Free speech threat: Associated Press must use the language the Trump administration wants

The Trump administration sets conditions on the Associated Press being allowed access to cover an official event in the Oval Office: the AP must use the language the Trump administration wants.

"Today we were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office." www.ap.org/the-definiti...

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 4:32 PM

The AP didn't comply.

"The Associated Press was shut out of an executive order signing Tuesday because of their refusal to call the body of water to the west of Florida the 'Gulf of America.'" — Paige Skinner, Trump Punishes The Associated Press For Not Calling The Gulf Of Mexico 'The Gulf Of America': The White House told AP to call the body of water the Gulf of America or they would be banned from an event at the Oval Office. HuffPost, Feb 11, 2025

"On Wednesday afternoon it happened again. The AP reporter was banned when Trump held a swearing-in for ceremony for Tulsi Gabbard, his new director of national intelligence." — Brian Stelter, Trump White House bars Associated Press reporter for a second day. AP signals legal action, CNN, February 12, 2025

The White House press secretary accuses resisters of "lying." Trump is president, his word is truth, and anyone who disagrees with him or does not submit to him is a liar.

“I was very upfront in my briefing on Day 1 that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America,” [White House press secretary Karoline] Leavitt said at an afternoon press conference.

— Nina Golgowski, White House Defends Barring AP From Press Events Over 'Gulf Of America' Decision: "If we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable," said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. HuffPost, Feb 12, 2025

Encyclopedia Britannica won't comply either.

Encyclopædia Britannica will continue to use ‘Gulf of Mexico’ for a few reasons: -We serve an international audience, a majority of which is outside the U.S. -The Gulf of Mexico is an international body of water, and the U.S.’s authority to rename it is ambiguous. 🧵⬇️

— Encyclopaedia Britannica (@britannica.com) February 12, 2025 at 12:18 PM

Google Maps Is Deleting Negative 'Gulf Of America' Reviews: Google Maps deleted 1-star reviews of the renamed body of water and has turned off the ability to leave reviews. Sebastian Murdock, HuffPost, February 13, 2025

The White House bans the AP indefinitely over the use of ‘Gulf of Mexico’, Brian Stelter, CNN, February 14, 2025

OPINION: Trump Trying To Force World’s Biggest News Org To Bend To His Will: Maybe you don’t care that the president of the United States is punishing The Associated Press, but you should. S.V. Date, HuffPost, Feb 14, 2025

Counting down the days until the white house conditions access on how trans people are referred to or how democrats are referred to. This fight isn't really about the name of a coastal sea.

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— Katelyn Burns (@katelynburns.com) February 19, 2025 at 6:44 PM

Even the right-wing pro-Trump propaganda outlets realize that this will come back to bite them in the ass:

Fox News And Newsmax Sign Letter Urging Trump To Rescind Ban On The AP: The president has called the news agency a “radical left organization.” Marita Vlachou, Medium, Feb 21, 2025

"The core principle of free speech is a prohibition on government interference. And Trump has been more than willing to use the power of the federal government to curb speech he disfavors.

* * *

In April, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was reversing a policy from the Biden administration that prohibited government officials “from seeking journalists' records and compelling their testimony in leak investigations." A memo by Attorney General Pam Bondi indicated that “reporters’ records could be subpoenaed for reasons broader than unauthorized disclosures of classified information,” CBS News reported. The memo “decried leaks that ‘undermine’” Trump’s agenda."

— Rebecca Crosby and Judd Legum, The state of free speech in Trump's America, Popular Information, Jun 10, 2025

Trumpist government deleted records of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as they believe "black smokers" (left) and "white smokers" (right) on the ocean bottom are DEI and "fake science" 🙈

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— Arseny Khakhalin (@khakhalin.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 6:49 AM

THEY LITERALLY PUT "BLACK" AND "WHITE" IN THE BANNED WORDS LIST Colors. THOSE ARE JUST COLORS. Ordinary words that are part of the English language, that don't have any political or racial connotation when being used to describe the COLOR of LITERAL PHYSICAL OBJECTS. This is completely mental.

