Leaders such as Trump and Orbán could only be effectively opposed, she said, by ditching a “legalistic, technical, technocratic approach” in favor of “something for the electorate to be excited about”.
That would require them to represent the many rather than the few, which would mean ditching the kind of people who rose in the party for the last 4 decades because they could do exactly the opposite and be handsomely rewarded for it.
Mind you, that’s a broader problem than just the Democrat Party in the US and affects most mainstream parties in Western Democracies.
Exactly.
Watch what is happening in Hungary. We were the petri dish, the prototype of the rot, we might be the prototype of the solution.
“What particularly rings out is how certain large media outlets or owners or large conglomerates try to appease Donald Trump by settling lawsuits or by firing journalists [or] editors,” he said. “It really resembles what happened in Hungary in the 2010s.”
This is why we’re fucked. Huge media corporations are selling us out rather than fight back against bullshit lawsuits from this corrupt administration. I blame you, ABC.
If I got right what you’re saying (I might have misunderstood it), the situation is slightly different in Hungary. Instead of the media outlets and conglomerates trying to appease the governing party, it was actually an active takeover by direct and indirect government relationships/strawmen.
Slightly less relevant context:
spoiler
Back when the popularity of Internet was on the rise in Hungary, one of the biggest news media sites was origo.hu. It got later bought out by a company that kept getting funds from one of the organisations handled by the later minister of finance. Nothing to see here.
One of the largest and most popular independent media sites, index.hu got also taken over in a similar fashion by Orbán’s most infamous strawmen of the times, Lajos Simicska. Later on they had a falling out, and it was funny to see how suddenly his media took a 180, and in a phone call with a reporter he also called Orbán a scumbag (well, ‘geci’ /p.:~getsy/ was the actual term, which is a slur word for semen/cum, basically meaning scumbag, and the paraphrased ‘Orbán egy geci’ /Orbán is a ‘geci’/ became a meme, but I’m meandering off). However, his control over these portals was taken over, and for a short while there were only one or two significant news/media sites independent from the party’s control.
Huge media corporations are selling us out
So the situation here is rather similar; the only difference was that we’re not the US, so let’s take the ‘us’ out of the above.
The difference is that now conventional corporate media has a much weaker effect on people’s beliefs now.
Now its corporate social media that is influencing our deep fried brains.
Even that’s slightly misleading because these media companies are also in the middle of merger talks so it’s a bribe to further consolidate the already consolidated media landscape.
We didn’t beat them senseless after 2016. It was obvious then.
Alfred Hugenburg energy. Literal nazi shit.
I have an issue the American populace can rally around: “Deep-fry Stephen Miller”
Democrat leadership would rather be under a Autocratic Trump than a Progressive president. They’ll show you in the next election. Either they all need to be replaced or the party needs to die.
I think the best chance for progressive democrats is to try to take over the party.
David Hogg showed the way, and the ones that helped unseat him for it has now been revealed as the ones that need to go.Follow the leaders by their actions, not their ability to sweet talk their way out of doing what is necessary.
That’s what happenned inside the more-rightwing party in the US, and in the UK too (which also has a FPTP voting system hence is a similarly flawed “democracy”).
If the Fascists can infiltrate the more-rightwing mainstream party, why can’t the lefties do the same to the less-rightwing party?
That said, it’s my impression that in both the US and UK, even the less-rightwing party is a lot closer to Fascism to begin with than it is to being left-of-center - Neoliberalism is all about removing the Power from the hands of voters and putting it in the hands of the Wealthy Elites by making what voters (supposedly) control in Democracy - the legislature and executive - be secondary to the Power of Money, or in other words, to make voters come second rather than first and hence the entire system less democratic.
