I like to think we are in a better place than russia for instance with all its propaganda and jailed journalists, but then i see these kind of article come over and over....
Most of the people in the 'free world' goes on mainstream media, like facebook to get their news. These companies are enticed to 'suck up' to the government because at the end they are business, they need to be in good term with ruling class.
you end up with most media complying with the official story pushed by government and friends, and most people believing that because no one has the time to fact check everything.
One could argue that the difference with russia is that someone can actually look for real information, but even in russia people have access to vpn to bypass the censorship.
Another difference would be that you are allowed to express your opinion, whereas in russia you would be put to jail, that's true but only in a very limited way. Since everyone goes on mainstream media and they enforce the government narrative, you can't speak there. you are merely allowed to speak out in your little corner out of reach to anyone, and even then since most people believe the government propaganda, your arguments won't be heard at all.
The more i think about it, the less difference i see.
>Another difference would be that you are allowed to express your opinion, whereas in russia you would be put to jail, that's true but only in a very limited way.
Although not even close in number and punishment the US government is deporting people for speaking against Israel.
I think we do have a much better system because we are aware of these cases, you can speak out about the issue, and our court system can rule against the current admin.
What makes this possible to either the level of Russia or the US is how much the supporters of the regime want it. This is regardless of morality, legality, or the precedent it sets.
> and our court system can rule against the current admin.
That is more and more often not happening recently, because courts are not involved. If they are and explicitly request planes to be turned around and people brought back - they're ignored without repercussions.
Last time I saw, the entire Supreme Court was requesting that the Executive return people, what means punishment may be a couple of weeks away. It may not happen, but it's not a given right now.
They requesting the government return oe person and they still haven't brought him back. It's not related to the plane that was supposed to turn around
> Last time I saw, the entire Supreme Court was requesting that the Executive return people
As I understand it, they requested that USGOV "facilitate" the return which is much weaker than the "effectuate" in the original court order; ie giving USGOV wiggle room rather than compelling them to undo the harm.
Exactly, it's the "they're the same anyway", "both sides" equivalency that allows the buildup of antidemocratic de-politicization and apathy. This is one of the goals of the _there_is_no_truth_ radicalization that is fundamental to Russian political control
But discussions on the internet seems to be with lots of people who have only a shallow understanding of the balances involved and low historical context
Ehh, I’ve got not particular stake in this conflict so it’s really interesting to see how each side is using propaganda and how obvious the propaganda is when you’re not emotionally invested.
Each side is using different tactics to fit the strength of their positions and how well various messages resonate. “They are the same anyway” is useful for a side who wants people to be inactive, it’s not some universal benefit to both parties. Instead each side wants different people to be engaged vs apathetic, which hardly unusual.
Their goals are similar. There’s lots of different ways of achieving similar ends. I’ve seen a lot more paid commercials from Israel side, but a lot more posts using Palestine’s side talking points.
Same way you can build a wood or brick home, historically which people chose had a lot to do with local materials.
This isn't then your previous comment that the results are similar.
Goals aren't nearly as important as results.
Also, to dive deeper, what goals and how many are similar, and how similar?
If you mean they are both supporting Israel, then yes, but the Democrats exert more control over their actions. For example Biden was limiting the bomb size that Israel could purchase and Trump removed that.
So if you want to help the Palestinians one side is the better than the other. It doesn't matter if the goals are similar or even the results. There's still a difference and as you can see voter apathy only helped Republicans
I have been talking about the propaganda from each sides of the current conflict in Palestine. I thought this make that clear “in this conflict so it’s really interesting to see how each side is using propaganda” but I may have misunderstood what you meant by supporting Israel.
> This isn't then your previous comment that the results are similar.
To be clear I’m noticing similar goals combined with something (diminishing returns?) yield similar results. Hell, it could also be a form follows function kind of thing, I’m noticing the results not doing a research paper.
> what goals
When I say they have similar goals I mean they are both trying to sway public option to support their agenda.
There’s a bunch of different kinds of kind of propaganda. If one side was doing a call to action for their supporters like “Buy war bonds!” then I presume the results wouldn’t seem so similar.
>When I say they have similar goals I mean they are both trying to sway public option to support their agenda.
Ok, but that's every politician (and many people as well). What their specific goal is matters. If one political party supports Israel 40% [4] and the other 80% then there's a difference. It's possible to support Israel and the Palestinians at the same time as well so it's not a clear "this or that"
>yield similar results.
If you are saying something like "Israel is still attacking Palestinians no matter who is elected" yes but to the same extent? What about aid to Palestine?
In 2018 Trump cut $200m worth of aid to them [1] then in 2021 Biden restored it [2]. I can understand if the issue is that neither party are going as far as you might want but that doesn't really make them same and not voting [3] doesn't make sense if you care because it can only make things worse for the Palestinians
Your argument reads like a general frustration with politics, which I get, but it still exists and will always exist. Not participating is the worse option imo.
> In 2018 Trump cut $200m worth of aid to them [1] then in 2021 Biden restored it [2].
I am not referring to US politicians here. This has nothing to do with republicans and democrats. I am referring to what propaganda from Israel and Palestine directly + groups paid and unpaid supporting their agenda.
> Ok, but that's every politician
Politicians don’t just talk about the same thing one may highlight poverty and another jobs etc.
Here each side (Israel, Palestine) is taking about the same topic (___location, war), trying to gain sympathy by talking about bad things that happen to specific people recently, etc
> Your argument reads like a general frustration with politics
If I was equally uninterested in politics and everyone was always talking about the deficit I might feel the same way. But this really does seem unusually similar.
Both sides want their side engaged and the other apathetic. On a national level this means FSB employing hundreds if not thousands of people to troll political discourse in social media in the west to maximize the amount of ‘I don’t care anymore’ people. A very asymmetric setup exposing the underbelly of free speech cultures.
>A very asymmetric setup exposing the underbelly of free speech cultures
As opposed to non-free-speech cultures like Russia and China where people have absolutely no say in whatever their leaders do? Because that's inevitably what happens when you give people in power the power to restrict speech: they restrict any speech critical of them. We're even seeing this in developed democracies like Germany where a journalist was recently fined for posting a meme online of a politician holding a sign saying "I hate free speech".
It's important to be precise because everything is not the same. In the German case the ruling was not because someone posted a critical meme, but because it was not entirely obvious the picture was edited (as in: you and I can immediately see the photo was edited, but some people will not recognize the edit). I do not agree with the ruling, but as a citizen I am happy that in Germany we still care if claims are true or not (and try to prevent people from lying).
Does this happiness that some people care whether claims are true or not overrule the arrest and deportation of peaceful protestors, and people in general based on social media posts, or do you also feel happy about that?
Isn't that just relying on the stupidity of someone who may not exist?
Like every single year people make the same dumb joke "Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats vote on Wednesday" leading to prosecution for misinformation when they cannot prove anyone actually tried voting on the wrong day because of the meme
Once you start talking millions of people someone will make that or any other mistake.
The US has a higher threshold, but it’s clear those standards mean many people are duped by “obvious” lies. It’s kind of an arbitrary line, but ignoring the dumb feels like a mistake to me when dumb people are active in society, still vote, etc.
Whataboutism does not change anything about it being a weak spot. I’m only saying the free speech west can’t use the same tactic against these kind of adversaries because they’re insulated against them.
Free speech including paid speech isn’t really a knock on free speech.
Someone can be persuaded by an argument they heard once, but can’t per persuaded by an argument they never hear. Thus blocking speech by preventing any kind of speech including paid speech is problematic.
They are noise generators with a goal of raising the noise floor above the pain threshold, in essence they’re using free speech to shut down free speech itself.
I’d say the same about social media. However IMO the value of free speech isn’t in having a clear message to directly improve things, the value is being able to steal ideas from anyone. “Obamacare” was originally a Republican idea, but once an idea is out there anyone can take it.
Ideas don’t need to win on day one, if it takes 30 years that’s still plenty useful.
Kids who grow up watching commercials start distrusting them. Free speech is not about any one issue but all topics. In many ways curating so people see the kinds of things they agree with is vastly more harmful than propaganda.
1.The majority of people are not intelligent. Source is polls on whether there was wide spread election fraud
2. Politicans want money and power. They have no issues lying or manipulating people to get it
3. In a country like Russia the government can counter any information with widespread arrests and fear.
4. In a country with free speech there is little to no recourse.
Meaning that Russia, China, etc can use misinformation against us and we can't do anything. On the other hand we can try the same but they can simply use authoritarian tactics to supress it.
5. Trump has shown that the threshold for lying was set artificially low by past politicians. His success while lying about events that are easily disproven multiple times is evidence for all future politicians to lie.
“The number of people overall who believe the election was fraudulent has hovered around 35% since November 2020, but this percentage has not increased significantly as the claim purports.” https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/feb/02/viral-imag...
Which is different than asking if voting fraud changed the outcome and more importantly different than asking which side benefited. Someone who calls targeted overly aggressive culling of voter registrations fraud has something of a point, even if that’s a long way from stuffing ballots or meaningful changes in results.
I don't think taking all political affiliations into account makes sense. Let me use another poll that had a similar outcome of your poll for all political affiliations:
A 2023 poll found that 71% of Republicans believe the election was illegitimate. [1]. The exact question in the poll was "Thinking about the results of the 2020 presidential election, do you think that Joe Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency, or not? Do you think there's been solid evidence of that, or is that your suspicion only?"
All - Note legitimate Solid + suspicious = 38%
Republican - Not legitimate: solid evidence - 41% suspicious only - 30%
1. Democrats or liberals (poll allowed for either) who didn't vote for Trump or dislike him are going to say the election was legitimate regardless of evidence and outcomes of investigations. This is why I only use what Republican voters think (about 2020) as an indicator of public stupidity *
2. This poll was in 2023, after court cases and numerous state investigations/recounts. Therefore saying it's "suspicious" is as stupid as saying there is "solid evidence".
If you have a suspicion a crime occurred, then multiple investigations find nothing or show the evidence your suspicious were based were fake, and you don't change your view that's stupid.
> Which is different than asking if voting fraud changed the outcome...
That's what Trump and many of the key players on his side claimed.
> Someone who calls targeted overly aggressive culling of voter registrations fraud has something of a point..
No, they don't. They are misusing the term "fraud" in an election situation (a.k.a "election fraud) [2]. Voter/Election fraud is clearly defined by the US government [3]. Voter suppression through a legal action isn't fraud. You can claim that it's "wrong" or "immoral" but not fraud.
The difference is clear if you look at something as either an opinion or fact. An opinion is not falsifiable.
"Widespread election fraud is why Trump lost the 2020 election" - This either happened or it didn't. It's not an opinion/judgement. [4]
"Aggressive culling of registrations caused a candidate to win/lose" - Since culling of registrations legally happens [5] whether or not it's aggressive is a judgement because "aggressiveness" is subjective.
> even if that’s a long way
It's not on the same scale because one is a crime. I think I need more to understand why you want to merge different accusations of fraud or suppression when discussing different elections.
[2] Wikipedia's article on Election fraud describes it better.
"Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of rival candidates, or both. It differs from but often goes hand-in-hand with voter suppression. "
[4] You can say "I believe X happened" which is an opinion however this is a judgement that needs a factual base. If the evidence is fake, doesn't exist, or you were lied and you are aware of this, then you're lying about the basis for your opinion which invalidates it (imo)
[5] I'm assuming you meant legal culling
* There's similar high numbers for Democrats talking about Trump's win in 2016 though most polls ask about Russian interference helping him, which is a judgement not a lie since this did happen, but it could also be an indicator. The 2020 situation was just much more obvious because the claim by Trump is of cheating NOT influence. The lie is that Trump was directly involved and to a high degree but blah blah complicated.
> Therefore saying it's "suspicious" is as stupid as saying there is "solid evidence".
Hardly, I find quantum mechanics suspect without having a better option. I’m not saying there’s any kind of conspiracy or anything and sure it fits the experiments we have done. Yet, I suspect most people who actually learn the details have similar reactions it doesn’t fit our experience. Sadly the universe doesn’t care it it seems consistent to us.
There’s a deep cultural divide in the US to the point where people have trouble remembering how close support is for each party. Because politics is so regional it’s easy for each side to overestimate how popular that side is. Imagine living in a county where 80% are voting for one side and almost all roadside posters are supporting one candidate. Suddenly the other side winning just doesn’t fit everyday experience.
