Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
Founder: @DiscoverFlux. Podcasting: @TheoryChange, @doomscrollshow, @STJH_pod Subscribe: https://t.co/2ecVthYpiJ
Chris Bugbee Profile picture eDo Profile picture Adam Smithee Profile picture Daniel O'Donnell Profile picture CandaceTX⁷🐨🌻 Profile picture 34 subscribed
Mar 11 15 tweets 4 min read
🧵 Everyone's still talking about how weird Katie Britt sounded last week. It's even more interesting once you realize that she doesn't normally talk in that breathy and melodramatic voice.

That she chose to speak that way is an interesting story... This thread is a summary of my latest @TheoryChange episode. I left the link out in the previous post since the doofus authoritarian who owns this site downranks posts with links to external sites.

You can continue here or click through: plus.flux.community/p/katie-britt-…
Mar 5 21 tweets 4 min read
🧵 Talking to Trump super fans about politics is often a surreal experience. And that's because they literally do not understand what you are talking about.

Why is that? Because Trump devotees actually believe that truth derives from authority rather than reality... This thread is a summary of my latest @DiscoverFlux piece, which you can find here. I am not including the link because a certain authoritarian billionaire deliberately downranks links in posts.

You can continue here or click through: plus.flux.community/p/trump-suppor…
Feb 5 16 tweets 6 min read
🧵 Disinformation is everywhere, especially because of right-wing politicians.

But all of the tactics at use in the internet age have a history, one that begins with Big Tobacco and continues straight through to climate change.

Can learning the history provide hope? This thread is a summary of the latest @TheoryChange episode, a discussion with Salon climate change writer @MatthewRozsa.

You can get the full episode on YouTube:

Apple Podcasts:

Spotify:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tod…
open.spotify.com/episode/06pqah…
Jan 23 10 tweets 3 min read
🧵 I know everyone is thinking about New Hampshire right now, but can I get your attention on something that's going to be key in the 2024 general election?

Republicans have given up on winning over Gen Z and Gen Alpha and so instead they've decided to gaslight them to hell... Younger people historically don't vote in high numbers, but due to the terrible political environment created by Boomers and Silents, Generation Z and Alpha are starting to vote in self-defense.

Right wing activists have responded by flooding the web with "post left" nihilism.
Jan 5 18 tweets 5 min read
🧵 A lot of people have been mystified by the sudden and incredible attacks Claudine Gay faced which led to her downfall.

As a former right-wing media entrepreneur who was part of the anti-Dan Rather blogger corps, there are a few things I think you should know... Just for reference, the clip in the previous post is from the latest @STJH_pod episode. You can get the full version of it here:

(I have to structure the thread this way given a certain anti-free speech billionaire's unwritten rules.)plus.flux.community/p/the-attacks-…
Dec 20, 2023 16 tweets 4 min read
🧵 Progressives have rightfully focused on Republican 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 techniques. But they've lost sight of another huge problem: 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Republicans broke government, but Joe Biden & Democrats were blamed for it... This is a great piece from @MaraGay about how some black voters in rural Georgia feel like their problems have been ignored by Biden/Dems.

Unfortunately, many of the situations the voters rightfully bemoan are caused by national or statewide Republicans. nytimes.com/2023/12/19/opi…
Oct 25, 2023 20 tweets 6 min read
🧵 Rep. Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, just became the Speaker of the House. He’ll be the most inexperienced speaker in American history. But he’ll also be the most far-right one in a long time as well.

He's an extremist in a tweed suit. Here's how... Image The most crucial thing to understand about Mike Johnson is that he's a lifer in an hugely wealthy far-right Christian activist sector dedicated solely to weaponize govt against people who disagree.

Johnson began his career working for the radical Christian supremacist group ADF.
Sep 10, 2023 13 tweets 6 min read
🧵So I finally got some time over the weekend to start watching the infamous "Leo & Layla's History Adventures" made by PragerU.

They're Republican propaganda, but they're also religious brainwashing, telling kids that obvious mythical Bible figures like Esther & David existed.


Image
Image
Image
Image
Obviously, people are entitled to believe or teach their kids that mythical figures like Joseph or Moses were real, but under the law, such beliefs need to be consigned to private religious worship.

These videos are prima facie violations of the establishment of religion.
Image
Image
Aug 7, 2023 16 tweets 5 min read
🧵We live in dangerous times principally because rapacious oligarchs have weaponized ignorance for political gain.

John Stuart Mill nailed it more than 150 years ago that stupidity is inherently right wing. Trump & the GOP have rebirthed the "Satanic Panic" to get votes. Image In the latest @TheoryChange episode, @JMillzDC, @OliviaLittle, and I discuss in great detail how the very highest levels of right-wing media are on a daily basis feeding QAnon lies about demons controlling Democrats and trans people to millions of people. theoryofchange.flux.community/p/theory-of-ch…
Aug 5, 2023 16 tweets 4 min read
🧵The tweet below is an absolute self-humiliation by Seth Mandel, editor of the Washington Examiner.

