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Elon Musk is just the latest billionaire to exert tremendous influence over U.S. politics. When he says he supports Neo-Nazis, take him at his word.

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[–] [email protected] 189 points 3 months ago (2 children)

The Most Powerful Man in America is a Nazi ~~Sympathizer~~

Fixed it for you

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Came here to fix the headline, glad someone beat me to it! Stop coddling and start calling people out for who they are. If it walks like a Nazi and quacks like a Nazi, it’s a Nazi

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But not in the ways that matter to them. Fascism was characterized by nationalizing private enterprises to transfer wealth and power from the government to the chosen elite. They want to privatize government enterprises to transfer wealth and power from the government to the chosen elite. Totally different, you see?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Nazi Germany privatized a lot of government services and industries from the Weimar Republic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Indeed, because the fucking Nazi bastards needed the industrialists to rebuild the German economy and more importantly, the war machine.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

And you don't know which of the two in the pic they're referring to without reading the article.

[–] [email protected] 127 points 3 months ago

His grandparents were Nazis. His parents intentionally moved to Apartheid South Africa where they ran illegal emerald mines. He's said he needs H1B visas because he wants to drastically overwork his "employees" and if they're not on H1B visas they'll leave. Is anyone at all surprised by this?

[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The only reason wealth makes someone powerful is what other people are willing to do for some of that wealth.

If everyone that wasn't a Nazi decided they won't do business with a Nazi, his wealth wouldn't mean anything.

For some reason lots of idiots keep using Twitter tho

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I dont even know anyone who uses it

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The Most Powerful Man in America is a Nazi Sympathizer

So is their newly elected president. What's new?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago

We're talking about the same person here, President Musk

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Which one are we talking about?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago

9 ppl sit at a table. comes a nazi and sits down with them. nobody stands up. bam:10 nazis sit at the table.

the american voter has already taken half of those seats.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wouldn't be the first time. But it ought to be the last.

Unfortunately people weren't convinced to get the fuck out and vote so. Y'know.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately people weren’t convinced to get the fuck out and vote so. Y’know

Neoliberals complaining about people not wanting to vote for neoliberals just always reminds me of "nice guys" upset women picked the bear.

You don't understand why they made that decision, and rather than try to understand why so that you could better yourself, you're gonna keep stomping your feet for years saying only an idiot would pick a bear.

Which is normally true.

Except the only option is you

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So while being marched to the gulag you're the guy that turns to the guy next to you and proudly proclaims "don't blame me, I voted for the bear". How bold

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

This the danger of treating every election like the last for the past 3 elections.

Neoliberals have failed to learn this lesson twice, because immediately after they're wrong they say there's nothing anyone can do.

They want to depress interest in politics to prevent voters from organizing.

They want us to all check out and stop paying attention so in three years they can say:

There's no time and all that matters is the letter by someone's name! Everyone has no choice but a bear or a nice guy!

But it's not. In a fair primary we could get so the choice is "decent human or bear" and go into the next election 100% confident people won't pick a bear.

Telling people how bad a bear is compared to you is what nice guys do.

Well adjusted humans would ask themselves why women view them as more dangerous than the bear.

Why won't you?

Edit:

And because it needs explicitly mentioned constantly to neoliberals, yes I held my nose.

The people who didn't aren't politically engaged right now. They were chased off by the shitty choice and no we have to win them back in time for 2028.

You're not helping to do that, your comments would just make them realize nothing's changed and stay away from politics.

Are you doing it intentionally or do you just not understand the consequences of your own actions?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Do YOU not understand how your nihilism and defeatism is deterring others from voting? I vote for the big fucking picture not the fine details. Would Kamala have been the best most left president ever? Probably not. Was she a better option at the time? Absolutely. Is the other option an existential threat to me and mine? Absolutely. If people can't understand THAT, then fuck them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

your nihilism and defeatism

What?!

You literally said we're being marched to a fucking gulag and I'm talking about how to best recoup non voters for 2028....