When either side wins a huge number of people will find it suspicious, that’s just how our heuristics and pattern matching work. A historian looking back on 2020 and 2024 isn’t going to find the election results odd because wider forces definitely favored the winning side in those elections, but people today don’t have that separation. Thinking there’s widespread and obvious fraud is different.
Everyone doesn’t fit those criteria. Motivated reasoning exists with and without propaganda. The specific words used may end up mimicking “a message,” but you can find millions of disgruntled people after any election.
There’s a great deal of talk around how much social media etc changed the landscape but American politics looks basically the same before and after Facebook.
>American politics looks basically the same before and after Facebook.
Trump and MAGA Republicans lie more openly than traditional Republicans. American politics are not the same.
Here's an easy exercise.
This is a post from MGT. Show me anything even close to this insane from an elected person in high office (house, senate, president) in the last 50 years
That’s fairly mild, but it’s not so easy to link to 20+ year old clips. There’s some real bangers of homophobic rants in your time frame, but you may be a little young to remember any of them.
In terms of lies here’s one that was a central tenant of the part of the party line for decades. Social security isn’t an income tax because we have a tax called the income tax.
>but you may be a little young to remember any of them.
I'm 45
> Social security isn’t an income tax because we have a tax called the income tax.
I took too long to be able to edit my other comment but I should have asked who said this? Because "social security" isn't a tax at all. In my other comment I assumed you meant tax we pay to fund SS but this still leaves me confused, can you provide me with a quote that shows the lie?
> Homophobia isn't lying, it's an opinion/ judgement
The lies about gay people are actual lies, even if they come from homophobia.
Luring people into gayness, crap about destroying the institution of marriage etc etc.
> SS tax is a tax on your income, "Income Tax" is a type of tax. Both are true
When taking about “tax burden,” there’s no excuse around the names. I’ve got little interest in digging up 20 year old clips, but you’re 45 you should remember that phrase.
I’d argue this is the biggest issue, because it’s ultimately about who controls the political process. Unless we can wrest that control from the hands of the wealthy, it’s hard to see how we can make lasting progress on other fronts. They run the show according to their own interests, even undermining the Constitution when it suits them.
The fact that they still hold all the power is proof that, consciously or not, enough people are still settling for scraps. You may not be, but many are, and that’s part of the problem.
The united states has the world’s largest incarcerated population. It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The USA has the fifth highest incarceration rate on the planet. In the Southeast United States, the incarceration rate of the Black population is 7% (as a point of comparison 2x the incarceration rate of minoritized Uyghur population of China per the World Uyghur Congress figures)
> It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s.
Not really. Estimates for the number of people in labor camps, labor colonies and prisons are all over the place, but based on their own fragmented records reached about 2 million by the end of 1938. That doesn't count pretrial/administrative detentions or the hundreds of thousands that were simply executed that year or all the people exiled to inhospitable settlements. And of course, the mortality rate in their penal system was extremely high.
> In the Southeast United States, incarceration rate of the Black population is 7%
Nowhere in the US is there anywhere close to incarcerating 7% of the black population.
That said, the US incarceration rate is ridiculously high and we should be ashamed of it.
> It currently dwarfs the number incarcerated by the Soviet Union during the 1930s
That was certainly false if you look at the late 40s (not by much, only 2x or so though..)
However if you actually think (since you post nonsensical “statistics” that’s unlikely) about it the mortality rates in soviet concentration camps were massive, especially in the 1930s or during the war which significantly decreased the incarceration rate.
Can’t have a huge prison population if you just murder or starve everyone to death..
If you are talking about Khalil, he didn't just speak against Israel, it seems like his role in an org which openly supported Hamas may have played a part but didn't matter legally. The legal issue was that he left out facts on his green card application.
I am 100% sure that support of terrorist orgs can invalidate your green card.
> According to recent court filings, President Donald Trump's administration said Khalil failed to disclose when applying for his green card last year that his employment by the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut went "beyond 2022" and that he was a "political affairs officer" for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees from June to November 2023.
> "Regardless of his allegations concerning political speech, Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application. It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech," the government said in the filing.
Most of these things are not black/white. We should wait for all the facts to come out.
Like indefinitely? Trump’s administration is ignoring the courts and there is no real oversight. Also whatever facts come out they will be drowned by all the other insane idiocy that the US government is doing so nobody will pay attention anyway..
When they start sending US citizens to El Salvador nobody is going to care about some guy whose green card got revoked.
This is part of the trick that israel is trying to pull. Suppose you support Palestine liberation from Israel's violent occupation and apartheid, as does most of the world. Well, so does Hamas, so therefore you support Hamas' goals and are evil and a terrorist.
To apply this in another context, I agree with Trump on very little, but I do agree that Daylight Savings should be gotten rid of. So am I pro-Trump? No, that's absurd.
Or if you are right wing in the US and believe that the US is the land of the free and home of the brave, well, so does Hilary Clinton. Are you pro-Clinton?
The connection is absurd, but it parrotted daily by US politicians and US media.
What’s the alternative? Regardless of what Israel did or did not do Hamas could have ended this “war” at any moment they wanted to. None of their actions were in any way remotely in the interest of the people of Gaza. Providing them [Hamas] material or other support only prolonged it..
This is proven false by the existence of the West Bank, where is there no Hamas and there's still a war. Who is fighting the war there?
In case you're commenting in good faith and genuinely don't know this, "Do you condemn Hamas?" refers to a pattern in media interviews from the earlier days of the holocaust. The interviewer would simply ignore what the interviewee said and repeat "Do you condemn Hamas?" until the interviewee answered with a boolean, at which point the interview was over. No discussion was allowed. You either support everything Israel is doing (boolean true answer) or you are a terrorist (boolean false answer). No nuance allowed. No debate allowed. No facts allowed.
There is a lot whole lot of violence in the West Bank, no carpet bombing or tens of thousands of casualties, though. That makes it extremely different.
That’s not sustainable. Best outcome would be ending up like Lebanon.
Besides Belgium (and that’s nowhere close) there are hardly any successful democracies that were evenly split primarily on ethno-religious grounds and didn’t entirely collapse on the first opportunity.
You are denying the agency of the people living there and/or are clueless about the country..
US and Israel started the Lebanese civil war and the enmity between the Christian and Muslim populations?
Well in a way.. at least the Palestinian refugees were a huge shock that shifted the scales. But the balance was very tight and the country would have blown up eventually anyway.
You can’t build a democracy when each half of the population hates the other half and considers that their ideological views and their ways of life are incompatible. Even US is learning that the hard way (again..)..
> Although not even close in number and punishment the US government is deporting people for speaking against Israel.
You and I both know that isn't true and repeating that doesn't help anyone but further implant in people's minds that the other side is completely irrational and cannot be reasoned with.
No, the US government is deporting people for supporting terrorist organizations, something that's always been a disqualifying position in US immigration law. You'll get your visa denied, or even your entry denied for holding such positions, let alone maintaining an active student visa or permanent resident visa. That has always been the case and simply enforcing laws already on the books does not change that.
> What makes this possible to either the level of Russia or the US is how much the supporters of the regime want it. This is regardless of morality, legality, or the precedent it sets.
> No, the US government is deporting people for supporting terrorist organizations,
Has it deported anyone voicing support for the Israeli Defense Forces or any of the other Jewish supremacist terrorist organizations currently terrorizing Palestinians? Regardless, your claim that Khalil would have offered material support or even voiced support for a terrorist organization is baseless. Not that it matters either because saying "I love Hamas" is free speech and covered under the First Amendment.
Israeli Defense Forces is not a designated terrorist organization. If you can name any Jewish supremacy designated terrorist organizations then yeah anyone supporting those should be deported too.
Öztürk had her visa secretly revoked because she coauthored an oped suggesting her college divest from Israel. She did not write an op-ed supporting a terrorist group.
Perhaps currently. How long do you think we should wait until we can start doing that? At the current pace probably a year or two?
I mean.. Putin wasn’t that bad in the early 2000s, nazis or fascists weren’t that awful in the 20s or 30s either (in relative terms compared to everyone else at the time) either. Waiting until its too late do change anything is maybe not the smartest thing, though..
> Perhaps currently. How long do you think we should wait until we can start doing that? At the current pace probably a year or two?
I think you should stop letting the propaganda get to you and take a step back and look at things from a rational perspective. I'd bet over 50% of the things that you think happened in this administration did not in fact happen.
> I'd bet over 50% of the things that you think happened
How and why would that change anything in any way? From a rational perspective 5% of those things are way too much already. Much less even...
In a rational and sane world Trump would have been impeached and possibly imprisoned just over his government funded golf trips that he is using to funnel millions of tax payer money to his own businesses. Just running a car dealership on the white house lawn should have resulted in impeachment. Yet these are the tiniest most insignificant things compared to everything else he is doing.
In our unfortunate reality paying him several hundred millions to just do nothing but play golf for 4 years would seem like an exceptionally good deal..
I mean your argument is basically “well he’s extremely horrible but at least he doesn’t eat babies, so shut up..”
> Opposing the support for another foreign nation's genocide is not a support of terrorism?
It is in Germany and also in the USA. It doesn't matter whether you agree with the government on this point or not, because the government are the ones with the legal right to lock you up.
it isn't, but the government in one of those countries has demonstrated a desire and willingness to arrest people on arbitrary pretexts and make them suffer while they try to free themselves from a kafkaesque nightmare regardless of what is true or legal
please don't falsely conflate opposition to the ongoing genocide of palestinians, with support for hamas
Indeed. The editorial boards of these newsrooms are often staffed with people who attended the same schools and classes as those running the country. The social circles of the two worlds are extremely closely linked.
Of course, this means that the reporting isn't very good at addressing its blind spots–i.e., most of the news in the country, let alone the world, that isn't relevant to the ivy league coastal elites. And I say this as a member of that same class. Most of the political perspectives in my life are completely unrepresented in the opinion columns, which generally tend to pander upwards rather than downwards.
I don't tend to put much weight in freedom of the press so long as that press is floating on the cream of society and asking the government permission to report on what they're doing.
Bad things happen in wars. And yes there are questionable videos of Israeli soldiers on TikTok. I'm not sure how this supports your view point. It's is entirely possible for Israel to be the good guy, for the BBC to have a strong anti-Israeli bias, and for there to be questionable actions by certain Israeli soldiers (including on TikTok). There are also questionable actions by Ukrainian soldiers and there have been questionable actions by American, British, and Australian soldiers in their war on ISIS and Al Qaeda and there have been questionable action by the allies in WW-II. Israeli soldiers are young adults fighting an enemy that has complete disregard to human life (theirs or others) or pretty much anything else. That enemy has been attacking them for decades. Many of them may have friends and family that have been impacted by this enemy's brutality. So yes- there are going to be questionable incidents. This is human nature.
We can fix this by forcing Hamas to release the hostages, surrender, and end this war. Could have happened a long time ago if the pressure was on the right side.
You can't get a picture of reality through anecdotes. In every war you can cherry pick any narrative. For what its worth I've spoken to soldiers who fought in Gaza and they maintain they hold high standards and the incidents you hear of are outliers.
Don't misunderstand. My views are not driven by random Tiktok videos. I mentioned them to point out that bias questions cannot be relevant in their case.
You might think those videos are aberrant, but I see it as just part of the overall pattern.
"War" is a misnomer when Israel has 10x the money, the resources, the military, controls Palestinian movement/water/food, erects walls completely surrounding Gaza, and bombed 100% of the hospitals and universities in Gaza.
"War" creates the illusion of roughly-equal enemy forces.
You don't have "war". You have a displaced, dehumanized people living in modern apartheid conditions, who periodically strike out against their conditions and history, and then get vengeance visited upon them 100-fold.
----
"You can't get a picture of reality through anecdotes ... I've spoken to soldiers who fought in Gaza"
I read the 1st third (it's really long) and while the data analysis is interesting, the conclusions say a lot more about the biases of the author(s) than those of the BBC.
Fundamentally you can't use sympathy as a measure of bias without first establishing a baseline for how sympathetic the views and/or groups of people are. The report mentions that Palestinians might be more sympathetic because they're the ones being blown up, but then discards this by pointing out that the BBC is supposed to "ensure broadly comparable treatment of the Palestinian and the Israeli viewpoints" without acknowledging that maybe they do and one viewpoint is more sympathetic than the other. The least sympathetic group according to the report is Hamas, so according to it's logic they're the group the BBC is most biased against. Not a reasonable conclusion.
