U.S. insurrectionists received $500k in bitcoins from French donor
blog.chainalysis.com
blog.chainalysis.com
That language should be a pretty clear indicator of where this person's politics lie, even without the 'fall of western civilization' rhetoric earlier. They always seem to use the same exact verbiage.
Yes, we have many people doing horrible things all over the world, but people being vile because their ancestors had less sun than others is a special kind of pointless stupidity.
“Melanin endows blacks with greater mental, physical, and spiritual abilities — something which cannot be measured by Eurocentric standards.”
This is just one quote from her letter, which goes on at length about black superiority.
I think the problem we have right now is we have two sets of standards. People that have been reintroducing racist concepts into government, academia and the media shouldn’t be surprised when there is a similarly racist backlash.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1994/11/4/clarke-should-r...
> “It was meant to express an equally absurd point of view — fighting one ridiculous absurd racist theory with another ridiculous absurd theory,” Clarke explained, “and the goal was all about [exposing] the ugly racist underpinnings of the Bell Curve theory. It was deeply personal and profoundly important to Black students and other students of color who felt that their right to be on campus was challenged. And frankly, the fight that we were leading as students is a fight that I am still very much a part of today.”
https://forward.com/news/national/462089/bidens-deputy-ag-pi...
The full letter certainly seems consistent with that: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1994/10/28/blacks-seek-an...
Would you accept this statement from a white supremacist?
Again, we need consistent rules against racism. Otherwise you're opening the door to racists and extremists on both sides.
From your own link: Later, in an interview with The Crimson, Clarke suggested that "The information [contained in the letter] is not necessarily something we believe, but some information that we think those pursuing a true understanding of The Bell Curve theory should either address, ignore or refute."
So it's false to say she is only addressing the matter now; she responded to questions about it at the time.
While claiming to have been unable to detect any irony in the letter co-authored by Clarke, the Crimson editorial is pseudo-objective at best, and at worst comes off as an example of insincere concern trolling.
Does this sound ok to your ears? If this was a white supremacist, we would all correctly be shouting about how it's a dog whistle and not an acceptable response.
I wish more people would read 'How to Be an Antiracist.' I believe he's absolute right in that the only way forward is to call out racist beliefs from everyone, not selectively. Selectively excusing racist beliefs from "our side" will only open the door to more racism.
“We” is not the same as “I”. She was speaking on behalf of a group, and a group which may not have even discussed their actual beliefs on the truth of the “theories and observations” presented, as that was not the purpose for which they were (explicitly, in the letters own terms) presented.
OMG! You're right! And Terry Pratchett went to his grave prostylizing a flat earth model because he never officially made a statement that his satirical novels were just that - satirical.
The record is set straight in the first sentence of the letter, which explains the intended role of the things presented : In response to those who defend The Bell Curve (“Defending The Bell Curve,” Opinion, Oct. 24, 1994), please use the following theories and observations to assist you in your search for truth regarding the genetic differences between Blacks and whites.
Disgusted sure, I am with you on that.
But "can still exist?" With the number of stories just on HN about social media dark patterns and recommendation engine rabbit-holes?
It's difficult to understand that as anything other than puffery.
Racism is more crazy religion than ideology.
That's all this really is. The economy has moved forwards. People either moved to cities and upskilled (hence the hate for a mysterious metropolitan "elite") or they sat in rust belt towns complaining their disability cheque is late again and worrying someone poorer than them might get the money instead.
That's Trumps whole platform really. That's where the racism fits in. That is all the bs about draining swamps and elites. That's "make America great again". That's rolling back climate change rules (even the tiny ones the US actually has). Bolt on anti-abortion single issue voters and tax cuts for trillionaires to keep the senate on side.
This whole thing is what happens when you have 25 years of social and economic progress and people get left behind and refuse to make any effort to catch up...
Trumps base was/is made up of majority poor white rural Americans, with a coalition of racists and extremists bolted on. What's crucial in that is the majority are just poor white townspeople.
They lost their jobs because overseas laborers are willing to do the same work for less; because consumers don't care if the latest iPhone is made in Cali or in some Chinese interment camp. Same thing for coal and oil jobs. The world changed and these are the people who lost their livelihoods for it. I've been watching American politics my whole life, and Trump was the first politician I saw to truly acknowledge that there is a large portion of the population that are suffering economically for things out of their control and told them it wasn't their fault.
Leaving aside fault for the moment...