— Invalid Hamdle (STOVE TOUCHED I REPEAT STOVE TOUCHED 👉♨️) (@invalidham.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 7:19 AM

In 2021, I made a slideshow based on 50+ incidents of police misconduct toward journalists. It covered all California over a 12 month period. The legislature responded with new laws to protect press. I just made a new one. It's bigger. It's worse. And it's just one week in Los Angeles.

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— Adam Rose (@adamrose.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 3:16 PM

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‘Should Shock the Conscience’: Trump Admin Escalates War on Press With Subpoena of New York Times Reporters: “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.” Brad Reed, Common Dreams, Jul 11, 2026

No arts grants if you're trans

Today's news:

"In a move that has shaken arts organizations, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) said on its website that it is eliminating a funding program that supports diversity, equity and inclusion and underserved communities.

* * *

The NEA says applicants for all grants must follow "all applicable executive orders" from the White House. The guidelines state that applicants "will not operate any programs promoting" DEI or use federal funds "to promote gender ideology.""

— 'Chilling effect': Arts organizations react to end of DEI initiatives from fed agency, Elizabeth Blair, NPR, February 11, 2025

No identity-based observances

Intelligence officials are starting to leak to me now too. Here’s a memo Defense Intelligence Agency personnel received instructing them to suspend observances including: - Holocaust Remembrance Day - MLK Day - Juneteenth

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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 10:24 AM

Ask harder political questions to go on 'narrative offense'

Trump, says Anand Giridharadas yesterday on the Ink, takes advantage of other people's civil discourse "by ascribing the [airplane] crash to...DEI." Are we "being governed by a manosphere podcast"? Maybe.

"We don't know what caused the [airplane] crash. But the crash should be cause for reflection about the project of disemboweling the state.

The crash should cause us to remember that government matters. That staffing at agencies matters. That public goods matter. That competent leadership at the Pentagon matters, instead of hegsethian vapidity. That it’s dangerous to email millions of government workers, trying to trick them into quitting their jobs.

In short, there is much one can say in a moment like that while still being factual, still being classy, still being decorous. But refusing to be in the void-excavation business."

Stop digging the hole. Stop expanding the void.

Hey, a couple rules from Giridharadas:

"The first rule is not to leave the void. Don’t wait for meaning to make itself. It won’t.

The second rule: find ways of reacting that don’t end up being unconscious hyping.

When Trump attributes plane crashes to DEI, you don’t have to consent to having a conversation about DEI and plane crashes. You don’t have to do the newspaper thing of calling the statement controversial or reporting it and citing a 'lack of evidence.'"

Karen Attiah says we should reply to him by saying: "Are you saying that this crash was caused by desegregating the races?"

I actually wish the media would stop using "DEI" and "diversity hiring" and just get to the essence of the thing and ask: "Are you saying that this crash was caused by desegregating the races?" And see what happens.

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— Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 12:25 PM

Reinstated, by the way:

Getting my job back at the Washington Post would not have been possible if it wasn’t for me belonging to a union. @postguild.bsky.social and @wbng.org are the unions I belong to. I was able to challenge my wrongful termination because of the collective bargaining agreement / union contract!

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— Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) August 27, 2026 at 8:04 AM

Jessica Marie Johnson (no longer on Bluesky) said: "Resegregation orders. Not anti-DEIA orders. Not a "rollback" of DEIA. A rollback of DEIA is a return to segregation. You don't break even on a desegregation order issued in 1965 or after. Resegregation. Segregation. Segregationist. Resegregation. Segregationist." (January 31, 2025)

"The remedy," Giridharadas says, "is not to avoid reacting to Trump. He is, like, the president. The remedy, rather, is to live in more than mere reaction to him. It is to go on narrative offense."