There's plenty of other indicators that this report started with a conclusion then tried to gather data to support it, but I've already spent more time on this comment than the report deserves.
I think it's an interesting question of how we measure bias.
For me, as an Israeli (who hasn't lived there for decades), who has some first hand knowledge of the situation, much of the reporting appears to be extremely biased. I know there are claims from the other side the bias goes in the other direction. What's the ground truth? I think using AI to crunch the large amount of data is a decent first order approximation.
Ofcourse bias depends on ideology. For some people if a Palestinian guns down an Israeli in a Tel-Aviv bar simply reporting this fact is biased towards Israel. And I mean, from their position that is understandable. And indeed we can see some media outlets that would not report these events at all, which I would consider an anti-Israeli bias.
I agree that it's an interesting question, that's why I spent so much of my free time reading it.
I'd also agree that using AI for sentiment analysis could be a good approach, I'm not an expert in the area, but I believe this is one of the things AI is best at. But it needs an extra step to translate that into bias. Establishing a sympathy baseline is my initial idea, but I haven't tested it and maybe there's something better.
Whether something is biased is less about how any given individual(s) feel about what's been said and more about if the different viewpoints are presented honestly. Though it can get really difficult to identify except in the most extreme cases. As you say, it's not just what's said where the bias occurs, but also in the choice of what not to say.
The NYT's Executive Editor Joe Kahn is the son of a billionaire who was on the board of lobby group CAMERA, a group devoted to pressuring US media to be more pro-Israel.
I've had this myself when trying to argue a point on a previous Palestine post on HN months ago. They essentially listed off all of the generic antisemetic tropes as fast as they could, trying to tie themself to me while contributing nothing to the discussion.
What do you claim Kahn has done? Do you have evidence? The NY Times regulary publishes news critical of Israel.
Children and parents, siblings, etc. disagree, sometimes extremely, regularly. Children and parents disagreeing is one of the most common stories in humanity. Should Joe resign because of dad's activities?
This is not only a reasonable question, but it is a good one, too. Unfortunately, the line beforehand:
> Just rumors and conspiracy theories.
...makes it seem like you've already made up your mind, and makes it difficult to interpret your post as a good-faith attempt on your part to learn something new from someone.
The issue that matters is not me, whoever I am and whatever I think, it's the claims made by the GGP. Which remain worthless until proven otherwise, like all other claims.
Just endless conspiracies. Which newsroom leaders get their money from what places? Why do leaders in government and business hate journalists so much and invest so much in discrediting them?
I'm not sure what your point is. Journalism needs funding, they must get it somewhere. Many journalism outlets have turned to subscriptions and donations, but whoever provides funding can be accused of influencing them. If they are funded by subscriptions, can they publish something their readers dislike?
The GGP comment said that journalists conspired with the country's leaders, not business.
Republican voters can see many if not all of the same economic ills in society that Democrat voters do. In some cases they can even agree on the cause. I'm not going to stand next to how right-wing media (and its eager audience) may characterize "main stream media". But I do think the window of representation across how americans see and characterize ourselves through newsrooms in general has narrowed too far (in its seemingly-permanently partisan polarization) to sustain a rational democracy. Social media and the internet have provided the means to see this clearer than ever, in both great and terrible ways. A lot of contradictions in society about values we have and language we use as a people will have to resolve now.
All I can say is I hope we see a real economic policy response from democrats in congress, and fast. They seem to be fishing around for ideas in all the wrong pockets (foreign interests, domestic private interests, namely not the daily interests of the majority of their constituents).... but even rhetorically, it would be a start.
I’d rather have JD than Trump, but otherwise I’m thrilled. I don’t know what you mean by “moment of pique.” Ross Perot got like 20% of the vote. MAGA basically realigns the GOP to absorb the Ross Perot Democrats and Buchanan Republicans while pushing out the neocons. It’s not a new set of political beliefs.
By "pique", I mean that the motivating factor I've heard from most Trump people, and that I'm reading from your posts, is "make the libs cry".
First term was fine, he was mostly harmless and made the libs cry every day with fake culture war stuff.
In 2024 I get the impression people were voting for a repeat of that, not some crazy reconfiguration of the entire economy. Trump ran on "they're making your kids trans and the Somalis are eating dogs", not "we will end global trade and deport anyone who criticizes Israel".
> The editorial boards of these newsrooms are often staffed with people who attended the same schools and classes as those running the country. The social circles of the two worlds are extremely closely linked.
This is a conspiracy theory - they are secretly conspiring. Do you have evidence of this conspiracy actually happening on any scale?
Many attended the same universities on all sides of politics and issues. The universities are big places that have been operating for generations. Ask someone who went to a university - do they know and agree with everyone else who went there? It's absurd.
> most of the news in the country, let alone the world, that isn't relevant to the ivy league coastal elites.
You need to do more than throw around stereotypes. Give us some evidence.
> I don't tend to put much weight in freedom of the press so long as that press is floating on the cream of society and asking the government permission to report on what they're doing.
Doesn't meet the criteria of what people typically call a conspiracy theory. It's easily verified or debunked by amateurs with publicly available information, it doesn't seem absurd on its face, and it makes no claims other than those of association (certainly none of blatant felony, coup, or world domination).
> Doesn't meet the criteria of what people typically call a conspiracy theory.
You mean that you find it credible. But we need evidence; human intuition of truth has led to 9.x thousand years of pre-science.
> It's easily verified or debunked by amateurs with publicly available information
If there was a specific factual claim - about who and what associations - it would take a mountain of research to explore it across the very many people involved. But there's not a specific claim - like most conspiracy theories.
And the implications, the only things that matter here, are unspoken conspiracy theories - again unspecified.
> it doesn't seem absurd on its face, and it makes no claims other than those of association (certainly none of blatant felony, coup, or world domination).
You know what claims it implies; otherwise it would be meaningless.
Yeah but that’s how modern conspiracy theories work. They have evolved beyond the old staples like flat earth and moon landing stuff which make clear statements. They instead just insinuate. And that’s enough to achieve the intended effect: to move your predispositions, while remaining immune to debunking because they haven’t made any specific claim.
>Yeah but that’s how modern conspiracy theories work. T
That is indeed how modern conspiracy theories work. They make outlandish claims that aren't supported by scientific fact, that some shadowy group controls the world through improbable means, and offer no evidence.
"Hey, these two groups are awfully cozy together" just isn't even close to being anything like a conspiracy theory. You've stretched your fallacious counter-argument too far.
America's arrested rather a large number of people in recent weeks—university students, mostly—for expressing viewpoints on the I/P conflict. The current Administration is claiming, and no one's yet stopped them, that First Amendment rights don't apply to non-citizens such as international students.
- "You’re not arrested for posting this"
For what it's worth, it's widely reported that ICE is trawling social media to find targets (targeted for their speech/viewpoints). HN itself is one of their known targets.
Chris Krebs just yesterday had his security clearance revoked solely for saying the 2020 election was fair and not rigged.
His coworkers at SentinelOne (almost certainly most of who are citizens) also had their clearances revoked, despite never speaking out on the topic, purely as a North Korea style "punish the whole family" approach to strike fear into people of guilt by association, so that those who have spoken out in any shape or form become social pariahs.
Citizens having their career taken away for saying an election wasn't rigged, or for happening to work at the same place as someone who said this.
If you think the status quo hasn't yet changed to "In countries like China, Russia and the US, speaking out against the government puts both your livelihood and that of those in your vicinity at serious risk", you're dead wrong.
There are many reasons to question Krebs’ tenure and not all of them have to do with ignoring the state of election security, The Disinformation regime, viewpoint discrimination, or election interference.
However many of my issues with CISA are based on my own professional work in security, and that of accomplished professors like J Halderman & M Blaze saying our election infrastructure is insecure.
We’ve been saying the same thing in hackerdom for 30 years!
If my career has been completely about the security of federal & military systems, then some lawyer like Krebs saying our infrastructure is secure when it’s running Windows 7 is a giant slap in the face, particularly given all of the censorship.
You wanted evidence. Here goes:
The censorship & viewpoint discrimination pressure CISA was bringing to bear has been over the top.
At the same time Krebs was talking about how secure our election infrastructure was, prominent professors such as Matt Blaze & J Halderman that have researched election security said the opposite.
This historically has been a bipartisan& Aceademic issue with more Dems & Repubs & Academia supporting claims of insecurity.
Those of us in security are convinced that all this unpatched windows7 usage is crazy and Chris Krebs lying about election security isn’t being open and truthful with the American people.
- NBC News revealed in 2020 that ES&S installed modems in voting machines, making them susceptible to hacking. [Note: The exact NBC News article from January 2020 titled "Voting Machines Vulnerable to Hacking Due to Modems" is not directly linked in the web results, but this matches the description in the thread. The full URL is not available in the provided web results, and I cannot search for it in real-time. You may need to look up the NBC News article from January 2020 for the precise link.]
- Vox highlighted in 2016 that voting machines on Windows XP and voter databases online were vulnerable to hacking. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/134 educed/hackers-election-day-voting-machines
- Senators Warren, Klobuchar, Wyden, and Pocan sent letters in 2019 to voting machine companies about security concerns. [Note: The direct link to the letters is not provided in the web results. These letters were sent to the private equity firms owning voting machine companies, as noted in the thread. You may need to search for "Warren Klobuchar Wyden Pocan voting machine letters 2019" to find the original source, possibly on a government or senator's website.]
- A 2019 compilation of media articles detailed election system vulnerabilities over four years post-2016 election.
Ending the statement with 'There is a list of things' and not providing it strongly suggests that you don't actually have any data or hard facts to back up your claims.
You are a random person on an internet forum, the onus is in you to provide data to back up incredible claims.
The censorship & viewpoint discrimination pressure CISA was bringing to bear has been over the top.
At the same time Krebs was talking about how secure our election infrastructure was, prominent professors such as Matt Blaze & J Halderman that have researched election security said the opposite.
This historically has been a bipartisan& Aceademic issue with more Dems & Repubs & Academia supporting claims of insecurity.
Those of us in security are convinced that all this unpatched windows7 usage is crazy and Chris Krebs lying about election security isn’t being open and truthful with the American people.
- NBC News revealed in 2020 that ES&S installed modems in voting machines, making them susceptible to hacking. [Note: The exact NBC News article from January 2020 titled "Voting Machines Vulnerable to Hacking Due to Modems" is not directly linked in the web results, but this matches the description in the thread. The full URL is not available in the provided web results, and I cannot search for it in real-time. You may need to look up the NBC News article from January 2020 for the precise link.]
- Vox highlighted in 2016 that voting machines on Windows XP and voter databases online were vulnerable to hacking. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/7/134 educed/hackers-election-day-voting-machines
- Senators Warren, Klobuchar, Wyden, and Pocan sent letters in 2019 to voting machine companies about security concerns. [Note: The direct link to the letters is not provided in the web results. These letters were sent to the private equity firms owning voting machine companies, as noted in the thread. You may need to search for "Warren Klobuchar Wyden Pocan voting machine letters 2019" to find the original source, possibly on a government or senator's website.]
- A 2019 compilation of media articles detailed election system vulnerabilities over four years post-2016 election.
>Chris Krebs just yesterday had his security clearance revoked solely for saying the 2020 election was fair and not rigged
Considering how Republicans control all three branches (to an extent), the "2020 election fraud" was a key talking point of Trump, and how stealing an election would be a historic crime in American history....the justice department has done nothing so far.
The Republican House spent a year or so investigating Hunter Biden to obtain a gun plus tax charge (also with the hopes of tying Biden to a crime) but not trying to find who stole the 2020 election?
To that end, I am quoting a portion of the text on the WH at the end of my comment here.
Anyone would be right to question CISA’s misallocation of resources to narrative control, and little emphasis on actual cyber security work. That CISA was getting in bed with former IC folks doing Censorship Ops, not computer security, is a very bad look.
There is a reason CISA is viewed as a joke with the federal space and it has everything to do with the lack of performance for a 2-3B dollar agency.
“ Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), is a significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority. Krebs’ misconduct involved the censorship of disfavored speech implicating the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic. CISA, under Krebs’ leadership, suppressed conservative viewpoints under the guise of combatting supposed disinformation, and recruited and coerced major social media platforms to further its partisan mission. CISA covertly worked to blind the American public to the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop. Krebs, through CISA, promoted the censorship of election information, including known risks associated with certain voting practices. Similarly, Krebs, through CISA, falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen, including by inappropriately and categorically dismissing widespread election malfeasance and serious vulnerabilities with voting machines. Krebs skewed the bona fide debate about COVID-19 by attempting to discredit widely shared views that ran contrary to CISA’s favored perspective.”
