Humans are capable of incredible evil and can cause untold harm onto each other.
We don't get to exclude humans who commit great evil from humanity just because it is convenient and makes us feel better, because the second we do that we do that we lose the ability to be able to discern that we, ourselves, are capable of these things, as well.
In the wrong scenario, in the wrong mindset, with the wrong cultural conditions, we could be the ones committing that evil.
We must always act as a check on ourselves and each other.
Republicans deliberately use coded language to trick people to vote for them and radicalize their group. Many don't even realize they're radicalized or what they're saying is even racist. This is why they think the Left is "over reacting" because the either know they're using coded language and don't care, or they don't know anything at all.
now that trump has tiktok, twitter, facebook and insta in his pocket, get ready for a massive wave of internet censorship. one of trump's greatest weapons has always been misinformation; it's going to become harder and harder to spread facts and criticism going forward. posts that aren't made invisible will be magically ignored by the algorithm. dissidents will have their accounts deleted and voices erased.
this is a suppression tactic. this is another stage of fascism.
This definitely seems like a good time to pull these out
Learn how to evaluate news sources, identify unreliable sources, misinformation, and conspiracy theories
The definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.
I'll also provide some of my advice:
Don't react immediately. Any form of ragebait or misinformation thrives on gut reactions. Instead, analyze the material. Do research. Think about what you want to say. Or you can not say anything at all. That is also a valid option.
If someone is attacking you online, do not fight back. Block them. If they keep coming back, starve them by giving them nothing to feed on, or report them. If they doxx you or do something that threatens your privacy, report it here and here.
Screenshot and record often. Keep circulating the tapes.
Never, under any circumstances, share personal information on the internet. You might as well go faceless.
If anyone has any other pages that talk about fact checking and how to fact check social media posts, do let me know.
FRIENDS IN AMERICA: DO NOT SIGN UP FOR ANY LGBTQIA+ STUDIES OR SURVEYS. chances are they’re fake/being monitored and your real/legal name will be recorded
Is there a source for this? Why would the VA be interested in non-veterans? Also it's the government, they already know your legal name, especially if they're sending letters to your address
because they're run by the Department of Veteran's Affairs
when it comes to surveys they are sometimes used to improve things like policy and access to resources but if you don't want to fill them out that's fine too. but if you're LGBT and a veteran the government already knows. this isn't going to build some national registry of LGBT people, and certainly not of LGBT civilians
Yeah the VA only deals with Veterans. These surveys are only being sent to veterans. The VA ALREADY KNOWS many vets sexual orientations because their MANDATE is to serve all demographics of veteran!
Like yes I would ALWAYS advise being cautious with disclosing information like this, but also one random tumblr post that's a screenshot of a threads post is not exactly reliable
Hey so apparently the Trump administration is trying to include Natives in his unconstitutional birthright citizenship end order. They haven't been non citizens since 1924. He trying to fucking reverse the Snyder Act.
A lot, if not all, of his plans impact natives in some way. Remember to keep advocating for native rights.
Here is an article from the Associated Press that discusses this. Another from Yahoo! News.
It's always good to remember that these kind of executive orders will have absolute mountains to climb.
On top of it how are they going to define a Native? Some tribes do blood quantum, and some people aren't even enrolled in their tribe.
On top of it, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs there are currently 574 federally recognized tribes. That's so many people, not to mention according to this article from the Muwekma Ohlone tribe (not my tribe), over 400 *not* federally recognized tribes. How would they go about sorting out citizenship for those people? Would they just deal with registered members?
Would my grandmother be Native enough to count but not me?
I don't normally talk lots of politics on here but these assholes are throwing everything at everyone all at once to keep us scared and worried. Keep your eyes open, but not so open you get blinded by the sun.
And yes, they absolutely want to overwhelm us. Which is why it's so important that we continue to fight like we always have, and keep pushing for our rights and our friends' rights no matter what. Keep advocating for native rights, for migrant rights, for POC rights, for LGBTQ rights, and for disabled rights. Leave no one behind.
