Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls.
Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes, demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.
So it’s probably Russia, or maybe NK, or another dictatorship or Fascist state who wants to destroy democracy. Or perhaps it’s just some straight-up traitors.
Well at least one is a traitor
The video’s co-creator — Bryan Heestand, a product engineer in Ohio who goes by the anonymous handle C3PMeme
If you have a handle tied to your name publicly, it’s not an anonymous handle.
Hahaha. “anonymous”. Alrighty.
Speaking of fascism: assuming all of your countries domestic problems are actually the fault of the devious machinations of sinister foreigners.
It’s been investigated and found to be true at various times by intelligence agencies and social media companies. Even worse would be to pretend that doesn’t happen.
Russia definitely had a hand in trying to elect Trump but don’t discount the stupidity of the average American. They don’t need help to crap their own diapers.
We don’t need help, but we have it anyway.
Sounds like something a Russian would say.
In seriousness, if you deviate in the slightest from the party’s centrist orthodoxy or criticize their messaging in any way, the accusations of being a Trumpist and a Russian immediately start flying.
Particularly if your criticism comes from the left.
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I think you may have misconstrued the fact that there’s foreign interference with saying all of the problems are due to that.
I think you may have misconstrued the fact that saying all problems are due to that with saying there’s any interference at all.
Oh, you’re not serious.
Good to know.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
- Satre
Trump is a festering wound that will keep producing pus if you keep poking at it. Wash your hands, wrap it up, take your antibiotics, and ignore it until it goes away.
Or, in the immortal words of Paul Anka and Lisa Simpson, “Just don’t look!”
yeah i’m sure fascism will just go away on its own if we don’t talk about it.
No, we need to aggressively stamp out fascism, but you won’t do that by arguing with xitter memes or amplifying their message by making it a news story.
Read the metaphor again. I didn’t say don’t treat the wound. I said stop poking at it with your dirty fingers.
As I’ve told conservatives, I’ll stop talking about Trump when they stop worshipping him and making him their leader. Until then, I’m just criticizing the opposition leader.
Problem is that it’s not just Trump at this point.
It was never “just Trump”
All I need is for him to not be the presumptive Republican nominee, to not have influence on the Republican party, and to no longer have an army of stochastic terrorists just waiting for the right signal. Then I can finally in good conscience listen to the unending stream of myopic advice from people on the internet who think we should just ignore him.
I don’t think anyone should ignore Trump or the rise of fascism. I’m saying that you don’t feed the trolls with attention. We should get updates on the various court cases and pay attention to justice being done. But if he and his followers pitch a nutty on social media, that’s not news, and paying attention to it amplifies the message. Debating the crazy nonsense shifts the Overton window further away from reasonable discourse.
It’s how he was elected in the first place. Covering Trump was good television. Lots of viewers tuned in to see what ridiculous fucking bullshit he was say or do next. Making a spectacle of it, building the circus tent around it, made it more powerful because it has no shame. It has no desire to speak truth or be virtuous. Trump and his troll army want you to get down into the mud and wrestle until you’re too tired to fight actual, serious people. Shining a light on it won’t kill the disease, it will encourage it to grow.
Think of it like a child’s temper tantrum. You don’t get down on the floor of the department store and argue about why they can’t have ice cream before dinner. You deal with the tantrum, whether it’s taking them home or otherwise punishing bad behavior, but you don’t engage in the tantrum.
I see your point, but if we don’t talk about it then we don’t know it’s happening. There’s no one here in this thread arguing with anyone about it, it’s just people learning one more thing to remember if (somehow) they are still on the fence about whether they would vote for him.
You think the other potential nominees are any better?
You think the other potential nominees are any better?
The comment was: You should ignore Trump
That’s what I replied to.
I’ll die of old age before there’s any chance a Republican in any election local on up gets a vote from me. I witnessed what conservatives enabled and supported in recent decades, and I saw how it all culminated in recent years. I see how many of them still say they would vote for Trump just because of R next to his name even if they claim they don’t support his policies or don’t like him. They can’t possibly reform themselves enough to get a vote from me within my remaining natural lifespan.
You think the other potential nominees are any better?
So no. But that’s not the topic.
Ahhh, ok, I see what you mean.
So…. There’s this shit going on- and my dad just disowned me because I said “America sucks.”
It’s usually a bit more diplomatic to explain what’s imperfect, and describe a better vision for how things could be.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
He was delighted, he said later in a podcast interview, to see Mr. Trump play the new version at his final rally before the midterm elections, pausing his speech to watch it with well over a thousand supporters gathered at Dayton International Airport.
Led by a little-known podcaster and life coach, this meme team has spent much of the year flooding social media with content that lionizes the former president, promotes his White House bid and brutally denigrates his opponents.
Many also faithfully tune into Mr. Dilley’s daily podcast, where he talks at length about the group’s activities, interacts with a small but devoted audience and promotes his 2013 self-help book, “Still Breathin’: The Wisdom and Teachings of a Perfectly Flawed Man.”
In August, when Mr. Trump was indicted on conspiracy charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, several team members produced a music video targeting the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis.
In July, one of the group’s most prolific contributors — a musician from outside San Diego named Michael Beatty, who goes by the handle Miguelifornia — mentioned that Mr. Scavino and Mr. Miller “gave us tons of great video” shot at a Trump rally in South Carolina.
If it is not compensated but is coordinating with the campaign, then it may run afoul of strict limits on in-kind contributions, said Paul S. Ryan, who serves as deputy executive director of the pro-democracy group Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation.
The original article contains 2,716 words, the summary contains 247 words. Saved 91%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
It’s quicker to simply state that memes scare you, NYT.
