Democracy Labs
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Viktor Orbán's Dictator Playbook
20 min in
audio pod former president of Central European University,
Shattuck has published four books, including Holding Together: the Hijacking of Rights in America and Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars, and has received numerous awards for his public service.”
These are Orbán’s rules for turning a democracy into an authoritarian state – rules that Donald Trump is now working to implement in America. - CODA Story
One: take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using political threats and intimidation to stamp out all dissent.
Two:build your base by appealing to fear and hate and branding immigrants and cultural minorities as dangers to society, and demonizing your opponents as enemies of the people.
Three: use disinformation and lies to justify what you’re doing.
Four: use your election victory to claim a sweeping mandate — especially if you don’t win a majority.
Five:centralize your power by destroying the civil service.
Six: redefine the rule of law as rule by executive decree.
Seven: eliminate checks and balances and separation of powers by taking over the legislature, the courts, the media, and civil society.
Eight: rely on your oligarchs to supervise the economy, and reward them with special access to state resources.
Nine: ally yourself with other authoritarians like Vladimir Putin and support his effort to undermine European democracies and attack sovereign countries like Ukraine.
Ten:get the public to believe all this is necessary, and resistance is futile. -
C&C to trump US
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no lnx pix
Republican group smears reputations of women nominees of color: Follow the dark money.
DEMLABS BLOG
April 19, 2022
Republican Slime Machine targets Biden Nominees - especially women of color.
"The Slime Machine Targeting Dozens of Biden Nominees" - Jane Mayer, New Yorker
"The American Accountability Foundation (A.A.F.), which is run by conservative white men, has particularly focussed on blocking women and people of color.As of last month, more than a third of the twenty-nine candidates it had publicly attacked were people of color, and nearly sixty per cent were women."
Who are the people running the 'slime machine'? Who funds them? How is the AAF treated as a nonprofit? Follow the dark money behind the smear campaign with this network map.
Republican group smears reputations of women nominees of color: Follow the dark money.
Share this Power Map freely with this link or as a GIF
Racist, misogynist attacks
"When Ketanji Jackson Brown defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.” - New Yorker
Desperately pursuing dirt
"The A.A.F. has taken the practice to extremes, repeatedly spinning negligible tidbits or dubious hearsay into damning narratives. The group recently deployed its unorthodox methods, Politico has reported, while “desperately pursuing dirt” on Lisa Cook, the nominee for the Federal Reserve. Cook, who has been a tenured professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University since 2013, has attracted bipartisan support. Glenn Hubbard, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the George W. Bush Administration, has said, “Cook’s talents as an economic researcher and teacher make her a good nominee for the Fed, adding to diversity of perspectives about policy.”
In college, Cook won a Marshall Scholarship. She subsequently obtained a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and served as a staff economist on President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. She also held appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research and at various regional Federal Reserve banks. The A.A.F., though, has portrayed her as unqualified, andsuggested that her tenure at Michigan State is undeserved." - New Yorker
Politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity
"An explicit purpose of the A.A.F.—a politically active, tax-exempt nonprofit charity that doesn’t disclose its backers—is to prevent the approval of all Biden Administration nominees. When Ketanji Jackson Brown defended herself on this point during the hearings, the A.A.F. said, on Twitter, that she was “lying.” The group’s allegation—reminiscent of the QAnon conspiracy, which claims that liberal élites are abusing and trafficking children—rippled through conservative circles. Tucker Carlson repeated the accusation on his Fox News program while a chyron declared “jackson lenient in child sex cases.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist representative from Georgia, called Jackson “pro-pedophile.” - New Yorker
Follow the dark money - Relationship map: https://embed.kumu.io/be295fbf0ae354739c97174ddb255144#untitled-map/political-character-assassination
All in the family
"Meadows’s son, Blake, an associate attorney at the Georgia law firm Foster, Foster, & Smith, appears to be involved with C.P.I., too: his name appears in a lawsuit filed last month on behalf of the A.A.F. against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Matthew Buckham, the A.A.F. co-founder, also has a Trump connection: he worked at the White House during his Administration, in the personnel office. (His father, Ed Buckham, is chief of staff to Marjorie Taylor Greene.) New Yorker
Russian connection
"Ed Buckham, the recently appointed chief of staff for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Today, Buckham handles a congresswoman who proudly attends “white supremacist, antisemitic, pro-Putin” rallies, as Congresswoman Liz Cheney characterized them, and has become renowned for touting conspiracy theories about how the California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. On Thursday, when the House of Representatives voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus, Greene, not surprisingly, was one of eight Republicans who voted against it.
