It’s clear that if the Holocaust happened today in America huge swaths of MAGA would describe it as “based,” say “this is what we voted for,” and do the “oh are you gonna cry, lib?” routine. There’s zero reason their gleeful celebration of brutal deportations wouldn’t extend to actual extermination. The psychological mechanism is identical: they tell themselves morals are for suckers and empathy is for losers, so immortality and cruelty become a proactive good.

The craziest thing that is actually true is that a relatively small group of very literal Nazis has completely seized control of the US government They have accomplished by building a tight-knit community in the dark corners of the internet, then establishing a lot of influence over the inner circle of MAGA, especially Musk and Vance

"I wonder what this relatively small account that Elon Musk follows is?"

"Oh I see, it just posts porn and Nazism only."


It's not subtle. This account tweets and retweets constantly about things like "not wanting to hear retarded blacks and their retarded opinions," the need to "make America blonde again," how America should be a "white nation," and celebrates Trump as the second coming of Hitler.

People are delusional about what happens if Musk and Trump ignore the law, the Constitution, and court orders. Everyone is acting like this is a standoff over USAID and a few other programs, and then we'll go back to politics as normal. But THERE CAN BE NO POLITICS AS NORMAL IF THERE IS NO LAW. Musk can cut anything. He can eliminate any part of the government. He can punish anyone. Who could stop him? Congress will be pointless theater. Why do laws matter if they can be ignored?

You need to take a step back, take stock of what's happening. Trump took office and abruptly gave the richest guy on earth free rein to unmake the US government without any White House oversight or coordination. That guy has been publicly radicalized into an increasingly open white supremacist and conspiracy theorist.

DOGE is, in the truest sense, a rogue agency. The White House has admitted it doesn't really know what DOGE is doing, it's commandeering critical systems, it's resourced by an independent oligarch, it's tearing chunks out of the government. It's a rogue actor in US government DOGE is serving an incoherent agenda all its own. That agenda is a mix of its owner's business interests, his far-right conspiratorial politics, his need to impress his horde of Twitter Nazis, and his arrogant billionaire cluelessness about how anything works.

Please note: this description of DOGE is a description of an outside agent attacking the US. It more closely resembles how you’d describe a virus attacking an immune system, or an army attacking a country, than intra-governmental push and pull.

Musk is an invader.

https://twitter.com/jeremykonyndyk/status/1886917463129956804

Musk has leveraged his connection to Trump, Trump’s constitutional cluelessness and neglect, and his own endless wealth to prop up a group that is operating essentially independently of US law. That group is now conducting a blitzkrieg assault against the US government.

This is Othman. Othman is a Nazi who talks about things like the JQ, or "Jewish Question."

Othman also seems to work in the White House. He claims to be at the Executive Office of the President.

I don't know Othman's exact identity yet, but we've got some clues!


Othman likes to fill his days tweeting about far-right fixations like race, the "JQ" and "Aryanism." He likes to tweet bizarre and threatening things about exacting revenge on Trump's enemies.

The single most galvanizing thing for public opinion is a sense of CURRENT, ONGOING crisis - the idea that something terrible is going down, right now, as we speak. 9/11, the 2008 crisis, Afghanistan withdrawal, early COVID, George Floyd, 1/6 - all shifted the public overnight. Crisis activates people emotionally, it compels attention through fear and uncertainty, it draws people in, it gets everyone in a social network talking about a single thing.

The important thing you need to realize, if you're a Democrat or media person talking about Trump, is that he is trying to CHANGE a bunch of fundamental rules about how America works. He is trying to dramatically alter our system of government to one more like Russia or China. For example, it's not that Trump has a different interpretation of the 14th Amendment and we're going to find out which one is correct. Instead, we are currently a country with birthright citizenship, and he is claiming he can strip it away by fiat.

DEMOCRATS:

I know many of you believe, probably accurately, that the worst thing you can do in the eyes of the American voter is be seen as an extreme, disruptive radical.

Another bad thing is to reveal your extreme agenda AFTER being elected.

See where I'm going with this? Trump spent his campaign explicitly denying his extreme agenda, because it was exceptionally unpopular. People HATED Project 2025. They HATED his anti-abortion radicalism. They HATED his authoritarian impulses. They wanted him to get in office, roll it back to 2019, and stop.

