OMG did that just happen???? Death threat on CNN

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rodoheel said:
OK, well that's not what Harris and other Dem leaders or prominent media figures are saying and it's not what they should be saying IMO. I don't disagree with your post from a moral perspective, but you don't win an election by calling 75 million Americans Nazis. You call out the Nazis who are leading and running the campaign and deceiving ordinary Americans into supporting fascism. You don't have to call every single Trump voter a fascist to make your point. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for people who don't recognize fascism when it's being screamed into their face with a megaphone, but the reality is that many, many Americans are fairly dumb and/or fairly checked out of politics and either don't or can't realize how insane the Trump campaign is. Telling them they're all racists and fascists is not the way to make them realize they're supporting racists and fascists.
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You won't do much to those 75 million Americans by not calling them racists and fascists, either, because most of them are beyond caring what anyone outside their bubble thinks about them.

I agree that most don't realize they're supporting fascism, but that's mostly because they don't know what fascism is. The majority of them certainly recognize what they're supporting. They want the things that Trump calls for, that's why they support him.

But the goal isn't to change the mind of the vast majority of those folks. They are effectively gone beyond what can be addressed in any real way and all you can do is thwart them at this point, hopefully at the ballot box. But the goal is to make a case that may be able to persuade the (maybe?) 1% who are open to recognizing where Trump has taken the Republican Party and to vote against that in this round. And while pointing out that Trump and the Republican Party are fascist is the main piece of that, it also has to be said that there is no "middle ground" on fascism and that anything other than resistance is support.
 
rodoheel said:
OK, well that's not what Harris and other Dem leaders or prominent media figures are saying and it's not what they should be saying IMO. I don't disagree with your post from a moral perspective, but you don't win an election by calling 75 million Americans Nazis. You call out the Nazis who are leading and running the campaign and deceiving ordinary Americans into supporting fascism. You don't have to call every single Trump voter a fascist to make your point. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for people who don't recognize fascism when it's being screamed into their face with a megaphone, but the reality is that many, many Americans are fairly dumb and/or fairly checked out of politics and either don't or can't realize how insane the Trump campaign is. Telling them they're all racists and fascists is not the way to make them realize they're supporting racists and fascists.
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I agree that it wouldn't be a good tactic for Harris but anyone still in Trump's camp is at minimum a fascist sympathizer whether they know it or not.

People who are still supporting Trump at this point are unreachable. Pissing them off isn't going to make any difference.

As for calling them fascists here or even on the politics subreddit, if someone is engaged enough to go to those places they aren't on the fence anyway. They probably aren't even on the fence on whether they will vote or not. Doubt there are many who would say, "I wasn't sure at this point who I was going to vote for but I think I'll vote for Trump because liberals are so mean to his voters." Even if they are on the fence, it should be pretty obvious that it isn't them being labelled as a fascist.

I'm tired of walking on eggshells around those people. I'll do it in the real world because I don't want to cause unnecessary conflicts and lose family but I am not doing it on somewhat anonymous message boards. (And yes I am fully aware that it wouldn't take much for Trump to track down my identity and while I have never threatened anyone and believe my posts are measured and reasonable, that may not keep me out of the concentration camps.)
 
farce© said:
Who is this Girdusky guy? Why should we care what he says?
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He’s one of the sacrificial MAGA stooges they trot out in CNN. Or used to, since he basically managed to get himself fired live on air. No reason to care what he says.
 
SnoopRob said:
You won't do much to those 75 million Americans by not calling them racists and fascists, either, because most of them are beyond caring what anyone outside their bubble thinks about them.

I agree that most don't realize they're supporting fascism, but that's mostly because they don't know what fascism is. The majority of them certainly recognize what they're supporting. They want the things that Trump calls for, that's why they support him.

But the goal isn't to change the mind of the vast majority of those folks. They are effectively gone beyond what can be addressed in any real way and all you can do is thwart them at this point, hopefully at the ballot box. But the goal is to make a case that may be able to persuade the (maybe?) 1% who are open to recognizing where Trump has taken the Republican Party and to vote against that in this round. And while pointing out that Trump and the Republican Party are fascist is the main piece of that, it also has to be said that there is no "middle ground" on fascism and that anything other than resistance is support.
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My personal opinion is that you have these hypothetical numbers wrong. I think the proportion of voters who will vote for Trump in this election and "don't recognize what they're supporting" is a lot higher than you think because you are underestimating how uninformed and checked out these people are. There are millions of people who will cast a vote for Trump who don't support mass deportations. Millions who don't think we should try to fund the federal government with tariffs. Millions who are people of color and don't believe Trump is racist or that his campaign says racist things. Millions who have no idea what "Project 2025" is. These people will completely recoil at the notion that they are Nazis for voting for Trump. It will make them into the "unreachables" you say they already are. And it will turn off some of the people who are, insanely, still on the fence because it suggests they're Nazis for even thinking about Trump.

