“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power ... becomes illegal,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said.

“This is out of the autocratic playbook. As autocrats consolidate their power once they’re in office, anything that threatens their power … becomes illegal,” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said.

Donald Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power.

In a speech Friday in Aurora, Colorado, the Republican presidential nominee blasted the immigration system and lobbed a rhetorical grenade at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“She’s a criminal. She’s a criminal,” said Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his New York hush money trial. “She really is, if you think about it.”

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  • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    7·
    9 hours ago

    You say ‘mass communication’, ‘information’, and so on.
    I say a ‘purposefully underfunded and failing education system’ and ‘online communication being used to spread anti-factual conspiracy theories’.

    Human choices, human systems, and human preferences for the untrue are, for many, stronger forces than reality. You can’t just invoke critical thinking, rationality, and logic to dispel those factors.

    In short: people are asking for what they want. It’s probably too late to ask why they want it while they’re in the process of forcing it down the necks of others. All we can do is stop them moving their hands.

    • aesthelete@lemmy.world
      2·
      17 minutes ago

      Human choices, human systems, and human preferences for the untrue are, for many, stronger forces than reality.

      That’s precisely the point. In the early 20th century, access to reputable sources of information was much more difficult. It was far easier to go about your day without seeing a single piece of information that contradicted “dear leader”. Fascism was also a relatively new, relatively untested ideology said to combine the “best parts of the right and the left”.

      Nowadays, fascists choose to plug their ears with their fingers and hum in order to support the ideology, or they support it because they actually support its eventual ends of genocide and authoritarianism. In the first go around, not everyone knew where these roads led, but this time we should know better but either do not, or do not care.