This twitter thread is a brutal takedown on the what passes for the conservative movement these days

[Soph0571]

Fair warning - there is some whataboutery about the left that is bollocks in this content... BUT you really want to read this. Fucking hell - background Bret Stephens the far right wanker wrote a shitty column basically parroting the far left danger to America theme that is the next new thing from the actual nazi's, yadda yadda. Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom who is not exactly a known liberal (because he isn't even!), even though he contributes to MSNBC, had a few things to say in response... which I have put into one image for ease of reading cause it is such a long thread...


https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom


BIFF. BAFF. UPPERCUT. BOOM.

[Journeyman]

1. Some good points. Too bad it won't get near the exposure it deserves among the radical right . . .

[Indykatie]

2. Thanks for Posting. I follow @radiofreetom but Missed This Thread. It's Good.

[mdbl]

3. All the moderate conservatives that voted for Dump,,,

thought he would act independently of the establishment. Unfortunately, that didn't ring true. Too bad his loyalties are to a cabal created by Putin and the KKK.

[3Hotdogs]

5. Nah, his loyalties are to his bottom line, which is consistantly red.

[mdbl]

6. That may have been true in 2015

but don't think it's true today.

[3Hotdogs]

7. You don't think the allegiance to Putin is in response to Russian loans to prop up his failing

businesses?

Also, Kushner, who got a loan to bail out 666?

[mdbl]

8. sure I do,

but things have progressed way beyond that. He now knows that that Mitch McConnell will cover up his corruption after the senate failed to indict him. Don't think Don the Con even cares about the Putin money story anymore. That's how bad it's gotten.

[JonLP24]

15. Why do you say red?

From what I understand Putin and his party is right wing.

United Russia

(Snip)

The party has promoted explicitly conservative policies in social, cultural and political matters, both at home and abroad. Putin has attacked globalism and economic liberalism as well as scientific and technological progress.[58][59] Putin has promoted new think tanks that bring together like-minded intellectuals and writers. For example, the Izborsky Club, founded in 2012 by Aleksandr Prokhanov, stresses Russian nationalism, the restoration of Russia's historical greatness and systematic opposition to liberal ideas and policies.[60] Vladislav Surkov, a senior government official, has been one of the key ideologists during Putin's presidency.[61]

(Snip)

International alliances Edit
United Russia has signed cooperation agreements with the right-wing Freedom Party of Austria,[67] Serbian Progressive Party,[68] the Cambodian People's Party,[69] the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party,[70] and the League of Italy.[71] Its youth wing, the Young Guard of United Russia, has an alliance with the youth wing of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany, Young Alternative for Germany.[72] The party has also signed cooperation agreements with the Serb nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Estonian Centre Party (though party leader Jüri Ratas recently claimed that the agreement has not been active for ten years and that there is no current cooperation between the parties).[73] The party has proposed a cooperation agreement to the populist Five Star Movement (M5S). The Five Star Movement never gave a proper answer to the proposal and it is currently unknown whether it actually accepted the proposal or not

(Snip)

United Russia has come in for criticism that it is "the party of crooks and thieves" (партия жуликов и воров, a term coined by activist Alexey Navalny)[93] due to the continuing prevalence of corruption in Russia.[94] In October 2011, Novaya Gazeta published an article describing how members of the public were writing the slogan on banknotes in protest.[95] In December 2011, Putin rejected the accusation of corruption, saying that it was a general problem that was not restricted to one particular party: "They say that the ruling party is associated with theft, with corruption, but it's a cliché related not to a certain political force, it's a cliché related to power [...] What's important, however, is how the ruling government is fighting these negative things".[94]

A poll made in November 2011 found that more than one-third of Russians agreed with the characterisation of United Russia as "the party of crooks and thieves".[96]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Russia

This is what I think confuses some progressives as they think anti Russia sentiment is more anti-communism or red baiting when it is not.

https://www.quora.com/Is-Russia-a-democratic-or-communist-country

[FakeNoose]

13. As for those moderate conservatives who went for Chump in 2016

... a lot of them went "eeny meeny miney moe" at the last minute. Those last-minute undecided voters never drank the Kool-aid (so to speak) however they had no idea that Chump was going to burn the place down either. Those are the people who can see what a disaster the last 4 years have been, and they'll never vote for him again.

Also don't forget about all those eligible voters who never bothered to vote because they didn't give a rats-ass in 2016. Most of them have been affected by the bungling of Chump, one way or the other. So many people have reasons to hate him and vote him out. Maybe they'll never join our party, but they'll help us get Chump and the evil Repukes out of office, and that's what we need.

[FreepFryer]

4. Is there a rolled up version ?

[sop]

9. It seems "Cancel Culture" has become the right's new "Political Correctness."

[localroger]

10. