adolph Hitler nazi
oops several nodes
SEE CRUEL SADISM IMAGE SPECTACLE
-=-=
MMA
While lamenting a suspected arson at Hitler's mountain vacation home, Benny Johnson says “in our modern era” Barack Obama “is the worst leader in human history — no one has caused more damage to the earth”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 10/26/26
Video file
Video
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): Little by little, the past will be destroyed by those who don't understand it, and don't want you to have any connection to it because they wish to rule over you.
Ladies and gentlemen, a relic of World War II, but an incredibly historic location, Hitler's Eagle's Nest was burnt to ashes, damaged beyond repair last night. I, you know, I think I would compare this perhaps to the melting down of the Confederate monuments, right? Like, you don't you don't have to agree with the Confederacy, you don't have to love Hitler or anything like that to understand that this is part of history. This is part of world history.
Perhaps you could like appreciate this place because it's a place where American troops set up shop in fact, when we conquered Germany and won World War II. It's where American troops actually carved their names into the banisters, into the walls, in the rock. You could see it as an Allied conquest. You could see it as a world con- — you could see it as many things. Certainly historic locations where Hitler held many historic meetings, right, throughout the Third Reich, and a symbol to the world of what that era in history meant, much like the Confederate statues.
I mean, I don't want, for instance, I don't like Barack Obama at all. I think there's never been a more damaging president and never will be. Please God, never will be a more damaging president in American history. I don't want his presidential library to burn to the ground. Maybe the people of Chicago do, you know, because it's a massive eyesore, but I wouldn't be in favor of burning it to the ground in spite of the fact that I — that in our modern era, he is the worst leader in human history — no one has caused more damage to the earth than Barack Obama.
Anyways, it's awful to see because it's history lost and a fire has ripped through the Eagle's Nest in Bavaria. German police have detained a suspected arsonist. What do you bet? What do you bet the arsonist is going to either be a criminal alien migrant, be a Muslim, or is going to be a communist, right? The communists want to start at year zero. The communists can't have you connected to anything in the past. Crews saw flames rising high in the air as they approached. They found the building completely ablaze.
The suspected person was taken into temporary custody. Nobody was injured and it was hard to contain the fire because it's a high altitude. There's wind. The building is only accessible with a heavy breathing apparatus. She said authorities were alerted of the fire. No potential reason for the fire was given. The German police reported, you can see here the fire. The place is a blaze. And now you can see that it is a a total loss, a total ruin. Oh, it's awful. Again, this is the retreat for Hitler, but also a location of some of the most significant moments of World War II. For that sake alone, it should be preserved and should be an opportunity for people to go and see history, learn history, and whatever they want to take from it, that's on them.
-=-=
-=-=
RWW 10 26 VID
Adolf Hitler Would Have Really Loved Joel Webbon's Wife
-=-=
---
RWW 1 26
Nick Fuentes unleashed an antisemitic rant in response to the controversy that erupted after he and several other far-right figures danced to Kanye West's "Heil Hitler" in a Miami Beach night club: "We do not care about the Holocaust!"
---}:
MMA
12/10/25
---
---
NO LNX
Trump admin's latest theatrics have troubling echoes — of a 1930's German concentration camp
U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Representative Randy Feenstra (R-IA) look as they stand near U.S. President Donald Trump at Joint Base Andrews, following a visit to Iowa, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S. July 4, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
Thom HartmannJuly 04, 2025
When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986-87, we visited Dachau with our family. The crematoriums shocked our children, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps. The ovens were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera.
The death camps, it turns out, were all located outside of Germany so Dear Leader could deny responsibility for them. You know, like Gitmo.
Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (aka the “GOP Donor Fellatio Act”) contains a 13-fold increase in ICE’s budget, turning it into the largest single (secret, masked) police force in America, along with, in aggregate, close to $100 billion to build a new series of “detention facilities” all across America.
If this passes, soon the country will pockmarked by concentration camps. As Trump said on Tuesday:
“Well, I think we'd like to see them in many states, really, many states. This one, I know Ron’s doing a second one, at least a second one, and probably a couple of more. And, you know, at some point, they might morph into a system where you’re going to keep it for a long time.”
Let’s stop pretending. Let’s stop dancing around the language, around the morality, and around the history.
What’s being built in the Florida Everglades, for example — what they’re calling “Alligator Alcatraz” — is not just another immigration facility. It’s a political prison engineered not merely to detain, but to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror.
