InfoWars and media ownership; Swing voters in swing states poll

One of the key differences between American pro-democracy and pro-authoritarianism factions, roughly Dems vs Repubs, is a major focus media on mass media ownership. Dems themselves, e.g., the neoliberal Bill Clinton, helped create the current disaster. Biden perpetuates it. 

After he got in power, DJT installed a plutocrat to head the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), Ajit Pai. Media ownership rules were changed to allow far more concentration of owner power in single markets for individual entities or families. Our authoritarian radical right supreme court stepped in and reinforced DJT deregulation that killed media ownership diversity. 

For example, the FCC repealed the Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule, which had prohibited a single entity from owning both a daily newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market. Also, the Radio/Television Cross-Ownership Rule was eliminated. That rule restricted the combined ownership of radio and television stations in the same market. So far, the Biden administration has not reversed those authoritarian rule changes, and the supreme court has reinforced them. It is not clear that Biden wants those rules changed.

Thom Hartmann comments on one aspect the critically important media ownership issue, talk radio: 

Radio Silence: How Progressives Lost the Airwaves

Inside the GOP's 30-year plan to dominate America’s talk radio system

After Ronald Reagan struck down the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule, Republican money men got the memo. Whichever party controlled the most states would have a big edge in both the Senate (and thus control of the Supreme Court nominations) and the Electoral College, and most of the low- and medium-population states had relatively inexpensive media markets.

You could buy or lease radio stations for less than a party might spend over a four-year electoral cycle on advertising, so why not simply acquire a few hundred stations across a dozen or more states and program them with rightwing talk radio 24/7?

This became particularly easy after Bill Clinton signed the neoliberal Telecommunications Act of 1996 that ended limits on how many radio or TV stations a single corporation or billionaire could own. Within months of that bill passing into law, Clear Channel and other networks had gone from small regional groups to massive nationwide radio empires.

The strategy worked, and today there are over 1,500 rightwing radio stations in America, along with another 700 or so religious stations that regularly endorse Republican memes and candidates for office.

Right-wing talk radio has been integral to Republican strategy for decades. In 1994, when Newt Gingrich took control of the House of Representatives, he understood the power of talk radio.

The GOP hold on most of American radio seems pretty unshakable.

A few years ago, a billionaire acquired one of the largest networks of these stations (800+ stations) and a senator I’ve known for years invited him and me to meet in his office near the US Capitol. The Senator asked the billionaire — who then owned several hundred stations programming exclusively rightwing content — if he’d ever considered putting some progressive content on the air.

The billionaire leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, tented his fingers in front of his mouth, and then said, carefully but emphatically:

“I’ll never put anybody on my air who wants to raise my taxes.”

A few years earlier, I’d sat at lunch at a Talkers Magazine conference with a vice president of what is arguably the most influential of the rightwing radio station networks [Salem Media Group; family-themed content and conservative (authoritarian) values]; the company had started out as a bible publishing business and moved from there into radio and then into political radio.

I asked him if he’d consider putting a progressive show on any of his stations (they were all 100% conservative talk) and he bluntly told me it was “never going to happen” because, he said, “It’s impossible for a liberal to be a true Christian.”

Think about it — political campaigns will pay thousands for a minute of advertising, and find that to be so effective that they continue to buy ads year after year. If that minute can be so influential, how about a host — who’s built a relationship with his or her listeners — telling them dozens of times a day who they should vote for and why? You literally can’t buy promotion like that; you have to buy the station instead.

I have argued many times here that demagogic DFS (dark free speech) has been the single most effective weapon that American radical right authoritarianism has used in its decades-long war against democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. Ownership of mass media is a key component. Concentrated media ownership by radical right authoritarian individuals and businesses maximize DFS's power to deceive, trap and manipulate minds and the distorted realities those minds think they see.

From what I can tell, Bill Clinton was, and Joe Biden still is, on the wrong side of our pro-authoritarian federal media ownership policy. They blew it and betrayed us.

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A NYT article discusses recent poll results from swing voters in three swing states:

We define swing voters as the roughly 18 percent of likely voters who say they haven’t yet made a firm decision. Some describe themselves as undecided, while others say they’re leaning toward one candidate but open to changing their mind.

