Empathy isn't action. We have to organize to do good.

"The remedy is going to need to involve the deconstruction of the empire and the ideologies that undergird it: our collective worship of capitalism and profit, of billionaires and other predators, of punishment, of military, of policing—all will have to be deconstructed and dismantled, and be replaced with institutions born of a commitment to a pluralistic, diverse, open world dedicated not to individual domination but universal interconnected thriving. This remedy will involve many costs and changes even as it returns us to health, and many of these costs and changes will be permanent. There will have to be a purge of our Republican Nazis from every level of government. There will have to be an overthrow of the corrupt corporate leaders of the establishment Democratic party. There will need to be a general outlawing of billionaires. We'll need to deconstruct our military and our police and our prisons. We will need to build parks and transportation and housing. We will need to subsidize art and music and poetry and philosophy and literature. We will need to fund day cares and libraries and schools."
— A. R. Moxon, A Confrontation With Truth, The Reframe, April 13, 2026

"To begin, pick something you’re wearing right now and briefly describe it. Say it out loud.
I’m doing this with you over here:
I’m wearing a black sweatshirt.
Do you notice any confusion or charge around your words when you say it? Not likely. It’s pretty straightforward...
* * *
Now use that same energy and verb tense as you speak the change you want. Try it on — just like what you’re wearing — using present-tense, positive words.
* * *
For instance, I might say:
Where I live, more acreage is converting to regenerative and rewilded spaces, so people and ecosystems are getting healthier."
B. Lorraine Smith, Trying on the change you want, April 16, 2025 email

Empathy is important, and not everyone has it or believes in it.

"Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey released a book in 2024 titled “Toxic Empathy.” The following year brought the release of “The Sin of Empathy” by right-wing theologian Joe Rigney. Shortly thereafter, billionaire Elon Musk declared on Joe Rogan’s podcast that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”"
— Caroline Bologna, The Surprising Skill MAGA Christians Say Is 'Sinful': As Christian nationalism rises, some influential voices are reframing this ability as weakness, manipulation or even a threat to faith, HuffPost, Feb 12, 2026

But it's not enough.

What does "moderate" mean these days? Marisa Kabas asks. Columbia University apparently is trying to "make donors happy at the expense of students." And on March 4, 77-year-old Rep. Al Green of Texas "stood up and shook his cane at the criminal president, and when he wouldn’t sit down, was removed from the chamber...Two days later, every House Republican and 10 House Democrats voted to censure Green, who is Black, for his protest."

"You cannot give an inch" to current Republican leaders, yet

"for some reason certain people who are supposed to be the opposition seem willing to give them a mile. It is, in a word, deranged.

We’re seeing this in the continued manufactured controversy on college campuses like Columbia University where students are exercising their First Amendment rights and adults in power will do anything to stifle them—including making nice with Trump after he canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to their university in the name of combating antisemitism.

“But let me be very clear: Columbia is taking the government’s action very seriously,” Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s Interim President, wrote in a statement Friday [March 7] (also sent as an email to alumni). “I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns.”

Siding with antisemites in the name of fighting antisemitism is both frightening and profoundly stupid, and playing nice with terrorists will get you nowhere.

* * *

Right now there’s too much appeasement and not enough fighting. If we really want to restore order to the federal government, if we really want to fight antisemitism, if we want to achieve anything that would benefit the greater good, we must push back at every single turn. Trying to appeal to a voter who will congratulate you for scolding a member of your own party [as did the 10 House Democrats who voted to censure Green] for peacefully protesting fascism is a losing game because that voter does not exist."

— Marisa Kabas, The time for a spine, The Handbasket, March 9, 2025

Citing this new post by Columbia, Combatting Antisemitism, someone says on Mastodon that the approach seems to be: more rules, more surveillance, more cops.

Relatedly:

"Holding fast to our empathy, caring about people we don’t know, and having compassion for those who are struggling are all immensely important in this increasingly cold and harsh world. But it isn’t radical. Framing empathy as something bold and transgressive is reacting to the fascist onslaught we’re facing rather than taking the time to stake out our own position and perspective.

* * *

Something doesn’t have to be radical to be good. I value empathy, both yours and mine, regardless of whether or not maintaining it is a radical act. At the same time, I value clarity around what constitutes a radical approach and outlook. I value it right now, as we engage in an increasingly overt and all-out struggle against oligarchy, more than ever. And so I want to draw a line and help ensure that we orient ourselves toward real radicality in our thought and action.

* * *

Getting down to the root means getting down to systems and that which upholds them. And we have to orient our goals towards those systems. It is never enough to simply change individuals and their mindsets. That is necessary for change, but not sufficient. Improving conditions is likewise necessary, but not sufficient to constitute radical change. We must get down to the systems that dominate us, and replace them.

* * *

Fostering our empathy is part of this process, but helping people shift internally must be paired with external action to move us toward radical change. “Being radicalized” is not something that can happen inside our heads. It’s not something that can happen alone. You cannot grasp the systemic roots by yourself. Without collective action we remain Schrodinger’s radicals. Anything could be inside that box: a radical, a moderate — the truth can’t be known until the rubber meets the road."

— J. P. Hill. What radicalized you?: Never cede the framing. New Means. Feb 20, 2025

Moderate enablers are doing evil:

"Because of their deliberate decision to emigrate from observable reality and immigrate into a dark land of coddled ignorance, smothering complacency, delusional fear, and celebration of greed, cruelty, and bigotry, American Republicans and their so-called "moderate" enablers are the very worst people on the planet right now, and, given their deliberate demolition of as many centuries of human progress as they can get away with, and their acceleration of a global catastrophe that threatens the suitability of this planet for human life, they're a strong candidate for the very worst people in the entirety of human history."
— A.R. Moxon, The Worst and the Dimmest: It's not a coincidence that we're being led by the least qualified monsters available; it's a deliberate strategy. Facing the Worst - a series about directional alignment. The Reframe. Feb 16, 2025

Moxon is saying that the Republican leaders, and anyone organized to support them, are radically evil:

"the Republican Party—which has for much if not all of my life operated as a hate group—is now a vector for an astonishing level incompetence and cruelty and corruption and bigoted hate that somehow seems destined to succeed at its main objective, which is the demolition of human society and the suffering and death of billions and billions of humans, all for the almost incomprehensible enrichment of only a handful of people, all of them among the very worst human beings this planet has ever produced—the most uncaring, the least intellectually curious, the most disconnected from their own humanity, the most gleefully malicious and deliberately destructive, with an all-consuming greed at the center of their being that renders them almost alien in their bland but fathomless evil. And one thing I know about Republicans is that they either love it or they don't give a shit, and you'll know it too, if you ask them."

I think Hill's point above, though, is that empathy isn't the polar opposite of radical evil. It's just a normal default state for humans. It's a neutral middle. The polar opposite of organizing to do evil is organizing to do good.

Indeed, Moxon goes on, inviting us to

"imagine a totally different system, one that might not have been imaginable before, a better one that not only does not seek to devour any people at all, anywhere at all, ever, but one that refuses to do so, and refuses to accommodate or tolerate people or systems who do.

Because remember, we are about playing the right game, and the right game is demolishing the billionaire system. The way you score points in the right game is by repairing broken things and paying all the natural costs of maintenance and repair.

The reason we face the worst is not to fall into despair.

The reason we face the worst is because it helps us imagine the best."

Riffing off this Bluesky post (Feb 25, 2025): Yes, decent humans have to support equality and diversity. Meanwhile, if your opponents destroy your talking points by claiming that they support equality and diversity (when they don't), you need a plan beyond just repeating your talking point that they stole and lied about. Unfortunately, there's no high road for you to take. You have to keep being a good person, but you also have to play a little dirty.

THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN TELLING YOU ALL DAMN IT Also I feel sorry for the NSA analyst who has to figure out what the hell is going on with my "burritos"

[image or embed]

— John Scalzi (@scalzi.com) March 16, 2025 at 2:41 PM

"...we aren’t the first to be in this situation, but we might be the first to allow a crazed strongman to take over our country without serious resistance in such a short period of time. Trump is accomplishing in record time what it took autocrats like Viktor Orban and Hugo Chavez years to accomplish. We are being fast-tracked to autocracy with little in the way of resistance in part because we are scared, overwhelmed, and the norms of whiteness keep many of us thinking someone else is going to save us and politeness will win out."
— Shay, "We aren’t helpless; buck up!", Black Girl in Maine, July 2025

Empathy is the new Christian battleground, Russell Contreras, Axios, Nov 30, 2025

In 2026, Democrats are not going to help

Recent statements from political strategists and Democratic Party insiders seem to suggest that the party’s strategy for the 2026 midterm races — particularly in hotly contested swing districts — will be to focus on economic concerns rather than on holding President Donald Trump accountable.

[image or embed]

— Truthout (@truthout.org) January 8, 2026 at 12:40 PM

Antisemitism and transphobia: It cooks your brain

"On Monday [October 21, 2024], Elon Musk invoked the names of two German Nazis in a tweet while simultaneously disparaging modern pronoun conventions — attempting, as he so often does, to make a joke. (I’m not repeating the text here — not because it’s profane, but mostly because it’s just not funny.)

For context, Musk was responding to a post about a Der Spiegel article that compared him to a media mogul who helped Hitler climb to power.

— Allison Morrow, Any other CEO would have been fired for what Elon Musk just said, CNN, October 23, 2024

Morrow also mentions that the previous month, Musk had promoted a

"widely condemned interview with a Nazi apologist who said the murder of Jews in concentration camps was “humane” and that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II. Musk later deleted his X post that called the interview 'very interesting' and 'worth watching,' per the Independent."

— Allison Morrow, Any other CEO would have been fired for what Elon Musk just said, CNN, October 23, 2024

a lesson we have learned repeatedly in the UK is that when transphobes suddenly appear in load-bearing roles in organisations, they are usually prepared to sacrifice everything, including their job and their org’s credibility, in order to platform and perform transphobia

— Alyson Greaves (@badambulist.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 3:51 AM

like, transphobia legit cooks people's brains. I'm talking people who are so determined to keep abusing trans children at their teaching job that they keep returning to school even after they've been fired, even after they've been taken to court. you cannot communicate rationally with these people.

— Alyson Greaves (@badambulist.bsky.social) December 11, 2024 at 5:46 AM

a new antisemitism, the parasitic traits of the belief — jeopardizing one's job, jeopardizing one's relationships, solely isolating the hosts in communities of persons who similarly can only discuss a single topic daily and for years straight, the conspiratorialism, etc.

— Salty 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 (@nacl.sh) December 11, 2024 at 6:33 AM

transphobia operates very much like the antisemitism we're all familiar with, but born anew altho still modeled in a distinct image

— Salty 🇵🇸 🇵🇸 (@nacl.sh) December 11, 2024 at 6:34 AM

Elon Musk Peddles Political Influence Abroad, Endorsing Germany's Far-Right Party The CEO backed Alternative for Germany in a newspaper piece and claimed his business interests gave him the right to comment on the country's condition. AP, Dec 29, 2024

More in this thread on Musk alt-right / neo-nazi imagery and how the press just treats it as trolling. To paraphrase @kenwhite.bsky.social on goats, even if you think you're Nazi'ing to own the libs, you're still a Nazi

[image or embed]

— David Burbach (@dburbach.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 8:25 PM

For anyone confused about this here’s an illustration that should help clear things up.

[image or embed]

— Dell Cameron (@dell.bsky.social) December 31, 2024 at 6:54 PM

Translash Media obtains an email from Dean Baquet responding to criticism from a transgender contributor over the paper's decision to hire Jesse Singal to review a book by Helen Joyce that alleges a cabal of Jewish billionaires invented trans people

[image or embed]

— Gillian Branstetter (@gbbranstetter.bsky.social) July 25, 2023 at 5:35 PM

X sues Media Matters

X has sued Media Matters.