The jobs are gone. So we have a few options:
* people can do what I said, retrain, maybe move, do something else
* people can do nothing and get benefits to sit there doing nothing.
I don't think there is a third option, but let me know if I'm missing something?
The issue is, 80% of people refuse to the first one. They sit in rust belt towns and die deaths of despair.
So what do we do?
Trumps solution, which they have chosen, is nothing. We do nothing. No healthcare for them, no improved benefits, no retraining.
Since they chose that, I could live with it. But I don't want to be tied to them and live with the rest of the shitty things trump wants to do.
I'm more than happy to hear a solution here. I've tried not to blame anyone. I honestly believe that it wasn't their fault the coal mine (etc) closed. I just don't see an option beyond waiting for them to die before we can progress economically or socially.
And that's not really acceptable to me. I'm gay, and I don't think I should be forced to be a second class citizen just because other people are bitter about their life and voted for a Fuck Everyone candidate. I'm sure there are women who will want reproductive health rights that feel the same way. I'm sympathetic, I came from just suck a place. But there does come a point where I feel like saying "you're not dragging me down with you".
Full disclosure: I'm actually a brit. But we have the exact same thing happening here. Only its Boris Johnson and Brexit (which will last much longer than trumpism).
I hope you can understand where I'm coming from.
There's a reason for that [1]
https://twitter.com/always_margot/status/1346578062700400647
It takes me back to when I read the Unabomber manifesto online as a teenager when it was first printed. I largely rejected it, but there was this part of me that resonated with the emotional appeal to a simple world with simple ideals and a connection to nature. I knew enough to realize that this was a fantasy, but it's an appealing fantasy that also finds expression in the popularity of comic books, pseudo-medieval fantasy epics, and other forms of escapist fiction.
I think what it boils down to is that we are not neurologically wired for abundance, huge scale societies, or the types of labor that pay the best in the modern world. We're not built to sit in front of screens and solve puzzles all day, and without something to struggle against parts of our emotional nature seem to go haywire. I've speculated that the immense paranoia and prevalence of all kinds of neuroses might be an emotional analogue to the hygiene hypothesis for allergies. Without real traumas and existential struggles, our emotional system starts attaching the coping mechanisms that exists for these things to other more mundane aspects of existence like politics and relationships.
David Skirbina addresses this is his forward to Technological Slavery[0]. Ted isn't a PhD student doing research; the lack of originality to his arguments is a feature, not a bug.
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/45035203-technologica...
Kaczynski has also continued to write while in prison and his work is thought-provoking notwithstanding the paradoxes involved (eg how technology has facilitated the spread of his anti-technological ideas). His views don't fit neatly into any political category.
I mean, I can understand the appeal, but it's sort of ironic that those fantasies are exchanged and amplified using the most unnatural and complex technology we have at our disposal.
I wonder if this is less a longing for "simpler times" than a longing for a society in which one has more power.
> Without real traumas and existential struggles, our emotional system starts attaching the coping mechanisms that exists for these things to other more mundane aspects of existence like politics and relationships.
This sounds a lot like the old nazi argument for "perpetual war": Without war, men will grow weak and complacent and society will become fragile, therefore war must never end.
I think this sort of reasoning can be easily be cured by talking with an actual veteran.
I always thought it was more about control and self determination rather than power for most, something many here running linux and avoiding cloud services can naturally sympathize with. It's a very old urge with even the aristocrats of ancient Rome had similar notions, farming and getting your hands dirty was held in high esteem for instance. We also see it in Tolkiens writing about hobbits who loved farming and never craved power. It's the sort of theme that seems to be a constant desire throughout history.
One of the recipients of the bitcoins is Luke Smith, I don't agree with his politics but from watching his youtube he seems to practice the self sufficiency he preaches to an extent, from growing his own food to running linux. He's a bit like Kaczynski but spends more time on his vim configuration than mail bombs.
> but it's sort of ironic that those fantasies are exchanged and amplified using the most unnatural and complex technology we have at our disposal.
I think in the long run technology will become sufficiently advanced to solve this paradox, anyone that desires to will be able to become fully self sufficient, we'll fire up our 3D printers to make a pencil instead of relying on the global supply chains we do now. It's either that or our psyche has to adapt to being colony animals, but after 2000 years we don't seem to be getting much closer to that.
While probably unintentional, this sounds very similar to the practice of making high sulfur "pig iron" very inefficiently in backyard furnaces during the Great Leap Forward.
