#demagoguery

Miguel Afonso Caetanoremixtures@tldr.nettime.org
2025-09-22

"There’s nothing in how Charlie Kirk “debated” that aimed to get at nuances or understanding. They were entirely designed to seek to humiliate his opponent. They’re full of red herrings, lies, and attempts to deflect from any actual logic, as the video link above showed.

The point is not about getting to any level of understanding. It’s to try to quip and dunk in the manner most likely to go viral when shared on social media in 20-second snippets.

The format actively discourages the kind of thoughtful, nuanced discussion that might actually change minds—the kind actually designed for persuasion. Instead, it rewards the most inflammatory takes, the most emotionally manipulative tactics, and the most viral-ready soundbites. Anyone going into these situations with good faith gets steamrolled by participants who understand they’re playing a different game entirely.

When trolls demand debates, they’re not interested in having their minds changed or genuinely testing their ideas. They want one of two outcomes: either you decline and they get to claim victory by default, or you accept and they get to use your credibility to legitimize their nonsense while farming viral moments.

None of this means we should avoid authentically engaging with different viewpoints or challenging ideas. But there’s a crucial difference between good-faith intellectual engagement and feeding trolls who are just looking for their next viral moment."

techdirt.com/2025/09/17/the-de

#Debate #OnlineTrolls #Demagoguery #Demagogue #CriticalThinking #MarketplaceOfIdeas

WIST Quotationswist@my-place.social
2025-08-08

A quotation from Adlai Stevenson

You may seek comfort at the feet of false leaders, who like medicine doctors beat drums to ward off evil spirits. You may listen to false leaders who tell you that there is an easy way — that all you have to do is to elect them and thereafter relax in a tax-free paradise, the political equivalent of sending 10¢ to cover the cost of postage. You may, fearing to face the facts squarely, be distracted by phony issues that have no bearing upon the life-or-death controversy of our time. But deluded you run the risk of being beguiled to destruction, for there is no easy way.

Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1952-09-29), “Fireside Chat” (radio and television broadcast)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/stevenson-adlai-ewin…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #adlaistevenson #campaign #campaignpromises #demagoguery #easyanswers #election #leadership #platform #politics #promises #politicians

WIST Quotationswist@my-place.social
2025-08-01

A quotation from Adlai Stevenson

A campaign addressed not to men’s minds and to their best instincts, but to their passions, emotions and prejudices, is unworthy at best — now, with the fate of the nation at stake, it is unbearable.

Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) American diplomat, statesman
Speech (1952-09-29), “Fireside Chat” (radio and television broadcast)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/stevenson-adlai-ewin…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #adlaistevenson #appealtoemotion #campaign #demagoguery #election #fearmongering #issues #politics #prejudice

WIST Quotationswist@my-place.social
2025-07-10

A quotation from Alexander Hamilton

The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) American statesman, author
Letter (1792-08-18) to George Washington, Enclosure: “Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration,” Objection 14

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/hamilton-alexander/7…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #alexanderhamilton #civildisorder #control #corruption #demagoguery #democracy #despotism #disorder #incitement #lawlessness #republic #security #subversion #tyranny #unrest

WIST Quotationswist@my-place.social
2025-07-08

A quotation from Bill Watterson

   CALVIN: I’m writing a fund-raising letter. The secret to getting donations is to depict everyone who disagrees with you as the enemy. Then you explain how they’re systematically working to destroy everything you hold dear. It’s a War of Values! Rational discussion is hopeless! Compromise is unthinkable! Our only hope is well-funded antagonism, so we need your money to keep up the fight!
   HOBBES: How cynically unconstructive.
   CALVIN: Enmity sells.

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1995-07-07)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/watterson-bill/77538…

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #billwatterson #calvinandhobbes #anger #antagonism #compromise #culturewar #demagoguery #demonization #donations #enmity #fundraising #hatred #politicalmovement #politicalpower #politicalpressure #politics #usvsthem #values

Calvin & Hobbes - Enmity sells.
𝓜𝓪𝓻𝓬 𝓐𝓷𝓰𝓮𝓵𝓲bax3l33t
2025-06-12
StacesCases2 🇨🇦 📎stacescases2.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy
2025-05-31

Arya on @lovelyperfecttalks.bsky.social exposes the heartbreaking irony of a struggling Trump voter who regrets her choices, revealing how MAGA #demagoguery and Trump's DISASTROUS policies directly impact the very people they claim to "protect." youtu.be/q5A7hD40sXY?...

MAGA Supporter's Own Words HUM...

WIST Quotationswist@my-place.social
2025-02-18

A quotation from Bierce

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Patriotism,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/bierce-ambrose/74874…

#quote #quotes #quotation #demagoguery #fame #nationalism #patriot #patriotism #publicity #scoundrel #villain

Kyozou-Yes on 50kyozou@sfba.social
2024-11-21

If it was about the price of eggs why is #NancyMace relentlessly attacking a trans woman?
#uspol #demagoguery #trans

Susan Larson ♀️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🌈Susan_Larson_TN@mastodon.online
2024-09-23
2024-09-21

Trump’s Anti-Haitian Hate Has Deep American Roots
The former president’s grotesque demagoguery is just the latehttps://newrepublic.com/article/185909/trump-hatred-history-haitian-americans st in a long line of vicious attacks on residents and immigrants from the island nation.