All the numbers in today’s newsletter come from a poll of three swing states — Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. But I’ve analyzed a similar question in a nationwide poll conducted by YouGov and The Economist, and the themes were similar.

Swing voters’ biggest concern about Trump, by far, is his temperament.

Is this poll more reassuring than troubling? I think it probably is, but that's certain. The 35% personality, 8% honesty, 7% threat to democracy, 5% ideology and 3% court cases amount to 58%. That's not an overwhelming majority. Presumably "ideology" and "threat to democracy" mostly refers implicitly to his authoritarianism, and maybe so does concern about his "personality."  

Other recent poll data is seemingly not as encouraging as this poll.

One has to wonder what the benefits of DJT policies are that Republicans cite as beneficial for them personally. A perplexity search indicated that Republicans commonly cite (i) the 2017 tax cut, (ii) pre-pandemic economic and job growth, (iii) energy independence policy, and (iv) deregulation with attendant reduced business costs and lower consumer prices. 

That search indicated that the perceived reality of some of the benefits are not clear. The 2017 tax cut added to the federal debt, so there was that downside. Before DJT was in office, the economy was on an upswing, so it is hard to know what influence he had on that. Evidence of energy policy and deregulation helping lower consumer prices ranges from non-existent to debated. In short, the claimed benefits may not have materialized as much for the average person as most of DJT's supporters presumably believe.

It still looks like the election is going to be very close in the electoral college. The outcome is not predictable at present.

Social science: Regarding the minds of DJT supporters

A fascinating NYT opinion/analysis writes about the disregard for truth and a basis in animus or hostility toward marginalized groups that drew ~14% of the American electorate early on in 2015-2106. According to the opinion, that disregard and animus now binds “roughly 43 to 45 percent of the electorate” to DJT today:

The Real Trump Mystery

The mystery of 2024: How is it possible that Donald Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency despite all that voters now know about him? .... The litany of Trump’s liabilities is well known to the American electorate. His mendacity, duplicity, depravity, hypocrisy and venality are irrevocably imprinted on the psyches of American voters.

John Podhoretz, in a 2017 Commentary article, “Explaining Trump’s Charlottesville Behavior,” .... “Whose early support for Trump itself played a key role in leading others to take him seriously and help propel him into the nomination?” .... a conspiracy-oriented constituency with little regard for truth:

If there’s one thing politicians can feel in their marrow, even a non-pol pol like Trump, it’s who is in their base and what it is that binds the base to them. .... Trump found himself with 14 percent support in a month. Those early supporters had been primed to rally to him for a long time.”

I’m talking about Alex Jones and Infowars, the conspiracy-theory radio show/website on which Trump has appeared for years; the radio show has 2 million listeners a week, and Jones was said in 2011 to have a larger online presence than Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

I’m talking about American Media, the company that owns the National Enquirer, the Star, the Sun, and the Weekly World News run by Trump’s close friend David Pecker; the combined weekly circulation of its publications is well in excess of 2 million.

The pervasive denial of truth has, in turn, been crucial to Trump’s continued viability.

Partisan loyalty is crucial to Trump’s success. He has a base of support — roughly 43 to 45 percent of the electorate — that sticks with him through good and bad times.

One reason for this is what Yphtach Lelkes, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, calls the “crystallization” of the electorate. In an email, Lelkes explained what he meant:

Crystallization describes a world where people’s attitudes won’t be swayed, no matter what new information they get. Campaign dynamics do very little to move attitudes. Polarization is the engine of crystallization.

MAGA loyalists believe “the investigations against Trump are witch hunts and baseless.” Taking this logic a step further, “people think that the other side is dangerous and that we need someone willing to do whatever it takes to stop them. That is, they think they are protecting democracy by supporting Trump. Finally, in a polarized world, people value policy and partisan outcomes over democracy — they are willing to tolerate some authoritarianism to further their own political goals.”