It’s America’s first open-air symbol that our democracy is not just dying: it is being dissected publicly, cruelly, and with calculation.
Trump is back in the White House. The Republican Party controls Congress. And with a permanent “immigration emergency” in place, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is running point on an experiment in authoritarian governance.
Alligator Alcatraz is the proof-of-concept.
Rising in a remote wildlife preserve in Big Cypress National Preserve — Indigenous land, no less — Alligator Alcatraz is expected to hold thousands of undocumented migrants. Some reports say 1,000 at launch; others say 5,000. Either way, it is the largest civilian detention project built on U.S. soil in a generation.
It’s surrounded by dense marshland, home to pythons and alligators.
“Let them try to escape,” Trump smirked at a recent rally. “They better know how to run from an alligator.”
This isn’t just cruelty. It’s performance. It’s state-sponsored sadism, broadcast as patriotism. DeSantis and Trump are now competing in a bizarre effort to show who can be more cruel.
But it’s not unprecedented. If you want to understand what’s happening in Florida, you have to travel back to 1933, to a small, remote town in Bavaria.
When Adolf Hitler seized power in Germany, the first thing he built wasn’t a tank or a warship. It was a “detention facility.”
The Dachau concentration camp, opened in March 1933 just three months after he became Chancellor, was described at the time as “the first concentration camp for political prisoners.” As the Dachau memorial site explains:
“From the very beginning, the camp was a place of brutality. During the first years, most prisoners were political opponents of the Nazi regime.”
They weren’t criminals. They weren’t traitors. They were “undesirable immigrants.” Trade unionists. Communists. Jews. Catholics. Writers. Teachers. Students. They were anyone the regime considered a threat or a convenient enemy.
The Nazis didn’t hide Dachau. They advertised it. It was a warning. A message. Step out of line, and this is where you go.
Sound familiar?
Alligator Alcatraz is not Dachau. It’s not exterminating people. Yet. But Dachau didn’t begin as a death camp either. It began as a “protective custody” facility, built on the idea that “certain people” posed a threat to the national body simply by existing.
That’s what Florida’s new facility represents. Not immigration enforcement. Not public safety. Protective custody for political purposes.
Under Trump’s new national emergency framework, virtually anyone deemed “unlawfully present” can be detained indefinitely without trial.
That means asylum seekers. Victims of trafficking. Children.
And if you believe this won’t expand — if you believe this power will remain solely focused on brown-skinned migrants fleeing violence in Central America — then you haven’t read a history book lately.
Stripping people of their citizenship is called denaturalization, and it was one of Hitler’s favorite tools against his enemies and Jews, who were referred to as “undesirable foreign elements” and denaturalized en masse in 1935.
Trump’s DoJ just updated their guidelines relating to the 25 million American citizens who first came to this country as immigrants and then obtained citizenship through the naturalization process. It used to be that you could only lose your citizenship if you committed a serious enough crime.
And, on Tuesday, Trump said:
“Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here, too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that'll be the next job that we'll work on together.”
So now, the DoJ says, Trump can choose to denaturalize anybody and then immediately send them to Alligator Alcatraz:
“Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue [may be stripped of citizenship]. These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance. Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate. The assignment of denaturalization cases may be made across sections or units based on experience, subject-matter expertise, and the overall needs of the Civil Division.” (emphasis added)
And as a special bonus, the memo notes that stripping American citizens of their citizenship is a civil, not criminal, process so you are not entitled to have a lawyer or any of the other normal aspects of legal procedure like a trial that we generally think of as our rights. Franz Kafka would be proud.
Dachau didn’t just hold communists. Over time, it expanded to include denaturalized Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, and anyone who opposed Nazi policy. It became a national crucible of cruelty. It normalized the idea that “certain people do not deserve legal protections.”
That is the fire that Alligator Alcatraz is stoking today.
How is this being done? Through a cunning abuse of emergency powers.
Florida has been under a rolling immigration “state of emergency” since 2023, a legal status that allows the governor to bypass environmental protections, override public procurement processes, and redirect funds without oversight.
Sound familiar? It should. The Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree to grant themselves emergency powers in perpetuity. One crisis, one convenient boogeyman, and suddenly all democratic guardrails are removed.
Today, DeSantis is using FEMA funds intended for hurricane victims to build migrant cages. Tomorrow, it could be protesters. Journalists. Teachers. You.
This isn’t alarmism. It’s precedent.
Let’s talk about the location, because it matters.
Big Cypress is a remote and largely inaccessible swamp, home to endangered species, sacred Indigenous land, and — now — a prison surrounded by natural predators.