The article that started it

Media Matters published this article: "As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content." CEO Linda Yaccarino previously claimed that brands are “protected from the risk of being next to” toxic posts. Eric Hananoki. November 16, 2023.

Advertisers pulled out of X

In immediate response, some advertisers pulled their ads.

Apple, "the platform’s largest advertiser, accounting for nearly $50 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2022," pulled out, as did "Disney, Comcast, Lionsgate and Paramount Global."

Judd Legum ("Free speech does not require subsidizing bigotry," Popular Information, November 20) wrote:

"Media Matters reported that X has been placing ads for major brands alongside pro-Nazi content. Ads for corporations also appeared alongside white nationalist hashtags. This was exactly what Linda Yaccarino, X'sCEO, said would not happen. In an August interview on CNBC, Yaccarino said that 'lawful but awful' content is 'demonetized.' In that way, brands 'are protected from the risk of being next to that content.'"

Update: She resigned in 2025.

Elon Musk, head of X, is mad, but does not have a real argument

Judd Legum again on Popular Information (November 21): "...according to X's own statement, all Media Matters did was create an account, follow some users, and observe what ads were displayed. ... the idea that Media Matters' conduct is legally actionable is absurd, especially since X has already admitted that ads were displayed next to the posts identified by Media Matters."

And yet Trump advisor Stephen Miller made noise, after which Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (a Republican) told the right-wing channel Newsmax: "And so," Legum says, "if we have an instance where there was a deceptive or fraudulent business practice where Media Matters was using some sort of coercive or fraudulent algorithms or advertising, that's going to be problematic on the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act." However, he points out: "Media Matters’ conduct did not involve 'fraudulent algorithms' or 'advertising.' And the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act only applies to 'the sale or advertisement of any merchandise in trade or commerce.' Media Matters was not selling anything."

Bluesky

Parker Molloy writes: "Last week, the richest man on the planet declared war on Media Matters for America, one of my former employers, repeatedly calling them 'pure evil'...The tl;dr about that lawsuit is that Elon Musk is angry that Media Matters has been publishing stories about the spread of hateful content on Twitter; Musk’s own racist, antisemitic, and transphobic tweets; and why major advertisers have been rushing to the exits." Molloy adds: "1. Musk absolutely does not believe in complete and total 'free speech' on Twitter," and "2. Advertisers are not obligated to continue advertising on a platform that went from being a low-simmering cesspool of hate to a full-on 4chan replica."

Furthermore, Molloy writes:

"I also can’t quite get over the double standard here. Musk’s far-right friends have turned 'Bud Light' into a verb that roughly translates to 'We’re going to destroy any brand that acknowledges the existence of people we hate' after losing their minds about the brand advertising one (1) time on trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s Instagram account and terrorizing Target stores across the country in sudden outrage over the chain’s truly inoffensive Pride section. Those tactics are far, far more extreme than simply being like, 'Hey brands, you know that you’re advertising next to stuff like this?'"

— "The Richest Man in the World Sued My Former Employer." It's a bit surreal to be watching this from the outside. Parker Molloy, The Present Age, November 27, 2023.

Re: Bud Light, see my post on that: Transphobes are boycotting beer because of the spokesperson.

Also: Really easy to find ads displaying next to bad content. Just search for bad content, then see if an ad displays. Voila.
Elon’s Censorial Lawsuit Against Media Matters Inspiring Many More People To Find ExTwitter Ads On Awful Content, Mike Masnick, techdirt, November 27

Thing is, X's self-punishment has an endpoint. If Musk drives his platform into the ground, antisemites and transphobes will have nowhere to congregate. So here you have one of the key transphobes, Chaya Raichik behind Libs of TikTok — yes, she's an Orthodox Jew; yes, that's confusing — begging Walmart to bring its ad dollars back to the antisemitic platform so she can keep doing her transphobia.

January 2024

By the way, here's more context about antisemitism on 4chan. Yair Rosenberg points out on Bluesky (Jan 10, 2024): "4 million views, 31,000 likes for an insane 4chan post about how New York Jews are snatching unsuspecting gentiles into their secret child trafficking tunnels."

April 2024

Hey you, get off X already.

You are the fuel that energises Elon Musk’s hate machine, Ketan Joshi, April 19, 2024

May 2024

Related to the interest in unaccountability:

Bad News: I’ve been laid off from mmfa, along with a dozen colleagues. There’s a reason far-right billionaires attack Media Matters with armies of lawyers: They know how effective our work is, and it terrifies them (him).

— Kat Abu (@katmabu.bsky.social) May 23, 2024 at 12:26 PM

July 2024

"The other billionaires in the room visibly "shook their heads and winced" in reaction to what Musk was saying, per reports." when you've lost the white supremacist oligarch vote

[image or embed]

— hammancheez (@hammancheez.bsky.social) Jul 29, 2024 at 1:37 PM

August 2024

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media will shut down because Musk is suing them... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/technology/elon-musk-x-advertisers-boycott.html

The judge recused himself... https://bsky.app/profile/ratelimitexceeder.bsky.social/post/3kzmivmi74q2z

More on that:

"Angry at advertisers for leaving his Nazi-tolerating social media site, Musk sued a nonprofit ad group out of existence."
— Allison Morrow, Any other CEO would have been fired for what Elon Musk just said, CNN, October 23, 2024

What an incredibly unsurprising turn of events. But, seriously, if you're still advertising on ExTwitter, you know that this is a risk. Spare me the "oh we're pulling ads because we just found out about this." www.cbsnews.com/news/world-b...

[image or embed]

— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social) Aug 23, 2024 at 3:01 PM

"A record number of firms plan to cut advertising spending on X next year because of concerns that extreme content on the platform could damage their brands, dealing another blow to the financial fortunes of Elon Musk’s social media company.

