Notices by Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe), page 2

@mekkaokereke Yep and the good quality research into online propaganda backs this up. But it's in the interests of lots of people who sell advertising to make everyone believe they have the power to control people. But adding fuel to a fire is easy to do, as is spreading disinformation or giving people license to be their worst selves. And because commercial social media is just advertising platforms designed to maximize engagement with ads, it's great for this purpose.

@mekkaokereke I'm sure it suppressed White voter turnout too. Just like putting Bill fucking Clinton on tour did too. And Obama scolding Black men was also very unhelpful.

@carnage4life There was also just outright denial and a refusal to listen to anyone bringing up practical and ethical problems (like thinking GDP/corporations getting rich somehow means the economy is great for everyone). Upper middle class people like to believe they're better people than they are, it's part of that particular class mythology (and, really, it's very related to Prosperity Gospel, the most American of religions even among people who believe themselves to be secular, but it's also related to education, which traditionally was one way for people of all kinds to move between classes). This is true of people of all types. Sure racism exerts itself even on "respectable" non-White people but that doesn't mean they aren't looking down on and rather desperate to seperate themselves from the poor people who look like them (White supremacy is ultimately about economic and political power). Respectability politics is very much about this. So I think it's not only an online bubble but a class bubble at work.

@mekkaokereke Quite a few states had abortion as a seperate referendum issue. As soon as that happened they lost any potential white lady secret votes for Harris. I wonder how many of those states had Republican governors? But, really, it was standing for absolutely nothing and pandering to nefarious neocons and people who would never vote for them. You can't keep promising people hope and change then not deliver.

@mekkaokereke It also wouldn't have been capitulating and pandering to fascism. @mloxton

So a lot of relatively privileged people are freaking out, White guys perhaps the most, but your lives might FEEL different but will continue relatively unchanged for quite a while, particularly if you put your head down and play along. So will everyone else's for a while. The veneer of normalcy is actually pretty crucial to fascism, particularly in the earliest stages before kleptocracies are solidly established.

Fascism isn't really a new facet of American life, it's pretty much built into the US political system, things will continue to appear normal for the privileged for a while. Make sure you use that privilege well and for more than just self preservation (and just looking after your own family isn't what I mean here, I mean using it to help those really at risk). This means risking your privilege, spending some of it on other people, because that's always been true and it's always been what's needed.

I just hope Harris winning doesn't just end up as being as shit as Starmer winning (I knew it would be shit but he's turned out to be even shittier than imagined).

@mloxton More info about White American women, sufferage and the KKK. https://19thnews.org/2020/12/first-came-suffrage-then-came-the-women-of-the-ku-klux-klan/

@mekkaokereke

@irene We're still soaking in it. Hillary Clinton called poor young Black men "super predators" back in the day yet ran for president. That's pure, uncut eugenics and race pseudoscience about genetics and babies being born evil (see also the "crack baby" hysteria of the same time period). Poverty and eugenics is applied against White people too. You believe poor people are poor because they're born stupid? Congrats, you believe in eugenics. You may want to fix that! @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@whknott I actually think it's important to preserve some of this stuff, we need to understand our past not try to erase it. Especially the horrifying stuff because the horrifying stuff is still around, race pseudoscience is still being pushed in very "esteemed" academic institutions, etc. It needs to be understood that it's a pseudoscience (the fact we still call it "race science" and not "race pseudoscience" is indicative of what a problem it still is). Erasing it only allows it to flourish in darkness. @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@whknott I mean, this thread is about how the racism involved in US feminism gets left out of the history books in the service of mythmaking so we're literally talking about history gets erased and distorted by erasing the bits about eugenics. It's clearly something quite a lot of Americans are unaware of (particularly non-intersectional feminists). @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@whknott I think there's a big difference between these things and I'm not advocating everyone read or have a copy of Mein Kampf. I'm not advocating for glorifying the past (statues of this kind are always memorializing, they're not documents, they're a form of mythmaking), I'm advocating for less mythmaking and more grappling with reality. @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke People who don't really know the history of science and medicine have a very limited understanding of the role racism and eugenics played in our own nations. The general public have been sold the fiction that eugenics was something Nazis did, not us. This has also allowed race pseudoscience to reemerge in academia. The lies we tell ourselves and others poison and change us, whether it's on an individual or cultural level.

@mekkaokereke Being mad at the past rather than informed by it is very ridiculous. But people like their myths about perfect people fighting for perfect justice, which we get sold by those who want to maintain power because it would be far more radical to understand that real change (for better and worse) is made by flawed, imperfect people (and that not all change is real change, particularly if it's actually really about preserving hegemonic power....in these situations categories can become very flexible, tokenism is a strategy to preserve power by presenting the illusion of change).

@mekkaokereke Yep. Also, White women got the vote in the US with a lot of help from the KKK because of worries about WASPs/White men losing power.

@cstross There have been indications of this and chatter about it for a very long time.

@evan um, I don't think that's the message voting for Jill Stein sends at all. Nobody really sees her as antiwar, they see her as a Putin apologist.

@clive They grew big and were widely promoted by institutions because they are employed to justify and rationalize exploitation and abuse. It's no coincidence that psychology is deeply integrated with marketing and propaganda, or that psychiatry can and is used as a means of social control. (TBC, I'm not anti-psychology or psychiatry, it can also be liberatory and inform us about ourselves, I'm just a realist about how it has been used historically and today*"

*Things like forcing addicts into treatment is a repeat of the criminal horrors of the past.

Is the US inviting in election observers from outside? It should.

Generally when people with power start talking about efficiency we should all be scared because it's really code for "incoming ruthlessness and greed, and privileging corporations over citizens." Being efficient is basically anti-human, it's viewing people and the world as an industrial machine not the glorious squishy alive chaos that is the natural world. Machine desires will not actually prevent billionaires from dying, no matter what ideologies they try to use to hide their basic fear of being mortal humans just like the rest of us not rich people. (This, of course, does not mean they don't get the opportunity to live longer than the rest of us because of the best medical care, lots of rest and relaxation, good food and lots of trees...if they so choose.)