Human rights lawyers and journalists will find it hard to access. Escapes will be all but impossible. Oversight will be nonexistent. That’s by design.
Dachau, too, was deliberately chosen for its isolation. As the memorial website explains:
“The camp was constantly expanded and served as the prototype and model for all later concentration camps.”
It became a template. A blueprint. And its very existence reshaped what the German public considered “normal.”
Alligator Alcatraz is the same. A testing ground. If it succeeds — not as a legal institution, but as a political spectacle — there will be more. One in Texas. One in Arizona. One in Arkansas. Maybe even one in your backyard.
The most dangerous thing about Alligator Alcatraz isn’t the alligators. It’s the message.
The message that some people are less than human. That caging them is acceptable. That they deserve no rights, no hearing, no compassion. Just mud and barbed wire.
That was the logic behind Dachau.
And it’s becoming the logic behind Trump’s America.
This facility is being built not to solve a problem, but to create one. To manufacture outrage. To train the public to see brown-skinned immigrants not as workers or families or survivors but as invaders. Intruders. Animals.
And that’s when the door opens for something far worse.
We cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford to be polite. The time for half-measures and technocratic rebuttals and “strongly worded letters” is over.
America stands at a crossroads. Down one road lies the fragile promise of democracy: messy, imperfect, but built on the belief in human dignity and the rule of law. Down the other lies the swamp — literal and figurative — where cruelty is policy, and fear is law.
Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a prison. It’s a mirror. And it’s asking us: Who are we, really?
The answer, as always, is up to us.
We must engage:
Lawsuits: Civil liberties groups and Indigenous tribes must continue challenging this facility in court. Environmental statutes, tribal treaties, and international human rights laws can still be leveraged.
Documentation: Journalists must risk everything to document the construction, conditions, and policies of Alligator Alcatraz. We need eyes in the swamp, or darkness will reign.
Direct Action: Peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and national mobilization must become central. This is a fight for the moral compass of our country.
Language: Stop calling this a “detention center.” Call it what it is: a political prison. A migrant concentration camp. Words matter.
History: Teach your neighbors about Dachau. Show them how it started. Not with mass extermination, but with silence. With a single camp, surrounded by a fence, where people were put “for their own protection.”
Democracy doesn’t fall all at once. It decays from the inside. It erodes at the margins. It disappears not with a bang, but with a shrug.
The United States of America has reached a threshold. We can step back and reaffirm our commitment to human dignity, to due process, to liberty and justice for all.
Or we can cross into the swamp. And never come back.
Dachau was the beginning of something monstrous. Let Alligator Alcatraz be the end of something: the end of our innocence, the end of our complacency, and the start of a renewed resistance.
Because if we wait too long, we may wake up one day and discover we are no longer the land of the free, but only the home of the caged.
NOW READ: Republicans just declared war on grandma
---
---}:
an 9 24 joe conasan
How unsurprising is it that former President Donald Trump appeared recently at an event supposedly devoted to opposing antisemitism -- and proceeded to deliver a speech dripping with antisemitic innuendo and contempt for American Jews?
Like so much of what Trump says and does, his remarks at the "Combating Antisemitism" affair in Washington, D.C., expressed a bitter grievance. He resents the fact that Jewish voters in the United States remain overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic, which means only a minority of them vote for him. He bluntly argued that his support for Israel's right-wing and bloodstained government somehow entitles him to Jewish votes, even though many Jews are critical of Israeli policy and political leadership.
Hours later, at an event for Israeli Americans, he expanded on the same themes but went much further, seeking to scapegoat the entire Jewish community for the electoral failure he now fears:
"If I don't win this election, and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40%, that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy ..."
Aside from his noxious description of his political rivals as "the enemy," Trump's attempt to blame Jews in advance for a Republican defeat at the polls is both absurd and sinister. Absurd because Jews are a tiny fraction of the electorate, mostly concentrated in states where he has no chance to win anyway. Sinister because the MAGA movement that Trump has spawned is crawling with neo-Nazis, white nationalists and antisemites who are already primed to spread hatred of Jews and other forms of racism.
ALSO READ:**Trump has a brand new front in the Haitian conspiracy push**
And he knows it.
Trump's rise over the past decade has seen the mainstreaming of every extremist ideology on the right -- a category that encompasses antisemitism along with racism, homophobia, misogyny, Islamophobia and the violent antagonism toward immigrants that he and his vice presidential nominee JD Vance now encourage routinely. As the Republican Party moved sharply rightward under Trump's leadership, the most vicious hatemongers have sprung up to proclaim their bigotry loudly, while proudly identifying as MAGA.