Insofar as "they are having fun. They are having a good time," (Christina Sharpe, Dec 5, 2025), maybe going on narrative offense means to make it less fun for them. It is tricky for me to come up with such a strategy, since it requires me to think like them. I don't actually know what deep degree of awfulness is the ingredient that enables them to have fun doing what they're doing. I don't know how suffering becomes glee, how shame becomes pride. I don't know why they don't have a second-order desire to change.

"Any Democrat who says “Voters don’t really care about this stuff” needs a good smack in the head. The answer to that problem is to make them care. Republicans do this all the time; if they have something they wish was on the agenda, they force it on the agenda, no matter how ridiculous it is or how removed it is from people’s lives. How many Americans cared five years ago about whether some middle school trans kid a hundred miles from where they live wanted to play softball? But they care about it now, because Republicans made them care."
— Paul Waldman, Democrats Need to Treat the Supreme Court Like the Villain It Is: The Court is out of control, and we'll never see reform unless we build the case for it. Starting now. Dec 5, 2025

U.S. states can continue to follow Paris Agreement goals

In 2020, I saved this headline:

Joe Biden’s climate plan could put Paris Agreement targets ‘within striking distance,’ experts say. Helen Regan, CNN, November 9, 2020

We lost 1.5 C.

Also, we lost the federal government.

However, U.S. states can continue to commit to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Since Oct 2023, Google has sold its AI tools Vertex and Gemini AI to the IDF

A few posts from a thread on Bluesky...

STATEMENT—from Google workers with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign on Washington Post’s reporting that Google rushed to sell the Israeli military its AI tools since the launch of its genocidal attack on Gaza began on October 7, 2023 [THREAD] www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

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— No Tech For Apartheid (@notechforapartheid.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 4:39 PM

Here's that Washington Post story.

Yesterday, reporting from the Washington Post confirmed: Since October 7, Google executives feverishly pushed to get Google's state of the art artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military. This includes Google’s Vertex and Gemini AI.

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— No Tech For Apartheid (@notechforapartheid.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 4:42 PM

Critically, part of this push came from an urgent effort to beat out Amazon, Google’s main competitor in cloud, and the other beneficiary of Project Nimbus.

— No Tech For Apartheid (@notechforapartheid.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 4:43 PM

This reporting officially debunks Google’s canned response to workers and press who have, since 2021, raised concerns about the corporation’s business with Israel: Project Nimbus is directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.

— No Tech For Apartheid (@notechforapartheid.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 4:43 PM

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have killed over 186,000 Palestinians in Gaza (as estimated by the Lancet in 2024, and likely a massively under-reported number); and products like Vertex and Gemini are not used just for tasks like email or payroll.

— No Tech For Apartheid (@notechforapartheid.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 4:44 PM

The thread continues on Bluesky.

A few months later:

"Not long ago, artificial intelligence executives were asking Congress for more regulation. The House of Representatives budget bill passed last week demonstrates how quickly the industry has changed course.

Inside the House bill is a moratorium on the sort of state-level AI regulations that have addressed political “deepfakes” and using AI to deny medical claims. At the same time the House bill cuts Medicare, it would funnel more money to tech companies to develop kamikaze drones.

For proponents of AI regulation, the House bill is the culmination of a shift in the industry’s mindset. Rather than paying lip service to popular concerns about AI, the industry has decided to partner with the Trump administration on its goal of “global AI dominance.”

“The message is clear. The House Republican proposal is stealing from poor people to give huge handouts to Big Tech to build technology that is going to perpetuate the president’s authoritarian plans and crackdowns against vulnerable people,” said Kevin De Liban, the founder of TechTonic Justice, a nonprofit aimed at preventing tech from harming low-income people."

Trump’s Big, Beautiful Handout to the AI Industry; The budget bill advanced by House Republicans bans states from regulating AI while pumping billions into autonomous weapons. Matt Sledge, The Intercept, May 29 2025

Until suddenly he saw an opportunity to seize power:

President Donald Trump in a Truth Social post on Saturday announced he is forming an “AI Force” to enforce regulation of artificial intelligence and will soon appoint an AI “czar.”

“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” Trump wrote. “Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows! However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System.”

Trump Announces 'AI Force' to Regulate Artificial Intelligence, Plans to Name AI Czar, Brianna Tucker, Sept 19, 2026

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

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— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell.com) September 30, 2025 at 6:24 PM

Drones are becoming organized crime’s weapon of choice in Latin America. Governments are struggling to keep up Sol Amaya, CNN, SEpt 9, 2026

Trump admin 2025: Science sites are being taken down

As we watch all mention of diversity actively get scrubbed from the NIH website in real time it's important to know that, we were not taking over anything, we were just trying to exist. - Only 2% of NIH R01 grants are awarded to Black investigators. The goal is total erasure/elimination.

— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 3:31 PM

I’ll emphasize that this is a rumor. But I’ve heard from people I trust that CDC has been ordered to scrub their datasets of LGBTQIA identifiers. This is supposed to start tomorrow. If you rely on gov datasets that have anything to do with this anti-woke witch hunt, I would download a copy ASAP.

— Claire Zagorski, MSc, LP (@clairezagorski.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 8:47 PM

Same exact thing.

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— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) February 1, 2025 at 6:17 PM

New from me in @wired.com: Donald Trump's cabinet is full of conspiracy theorists who think COVID-19 is a bioweapon, and that the doctors and scientists who now report to them helped create it. Those scientists are worried about the coming military tribunals. www.wired.com/story/reveng...

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— Justin Ling (@justinling.ca) February 12, 2025 at 4:22 PM

We’re only two months in, & they’re cancelling research into pediatric brain cancer. They’re deporting US kids with brain cancer. They’re putting millions at risk of malaria, TB, & polio. I for one will never forgive or forget those who said ‘it won’t be that bad’. 😡

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 10:30 AM

As far as I can tell no one else has yet reported (tell me if I missed something!) on the DOJ dictating what meetings NIH employees can attend, which, well, seems odd to me.

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— Dave Levitan (@davelevitan.bsky.social) September 18, 2025 at 9:59 PM

Not BREAKING NEWS because the Trump admin has been deleting and altering federal datasets for over a year. You can argue about policy. But when the government starts eliminating the data we use to determine whether those policies are actually working, that deserves a hell of a lot more attention.

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— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) September 7, 2026 at 10:46 AM

Elon Musk's salute

"It has begun. Trump is the President and Elon Musk did his part in launching the administration by doing a Nazi salute at the inauguration.

* * *

This iteration of fascism is all about the oligarch class. It will fuse corporate power with state power, as fascism has always done, but it will also strip our government for parts and attack the working class specifically to reinforce the power of the ruling class, rather than attempting to build the power of the nation in any way. The oligarchs want to repeal the New Deal, repeal worker protections, crush unions and more. We must understand this as we enter the second Trump administration. We will be confronted with Nazism, unparalleled greed, and countless attacks from multiple directions. And, in the chaos, we must keep hold of this bigger picture if we are to effectively fight back.

The Trump onslaught is already upon us in direct, material, tangible ways. ICE raids are about to start; by the time you read this, they may have begun. Today they will likely be executed in fourteen cities. At the same time, Trump and Melania are both scamming the MAGA faithful out of billions of dollars with crypto schemes. The first executive orders of the new administration target trans and non-binary people, increase oil production, and even move to end the birthright citizenship enshrined in the constitution."

— J. P. Hill, The Nazi Regime Begins: Trump, Musk, and fighting the fascist oligarchy. Jan 21, 2025

Regarding that scam:

"Today, the guardrails have become so flimsy that blatant corruption barely makes the news. On Friday night, Trump launched a meme coin—a digital token with no real-world value whatsoever—and abruptly increased his net worth by tens of billions of dollars.

