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All of America was able to witness an extraordinary moment on Fox News tonight. It is the most corrupt institution in the United States run by the most dangerous immigrant who was ever welcomed here Rupert Murdoch. Two Australian Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd & Malcolm Turnbull

Please send this to GOP voters you know and ask them if they approve of violence against members of another political party. Frame it as q of freedom and individualism. If they answer yes, ask them WHY. Have discussions w/GOP-voting friends and family using this as a prompt.

This is what authoritarians do. They beat up opposition candidates, hoping they will be too afraid to run. This is how you 'win' elections when you can't prevail in the popular vote: you use violence to clear the field of the competition.

Everyone should watch this. Persuasion and conversion back to democracy and 'agreeing to disagree' is possible. In any authoritarian community there are many who are secretly tired of the violence & hatred & propaganda and are waiting for a safe space to act differently.

As I write in #Strongmen , privatization & Fascism go together. Mussolini was appointed PM 1922; in 1923, he privatized electric, insurance & other industries to reassure elites he would protect their interests.

Please do not RT Musk's infantile #Strongmen -style self-portrait. Propaganda is a system of attention management, and far-right operatives like Musk seek to keep you in reaction mode and distract you from purposeful action. Eyes on the prize: saving our democracy.

So one party rule is the answer? I have some stories for you...

Twitter changes under Elon Musk seem the fruit of a toxic blend of capitalist greed, immature & egocentric style of leadership, and illiberal ideology. In other words, Twitter as a platform will mirror the #Strongmen leaders he partners with and admires.

my latest La Croix Int.
It is naïve to see pope Francis as liberal leftist who is willing and able to lead an opposition to Meloni's hard-right government in Italy
international.la-croix.com/news/signs-of-…

Important thread by Fix Media Now (by the Media and Democracy Project)

🎙️'Giorgia Meloni is a 'strongwoman', the first one we've had'. In this extract from New Lines Magazine “The Lede” Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains that the emphasis on masculinity is why most strongmen tend to be just that — men. But Meloni complicates that picture: newlinesmag.com/podcast/how-st…

Musk 'the populist.' Pandering to authoritarianism anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism. Punish those blue checks!

All is by design. Timing is everything when a far-right troll (musk) and a dictatorship (SA) buy the most important US political communications platform right before elections critical for US democracy.

This is autocratic capture: the Court protects a criminal who tried to overthrow our democracy and justice becomes a means of covering up corruption. It's always been about the tax returns, from the very start.

Chief Justice John Roberts puts temporary hold on release of Trump's tax returns cnn.com/2022/11/01/pol…

On today’s episode of “The Ezra Klein Show,” the political scientist Pippa Norris joins @EzraKlein to discuss the role of the transgressive aesthetic in the Trump era. nyti.ms/3NpmkQP

Russia embraces the Nazi death cult and the Fascist aestheticization of war