You call out the message from the Trump campaign, not the voters. We learned this, if nothing else, from Clinton. She called half of Trump's supporters "deplorable" and it turned into a full-blown political scandal that helped cost her the election; yet some people think it's a good idea to openly call every single Trump voter a Nazi, a much more negatively charged term? I fully support open and detailed explanations of why the Trump campaign is engaging in fascist rhetoric and what the dangers of going down that path are. I very much agree that there is no middle ground on fascism. But you have to frame that in a way that makes clear the fault is with the people pushing the message, not the voters who are potentially being swayed by it. Whether you think those voters are culpable or not. There is a reason the Trump campaign tries to turn every fascism accusation into an argument that "all Republicans/Trump voters are fascist" (the exact same thing they do with accusations of racism). it's because they know many of the more moderate voters who lean Republican will recoil at the idea that they're fascists, racists, Nazis, whatever. As I said, I very much agree from a moral standpoint that the people who vote to support this BS are culpable. But we are trying to win an election here, not a moral argument. You can't shame someone into voting for Kamala by telling them that if they don't, it makes them a Nazi sympathizer or Nazi enabler. Even if you believe that's true. It's the difference between being right and being persuasive.
 
If the link is correct, Gidursky wrote under his own name for a Richard Spencer website:

 
rodoheel said:
I think the proportion of voters who will vote for Trump in this election and "don't recognize what they're supporting" is a lot higher than you think because you are underestimating how uninformed and checked out these people are.
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The people who are uninformed and checked out aren't going to see what random Harris voters are posting on online forums. If they do, then it's hard to see how they could be so checked out.

If Trump posted and tweeted about it, if they even see that tweet it is hard to argue that they are really checked out. Same if they hear it in a right wing echo chamber.

But I agree that Harris and other politicians should avoid using that language about voters.
 
ChapelHillSooner said:
The people who are uninformed and checked out aren't going to see what random Harris voters are posting on online forums. If they do, then it's hard to see how they could be so checked out.

If Trump posted and tweeted about it, if they even see that tweet it is hard to argue that they are really checked out. Same if they hear it in a right wing echo chamber.

But I agree that Harris and other politicians should avoid using that language about voters.
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You are missing my point. I'm not telling anyone to change how they're posting on this forum. I am saying that the national message from Dems and media should be to criticize the message as fascist, not the voters as fascist. The Trump campaign is doing everything they can to make Trump-leaning voters think that the Harris campaign and media are calling them fascists.
 
rodoheel said:
My personal opinion is that you have these hypothetical numbers wrong. I think the proportion of voters who will vote for Trump in this election and "don't recognize what they're supporting" is a lot higher than you think because you are underestimating how uninformed and checked out these people are. There are millions of people who will cast a vote for Trump who don't support mass deportations. Millions who don't think we should try to fund the federal government with tariffs. Millions who are people of color and don't believe Trump is racist or that his campaign says racist things. Millions who have no idea what "Project 2025" is. These people will completely recoil at the notion that they are Nazis for voting for Trump. It will make them into the "unreachables" you say they already are. And it will turn off some of the people who are, insanely, still on the fence because it suggests they're Nazis for even thinking about Trump.

You call out the message from the Trump campaign, not the voters. We learned this, if nothing else, from Clinton. She called half of Trump's supporters "deplorable" and it turned into a full-blown political scandal that helped cost her the election; yet some people think it's a good idea to openly call every single Trump voter a Nazi, a much more negatively charged term? I fully support open and detailed explanations of why the Trump campaign is engaging in fascist rhetoric and what the dangers of going down that path are. I very much agree that there is no middle ground on fascism. But you have to frame that in a way that makes clear the fault is with the people pushing the message, not the voters who are potentially being swayed by it. Whether you think those voters are culpable or not. There is a reason the Trump campaign tries to turn every fascism accusation into an argument that "all Republicans/Trump voters are fascist" (the exact same thing they do with accusations of racism). it's because they know many of the more moderate voters who lean Republican will recoil at the idea that they're fascists, racists, Nazis, whatever. As I said, I very much agree from a moral standpoint that the people who vote to support this BS are culpable. But we are trying to win an election here, not a moral argument. You can't shame someone into voting for Kamala by telling them that if they don't, it makes them a Nazi sympathizer or Nazi enabler. Even if you believe that's true. It's the difference between being right and being persuasive.
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I live in MAGA country...Trump has received almost 75% of the vote in my county in both 2016 and 2020.

