Thread by @equalityAlec

THREAD. One of the biggest political scandals of our time is coming to a head today. Democratic leaders just announced they will vote with the far-right to overturn a democratically passed DC law. The story is important, and full of weird lies.

Background: DC passed modest changes to modernize its criminal code and promote safety. Changes would still leave DC an outlier across the world in severity of sentences, more than any country. DC cages people more than any state, and Black people 19 times rate of white people.

It is a scientific consensus that more human caging makes people less safe. It literally reduces total U.S. life expectancy by 2 years *for every one of us.* If more caging made us safe, U.S. would be safest place in world. It's not--U.S. is violent.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1454486985943535624

Moreover, data shows that crime rates in DC are at historic lows. Despite daily fearmongering news stories, crime in DC hasn't been lower in at least 40 years, and likely longer. The curation of anecdote in the media has created unhinged misinformation.

https://twitter.com/davidminpdx/status/1632814326657568771

In this context, right-wingers (and now Biden and Schumer) have seized on modest reductions in maximum authorized sentences for carjacking. This is total nonsense, and actually based on a huge lie: carjacking sentences won't go down in practice! slate.com/news-and-polit…

Today, we learned that Schumer (and many Democratic senators) will join Biden in an inexplicable, shameful, historic push to overturn the will of DC voters, who have no political representation in the Senate, all based on right-wing lies.

This followed relentless and absolutely bonkers levels of misinformation and outright lying in the establishment DC media:

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1633096328258494465

Thus, all of this DC criminal code debate is based on three crucial lies: 1) lies about what the new code does, 2) lies about crime rates, 3) and lies about longer sentences reducing violent crime.

Here's the crucial point: I have been studying the rise of fascism around the world and this kind of adopting of misinformation and appeasement of fascists is how fascism comes to power.

Those who actually care about safety and who devote our lives to it--as opposed to pundits pushing more human caging in the greatest caging bureaucracy in history--know that the evidence shows that safety results from investment in things like health, housing, education, etc.

And these material improvements are popular politics for Democrats! But when they play into Republican lies and adopt their logic, they will always lose because if people are afraid in this way, they will always choose the genuine autocrat over the weak, unprincipled pretender.

Fascism is never beaten by accepting its lies and appeasing its zealots. That only makes them stronger, as history has sadly taught us. Pathetic, and historic haplessness from Democrats .

The political significance of this development is enormous, not just for DC statehood. Biden's move--and support of Dem establishment--is attempt to signal end of contemporary "criminal justice reform" moment. Both parties now have unhinged state repression as their strategy.

Responses like this from Dems are common. Some people are incapable of processing critique of Dems. No one is saying there is "no difference" btw liberals and fascists. And many Democrats have difficulty understanding how boosting police is devastating for reproductive rights.