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   Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Feb-2025 01:55:36 JST Paul Cantrell

   • Cory Doctorow

   Here @pluralistic zeroes in on an essential insight I missed:

   The model for this administrative coup attempt, the playbook Musk and his pet president are trying to use, comes right out of private equity.

   And not just the playbook, but •the actual people•: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/113963596114874881

   • Embed this notice
     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Feb-2025 01:58:18 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     The Nazi and Mussolini comparisons are also apt and useful. These people really are actual fascists in any meaningful sense of the word.

     But if you want to anticipate and counter what’s coming, don’t think of Hitler annexing the Sudatenland. Think of how private equity buys up and then strip mines business after business, destroying the business and harming every human connected with it. As @pluralistic puts it, people with “an unerring instinct for making people miserable while making money.”

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     Marsh Gardiner 💡🐝🔧 (earth2marsh@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Feb-2025 02:02:49 JST Marsh Gardiner 💡🐝🔧

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @inthehands @pluralistic Yes, and… it is a prioritization of profit over people. The category mistake is thinking of the government as a business.

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     Paul Cantrell (inthehands@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 08-Feb-2025 02:40:13 JST Paul Cantrell

     in reply to

     • The Janx Devil

     @janxdevil
     Yes. I think of there being a sort of Orban-Franco continuum of authoritarians not •quite• intolerable enough at any given moment to ever topple. That’s probably relevant:

     One of Trump’s true talents is understanding where weakness is and where it isn’t, and instantly backing off or rejiggering any given one of his wretched ideas that’s actually going to undo him.

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     The Janx Devil (janxdevil@sfba.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Feb-2025 02:40:14 JST The Janx Devil

     in reply to

     @inthehands Franco probably a good name to consider too. Mussolini probably would have died peacefully of old age if he had decided instead not to follow Nazi Germany into WW2.

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     Cluster Fcku (clusterfcku@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 08-Feb-2025 05:16:45 JST Cluster Fcku

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @inthehands @pluralistic oooh a new term to call those parachuted consultants and their financiers, including Elon and his barely adolescent tech wreckers: "enshittification ninjas". Because they are good at what they are assigned to do, but work best in the dark without any moral accountability but all loyalty.