For a supposedly intellectual site that I clearly am at best in the middle tier of intellectual ability, this place is shockingly passive and accepting of the converging futures of authoritarian AI and the marked collapse of political discourse, if not rule of law.
Maybe I'm just a dumb one that speaks up, everyone else has gone dark forest.
Lets say that a ton of us got a leaky look at what the likes of thiel datamimed from the humanity dataset. The last mile of the enlightenment wrecks all those romantic ideas of eternal progress by technology, self actualizationa and retardation repair by education pretty thoroughly. Those that are not in the know mimic those that are or just develop a amoral stance to whether and survive the times which are a changing. It turns out the civil liberty lessons do not survive the contact with the lovecraftian reality beneath. This whole 10 year ride since 2016 was not foreseen, predicted, effectively countered and not even mitigated by protecting cultural artifacts and institutions against the decay. The science whose prediction power is zero, who has no eclipse to show, is not one.
Dictatorships tend to do worse economically, the biggest example was the Soviet bloc which fell for economic reasons mostly.
You can accelerate this effect by doing sabotage. The WW2 CIA sabotage manual contains a lot of ideas that have pretty good ratio of problems created to personal risk.
That’s the truth, if we remain silent we will be targeted eventually. I am extremely disappointed by the lack of tech colleagues calling this out. I took an oath of ethics to do no harm and I see many people willing to use technology to find and silence critics of the government.
Fuck Donald Trump and his gross, weird, pathetic mafia.
This regime is a rogue autocracy strangling anything good about this once great country.
I hope every single person responsible for the many crimes they have committed (and they have committed crimes) faces justice, if not in this life, then the next one.
IME the authoritarian politics had much more support here; I'd say it was the majority of voices heard. It diminished considerably when Trump was elected and then took office.
But the silence has been a long-standing problem: HN has long been largely silent on the social and political dangers of IT - really an outrage; here are the people most responsible, and the outcomes are predictable. That would include especially disinformation and misinformation, and propaganda more generally; and also the power of social media. Those are what makes it impossible to do anything.
When things became so polarized, years ago, shutting down discourse everywhere, HN didn't work to solve the problem - they stopped talking too. Again, a big failure of the people with the knowledge, skill, and power. But shutting down discourse is not politically neutral - it's a great help to the corrupt and evil to hide what they do and prevent people from responding to it. Democracy dies in darkness, I've heard.
There's this macrocycle of fatigue related to Godwins law for, what, 30 years of online discourse.
The undeniable long term trend during this period has been increasing surveillance, control, centralization of power in the executive, weakening of rights, due process, legal authority, politicization of the judiciary, and majority minority slowly building a core base of manipulatable populism.
Maybe I'm naive about the past, even the last 75 years of what was really going on in Washington, but a Seig heil on national television with no pushback or consequences beyond grassroot pushback (and it has been ALL grassroot) was a crystallizing moment.
This isn't stuff to roll your eyes over as just Godwins law style hyperbole.
The only in the I mean only saving grace, is that the stock market exists for immediate political blowback. But the fact that the only functional political bulwark against trump is the second by second ticker of financial health of the oligarchs is really depressing.
That would be great, but I don't see it. HN has already been obviously violating GDPR and all other right-to-forget laws since forever by not allowong for account deletion, and everytime this has been brought up, dang has pretty much confirmed they don't care ("it would look bad if there were deleted comments [and that's more important than these laws]").
It turns out that in real life you don’t have any right to be forgotten, and trying to legally manufacture one is not only nonsensical, it’s impossible.
HN is a public forum, if you don’t want your statements here being public, don’t post.
There are many cases where laws that are made for humans before certain tech are not sufficient once certain tech arrives.
You don’t need the right to be forgotten outside of specific tech because human brain forgets by default, paper rots, and all of the above is restricted geographically and does not scale.
The right to be forgotten is a natural consequence of reality - nothing is by default permanent. It's digital systems that have perverted reality by persisting information beyond its normal short lifetime.
If there's one law of the universe it's that nothing is permanent.
We can "what if" ourselves into any position we want. The fact is that digital surveillance is here and does collect information about people in a scope that is qualitatively different than putting information in books.
Books have limited print runs. Many books in libraries are only borrowed and perhaps read a few times. Niche titles more so. Books go out of print and are hard to search for arbitrary text.
The ease of making copies of digital data, the ease of indexing them is totally different from books, just as writing, clay tablets, scrolls and books were from a purely oral society.
I have a hypothetical. Let's say you attend a rally and give a hate speech and the entire event is live-streamed / recorded for posterity. Can you use "right to forget" laws to impel all sites hosting that video record to blur out your face in the original videos?
What's the functional difference to writing a bunch of hate speech with your username and wanting it scrubbed from the "public record" (which I would argue a popular forum such as HN would be classified) using RTBF?
Same thing if you wrote a "Letter to the Editor" to the New York Times expressing something distasteful. I don't see how anyone should be allowed to wield RTBF as a tool for suppressing information.
The whole idea behind right to forget is that people don't live their entire lives under condemnation for something they stopped doing. You can debate whether or not permanent ostracism is effective as a deterrent, but let's not ban the removal of gang tattoos.
Will that matter in a world of AI? Can't the connection be made - for example based on writing style, political opinions, time of day you post, networks you use, etc etc.
You could be indoctrinated or paid to give the speech. You might regret it or change your mind. The video doesn't have to be real, it could be generated, it could be someone with the same name who looks like you.
Maybe you got drunk and climbed on stage naked 10 years ago. Should you be that guy forever?
When I asked dang about GDPR this is how he explained HN’s stance on not allowing broad comment and account deletion
> Re GDPR: our understanding based on the analysis done by YC's legal team is that HN does not fall under the GDPR, so for the time being we're sticking with the approach of not deleting account histories wholesale but helping with privacy concerns in more precise ways.
> Re "aren’t these comments owned by the person who wrote them"? That's a complicated legal question, no doubt, and also philosophically. From my perspective, two other factors are that (1) the threads are co-creations (see pg on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226) and (2) posting to an internet forum is publishing something, not dissimilar to sending a letter to the editor of a newspaper.
> Obviously there are many reasonable takes on this. Ours is that we're trying to balance the community interests of a public forum (mainly the interest of commenters not to have their comments deprived of context, and the interest of the community in preserving its archive) with the need to protect individuals. That's a lot of work—we end up taking care of requests manually for people every day—but we're committed to both sides of it because it seems like the only way to do justice to both sides.
huge shock that y combinator doesn’t give a shit about legal risk considering the huge chunk of its successful startups were just law-breaking mobile apps.
To be fair...the other side was just as ferocious when someone postulated that the election was rigged, or that COVID couldn't be stopped by masks. You're essentially asking for conservatives to be the bigger person and stop the blood feud.
IMO both approaches should have been more measured, but who do you think will propose the ceasefire agreement?
This is not true. People who claimed the election was rigged were asked to back up their claims with evidence. Typically they never did, although a smaller number made an effort...but the profferred evidence was nonsensical. I am not just talking about talking heads widely quoted on TV or social media posts, I read a lot of election litigation.
I think the anti-mask people had some valid points, but they sank their own boat by ranting about 'masktards' and 'face diapers' while also demonstrating callous indifference to the large number of deaths.
If you check their work based on the publicly available data, you find that based on their logic there was a clear case for Trump cheating. Right wing media reporting the story, of course, did not.
Can you give some examples of things related to those topics you think are equivalent to what is happening right now? Are you referring to facebook and twitter censorship of those topics?
>To be fair...the other side was just as ferocious when someone postulated that the election was rigged,
No they weren't
Not in the amount of court cases, elected politicans stating the view, and January 6th
When a few Democrats starting objecting to the 2016 results. Joe Biden, in congress during the certification, slammed the gavel down and said "it's over"
There's a difference between truth and lies - an actual, material, essential difference. It's not politics, it's truth.
People can take any relativistic position they want, but that difference is essential to anything and everything: The truth about database i/o performance is essential to your project; the truth about climate change is essential to preventing catastrophe; the truth about Covid was essential to saving millions of lives - and many died and much blood is on the hands of the liars.
But the liars were not, and shouldn't have been, arrested, deported, extorted, threatened, etc.
> To be fair...the other side was just as ferocious when someone postulated that the election was rigged, or that COVID couldn't be stopped by masks. You're essentially asking for conservatives to be the bigger person and stop the blood feud.
Did anyone have their, and their coworkers', security clearance revoked just for saying either of those? (There are other activities that could have been taken by people saying the election was rigged that could have led to a loss of security clearance, but I don't think that just the statement did it.)
Yes, lots of people got fired for claiming those in the Covid days. The selective memory of the majority opinion here on HN is deeply distressing, but understandable due to blind tribal support for the democratic party.
Large swathes of people were first identified for being antivax when they self-registered under the religious exemption scheme and then were harassed and fired. It was cunningly done with the media paying no attention.
So people in government claiming it was rigged should probably lose their jobs, as they were advancing harmful narratives related to their jobs. Journalists were (rightly) ridiculed, but there is a significant difference. I might not use a mechanic who is antivax; I would advocate a doctor be fired.
Nobody was made that people thought the election was rigged. They were frustrated with their lack of evidence, and then mad at their attempt at an insurrection. And then really pissed off at their complete lack of accountability afterwards.
Same thing with Covid. Nobody was mad if you thought masks were stupid. They were mad if you didn’t wear your mask, putting immunocompromised people at risk for your own selfish reasons.
There’s a difference between speech and actions. Doing things that actually, literally, kill people is a problem.
It doesn't matter if they're citizens or not if the government is skipping court thus not being required to prove it either way. Then when they oopsie you to another country they have to at least try to pretend to get you back but the courts need to show "deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs".
Which is a long way of saying the executive can blackhole anyone it wants to a foreign country and no one is going to do anything because god forbid we step on the executive's role to give up people in our country to other countries.
>Which is a long way of saying the executive can blackhole anyone it wants
Do you have examples of the executive doing this to citizens or are you being hypothetical here?
Countries generally grant far fewer rights to non-citizens. Have you considered how allowing non-citizens to spread discontent within a country could be abused?
"You are believing the trash talk and allowing it to intimidate you. You are helping them by spreading it and legitimizing it."
I take this as "Just ignore the rhetoric and threats from Republicans because they are empty and you're helping them spread the hate which gets more them support"
>Because if enough people chant that, then it will become a real possibility.
I'm not sure what you mean. Can you provide an example?
> "Just ignore the rhetoric and threats from Republicans
No, you need to stop them. You need a plan for victory. Testifying that they have unstoppable power is an indulgence in cowardice. At halfime, do athletes say 'we can't possibly stop them!' It's just someone acting out their fears.
Or are you dismissing overt signalling of fascism as "just owning the libs"? Are you just cherry picking communication you feel safe about and ignoring the huge glaring signs being flashed by dozens of appointees? Are you pretending Obama and bush established legal precedents for classifying citizens as enemy combatants for rendition, denial of due process, and murder by drone without trial? That we don't have a better than 1984 turnkey oppression and total.monitorinf infrastructure for any despot of sufficient motivation which this admin has amply stated affection towards?
Language is important from leaders. So is consistency and some degree of integrity. Even disingenuous cowtowing to appearances and political norms constrains power and abuse.
I'm not sure what you are saying, but I'm not dismissing it, I'm saying we need to stop repeating their propaganda of terror and intimindation as if it's true. Be effective, not spread the poison of helplessness and fear.
He's married to a citizen which gives him an avenue towards legal residency and full citizenship.
It doesn't matter anyways because the government admitted he was deported due to a administrative error and because they actively undermined and sidestepped the courts authority on several occasions, there is effectively nothing stopping them from doing it to full blown citizens. Honestly, it sounds like it's just a matter of time if this keeps up.
I agree it's bad, and yes, the government admitted they shouldn't have done it. But regardless, the question was about if it has happened to a citizen, not a person who maybe could be a citizen one day but is not, and you responded with them "doing just that" when they did not, in fact, "do just that".
I'm not sure why there's a need to mislead when what's actually happening is bad enough.
It's not a need to mislead. You're grasping at a technicality. Citizenship is irrelevant if you're not given the chance to demonstrate it, which he wasn't, and again, he was actually deported because of the administrative error, not an on-purpose action, the correctness of which is irrelevant.