The political scientists Lilliana Mason, Julie Wronski and John V. Kane capture this phenomenon in their June 2021 paper “Activating Animus: the Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support.” .... “feelings of animosity toward Democratic groups do not predict favorability toward the Republican Party, Paul Ryan, or Mitch McConnell,” Mason, Wronski and Kane write. Instead, “Trump support is uniquely predicted by animosity toward marginalized groups in the United States.” .... Their conclusion amounts to a warning, even if it’s veiled in academic language:

This research reveals a wellspring of animus against marginalized groups in the United States that can be harnessed and activated for political gain. Trump’s unique ability to do so is not the only cause for normative concern.

Instead, we should take note that these attitudes exist across both parties and among nonpartisans. Though they may remain relatively latent when leaders and parties draw attention elsewhere, the right leader can activate these attitudes and fold them into voters’ political judgments.

I love it, the opinion refers to the “crystallization” of the electorate. I sometimes use crystallization to describe what DJT has been able to do and maintain ever since 2015. 

Even before DJT, many or most of his current acolytes had been primed for decades by authoritarian radical right animosity (bigotry, racism, hate, fear, intolerance). That bad state of mind was intentionally fomented by America's authoritarian radical elites and their right dark free speech Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, the GOP, Christian nationalist propagandists, elite American plutocrats, etc. 

This opinion assesses evidence that DJT's committed rank and file supporters are significantly different from the portion of the American population that (i) still mostly allows inconvenient truth to have some impact on belief and behavior, and (ii) does not harbor significant animosity toward marginalized groups.

I queried the Perplexity search engine about how it assessed the importance of truth and animosity toward marginalized groups in supporting DJT. It responded that both factors seemed to be important. My follow-up question referenced this NYT opinion piece. Perplexity then commented:

Based on the new information from the New York Times opinion piece, I would revise my assessment to emphasize the importance of animosity toward marginalized groups and disregard for inconvenient truths as key factors binding committed supporters to Trump.

Animosity and disregard for truth are not the only two factors in play, but it seems plausible that each is important. So maybe together the two are dominant.

Q1: Does the evidence presented here and other things known to constitute a convincing case that most of DJT's committed rank and file are bound to him more by (i) disregard for truth, and (ii) animosity toward marginalized groups than other factors alone or together, e.g., feelings of being disrespected, and fear of the Great White Replacement catastrophe (assuming one can meaningfully disentangle GWR fear from probably overlapping animosity toward marginalized groups)? 

Q2: On the basis of what is presented here and other things you know or believe, is it (i) unfair, (ii) inaccurate and/or (iii) counter-productive to refer to committed DJT rank and file supporters as MAGA or part of the MAGA movement, or are they otherwise unremarkable people like you or me but who just happen to support DJT?

Brass knuckles capitalism update; Plastics pollution update

The Guardian reports: 

Amazon, Tesla and Meta among world’s top companies 

undermining democracy – report

Some of the world’s largest companies have been accused of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights in a report published on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore are the corporations included in the report. The companies’ lobbying arms are attempting to shape global policy at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York City on 22 and 23 September.

At Amazon, the report notes the company’s size and role as the fifth largest employer in the world and the largest online retailer and cloud computing service, has had a profound impact on the industries and communities it operates within.

“The company has become notorious for its union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS data centers, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level,” states the report.

The report cites Amazon’s high injury rates in the US, the company challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), its efforts in Canada to overturn labor law, the banning of Amazon lobbyists from the European parliament for refusing to attend hearings on worker violations, and refusal to negotiate with unions in Germany, among other cases. Amazon has also funded far-right political groups’ efforts to undermine women’s rights and antitrust legislation, and its retail website has been used by hate groups to raise money and sell products.

Simply put, capitalism, like theocracy, is inherently anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian. When capitalism is not reasonably regulated, elite capitalists have too much power. That power comes mostly at the expense of the public interest and government functions needed to protect it. Unfortunately, in pay-to-play politics, special interest money talks and democracy and the public interest get a kick in the pants.

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The WaPo reports (not paywalled) about the abysmal, decades-long state of affairs regarding the non-recyclability of plastics:

Is recycling beyond fixing? 

Here’s why California thinks so.

California’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil says plastic recycling is broken. The oil giant agrees, but blames the state

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued ExxonMobil, claiming the oil and petrochemical giant had engaged “in a decades-long campaign of deception” about the effectiveness of recycling. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit seeks to hold the company responsible for the plastic pollution crisis. It argues that, since at least 1988, ExxonMobil has blanketed the state in marketing and advertising to convince people plastic is being recycled, making them more likely to buy it. This includes spreading misinformation about the efficacy of plastics recycling on social media, it alleges.