A global survey by market research firm Kantar found that a net 26% of marketers plan to decrease their spending on X in 2025, the biggest recorded pullback from any major global ad platform. Only 4% of marketers overall think X ads provide “brand safety” — certainty that their ads won’t appear alongside extreme content — compared with 39% for Google ads, Kantar said in a report Thursday [September 5, 2024]."

— Hanna Ziady, Advertisers plan to withdraw from X in record numbers, CNN, September 5, 2024

"Litigation is a key part of the Musk playbook when it comes to any person or group challenging him or his businesses. ... In fact, Musk and his companies have filed at least 23 lawsuits in federal courts alone since July of 2023, according to Fortune, targeting 'competitors, startups, law firms, watchdog groups, individuals, the state of California, federal agencies, and pop star Grimes, who is the mother of three of his children.'"
— Allison Morrow, Any other CEO would have been fired for what Elon Musk just said, CNN, October 23, 2024

Previously: January 2023

Free speech ‘absolutist’ Elon Musk personally ordered the Twitter suspension of left-wing activist, report claims: Twitter CEO has overseen effort to punish his critics while cozying up to far-right accounts. John Bowden, The Independent, 29 January 2023

"I don’t think we can ever replicate the ecosystem that Trump and MAGA created, but I also don’t believe we want to. The MAGA media is built around one personality, and even as it’s fracturing, Donald Trump remains at the center of that universe. That might be sustainable for a time, but it’s not how the left builds power and we don’t want to become our own cult of personality. However, we can adopt some of the practices that we know worked well for Trump, and candidates who want to win should absolutely find ways to compete in the attention economy, especially content creators, and build an ecosystem that works for us rather than against us."
— In this (attention) economy?: What we can learn from Mrs. Frazzled and Trump’s online outreach operation, Melissa Ryan, Apr 19, 2026

'Vermin,' Trump says — He's telling you who he wants to exterminate

In September, seeking the presidency again, Trump said: "We will immediately stop all the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store."

In November, it continued. Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post:

"Four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump declared on Truth Social (on Veterans Day weekend, no less) that 'the radical left thugs ... live like vermin within the confines of our country.' He repeated the invective during an appearance in New Hampshire. As Forbes pointed out, 'The former president’s incendiary rhetoric invokes a term frequently used by Nazis to dehumanize Jews, including a 1939 quote attributed to Hitler: ‘This vermin must be destroyed. The Jews are our sworn enemies.’'"

In response to people who pointed out the comparison with Hitler’s rhetoric, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said: "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome...their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House."

Our sad, miserable existence will be crushed? That rhetoric is also supposed to demonstrate how Trump's not a Nazi?

This too is what I hear when the MAGA folk refer to "trans activists," "trans extremists," or "radical trans." There is no such thing. It's a synonym for "radical left," "thugs," and "vermin," which is to say it attaches to nothing whatsoever in the real world. It is a language hammer of dehumanization. The more specific the speaker gets, the more precisely they're telling you exactly who they want to kill.

This is explicit. Below, "globalists," "Communists," and "Marxists" mean Jews. Donald Trump and Elon Musk embolden each other.

(on Bluesky)

Here's another place to see Trump's November 19 post (quoted in Salon.com): “2024 is our final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State, we will expel the warmongers from our government, we will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, we will throw off the sick political class that hates our Country, we will rout the Fake News Media, we will evict Joe Biden from the White House, and we will FINISH THE JOB ONCE AND FOR ALL!”

"We have a political party that sees value in division and hatred, even when it is unjustified or ridiculous, like Trump’s description of anyone who disagrees with him as vermin." — Martin Edic, The Witness Chronicles (Substack), November 22, 2023

No one is actually vermin. Vermin is how people are treated when they're stomped on. MAGA tells you whom they plan to stomp.

---

In November 2023, at a Florida rally, "Trump painted a picture of a hellish (predominantly white) America overrun by serial killers and other human monsters frlm foreign (and predominantly nonwhite) countries, insisting that only he could save (white) America from the death and contamination caused by Democrats and 'the left.'" (Salon)

Under the Insurrection Act, U.S. presidents have authority to use the military to stop civilian protests, and the courts can't interfere. Trump has said he will call the military if he wants.

On December 5, 2023, at a Fox News town hall, Sean Hannity asked Trump: "Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever if reelected president to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?" Trump responded: "I’m going to be, you know he keeps, we love this guy, he says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling.’ After that I’m not a dictator." (emphasis mine)

The same day, Kash Patel said on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast:

“We will follow the facts and the law. We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.

We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

Here's someone who believes "dictator" means benevolent paternalist and that Trump would only briefly use his power to make the nation more beautiful and liveable:

“I love it,” said a woman in her 50s from northwest Iowa who spoke on the condition that she be identified only as Sue. “My kids call me a dictator, I thought my parents were dictators … He said he was only going to do it for a day. Like if you had a home that was in disrepair and your parents came in and they were firm and they wanted to get it done, and when you got done you had this beautiful home, how could you be mad?”
— Trump backers laugh off, cheer ‘dictator’ comments, as scholars voice alarm, Marianne LeVine and Isaac Arnsdorf, Washington Post, December 13, 2023

[Update: In January 2024, a YouGov poll asked whether Trump being "a dictator only on the first day of his second term" sounds like "a good or bad idea for the country." Three-quarters of Republicans said it was "definitely" or "probably" good.]

Update: In January 2025, when Kash Patel was being considered for FBI Director, Robert Reich wrote:

"Patel has already come up with his own Trump enemies list. In Patel’s 2023 book Government Gangsters, he lists 60 current and former executive branch officials whom he refers to as members of the “Executive Branch Deep State.”

Patel calls these people “a cabal of tyrants” and “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.”"

