If you work in politics or media and aren’t familiar with “boogaloo,” you should read this.
bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/2…
bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/2…
In the 1990s a lot of people who should have been aware of the rise of violent far-right movements weren’t — until Timothy McVeigh blew up a building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people.
A similar dynamic exists now; I see it in the way some people react when I warn of the possibility for large-scale political violence.
Except now there is far more danger: wider range of extremists, Trump/GOP egging them on, Facebook/tech cos helping recruit/organize, Russia...
Except now there is far more danger: wider range of extremists, Trump/GOP egging them on, Facebook/tech cos helping recruit/organize, Russia...
This shit is serious, and dismissing it as paranoid isn’t savvy, it’s dangerous. And it probably means you haven’t taken the time to learn about the threats, which is understandable — nobody has time to know about everything. But maybe listen to folks who have studied it.
(PS: When some of us said five years ago that tech companies were going to be a problem and the Right was going to work them the way they worked the news media for decades, more of y’all shoulda listened. Then again, you didn’t listen to decades of warnings about news media.)
By the way: I don’t have particularly good solutions to this, or to many of the problems I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people. And I tend to feel pretty badly about that, like it’s a personal failure…
But in my more rational (and self-forgiving) moments, I understand that this is OK.
I’m comfortable saying I have a pretty advanced understanding of a lot of problems we face in political/government/media/information spheres. But nobody’s good at, or knows, everything.
I’m comfortable saying I have a pretty advanced understanding of a lot of problems we face in political/government/media/information spheres. But nobody’s good at, or knows, everything.
There are a *ton* of people who are way more skilled, knowledgable, and experienced than I am at *a ton of things.* That’s one reason I spend so much timing imploring people to take [Problem X] seriously — they could come up with (or execute) solutions I won’t.
It isn’t “if only everyone would acknowledge this problem, we’d be fine.” It’s “this will destroy us without a lot of smart and talented people coming up with and executing creative solutions. Help!”
Of course.