The amount of plastic being recycled in the United States today is a sliver of what is produced. Recent estimates suggest that only about 9 percent of this waste is recycled worldwide, while in America it’s about 5 to 6 percent.

Take, for instance, two common household plastics: an orange laundry detergent bottle and a clear squeezable ketchup bottle. They are made from different resins — a petroleum product that’s the main ingredient in plastics — are different colors and contain different chemicals. They can’t be combined and resold. The makeup of each product is so specific that even green and clear soda bottles made of No. 1 plastic cannot be recycled together, which is why the Coca-Cola Co. no longer packages Sprite in its iconic green container.

“Fundamentally, most plastics are not recyclable,” said Judith Enck, the president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and a former regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “And you know who has known this for years? The companies that make and sell plastic.”

ExxonMobil responded to California’s lawsuit by alleging the state’s recycling system is broken. A spokesperson for the company said it had kept more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste out of landfills by turning it into reusable raw materials.

In the face of growing skepticism about plastic recycling, the industry has gone on the offensive. The Plastics Industry Association, a trade group, launched a $1 million campaign last year called “Recycling is Real.” Aimed at lawmakers and brands, the digital ads tried to bolster confidence in recycling.

The WaPo article also commented that an an international trade group of plastic recyclers said that as long as people use plastic products, recycling has merit. That is very much like DJT telling us he has "concepts of a plan" to replace Obamacare. It's pure insulting, morally rotted bullshit.

A person does have to marvel at the insulting arrogance of lying pollution profiteers like ExxonMobil. They foster plastics pollution but falsely claim recycling is real, while blaming government for the non-recyclability of plastics. Morally rotted, outrageous arrogance is a reasonable assessment. Capitalism's inherent lack of compassion for human welfare and the environment is on display.

Piles of plastic

The staggering fragility of American democracy: The Nebraska horror story

A terrifying NYT opinion (not paywalled) discusses the possibility that one person, Nebraska State Senator Mike McDonnell, who defected from the Democratic Party a few months ago, is standing in the Republican Party’s way of giving DJT the election if the closest electoral college scenario comes to pass:

A Leading Law Scholar Fears We’re Lurching Toward Secession

Here’s how rickety our constitutional system has become: The fate of the 2024 election could hang on the integrity of a single Republican state senator in Nebraska.

Almost all states use a winner-take-all system to apportion their presidential electors, but Nebraska and Maine award some electors by congressional district. In 2020, Joe Biden won one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes, and Donald Trump won one elector from rural Maine. This year Kamala Harris’s clearest path to victory is to take the so-called blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, plus one electoral vote in Nebraska.

This year, Republicans waited until it was too late for Maine to change its rules before starting a push to change them in Nebraska. If they succeeded and Harris held the blue wall but lost the other swing states, there would be a tie in the Electoral College. For the first time in 200 years, the election would go to the House, where each state delegation would get one vote and Trump would almost certainly be installed as president.

So far, one man, State Senator Mike McDonnell, who defected from the Democratic Party this spring, is standing in the Republican Party’s way. We should all be grateful for his courage. But the pressure on him from his new party will be intense, and he can still change his mind in the coming weeks.

Whether or not McDonnell remains steadfast, this is a preposterous way to run a purportedly democratic superpower. The Electoral College — created in part, as the scholar Akhil Reed Amar has shown, to protect slavery — has already given us two presidents in the 21st century who lost the popular vote, and it continues to warp our politics. It is one reason Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the U.C. Berkeley School of Law and an eminent legal scholar, has come to despair of the Constitution he’s devoted much of his life to. “I believe that if the problems with the Constitution are not fixed — and if the country stays on its current path — we are heading to serious efforts at secession,” he writes in his bracing new book, “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”

To me, the main point is this: this is a preposterous way to run a purportedly democratic superpower. 

Chemerinsky's concern about secession is too far out in time to be a serious worry for me at least. The possibility of a constitutional convention doing anything significant or at all is very low because 38 states (75%: 37.5 gets rounded up to 38) would need to ratify it. That is politically just about impossible, if not actually impossible. 