The latest mortifying episode involves Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor of North Carolina, a pious moralist whose raunchy online persona was suddenly exposed by a CNN investigative team. Much of what Robinson wrote on the "Nude Africa" porn site is too scandalous to be recounted on television, including his sexual encounters with his sister-in-law. What could be reported in full were his viciously bigoted screeds. "I am a black Nazi," he wrote, declaring his admiration for Hitler and the genocidal murderer's autobiography, "Mein Kampf."
But here's the problem for Republicans and especially Trump, who endorsed this weirdo fulsomely while comparing him favorably to Martin Luther King Jr.: Unlike Robinson's strange sexual preoccupations, his antisemitism was no secret. He openly posted anti-Jewish and conspiratorial material on social media for many years, and refused to disown or apologize for those offenses. And by now nobody should be shocked that Trump and the MAGA Republicans, including his media claque, have lionized a Black Nazi.
The proliferation of white nationalist and Nazi-adjacent personalities at the highest levels of the Republican Party, directly attributed to MAGA and Trump, is pervasive. Candace Owens, a commentator dismissed from a right-wing website for her antisemitic ravings, was recently invited to headline a campaign fundraiser with Donald Trump Jr. Jack Posobiec, a right-wing operative repeatedly promoted by Trump, has collaborated with neo-Nazis and distributed antisemitic posts on social media. Wendy Rogers, an Arizona GOP state senator, just recently posted Nazi song lyrics on X, which was only her latest antisemitic emission.
The list goes on, including the nasty little pro-Hitler podcaster Nick Fuentes, who dined at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, as well as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the "Jewish space lasers" theorist.
And then there's Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host and close Trump confidant, who not long ago aired a show with a pseudo-historian whose work aims at absolving the Third Reich of responsibility for the Holocaust and whitewashing Hitler. Carlson, long a fan favorite of neo-Nazis here and abroad, approvingly echoed the recitation of revisionist lies.
This is a sickening phenomenon from which most Republicans -- and too many in the media -- have long averted their eyes. Trump may be the most reliable ally of the far right in Israel, but he represents a growing danger to American Jews.
===
an 9 24 // NC i am black nazi
alternet-no lnx
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell (Image: Screengrab via MyPillow.com)
Carl Gibson September 21, 2024
Far-right election denier Mike Lindell's MyPillow is now being advertised at a significant discount. One historian is pointing out that the pillow's new price is a reference to a prominent neo-Nazi rallying cry.
On the social media platform Bluesky, Willamette University history professor Seth Cotlar observed that the official @MyPillowUSA X (formerly Twitter) account tweeted an advertisement for its product with a posted price of $14.88. As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained, the number "1488" is a reference to the "14 words" slogan frequently used by neo-Nazis: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The "88" is a reference to the eighth letter of the alphabet twice, interpreted by neo-Nazis to mean "Heil Hitler."
"This ad is a disturbing wink at Nazis, wrapped in the seemingly innocuous, plausibly deniable form of an advertisement," Cotlar wrote on Bluesky. "I doubt Lindell is behind this or would even get the reference, but that doesn't really matter."
READ MORE: Attorneys ditch Mike Lindell as he fights to avoid paying $5M
"It is undeniable that there are fascists, and even straight up Nazis, working inside the Republican Party. One of them is likely responsible for that winking Lindell ad," he continued. "But such people still have to wink at each other like this. Lindell or other public figures wouldn't openly embrace this."
The MyPillow advertisement — which is still live on the account as of Saturday afternoon — was praised by numerous X users who made Nazi references.
"We will be buying," tweeted an account named "Ohio Groyper" ("Groyper" is the term used for fans of white supremacist influencer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes). An X user with "groyper" in her bio tweeted: "1488 right on!" Another X user replied to the ad by tweeting "the price is reich."
"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white pillows," another user tweeted.
READ MORE: 'Flattened like a cheap pillow': Mike Lindell brtually mocked after losing debate with 12-year-old
As Cotlar noted, it's not clear whether Lindell is in on the reference. In a video announcing the discount, Lindell is seen holding up two pillows and announcing the new discounted price as $14.98, even though both the official MyPillow website lists it as $14.88 with the promo code.
"I want to tell you about a current box store that put in an order — a big order — for our famous MyPillows, we made them all and got ready to ship them and they cancelled at the last minute," Lindell said in the video, after lamenting that his company had been "cancelled" by "attacks that just keep coming."
