The crazy nutjobs on the right, are going all in on Putin. Is that because they are all about authoritarianism and fascism or because they want his help winning elections? Clearly, they aren't interested in what's best for the U.S. as a whole. It's more about what will help them personally and their benefactors, the obscenely wealthy who see no personal advantage to democracy but would love an autocracy they control and their serfs back!

Rachel Maddow Calls Out The Doomed Pro-Putin Republicans https://www.politicususa.com/2023/02/20/rachel-maddow-calls-out-the-doomed-pro-putin-republicans.html

#RightWingLovesPutin
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack
#TheObscenelyWealthyHateDemocracy

"Rachel Maddow put a spotlight on the Republicans from Tulsi Gabbard to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis who criticized Biden’s historic trip to Ukraine.

Maddow said:

'This one tiny event, it was small. It was a weird assemblage of Americans. There were Proud Boys there. Some of the white supremacist groups you would recognize from the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville a few years ago. Also represented prominently, the remains of the bizarre Lyndon LaRouche cult. There were people with flags including the former Soviet Union.

Also, at least one person who guest hosts for Tucker Carlson on the Fox News Channel was there as a featured speaker. There were antivaccine conspiracy theorists, a lot of them. There were cryptocurrency promoters. It was a really weird group. It was a small rally and a weird one. But that’s what it looks like.
That assemblage of short straws and split ends and loose electrons that is advocating in this country that Russia is in the right and America should be on Putin’s side as he keeps invading other countries. I mean no disrespect to the Americans who turned out as part of this small event this weekend. But it’s not like they represent a big constituency that is arguing for this pro-Russia point of view.

While this happened this weekend, while president Biden was heading to Kyiv secretly, once he got there today and we found out that he had made the trip to Kyiv. At least one pro-Trump member of congress who happens to have a seat on the Homeland Security Committee called for him to be impeached for having gone to Ukraine. Other pro-Trump members of congress said it was a disgrace and a shame and how dare president Biden go to Ukraine today. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who wants the run for president, apparently he went on the Fox News Channel this morning and said President Biden was wrong to go and we shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine in this war. Whatever Russia is doing, it is nothing to worry about.

Again, it is not clear in political terms what the big constituency is for this stuff. But that is where at least the Trump and Trump-ish wing of the Republican party says they are on this issue. And good luck to them with it.'

Rachel Maddow brought up an interesting point. Who are the Trump Republicans catering to? It doesn’t seem to be a domestic pro-Russia audience, so it is logical to suspect that the person the GOP is catering to is Putin. Russia has spent decades attempting to infiltrate both political parties, but almost all of its success has come on the Republican side.

Republicans saw what Russian election meddling was able to do in 2016, so it could be that they are lobbying for the same support from Putin in 2024.

Christian nationalists, fascists, republicans and the obscenely wealthy use each other to destroy our democracy and move us toward the hellish society they desire. They don't agree on what that society should look like, but their unholy alliance is a threat to all of us and they are far too willing to use violence to get their way. Are Biden and Garland up for the threat they pose? They better be!!

""Christian nationalism adherents are nearly seven times as likely... to support political violence."

They're also twice as likely to "have hit, kicked, bit, or slapped someone to resolve a disagreement."

#ChristianNationalism
#RightWingViolence
#GOPHatesDemocracy
#RightWingHatesDemocracy

This was in an email from Faithful America https://faithfulamerica.org

"A major new survey released last week shows just how serious the Christian-nationalist threat to democracy and the church has become -- while also providing a glimmer of hope.

According to the new PRRI/Brookings Christian Nationalism Survey, "Christian nationalism adherents are nearly seven times as likely... to support political violence."

They're also twice as likely to "have hit, kicked, bit, or slapped someone to resolve a disagreement."

These new numbers are both heartbreaking and scary, but we can't afford to ignore them. They help explain exactly how the fusion of the religious right and the Republican Party has incited horrific acts of violence like the deadly January 6 insurrection, bloody attacks on lawmakers' families, and angry fights at school-board meetings."

Musk is now clearly a right-wing nutjob/villian! He's an active participant in the right-wing/Murdoch/Putin/Oligarch's war to destroy liberal democracies and replace them with oligarchies. They are all clearly deranged, insecure, power-hungry, dysfunctional sociopaths who will destroy our functioning societies so they can have their ways!

"The "shadowbanning" myth is a pretext to boost far-right voices on social media — even if people don't follow them"

Elon Musk's latest Twitter tantrum is an attempt to amplify propaganda | Salon.com https://www.salon.com/2023/02/14/elon-musks-latest-twitter-tantrum-is-an-attempt-to-amplify-propaganda/

#ElonAndRupertIncahoots
#ElonRightWingNutJob
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#RightWingPowerHungry
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"The cartoonish villainy of Tesla CEO Elon Musk leveled up again last week after he fired an engineer for the high crime of telling him the truth.