What Trump is attempting as we speak is a radical far-right revolution, where violent supporters of the far right are turned out of prison, civil rights laws are abolished, we send troops to neighboring countries to establish a permanent state of war and destroy our alliances They are trying to destroy the United States of America and replace it with something that shares our name and flag but isn’t a democracy, where laws don’t apply to the president or his ultra-wealthy cronies, and the Constitution is meaningless

@Ollisonesque @tracewoodgrains @MyDogMonkey The difference is that Trace is absolutely committed as positioning himself as the thoughtful moderate between two extremes, so he is required to describe my bog-standard political recommendation to attack the opposing party as some kind of crime against Truth and Honesty @Ollisonesque @tracewoodgrains @MyDogMonkey Trace, however, is so self-congratulatory about taking the words of both sides seriously and thoughtfully that he has become almost impossibly gullible. He does not recognize that many, many, many loud voices on the right are acting in obvious bad faith

HERE'S A SUGGESTION FOR JOURNALISTS

Rather than focusing on the (ultimately unknowable) question of whether Musk's twice-over salute was an intention sieg heil, focus on WHY people are so suspicious of Musk: his endless interaction with open Nazis on here and in politics.

https://twitter.com/KahliefAdams/status/1881432971976339916

We will never know what was in Musk's heart at this moment.

What we do know, however, is that he constantly uses this site to talk to people that endorse Hitler, deny the Holocaust, promote white supremacy, and promote Nazism. He has unbanned hundreds of thousands of them.

The reason people fall into MAGA so quickly is that it's not a process of BECOMING something, but of simply GIVING UP. Giving up resistance, giving up critical thought. Much easier to go along with it, say the words, agree that the lies are true. Easier than standing firm. The more people around you are MAGA, the more strenuous the process of resisting it becomes, and the greater the relief of simply giving up and going along. You don't have to struggle anymore! No need to think! MAGA will simply tell you what to believe, and you'll agree.

Basically my view is this: right now, the vast majority of voters are getting either some or all of their political information from a giant unregulated ambient media ecosystem, which only really shows them ideas that will excite or anger them, largely free of any fact-checking In this ecosystem people tend to gravitate towards ideas that reaffirm their existing prejudices and biases.

The moment I heard that Puerto Rico line, I messaged some Dem friends and said "This is gonna be catastrophic." And right on cue, Trump's fascist rally is ballooning into a full-blown campaign crisis. The reason why is that it's a perfect storm:


-shocking racism that hasn't been on a US political stage in 100 years
-basically every electorally important group was a target
-so bad that the GOP actually ran for cover, creating permission for press to chase the story
-perfectly validated weeks of Dem attacks on Trump

My working theory for What’s Gone Wrong is that the plethora of media sources have enabled extremist ideologies - not by LIMITING people’s exposure to ideas, but by INCREASING it. This enables people to select whichever narrative supports their inner emotional universe best. Ultimately most of these extreme ideologies are about intellectual laziness and indulgence - substituting prejudice and simplicity and emotion for the hard work of thinking through complicated problems, confronting uncertainty, and developing a consistent set of beliefs.

It's insane that the main policy proposal of one major-party candidate is "Carry out the largest domestic purge in history by a factor of twenty, and no, I won't be telling you exactly what groups will be removed" and the media is like "Cool! What's your plan for health care?" If Trump follows through on his plan to remove 20 million people (again, he won't say who, because there aren't even 20 million undocumented immigrants in this country) that means one in every 15 Americans will be disappeared. Every workplace, every classroom, every street

the structure of media has changed, and it's changed what kinds of political messaging successfully reaches and persuades people, and democrats are the ones that have been getting left behind HOW HAS THE STRUCTURE OF MEDIA CHANGED?

primarily, it's vastly more fragmented. instead of large centralized outlets, media consumption is fragmented across an incredibly wide range of TV, print, online, and social media outlets

One thing the Harris campaign seems to understand, explicitly or implicitly, is that you should perform the emotions you want the audience to feel, not tell them how to feel. Don’t tell them to be mad at Trump - actually be angry at him. Don’t tell them he’s too old - mock him. Democrats are really bad about this in the often and I think it’s been terrible for them. People don’t want to be informed, they want to join in. This is why the right’s bullying is so effective - it models an interaction and encourages people to join.