It would be the height of irony if these far-right, hyper-libertarian types took their ideology to the extremities where it begins to resemble Mao or Pol Pot's ideas about autarky.
however as institutions dip their toes deeper into the open embrace of superficial intersectionality and antiracism, it should come as a surprise to no one that retrograde ideas about white identity begin to viscously resurface with greater frequency. my personal opinion is that it is a very bad time to repeat the economic mistakes of obama with an added veneer of identity justice. optimism makes me want to believe that good governance can heal our country, but more realistically, good governance is the one thing we truly do not make in america anymore.
"This time it will be different."
There are also various explanations of how and why the Holodomor just "happened", and it had nothing to do with communism/socialism/USSR/Stalin, or it was Nazi propaganda, etc. ( https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/izcxbk/i_saw_... - with reputable sources such as sputniknews :| )
Though my favorite is the "Capitalism kills a lot more people" """"infographics"""". ( https://twitter.com/HasBezosDecided/status/12608739086995087... )
For reference, the famous quote that is VERY similar is "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children". Notice the missing "white" from rchauds quote.
Again, not sure if on purpose, or who butchered it, but it might not mean what you think it does.
Stupidier things have happened in the past. I bet more than half of HN wouldn't know that quote if you removed the "white" part, so not so unlikely that someone who doesn't know it, sends it to others as the sentiment (without the "white" part) is actually pretty good.
The donor here is not comparable to typical HN users. They've gone out of their way to make a large donation to known white supremacists.
Also, if you read the donor's suicide note (in the article), there is a reference to the Weimar Republic and there is a holocaust denier code phrase. (I won't encourage its spread by copying it here, but it's in one of the highlighted sections.)
While I know it is routine to paint the right and specifically the alt-right as all being racist white supremacist's the reality is they are a small minority that has banded onto the right given their conservative views on certain items. The right needs to do a better job of making it known that they are not welcome but things like this really don't help them in doing just that. I know the guy with the buffalo headdress has a Valknut tattoo prominently tattooed on his chest so I think it's pretty safe to assume he is a white supremacist's. So to me it looks like a small band of white supremacist's organized to incite the mob into action. People should really be aware of who they are throwing their lot in with.
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/well-duh-portland-fund-bail-out-p...
https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-ea...
This seems easy to automatically audit? I mean there is a government record of who receives the money.
One is civil disobedience in the face of a legitimate problem, however the other is a coup attempt.
And of course, there's nothing wrong with people paying for other people's bail, there is however, something wrong with financing a coup.
Hopefully, those involved in civil disobedience who really did break the law by 'looting Target' will face reasonable justice irrespective of their bail, and those attempting to stop the transfer of power between Presidents will face proportional charges.
Edit: I should be clear I don't mean to be supportive of any of what is going on in any direction: BLM/Trumpland/Apple/Facebook/BLM/COVID/Free Speech/Hate Speech etc. Even as most of the press hides under the veil of 'technically truthful' there's quite a bit of strong narrative building going on. Sufficed to say, the 'insurrection' on capital hill was of another league altogether what with the legitimacy of the Office of the President being maligned to support the interdiction of the transfer of power. That's a 'really big deal'. In 200 years we will remember COVID and Trump for dubious reasons, while the BLM protests and FB/Apple/Twitter wars won't like make the history lesson.
But even more saliently: nobody was "paid to cause destruction." People we being bailed out following mass arrests in the midst of a pandemic and unprecedented social unrest. Whether or not a particular fund has failed to recoup its bails is immaterial to the fact that nobody gave to bail funds as a mechanism for direct wealth transfer. That just wouldn't be very efficient.
Bank transfers are not a peer-to-peer system and there are processes in place for anti-moneylaundering
So cash is just as dangerous then as it is also used by criminals?
Using or accepting Bitcoin is not dangerous because of this. And you have no more chance of unintentionally recieving funds linked to this than you have of unintentionally recieving cash used for criminal purposes.
(Not intending to start an argument for or against Bitcoin, and there are other pros and cons of it I'm sure, but this particular one is not really valid)
You can have extreme inconvenience for being linked to illegal bitcoin transactions.
I had a roommate who had >$100K tied up into an online poker platform, which was frozen for months because the platform was doing some illegal activity.
But if the reason for taking the payment is legitimate you're going to have no more problems with Bitcoin than you will with cash in this regard.