Whether Lindell is aware of the phrase, the ad was widely panned on X for its use of a neo-Nazi slogan. Colorado Political Workers Guild founder Logan Davis called the ad "shocking even for Lindell." Progressive podcaster Jordan Uhl quote-tweeted the ad and simply commented: "Mein Pillow."
Click here to read Cotlar's full thread on Bluesky.
mma
Hitler speeches that appear to be AI-generated are getting millions of views on TikTok
Despite TikTok’s policies banning the “praise” of individuals who cause mass violence, English-language versions of Nazi rants have racked up millions of views on TikTok
Written by Abbie Richards
Published 09/17/24
Audio clips of Hitler giving speeches in English, which appear to be AI-generated, have been proliferating on TikTok, earning millions of views. Some users have been promoting and praising the audios in an apparent violation of TikTok’s community guidelines.
While some of these audios — which are often poorly translated and set to slow, reverb instrumental beats — have been removed, Media Matters has identified accounts dedicated to uploading this content. At least one of these accounts is still live and posting regularly.
The platform’s community guidelines prohibit “promoting (including any praise, celebration, or sharing of manifestos) or providing material support to … individuals who cause serial or mass violence, or promote hateful ideologies.” The dissemination of excerpts of Hitler’s speeches seems to violate this policy.
Media Matters has identified numerous videos with these English-language Hitler speeches posted as far back as April 7, 2024. However, since early September, videos with these audios have been proliferating across the platform. TikTok has since removed some of the videos that Media Matters identified, but only after some had earned hundreds of thousands, or even over a million, views.
One video, which had earned roughly 120,000 likes and over 1 million views prior to removal, featured an excerpt from a speech Hitler gave on the 19th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch (a failed coup d’etat by the Nazi Party in November 1923) and portrayed an image of Hitler standing with his back turned to the camera with the text: “Just listen.”
The excerpt of the speech — which appeared to be slightly different than a translation posted by the Jewish Virtual Library Project — is layered on top of a slow instrumental beat, and suggests that Hitler did not want to go on the offensive during World War II, that he tried to save women and children, and that he waited until he had no choice.
Video
CitationA September 1, 2024, video uploaded to TikTok
While some TikTok users expressed skepticism in the comments about this portrayal of Hitler, other comments embraced this fantasy. Some users wrote: “He was a hero,” “Winners write history,” “The great painter,” and “Maybe He Is NOT The Villain.” (“The painter” is presumably a reference to the Nazi leader’s failed art career.)
While Media Matters was viewing this video, TikTok’s search-prompting feature suggested the search “the painter english speech,” indicating that the platform was reducing friction for users to find more of Hitler’s speeches.
Another video using the same sound — which has since been taken down — featured a visuals of cliffs by water and the hashtags “true,” “nature,” “europe,” and “1161” (seemingly a right-wing dog whistle for Anti-Anti Fascist Action or AAFA).
The video had at least 22,700 likes and over 270,000 views prior to removal. Some users commented: “AH was a good and kind man,” “now i know why they didn’t translate this before,” and “this changed my views on him.”
Some TikTok users were quick to turn this audio into a meme that appeared to mock Hitler for feigning innocence. For instance, in one video with 2.4 million views, a user lip-synchs to the AI-generated Hitler speech with text on screen reading, “when i pooped in the urinal in 3rd grade.” In a video with over 520,000 views, a user donning full military gear lip syncs to the Hitler speech while the text on screen reads “When there beef in the GC and your involved.” This audio was used at least 251 times prior to its removal.
Video
CitationAn August 13, 2024, video uploaded to TikTok
Another supposed Hitler speech focused on cultural decline; Hitler spoke on that topic, but Media Matters could not verify the accuracy of the translation.
Users were quick to turn this audio into a meme as well. One such video, with 197,400 views, compares “the furniture my grandparents left me vs the furniture I’m leaving my grandkids” with the caption “Preservation is a must.”
Other users lip-synched to the AI-generated Hitler speech with text on screen reading “pov: gen alpha in 2035 when skibiti toilet comes out as bisexual and baby gronk overdoses on galaxy gas 2.0,” “POV: a guy just asked me if I wanted to see a Marvel/DC movie,” and “pov: you stuck talking to that mf that gets political after a line [of cocaine].”
