Thread by @FreedomFriesInc

(1) Why are you here?

I'm on Twitter to learn more about US history, current events, & theories behind political movements, esp. extremism & domestic terrorism.

To help me find my own tweets about it, I tag them #HWEdCamp. Here's why I chose that term.

(2) I'm not arrogant enough to think lots of folk will or should read my threads & tweets. A few years ago I had 17k Twitter followers, but that was only bc I had taken a side politically & tweeted what folk wanted to hear.

When you leave a club, you give up some stuff. >Shrug.

(3) So, think of these threads as me writing in my journal, in public. I want to bounce ideas off others, but not if we're just re-hashing the talking points of Democrats and Republicans. I can do that all day, having learned them when I was in each of the clubs.

(4) During 2020 I had no idea I would have a near future as a political re-educator (of myself and anyone else who is open to learning new things.)

"Re-education" is a time honored term around the world. Tyrannical regimes use it euphemistically. Most others use it ironically.

(5) My first exposure to the concept of contemporary totalitarianism was hearing of the book The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

During the Stalin era the USSR had sent him to a Gulag (concentration camp) for 8 yrs. He was famous in Cold War US-allied countries.

(6) The US far right have been fearmongering for years about "FEMA camps."

There's a ton of people rn who genuinely believe they could one day be detained in some kind of federal facility for "wrongspeak" a la Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four novel.

They overlap with Q folk...

(7) I've come to realize, though, that the rhetoric used by the far right is very similar to that used by the far left.

And, my definition of what makes someone far right in 2021 is different to that of most people. Which is fine.

Defining terms at the start is paramount.

(8) After the 1/6 Capitol riot there was talk of a need to "deprogram" the supporters of the far right, ie Trump supporters who still believe a terrorist attack on a branch of government was an appropriate response to losing an election.

I use the term re-education ironically.

(9) People brainwashed by a cult of personality aren't going to willingly join in "re-education." Both sides have an extremist fringe that becomes more entrenched over time. Rule of law supporters can never win this "war" but we do need to lower the temperature as much as we can.

(10) So, I continue on my personal journey to learn as much as I can about domestic extremism in other places at other times, to see how those lessons could be applied to the situation in the US... and in other countries, too, since these ideas are being nurtured everywhere.

(11) My intended audiences are: me, moderate liberals, moderate conservatives, and those in the process of escaping this or any other cult.

There's little point in me engaging seriously with the far right or far left here. They operate in fantasy, not reality.

(12) When I first heard folk talking about re-education for the MAGA movement I knew that actual programs could never work and would never be tried. However, I was (and am) open to studying what beliefs contribute to domestic terrorism and therefore need to be challenged.

(13) Calling Trump's stolen election claims "The Big Lie" doesn't advance the cause of peace because a lot of MAGA folk were already familiar with the term, in relation to their opponents.

The rhetoric they were sharing in meme form already referenced Goebbels' use of it.

(14) I agree with the belief that Trump was preparing the ground before the 2020 election. There's lots of evidence of that. But a Trump supporter will bat away that evidence, citing the small kernel of truth within it.

The brainwashing is very sophisticated, yet very simple.

(15) For example: Mail-in ballots.

No one* opposes well-regulated civilian absentee voting that is voter-requested & (in some way) identity-verified.

*Figure of speech. Virtually no one, and certainly not me.

(16) The TYPE of mail-in voting Trump questioned pre-election was the unsolicited sending out of high numbers of ballots, w/out adequate identity verification (eg properly checked signatures on the envelopes.)

Surely y'all realize those ballots can fall into the wrong hands?

(17) I was not surprised to see widespread use of mail-in voting in 2020 & serious post election questions about the integrity of some of it. I supported further investigation of it BUT not at the expense of a peaceful transition of power. That's where MAGA & I diverged.

(18) When it became clear to me (in December) that Biden had won the election, I decided to stop participating in the movement to question it. Because it was time to prepare for a new admin &, most importantly, trying to keep the Senate majority.

(19) This stance wasn't as rare as you might think. Plenty of us shifted our energy toward the 1/5/21 GA Senate election runoffs, while noticing the increasingly militant tactics of Trump and his allies or, "inner circle" at the time. 1-2 weeks ahead of 1/6 I predicted violence.

(20) If Trump had enabled and encouraged a riot like that of 1/6, months earlier in his term, he would have been impeached and convicted and thereby removed from office at that time. The only reason he got away with it (in that respect) was that he had 14 days left in office.

(21) The voting block that's anti-Democrat party has been left in tatters. The only way to vote Ds out of the WH, Senate, or House is to shrink the Trump faction of the GOP. And the only way to do that is by being honest abt 1/6.

Sanity will be restored to the GOP. Eventually.

(22) As usual, a bunch of MAGA folk have misunderstood the above tweet (and if they bothered to read it, the whole thread too.)

I'll never support the Democrat policy platform but we're all stuck with it for the next few years BECAUSE Trump threw his supporters under the bus.

(23) Y'all skipped over the part of the tweet about "being honest about 1/6."

The riot is the number one reason that "fighting" for Trump is now a waste of your energy. HE threw it all away. Didn't have to.

Yes, he did enable & encourage the violence. You believe his denials.

(24) There's now no path to victory for the MAGA part of the GOP, despite it's size.

We'll remain in opposition until the law-abiding part takes over. You know, we who actually support LEOs and don't lie about a mass assault on 138 of them just bc Dear Leader tells you to.

(25) The RAP, @AccountableGOP, is mostly made up of conservatives like me who prefer honesty, credible evidence, & the rule of law. There's a few RINOs & moderate Dems but WHO CARES. They don't send thousands of angry zealots into a bldg where your "last chance" is occurring.

(26) As I said at the time, the joint session on 1/6 was your last chance to lawfully present the solid evidence of electoral fraud y'all keep saying you have, but never seem to actually file in a court or even present in congress. Saying it could happen =/= proof it did happen.

(27) In the days BEFORE 1/6 I said here on Twitter that I hoped the Republicans who said they had credible evidence to present during the joint session would do so. Then we could ALL evaluate it in an orderly fashion.

But no. That wasn't good enough for Trump, Giuliani & co...

(28) The planned (by Trump & his inner circle), violent assault on the Capitol & it's thousands of innocent staffers & police stopped the joint session & the supposed "evidence" was never tabled.

No one released it publicly, either. Surely if it was solid they'd have done that?

(29) You can lash out at me & others as much as you want, it's not going to achieve anything positive for the conservative cause. All this online anger does is raise funds for the grifters who are laughing all the way to the bank that making money off of the gullible is so easy.

(30) There is abundant, credible, evidence that Trump as the sitting POTUS had ample opportunity to prevent the protest on 1/6 turning into a riot that injured >138 cops.

It's so obvious anyone can see it... unless of course you're brainwashed by these sorts of lies:

(31) And if you don't find that kind of egregious dishonesty & excuse-making repugnant, then I just feel sorry for you.

We used to have things in common. Then our "leaders" recklessly put their wants ahead of the needs of you & me. I learned from it. I hope others do too.