If your reason for taking the payment is illegal then I agree, Bitcoin puts you at some greater risk. But if that's you're point then perhaps you should be clearer. Bitcoin can be dangerous to use for criminals because it's more traceable. If your use is legal, it's no more or less dangerous than cash.
Nope. You may deposit cash into a bank and explain where it came from. Sure.
This has no relevance to how you can later try to spend your bitcoin and have your transaction frozen + end up in a police investigation where you need to try to explain why chainalysis software says you are linked to terrorism, to people who have no understanding of it. This can be especially bad if you are not in a developed country. It simply means bitcoin is not usable as a "peer to peer cash" as it was intended. With cash you will not have such problem because it has no history permanently linked to it.
That said, I'm not in the position where I have much to fear from the police/government. If I did, that would be different.
I don't believe that having bitcoin that was in the past involved in criminal use will cause you any problems at all. I'd be interested to see any evidence you have to the contrary.
Something I think people confuse is the concept of 'a bitcoin'. There is no thing that is transferred around like a physical coin or note. A bitcoin 'transfer' is just a change in the balance of two accounts, not an actual transfer of anything physical or digital. There is no change of ownership of anything.
I probably would if cash were only used by criminals and speculators.
Are torrents also bad because pirates often use it?
Suppose that I have a history of doing semi-illegal things and that my wallet is publicly associated with real personhood.
Example. gretch = id 1234; buys drugs which are legal in country x and highly illegal elsewhere
Now one day I come to your completely legal business and make a completely legal transaction
Example. I come to your bakery and get my wedding catered
Now you just received a lot of money from an account which is on several bad actor lists and you have to explain what happened. Okay, you can try to explain that the services rendered were completely legitimate; hopefully the investigators will believe you because that's what all money launderers try to do.
Alternatively, you as the caterer need to research the actor behind incoming transaction for your innocuous service.
Torrents are routinely used for distributing Linux isos.
Unequivocally, yes. Just don't expect to get them back.
It seems like the kernel of Bitcoin is maximally open information, not secrecy. Obfuscation of transaction is possible, but any solution that could actually hide transaction information would be incompatible with the trust model that Bitcoin is based on.
In fact the US government put out a bounty to trace monero transactions just after Ciphertrace made such claim, and ciphertrace failed to win the bounty, so it appears to be ineffective
However right now the technology to properly anonymize bitcoin already exists via coinjoin wallets. The most mature implementation so far is the Samourai Wallet using Whirlpool.
If you are doing it right there is no danger using Bitcoin at all. In fact it might even less dangerous than any other method of anonymous transactions including physical delivery of Gold.
Sure grandma can just practice output control (that I still struggle with after using BTC for 8+ years) and pay hundreds in fees for coinjoins with every transaction, problem solved /s
> The Lightning network in conjunction with Tor will make tracing of transactions nearly impossible in the future.
I only see papers finding flaws that prevent it from being private, and that people are struggling to get it to work even without thinking about privacy. Scaling is still a difficult and unsolved problem for now, lets not make absurd privacy claims alongside it. Relying on Tor is an issue in itself.
> Scaling is still a difficult and unsolved problem for now
Scaling is essentially a solved problem thanks to Lightning. Adoption is currently a problem but will become a non-problem as soon as transaction fees rise so much that it is worth the effort for everyone to get Lightning Network running. Right now this is not the case.
Saying the privacy properties are already solved and settled is ridiculous, none of the literature or other information supports that
Only a fool would say it is certain that everyone will have magic instant, scalable, cheap, perfectly private btc transactions and it's already solved and settled
This is inaccurate. One police officer and 4 of the rioters died on the day of the incident. Another Capitol police officer subsequently committed suicide at home for reasons that are at present unclear.
Worth about double that, now.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/collective-violence/Coups-r...
Even your own definition doesn't apply - the insurrectionists weren't a subnational group (they don't have a cohesive identity other than sharing a common cause) or clandestine agents.
I and others have been following their discussions online and its clear that while not every single individual at the domestic insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6th seeks to murder and cause mayhem, many in the hundreds and thousands do. Many beyond that seek to downplay the danger and provide apologia for the criminal actions of terrorists they at least partially sympathize with.
Are there things which are currently legal that will become illegal under this 'domestic terrorism framework' that is being discussed? What are these things which are currently legal that will be addressed by a 'domestic terrorism framework'.
Were the result Church Hearings justified or did they go too far in the restrictions they placed on law enforcement?