You're arguing whether a car wrapped around a tree has a bad alternator. Surely a fact useful to someone, somewhere, and worth knowing. But also certainly not the reason there's a problem.
100% this. To echo another poster below, it's really important to read the Supreme Court's own words here.
>"The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene. "
From https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
I suspect that is one of the main reasons behind the order. It's very obvious that citizen vs legal resident matters very little here, if due process is not given.
So.. the very post you share prooves it's not happening. Incredulously, I gotta wounder: Did/ do you really believe your link supports your claim that it's been happening?
So, I think, the courts ruled just 2 days ago that people can get sent abroad so long as they get to 'petition' it in... Texas. Right? So like, if their was an investigation, it closed one day prior to the interview; which is why she didnt say what you think she did. Trump said Would do it, and supposedly now he Can do it. All this is 'fact'in her eyes prior to the interview. An important distinction, no?
So you think it’s sane to do nothing and wait till it’s happening when they are explicitly saying they are looking for ways to make it happen? Really?
At this when they say something absurdly unhinged and unthinkable and if you still don’t believe they will try it.. well.. maybe you’re in the market for a bridge?
If they can ignore due process in this case what's to say they cannot do it to proper citizens? It's clear they're probing their way into creating a blueprint to get rid of people critical of trump.
>He's married to a citizen which gives him an avenue towards legal residency and full citizenship.
You seem as if you're trying to leverage that to actual citizen rights... "look, he could be a citizen someday, so that means he has these same rights reserved to citizens". But it does not work that way.
>there is effectively nothing stopping them from doing it to full blown citizens.
Be sure to raise the alarm when they do. I'd be curious if it ever got that far. I think that some on the left worry that it might not, because if they don't have the absurd slippery slope argument then many people would never be concerned about this at all.
It happens to be the case that he's not a citizen or claiming to be a citizen, but he wasn't given due process, and there's absolutely nothing stopping them from picking anybody up off the street, claiming they're here illegally, and shipping them off to an El Salvadoran prison.
All people in the us, legal or illegal, citizen or not, have fourth amendment protections, and if you strip those rights from anyone, you remove them from everyone.
Do they? We generally don’t give noncitizens the right to own a gun in the us, so clearly we are selective about applying the 2nd amendment protection. The 4th may need adjudication.
And just what process is due a person under risk of deportation? People say "due process" quite often without even giving any thought to what the term means, and I doubt that 1 in 4 could give a casual definition.
One might think that the only process due to such a person would be the opportunity to contest that they were a citizen and to provide evidence to that claim. Was he denied this? Did they slap a muzzle on him as he tried to scream "but my birth certificate's in the sock drawer, just take a look!"? If the agents who detained and deported him ran any sort of check that would have discovered his citizenship in time to prevent a deportation (had he been a citizen), this seems about all the process that could or should be due.
PS Am I the only one that notices how the news media always describes him as "from Maryland" when he wasn't born there, didn't attend school there, etc?
> They should have the due process to prove they are here legally.
This sounds like a nonsense statement. Non-citizens are only ever here legally at the pleasure of the United States. If we allow them in for 2 weeks, or 3 months, or whatever on a visa... we can change our minds and cancel it early.
The idea that they can have some absolute temporary right to be here ignores what it means to be a non-citizen. You have no right to be here, just a temporary privilege that can be revoked at any point for entirely arbitrary reasons.
>And yes, they were denied that.
I've heard no evidence that this was the case. "Due process" rights are, in many cases administrative. No trial, no judge.
>Even if you imagine due process is for citizens only,
I did not say this, and I do not imagine it. I just happen to know what due process rights actually are.
>you can't prove citizenship status without due process,
Was he denied his opportunity to prove citizenship to the agents who detained him? Did he try to get them to look in his wallet for papers, but they ignored that? Did he beg them to just look in his closet and see his birth certificate? That would be denial of due process.
>Otherwise, nothing's stopping ICE from just claiming you're not a citizen
So you claim. But it's absurd to think that will happen. If you believe it will happen, then just wait and sound the alarm when it does. I'll be genuinely surprised.
> Was he denied his opportunity to prove citizenship to the agents who detained him? Did he try to get them to look in his wallet for papers, but they ignored that? Did he beg them to just look in his closet and see his birth certificate? That would be denial of due process.
Really? The things that are happening now are so absurdly insane that nobody could have imagined them just a few years ago, and you are still gullible enough to say something as silly like that...
> sound the alarm when it does
The loons will just move the goalposts yet again. So what would that achieve?
> It's absurd that people who aren't citizens would be sent back to their home countries
I’m obviously referring to everything the current administration is doing not this specific case.
> common ground with the left
I’d consider myself a moderate centrist. Maybe mildly center-right.
> Do you even know why you want
If the only way of stopping them from coming is to surrender democracy to an authoritarian government staffed by exceptionally deranged and incompetent individuals, well.. let them come then..
> I contend that there's no chance of me ever being deported
Probably. As long as you don’t burn down any Teslas or say nasty thing about the president it’s very unlikely..
> of unease you feel right now continues until 2029 and beyond.
So you are willing to give up democracy and the rule of law (and economic stability for that matter..) just to get rid of some immigrants you don’t like?
If we don't have due process, in that, you can't go and defend yourself in public court, nobody here is really legal or not. It doesn't matter if your birth certificate is in the other room. Without due process it's whatever the ICE agent that's bagging you feels like. What are you gonna do? You don't get due process, you get no court hearing, you get the pleasure of getting onto a plane and flown out to a slave labor prison in El Salvador. Also Garcia had full legal permission to be here but it shows they never checked it and thus he was whisked away like we can expect other's to be if things stay on the current path.
>If we don't have due process, in that, you can't go and defend yourself in public court
That's not due process. Due process rights do not guarantee you any sort of court hearing or trial. It does not require a judge. 90% or more of due process is administrative in nature. The bureaucracy infringes your due process rights when they don't "go through the motions" of how to handle a particular situation. How should they handle deporting someone? By checking that they're not deporting a citizen. If they failed to check, if they failed to give him the opportunity to prove citizenship, they denied his due process rights. Did they do this?
>It doesn't matter if your birth certificate is in the other room. Without due proces
You miss the point. I wasn't asking if his birth certificate was there or not. I'm asking "did they give him the chance to claim as much, and did they follow up and make sure it wasn't there". If they didn't give him the opportunity to make the claim, if they ignored such a claim, this is a denial of due process.
And there was no denial. If you had more than a second grader's understanding of due process, you wouldn't be so confused here.
> What are you gonna do? You don't get due process,
"Look Mr. ICEman, you're making a mistake. We can clear this up in minutes, pull my wallet out and take a look at my identity documents, some of which indicate I'm a citizen. It'll only take two minutes to reveal me as a liar if that's not the case."
And if they refuse, then my due process rights have been denied.
>Also Garcia had full legal permission to be here
He showed up without such permission, then weaseled his way into getting contested permission after the fact. Which was always the case under previous policy, there was no practical way to send them back if they made it 100 yards across the border.
You keep saying other people have no idea what due process is, and you keep implying that asking a police officer really nicely not to arrest you is due process. Due process is given via the judicial system. The executive branch doesn't have the authority to be judge, jury and executioner. The police don't get to determine your rights, the courts do.
>and you keep implying that asking a police officer really nicely not to arrest you is due process.
I didn't imply this, in fact if you go up a few comments, I specifically say that due process rights are often administrative in nature. If the bureaucracy lets everyone file paperwork and processes it the same way every time, but when you show up with your paperwork to file it they throw it away without looking at it and say "we're already rejecting it"... that's a due process rights violation. In fact, that's pretty much the textbook definition of it. It's not that hard to understand. The "but he didn't even get a trial!" whiny-assed ijits don't seem to get that, or you. The "police officer" has already arrested you (though not in this case, because it wasn't an arrest, and not a police officer). They're allowed to do that, that's their job. Even when they do it to the wrong person.
Did the police officer check if he was a citizen or not? When (if?) he protested that he was, did they double-check? If those things didn't happen, no due process was skipped, ignored, or infringed. You don't know what due process is either... it's just this phrase you've heard and read from time to time in popular news media without ever thinking about it.
> The executive branch doesn't have the authority to be judge, jury and executioner.
Since these aren't criminal cases, they don't get a judge, jury, or executioner. They get a deportation. And by law, the executive branch really does have this legitimate power and authority. Deportations aren't penalties for crimes.
>The police don't get to determine your rights, the courts do.
This is a strange, distorted view. The courts aren't used to create new rights, only to determine the correct interpretation of rights when there is a dispute. It won't go your way at all. No matter how many times the media calls him a "Maryland man" despite being from El Salvador.
Would his being a citizen have mattered to any of the procedures prior to his rendition? The government never made any effort to prove that he was here illegally (which is important since he wasn't), and he never had an opportunity to offer a defense.
He's a permanent resident. Splitting hairs over citizenship when he was here legally massively misses the problem with blackholing people here legally.
> Splitting hairs over citizenship when he was here legally massively misses the problem with blackholing people here legally.
And on top of that this case should be horrifying to anyone regardless of whether they want to split hairs because:
A) they admitted he was deported in error
B) they are now effectively trying to argue there is no way to get him back
So even if you believe they would never knowingly do this to an actual citizen they are only one slightly different mistake from disappearing a citizen, whether or not it has happened yet.
And then lastly and most importantly IMO it is wildly un-American to believe anyone (regardless of citizenship or legal status) is not entitled to due process.
He's *not* a permanent resident; he's on "withholding of removal" status since 2019 [*]. It's not splitting hairs to discuss that, but you're right that the govt is (deliberately) pursuing a "camel's-nose-under-the-tent" approach first on a small class of people where Congress and INA haven't defined a direct clear path to PR or becoming a citizen, unlike a GC would since both his wife and child are US citizens.
He was granted "withholding of removal" status in 2019, which protected him from deportation to El Salvador (for fear of gang violence/extortion, which is why he came to the US).
The current DOJ acknowledges that at the time (2019) the "[first Trump admin] government did not appeal that decision [to grant withholding of removal], so it is final". It also seems like they never previously made any allegation that he was a gang member, and that they don't have any solid proof now that he is (other than supposedly one informant who incorrectly claimed Garcia lived in NY, so basically no credible evidence whatsoever).
By jumping the gun on deporting Garcia without due process, the current admin seems to unwittingly be forcing the issue to the Supreme Court very soon. (UPDATE: SC has just ruled unanimously 9-0 that the admin must try to release Garcia.) Looks like the SC's going to be very busy this May-June.
[*] Withholding-of-removal is a pretty rare status, rarely granted by court (>99% rejection rate), much rarer than Green Card, and applicants have to demonstrate credible fear. [0] This procedure is defined in INA § 208 (INA = Immigration and Nationality Act) [1]
As of 12/2024 there were over 100,000 individuals (from Cuba, China, Venezuela, Mauritania, Nigeria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, etc.) with orders of removal remaining free in the US due to various special interest statuses, including withholding of removal, according to a report from FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform). [2]
(Does anyone have stats on what historically happened to people in withholding-of-removal (what % became citizens, what % got GC, what % voluntarily left, what % got deported, what % moved to a different status etc.)?)
What about that guy who got deported to El Salvador even though he was legally here and the court had also ordered he not be sent back to El Salvador for his own protection? I’m pretty sure the admin admitted it was a mistake then refused to bring him back.
The Supreme Court resolutely batted that down 9-0 in a few days.
>> The [District Court] order properly requires the Government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. The intended scope of the term “effectuate” in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority. The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs. For its part, the Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps.https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
The only question at this point is how detailed in demands the District Court can be.
The administration attempted to push the boundaries of executive power and lost in court, as has been happening.
Turns out, conservative justices with lifetime appointments aren't too legally thrilled about an unbridled executive either.
Yes, that is where my quote came from. From your own quote:
> The District Court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.
Which is such a ridiculously bullshit line of thought. This wasn't some person who willingly went to some random country, this is someone the executive illegally put there against the person's will in coordination with said foreign government. I can guarantee you that any order with teeth will be struck down by SCOTUS on this line of thought.
I'm not sure why people obtusely intepret Supreme Court rulings as though they're part of the current administration.
The court is obviously saying that (1) it's correct and necessary to bring him back but that (2) the District Court doesn't have unbridled authority to order any foreign policy-influencing remedy it wants.