Like, why are you even trying to argue with me that Kamala was the right choice when I just said I held my nose and voted for her?

What do you not understand about this?

You're saying it's over, I'm saying we shouldnt stop fighting.

It's like Bizarro Superman where you keep saying everything backwards...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'm bored, so I feel like sharing this idea with somebody who might give some fucks: I've seen a lot of think pieces about why Democrats lost so badly in this past election. Somebody on Lemmy linked Adam Conover's video yesterday, and that was one of the better ones. Adam's thesis is that the decline of civil society institutions, like clubs and unions, have left the Democratic Party acting like a privately-owned business, rather than a membership organization. All of these analyses are good, but remind me of the parable about the three blind men describing an elephant. In my hubris, I think I have model which succinctly describes the elephant.

Most of the loyal Democrats, the "blue no matter who" people, and harm-mitigation people have a mental model which comes down to voters considering the facts and making a more-or-less rational decision based on how a candidate's policies would serve the voter's own needs. One can see this in the way that Democratic candidates are stuck in the mode of describing wonky policy details, seeming to assume that voters can extrapolate how those details would affect the individual voter's life. That's why we get exasperated outbursts of, "bUt he'S wOrSE!", from people like the commenter above. Yeah, undoubtedly, but that's not how the human mind works.

The model I prefer to use to understand humans is to see us as sensory processing machines, rather than rational minds. It works so much better at the population level. (Our logical frontal lobes are recent evolutionary developments on top of the ancient animal brain and nervous system, after all.) Our politics these days is all about fear. (Some of it well-founded, much of it not.) When people are in danger and afraid, our nervous systems enter the "fight, flight, or freeze" response state. Flight is off the table; few of us can afford to leave our homes for another country, and where would we go that's not also in the same situation? Where we wouldn't be the very immigrants that the local right-wing parties are promising to Fight? The right wing, with its strong-man bluster, is very explicitly offering Fight. That much should be pretty obvious, even if the details of their plans don't make logical sense. The Democrats, on the other hand, do not fight. They compromise before the fight begins (see: the Affordable Care Act), fall back on decorum and norms, or debate whether they need to capitulate a little or a lot after an electoral loss to peel away centrist Republicans next time. And as Adam Conover pointed out, they won't let us into the party to Fight for ourselves.

So what's left? Well, the big elephant in the room that all the pundits struggle to explain with their think-pieces is why Democratic voters stayed home this past election. There it is: Flight is impossible; Fight isn't on offer; so they Freeze. And what that looks like is disengaging from politics. Consider Yeats's famous phrase from The Second Coming, "the best lack all conviction". It's almost like the same thing happened over 100 years ago, as right-wing populism surged then. Doesn't that sound a lot like all the loyal Democratic voters today deciding to stop following the news, getting off of social media, and distancing themselves from politics? Why some of them (like the commenter above) seem to have turned into FAFO/accelerationists? Doesn't that explain why The Adjuster unleashed a torrent of rage from seemingly out of nowhere, by offering Fight to people stuck in Freeze? And why some polls showed that a candidate (Bernie Sanders) offering even a mild version of Fight could've won as a Democrat in 2016?

Democrats need to either learn to fight hard, or get out of the way so that the rest of us can.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

the Democratic Party acting like a privately-owned business, rather than a membership organization

The party is the DNC. When a Dem wins the vote for chair is mostly ceremonial. So it's a very small amount of people running it, especially since the "victory fund" means those few people control the flow of money to I think around 25 states?

The good news is it's not some huge organization like people assume. And it's easy to change.

2/2/25 is the chair election, since a Republican won the presidential it's a pretty fair election and there's a couple great front runners.

Most of the loyal Democrats, the “blue no matter who” people, and harm-mitigation people

They're liars. They ditched the party when Obama beat Hillary, but it didn't matter. It's a very small but vocal contingent of voters. And some of them are just copying party leadership and won't stay like that.

