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Alfie Kohn (alfiekohn@sciences.social)'s status on Wednesday, 26-Feb-2025 22:49:33 JST Alfie Kohn

Being a buffoon isn't incompatible with being a dangerous tyrant. Similarly, we should resist the temptation to laugh off the "Gulf of America" thing. Yeah, it's pathetic and ripe for mocking memes, but the historical precedents are deeply worrisome: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/26/trumps-gulf-of-america-authoritarians
In conversation about a year ago from sciences.social permalink
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1. As tempting as it is to follow Shakespeare in shrugging the shoulders at “what’s in a name;” we should turn to history to learn what follows when authoritarian leaders start out with seemingly harmless verbal imperialisms. One of the first actions Hitler took after seizing power in 1933 was to scrub streets and public spaces of names that reflected Jewish influence or Weimar republicanism in favor of tributes to National Socialism. Stalin celebrated his own greatness by changing Tsaritsyn, now Volgograd, to “Stalingrad”. Before Stalingrad, there was the switch from Petrograd to Leningrad. In today’s China, the name “Tibet” has disappeared from Chinese maps in favor of the Mandarin name, “Xizang”. It is hard to know how seriously to take Trump’s flagging of territorial, as well as verbal, imperialism. He has suggested we reclaim the Panama Canal Zone, buy Greenland from Denmark, incorporate Canada as a 51st state, and take over the Gaza Strip for resort real estate development. Even if these are mere paper ambitions, the disdain Trump shows for international law is already doing irreparable harm.
  https://cdn.masto.host/sciencessocial/media_attachments/files/114/070/498/480/497/514/original/abb6ae1e93b1aae3.png
2. Domain not in remote thumbnail source whitelist: i.guim.co.uk
  
  Trump’s ‘Gulf of America’ debacle is no joke – this is how authoritarians get started
  
  from Jeffrey Abramson and Jack E Davis
  
  The move has disturbing historical precedents, and retaliation against the Associated Press signals more restrictions to come

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