isn’t just structural. It’s behavioral. It’s psychological. It’s us.Image
Let me break this down for you, because until we understand the real problem, we’re not going to fix it. And if we don’t fix it, we’re not just going to lose elections. We’re going to lose democracy.
1. Democrats Want to Be Smart. That’s a Problem.

Democrats are smart people. Progressives, especially. They value intelligence. They curate it. They showcase it. They want to look smart, and more importantly, they’re terrified of looking stupid. This seems like a good thing—until you realize that effective propaganda often requires you to say things that sound stupid to smart people.
Read 21 tweets

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