If you rile up enough people, then a small slice of them will be on the radical margins.
It only took a ~5 Serbs to kill Franz Ferdinand.
Aren't suicide notes generally for friends and family? Aren't the french typically very protective of their language and culture?
The note seems intended for USA readership. It's all very strange.
On his website there was both an English and French version.
personally I’m a bitcoin minimalist for this reason. Capital controls have always been part of human history.
Welcome to the new world, it's your money, you earned it. Do whatever you want with it.
This kind of makes me wonder even harder.
This run will probably last as long as their finances allow. I don't think it'll end on January 20th. The delusions have held this long, it's probably going to continue.
It's terrible. Not only have these conspiracy theories led to isolation and a destruction of their social networks but soon it'll also lead to their financial ruin as bitcoin will inevitably crash once again (I'm holding tens of thousands in crypto. I know it's a day at the casino. My fear is about those that don't. The current flurry of nonsecuritized uninsured bank looking companies that have surfaced in this crypto bubble isn't helping one bit. Stable coins are fine, but give the depositors some security)
Plus coastal elites (including non-elites who still identify as hollier-than the plebs in the fly-over country) sneering at them.
The glorious march of the stock market, or the glorious technological future, only meant being worse of (job prospects, housing costs, healthcare costs, education costs, etc.) for them. Even openly calling out a 40% who voted another candidate "deplorables".
So from this European's standapoint, it makes sense for these people to consider more of the status quo to mean "return to the dark ages".
You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism." They eagerly voted in those who planned to dismantle the ACA and loudly said they would do so in 2016 ("repeal and replace"), then when the Republicans attempted to leave them high and dry, everyone, including Trump, panicked and backed out. What's going on here?
This attempt to make them sound reasonable in their fear glosses over the obvious contradictions in how they vote and where they think their problems lie. What will four more years of Republican tax cuts coupled with absurd austerity politics get them? Biden is worse than this because...?
They didn't attack Biden as being those things. They attacked Biden for being old, not entirely there, and weak barrier against the radical elements of the Democratic Party. For example Karen Bass, who was on Biden's VP shortlist, had a bunch of communist ties: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/karen-bass-vice-presiden...
> First reported were her ill-chosen words upon the death of Fidel Castro in 2016, she opined, that “the passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba.” Ouch! But politically survivable.
> Far more damaging was news that that Bass first visited the island while, in college, at age 19, in 1973 with the Venceremos Brigade, a group popular with leftwing student radicals and social progressives that organized and ferried Americans to Cuba to cut sugar cane and build homes—in defiance of the U.S. Embargo and policy. She would take eight trips with the Brigade during the 1970s alone
As to "anti-American" many on the left embraced taking the name of founding fathers off of school buildings. My magnet high school in Virginia is named after Thomas Jefferson and there has been an effort to rename it. Even Abraham Lincoln has been indicted (if not yet convicted): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/20/fac....
Taking Thomas Jefferson's name off a school building is a declaration of war to conservatives. They believe that civilization is a product of history and tradition and practice, not abstract principles. The idea you can "keep the good things Jefferson believed" while ditching the historical figure himself is something that makes no sense to them. It'd be like taking Jesus out of the Bible.
> You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism."
Trump voters already have healthcare. They're disproportionately likely to be folks who bear greater burdens under the ACA--like small business owners. Or the majority of people who are happy with their private health insurance.
More generally, the Republican Party is a coalition of social conservatives (some of whom are quite economically liberal) and economic conservatives. Voting Democrat wouldn't make any sense for them, especially because, as you observe, the Democratic Party is staunchly neo-liberal as well. I recall listening to interviews with Trump voters around Scranton (where Joe Biden was born). Folks were talking about how they were multi-generational Democratic voters, but were disillusioned by Democrats' support for NAFTA, etc. If Democrats chose to prioritize social liberalism and economic neo-liberalism it makes totally sense for those folks to vote Republican.
> Trump voters already have healthcare. They're disproportionately likely to be folks who bear greater burdens under the ACA--like small business owners. Or the majority of people who are happy with their private health insurance.
I don't understand this at all. The ACA has been a godsend for myself who over the last 8 years been an owner(for 4 years) and employee(for 4 years) at a small business. It allowed me to work for a small business(as both an employee and an owner) because I could get insurance. I tried getting insurance before the ACA and was denied because my testosterone levels were 5% under the cut off for normal.