I.e. a US court couldn't order a president to sign a treaty
If the administration tries to foot drag further, the Supreme Court will likely order more specific remedies.
By not taking the L here, the administration is just burning whatever conservative goodwill they might have started with on this Supreme Court.
They're already disobeying the court, including both the lower court's order and the supreme court's order to attempt repatriation, as well as the lower court's order to provide information on the victim's ___location and attempts to retrieve him. They disobeyed numerous court orders to rehire people they fired and re-fund things they defunded.
What makes you think the administration cares about goodwill after that? Disobeying direct court orders is crossing the Rubicon. There's no going back to the illusion that judicial judgements will be respected by this administration.
> They tried to weasel around the verbal vs written order...
On numerous occasions (not just the one you mention), they did not obey the direct order by the time specified, meaning they directly disobeyed the court. For example, post-supreme-court-order, they were obliged to provide the lower court with a status update of the victim, and a list of things they've done so far to retrieve them. They directly violated that court order.
It's important to draw a bright, flashing distinction between:
1. Arguing that you think you should not have to comply with an order, but then complying if you don't receive a ruling in your favor in time.
2. Directly violating a court order, and then tossing out a cynical pretext as an excuse which hasn't been preapproved by the judge (they're called that for a reason).
Unless a stay is placed before the deadline, you must comply with every single court order, by the court-ordered deadline, no matter what you think.
At least, that's how it was before. Now the USA has crossed the Rubicon, with the government itself ignoring court orders at will, in order to imprison political enemies.
It was a decent liberal democracy while it lasted.
I think the SCOTUS was right on the money this time, and I am well to the left of any of its members. My read of their verbiage about effectuation/article II was a suggestion to the District Court judge to eliminate any wiggle room the administration would try to exploit.
This order was toothless, and the administration has already flouted it.
All John Roberts is doing is asking Trump to go further next time. Whether it's intentional or just cowardice on his part doesn't really matter to the rest of us.
It matter to me, since there are 2-3 conservative justices on the current Supreme Court that are likely to tire of administration excesses.
A long game player might even say Roberts is angling for that, by tailoring consensus opinions that nonetheless leave room for the administration to demonstrate further stupidity.
- "Do you have examples of the executive doing this to citizens or are you being hypothetical here?"
"Do you have examples of this severity-11 CVE being used in the wild, or are you just being hypothetical here?" It's a horrifically exploitable bug, were it left unpatched.
It's not some fringe conspiracy theory that this is how the law works and how the law would work on contact with US citizens; the Garcia SCOTUS concurrence explicitly underscored this perversity,
- "The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens [sic!], without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene... That view refutes itself."
> Do you have examples of the executive doing this to citizens
Feels like moving the goalposts. First they were going to clear out "illegals" by any means, now the line includes any non-citizens. Granted maybe you personally didn't say both though.
> Have you considered how allowing non-citizens to spread discontent within a country could be abused?
Is it meaningfully different from allowing citizens to "spread discontent"? Why not just start taking everybody's 1st amendment rights, by the same logic? I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure there's long precedent that non-citizens are granted most of the same rights, including freedom of speech and assembly.
If non-citizens are being supported, instructed, etc by their government in spreading discontent, there are probably laws like espionage for that; you don't have to take away everybody else's freedom to stop them.
I am aware of some US citizens being deported by mistake under previous administrations, but there was a general consensus that those were genuine mistakes, examples of negligence rather than policy: https://immigrationimpact.com/2021/07/30/ice-deport-us-citiz...
>Countries generally grant far fewer rights to non-citizens. Have you considered how allowing non-citizens to spread discontent within a country could be abused?
The most powerful person in the country lied and still is lying about elected fraud, undermining the basis for our Democratic system and was rewarded with a 2nd term.
Median voters voted for Trump because they wanted a regime change after feeling the economic shock of covid. This is the trend across basically every democratic country. Polls on the issue itself show that this split is not 50/50 though the actual number escapes me.
I've seen a few news articles on arrests and the headlines are attention grabbing "Ivy League Student arrested for protesting" and it's worrisome to see.
However then buried in the article is something like they overstayed their visa, etc. Take a sibling comment's link to an article with a "second student arrested" in the title. As in that seems like there isn't a "large number". This is nothing like the reports of arrests in Russia. Especially as some of these pro-Palestinian protestors advocate violence or intifada pretty freely. I've seen that with my own eyes.
If I were a foreign national protesting and advocating for violence against any other country or people group I'd expect to be denied a visa or possibly deported for participating in such events. It'd be arrogant not to expect that outcome IMHO.
Visa applications in European Union countries often include things such as "indicators of good civil behavior". Take the quotes from that sibling comment's linked BBC article:
> The DHS statement says that Ms Kordia had overstayed her student visa, which had been terminated in 2022 "for lack of attendance". It did not say whether she had been attending Columbia or another institution.
> She had previously been arrested in April 2024 for taking part in protests at Columbia University, according to DHS.
> "It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America," said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a statement.
> "When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country."
And cases like Rumeysa Ozturk's are different. I also believe DHS should have to abide by the courts as well. Her case is also getting national and international attention and legal help.
By your logic, in the grand scheme of thing, it’s ok to deport elcritch and then say “elcritch’s” case was different and provide it with national and international attention and legal help.
Full disclosure, i’m not arguing in good faith. As a Canadian I don’t believe the US has a future, so I’m merely highlighting an argument which is symptomatic of the country’s downfall.
You could construe my logic that way, but no I’m saying the DHS was likely wrong in that instance and it caused uproar and backlash. Unlike other nations where few would care if the government overstepped. Governments will always overreach, it’s how people pushback which matters.
Also I’m more likely to be arrested and deported for silently praying in the UK.
However there’s also political tactics of “look at that poor student being deported” when said student was calling for jihad, intifada, and antisemitism and violating visas on top of that, which was sort of my original point.
Heh and is Canada fairing any different? Remember when Trudeau froze bank accounts for truckers protesting Covid lockdowns or whatnot. Maybe Trudeau shutting down parliament to seemingly avoid scrutiny. Hopefully it’s just news sensationalism and not the downfall of Canada.
> As in that seems like there isn't a "large number".
---
> “But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”
― Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
---
You have to say "No" loudly and clearly at the _first offense_, and not wait until it's too late.
Poignant quote. Should we as a society accept students who are calling for violence and intifada on Israel or Jewish people in general? If anything some of those pro-Palestinian protests were more reminiscent of the 1933 “German Firm” boycotts the quote mentions than not:
> A boycott sign posted on the display window of a Jewish-owned business reads: "Germans defend yourselves against Jewish atrocity propaganda. Buy only at German shops!" Berlin, Germany, April 1, 1933.
It seems that a number of these students have been participating in events and protests calling for violence. After all there’s probably 10’s of thousands of student protestors, and likely many of them foreign students too. So it doesn’t seem like a “deport all Muslim students” either.
Peaceful protests are one thing, but I’ve seen some of these protests in person and it’s clear they’re not all peaceful demonstrations. Also supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is not supporting peaceful innocent freedom fighters. Both groups are clear and open on their stance for genocide against Israelies.
However we shouldn’t deport students who are peaceful and haven’t called for violence against others. It’s great that those cases are being called out and publicly criticized
. But not every one of these cases are an innocent student getting caught up either. What is happening is Gaza is terrible all around. It shouldn’t be used as an excuse to call for more violence against Jews or Muslims.
"By looking at property damage and police injuries, we also conclude that this pro-Palestine movement has not been violent. That is true of both the national protest wave in general and of the student encampments in spring 2024 in particular. The rhetorical core of this pro-Palestine movement has not been a call for violence against Jews, but rather a call for freedom for Palestinians and an end to violence being inflicted upon them. To substantiate this point, we considered two sources of evidence: 1) the banners, signs, and chants seen or heard at pro-Palestine events; 2) the demands issued by organizers of over 100 student encampments."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14742837.2024.2...
The way it works in American culture is quite simple. You are allowed to say whatever you like, but certain acts (like vandalism, or causing bodily harm to another individual) are criminalized. What we find in practice is that the truly awful people commit these crimes in addition to speaking awful things. We avoid punishing the merely incorrect.
This isn’t quite true. The last language from the Supreme Court, in Brandeburg vs. Ohio ( 1969) was “imminent lawless action”. There’s also standards for the public airwaves, which are regulated by the FCC. maybe not as important as they used to be, but still there and the major networks which are also broadcasters abide Also there’s specific exceptions like threatening the President, and “obscene” material, such as porn.
The there’s the question of private ownership of the platform. You certainly can’t say whatever yiu want on YouTube, for instance.
It’s hardly an equal fight, Gaza is an occupied and colonized territory that has limited ability for resistance. We wouldn’t be having this same discussion about South Africa overthrowing their apartheid.
There is a difference in a foreign national engaging in political speech and a citizen. If anything allowing foreign nationals to adjust political speech here while supporting violence or terrorism would be inappropriate and unwise. After all, it's easy for a foreign power to send radicalizers to a foreign country to influence or topple them. Well trodeen history there. Sending radical students is much more effective than a few thousand Twitter bots.
Of course, and as it stands foreign nationals on Visa's in the US don't have the same rights as citizens. Not that they shouldn't have some degree of free speech, but they can also be scrutinized and deported for advocating for violence and terrorism.
That scrutiny is a waste of federal resources since you're basically extending the notion of advocating violence to supporting any side in any war - perhaps meta should just go ahead and remove all posts on both sides.
No I’m not, but in case you missed the news several of the pro-Palestinian protests were violent or openly called for violence. Similarly with the posts in question.
as a person of jewish faith, I ask that you please not falsely conflate these two completely different concepts
someone who opposes jewish people in general is bad, but someone who opposes the ongoing genocide of palestinians is good
your usage of "or" here would indicate that the above good person is grouped together with the above bad person
> If anything some of those pro-Palestinian protests were more reminiscent of the 1933 “German Firm” boycotts
structuring your metaphor like this, strikes me as an example of DARVO [0], considering what is being done to innocent palestinians. how many israelis patronize businesses based in palestine? how many such businesses do you patronize?
As someone who came from a pretty authoritarian country- let me assure you that people there do routinely criticize their government, mock them all the time. Governments often do not have the bandwidth to deal with the volume of criticism, and even when they do- they wisely realize that letting people vent a little online is better than complete crackdown. I myself routinely did this in Facebook, where many in my friend list were government employees and (ex-ruling) party members.
I am in fact far more afraid of pro-palestine speech from USA as an immigrant than I was in my home country- and please trust me I am not exaggerating here.
>I am in fact far more afraid of pro-palestine speech from USA as an immigrant than I was in my home country- and please trust me I am not exaggerating here.
I would have laughed at this until pretty recently. How wrong I was.
Likely he means expressing any pro-Palestine sentiments. Doxxing is very common and if Ivy League deans were taken down, immigrants are likely to be deported for expressing any empathy towards the Palestinian.
But the people doing the doxxing complain that any criticism of Ire* for their war crimes makes them feel like there is no place they are safe, I don't buy it but the complainants have a lot of allies.
As someone said above, "America's arrested rather a large number of people in recent weeks—university students, mostly—for expressing viewpoints on the I/P conflict. The current Administration is claiming, and no one's yet stopped them, that First Amendment rights don't apply to non-citizens such as international students."
America is changing. What was true before isn't necessarily true now, and may get worse, depending on election outcomes.
People who have spoken out against the genocidal apartheid regime are being black-bagged in the street by plainclothes officers all across the United States. The gap between the supposedly enlightened West and Russia grows smaller by the day.
Right. We don't have to arrest. We can just disappear anything you say critical of our masters, I mean, our overlords, I mean, our government, I mean, a foreign government, I mean, a foreign government that hacks American companies and sells the hacks to Middle Eastern dictators who breed an ideology that trained people to attack our own country, I mean...
Yea but there's also not much point in critiquing the government here. What we ever been able to do about it except riot? We can endlessly discuss the failures of government and as it stands I don't think we will never see these failures distinguish candidates in the voting booth. Which is confusing, because you'd think the democrats would have wanted to win this time.
Well, Israelis are not abruptly incompetent and culturally allergic to progress, with a predictable habit of grovelling to whichever tyrant comes next — but they certainly do share some methods.