He's pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as an "expert" in conservative politics and he's never heard of someone who is far more (in)famous than his publication. Image I used to be part of this dilletante conservative intellectual class until I realized that while my colleagues and I fashioned ourselves as thought leaders for the right, what we really were was just puppets for decrepit, out-of-touch oligarchs.
Jun 20, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
Mini-thread: When Republicans speak of a "weaponized" DOJ or a "two-tiered system of justice," they are really describing what they want to create and what already exists--in their favor.

The record shows that Republicans like Donald Trump & Roger Stone get favorable treatment. As @ryanjreilly notes, Hunter Biden's gun possession crime is rarely prosecuted.
Jun 19, 2023 17 tweets 5 min read
🧵 American politics is severely distorted by an extremist form of reactionary Christianity which originated in the former Confederacy.

And yet this fact is almost never mentioned by mainstream media journalists, even when they are covering the events these people host. 🧵 This failure to tell the full truth originates in the "both sides" fallacy of MSM reporting, but how it manifests here is especially dangerous to democracy and for people who get sucked into this reactionary culture.
Jun 16, 2023 19 tweets 6 min read
Thread: The first rule in GOP politics is that you should never believe right-wing media. Donald Trump forgot this & it's why he could spend life in prison.

In the past, Trump didn't believe rw media. But now he's taking advice from Tom Fitton. flux.community/matthew-sheffi… There are basically three groups in Republican politics: 1) The (mostly ignorant) voters.
2) The activists & propagandists. They promote Republican pols, attack Dems, and motivate the voters. True believers.
3) The inner circle. These people are totally cynical operators.
Jun 8, 2023 14 tweets 6 min read
Part Robertson, the antisemitic Christian supremacist who was one of the founders of the religious right, has died. He was 93.

He never got to become the Republican presidential nominee, but his vision for the party completely triumphed.

apnews.com/article/pat-ro… Regarding his antisemitism, see this piece on Robertson and "New World Order" conspiracism middlebury.edu/institute/acad…
Jun 5, 2023 20 tweets 8 min read
Thread: How the "fanfiction left" creates a politics of failure while taking home millions from the far right.

This is a summary of the latest @TheoryChange episode featuring David Masciotra.

Continue here, or click through to watch, read, or listen: theoryofchange.flux.community/p/theory-of-ch… As most people know, the right has evolved into a minoritarian politics that loves failure and hates the public.

But a similar thing is happening in some quarters of the political left. Social media has enabled the rise of what Masciotra calls the "fanfiction left."
May 26, 2023 17 tweets 3 min read
1) "Reactionary extremism" is the best term to describe the far-right attitudes that keep the Republican party in business, but a second-best term for them is "Confederate Christianity."

There are other useful terms for this, but I think they exclude too much... 2) Standard-issue conservative Christianity has nothing to do with the Confederacy per se, what we are dealing with presently is obsessed with the Confederacy, and it's why you see such obsessions over obscure monuments to traitors.

Normal conservatism shouldn't care about them.
Apr 18, 2023 15 tweets 5 min read
🧵 Dominion and Fox have settled, we'll see what the details are shortly, but undoubtedly, there will be apologies, hopefully at least one on every Fox program for multiple months.

Let's review what we've learned in the meantime... 1) The lawsuit has proven that Fox's critics were right from the beginning about what it was and is.

Fox is not news. It's a political propaganda operation whose purpose is to manipulate and monetize fundamentalist Christians and uneducated people.
Apr 16, 2023 14 tweets 5 min read
Thread: The U.S. is stuck in a doom-loop with a shrinking minority of far-right activists tearing down democracy.

But abstract warnings of "norms" or "democracy at risk" won't work.

In the latest @TheoryChange, I talk with @Tim_Shenk about what can. flux.community/matthew-sheffi… Our conversation is centered around Tim's important new book, "Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy."

Check it out here: us.macmillan.com/books/97803741…
Apr 4, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
Trump's face right before entering the courtroom to hear the charges against him. #TrumpArraignment Image Trump as he listens to the proceedings against him. #TrumpArraignment Image
Mar 31, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
1/x. Alvin Bragg working to preserve the rule of law by indicting Trump is what every single DC Republican has been yearning for secretly for the past 5 years.

They "hate him passionately" as Tucker Carlson put it. But they are almost uniformly too cowardly to stand up. Republican elites are in the exact same position they were in following the Capitol Putsch.

"The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us," Mitch McConnell was reported to have told associates at the time.
Mar 30, 2023 4 tweets 3 min read
Far right media figures have once again put forward a 4chan hoax trying to frame trans people as if it were real.

The image circulating of supposed "trans day of vengeance" is literally a reworded racist 4chan meme. This has happened before in 2020 with another 4chan fake.