On December 16, 2023, Trump "approvingly quoted autocrats Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary," once again used "dehumanizing language targeting immigrants that historians have likened to past authoritarians, including a reference that some civil rights advocates and experts in extremism have compared to Adolf Hitler’s fixation on blood purity," and referred to Capitol rioters (who are facing criminal proceedings for their violent crime) as "hostages." (Washington Post, December 16, 2023)

Jason Lyall on Bluesky, @jaylyall.bsky.social:

"You can literally see CNN bending over backwards to avoid saying "fascism" when they describe Trump's speech as using 'language condemned for its ties to White supremacist rhetoric'

FFS, he said immigrants are 'poisoning the blood of our country.' That's the center square on the Fascist bingo card"

Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained on CNN on December 16:

"'...they’re not going to stop with immigrants,' she said. 'I’m quite concerned that he is mentioning what he calls mental institutions and prisons so often. In another speech he actually talked about the need to expand psychiatric institutions to confine people and he mentioned special prosecutor Jack Smith as someone who should end up in a ‘mental institution.’'

'This is what fascists and especially communists used to do to critics,' Ben-Ghiat added. 'They used to put people who didn’t believe in the propaganda of the state or who were troublemakers into psychiatric institutions.'"

The next day, December 17, Kristen Welker on Meet the Press asked Sen. Lindsey Graham: “Are the president’s comments representative of how you and other Republicans feel? ... Just on the language, though. ... You have endorsed former President Trump. Are you comfortable with him using words like that?” Graham replied: "You know, we’re talking about language? I could care less what language people use as long as we get it [immigration policy] right."

A.R. Moxon on this (No Beliefs, Just Intentions, The Reframe (Substack), Dec 17, 2023):

"Trump has openly announced his intention to become a fascist dictator if he re-achieves the presidency, promising to use the military to crush dissent, vowing to use his standing army of fascist judges and police to seize power and disband large swaths of the government, and swearing to purge the courts and the government and the nation of undesirable elements. Last night he literally quoted Adolf Hitler, telling his pink-faced crowd that immigrants were poisoning the nation’s blood. The language he’s used to marshal his support among mostly white, mostly Christian Americans can only be described as dehumanizing and eliminationist, the sort of talk that usually precedes mass killings."

On December 17, "in Reno, Nevada — the third GOP-nominating state — Trump claimed, without evidence, that migrants are largely coming from prisons and mental institutions" and that the US is now a "haven for bloodthirsty criminals." (I mentioned this on Medium.)

On December 19, Sen. Tommy Tuberville egged on other Republicans to be yet more racist: "I’m mad he wasn’t even tougher than that."

In December, CNN reviewed the history of a few of Trump's related comments. According to WSJ reporter Michael Bender in his 2021 book Frankly, We Did Win This Election, Trump told John Kelly, regarding Hitler's economic policies: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.” According to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s 2022 book The Divider: Trump in the White House, Trump said to Kelly: “Why can’t you be like the German generals?...The German generals in World War II.” In 1990, Vanity Fair reported that Ivana Trump “told her lawyer that Donald Trump occasionally read from a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he supposedly kept in a cabinet by his bed. And a friend of Trump told the magazine on the record that he had given Trump the book, saying he thought Trump would find it interesting.” (See VIDEO: "1990 report: Ivana Trump told her lawyer Donald Trump kept Hitler speeches beside bed," CNN, December 18, 2023)

On December 19, Trump continued, saying that immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally are "destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country." (CNN)

On December 20, CNN anchor Jake Tapper "cited a 'shocking' Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll that shows 42% of the state’s likely Republican caucusgoers saying the GOP presidential frontrunner’s comment makes them 'more likely' to support him..." — HuffPost

Here's where we've ended up, June 2024:

"Former President Donald Trump backed an idea for a “migrant league” similar to the Ultimate Fighting Championship in remarks to Christian conservatives at a Faith & Freedom Coalition conference on Saturday.

“Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters and then you have the champion of your league, these are the greatest fighters in the world, fight the champion of the migrants,” said Trump, who claimed he pitched the idea to UFC President and CEO Dana White."

— Trump Entertains Bizarre UFC-Like Concept For Migrants: 'Not The Worst Idea I've Ever Had': "These people are tough," said the former president, who claimed he spoke to Dana White about setting up a new league of "fighters." Ben Blanchet, HuffPost, Jun 23, 2024

New pod: Media should cover Trump's smearing of millions of immigrants and his deranged call for UFC fights between migrants and US-born Americans as an absolute scandal. @brianbeutler.bsky.social and I dig deep into this media failure. He makes so many good points: newrepublic.com/article/1830...

[image or embed]

— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) Jun 24, 2024 at 5:58 AM

He just makes stuff up

On February 5, Trump appeared on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures show, speaking to Maria Bartiromo:

"'We’re letting 18 million people in,' Trump said at one point, offering a wildly inflated estimate of the number of immigrants allowed to stay in the United States under President Biden. 'I think the number is going to be 18 million people by the time he gets out.'
'Wow,' said Bartiromo."
— "One of Trump’s biggest political assets is his mundanity," Philip Bump, Washington Post, February 5, 2024

'Not human'

In April 2024, Trump said: "The democrats say 'please don't call [immigrants] animals; they're humans.' I said, 'no, they're not humans, they're not humans; they're animals.'" (see the video clip on Bluesky)

His propaganda networks don't challenge him

On April 28, Fox News put Eric Trump on the air "as the legal expert to analyze the merits of the criminal case against his own father," as Brian Klaas put it. Eric Trump's argument was that other people commit worse crimes. Maria Bartiromo asked no follow-up question.

Journalist Who Broke Maria Bartiromo's Fox News Exit Predicts Trump Might 'Swoop In' And Hire Her: The ex-Fox News host “got brain worms at some point and just believes all this MAGA nonsense,” Oliver Darcy said. Pocharapon Neammanee, HuffPost, Sep 5, 2026

He's outraged that his victims resent him

With the cross of Michael Cohen, it continues to be amazing to me that the defense's argument is that it's somehow dirty pool to be mad at Trump for screwing you over.

