Academics, think tanks and magazines are buzzing with conversations about how to undo the damage wrought by half a century of misguided economic policies. On the right, that debate has already spilled out into the public view.

Well, if vocally campaigning to make shit much worse qualifies as “spilled out into the public view”, then yeah I guess it has

I suppose they meant that it slows down their internet, not the internet

I thought he’d understood why it was better for him to drop out of the race, but I guess that was overly optimistic of me

Clueless MBA parasites ruining shit for everybody again?

Must be a day that ends in Y

Well, separating his [REDACTED] from his [REDACTED] using the famous French invention called [REDACTED] would definitely be justice

As long as we keep pretending conservatism is a valid political ideology and not a dangerous mental disorder that should land you in treatment and on a watch list, no civilized society can be safe.

What he needs is something I can’t say out loud if I don’t want to get banned.

I love it that reich-wing lunatics are now eating their own. They suddenly think Andrew Tate is trans, ditto for that one cockwomble who shot protestors (Kyle something?), and now even Trump is a deep state operative.

Keep it up, conservatives. Maybe murder each other and not us LGBT+ folks for a change?

The Usenet post I linked to claims it’s originally from the 1st quarter of 1990, but who knows if that’s accurate or not. I actually can’t find a good source for whether Stumpf is the original author or just the one who posted it to rec.humor.funny.reruns, but it’s usually attributed to him at any rate.

But yeah, fairly ancient by internet standards. I remember first running into it in the 90’s

Well, no. The originally German / Nazi tactic called Lügenpresse aka. “Lying Press” is more about just claiming that the press is lying – like how conservatives latched onto calling everything “fake news” after US Republicans and Trump started doing it after their bullshit was called out with that term.

The idea with the “firehose of falsehood”, like the page I linked to explains, is to saturate media with so much high volume and continuous bullshit that people start to doubt whether it’s even possible to know anything about objective reality in the first place. The point isn’t to proclaim that the media is lying, but to simply lie so much that people start to think that all media is just lies. The tactic originated in Russia and has been in use since Soviet times and the internet has allowed them to take it to a completely new level.

And yes, Nazi-controlled media was obviously also full of total fabrications, but that doesn’t mean that these two tactics are the same thing.

Known as the “firehose of falsehood”

They think they’ll be tortured because that’s what they do to others.

Of course a fucking reich-winger is sharing misinformation. They’re completely incapable of media literacy – I bet this particular fucking specimen thinks they’re actually posting trustworthy “news”

Frontotemporal dementia

The scary part is that they are normal for something like 30% of the population of not more

There are no moderate conservatives. Every single one of them either wants genocide and other atrocities, or maybe doesn’t actively wish for genocide but as long as it doesn’t affect them they’re going to keep voting for the people pushing for genocide anyhow

Trump is much better equipped psychologically to withstand ferocious criticisms than he is equipped to withstand mockery. Malignant narcissists go to great lengths to hide their fears and display a false or idealized self. Criticism targets the persona. Mockery, by contrast, can tap very deep fears of being exposed as flawed or weak. When the mask is the target, people with Trump’s psychological profile know how to fight back. Mockery, though, can cause them to unravel.

This seems to be very common with conservatives more generally. Criticizing them does nothing, but turns out that mocking their absolutely fucking bizarre beliefs drives them up the wall

Well that’s… weird. Why on earth would they do that?

Assuming any of this is true, at any rate.

Some plans less so than others.

Also, I like this framing of users as the enemy. Matches my experience, really.