A third seemingly AI-generated Hitler audio on TikTok featured an excerpt from a speech he gave in January of 1939, also overlaid on top of a slow instrumental beat. Prior to its removal, this audio was used at least 55 times, with some of the videos earning hundreds of thousands of views.
Video
CitationAn August 4, 2024, video uploaded to TikTok
A video using this audio with nearly 500,000 views and over 64,000 likes reads, “name a character no one can make you hate,” and then shows an outline of Hitler. While the sound had been removed, this video was still up at the time of writing.
Another video, with 394,000 views, featured what looked like an AI-generated image of a white, blond girl in a Union Jack T-shirt standing in the middle of a bus and crying while surrounded by laughing nonwhite people in hijabs and taqiyahs. The comment with the most likes read, “We need the painter.”
Another video, with over 650,000 views and 90,000 likes, used this audio along with pictures of two bowls of ice cream, one with chocolate and vanilla mixed and one with just vanilla, which seemed to insinuate disdain for racial integration.
Media Matters also identified several accounts dedicated to posting these Hitler audios.
One account with 20,500 followers and over 3.8 million cumulative views across 12 videos posts videos with these Hitler speeches, a silhouette of the German mass murderer, and the text “Growing up is realizing Who the villain Really was.”
One explicitly antisemitic video, blaming a “small rootless international clique” who are “at home both nowhere and everywhere who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up” for “turning the people against each other,” has received over 1.6 million views. The excerpt seems to come from a speech Hitler gave at the Siemens-Schuckert plant in Berlin in 1933. At the time of writing, this account was still up.
Media Matters identified another account seemingly dedicated to posting these reconstructed Hitler speech audios that has been removed by TikTok. The most popular video on the account, with over 87,000 views, was an English-language excerpt from Hitler’s July 1940 speech “My Last Appeal to Great Britain.”
As AI becomes increasingly popular for content generation, novel forms of disinformation that promote hateful ideologies and misrepresent historical facts will follow. Social media platforms must be aware that this technology is being used to cause harm and take proactive measures to prevent it from proliferating on their platforms.
prevent it from proliferating on their platforms.
Related
02/08/24 9:49 AM EST
07/06/22 4:05 PM EDT
02/09/24
---
nov 2023 an 2x?
With a government shutdown looming a week from today, the House of Representatives adjourned yesterday for the weekend after Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson failed to get a successful vote on two essential funding bills.
One, a transportation bill, would have gutted Amtrak, so a few east coast Republicans objected; the other, funding government operations and oversight of banks, went down in flames because it had a draconian anti-abortion provision built into it and Tuesday’s election appears to have spooked the GOP.
Just a week earlier, Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott — who became a near billionaire running a company convicted of the largest ($1.7 billion) Medicare fraud in American history and hails from Ron DeSantis’ home state — endorsed Donald Trump.
These stories are connected, and answer the question: “Why have Republicans in the House and Senate become so unable or unwilling to do the nation’s business?”
It turns out they actually want the chaos they’re creating, the government defaults, the mass shooters, the fights on school boards and city councils, the racist, antisemitic, and homophobic vigilantes. They think it will all work to their advantage: none of this is accidental.
They think it will discourage voters by amplifying American cynicism and discouragement, making it easier for them to take over.
Rick Scott is betting that when Trump becomes president and declares martial law on his first day, as he’s promised to do, morbidly rich people like Scott will be unscathed.
His vast wealth has always insulated him from having to interact shoulder-to-shoulder with the unwashed masses: private jets, exclusive clubs and restaurants, chauffeurs and butlers, a dedicated security detail and gated communities.
The billionaires and CEOs funding the Republicans in Congress who are disrupting our government believe the same thing. They think they’re invincible. They believe the GOP embrace of fascism to replace the democracy that is increasingly rejecting them at the polls will keep them safe.
They’re wrong.
From the time in 1980 when David Koch ran for Vice President on a platform of ending Social Security and Medicare along with gutting all federal support for education, healthcare, and “welfare” programs, “Libertarian” billionaires have worked to end every part of what they call “big government” that may help average working people, the environment, or the poor.
Reagan won the election that year, but Koch’s worldview prevailed, taking over the GOP.
Over the past 42 years, Reaganomics has moved over 60,000 factories and nearly 20 million good-paying manufacturing jobs overseas.
It’s cut taxes on billionaires to the point they pay an average 3.4% income tax (when they pay anything at all: Trump, taking in billions, paid $750 a year for almost two decades).
Reagan’s policies destroyed the American union movement and stole $51 trillion from working class people, putting almost every penny of it into the money bins of the GOP’s morbidly rich patrons.