[image or embed]

— Amanda Marcotte (@amandamarcotte.bsky.social) May 14, 2024 at 1:36 PM

Please raise the bar

Bluesky

Prepare

We must prepare for possible outcomes:

‘Dictator’ Trump Plans to Deploy Massive Number of Troops on U.S. Soil: In his first term, Trump’s plans to send troops to “war” on the southern border were thwarted. This time, he’s talking about sending up to 300,000 there. Adam Rawnsley & Asawin Suebsaeng, Rolling Stone, December 14, 2023

"National news media are sanitizing Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan: Broadcast news shows and top national newspapers have largely ignored the Republican front-runner's extreme policy proposal. Harrison Ray. Media Matters. Feb. 26, 2024.

Philip Bump wrote for the Washington Post how bad this would be. (gift link)

Trump Promises Immigrants He Wants to Deport Will Get Serial Numbers newrepublic.com/post/186239/...

[image or embed]

— Joe Sudbay (@joesudbay.bsky.social) September 23, 2024 at 11:26 AM

Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Oct 7, 2024 that, as HuffPost explained, "immigrants were filling the country with 'bad genes' and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point."

Dem Strategist Says Trump 'Would Absolutely Try To Exterminate' People Based On Genes: Aisha Mills also reminded CNN viewers Monday that the Republican nominee allegedly "revered" Adolf Hitler. Marco Margaritoff, HuffPost, Oct 8, 2024

It's not his age. It is his fascism, his Nazi roots. Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake by Sidney Blumenthal www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

[image or embed]

— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) October 7, 2024 at 7:00 AM

October 2025: Democrats are a 'little gnat' that must be 'take[n] care of'

Trump to the Navy: "We have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 5, 2025 at 3:51 PM

"Yesterday, on Christmas of all days, Donald Trump chose to call Democrats “scum.” Not criminals. Not misguided. Not wrong. Scum. ... Hours after calling you and me “scum,” he put up another post calling us “sleazebags.”" (Thom Hartmann, Dec 26, 2025)

The reactionary centrist logic is simple: if the left does something bad it’s the left’s fault, and if the right does something bad, it’s also the left’s fault for making them do it. It’s a simple formula and once you see it every one of their arguments is the same

— Adam Serwer (@adamserwer.bsky.social) January 10, 2026 at 6:24 PM

Calling Democrats “treasonous” and “human garbage” would’ve been a big deal in any other era. Now it’s just another fucking Saturday.

[image or embed]

— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) May 2, 2026 at 6:17 PM

One of many reasons it is time to sign off Twitter

"Musk has a penchant for sharing memes and diving deep into the bellows of Twitter conversation, to what end, no one knows. But as with most things on the internet, it all eventually goes Nazi." — David Covucci, Musk shares Nazi soldier meme—after deleting praise of quote from Nazi, Daily Dot, November 7, 2022

Elon Musk says his politics are in the center but extremism experts say he's using Twitter to increasingly empower right-wing viewpoints, Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Hannah Getahun, Business Insider, Dec 11, 2022

---

A Jan 31 screenshot I took of what was trending, at least in my location, at that moment.

---

Here's a May 27 tweet by Elon Musk — consistent with conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the media.

Here's a May 27 tweet by Elon Musk. (I took the screenshot around mid-day on May 31, exactly four days later, so the views/engagement stats reflect that timeframe.) The sentence is not by Voltaire, but by neo-Nazi Kevin Alfred Strom, who said it on the radio in 1993.

---

Here is what Seth Abramson had to say about it. "Community Notes," by the way, is a feature on Twitter that allows users to say that the information is incorrect or portrayed incorrectly and to provide essential context so others can understand it properly.

Where to find Seth Abramson: for politics, sethabramson.substack.com and Notes, and for other stuff retrostack.substack.com

Speaking of aliens, see: UFO files release coming ‘very soon,’ Kash Patel says – as pastors warned Americans may ‘abandon faith over revelations’ Arshi Qureshi, The Sun, 6 May 2026

"Do you not see the intolerant graffiti on the walls now? You are in the middle of Westboro Baptist Church trying to talk to people about the debt ceiling. They don’t care. They want you dead.

I still check Twitter occasionally, out of habit. My thumb finds the Bird icon, I can’t help it.

The app is a swamp. The most prominent accounts, the ones that the owner enjoys, are engaged in open homophobia. The top replies to any news story include bizarre accusations of 'grooming' by guys who shouldn’t be allowed to own firearms. A basset hound could win the Westminster Dog Show and the first 18 replies would be accusations that Hunter Biden runs a child sex dungeon.

Is that enjoyable to journalists? What are you doing there?"

— Jason O. Gilbert, Why Are Journalists Still on Twitter?, JOG Blog, Substack, June 2, 2023

At a June 24, 2023 Pride parade near Portland, Oregon, "rival far-right groups and neo-Nazis who began fighting among themselves while protesting," CNN reported. "Online conspiracy theorists soon jumped into the fray. Rather than accept the fact that two far-right groups who have previously embraced violence were responsible for the clash, online trolls insisted it must be a so-called 'false flag' event – a set-up of some kind to make the neo-Nazis look bad." They randomly picked a 22-year-old Jewish man who had just graduated college and falsely asserted he was a Neo-Nazi working undercover for the federal government. Elon Musk engaged with the harassment. Brody's lawyer, Mark Bankston, is "the same attorney who successfully sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his lies about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre."

June 29, 2023 tweet from LGBTQReads:

A.R. Moxon:

"It's hard not to look at Elon Musk’s cartoon villain smirk-face and not see a cruel boy with a magnifying glass who just spotted an anthill.

It strikes me that the experience of being on Twitter is very much like the experience of living in the United States, or anywhere else where the whims of wealth hold the reins of power, where increasingly the answer wealth has for those of us experiencing misfortune or calamity—much of it brought on by conditions caused by the decisions of wealth—is: work for us until you can't, then give us all your money to stay alive until it’s all gone, then die as politely as you can. And to be sure, many of us are far more vulnerable to this than others, because our systems are inherently supremacist, but a supremacist system is an unsustainable system, and an unsustainable system will not sustain, so the reason that you feel vulnerable is ... you are."