Anyone in the world, whether foreign despots, criminals, or lobbyists hoping for a political favor, can now directly pay the president, a man who governs by loyalty tests and self-interested, transactional dealing. When I checked this morning, it was the tenth most prominent story on the New York Times website; by tomorrow, it will have mostly disappeared from view and discussion, even as it becomes a defining feature of his corrupt administration."

— Brian Klaas, How to survive the second Trump era. Jan 20, 2025

"The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”"

— Heather Cox Richardson, January 20, 2025

Here:

"Of all the dark moments during Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the darkest may have been the moment Trump acolyte and world’s richest man Elon Musk threw up not one but two Roman salutes—the gesture most strongly associated with Nazis and the phrase “Heil Hitler,” but also used as a symbol of support in other fascist regimes. The gesture was shocking, and observers from the left to the racist right alike agreed on what they saw. Neo-Nazis cheered. (“Holy crap … did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump Inauguration Rally in Washington DC … This is incredible,” one prominent Holocaust denier wrote, later adding, “We are so back.”) Moderates and liberals were shaken.

One group, though, was unbothered: The Anti-Defamation League, which has as its mission fighting antisemitism and bigotry more broadly.

* * *

The entire ethos of the men and women (but mostly men) who make up the white-supremacist-adjacent fascist-friendly too-online right is one of saying what they really think with enough plausible deniability to claim it’s all just a big joke, and if you take offense, it’s because you’re a triggered woke scold. There’s always a veneer of irony, a little smirk. If the story gets too big, then it’s yet another example of a biased media engaged in, as Musk called the latest headlines, dirty tricks."

* * *

The ADL, after all, has as its national director a man who has compared wearing a kaffiyeh to wearing a swastika. The group has conflated protests against Israel’s war in Gaza with antisemitism—and while far too many of these protests have indeed veered into the antisemitic, the ADL seems to equate just about any opposition to Israeli militarism with antisemitism, a position that has badly damaged their credibility. It’s not that there is no antisemitic threat from the left; there is. It’s that a sense of proportion is also necessary, and the ADL seems to believe that an encampment of kaffiyeh-wearing college kids is more dangerous than the wealthiest man in the world who owns a major communications platform and has the ear of the most powerful man in the world. This posture is a damning indictment of an organization that has a crucial mission, is being put to the test, and is badly failing."

It’s Clear Enough What Elon Musk Did. The ADL’s Response Is Pathetic.: We desperately need a better anti-antisemitism group than this. Jill Filipovic, Slate, Jan 21, 2025

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ICYMI: My floor speech about Elon Musk’s Nazi Salute. Did not expect this to go as viral as it has, but it needed to be said. Speech text 👇🏼

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— Senator Dayna Polehanki (@senpolehanki.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 11:34 AM

Germans are in the streets demonstrating against the extremist right there and here (note the language of their message). Where are our rallies in defense of democracy? Where is our resistance? Sie wollen die Brandmauer www.zeit.de/politik/deut...

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— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 3:32 PM

For inspiration, look at this from the Süddeutsche: no paywall; with or without Google Translate, the photos tell the story of resistance. Thousands rally across Germany against the right. www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/art...

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— Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 3:36 PM

"The groyper-posting billionaire who supports a far right German political party and waxes nostalgic about apartheid South Africa definitely knows what a Nazi sieg heil looks like and could easily make up other hand gestures that don’t look exactly like them." — Aaron Huertas (Bluesky, January 20, 2025)

Do not waste time arguing about whether or not Musk believes all the tenets of Naziism. (We know he supports a few key ones.) The point of the salute was to (a) activate and encourage Nazis who were watching and (b) assert his own invincibility.

— Bilal Dardai (@bilald.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 1:13 PM

There are many mysteries and ambiguities in life but the nature of this gesture is not among them. It's a Nazi salute.

