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16 Oct, 14 tweets, 4 min read
Seems like it should be a bigger story that the current occupant of the White House has been illegally running a covert propaganda effort against the American public and is now doing so to help his campaign.
@AshaRangappa_ on “black propaganda”, why it’s illegal, and why Trump’s various anti-Biden schemes in Ukraine qualify.
asharangappa.com/covertpropagan…
From the link above: ImageImage
When Trump told Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden, he was trying to launder his own Biden smears thru an apparently independent source. If he didn’t get caught, that would’ve been covert propaganda aimed at the American public.
When Trump’s right hand man Guiliani got the former head prosecutor of Ukraine to provide an affidavit alleging the same Biden smears, and then got John Solomon to report on the affidavit, that was covert propaganda aimed at the American public.
The Shokin affidavit was black propaganda with a deliberately circuitous backstory and a familiar cast of characters.
This @RobertMackey article from a year ago summed things up really well. theintercept.com/2019/10/17/ukr…
I’ve been thinking about doing a “remember last year when Trump ran an illegal propaganda campaign with the help of a Putin-linked Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US?” thread. Then this story hit yesterday:
Weeks before the election, a laptop with incriminating info just happens to land in Rudy’s hands. (Machina ex deus?) Obviously more black propaganda. And now we know it was produced in collaboration with Russian intelligence. Again.
Every outlet uncritically covering the laptop story is helping Trump conduct an illegal propaganda campaign against us. Let them have it.
“Being in the crosshairs” implies Rudy wasn’t a willing collaborator. That’s nonsense. He’s been actively soliciting their help for years.
Same problem with a lot of the coverage around this. The problem isn’t that Trump should be more bothered by Russian disinformation. It’s that he’s so transparently IN ON IT.
The soft bigotry of low expectations (for openly racist conservative men)

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More from @EdOverbeek

Ed Overbeek Profile picture
13 Oct
Republicans keep being massive hypocrites, and the press keeps letting them get away with it, because neither wants to admit the GOP’s real motivation is to maintain rich, straight, white Christian male supremacy.
If they actually cared about religious freedom, law and order, small government, or the Merrick Garland “rule”, they wouldn’t support the Muslim Ban, a serially criminal president*, concentration camps or ACB.

But they can’t openly say what they really want is a rigged system.
Lucky for them, the press doesn’t really want to talk about their hypocrisy. The press has almost as little interest in honest talk about rich, straight white Christian male supremacy as the GOP does.
Read 4 tweets
Ed Overbeek Profile picture
10 Jul
If you're going to complain about "cancel culture", how do you define it?

Does it apply to online criticism? Losing a gig after a racist rant or ten? Getting ostracized for sexual harassment? Getting arrested for rape?

Does it distinguish between punching up and punching down?
Looking at these discussions through the lens of punching up vs punching down is clarifying. Most arguments against "political correctness", "incivility" and "cancel culture" are just attempts to stop punching up and defend punching down. Defending abuse from a high horse.
The phrase "punching up" is really suboptimal here.
Punching down has real consequences for the target. Punching up usually has few consequences. That's how power dynamics work. It's usually just complaining about abuse. In rare cases, it means consequences for abuse.
Read 13 tweets
Ed Overbeek Profile picture
28 Jun
I'm sure people will accuse Princeton of "erasing history". That's backwards. Keeping Wilson's name meant ignoring the facts that disqualified him from the honor. Acknowledging history is the opposite of erasing it.
What they call erasing history is always really just people removing the whitewash. And it's striking how many public monuments and history books this applies to. Wilson, Columbus, Confederate generals, Jefferson, Washington...
The "erasing history" argument has a lot of problems, not least of which is that it's stupid. It's not like this erases Wilson from history textbooks. If monuments were simply how we learn about history, we'd need a hell of a lot more statues. With placards. Long placards.
Read 15 tweets
Ed Overbeek Profile picture
4 Jun
They wouldn’t have to hurt us if we didn’t try to stop them.
This is the mentality that drives cops to respond to police brutality protests with more brutality. *They* get to decide if we’re safe from them, not us. It’s the abuser logic behind everything in this country that serves white supremacy.
Police brutality is a weapon of white supremacy. People who try to take that weapon away get that weapon pointed at them. The crackdown is white supremacy refusing to give up power, and the right to keep that power through violence and fear.
Read 4 tweets
Ed Overbeek Profile picture
31 May
White supremacy is an occupying force.
Scenes from an occupation that started centuries ago and won’t end when the national guard leaves.
White supremacy is an occupying force. And the backlash to Kaep was never about respecting the flag. The occupation demands the right to maintain itself through violence.
Read 7 tweets
Ed Overbeek Profile picture
29 May
The White Christian Male Supremacist Constitution

Free speech, unless you criticize us
Freedom of religion, unless you have the wrong one
The right to vote, unless you're black or Hispanic
Justice, if you're a white male
Democracy, but only for us
That isn't democracy, it's minority rule. It's authoritarianism. And if you believe in it, everything Trump does to torch the real Constitution is justified.
dailykos.com/stories/2017/8…
"To them, the government is legal and patriotic when it protects minority rule, and a lawless plot when it doesn't."
dailykos.com/stories/2017/8…
Read 4 tweets

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