— A.R. Moxon, "The State of Things," The Reframe newsletter on Substack, July 12, 2023

A.R. Moxon again:

"...since the new owner—a fella I’ll call Owner X, whose overall sensibilities seem to have arrested around 7th grade, who seems like the kind of guy who finds it amusing to pull wings off flies—seems intent on wrapping his $44 billion toy around a telephone pole, and so it seems foolish to blindly trust it to stick around in the long term or maybe even the near term..."

* * *

This leads to a lot of talk about why. Some believe he’s just a profoundly ignorant fool with a predilection for bullying, in over his head and demolishing something he barely understands. Others think that he’s a deliberately destructive vulture capitalist with a predilection for bullying, who wants to sabotage something of public value to create an environment more conducive to oligarchy.

* * *

...maybe it’s all a little too abstract a question to matter, since the result is the same."

— A.R. Moxon, "The Dipshit Paradox": Profoundly ignorant? Deliberately malicious and lying? Does it matter? The demand to engage in good faith with supremacists in a musky age, The Reframe newsletter on Substack, July 26, 2023

Not that it was ever meant to be good.

"there's a lot of bad tweets every day. In my thinking, the worst tweets are really the best tweets, because that's what the website is designed to do." — Rick Paulas, 2021 interview

"He dresses up his antisemitism in tech jargon and cutesy tweets, but it’s antisemitism nonetheless. Musk actively promotes the conspiracy that Jews are responsible for all the world’s ills, a tale as old as time. He’s dangerous, and not to mention staggeringly unoriginal. And terrifyingly for Jews, he’s also incredibly powerful. ...with his encouragement over the weekend of the Twitter hashtag “#BantheADL”...now he’s actively threatening to sue the ADL because of an erroneous and unquantifiable claim that somehow the organization’s calls for the Twitter CEO to regulate hate speech resulted in a 60% reduction in advertising revenue."
"Elon Musk is an antisemite," Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket (Substack), September 5, 2023

Kabas acknowledges that "One of their [the ADL's] core values is that any criticism of Israel is equal to antisemitism. ... they often equate right wing antisemitism with progressive criticism of Israel’s leadership and policy ... But we can hold two things true at once: The ADL is not representative of all American Jews, and Elon Musk is an antisemite who’s singling out the organization as a stand-in for all of us." She points out this article from the Guardian:

"Research published by the ISD and CASM Technology (CASM) earlier this year found a major and sustained spike in antisemitic posts on Twitter since the company’s takeover by Musk, with the volume of English-language antisemitic tweets more than doubling.
Analysts detected 325,739 English-language antisemitic tweets in the nine months from June 2022 to February 2023, with the weekly average number of antisemitic tweets increasing by 106% when comparing the period before and after Musk’s acquisition. The rate of creation of antisemitic accounts more than tripled in the period after Musk’s takeover."
— Twitter faces legal challenge after failing to remove reported hate tweets, Jason Burke, The Guardian, July 10, 2023

"I’m going to call it X when I'm talking about the evil bullshit; whatever the users built that is still good and fine is still Twitter to me." — A.R. Moxon, "How to Help Writers Leave X," September 7, 2023

Elon Musk Threatens To Sue Anti-Defamation League For X’s Lost Ad Revenue (HuffPost)

Scrambling after defending the loudest Nazi on the planet:

[image or embed]

— Eli Valley (@elivalley.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 2:19 PM

In October 2023, upon war between Israel and Palestine:

On November 15, an X (Twitter) user who identifies as Jewish said that anyone who believes "Hitler was right” should “say it to our faces." Someone else replied that certain "hordes of minorities" don't "like" Jews, and the user gives not "the tiniest shit" since "western" Jews "support[ed]" those groups "flooding their country" in the first place. Musk replied to the second person: "You have said the actual truth."

Apple, X's largest advertiser, said it would temporarily pause ads, as did Amazon, Lions Gate Entertainment, Disney and the European Commission. “It’s self-destructive for any advertiser to be associated with him,” Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management, told CNN.

"Essentially, they [right-wing leaders including Musk] argue that left-wing Jews who have supported progressive causes have incited racial division and hatred. Antisemitic claims along these lines have been around for years — they’re just usually dressed up as opposition to 'cultural Marxism.'
* * *
Matt Gertz of Media Matters observed that 'Musk is, in the parlance of the white nationalists who applauded his remark, explicitly ‘naming the Jew’ as the source of the problem.'"
— Matt Shuham, Right-Wing Figures Go All In On Antisemitism, HuffPost, November 17, 2023

On Musk's endorsement of "the vile replacement myth," A.R. Moxon writes ("Channels of Rage," The Reframe (Substack), November 19, 2023):

"It’s the latest incident in Musk’s ongoing promotion of white supremacist and neo Nazi ideology, and probably the most unignorable one, or at least it isn’t being ignored by advertisers, who have pulled their ads. Musk may be confused by this, since they didn’t pull their ads after many other horrible things he’s said recently, but he may also be counting on them coming back, as they have after other times he’s said horrible things."

On November 19, Ron DeSantis — polling second in the upcoming presidential primary, behind Donald Trump — when asked for a reaction to Musk's comment (made four days previously), said "I did not see the comment" and added that he assumed Musk was the victim here: "And so I know that Elon has had a target on his back ever since he purchased Twitter, because I think he’s taking it in a direction that a lot of people who are used to controlling the narrative don’t like." So does DeSantis mean Jews control the media, or what? He went on to say "I know Elon Musk. I have never seen him do anything." He added that it would be "surprising" if Musk had said anything antisemitic.