Devastating the working class was actually part of the plan: now that the American middle class has gone from over 60% of us down to a mere 43%of us, Republicans are trying to harness the outrage people are feeling and then use it to tear our society apart.
Out of the chaos, they believe they can rebuild a nation on the foundations of hypermasculinity, racism, religious bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, and threats of violence. These are the weapons that every fascist leader in history has relied on, and in every case those leaders — from Mussolini to Hitler to Putin — were first heavily supported by the morbidly rich who thought they could “control the madman.”
Pro tip: you can’t control the madman.
Fritz Thyssen, the steel baron who was one of Germany’s richest industrialists in the 1930s, wrote a book about how he made the same bet American billionaires and Republican politicians are making today: he thought he could ride a tiger that would make him richer and it would never turn and devour him.
His book I Paid Hitler (my book-collecting father gave me a copy 51 years ago for my 21st birthday) — which lays out how he personally convinced Hindenberg to make Hitler Chancellor and raised the Nazi Party’s first 3 million Reichsmarks so they could win their first national election — reads like a modern-day tragedy.
At first, Thyssen got along with Hitler, even believed he was influencing the man, but when he began to object to some of the Nazi leader’s worse excesses he had to flee the country with his family to avoid being murdered.
Fascists play for keeps.
Just ask the families of the four police officers killed by Trump’s January 6th rioters. Or the mourning parents of over 1,000 children Trump stole at the southern border and then trafficked into a “Christian” adoption scam and are still missing.
Once they acquire power, fascists rarely relinquish it, regardless of how many people must die, how many lives are destroyed. When they fail to hold onto power, as Hitler did when he was arrested in the 1920s and Trump did in 2020, they fight like hell to regain it. And once they succeed, their commitment to revenge makes them ten times more deadly.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his House Republicans are making the same bet as the morbidly rich men who own them. They naively believe that fascist leaders like Trump actually care about “unborn children,” budget deficits, and Drag Queen Story Hour.
In fact, all America’s morbidly rich who fund the GOP care about is power and the obscene wealth that is protected by it. Everything else is chum they toss into the water to bring along the lowest-common-denominator voters. And once Trump seizes total power, he’ll turn on them, too.
Nonetheless, American billionaires are still funding and thus growing this fascist movement within the GOP, just like Fritz Thyssen did back in the day.
Pushing conspiracy theories. Casting minorities (gender, race, religion) and politicians as actual evil. Passing laws that increasingly narrow our democracy until one day there will only be one party governing this country and that party will be wholly beholden to them.
Can they pull it off? Can they create a righwing movement so powerful it will lock the Democratic Party out of national power forever? Will their stooges on the Supreme Court help them block future Democrats from the White House with more corrupt endorsements of political bribery, gerrymandering, and voter purges?
Or will the beast they’re empowering turn on them, like it did on Fritz Thyssen when he had to flee his homeland to avoid the brutal fate so many of his wealthy peers suffered?
Outlawing actual (as opposed to purely symbolic and impotent) opposition took a few months in Chile when Pinochet took over; it took about two years in Germany; arguably four or five years in Russia. If Trump, DeSantis, or somebody like them becomes president next year, it could happen very quickly. They even have a plan for it, called Project 2025 according to the Washington Post.
It can happen here. And the morbidly rich are not going to save us.
Next year’s election will determine the fate and future of what’s left of our democracy, so badly battered by bought-off and corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court and in Congress: this cancer that started with Reagan and was put on steroids by Trump’s racist “birther” claims about Obama in 2008 has now fully metastasized across American society.
As long as our rightwing billionaires can keep their billions in dark-money “donations” relatively quiet and minimize outrage over their practice of nakedly purchasing elections, of carpet-bombing American homes with lie-filled television advertising, of turning the algorithmic social media screws to fill our nation with hate, the path we’re following won’t change.
That will take an overwhelming number of us waking up and becoming politically active.
And we’re going to have to get it done soon, while it’s still legal to write, protest, and vote. Because if Trump or someone like him is elected, all those rights will quickly vanish.
===
August 19, 2024 rww
- Steve Maxwell
that it’s an honor to be labeled a Christian nationalist. Of course, it should be pointed out that Maxwell is the one who labeled himself a Christian nationalist. - Stew Peters is now approvingly posting Adolf Hitler quotes on his social media pages.
- Mark Meckler cheers on a security guard for punching a climate change protester: “People need to know that when they behave like this, there will be consequences.”