2024-09-16

“While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for [#Reagan] in the White House, in the admin, in campaigns & on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the #HarrisWalz ticket," the group writes. "The #TimeForChoosing we face today is a choice between #integrity & #demagoguery, & the choice must be Harris-Walz. Our votes in this #election are less about supporting the Democratic Party & more about our resounding support for #democracy."

#HarrisWalz2024

2024-09-16

Ronald #Reagan's fmr staff back #HarrisWalz ticket: "Today is a choice between #integrity & #demagoguery."

17 fmr staff members of the late #Republican President Ronald Reagan are endorsing the Democratic nominee, VP #KamalaHarris.

In a joint statement, the staff members wrote that Reagan, if alive, would have supported #Harris.

"President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘#TimeForChoosing.'“

#HarrisWalz2024
cbsnews.com/news/ronald-reagan

2024-04-10

#Democrats lock on #Latino vote that they took for granted has apparently expired, along with most of the party's former core principles.

While #Republicans are clearly defined, no one's quite sure what a Democrat is, other than a politician hitching their wagon to Joe Biden, whom polling says less than 30% believe has the mental acuity and physical fitness to enter another term.

In a tight Presidential race, Democrats can little afford to lose even a fraction of the Latino vote, the fastest growing voter bloc in the US, which is expected to provide about 15% of the total 2024 #ballots cast.

As recently as 2012 , 70% of #Hispanic & #LatinX voters dug the Donkey, but that total has severely spiraled into toilet since, with new polls showing only 20% of #LatinoVoters expressing faith in #BidenAdmin to tackle #economy & #crime, their most important issues. In a recent Ipsos Latino voter poll commissioned by Axios & Telemundo, Trump had a 22-point edge over Biden when asked about dealing with economic issues.

Despite a supposed hot economy, decades of #Democrat promises in aspirational immigrant communities have oft delivered few tangible results that voters see on a daily basis, and political consultants say any legislative achievements of Democrats have largely gone unnoticed by most voters in the news spin cycle. Democrat leadership runs most of America's largest most visible cities, many of which have become a locus of crime, #drogas and inevitable urban decay, while occasionally notorious corruption cases such as NJ Sen. Bob Menendez, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown's prison time, or the racist LA City Council scandal, all certainly didn't help bolster the image of Democrat politicians.

Despite Trump's overtly bigoted dictator envying #demagoguery, Democrats are now polling as low as they did in 1960 with non-white voters, back when Klan connected #Dixiecrats controlled much of the party caucus.

Hispanic heritage voters with roots south of the border now seem willing to accept #GOP candidates, many who have claimed religious faith as a mantle. At least one in five Latino voters surveyed as considered switching parties to Republican which, if enacted upon, is a big enough margin to throw the 2024 Presidential election.

#Biden either barely leads, or trails #Trump in many recent polls of #latinovoters such has #NYTimes which says Trump now has a 6-point edge with Latino voters, a significant slide, since #JoeBiden won 60% of their vote just a few years ago.

Other polls, have shown tighter or even greater divides in a downward direction, as Democrats have politically focused on less bread & butter basics, identity politics and "diversity, equity and inclusion", many Latinos and other non-white voters, have forged ahead on their own, starting small & large businesses, feeding families, with little interest in the pissing match of petty party politics in America.

#PaywallFree Links below

thefulcrum.us/ethics-leadershi

axios.com/2024/04/09/biden-app

vox.com/2024-elections/2409168

Ben Royce 🇺🇦 🇸🇩benroyce
2024-03-09

@GrimmReality

Lyndon Johnson described how the manipulates small minded bigots for power. , , , , etc.: it's a simple game plan, and it unfortunately works in a country full of hateful pin heads

Lyndon Johnson tells us how manipulating small minded bigots for power works
Jonathan D. AbolinsJonAbolins@mastodonapp.uk
2023-09-25
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴HistoPol
2023-08-16

@GottaLaff

He will probably make it in the Guiness Book of World Records for a long zome, hopefully for infinity.

He's the caricature of a leader. The only thing he is really good at is .

2023-08-05

The primaries of the #GQP are turning into a shit show that could be called #America's new top #psychopath. With his ramblings about a #deepstate and "slitting throats from day one", #RondeSantis is desperately trying to pass #Trump in terms of utter insanity and #demagoguery.

#populism is #poison, and politicians banking on it have to keep escalating their incendiary language to keep their supporters happy. But if the happen to get elected, following up is not an option.
#UnitedStates

2023-07-03

People like #MichelHouellebecq are like junkies and public acclaim is their heroine.
The only problem is that #France does not need any more #demagoguery and incendiary language right now - it needs #reconciliation and listening to each other much rather than talking about each other in a highly condescending tone.

Maybe self-declared intellectuals should check out the movie #LaHaine, as Mathieu Kassovitz was very clairvoyant with this one.

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