Authoritarianism in the 2020s

[Tero]

Anne Appelbaum

Applebaum begins by looking at an obscure politician in Romania that to the surprise of everyone won a recent presidential election in that country. The results were eventually disallowed when evidence appeared that his election had been influenced by Russian cyber misinformation.

"This is Călin Georgescu, the man who shocked his countrymen when he won the first round of the Romanian presidential election on November 24, despite hardly registering in opinion polls and conducting his campaign almost entirely on TikTok, where the platform’s rules, ostensibly designed to limit or regulate political messages, appear not to have constrained him."

Georgescu took all kinds of strange positions. He opposed further Romanian assistance to Ukraine, a next door neighbor.

Applebaum isn't just focused on Romanian politics but uses Georgescu as an example of similar politicians that are gaining support in other European countries and has similarities to some of the people that are taking roles in Trump's new administration such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others.

"When I first wrote about the need for new political terminology, in 2017, I struggled to come up with better terms. But now the outlines of a popular political movement are becoming clearer, and this movement has no relation at all to the right or the left as we know them. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, whose belief in the possibility of law-based democratic states gave us both the American and French Revolutions, railed against what they called obscurantism: darkness, obfuscation, irrationality. But the prophets of what we might now call the New Obscurantism offer exactly those things: magical solutions, an aura of spirituality, superstition, and the cultivation of fear."

"Rather than conservatism as conventionally understood, this crowd and its international counterparts represent the fusion of several trends that have been coalescing for some time. The hawkers of vitamin supplements and unproven COVID cures now mingle—not by accident—with open admirers of Putin’s Russia, especially those who mistakenly believe that Putin leads a “white Christian nation.” (In reality, Russia is multicultural, multiracial, and generally irreligious; its trolls promote vaccine skepticism as well as lies about Ukraine.)

"Fans of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—a small-time autocrat who has impoverished his country, now one of the poorest in Europe, while enriching his family and friends—make common cause with Americans who have broken the law, gone to jail, stolen from their own charities, or harassed women. And no wonder: In a world where conspiracy theories and nonsense cures are widely accepted, the evidence-based concepts of guilt and criminality vanish quickly too."

"By contrast, this rising international elite is creating something very different: a society in which superstition defeats reason and logic, transparency vanishes, and the nefarious actions of political leaders are obscured behind a cloud of nonsense and distraction. There are no checks and balances in a world where only charisma matters, no rule of law in a world where emotion defeats reason—only a void that anyone with a shocking and compelling story can fill."

www.theatlantic.com

[JimC]

Rings true...

[Tero]

Toxic males decade:
Guardian
I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down. What I didn’t expect, and don’t think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be. I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice – but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... uch-losers

[L'Emmerdeur]

The Trump administration has imprisoned another student for publicly stating an opinion. Predictably, faux free speech champions will ignore this, coming up with pathetic excuses to justify their hypocrisy. The student has not been allowed to speak with an attorney and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Department of Homeland Security aren't commenting on the arrest.

The student is not a prominent demonstrator, in fact it would appear that her sole 'offence' was co-authoring an editorial in a student newspaper.

'Federal immigration authorities detain Tufts graduate student'

Masked federal immigration authorities in plainclothes arrested a Tufts PhD student on a residential street in Somerville Tuesday evening, according to the student’s attorney, an eyewitness, and a video of the arrest.

The authorities handcuffed Rumesya Ozturk, a Turkish national in the US on a student visa, and loaded her into an unmarked SUV with tinted windows as she cried.

“I’m a student,” she said, according to the eyewitness, a Somerville resident who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the government.

Ozturk’s attorney, Mahsa Khanbabai, said she does not know where her client is now and has not been able to contact her. A federal judge in Boston, Indira Talwani, ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement not to remove Ozturk from Massachusetts on Tuesday without prior notice.

It was unclear Wednesday why the Trump administration targeted Ozturk. She had voiced support for the pro-Palestinian movement at Tufts, but was not known as a prominent leader. Her lawyer said she is not aware of any charges against her. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

[Brian Peacock]

Somebody must've pointed her out to the snatch squad.

[aufbahrung]

First drops of rain, the disappeared, like in Chile...never be found - many dropped into volcanoes by helicopter. It's time to leave if you have means and reckon their IBM database has you on its list.

[Brian Peacock]

She was renditioned to Lousiana with no due process and against the orders of a judge.

[pErvinalia]

Land of the free.

[aufbahrung]

Make Australia seem a liberal paradise the way things are going

[Cunt]

https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1905238067843150186

Confirmed: Ninja swords will be banned by this summer.

When we promise action we take it.

An authoritarian government crackdown on those damned Japanese migrants, and their ninja swords! Finally! Old Blighty will be safe!

[Sean Hayden]

The administration is trying to argue that a student here on a visa doesn’t have the same rights to free expression as a citizen.

But it can be good practice to set boundaries at some distance from the ideal you hope to protect ie to safeguard the freedom of speech, you don’t erect a barrier on your front porch. You put it as far out, and around as many as you can…

[Cunt]

I think the free expression is for everyone. But a visa is a sort of contract where you have the government composing, writing, lawyering and enforcing the contract.

So anyone with a visa should know to avoid giving the issuers reason to cancel it. Unless you want to practice your free speech in your home country, of course.

Trump got a mandate to undo some of the damage done by Biden's immigration efforts. The 'merkins don't want to end up like Englind.

https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1905192558755455035

My follower
@Truthhurts101UK
is out & about visiting migrant filled Copthorne Hotel Effingham Gatwick. The security tried to snatch his camera. Another man sorts him out.

The taxpayer is paying for 8 security guards & the shuttle busses have Arabic writing on them.

LOT of security for a hotel. Must be those danged ninjas again.

[Sean Hayden]

Sure, I mean that's one of the advantages of power isn't it? You can be confident that a lot of people will excuse your behavior, because obviously it should be common sense to avoid kicking against the pricks. But maybe the administration should focus instead on protecting our ideals, and find some other way to discourage anti-Israeli sentiment.

[JimC]

Sure, I mean that's one of the advantages of power isn't it? You can be confident that a lot of people will excuse your behavior, because obviously it should be common sense to avoid kicking against the pricks. But maybe the administration should focus instead on protecting our ideals, and find some other way to discourage anti-Israeli sentiment.

Discouraging anti-Jewish sentiment, sure, but anti-Israeli sentiment, as expressed in protests against the Israeli government's vicious actions in Gaza and the West Bank is surely within free speech...

[Cunt]

Sure, I mean that's one of the advantages of power isn't it? You can be confident that a lot of people will excuse your behavior, because obviously it should be common sense to avoid kicking against the pricks. But maybe the administration should focus instead on protecting our ideals, and find some other way to discourage anti-Israeli sentiment.

It isn't rocket science.

Just free Palestine. From Hamas. And Islam.