- Josh Bernstein wants to “see bloodshed” at the Democratic National Convention.
- MAGA pastor Jackson Lahmeyer reveals that he is contemplating another run for office.
- Finally, Charlie Kirk and right-wing pastor Lucas Miles are not fans of Evangelicals For Harris”: “This is an oxymoron … It’s Jews For Hitler. This is really what we’re talking about here.”
===
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis
How Big Business Bailed Out the Nazis
A tragic tale of what can go wrong when profits are entangled with politics.
Ciara Torres Spelliscy
The views expressed are the author’s own and not necessarily those of the Brennan Center for Justice.
Considering the outcome of this year’s presidential primaries, where the best-financed candidates were defeated, I’ve been asked repeatedly whether corporate money in politics really matters. And I’ll grant, corporate money so far mostly gone to losing candidates. But history may give us some greater perspective on how corporate money in politics can prove decisive.
It’s a largely forgotten piece of history, but in 1932 the German Nazi Party was facing financial ruin. How did the Nazis move from being broke to being in control of the German government just a year later? The Nazi Party was bailed out by German industrialists in early 1933.
The industrialists who led the way were two huge German firms, I.G. Farben and Krupp. Leaders of both of companies were among the few civilians who were later charged with war crimes at the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II. These trials placed the story of their financial and moral support of the Nazis into the historical record. Krupp was a huge arms manufacturer. I.G. Farben was a vast chemical company which made everything from Bayer aspirin to Zyklon B, the poison used in the gas chambers.
According to The Arms of Krupp, the Nazi Party was essentially bankrupt in late 1932. Joseph Goebbels, who would later become the Minister of Propaganda, complained, “[w]e are all very discouraged, particularly in the face of the present danger that the entire party may collapse….The financial situation of the Berlin organization is hopeless. Nothing but debts and obligations.”
Regardless of the party’s financial problems, Hitler was named Chancellor in late January 1933. He called for elections in early March. With less than two weeks left before the vote, Herman Goering sent telegrams to Germany’s 25 leading industrialists, inviting them to a secret meeting in Berlin on February20, 1933. Attending the gathering were four I.G. Farben directors and Krupp chief Gustav Krupp. Hitler addressed the group, saying “private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy.” He also told the men that he would eliminate trade unions and communists. Hitler asked for their financial support and to back his vision for Germany.
According to Robert Jackson, the former Supreme Court Justice and chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, “[T]he industrialists…became so enthusiastic that they set about to raise three million Reichsmarks worth about [$30 million today] to strengthen and confirm the Nazi Party in power.”
Gustav Krupp was the first executive to speak at the Berlin meeting, and pledged one million marks. As the United Nations summarized in a 1949 report, Krupp was a key financier for the Nazi Party, including through his corporation:
It was clear from the evidence that Gustav Krupp embraced Nazism shortly prior to the seizure of power by the Nazi Party and continued his allegiance thereafter.He played an important part in bringing to Hitler’s support other leading industrialists and through the medium of the Krupp firm… from time to time made large scale contributions to the [Nazi] Party Treasury.
Hitler awarded Krupp the title of Fuhrer of Industry later in 1933.
Krupp acted in concert with other businessmen, including the directors of I.G. Farben, then Europe’s largest corporation. I.G. Farben’s full name was Interessen Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft which translates to “Community of Interest of the Dyestuffs Industry, Incorporated” or as one of the Nuremburg prosecutors, Josiah DuBois Jr. in his book, The Devil’s Chemists, put it, the name was “like the cross between a service club and Easter eggs.” But what I.G. Farben did with the Nazis was no laughing matter, including using slave labor at a specially-constructed plant at Auschwitz called Monowitz.
In the opening of the tribunal against the directors of I.G. Farben, prosecutor U.S. Gen. Telford Taylor stated: “The indictment accuses these men of major responsibility for visiting upon mankind the most searing and catastrophic war in human history. It accuses them of wholesale enslavement, plunder, and murder.”
At the February meeting, the I.G. Farben executives gave the Nazis 400,000 marks, and a total of 4.5 million marks by the end of 1933, according to The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben. This infusion of corporate cash saved the Nazi Party from financial disaster. The rest, as they say, is history — tragic, tragic history.
As the book Hell’s Cartel explains, the history of the German industrialists’ support of Hitler shows “what can go wrong when political objectives and the pursuit of profit become dangerously entwined.” One can only surmise what might have happened if the businessmen had simply said “no” to Hitler that night.