Links: Now what, and what happened

[sonia]

The key is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.. 1) Trust yourself. 2) Find others whom you trust. 3) Grieve [...] 10) Envision a positive future. Via cosmolinguist and ewt

Who Goes Nazi? by Dorothy Thompson."It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi."

I've been following Mekka Okereke @mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io over on mastodon, and he's been saying for months (probably years) that the key is the Black vote. White people (he's particularly down on white women) can't be depended on to vote against fascism. He says "Right here is where it all went wrong." Oct 11, 2024, Kamala Harris announced that as president she would create a bipartisan council of advisers. This is aimed at swing voters rather than at Black or other progressive voters.

The whole thread is worth reading, with lots of good points. And someone does call Mekka out on his focus on white women. (I wish people would specify white Christian women too. While I'm sure there are a few Jewish fascist sympathizers, I bet there aren't many.)

If, like me, you want to have some kind of understanding of what happened, the explanations are 1) Voter turnout about 8 million less than in 2020. Trump got about the same number of votes, so the deficit is in the Democrat tally. Partly the betrayal of Black voters (see below), and also, of course, voter suppression. 2) Abortion-rights referendums made some white women feel safer voting for Trump because they think their own right are safe. (?!!)

A thread about why moving to the center, collaborating with Nazis "a little bit", loses a crucial 10% of the Black male vote.

I explicitly said that Black men *will* experience worse outcomes [under Trump].

But the relative drop in freedom for a Black man under full fascism, is much less than the relative drop in freedom for a white Dem voter. And freedom from fascism for everyone else while you still live under fascism, does not feel good.

I've said on here before, racism is just fascism practiced on Black people first.

Like I said, this is not my position. I disagree with it. But it is not insane, stupid, or selfish.

What's selfish is expecting someone to save you from fascism, without reciprocating the favor.

Expecting to live in US luxury, while someone else lives under US fascism, is selfish.

In 2028 there will be another election. Again, I will tell US Dem candidates not to do the "Fight the nazis! But also, I will use your vote to give power to those same nazis!🤡" I will say that most Black people will make a selfless decision, but about 10% of Black men (2 million voters) will say hells no

I will again say that without that 10%, a Democratic candidate cannot win.

And again, some people will make the arguments that you are making now: "I know it's unfair, but look that's just how it is! Black people just have to take it!" But they don't just have to take it. We need them to play more than they need us to play.

Comments

[silveradept]

For what I can understand, I think the reasoning is that white women can be peeled off to vote for women's interests over white interests, while white men have no reason, other than their own enlightened self-interest, to vote against whiteness and patriarchy. So they think white women are the wedge that decides whether white men's interests, or everyone else's, triumph.

"Latine men" covers a broader and more inclusive swath for me than "Latin men," but I also have it in MTT head that "Latin men" has fallen out of favor.