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— Binyamin Appelbaum (@bcappelbaum.bsky.social) February 21, 2025 at 9:01 AM

"My favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote--"you are what you pretend to be"--comes from Mother Night, a novel about an American spy who pretends to be a Nazi propagandist only to realize later in life he was just being a Nazi propagandist." Gillian Branstetter, Bluesky‬

On an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast released February 28, when asked about the salute, Musk took the opportunity, not to say that racism and antisemitism are bad and that he will do everything in his power to make a better world for all, but instead to say that only people who invade Poland are Nazis, and thus the label is inaccurately applied to him. The bar is literally in Hell.

"“What’s relevant about Nazis is, like, are you invading Poland? And if you’re not invading Poland, maybe you’re not,” he continued. “You have to be committing genocide and starting wars.”"
— Elon Musk Defends Nazi-Like Gesture: 'Meant In The Most Positive Spirit Possible': “You have to be committing genocide and starting wars" to be a Nazi, the tech billionaire told Joe Rogan. Pocharapon Neammanee, HuffPost, Mar 1, 2025

Elon Musk Shares Post Saying Hitler 'Didn't Murder Millions Of People': The repost, later deleted by Musk, said: "Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did.” Sebastian Murdock, HuffPost, Mar 15, 2025

“He who wishes to take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm, to conquer and eradicate evil by force, is already in the hands of evil.” CARL JUNG

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— Visio Smaragdina (@visiosmaragdina.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 10:58 AM

"Just came across this quote: "To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. Whoever defates part of the empire becomes the empire; it proliferates like a virus, thereby it becomes its enemies" Philip K Dick A quote I've been pondering deeply lately" — SPACE WIZARD RETURNS (Bluesky, March 16, 2025)

Adolf Hitler's “Mein Kampf” is still on U.S. Naval Academy shelves. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and “Memorializing the Holocaust” are not. An order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office led to a purge of books that are critical of racism — but preserved volumes defending white power.

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— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) April 11, 2025 at 2:06 PM

Read the Naval Academy’s list of removed books.

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— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) April 11, 2025 at 2:07 PM

July 8, 2025 - we are here: Grok's Spouting Hate, and No One's Surprised (3-min read on Medium)

The Department of Defense will begin using Grok, the AI chatbot built by Elon Musk’s start-up xAI, the company announced www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 11:45 AM

Trump DOD Gives $200M Contract To Elon Musk's AI Company: The company’s signature chatbot recently called itself “MechaHitler.” Ryan Grenoble, HuffPost, Jul 14, 2025

I'm trying to think about how I would have reacted if shown this headline five years ago

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— David Klemperer (@dmk1793.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 5:20 PM

"Elon Musk’s seizure of Twitter and its rebranding as X is the playbook’s most brazen chapter. Under the fraudulent banner of “free speech absolutism,” he gutted the platform and began the real work: transforming a global communication tool into his personal propaganda megaphone. His philosophy of “Freedom of Speech, Not Freedom of Reach” was a lie from the start, a pretext for a system where his allies are amplified and his critics are shadow banned into oblivion. After his endorsement of Donald Trump, the political agenda became undeniable. Researchers identified a "structural break" in the algorithm, a point where the code was rewritten to systematically favor Republican accounts. The system is now so blatantly biased that it has triggered investigations by the European Commission. The final piece of this ideological propaganda project is Grok, his AI chatbot that called itself “MechaHitler” just last week is being aligned to avoid being "woke," creating a model that reflects his own paranoid worldview back at him."
— Alejandra Caraballo, The Oligarchs' Coup Against the Free Press Is Happening Now, The Dissident, 17 Jul 2025

More than one, actually. youtu.be/I3-sR9MJ7IQ?...

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— Kate (@k8c.bsky.social) October 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM

"The proposals also advise Mr. Trump to prioritize Europeans who have been “targeted for peaceful expression of views online such as opposition to mass migration or support for ‘populist’ political parties.”

That appeared to be a reference to the European far-right political party Alternative for Germany, whose leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans and denigrated foreigners. Vice President JD Vance has criticized Germany for trying to suppress the views of the group, which is known as the AfD.