Still not sure what you mention. Hard to say that Israelis don't grovel to whatever tyrant comes next when they are currently ruled by a tyrant who would rather endanger his citizens and commit war crimes than gold and election he knows he'll lose. Also they have elected him over and over again despite how he endangers them and funded their current biggest enemy Hamas, in a cynical ploy to weaken his more moderate opposition at the time, the PA
I understand, but I don't perceive them as tyrants in the "Russian" sense. That’s not to excuse anything, of course. There’s this strange tendency among Russians to almost embrace suffering—and to try to drag everyone else down with them. It’s as if it doesn’t matter that they live in poverty or that their country is ravaged by oligarchs and mafia. What matters is that Russia is big and strong. That seems to be their default mindset.
But back to my original point. A few days ago, I happened to come across some pro-Israel propaganda, and honestly, I was stunned. It was just an Instagram profile claiming to be part of a pro-Israel lobbying organization, but the content was deeply disturbing. They were pushing a heavily distorted narrative, even going so far as to post photos and names of students, accusing them of supporting terrorism. It was all incredibly manipulative. The presentation was slick and more polished than rusias work of course, but the whole thing strongly reminded me of their methods.
Yeah unfortunately we thought the end of history would be the global spread of liberal democracies, but it's the global spread of this kind of stuff instead
To be honest, I think things have just become more visible and easier to interpret for those who are paying attention. I don't believe people have really changed.
The "end of history" theory today comes across, if not arrogant, then at the very least deeply naive.
Any difference is going to disappear in only a few years. What matters is the direction the US taking. This happened to Russia about 14 years ago, and it’s happening to the US now.
You have a point with democratic backsliding - but then your rights hinge on the impartiality of the judicial system (as a whole, and eventually, not necessarily individual decisions evidently). It’s pretty obvious that the legal systems even in flawed democracies is still vastly better than in those autocracies.
Checks and balances are a crucial feature of American democracy.
It's almost as though the framers of the Constitution foresaw the possibility of the two elected branches of government (executive and legislative) being monopolized by the same group, at some point.
And that the very flexibility of regular, open, direct elections also required a check to protect the fundamental rights of all people in the country.
They may have foresaw it but they did little if anything to prevent it. They lamented that political parties would probably be the downfall, and here we are...
The prevention is literally in the Constitution! Do you think other branches of government would be deferring to the Supreme Court if it weren't spelled out that they must?
> You do realize that this is where things are going, right?
This has been going on for decades.
> Have you not heard of the arrests and recent deportations of student protestors?
The legality of which will be decided (hopefully) by the courts. If this turns out to be legal, the fault doesn't lie at the hands of Trump and his cronies, but at a broken system we've had - for decades. Getting rid of him won't solve this. Having checks and balances will.
Much of his and Elon's actions are within the power that has been legally granted to them. And that is the problem. Congress is not limiting those powers. Voters are another part of checks and balances, and they happily wanted to give him those powers.
The problem isn't Trump. It's the country. Been broken for a while, but it took time for someone to clearly demonstrate how broken it is.
The western endorsement of the genocide in Gaza has been some of the best PR Putin could ever have hoped for.
It simultaneously underlined the viciousness, the lack of moral credibility and extreme hypocrisy of western leaders in the eyes of the nonaligned world (e.g. the global south), none of whom sanctioned him.
If you are not constantly posting fake and not recieve money from foreign entities you are not being arested at all in Russia. You may get a fine, and that's not always the case.
In today's world, it's all complicated, to tell the truth. If you think very deeply, then with the help of foreign money, if there is a lot of it, you can even destroy the country without doing anything illegal, just paying for advertising and comments with coverage of only facts that are beneficial to you and excluding the unprofitable ones.
People often think that bot farms are only from Russia and China, but on the other side, paid commenters are also used. Unfortunately, it will only get worse with modern AI.
For me, there is not much difference between these names. Anyway, choosing a name doesn't change the actual events... Yes it's not good. But it's bad saying only about war aggression and not saying at all about bloody coup and bloody nationlist crimes.
It's not very complicated. Russia invaded Ukraine, occupied large parts of its territories, and forcibly annexed it. Russia is the aggressor and the war criminal. These are all objective facts.
Not really, I'm Russian currently located in Russia and I can openly say that I hate our government. Though it would obviously be much worse if I actually had a big audience, in which case yeah there may be repercussions
... and they're trying to end birthright citizenship. I.e. people who are literally not immigrants (were born here and perhaps have never lived anywhere else) are already being lined up for this.
It's not unreasonable to see the situation as "Then they came for the Jews, and the administration finally deported the people who were coming for the Jews".
The president's literal argument for doing it is that the activist groups are coming for all of American life.
I'm not a big fan of either side's rhetoric, but clearly the horseshoe has become a ring.
> I'm not a big fan of either side's rhetoric, but clearly the horseshoe has become a ring.
Either side? Tell me which "side" does that sound like?
- hostility towards non traditional sexuality
- immigration being used as the scapegoat for economic problems
- strong feeling of national exceptionalism
- assault on women's productivity rights
- politicizing of science
- deportation for political reasons
- "Roman" salutes
It brings parallels with some things happening in Europe some time ago.
> activist groups are coming for all of American life.
I wonder who's actually going for all of American life though. Let's take Birthright citizenship, which has been established in 1868. Is that American life enough for you?
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
And guess who goes against this American way of life value? An orange grandpa married to an immigrant. You really can't make this up.
> Either side? Tell me which "side" does that sound like?
Up until you got to the "Roman" salutes, it sounded like both sides in the US.
Or rather, it will sound like whichever side you aren't. That's the point.
But using "Then they came for the Jews" when you're discussing deportation of these particular people is perhaps a new level of absurdity in the discourse.
> "Roman" salutes, it sounded like both sides in the US.
The liberals / Dems can barely organize a picnic. They can't agree on anything. There is no Fox News, there is nobody they bow down to. The obsequiousness to Trump is unprecendented.
> If a president stretched the limits of executive power to go after guns, half of the country would cheer for it.
That's speculation about specuation about an undefined interpretation. We are bounded by law, including by the Constitution.
> The Constitution is a living document, and the line is constantly pushed back and forth on its interpretation and enforcement.
There is variation in interpretation, but within bounds. If you want to eliminate Constitutional gun rights, you would need to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Ok, but if we want to repeal it there's a defined process for that. The president doesn't just get to declare people's citizenship invalid, that's Nazi shit. That's why I call Trump and everyone who tacitly or explicitly supports him a Nazi. He's trying to rule by executive fiat to enforce white nationalism.
> The president's literal argument for doing it is that the activist groups are coming for all of American life.
What is American life? Why can't people criticize whatever they want - that is American life.
> "Then they came for the Jews, and the administration finally deported the people who were coming for the Jews"
The vast majority of antisemitism is on the right. The administration does nothing about it (and supports and legitimizes much of it).
Also, the Jews will be next. By attacking critics of Judaism, they are entrapping Jewish people (and others) in legitimzing this oppression, and in making themselves into targets of hate. Then when the white supremecists turn on them, and say Jews are conspiring to control American, what will these Jewish supporters of arrests, oppression, and deportations say?
Most of the pro-Palestine or anti-Zionist content I see is denouncing Israeli war crimes and genocide. No one is bashing Jews because of their ethnicity or religion.
Also a lot of this comes from the Jews (who are then attacked for being confused or..... antisemitic)
We're not at the point of people hunting Jews because they're Jews. We are at the point when opposing targeting/killing medics, press, children or hospitals may result in being kidnapped from the street and either locked up without charges or trafficked to the torture camp.
I do not disagree with your comment in general, I disagree with you putting "Judaism" while the almost all the critique and rebuke is aimed at the Israeli war crimes or the Zionist supremacy ideology.
Got called a "self-hating Jew" for the first time on Mastodon a year ago, for criticizing Israel.
Unfortunately for those of us in the diaspora, Israel has really muddied the waters by convincing people that anti-Israel = antisemitism, because it's given real antisemites cover. E.g., like when the ADL came to Musk's defense after his Nazi salute because he officially supported Israel.
Almost all far-right / neo-nazis groups with a long (real) antisemitism trajectory like the ones Elon Musk supports are now pro-Israel and pro-Gaza genocide. Sounds weird, but it makes total sense, as:
- The Zionist project is an ethno-state, just like those groups want for their countries. This also echoes the Zionist-nazi collaborations before WWII to move jewish population out of Germany to Palestine.
- Israel works as an spearhead of the global imperialism configuration, if you support imperialism on the Middle East -as those groups and their bourgeoisie do- you must support Israel.
- European neo-nazi groups are militant against immigration, and a big chunk of that immigration to their countries is muslim, so they are more than open to the Israel narratives against the muslim world... even the most extremist ones that de-humanizes Gaza children ("those children are future terrorists").
> I do not disagree with your comment in general, I disagree with you putting "Judaism" while the almost all the critique and rebuke is aimed at the Israeli war crimes or the Zionist supremacy ideology.
It's good that you brought this up!
It's a common right-wing tactic to conflate themselves with the purest version of something that is highly regarded and hide behind it. E.g the Nazis conflated themselves with "pure" Germanness, the fascists in Italy conflated themselves with "pure" Italianness, the same way now Israel conflates itself with Judaism/Jewishness. Then it naturally follows that if you attack Israel's genocide of the people in Palestine, you are attacking Judaism/Jewishness. If you question Netanyahu's genocidal ultra-supremacist ideology (which many Holocaust survivors, Jewish themselves, have done repeatedly), you are anti-Jewish, and so on.
A similar thing is happening in the US where the current administration is trying to position itself as America-first, so naturally any critique on them must be anti-American, right? You will find that this playbook is always the same. First will be immigrants, then non-traditional sexual orientations and women's reproductive rights, then the press and universities and finally just whoever they feel like.
Fortunately, if history goes to show us anything, it's these hate-fueled-orders always end up imploding.
> Fortunately, if history goes to show us anything, it's these hate-fueled-orders always end up imploding.
That's taking the 'in the long run' analysis to an extreme.
In WWII, after hundreds of millions died - including over 10 million murdered by the hate-filled - major parts of the world were devestated, and the free world united in a massive war, the hate-fueled were stopped. They didn't implode.
The idea that they will implode is a common fantasy that you (and many others) won't have to do anthing, face their fears, fight an uncertain fight. If you really believed they would implode, the fight would be certain. They won't stop until you stop them.
> And the same way now progressives conflate Zionists with White supremacists / Nazi
Nazism and Zionism are both ultra-right-wing nationalistic ideologies. The conflation doesn't stop on the surface though, but it runs deep in the actions of the two states: The Nazi state during WW2, and the Israeli state:
Yes Zionists are the Nazis and Hamas are the good guys I got it. Thanks for all the links I read each and every one of them , especially Wikipedia articles about Nazi concentration camps I've never heard of that.
I am sure I won't hear the end of it how the torture concentration camp of the Nazis is completely different from the much more civilized and completely different torture detention camp of the Israelis. Israelis' of course, have a high regard for their prisoners' well being, especially considering they call them "animals": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr24GcCDgyM
> Yes Zionists are the Nazis and Hamas are the good guys I got it
I probably shouldn't bite, but here it goes:
Here are some stats even before the current war started.
I am sure when some Nazis were killed by the French Resistance, somebody Nazi apologist was saying: "see, French are also bad, because they are killing the poor Germans". However, there is a very important distinction:
And nobody says Hamas are the good guys: both the leaders of Hamas
and Netanyahu and his genocidal posse are sought to be trialed by the ICC for war crimes (https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu).
- Both are far-right ideologies based on some feeling of superiority (racial or national/religious)
I mean, yeah, there are differences in the "flavor", like fascism in Italy was different from Nazism in Germany and is different than the contemporary genocidal Zionism by the Palestinian state, but the similarities are far more than the small differences.
Not sure what "fair exchange" would mean here. It looks like
a) A war / protracted conflict , not some kind of one sided genocide. Jews haven't killed thousands of Germans or tried to bring down the German state. Also, if there is one side that is sympathetic to Nazi ideology it is actually historically the Palestinian side (see Mufti relations with Hitler and his contributions to the final solution).
b) One side is clearly stronger than the other side (however, the weak side is doing everything it can to bring the casaulties numbers up. We know Hamas is doing this).
Israel is not going to try get more Israelis killed just so progressives become happier.
Israel is bulldozing Palestinian houses, bombards working hospitals, forbids (and shoots) humanitarian aid, starves the opponent, stops their electricity, and calls them animals. Why not respond to that?