So, join with me and let's fret about the crappy way we run our democracy, which is on the verge of falling to some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism. Just one yahoo in Nebraska could drag us into the brutality and cruelty of DJT and MAGA in control. Let's hope that probably low-probability Nebraska scenario does not come to pass.

What, me worry? Nah!

America's fine-tuned electoral

system works just fine  /s

A sampling of authoritarian radical right reality & thinking

Dissident Politics is exposed to too little MAGA reality and thinking. To broaden our horizons a bit, here is some heavy duty MAGA-ology:

Progressives Thrive on Deceit

To remake America, progressives have centered on a strategy of rewriting history, distorting current events, changing language, and using false allegations of disinformation, malinformation (facts progressives believe are presented out of context), and racism to censor and suppress centrists and conservatives.

By undermining confidence in American values, progressives have considerably advanced their efforts. They have controlled the White House and at least one House of Congress for 12 of the last 16 years, and the Supreme Court for nearly all of the last 70 years. Almost all major media outlets and reporters are in lockstep with progressive goals, lies, and omissions. Most report only about events and views that benefit the progressive agenda, and mischaracterize or suppress news, information, and opinions that may impede it. Progressives also control most federal agencies, many state agencies, leading universities, school boards, professional organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, most leading think tanks, and many corporate boards.

As the COVID pandemic raged, progressives spoke hopefully of a new world order in which experts would tell us how to live. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, often refer to this chaos as the “rules-based international order.” They and other progressives, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, see the U.S. as just one among many countries. That is why they oppose immigration controls, support global compacts, subordinate the United States to the United Nations, and believe the U.S. can use economic or military power only when supported by an international coalition.

In a recent article for RealClearPolicy[1] about progressives’ crude ad hominem attacks on conservatives, it is explained that progressive dogma is a fierce,
culturally Marxist philosophy that:
(1) demands all policies, resources, and opportunities be allocated in accordance with a benighted view of oppressors and victims centered on race, sex, and sexual orientation;
(2) believes children are wards of the state to be indoctrinated by educators, while physically cared for by parents;
(3) represses religion for being what Karl Marx described as “the opium of the people;” and
(4) places a green agenda, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the rights of criminals above free speech and assembly, the judicial process, and rights of petition. Progressives deny that ISIS and Hamas are terrorists, oppose Israel’s right of defense because Jews are “oppressors,” and believe children may select irreversible gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.

Eliminating or distorting teaching about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and liberty leaves students uninformed about America’s unique story. An Echelon Insights poll highlights the cumulative impact of this indoctrination. Sixty-six percent of high schoolers viewed the U.S. as exceptional and unique, compared to 47% of college students; 63% of high-schoolers were proud of the U.S., compared to 40% of college students; and 58% of high-schoolers were patriotic, compared to just 35% of college students.

Concurrently, progressives are remaking the acceptable lexicon. They corrupt language and norms to deprive us of the ability to express nuance and understand distinctions.

Leading institutions, including government agencies, professional organizations, and universities, proclaim that our language is replete with hidden racism and genderism that must be cleansed with a new vocabulary featuring ideologically-laden phrases. Among the words that trouble the American Medical Association are “disadvantaged,” “equality,” and “disparities.” The politically acceptable terms are “historically and intentionally excluded,” “equity,” and “inequities.” Similarly, “ex-con” or “felon” are to be replaced with “returning citizen” or “persons with a history of incarceration,” and “fairness” with “social justice.”

“Illegal alien,” the term used in federal law for those who enter the U.S. without proper visas or overstay their visas, first became “undocumented alien” and then “non-citizens,” who somehow deserve all benefits to which citizens are entitled.