Musk...was mad that his personal account wasn't getting more likes and retweets. The obvious reason for this is that Musk's tweets are boring. They're often sub-replacement-level right-wing trolling or failed attempts at humor...He's just not that interesting to people who aren't being paid to pretend to like him.
...
his tantrum is part of a larger Republican strategy of using false accusations of social media "bias" against the right as leverage to pressure the companies into disseminating even more right-wing propaganda — often to people who didn't ask for it. The goal is to create the illusion that far-right ideas are more popular than they actually are, helping normalize and mainstream the MAGA movement's war on democracy.

It's the same "working the referees" tactic that has long worked to tilt the mainstream media into a pro-Republican bias that often veers into outright disinformation. For decades, Republicans have used false claims of "liberal bias" to bully journalists into minimizing negative coverage of the right, while elevating often baseless stories about the left. It's how a nonsense story about Hillary Clinton's emails ended up dominating 2016 election coverage, while genuinely troubling stories about Donald Trump's long history of crime, from sexual assault to tax fraud, received only a fraction of the coverage. It's why the media currently conflates a real scandal regarding Donald Trump stealing and hiding classified documents with a nothingburger about President Joe Biden turning over accidentally filed documents without a fuss.
...
A delusional insistence that conservatives are subject to imaginary "shadowbanning."
...
On the contrary, study after study shows that social media is biased toward right-wing opinions, and toward spreading false information, despite the half-baked efforts to stop it.
...
But the myth of shadowbanning does serve a purpose on the right: It's a pretext to pressure social media companies to favor right-wing content, and even to go so far as to push it into the feeds of people who have not sought it out.
...
On the contrary, though Musk went out of his way to restore neo-Nazis, bigots, and other hate-tweeters, MAGA bloggers continued to bellyache about totally imaginary blacklisting. To make things worse, congressional Republicans like Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, have started to whine about non-existent "shadowbans," as well, often solely because they think they should be getting more retweets than they're getting.
...
The real concern is that tweaking the algorithms so that more authoritarian propaganda is visible will impact the heavily overlapping groups of gullible people and members of the mainstream press. Having far-right opinions crop up more often will have a subconscious effect. It will make those ideas seem more popular, more normal, and more reasonable than they are. It will open up more people to radicalization and cause the mainstream press to take preposterous GOP nonsense more seriously than they would have otherwise.

All of which is no doubt the point. The same day Musk used jargon-laden tweets to hint at a more right-leaning and disinfo-laden site, he showed up in a box seat next to Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch at the Super Bowl. Murdoch, of course, has spent years using the trappings of cable news to create the illusion of credibility for right-wing propaganda. He did so by claiming right wing lies were necessary as "balance" to the mainstream media. Musk's presence by his side was a clear signal that Musk has similar goals for using social media to whitewash repugnant lies..."

Part 1
Wealthy right-wing extremists are trying to "buy" the racist, oligarchic, Christian nationalist country they want and dismantle public education, democracy and the separation of church and state. They are actively plotting and working to destroy our multi-ethnic, liberal democracy!

“Parents Defending Education” is overwhelmingly funded by big donors’ dark money rather than by “concerned parents.”

Tax Docs Link Right-Wing “Parents Group” to Leonard Leo’s Dark Money Network - Truthout https://truthout.org/articles/tax-docs-link-right-wing-parents-group-to-leonard-leos-dark-money-network/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#Fascism
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"Right-wing operatives are increasing their attacks on U.S. public education with an expanding number of legal complaints to censor books and target teachers on an array of issues —preventing them from teaching U.S. history accurately, treating LGBTQ+ students with the respect they deserve, and forming support groups for kids and teachers of color. These attacks will likely continue to escalate through 2024 as wedge issues intended to feed the right-wing voting base and lay the groundwork for redirecting funds from public schools to private recipients.

One of the main players in these attacks is Parents Defending Education (PDE), a dark money nonprofit group launched in 2021 in the midst of the Virginia state election cycle. Over the past two years, PDE has become a central actor in the right-wing assault on public schools across the nation. The group has trained local agitators to grab media attention, sued school districts for supposed anti-white discrimination, and railed against the teaching of social emotional learning, accurate U.S. history, and even ethnic studies in schools.

Lawyers affiliated with PDE filed at least four complaints in January with the U.S. Department of Education claiming affinity groups for kids or teachers are illegal. These are just a few of the many complaints the group has filed over the past two years.

As dark money in education expert Maurice Cunningham has written, PDE’s “real goal” in filing lawsuits and complaints appears to be to “create media attention and promote chaos and disruption.” Then groups like PDE can claim the solution to the chaos is increased right-wing “parental supervision” over school boards. That supervision appears to involve a minority of vocal, politically motivated parents dictating what other people’s kids are taught or what they can read, based on whether such lessons or books are consistent with their right-wing religious beliefs and political opinions.