And second it's been super helpful because the biggest barrier to recruiting for a small business is healthcare. Specifically many developers are willing to take a 30k+ paycut to get premium healthcare(which isn't providing 30k of value but is unpurchaseable for small clients) and this problem was worse pre-ACA. If we had a Medicare option the job market would be more efficient, and small businesses would be better able to compete with enterprise.
Compare:
>Fascism is strongly opposed to the individualism found in classical liberalism. Fascists accuse liberalism of de-spiritualizing human beings and transforming them into materialistic beings whose highest ideal is moneymaking.[261] In particular, fascism opposes liberalism for its materialism, rationalism, individualism and utilitarianism.[262] Fascists believe that the liberal emphasis on individual freedom produces national divisiveness.[261] Mussolini criticized classical liberalism for its individualistic nature, writing: "Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; ... It is opposed to classical Liberalism ... Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual."[263] However, Fascists and Nazis support a type of hierarchical individualism in the form of Social Darwinism because they believe it promotes "superior individuals" and weeds out "the weak".[264] They also accuse both Marxism and democracy, with their emphasis on equality, of destroying individuality in favor of the "dead weight" of the masses.[265]
...
Fascists saw contemporary politics as a life or death struggle of their nations against Marxism, and they believed that liberalism weakened their nations in this struggle and left them defenseless.[268] While the socialist left was seen by the fascists as their main enemy, liberals were seen as the enemy's accomplices, "incompetent guardians of the nation against the class warfare waged by the socialists."[268]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_and_ideology#Liberalis...
I think an issue we're seeing is American schools don't really teach anything about the Fascists outside of the context of WW2 itself and the Holocaust, and it means regular people don't recognize it in the Republican's rhetoric.
https://timeline.com/business-plot-overthrow-fdr-9a59a012c32...
Since the elites that push them over and throw them to the dustbins of history as deplorables are mostly Democratic, and the elites that hypocrically placate to them as lip service are mostly Republican (hypocritically since both serve the same neoliberal agenda), those masses confuse their liberalism (left-leaning-ness) as a reason that they hurt them.
That the Democrat elites and coastal pundits also hate their (the fly-over peoples) guts and everything they stand for culturally (e.g. them being more conservative wrt tradition, family, etc.), and diss them from a left/socialist point of view is also another reason for those masses to consider that "socialism" is their enemy.
Because for them socialism is not some benevolent Swedish style state socialism that caters to their needs, or old-style workers-first aid, but superficial cultural "socialism" with "fuck these backwards people" at its mast flag combined with neoliberal policies.
If the Democrats actually catered to their needs (rural growth, working/middle class jobs, wage stagnation, skyrocketing college, health costs, etc) and also had a sincere dialogue about those people's values (instead of pushing the latest SJW cause as if it's something everybody should get on with pronto or they are Hitler -- when in reality it's things not even the foremost leftists in the US championed just 20 or 30 years ago, never mind the Democrats themselves. Heck, Obama himself was publicly against something as inoffensive as gay marriage back in the day iirc, never mind other modern causes) and didn't consider them all backwards rednecks that should be put into re-education camps, the same people would change their mind about "socialism" and such.
But instead the Democrats publicly deplore them, and use those social justice causes as a substitute for real progressive policies (economic, for peace, for curbing big tech, etc.).
>You can argue that their feelings of economic greivance make sense--but their voting habits are a rejection of policies like universal healthcare (which would benefit the vast majority of them) because "socialism."
From what I've read and discussed with some people there - haven't delved much into it to read the details - the ACA mostly benefited the very poor and welfare, while did two things for working class and middle class people: it increased their healthcare costs and also (I see mentioned) make them not able to keep the doctors they used to see.
If true, this is not a case of those masses "voting against their interests", but the other side confusing the very poor/welfare recipients etc (who assumedly did benefit from ACA) with the working/lower middle class (who was hurt by it), and wondering why the latter don't jump with joy about ACA.
>What will four more years of Republican tax cuts coupled with absurd austerity politics get them? Biden is worse than this because...?
To my eyes both parties are neoliberal and thus bad.
That said, Trump (not the GOP) term was marked by less (no?) wars and hawkish behavior (good for the globe at large) and a promise to scale-back American "democracy export business" (e.g. war).
That alone, and thus hundreds of thousands not impacted by that, is better than anything we could see coming from legendarily hawkish Hillary, in my book. With regards to Biden, let's see.