Musk tweeted on the afternoon of November 19: "This past week, there were hundreds of bogus media stories claiming that I am antisemitic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wish only the best for humanity and a prosperous and exciting future for all." Someone who is truly not antisemitic would, in this situation, apologize for the hurt they've caused, acknowledge that they said specific words that were ill-chosen or misunderstood, listen to Jews and thank them for their feedback, and commit to improving their speech and behavior. Actually, someone who is truly not antisemitic would have followed these general steps at the first opportunity and thus would never get years-deep into antisemitism as Musk is.

Brian Krassenstein, co-host of a podcast with 159,000 followers on X, replied to Musk six minutes later: "as a Jewish man I have never once thought that you were even remotely close to an antisemite." Musk replied one minute later: "Thank you". This helps reveal the interests of Musk and his supporters. They want to polish Musk's image and come up with a reason not to listen to Jews. Their answer: They've found one Jew who's willing to tell Musk that it's unthinkable that anything he should ever say is "remotely close" to antisemitic.

Musk "wants it both ways. He wants the following he’s cultivated to know very clearly that he remains antisemitic, but he wants to simultaneously appear to toe a line meant to stem the exodus of advertisers from Twitter, and keep his other businesses from being affected. It should be very easy to see through this façade." Netanyahu can see the truth as well as anyone else, but unfortunately "the fascist Zionist right places their nation above the safety of Jews everywhere else. Some, like Netanyahu, even appear to embrace the perverse incentive that danger to Jews around the world bolsters Israel as the only place that can ensure our safety. It’s a deal with the devil. Or, in this case, a deal with Elon Musk."
— Fascist Meetup: Netanyahu Welcomes Elon. Plus the Netherlands, Argentina, and the global far-right. Joshua P. Hill. November 28, 2023.

"A day after Elon Musk restored the X accounts of notorious right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his website, Infowars, the platform is actively promoting Jones’ account to other users, giving the fringe figure a major platform to air his deceptive and dangerous views.

Conspiratorial posts from Jones’ account appeared Monday in the “For You” feed of some users who do not follow him on X; his account was promoted in some users’ “Who to Follow” recommendations; and his name was promoted in X’s top trending topics section.

Musk on Sunday also elevated Jones’ newly restored profile, which had 1.6 million followers as of Monday, by engaging with him in a live streamed interview on X. They were joined by Andrew Tate, the self-proclaimed misogynistic internet personality who earlier this year was indicted on human trafficking and rape charges in Romania although he denies the claims, far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy."

— Elon Musk’s X is encouraging users to follow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after reinstating his account, Clare Duffy, CNN, December 11, 2023

[Update on Andrew Tate:]

Now the real question is: Will Trump see interfering in their extradition as enough of an attention getter that he won't be able to resist, despite the fact that it would do incredible damage to his ability to deport undocumented people to allies?

[image or embed]

— Bo Thompson (@gaudipern.bsky.social) July 18, 2026 at 11:37 PM

[Update:]

“I don’t really have much of a life, you know?” Loomer says. “So I’m happy to dedicate all my time to helping Trump, because if Trump doesn’t get back in, I don’t have anything.”

* * *

Loomer’s ability to remain visible to Trump is, perhaps, a testament to the former president’s media diet — which apparently includes content on the platforms where the self-described “most banned woman in the world” still freely posts. Her show, “Loomer Unleashed,” airs via Rumble. She’s also on Gab, Gettr, Telegram — and now X, formerly Twitter, where she was unbanned after Elon Musk took over. “It’s pretty amazing,” she says of her reinstatement. “It’s given me an opportunity to have a comeback.”

* * *

“Donald Trump is, like, hope for me,” she says. “I don’t really feel like I have anything in my life. I got canceled everywhere for what, speaking the truth? And they treat me like a criminal. Half the world thinks I’m a Nazi. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

— For Laura Loomer, a Trump comeback is everything: The anti-Islam, anti-immigration crusader has repelled even would-be allies in the MAGA movement — with one major exception. Kara Voght, Washington Post, May 2, 2024

On January 9, 2024, another journalist informed Stephen Monacelli that his X account was gone:

"My Twitter/X account with more than seventy-thousand followers had been suspended overnight, along with the accounts of several other prominent journalists and leftist posters. Thalen and other journalists were asking if I knew why. ...by the afternoon, the other suspended accounts and I had been reinstated. I never received a notification as to why my account had been suspended. Elon Musk himself claimed in a public post that the entire episode had been an accident, the result of a sweep for “spam/scam accounts — an assertion as convenient as it is implausible."

Matt Taibbi has seen his X posts suppressed, so he's complaining on YouTube.

Hmm.

Here's the same guy complaining in 2026:

Incredible stuff

[image or embed]

— Eoin Higgins (@eoinhiggins.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 7:41 PM

Bari Weiss's Free Press website ran this screed by Matt Taibbi defending his lawsuit against a book author. But the Free Press apparently never reached out to the author. Even though Weiss spiked that 60 Minutes piece for not reaching out to enough Trump officials www.thefp.com/p/matt-taibb...

[image or embed]

— Bill Grueskin (@bgrueskin.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 10:27 PM

This lede. www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/trump-musk...

[image or embed]

— Sean Casten (@seancasten.bsky.social) March 22, 2025 at 2:54 PM

"It’s bad. So, so bad. To be on Twitter for more than a few seconds is to experience a deluge of some of the most brain-rotting images and videos and posts you’ll ever come across. In that way, it reminds me of the years where I had to go on 4chan or 8chan to study extremism. It’s gone mainstream, and that should trouble everyone." — Jared Yates Sexton, November 2025

"Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X rolled out a feature that had the immediate result of sowing maximum chaos. The update, called “About This Account,” allows people to click on the profile of an X user and see such information as: which country the account was created in, where its user is currently based, and how many times the username has been changed. ... Almost immediately, “About This Account” stated that many prominent and prolific pro-MAGA accounts, which signaled that they were run by “patriotic” Americans, were based in countries such as Nigeria, Russia, India, and Thailand."
Elon Musk’s Worthless, Poisoned Hall of Mirrors How X blew up its own platform with a new location feature. Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic, Nov 24, 2025