“BREAKING: A constitutional amendment has been filed allowing President Trump to seek a 3rd term in office.
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than three times, nor be elected to any additional term after being elected to two consecutive terms, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."
It was filed by Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN).
Don’t let this slip by unnoticed. This is not just “one extra term”, it’s a warning shot. It’s a red flag. It’s an omen.
They are slowly turning up the heat in the pan. Do not be the frog who sits denying it’s getting hotter.
One extra term will become two, two will become three, and three will eventually give way to lifelong reign of each president.
Fight. Fight for God’s sake.
Contact your local representative of congress. Convince them we do not want this.
We are going to end up in a dictatorship.
@ikiyou
Please help spread this. I don’t usually get political and I don’t usually ask for assistance but this is important and you have more reach.
Hey, so I don’t like posting about politics on here, not one bit. This is not a political blog. But this is one of the very rare times I will. It’s too important. That TikTok stunt? It was distracting us from this:
Be diligent. Everything outlandish 45 does is to distract us from shit like this. DO NOT fall for it.
They are trying to wear you out, and they own most major social media now, along with many major media outlets. The disinformation machine is cranking along. You are going to have to slow the fuck down and read things before you help them wear out other people, too.
So you just saw a post about a real scary bill, hunh? Republicans want to make it a capital offense to pet dogs and repeal The Sky Is Blue Act of 1793, declaring the new official color of the sky to be squant? Damn, that sounds scary.
Let's go look up this fictitious "Make The Sky Squant Again Act" on GovTracker* & on the official legislative tracker on congress.gov!
Tracking legislation and votes in the United States Congress.
U.S. Congress legislation, Congressional Record debates, Members of Congress, legislative process educational resources presented by the Lib
Well, let's see... GovTracker estimates it has a 1% chance of even getting out of committee and a 0% chance of being enacted, while congress.gov says this bill has 2 cosponsors who have been in the House and combined total of less than a month. The bill doesn't have any actual text, and it was referred to 5 different committees.
That fictitious bill and a hundred others like it are quite literally not worth your time, and more than that, continuing to wring your hands about it and tell other people about the scary scary squant sky bill only does their work for them. It scares people, it makes them spend time and energy on it, and it wears them out. It is a legislative Gish Gallop, meant to throw so many things at people that we can't keep up.
Even calling or messaging your Rep in this case means their staffer has to waste time responding to you and letting you know that Representative Buttzonheads definitely won't support making petting dogs a capital offense, a thing that will never, ever happen regardless.
Staying engaged in this environment is going to require protecting your heart and protecting your energy, yes, but also protecting the energy of others. This is why WWII propaganda posters also included ones taking people to task for spreading panicky rumors and undermining morale.
Do you know why most observant Jews don't eat chicken and dairy together, even though the ban is on red meat and dairy together bc you're not supposed to cook the calf in the milk of its mother?** It's not because we think that chicken might secretly lactate or Just Because. It's because the rabbis decided that if I'm sitting out in public and eating turkey and cheese together, someone might glance at the turkey and mistake it for red meat and think, "oh, well, I know that Spider is a good Jew, there must have been a change, or maybe I can just justify it to myself that if Spider does it, it must be permissible to bend the rules just that much." And I would then be accidentally leading my fellow Jew astray. We are responsible for being even more careful for the sake of others than we are for ourselves.
It's the same principle here. We need to really be careful about the information we are spreading and check things past reading a news site. Is it true? Is it relevant? Is it meaningful? Is the news site one I recognize? Can I find meaningful independent corroboration on another site, which is to say, if I find an article about it on a second site, is it just quoting or rephrasing this site?
Yeah, that is a lot. But that's how we keep them from using us to lead our fellows astray.
*GovTracker is an independent site. They explain their methodology in their About section.
**I cannot say enough how I am not at this time interested in going on a Jewish Side Quest About Dietary Laws on this post. Usually, I love it, but hold off this time, please, y'all. Let's stay on target this once.