> Not sure what "fair exchange" would mean here. It looks like
Again, when a nation occupies another nation's territory, it's normal that there are resistance movements. The numbers actually suggest not a war of army vs army but instead warfare on Palestinian territory, in which thousands of innocent Palestinians are caught in the crossfire.
Are those 13,000+ children that Israel killed part of Hamas? Is everybody in Palestine Hamas? Or is it the excuse of a Zionist-apologist for bombarding innocents?
> Israel is not going to try get more Israelis killed just so progressives become happier.
Well, actually again, you are conflating the actions of the genocidal Israeli state and of the wanted war criminal Netanyahu, with the will of the Israeli people, who repeatedly protested against his genocidal regime.
Zionism is the same as Nazism, a type of fascism, predicated on the fact that some are "better" and "chosen" and have a right to and deserve more than others just because of their race/skin color/nationality/religion.
> The president's literal argument for doing it is that the activist groups are coming for all of American life.
American life is defined by the acceptance of dissent and the encouragement of even distasteful free speech. If that's not American, what even is American?
Russia doesn’t just put people in jail for speaking against the government. They weaponise the generational fear of being disappeared by the government. This is not close to what happens in America where you can post anything anywhere and if Facebook deletes it you can always make your own website about it. If you did this in Russia you go to jail. Even if you say things like “it is sad Ukrainian children die in children’s day in Russia” you go to jail. I don’t think you can compare modern USA with modern Russia in this way. USA does plenty of other things that are bad like jailing so many people for petty crimes without pushing much on speech. USA has its own problems and all these comparisons only hide them.
They are now denying visas, and deporting lawful residents, sending them to offshore torture prisons, for social media posts.
For non citizens, regardless of length of time or legality, this is the case right now. For birthright citizens and full citizens it will be the case very soon
But… they can't remove citizenship retroactively. What I mean is today there are citizens and non-citizens, but there are no classes of citizens. Either you have citizenship or you do not, it doesn't matter how you acquired it.
I read this article (and others) and I am still unclear. I thought this whole idiotic crusade applied only to newly born children. It never even crossed my mind that you could revoke citizenship from your citizens. I mean, the principle of non-retroactivity dates back to the Roman Empire.
I think it's disgusting hypocrisy. We're talking about the USA, aren't we? A country that has started many, many wars, a country that massacred innocent Vietnamese, Afghans, Iraqis. Even at this very moment, the US is participating in the killing of honest, decent, innocent Palestinians and Russians. But that's okay, not worth mentioning.
But deporting lawful residents? How dare you, America? This is definitely the beginning of the end.
> Officers “beat up Kamardin very badly and stuck a dumbbell in his anus,” according to Novaya Gazeta Europe.
2. Bald man claim to power was accompanies with mysterious explosions of apartment buildings after which Chechens were declared enemies and war started.
Some interesting bits from wikipedia:
> Three Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents who had planted the devices at Ryazan were arrested by the local police.[6] The next day, FSB director Nikolai Patrushev announced that the incident in Ryazan had been an anti-terror drill and the device found there contained only sugar, and freed the FSB agents involved.[7]
And
> 13 September 1999: Russian Duma speaker Gennadiy Seleznyov makes an announcement about the bombing of an apartment building in the city of Volgodonsk that only takes place three days later
> 16 September 1999: Bombing in Volgodonsk, 17 are killed, 69 injured
None of the NYPD officers didn't have any sentence for this
2. That's an old conspiracy theory, even the Russian opposition (at least the reasonable part of it) doesn't support this theory. There are plenty of publications about it in Russian, and if you will do some effort you will find why
Most of Russian opposition does support this theory. Many people do, in general. It's hard to call it a conspiracy theory when they literally caught a couple of FSB guys loading bags of explosives into an apartment building. The official version is that this was a "security training", but c'mon.
> A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation),[3][4][5] when other explanations are more probable.
Evidently, different people assign different probability to security chief thinking “while real bombings are actually exploding each week and whole cities sleep outside to avoid death, let’s plant a fake bomb and see what happens”
FWIW there was a public opinion poll by Levada back in 2002 about this. 6% said FSB did it, 37% said that there's no clear evidence but they could have done it, and 38% said that it's definitely not the feds.
It's still humans being humans, we just have a covert culture while they are more overt. I personally like being tricked/manipulated more than forced. I'd rather get Tom Sawyered into painting a fence than being held at gunpoint.
The college deportations are the government, but I would guess that the Meta compliance has more to do with the fact that Cheryl Sandberg is a politically-connected turbo-Zionist.
I wish we were neutral on this issue. As an American, it is not my business. I am in no position to justly arbitrate between them. But our politicians are whores, our Zionists have deep pockets, and they're not afraid to empty them out for the cause, so it looks like America's taxpayers are all on Team Zionist, whether we like it or not.
Corruption of power is an inherent property of power. It is expected that people in power will get corrupted. The methods of power grabs are also fairly universal.
The difference between a corrupt shithole and free world is not in what the government tries to do, but in how the governed respond.
Well, there is a difference with Russia, actually. One of Palestinian professors, who studied freedom of speech, shaped it this way:
The difference is that people from Russia, Arab countries etc DO know that their media is lying - but also they know the Western media is lying, because they read all that nonsense the westerners write about their countries.
Good for you that you started to realize how corrupt the Western media is.
> Another difference would be that you are allowed to express your opinion, whereas in russia you would be put to jail, that's true but only in a very limited way.
This is more subtle. I have a lot to say about Israel, and I do post occasionally on Facebook, but I tone it down a lot because I have a few high profile people in the industry and academia among my Facebook friends (not actual friends). If I were to post what I really think, this would have serious career repercussions for me. People would brand me as an antisemite (they don't know that my grandfather is Jewish and he practically raised me).
Can you compare this to Russia? Well, I am Russian and I live in the West, so my choice of living here gives an answer to this question. I'd be in jail in Russia if they read my Facebook posts about the war in Ukraine. Yet, I'm now disillusioned about the Western liberalism, all thanks to Gaza war.
There is no difference between US and Russia in terms of free speech. Russia doesn't have promote a narrative of free speech while banning it. US suppresses it, punishes it and effectively deports anyone who criticizes Israel.
Holy cows are holy everywhere, its just that different cows are holy everywhere.
Strictly speaking, Russia has quite explicit free speech protections in its constitution. So much so that it separately covers freedom of speech and freedom of press, and in regard to the latter straight up says "censorship is prohibited".
Whenever this topic comes up, the government just nods at the document, as if it had any relation to the real world.
True. I was born in Russia and to be honest I wish Russia would at least "bang the drum of free speech" as well. If you pretend to have some values you actually make people start to believe in them a bit
I'm pretty sure Russia still preaches a lot of admirable things that it doesn't actually practice. Talk is cheap yet people will put stock in it anyway.
Is Meta really considered “mainstream media”? I always took that phrase to refer to NBC, CBS, NY Post, etc - the big legacy news organizations (print and TV).
The big legacy news organisations would be legacy media.
Social media is not even 20 years old but it’s a tall order to deny it mainstream status since the younger generations get their news from scrolling TikTok and not cracking open the daily broadsheet.
Legacy media has been sourcing from Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit for years. They’re as mainstream as AP and Reuters but without the reputation or the credentials.
I read “mainstream” as one of those words like “modern,” to apply the media that was prevalent when the phrase was coined. Technically modern architecture, if we read the words literally and individually… well, I guess that would be tent-cities, that seems to mostly be what gets built nowadays.
Facebook, the tent-city of media, actually it would kinda work if only the platform wasn’t centrally controlled.
It's mainstream, it's media, people read their news on it, so yes. But I'd rather trust NPR, BBC, the Guardian or some other legacy news outlet, because these unscrupulous tech bros will skew the narrarive by silencing some sources while brainwashing people with whatever suits them best.
I don't think this is necessarily an issue of censorship so much as it is highlighting that Facebook is clearly a fucking news publisher and should be treated as such under the law.
It's time to revoke section 230 for any social media network that amplifies or buries content with a non-transparent process.
In this case it isn't even merely an algorithm designed by humans. They have LITERAL human editors choosing which stories to put on the front page, just like the NYT, and they should be held liable for the content on their platforms just like legacy media is.
> They have LITERAL human editors choosing which stories to put on the front page, just like the NYT, and they should be held liable for the content on their platforms just like legacy media is.
Do you think a Facebook feed is just like the New York Times?
Anna Politkovskaya – Investigative journalist and critic of the Chechen war, shot in Moscow (2006).
Alexander Litvinenko – Ex-FSB officer poisoned with polonium in London (2006).
Stanislav Markelov & Anastasia Baburova – Human rights lawyer and journalist, shot in Moscow (2009).
Boris Nemtsov – Opposition leader, shot near the Kremlin (2015).
Denis Voronenkov – Former Russian MP, shot in Kyiv (2017).
Nikolai Andrushchenko – Journalist, beaten to death in St. Petersburg (2017).
Alexei Navalny – Opposition leader, died in prison after previous poisoning (2024).
---
The difference is that they murder their political opponents for show to make their people be afraid of dissent.
You comparing it with some (disgusting, vile) social media company (which would improve the world immensely if it disappeared) is completely inappropriate.
"We're not as bad as them" is a poor argument. Particularly while America quickly slides in that direction. Just take a look at the deportation of Venezuelans especially the case of the wrongly deported man that the government conveniently "can't find". That's a story comparable to the stories Americans tell about Russia and China.
I think OP is more using this incident along with many others. Things similar to in February when the President signed executive orders that imposed sanctions on American law firms and lawyers which included suspension of security clearances, termination of government contracts, and restrictions preventing firm employees from accessing federal buildings. (https://www.justsecurity.org/110109/president-cannot-issue-a...)
I have no idea how to talk equality to speak of whether they are comparable or not, but I do think people are seeing a different atmosphere.
Trump is barely, like, 90? days into his presidency and his gestapo is already kidnapping people and shipping them to torture camps contrary to the court orders.
Putler is an established dicktator with a long list of killing his own citizens with impunity.
Give trump a couple of years. He can't do it overnight, he needs to cook the Americans slowly. Hitler didn't turn the Germans into Nazis overnight either.
Sadly, that situation is also contorted to legitimize the spread verifiably false information by certain current political cults, led by a Turnip, that claim it is another party controlling media because they believe that they have the secret access to the “truth” that is being “blocked” on all other sources of media, and point to other suppressed stories (even if completely unrelated or blocked due to being outright lies) as proof. Look at attempts to curtail the spread of completely false vaccine information that is now being used as proof of something nefarious (even while more nefarious activity is being perpetrated). Some people took notes from other Dictators’ control of media long ago and have been working toward it for many years via press-related misinformation to cause a loss of confidence. You would think the press would fight back harder against being de-legitimized, using stronger wording and calling lying what it is, but when your purse strings are being controlled by the same businesses that see opportunities to advantage themselves, it’s not surprising.
Facebook is in the 'mainstream media'? That's a first in my experience. 'Mainstream media' usually describes established journalism organizations such as CNN, Fox, the NY Times, the WSJ. Facebook is universally grouped with 'social media' in my experience.
> Most of the people in the 'free world' goes on mainstream media
In fact, most people go on social media. The 'mainstream media' is losing audience rapidly.
> you end up with most media complying with the official story pushed by government and friends
I'm a bit confused here. Facebook complying with ... which government? The Israeli government has very little power over Facebook - Israel is a tiny market.
Meanwhile, Trump has been calling the 'mainstream media', the 'enemy of the people' - because they constantly report what he doesn't like.
Since the November election, many have shockingly capitulated but many remain. The NYT, for example, publishes negative news and criticisms of Trump and Israel daily.
> The more i think about it, the less difference i see.
You haven't established much of anything. Much of the comment doesn't make sense. Where is the Russian NYT? Which American journalists are in jail?
Most of the people in the 'free world' goes on mainstream media, like facebook to get their news. These companies are enticed to 'suck up' to the government because at the end they are business, they need to be in good term with ruling class.
you end up with most media complying with the official story pushed by government and friends, and most people believing that because no one has the time to fact check everything.
One could argue that the difference with russia is that someone can actually look for real information, but even in russia people have access to vpn to bypass the censorship.
Another difference would be that you are allowed to express your opinion, whereas in russia you would be put to jail, that's true but only in a very limited way. Since everyone goes on mainstream media and they enforce the government narrative, you can't speak there. you are merely allowed to speak out in your little corner out of reach to anyone, and even then since most people believe the government propaganda, your arguments won't be heard at all.
The more i think about it, the less difference i see.