A senior official said the Trump administration was monitoring the situation in Europe to determine whether anyone would be eligible for refugee status. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan had not been finalized.

Mr. Trump enacted some of the proposals in the documents even before the plans were submitted to him, including slashing refugee admissions and offering priority status to Afrikaners, the white minority that once ran South Africa’s brutal apartheid system.

Mr. Trump has claimed that Afrikaners face racial persecution in their home country, a claim vigorously disputed by government officials there. Police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa."

— Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Hamed Aleaziz, Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People: The proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted. Oct 15, 2025

For about one day in November 2025, the swastika was not a definite hate symbol in the U.S. Coast Guard. Swastika No Longer Hate Symbol Under New U.S. Coast Guard Policy: Report They changed the policy back as soon as it was widely reported. Coast Guard Again Classifies Swastikas, Nooses As Hate Symbols. However, their public walkback was apparently a lie, as they switched it back to the original plan: "The Coast Guard ultimately decided to put out this version despite the uproar that a November report about it received." New Coast Guard Policy Downgrading Classification Of Swastikas, Nooses Takes Effect: Report

grok not beating the allegations futurism.com/future-socie...

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— jon christmas 🎄 (@jonchristian.net) December 1, 2025 at 5:51 PM

[pressing earpiece] "we're receiving new info" futurism.com/future-socie...

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— jon christmas 🎄 (@jonchristian.net) December 1, 2025 at 6:19 PM

it should probably be a bigger story that the richest man on earth and leading Republican is a fucking Nazi media needs to stop beating around the bush. this is Nazi shit.

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— Sam (@samd.bsky.social) December 3, 2025 at 12:03 AM

The US regime is basically formalising support for European far right parties. Moscow must be laughing, since they finance so many of them.

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— Alastair Millar (@skriptorium.info) December 5, 2025 at 7:18 AM

The new National Security Strategy is a propaganda document, designed to be widely read. It is also a performative suicide. Hard to think of another great power ever abdicating its influence so quickly and so publicly. It will be worth following the reactions around the world, not just in Europe.

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— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum.bsky.social) December 5, 2025 at 7:17 AM

BREAKING: X’s chatbot Grok isn’t just making AI porn deepfakes, it’s now making Nazi AI porn deepfakes, undressing women and showing them wearing “swastika bikinis”. Many of these women are Jewish, including a recently deceased Holocaust survivor.

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— Decoherence Media (@decoherence.media) January 7, 2026 at 2:27 AM

I reached out to more than three dozen X advertisers, xAI investors, politicians, and government agencies about the growing library of sexualized deepfakes generated with Grok—now including Renee Good. I only heard back from four, with three declining to comment. spitfirenews.com/p/grok-deepf...

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— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge.bsky.social) January 8, 2026 at 4:04 PM

The world’s richest man™️ is a straight up 1488 Nazi and white supremacist. Today he wanted to let us all know it without the Nazi salute.

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— Malcolm Nance, Leading Resister (@malcolmnance.bsky.social) January 8, 2026 at 7:09 PM

The Guardian doing inexplicable voluntary free public relations work for a corporation profiting from sexual abuse by headlining this as the image gen being "turned off". It isn't off: they've just monetised it. What the fuck are we doing here people, come on. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

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— Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) January 9, 2026 at 4:18 AM

The ADL found that Grok was the most anti-semitic chatbot in its testing -- and did its best to minimize that finding, because everyone is afraid of Elon. @miasato.bsky.social runs it down www.theverge.com/news/868925/...

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— nilay patel (@reckless.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 10:17 AM

See a photo of Gregory Bovino doing the salute in Chicago on October 28, 2025. (Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP/Getty)

After the 2026 election

Elon Musk is crashing out after a disastrous midterm election night for the Republican candidates he bankrolled. After pouring hundreds of millions into the races, Musk is now deleting posts and lashing out on X as the fallout continues.

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— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) November 4, 2026 at 3:22 PM