As progressives erase and change language, history, and values to create a foundation to change America’s way of life, they also corruptly fabricate, suppress, and misrepresent recent and current events to confuse voters, shield accountability for their failures, and disparage their opponents. The following is a list of recent political hoaxes promoted by progressive elected officials, bureaucrats, and major national media (my thanks to Breitbart News for identifying many of these):

Russia Collusion Hoax
Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
Biden Is Not Cognitively Impaired Hoax
The Biden-Harris Administration Is Not Censoring Social Media Hoax
Biden Is Not a Crook Hoax
Project 2025 Hoax
Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax
Jussie Smollett Hoax
Covington KKK Kids Hoax
Very Fine People Hoax
Drinking Bleach Hoax
Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
Russian Bounties to Taliban Hoax
Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
Policemen Killed on January 6 Protest Hoax
Rittenhouse Hoax
Eating While Black Hoax
Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
NASCAR Noose Hoax
The Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
COVID Deaths are Overcounted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
Hamas Hospital Hoax
The Alfa Bank Hoax

Hiding Biden’s cognitive impairment took dozens, if not hundreds, of staff, family, elected officials, and reporters. That hoax was revealed only when replacing Biden became imperative to defeat Trump. In lockstep, the progressive media complex abandoned its cover-up of Biden’s impairment and called for his replacement.

Harris’s and Tim Walz’s campaign became the second act of this hoax. With few exceptions, they refuse to discuss their records or beliefs, and falsely claim to have changed both. They willfully misstate Trump’s positions and falsely attribute to him sponsorship of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (yet another hoax, as even USA Today and CNN have acknowledged).

From what I can tell, that is very likely very close how most of MAGA sees the situation. In all of that, one can see some nuggets of truth, along with some other things. For example, one could consider Dem elites hiding Biden's cognitive situation a hoax. I do, but that does not lead me to support DJT or his corrupt authoritarianism. Despite labeling the bad guys here progressives, this is probably how most of the MAGA rank and file sees most everyone other than themselves. Centrists, the center-right, independents, pragmatic rationalists and other non-MAGA, but anti-MAGA folk seem to be either implicitly lumped in, or ignored. The undeniable authoritarianism and staggering corruption of DJT and his MAGA are flat out denied or ignored.

With that kind of "reality" and "reasoning", it is easy to see why so many minds stay trapped in MAGA's version of reality and reason. There is no good will in it. No accounting for disagreement. Can you feel the pull of persuasion in it if you just let go and ride the emotional appeal, the facts be damned? I can definitely feel it.

Qs: Is it good or at least useful to be occasionally exposed to how MAGA presents its version of reality and reason, e.g., so that the power and appeal of its dark free speech can be felt in one's guts? Or, are Germaine's guts full of crappage and there is little or nothing one can feel in, or learn from, how the radical right authoritarian propaganda Leviathan presents its arguments, reasoning and alleged facts?

Footnote:

1.  The RCP article referred to above includes these comments:

Both parties are guilty of incivility, hyperbole, hubris, and engendering turmoil. But, there is a binary choice in what this election means for freedom, prosperity, and security.

To deflect from their autocratic dogma and failures, including massive illegal immigration, compounding inflation, lawless prosecutors, spiraling crime, a two-tiered justice system, rampant racism, and international wars, progressives falsely attack Trump as an existential threat to democracy.

The faux Russian collusion conspiracy, defunding police, delegitimizing conservative justices, and claims that Republicans are threats to democracy is the sophistry of leftists who despise traditional values, family, faith, equal opportunity, individual rights, Western culture, industriousness, and performance. As the ultimate centralization of authority, the far left intelligentsia seeks a liberal, rules-based international order that overrides national sovereignty.

The RCP article equates the far left intelligentsia with the mostly center to center-right politics and policy of dominant mainstream Democratic politics. In the real world, the far left is socialist, not centrist to center-right capitalist. Support for abortion and reasonable gun safety laws is centrist, and maybe also socialist, but that does not negate the possibility that centrism or even center rightism and socialism sometimes overlap. What decades of radical right dark free speech has successfully done is drag the Overton Window so far to the right that most of the MAGA rank and file now think of the center right and center as far left progressives, i.e., socialists or communists. That's the power of dark free speech.

Overton Window

InfoWars: A critical weapon in the global authoritarian attack on democracy and truth

American and other democracies are in a bitter, existential InfoWar against forces of foreign and domestic authoritarianism. In essence InfoWar constitutes a combination of dark free speech (divisive lies, slanders, bigotry, crackpot reasoning, irrational emotional manipulation, etc.) and dirty tricks. The big gun is dark free speech.  A WaPo opinion (not paywalled) focuses on the foreign InfoWar that China wages against the US:

The PRC is increasingly controlling global narratives and silencing critics

The United States is not yet losing the global information war, but we soon will be — unless we act quickly and make the most of our strengths.