(Also in the UK when the lefties did try and take control of the less-rightwing party, there was a massive campaign by the entirety of the Press, the more-rightwing party and even the until then faction in power inside the less-rightwing party to revert it, even involving Israeli-linked Jewish Organisations in Britain - as the campaign relied mostly in slandering the lefties and the elected leftwing party leader of being anti-semites - which succeeded and returned the Hard-Right Neoliberals to the leadership of that party - were they immediatelly started a purge of leftwingers - all of which is probably a pretty good predictor of how things would happen in the US if the leftwing tried to take over the Democrat Party by trusting the democratic nature of the voting system and other structures within that party and just electing a new leadership: in this era and in countries which Duopoly Performative Democracy systems, the power parties are not at all democratic and when push come to shove they will ditch the Theatre of Democracy they use to seem democratic and operate under the same Rules Of Power as all other authoritarians).
I agree with basically all of that. Problem is USA and UK are essentially 2 party systems, so taking control of either is the only option to gain power.
For some reason UK voted against having a more democratic system, which is so stupid moronic idiotic that I don’t have words.
Both countries need to modernize their democracies, and until that has happened the only option is to gain the power to do it.
But yes the media are right wing too, because all media is owned by billionaires, so there is no such thing as fair press in politics.
UK has the BBC, but that too is controlled by right wing powers, so although it’s better than American media, it’s still mostly on the side of the right wing establishment when it counts.It’s a shitty situation in both places, but democracy is not something that is given, it is something that needs to be fought for. And even when we have it, we need to actively preserve it.
Oh, I’m not saying that it’s not possible or that there is any other option, I’m saying “Learn from the errors of the British leftwingers when they tried to do it there”.
Be prepared for the dirtiest of dirty tricks and the entirety of the Press revealing itself as nothing more than a Propaganda machine for the Wealthy Elites and their political minions.
Mind you, at this point and with the Israeli Genocide turning into the XXI century Holocaust and after the insane overuse of the “anti-semite” slander against people merelly speaking against the mass murder of children by the Zionists, it’s doubtful that using accusations of “anti-semitism” as basis of their dirty tricks campaign would actually work (though you can see that they’re sorta trying it against the guy in New York).
If anyone has ever heard the quote “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” please give this a read and share it with whoever you can. Order of the Star Dissolution Speech: we have been lead down a path where truth no longer exists, progress cannot be achieved until we acknowledge our errors and learn from our mistakes.
Right. Democrats. Actually do something about this. The Do Nothing Convention. Yeah, okay. Deffo gonna happen, just you fucking watch.
“Take it from us, the people who failed in Hungary!”
So, who else? Jill Stein the cocksleeve for Putin? “We can deny votes to Kamala Harris” Jill Stein?
When you can answer that question, that’s when the insanity will start to end. Took us 35 years.
Democrats:
Yes you really convinced us, we will hastily create a special committee, with the specific purpose of writing a very stern letter to the Trump administration.they should say what they really mean - take up arms and resist with violent aggression.
No, what they really mean is to coalesce around popular issues and stop fucking around.
To open to both sides of the culture war divide and reject the parts of it which are divisive and embrace the parts of it which are unifying. To actually court both left and right wing voters and not left and right wing donors. To rebuild your society.
To stop courting one group at the expense of another and try and find issues with broad appeal. Take for example “draining the swamp”. What if someone actually did that? But instead of campaigning solely on stupid slogans, campaign on a wealth tax and name names where crimes will be investigated and wealth will be confiscated. Or infrastructure. Or anything that everyone can agree on. People like Mamdani are good, but what if you had a Mamdani who can mend bridges even with nationalists? What the current things happening in Hungary is showing us is that everyone slowly got so far from where the people are at, Trump and Harris were both extremists and normal people just want a return to normalcy, where crime meets punishment and an honest life’s rewards are greater than a dishonest life’s. That there is no “left” and “right”, just people with issues.
There was a point where Hungarians also started shooting back in history in similar times. That is a way as well. We went from a place where it was only good for the oligarchy to a point where it was good for nobody. Your equivalent would be that Trump would be hanging from a noose next year, but then AOC would be shot the next. And also their followers. Roving gangs in your town, first rounding up everyone not on the right, then everyone not on the left. Then rinse and repeat. Death, rape and accusations.
And finally you end up with a hyperinflation record and a country that will never be what it once was.
if we actually went and “coalesced” around those popular issues, we would realize we should be fucking fighting. Violently.