Buckham’s ties to Russian interests date back 25 years to 1997—before Putin came to power—when he served as an aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. This was the heyday of “Casino Jack” Abramoff, the lobbyist-conman who took on pay-for-play clients ranging from the Choctaw Indian tribe of Mississippi to the Kremlin with a panache made for Hollywood. At the time, Buckham, in addition to his job with DeLay, oversaw a lobbying outfit called the U.S. Family Network, which presented itself as a public advocacy group but was really a vehicle funded largely by clients of Jack Abramoff." - New Republic
TakeAway: Follow the dark money funding Republican smears on highly qualified Biden nominees based on their race and gender. Does such a group deserve nonprofit exempt status?
Deepak
DemLabs
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https://thedemlabs.org/2022/09/06/republicans-pack-the-courts-with-dark-money-to-get-wealthy-donors-the-laws-they-want/
story maps
https://thedemlabs.org/resources/
voter supp 2019
https://thedemlabs.org/press/map-reveals-voter-suppression-incidents-in-us-election-case-study-democracy-labs/
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facebook spreads right wing disinfo ignoring its own policies
DEMLABS BLOG
February 26, 2022
Facebook spreads right wing disinfo ignoring its own policies
Why does Facebook spread right wing disinformation ignoring its own policies? Follow the connections.
Popular Info exposed how the DC Enquirer gets so much exposure on Facebook. There are several groups, a network of Facebook pages coordinating behavior and several Republican operatives in key Facebook executive positions. This relationship maps helps understand how Facebook ignores its own policies to spread right wing disinformation.
Check your knowledge with this relationship map.
Which Facebook VP took part in the Roger Stone organized riot to overturn the Bush-Gore election recount?
Which Facebook exec led Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee?
Which right wing commentator prosecuted for violating federal campaign finance laws did Trump pardon?
Does Facebook officially prohibit "coordinated inauthentic behavior"?
How are the the DC Enquirer and the Conservative Brief related?
Did Mark Zuckerberg really host Tucker Carlson at his home?
Facebook - Right wing connections
Facebook spreads right wing disinfo
Share this relationship map freely with this link
Popular Information
"A far-right website created 36 days ago is more popular on Facebook than the Washington Post. Brandon Gill "provides strategic marketing direction for Conservative Brief," the right-wing website whose underhanded tactics were exposed in yesterday's Popular Information. But he is also the founder and editor of his own website, DC Enquirer. The DC Enquirer website was registered on January 8, 2022. The first article was posted on January 19, 2022 — just 36 days ago. The site is so new that you can't find it by Googling its name.
The content is unremarkable, aggregated pieces designed to push the buttons of the right. Recent headlines include "Republican Party Ditches RINO Views in Favor Pro-Trump Populism, Now Starting to Win Over Hispanic Voters" and "Chilling New Meme Shows Us The Future The Left Wants and It’s Devastating." But in just over a month, the DC Enquirer has become more popular on Facebook than the Washington Post. Its rapid success on Facebook is the result of an audacious scheme to manipulate the Facebook algorithm." - Judd Legum in Popular Info
Joel Kaplan, Facebook VP of U.S. public policy
Joel Kaplan and Zuckerberg
"A former clerk for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, he served as a White House deputy chief of staff under President George W. Bush after participating in the Brooks Brothers riot during the 2000 Florida presidential election dispute." BuzzFeed News
"Facebook hired Kaplan as its vice president of U.S. public policy in 2011, as part of a Facebook's effort to "strengthen" the company's ties to Republican lawmakers.
Within the company, Kaplan advocated against restrictions on racially incendiary speech. He played an important role in crafting an exception for newsworthy political discourse when deciding on whether content violated the community guidelines.[18] During the 2016 election, Kaplan advocated against closing down Facebook groups which allegedly peddled fake news. Kaplan argued that getting rid of the groups would have disproportionately targeted conservatives. During and after the 2016 US presidential election, Kaplan argued against Facebook publicly disclosing the extent of Russian influence operations on the platform.
Kaplan at Brett Kavanugh hearing
In 2017, after Facebook had implemented changes to its algorithm to expose users to more content by family and friends and less by publishers who were determined by Facebook to engage in misinformation, Kaplan questioned whether the algorithm disproportionately hurt conservative publishers and successfully advocated for Facebook to change the algorithm again. He pushed against a proposed Facebook project that was intended to make Facebook users of different political views engage with each other in less hostile ways. Kaplan argued that this feature would lead conservatives to accuse Facebook of bias. Kaplan also reportedly advocated on behalf of Breitbart News and the Daily Caller within Facebook. Kaplan has helped to place conservatives in key positions in the leadership of Facebook.
In 2018, Kaplan advocated strongly for the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. (Business Insider). Kaplan sat behind Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearings. During Donald Trump's presidency, Kaplan was on friendly terms with the administration. At one point, the administration considered nominating him as head of the Office of Management and Budget". Wikipedia
TakeAway: Follow the connections when a multi-billion dollar corporation spreads right wing disinfo from a family operation ignoring its own policies against deception.