In the first part of the video, this doesn't seem revelatory - amounting to "it's the racists, stupid".

But it goes into a lot more detail after that, and there's a lot to unpack.
I would in particular say that how they're racist matters. Knowing it's the Great Replacement theory that is driving these people points for me to what sort of public education efforts can reach them.

The Great Replacement theory is pure zero sum game. "They win I lose."
I've written before about how zero sum game theories are generally the roadblock for lots of progressive ideas.

The good news is that this is solvable. If it wasn't, women would NEVER have gotten the right to vote in this country.
The zero sum game view of giving women the vote is, men will have less power. And men were the only voters at the time. It's a tough bootstrapping problem. So how do you get past it?

By focusing on the positive sum game:
America will be stronger if it includes women too.
So this is where we begin to undermine the Great Replacement:
America is strongest when all Americans are truly equal.
(Conversely America is weakened by the racial battles.)

And from another angle, we remind people the Great Replacement theory is political fear-mongering.
The other really interesting piece in the video is that the majority of insurrectionists were politically isolated, geographically. That Trumpists stranded in a sea of blue were far more likely to be insurrectionists than Trumpists who live among their peeps.
Interesting, because it really hints that the Internet is playing a critical role here that isn't happening in real communities. And this makes sense. Real human interaction isn't nearly as callous as online interaction.
And it also points a way forward, though perhaps more vaguely:
• Better social media structures for moderation.
• more law enforcement monitoring of online white supremacist communities
• paradoxically, encouraging in-person meet-ups for isolated Trumpists.
Each of these options is problematic in its own way, but at least it's a place to start.
There's also mention in the video about the fact that of the militia group members, fully a third are ex-military. At first this seems alarming, but this is likely just a self-selection issue. Ex-military are going to naturally gravitate towards belong to something structured.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Thomas A. Fine 🇺🇸

Thomas A. Fine 🇺🇸 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @thomasafine

27 May
Parnas' arrest certainly had the effect of shutting up Trump and allies, but I have a hard time believing it was intentional, considering the massive propaganda effort that was all but demolished with their arrest.
I could more easily believe that Barr worked to keep others from being arrested and/or investigated, and warned them off of traveling with Fruman and Parnas, so that they wouldn't be nearby when FruPar were arrested.
In which case, a more accurate description would be that Barr couldn't prevent their arrest, and so arranged to limit the collateral damage as much as possible. Part of that WOULD mean shutting down the propaganda effort.
Read 4 tweets
27 May
Working on some graphics.
Sadly it seems like 1/6 really didn't have the impact on our culture it should have. If you do an image search on 1/6 you don't get single image of the insurrection in the first screen.
Read 4 tweets
27 May
There's some scientific arguments for lab origins of COVID-19 that are frankly well outside of my expertise and I can't comment on them.

But there IS a statistical component to their arguments that some are making, and that I CAN comment on.
Statistics is one of the trickiest fields of math, because it has strong interplay between the results you get, and how you state the problem. It's easy to create what seems to be some sort of statistical paradox or weirdness, but it's usually in problem misstatement.
And so there's an argument that says (more or less):

"the mutations to this virus are exactly and precisely what a lab would do to make this non-human virus very dangerous for humans."
Read 9 tweets
25 May
Merrick Garland had two options in front of him. Two possible questions to pursue:

1. In a perfect world, how should the DOJ interact with legal requests regarding their internal processes?

2. In this real piece of shit of a world, what the fuck should be done about Barr?
Merrick Garland chose to answer question one, and ignore question two.

This is commendable. And disastrous.
A few days ago I tweeted about the need to contact our members of Congress to demand Congressional investigations into DOJ problems and/or demand an IG investigation at the DOJ.
Read 6 tweets
4 Mar
You know what would be awesome? If @SIRIUSXM dedicated a few channels solely to exploring this material.
Here's Bing Crosby singing with Duke Ellington in 1932.
archive.org/details/78_st-…
Read 6 tweets
4 Mar
I didn't really get how big the SpaceX Starship is until seeing SN11 being assembled.
And the fact that they're building these things so quickly underscores the fact that they basically expect them to blow up at this point. These are expendable test vehicles. When SN9 crashed, SN10 was already on the launch pad. SN11 is already assembled.
It was a super smart decision to make these things out of stainless steel. Seemed crazy at first. But if they can build these things super cheap, then they can afford lots more testing.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(