Russia recently amped up its disinformation and misinformation around the U.S. election. The United States recently accused RT, Russia’s state media, of out-and-out intelligence activities. Still, of all the globe’s information warriors, the most formidable is still China, which spends billions each year to dominate the world’s information space. More than missiles, ships, drones or guns, this is the real threat to our national — and global — security. Listen to China’s president, Xi Jinping, as quoted by then-Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) during a congressional hearing last November: “Once the front lines of human thought have been broken through, other defensive lines also become hard to defend.”

How is China controlling global narratives and silencing critics? By buying television and radio frequencies around the world, partnering with news organizations, seeding pro-China content into local media, courting journalists and content creators with trips, training and new equipment and winning over their bosses with free content.

The PRC targets both Chinese and non-Chinese audiences worldwide, far beyond its own borders. China’s largest media conglomerate, Xinhua, has 37 bureaus in Africa, far more than any other news agency, African or non-African — a dramatic increase from just two decades ago. The PRC is running information operations into Latin America, from Cuba to Nicaragua to Venezuela and beyond.

Even in countries boasting a free press, China’s free-for-the-taking content lures the cash-strapped media industry: Consider Xi’s visit to South Africa in 2023, when he put his name to an article hailing China and South Africa as “comrades and friends.” Three leading South African newspapers reprinted the talking points verbatim on their front pages. 

In China, the PRC has made tremendous progress fortifying the so-called Great Firewall, deterring citizens from accessing outside information while funding party-approved, entertainment-focused content to lull them into cocooning themselves within.

Once again, critically important but shockingly under-reported issues related to defense of democracy bubble up from all the usual MSM fluff and noise. This is the heart of MSM's weakness:

American capitalism is not compatible with the level of MSM professionalism and blunt honesty needed to (i) properly alert the public to authoritarian dangers, or (ii) to adequately defend democracy and truth against foreign and domestic authoritarian dark free speech. Regarding defense of democracy and truth, I continue to give the MSM an F. American professional MSM is far too damaged by its fealty to the profit motive. America's authoritarian propaganda Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, faces no sanction for its role in fomenting domestic kleptocratic authoritarianism, i.e., DJT and MAGA. Weakness and subversion of America's professional MSM is a key weakness in our defenses against internal and external authoritarianism. Maybe a decisive, lethal weakness.

A NYT opinion comments (not paywalled) about Russia's worldwide authoritarian  tactics of hiring thugs to beat dissidents up or assassins to murder them:

Putin Is Doing Something Almost Nobody Is Noticing

In November 2022, my editors asked me to be careful about what I ate and stop ordering takeout. Initially, I didn’t think much of it. But I soon realized the importance of their advice when, just one month later, my colleague Elena Kostyuchenko discovered she had been poisoned in Germany, in a probable assassination attempt by the Russian state.

Such stories have become routine. Last year, an investigative journalist, Alesya Marokhovskaya, was harassed in the Czech Republic; in February, the bullet-riddled body of a Russian defector, Maxim Kuzminov, was found in Spain. In both cases, the Kremlin was assumed to be involved. Russian opposition figures know well that even in exile they remain targets of Russia’s intelligence services.

But it’s not just them who are in danger. There are also the hundreds of thousands of Russians who left home because they did not want to have anything to do with Vladimir Putin’s war — or were forced out, accused of not embracing it enough. These low-profile dissenters are subjected to surveillance and kidnappings, too. Yet their repression happens in silence — away from the spotlight and often with the tacit consent, or inadequate prevention, of the countries to which they have fled.

It’s a terrifying thing: The Kremlin is hunting down ordinary people across the world, and nobody seems to care.

So there we have it, democracy and truth fans. American kleptocratic authoritarians like DJT and their wealth and power MAGA movement are not much different from the goons that rule China with an iron fist. But so far, the US dictator squads still rarely resort to breaking knee caps and murder, like the fun-fill Putin and his hired thugs and murdering monsters.