I'm pretty sure that's the main reason for most of Trump's Executive Orders on day 1. A lot of them are unenforceable, others are blatantly illegal or even unconstitutional, but people will be distracted in the courts trying to shut them down, and it's splitting everyone's focus away from the few that are genuinely dangerous. Splitting people's focus is the one thing that Trump is genuinely good at, distracting the public while the Republicans are doing more subtle awful things in the background.
Corporations and stuff are also taking advantage where they can of "complying early" because they hate regulations.
Use the tracker.
Take notes of who's claiming the nothingburgers are already legal. They are doing illegal shit, actually, until Actual Law is passed, and as the trackers show, much won't be for ages if ever.
Take note of the genuinely hazardous shit that's got more than an ice sculptures chance at the equator at becoming actual law.
Try not to panic. Harder to manage shit mid panic.
Hi. Things are bleak, I know that. I know that we paid for Trump's last term with blood and it is likely the price will be blood again.
But listen to me. LISTEN.
You do not have to force yourself to witness horrors as an act of activism. It is not a form of activism. You can put your phone down, you can block that horrific video. We cannot win if you cannot fight and you will not be able to fight if you are hopeless.
Do not let them guilt you into this. People who are exhausted are easier to walk over. Take care of yourself, find community where you find joy.
rolling stone: every person in a position of power in the US collaborated together to do this to you. the media sold you out for profit and aided in the indoctrination of millions to right-wing xenophobia via instilling a fake crime panic. Biden sold you out by putting his own selfish ambitions before the wellbeing of 330~ million citizens by running for a 2nd term and failing to undo any of the cruelty and pain done to people who were hurt under Trump and in some cases making the pain worse. the rest of the Democratic party sold you out by falling in line, normalizing Trumps rhetoric and becoming Republican Lite. Federal law enforcement sold you out via Merrick Garland doing absolutely positively nothing to prosecute right-wing extremism, falsely adding to the Trump narrative that it wasn't all that serious. and most of all, corporations sold you out as they always do, by working together to falsely inflate prices over the last 4 years, causing the economy to appear far worse to the (yet again) unwitting public who have been totally devastated and in some cases made homeless. this also dooms the Democrats on the economy for the foreseeable future. hold these institutions accountable.
you, a person completely immune to being radicalized through propaganda: the american people really dropped the ball here
LGBT people, I need you to know that any “pedophile execution bill” passed in the US is meant to put you, personally, to death. When the right says “groomer,” they’re talking about you. When they say “predator,” they’re talking about you. When they say “pedophile,” they’re talking about you. Any actual child sex abusers who are convicted and executed would be, to them, a happy accident, a cherry on top of a law that’s meant to exterminate anyone who deviates from the cisgender, heterosexual norm.
I know some of you social media activists think this is a win "yayy the groomers are getting what they deserve" but no, it's not about pedophiles, it's about you and/or your queer friends.
Haven't you noticed that the conservatives have been increasingly calling us "pedophiles" and "groomers" for years now? They want to end us.
They're not interested in actual pedophiles. Of course not. That would mean executing their own friends, like, possibly, Donald Trump.
Also, death penalty is a human rights violation.
No one deserves it. USA is violating the human rights. It's disgusting and horrifying.
Conservatives support child abuse in a lot of different ways, as long as it's done by people they consider to be the right people. They don't intend to stop that. They intend to go after people they consider to be the wrong people with any tools they can get their hands on. Calling queer and gender-non-conforming people pedophiles is one of those tools _because people fall for it_.
There's a lot of good comments and tags in the notes, but this one is very important, I feel like it deserves some emphasis.
Part of how authoritarianism works is telling you that you can't stop it. And you can't stop it by yourself. But it wants to stop the train of thought there and let you fall into despair.
You need to remember the next part: you don't have to stop it by yourself.
You're not alone. Take care of your community and let your community take care of you. Supporting each other is so vital.
