drthunder

I've known about KMFDM for a long time but discovered Free Your Hate about this time in 2017, it's too bad it's that relevant again but at least we've got some good Nazi-punching music.

I had to look it up but that's totally it, lol

I also double checked by searching "schokolad quadratisch praktisch" and I can't believe it's a real tagline. Thank you so much Germany

The ruling class was able to get along well enough up until the US Civil War, at which point the slavers decided they were willing to tear the country apart to keep on slaving. I include this because the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow and how we did things over here. Fascism started bubbling up in the early 20th century because industrialization and capitalism polluted everything and made people work awful hours and all that, and liberalism and conservatism hadn't fixed it. There was a serious coup attempt forming in the early 30s called the Business Plot, but they went to a war hero Marine general who told them to fuck off and told the federal government about it.

At least in the US, we're in this situation now because authoritarians have been working toward it since the 60s (the Powell Memo was written in 1971 I think) and they've taken advantage of how terribly the Constitution is written, along with consolidation of wealth and stoking backlash to all the civil rights movements to get people to back them. The worst part is that it's a feedback loop: since Reagan took power, Republicans campaign on "look how bad the government is!" and make the government worse once they're in office, which feeds their cause.

tl;dr capitalism makes living conditions terrible, people abandon liberalism and conservatism for socialism/communism/etc and fascism, liberals don't want much to change, fascism lives or dies based on how much conservatives sell out to/ally with them. The fact that we're doing this all again shows to me that liberalism is a dead ideology and capitalism is going to kill us if we don't kill it first.

I get where you're coming from, but if someone can get away with doing things associated with a group that's shorthand in the West™ for the worst people in the world, I do think that's a problem too.

The joke is that Germans love bureaucracy and design and don't do humor, as evidenced by some German chocolate my dad got at LAX that described itself as square and practical.

There were real big sexual assault problems in the Mavericks organization while Mark Cuban owned the team.

Welcome aboard o/

Is killing people for profit not backwards?

Making ByteDance sell 80% to US companies is a win for the powers that be because then that too can be manipulated by right-wing oligarchs.

I don't trust Chinese companies all that much either, but Mitt Romney outright said this was about Palestine, you can see another reply of mine below with a link.

I don't trust either of them, but why would they lie about wanting to suppress support for Palestine? And if you don't believe me, the State Department has them on record saying as much: https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-mccain-institutes-2024-sedona-forum-keynote-conversation-with-senator-mitt-romney/

SENATOR ROMNEY: A small parenthetical point, which is some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts. So I’d note that’s of real interest, and the President will get the chance to make action in that regard.

Facebook and YouTube have for years boosted conservative people and posts/videos: this is fine according to the powers that be.

Russia and no doubt countless others run influence operations through all US social media companies: this is also fine according to the powers that be.

China probably runs influence operations through a Chinese social media company: this is a national security problem that needs to be dealt with!!

The reasons TikTok is maybe being banned are because it's the only major social media that isn't suppressing pro-Palestine speech and because it's not owned by a right-wing US oligarch. Musk is the shadow president, Zuckerberg is blatantly sucking up to Trump, etc etc.

Health insurance companies are already judge, jury, and executioner. Thousands of people die every year because they can't afford health insurance and I guarantee I'm not the only one in here who's had family die that way.