Do these folks want mass deportations? They want the (real or imagined) brown people to go away and they're ok if that means mass deportations.

Are they ok with trying to fund the government through tariffs? They don't understand economics well enough to know what tariffs actually are, but they're fine with it if they think it means a tax cut.

Millions of people of color don't think Trump is racist? They know he's racist, they just think they're the "good ones" and that Trump will only act against the "bad ones".

We've got to stop picturing Trump voters as stupid, foolish children and realize they're actual adults who believe terrible things and are willing to act on those beliefs. And most of them don't care what the rest of us say about them because they will wear whatever labels we apply to them as a badge of honor.

You're correct that it is better campaigning to attack the message/leaders than the entire party, but recognize it won't make much of a difference because the vast majority of these folks aren't reachable no matter what language you use. The folks who are able to be turned will care about being associated with fascism - however you communicate that - and that is part of why they may turn from Trump.
 
dukeman92 said:
He is apparently not backing off his statement.

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These people seem to believe that claiming their statements are jokes, somehow changes the meaning of the statement. It does not. This wasn't a joke. Jokes are humorous, hoping someone is injured is not.

Fucking douche bag.
 
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SnoopRob said:
I live in MAGA country...Trump has received almost 75% of the vote in my county in both 2016 and 2020.

Do these folks want mass deportations? They want the (real or imagined) brown people to go away and they're ok if that means mass deportations.

Are they ok with trying to fund the government through tariffs? They don't understand economics well enough to know what tariffs actually are, but they're fine with it if they think it means a tax cut.

Millions of people of color don't think Trump is racist? They know he's racist, they just think they're the "good ones" and that Trump will only act against the "bad ones".

We've got to stop picturing Trump voters as stupid, foolish children and realize they're actual adults who believe terrible things and are willing to act on those beliefs. And most of them don't care what the rest of us say about them because they will wear whatever labels we apply to them as a badge of honor.

You're correct that it is better campaigning to attack the message/leaders than the entire party, but recognize it won't make much of a difference because the vast majority of these folks aren't reachable no matter what language you use. The folks who are able to be turned will care about being associated with fascism - however you communicate that - and that is part of why they may turn from Trump.
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I think it's a mistake not to realize that the 75 million people voting for Trump includes both millions of "stupid, foolish" people who don't really realize what they're doing and millions of "actual adults who believe terrible things." I have no doubt about your personal experiences with Trump voters, especially living in the rural US. But Trump voters are nowhere close to a monolith and they get there in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. When we try to boil it all down to simple reasoning we miss ways in which that coalition of voters can be split in the future.
 
rodoheel said:
I think it's a mistake not to realize that the 75 million people voting for Trump includes both millions of "stupid, foolish" people who don't really realize what they're doing and millions of "actual adults who believe terrible things." I have no doubt about your personal experiences with Trump voters, especially living in the rural US. But Trump voters are nowhere close to a monolith and they get there in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. When we try to boil it all down to simple reasoning we miss ways in which that coalition of voters can be split in the future.
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After 9 years of Trump saying tons of bigoted, racist, xenophobic, idiotic things, the basics of those things have almost certainly filtered down to every American adult. The only way that someone wouldn't know what Trump stands for at this point is if they are willingly ignoring it, which is its own form of culpability.
 
Mulberry Heel said:
Yep. And there's a very clear double standard that's existed since 2016 as well. If they use an insult or slur or threat - racial, gender, homophobic, religious, ethnic, etc. - then it was just "a joke" and the person they're attacking or threatening just needs to get over it and forget about it. But if anyone turns the tables and attacks them - even when the accusation is true - then suddenly it's unfair and hurtful and just needs to stop. They can insult and threaten you all they want, but if you dare to respond, they're just a victim of liberal wokeism and censorship and blah blah blah.
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If only the Congressional leadership of the GOP would come out with some sort of statement that all politicians should stop fanning the flames beneath a boiling cauldron of political animus and daring it to boil over.
 
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