But if they do go to the Republican party and moderate them while we gain more from non voters?

That's a win/win. They can hang out with Liz Cheney and try to save the republican party, I'm all for it.

Our politics these days is all about fear.

Because it works on republicans and neoliberals blindly copy Republicans.

With ~~over 70%~~ 82.9% accuracy an untrained volunteer can predict the political affiliation thru nothing but a brain MRI. It's down by looking at the relative size of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala.

Large amygdala is higher adrenal reactions and more likely to be conservative, larger prefrontal cortex means more liberal.

Which is very impressive when you remember 1/3 roughly just stay out of it.

So what’s left?

Pandering to the part of the population with the larger pre-frontal cortex. Where things like critical thinking, long term planning, and empathy come from.

Which is essentially progressive policy.

But what direction the party takes really comes down to who becomes chair in February.

Most likely I expect to be 100% behind the DNC in a month and I'm fucking psyched. But I might be wrong

Edit:

I was wrong, that study I remembered was 82.9% accuracy, not 70%

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/study-predicts-political-beliefs-with-83-percent-accuracy-17536124/

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

In b4 missing baby.

I'm gonna be so fucking upset if I actually called this one...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What does "missing baby" mean?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

A horrible reference to a terrible tragedy surrounded in conspiracies featuring another rich and powerful Nazi.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Its weird these days. Parties that some call as nazi, are praising, and supporting putin, who is an ex-KGB agent, praising stalin, and trying to re-build the soviet union. Most of the "right wingers" now support putin, AFD too (and putin supports them too, to destabilise democracies).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's really only surprising if you somehow still believe that Putin is not a fascist dictator. You know, like Stalin.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Putin is not communist even a little bit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Correct. He's fascist.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When elon musk takes donald trump on a walk, where do you suppose he puts the leash?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Certainly not on his mushroom dick.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

if only Dem neolib leadership had taken "the most important election of our lifetimes" a tad more seriously..

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's their fault America voted for Hitler... Again.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

And you know what we do with nazis.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Elect them to the highest office.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

No no no wrong direction, America!!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Nothing, Americans would do nothing.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Spoiler alert: He's not the "most powerful man in America".

Here's an interesting discussion on Vox of what he might run up against in the new administration, specifically squaring off against Baby Goebbels.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

HE! Is the most powerful?!?!? I could beat him at arm wrestling with a horse tranquilizer iv straight to my throat! And I know atleast 2 POWERLIFTERS that could throw me around like a rag doll. All this dude has is technology he bought from other people and people he bought and paid for. Dudes as weak as a spy character in gaming, more duplicitous tho.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

There might be some confusion between "power" and "force".

His power could compel more force at you than you could muster towards him.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Hey, don't forget his pet, he's a Nazi too!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

All the MAGAts are Nazi sympathizers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Crazy how this keeps happening

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

His political power is premised in large part on the supposition that his following on X is authentic. Given his interests in AI, self-professed belief that Twitter, as it used to be called, is overrun by bots, and ownership and control of X, is there any reason to believe that this is true? How do we know that his human following hasn't declined precipitously since his hard-right turn and been steadily replaced by bot accounts?

I know, you'll say "but--richest man--can buy politicians" and I say yes, but only on credit which could get yanked away at any time, should his following be revealed as inauthentic. His net worth is premised mostly on stock shares in a company with serious problems (which he is doing nothing to solve) facing stiff competition in a troubled niche industry (the electric car market). He had to borrow huge amounts of money in order to buy Twitter because he does not have the cash and if he were to sell that much money in Tesla shares it would cause an investor panic and precipitous decline in his net worth.

And so now we can see why he likely had to buy Twitter; he probably had no choice: the company was likely about to expose or tamp down on his fraudulent and bot-driven following, which would create loss of investor confidence in his brands, which is the only thing propping them up given their weak fundamentals. The Emperor has no clothes, folks.

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