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18 May, 6 tweets, 2 min read
(🔓) BREAKING: I swear I didn't know that the first day of PROOF's AFOL section would feature political news. LEGO—the most successful toy brand in history; also, famously apolitical—will apparently be releasing a set with gay and transgender pride colors. sethabramson.substack.com/p/set-reveal-4…
(PS) As indicated in the article above, this news comes from an Instagram account that reliably breaks news of forthcoming LEGO sets, The Brick Man (IG: instagram.com/thebrickman199…). So I don't take credit for this news, which has already, apparently—sadly—divided the AFOL community.
(PS2) It's hard to underscore how "famously apolitical" LEGO is—accepting, as I certainly do, that toys are always-already political, so "famously apolitical" is more how LEGO thinks of itself than anything else—so I suspect conservatives will cry foul over this forthcoming set.
(PS3) For the record, this set is badass in every way and I'll happily buy it. I hope millions of people will do so. The world's most successful toy brand announcing unambiguously its view that all people deserve full civil and dignity rights is a big deal to me, and many others.
(PS4) According to the IG source, the set will retail for $34.99.
(NOTE) You can find the new AFOL section of PROOF at the link below. It's just for fun, so subscribers won't receive email updates for it but can view it—along with the general public—via a phone or computer whenever they wish. I call it a "labor of love." sethabramson.substack.com/s/afol

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More from @SethAbramson

Seth Abramson Profile picture
20 May
(🆚) BREAKING NEWS: Trump-Brazil Plot to Steal 2020 Election Appears to Have Been "Plan B" After Failure of Trump-Ukraine Collusion

This news is big—and a PROOF exclusive. I hope you'll consider subscribing to PROOF, reading the exposé, and retweeting it. sethabramson.substack.com/p/breaking-new…
1/ This report builds on two PROOF reports—linked to in the first paragraph, above—that made national news in Brazil and led to a congressional inquiry there, as well as the shocking Ch. 12 ("Trump-Venezuela") of the bestselling Proof of Corruption.

Link: amazon.com/Proof-Corrupti… Image
2/ All of the evidence now suggests that the Trump-Ukraine election-theft scheme Trump ran in 2019-2020 was followed by a likewise failed 2020-2021 election-theft scheme involving the governments of Venezuela and Brazil.

In almost every contour, the two plots mirror one another.
Read 24 tweets
Seth Abramson Profile picture
18 May
I told you they wouldn't stop lying about this. And they won't. At stake for them is money and cultural capital. We can' imagine the damage to Taibbi and Greenwald's careers if they admitted that they've been lying to their far-right followers about *every aspect* of the dossier.
On the bright side, as both men are all about money now, I can say what I like and they won't try to contradict the accurate facts I've offered. Why? They don't want to send traffic to another Substack author. Fine by me—I've forgotten more than they ever knew about Trump-Russia.
Imagine doubling and tripling down on something you know is a lie—on the subject of the national security of the United States—because you'd lose your financial backers by the thousands if you (Taibbi and Greenwald) accurately reported on a pressing issue in geopolitics. Amazing.
Read 6 tweets
Seth Abramson Profile picture
17 May
(🔓) PROOF UNLOCKED: I've been doing AMAs for years, and the top question I hear—besides if Trump will go to prison—is, "What are your favorite/recommended [X]?" Now that PROOF exists, I can not only tell you but subscribers can yell at me in the comments. sethabramson.substack.com/p/proof-recomm…
1/ Because I teach in 12 subject areas at University of New Hampshire—yes really—not many folks know that while I'm often teaching prelaw, journalism, cultural theory and professional writing, at other times I'm teaching memes, stand-up, video games, TV shows and digital culture.
2/ I use to review digital culture professionally at Indiewire, and wrote more book reviews for The Huffington Post in the mid-2010s than any reviewer on that site or—I think it's possible—any site. (In one year I wrote over 100!) Now I teach, among other things, graphic novels.
Read 10 tweets
Seth Abramson Profile picture
17 May
Jesus Christ @Reuters delete this embarrassing "coverage" of a staged hat trick by a man who'd assassinate any defender who thwarted him

First you partner with Russian propaganda outlet TASS, and now this?

Why don't you report on Kim Jong Un scoring an 18 on a round of golf too
(PS) I guess my favorite part of this is that they put Putin in a white helmet so everyone on his team would know to pass to him and everyone not on his team would know to stay out of his way

The metaphor of an international villain demanding a "white hat" is also not lost on me
(PS2) I imagine that the conversation they had with the goalie before this game was similar to the conversation Ving Rhames had with Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction about precisely when in his boxing match he would go down and how we would do it

What a sad day for that poor goalie
Read 4 tweets
Seth Abramson Profile picture
16 May
(THREAD) To those who thought that Glenn Greenwald or Matt Taibbi would eventually stop lying about the Steele Dossier: no, they won't stop. They won't *ever* stop. They have too much money and too much cultural capital invested in the lies now.

So here (yet again) is the truth.
1/ Whatever nitpicking about Steele's professional reputation you may find that plays off the straw man one or two sources in England accidentally created by comparing Steele to Bond, the facts are simple: he was so trusted by MI6 that he was the man who trained *other* spies.
2/ The FBI had long trusted him, and had *good reason* to trust him. Steele was and is not just a top Russia expert worldwide—he *ran* the Moscow desk for MI6—but he had fruitfully aided the FBI in the past. When he did work for Fusion GPS, he did *not* know who his client was.
Read 56 tweets
Seth Abramson Profile picture
15 May
(THREAD) Most of us—for our own health—don't track the evolution of right-wing rhetoric. I do so because it's part of my beat. The most common words and phrases in public Trumpist rhetoric are these 5:

đź“› "WE THE PEOPLE"
đź“› "PATRIOTS"
đź“› "1776"
đź“› "FIGHT"
đź“› "RADICAL SOCIALISM"
1/ Noticed I say "right-wing" rather than "far-right." This is not a matter of fringe rhetoric anymore. This is GOP rhetoric. This is what you'll hear from House GOP leadership every bit as much as paramilitary extremists and white nationalists. Their rhetoric has been conjoined.
2/ Many years ago, I went on a vacation to China with my girlfriend and a good friend. One of the things I was struck by is how frequently the Communist Party uses the word "people" in its public rhetoric. The GOP *also* uses that word as propaganda, but in a very different way.
Read 51 tweets

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