Trump also spoke against outsourcing everything and about rampant globalism, which, last time I checked (I'm old) it was one of the concerns of our side (the leftists), people fought in Seattle protests, Genova protests, etc. Suddenly, people on the left seem to consider this to have gone out of style, just out of partisanship to the Democrats against Trump.
As for domestically, all the numbers I've seen put the number of e.g. blacks shot by cops as the same during the Obama years, and the numbers of migrants deported roughly the same as well. So on that front, I see more partisanship and cant, than actual difference.
This sounds like a Biden campaign ad. I don’t find takes where the Professional Twitter Opinion LoudPeople are “the left” and “the right” are very interesting. Picking an extreme/outlier take and saying “look what the left/right thinks! aren’t they crazy!!” is exactly why the political discourse is so dumb. What are we supposed to do about it? I think Twitter is dumb
And this should begin by absolutely banning any kind of donation above, say, a small dollar amount per person (with very strict criminal penalties for bypassing this in any way). Want to get funding as a party? Find more persons to fund you -- as opposed to non-representative parties being pushed forward by large donors.
Then again, it's your parties, do as you wish with them. But no real political discussion is ever gonna come out of those...
Your comment makes me imagine a person in a room somewhere with the ability to change everything all around, but they just haven’t seen that they need to do it. The truth is that there are lots of people dedicating their life’s work to improving the system, but the system is complex – it has billions of people with competing priorities – and even pretending someone has the correct answer about how the system should be rearranged, implementing that system would be a task akin to moving oceans.
Obama encouraged organizations that were re-training coal miners and others in dead industries to join the digital workforce.
It's the alt-right who have been promising to go back to 'normal' and that coal is the future. The economics aren't there, fossil fuels is a dying industry. Even if we aren't elimiating fossil fuels tomorrow, we don't need 2,000 men underground digging, we have machines, automation and different mining methods now.
Any one who perpetuates this idea that we can get through this without radical change is fooling themselves.
Is Biden going to lead us into the future? Unlikely, but he is not going to perpetuate a lie. Coal is not coming back, drivers are on the way out, the economy is going to be turned upsides down in the next decade and we need to admit that fact.
This is at-least one source of coal (and other fossil fuels) being politicized this election cycle.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/09/29/joe-biden-no-c...
You should watch the relevant answer from Biden[0], the Brietbart article is heavily biased and misleading.
His position is simple and data driven, it is no longer economically viable and the market will no longer create any new coal or oil fire plants in America.
To fact check Biden: "Under the 25-year contract ... Los Angeles ... would pay less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour ... the lowest price ever paid for solar power in the United States, and cheaper than the cost of electricity from a typical natural gas-fired power plant"[1]. This includes the cost of production and storage.
But what about other parts of the country with less sun? "solar and wind energy will dominate America’s new generation in 2020, making up 76% of new generation ..., while coal and natural gas will dominate 2020 retirements with 85% of plant closures."[2]. And this was 2020 while Trump was helping the fossil fuel industry.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1lY5jFNcQ&start=1h44m03s
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-08-27/los-ang...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/01/21/ren...
> Here’s what he said: "During our administration in the recovery act, I was...able to bring down the cost of renewable energy to cheaper than or as cheap as coal, and gas, and oil. Nobody’s going to build another coal-fired power plant in America. No one’s going to build another oil-fired plant in America. They’re going to move to renewable energy."
If Biden promises to increase subsidies for renewables (which, as I understand, he plans to do), and that causes disinvestment away from say gas-fired plants, isn't it reasonable for folks in places like Pennsylvania and Texas where fracking is a huge part of the economy to oppose such measures?
If "the market" is going to make it so nobody builds new gas-fired plants (I agree the market won't build new coal or oil plants) why is Biden proposing $2 trillion in subsidies for renewables?
To be clear, I think Biden's renewables plan is basically the correct one, but its going to be bad for currently prosperous middle class parts of Pennsylvania, Texas, etc., that rely heavily on gas extraction.
What a wrote wasn't just about coal. Heck, I didn't ever had coal in mind when I wrote it. It's a general situation with working class jobs and middle class prospects, that's way beyond coal shutting down.
And the "encouraged organizations that were re-training coal miners and others in dead industries to join the digital workforce" part shows how out of touch those running the "business as usual" part were.