PDE’s speakers are often portrayed in the media as simply “concerned parents,” despite the group’s ties to the network of oil billionaire Charles Koch, far right politicians and school privatization efforts. Due to the timetables for the filing of nonprofit IRS forms, the amount PDE had raised to mount these attacks was unknown — until now.

PDE’s 2021 990 nonprofit IRS form shows that the group raised more than $3.1 million in its first year, even though many genuinely local grassroots efforts take years to raise that much money. That form does not reveal how much money PDE raised in 2022, during the congressional midterm elections; the amount it received to fuel its operations last year is likely even higher than 2021. The $3.1 million disclosed for 2021 also does not include any money raised that year by PDE Action, its (c)(4) advocacy arm.

What does the new filing show? First, it reveals that although PDE describes itself as a group of concerned parents, almost all of its funding came from major donors rather than dues from parents. Specifically, PDE raised only $77,272 from membership dues out of the $3,178,345 it was given that year by funders who were not members.

That is, only 2 percent of the group’s funding came from local parents who paid a $10 fee for membership. The vast majority of PDE’s funding comes from big secret sources underwriting the attacks on public education, sources that paid the group a lot more than $10 in membership dues.

PDE’s figure and its disclosed fee suggest that around 7,700 people have paid dues, which would constitute .01 percent of all of the parents in the U.S. It’s a case study in the squeaky wheel getting the grease..."

Part 2
Wealthy right-wing extremists are trying to "buy" the racist, oligarchic, Christian nationalist country they want and dismantle public education, democracy and the separation of church and state. They are actively plotting and working to destroy our multi-ethnic, liberal democracy!

“Parents Defending Education” is overwhelmingly funded by big donors’ dark money rather than by “concerned parents.”

Tax Docs Link Right-Wing “Parents Group” to Leonard Leo’s Dark Money Network https://truthout.org/articles/tax-docs-link-right-wing-parents-group-to-leonard-leos-dark-money-network/

#GOPInBedWithTheRich
#Fascism
#RightWingHatesDemocracy
#TheyWantTheirSerfsBack

"...Accordingly, the services Leo’s CRC Advisors provided to PDE are not publicly known.

Leo’s ambitions are, however.

Following on his success in capturing the Supreme Court — he hand-selected Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch for Donald Trump and opposed Democratic nominees to the court — Leo announced his plans to dominate other parts of society. He told The New York Times in a 2022 interview that he sought to take the lessons learned from his decades of experience pushing the law to reflect the right-wing agenda and apply them to “other areas of American cultural, policy, and political life.”

Leo’s desire to influence public education seems clear through the efforts of the groups his network is known to be funding.
...
Free to Learn was active in the 2021 gubernatorial race in Virginia, where the right-wing media credited the win of Republican Glenn Youngkin to his success in leveraging attacks on the state’s public schools. In September 2021, the group dropped more than $1 million in ads targeting Loudoun County alone. PDE was launched that year and was also intensely focused on public attacks on Virginia’s public schools.
...
IWF actively attacked Virginia schools as “toxic” during the 2021 governor’s race and has increasingly attempted to discredit public schools by promoting anti-trans fear mongering and assailing masking and vaccine requirements designed to keep students and staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. IWF has also supported an array of measures to privatize public schools or redirect public school funding.
...
For example, in 1986, Robert Thoburn, who later joined the Council for National Policy — a secretive group of powerful Christian/Catholic nationalists where Leo has been and may still be on the board of governors — explained in his book, The Children Trap: “I imagine every Christian would agree that we need to remove the humanism from the public schools. There is only one way to accomplish this: to abolish the public schools.” He urged Christians to run for school boards with the intent “to sink the ship.”

The Christian and Catholic right-wing has had significant success since then in targeting public schools. Since 2020 in particular, right-wing political operatives have sought to take over local school boards — throwing money into flipping control of boards of education across the country — with recent wins in some districts in Texas, California and Florida — and pushing for the banning of books they disapprove of in public schools.

PDE also filed an amicus brief in a pair of cases before the Supreme Court, where the right-wing supermajority is poised to gut affirmative action at the behest of a veritable army of Leo-tied groups. These groups, which Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has dubbed the “amicus flotilla,” provide support for the right-wing justices on the court to undercut Americans’ rights and overturn long-standing legal precedents.

Those cases were brought forward by the right-wing group Students for Fair Admissions, which itself received a quarter-million dollars from Leo’s 85 Fund in 2020. Ed Blum, who sits on PDE’s board, is a plaintiff in the joint case, despite not being a student at either of the universities being sued.

All this shows how PDE’s sudden arrival has been met with major funding from secret sources as it continues to portray itself in the media as merely “local moms.” The local activists PDE has aided are not paid the big bucks that PDE’s president pays herself, but they are benefiting from a multimillion-dollar infrastructure Neily has created to assail schools and teachers across the country, an operation that appears to be expanding as the group enters its third year of operation and eyes the 2024 elections."