This is the advice/career path famously summarized as "learn to code", as if 40-50 year old coal miners (and millions of people in other working class jobs) are suddenly going to be able to complete those programs and join some "digital workforce" (in any capacity other than POS operators). And as if the market eagerly awaits for those people to join the digital workforce and will jump at the chance to hire them.
It's very plausible but I don't want to lump independent groups together.
In the same way that many leftist groups really don't like each other and it's probably wrong to lump them together.
Totally plausible but I haven't seen direct evidence. (I also haven't, say, done any analysis of historical tweets from qanon believers for the evidence)
It's ultimately unimportant as they're both part of the same overarching bullshit movement, but something sounding logical doesn't constitute valid evidence.
To look at it another way, they really expect the end of American and Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris are just the right wing villains of the moment. You could pick anyone else from the field of Democratic politicians and they would equally be treated as the harbinger of the apocalypse.
The underlying anxiety of the alt-right (though not every single individual therein) is that 2020 was the first year when white people became a minority of the youngest (u18) demographic cohort. As most far-right adherents in the US build their politics around racial identity this is regarded by them as the onset of demographic winter, historical decline, fall of empire et.c etc.
I think the white identity thing is more widespread on the far right than you appreciate; even neo-nazis have examples of ethnic diversity that they like to bring out (eg photographs of black soldiers in wehrmacht uniform socializing with caucasians) but these are employed mainly as an aid to entryism in breaking down reflexive hostility to national socialism, rather than because neo-Nazis are actually trying to build an ethnically diverse movement.
People really seemed to honestly feel that way about Obama... then Obama again. I expect people will feel that way about whatever Democrat eventually gets elected next too.
David Columbia, the author, provides evidence of right-wing associations with cryptocurrency.
Additionally, Tesla has the advantage that many European countries are phasing out ICE vehicles and Tesla is the solid tech lead, plus the hype machine that Elon Musk has created... it's not surprising to me that Tesla is a very much sought-after stock. And unlike Wirecard or P&R Containers, Tesla has actual cars on the road with government records certifying that number.
These days lay bare the bigotry of the tech- and internet culture.
Decades of championing independence from prosecution, from surveillance, and from corporatist government overreach, as self-styled digital-freedom-of-speech-vigilantes, are now moot - as within a single week all quasi monopolists in the tech world did exactly what was fearmongered all these years - and the same culture stays silent at best because it was downright complicit at worst.
You see for the first time all those often signaled, highflying virtues weren‘t demanded in some third world country but right at one‘s doorstep - and we failed miserably.
Classic dictatorships need massive amounts CCTVs, intrusive artificial intelligence and a party apparatus to run their social scoring to subdue the public.
The west just needs us!
Likely the value here is counter-intelligence. You know that unsavoury characters like to hide their transactions. Now throw cryptos in the mix which becomes the weakest link.
There used to be more secure and traditional ways of laundering money like inflated real estate. Good example is Vancouver, BC which actually got a money laundering technique named after the city who has for the most part been unwilling to investigate because almost the entirety of their tax revenues come from the real estate market.
The Vancouver Model's rise [1], bitcoin, real estate market, gang activity all seem heavily correlated. But Mark Twain said something about people looking the other way if they were paid to.
[1] https://complyadvantage.com/knowledgebase/vancouver-money-la...
If it isn't can't the CCP or Putin simply donate to a side that supports their cause?
Still probably illegal to financially support.
There is a separate set of laws for conspiracy to commit sedition. If the donor was donating to forment unrest (knowingly) then there are charges that can be pursued, but would likely require extradition.
From reading the article, the donor sent $500k to 22 different parties. Some of these parties include Luke Smith, a popular Linux youtube personality, the guy who runs cock.li, ruqqus (a reddit alternative), various right wing websites including amren.com and unz.com (which didn't promote the protest). 45% of the donation went to Nick Fuentes, who was at the capitol, but denies entering the building.
And according to the article:
>While we don’t know if these donations directly funded last week’s violent gathering at the Capitol or any associated activity, the timing certainly warrants suspicion
I think we need a new headline.
Nick Fuentes is possibly going to face charges of incitement, though, because he was addressing the crowd through a megaphone and urging them on while specifically mentioning that the vote counting had already been halted. Amusingly enough he was being called out on this alt-right personality Richard Spencer yesterday.
That's not really true. Many organizations charter buses, print signs, provide assistance to people in getting to such protests and a host of other activities that require funding.
In fact, that's almost de rigueur for large, peaceful protests.
Not an endorsement of this example of political funding.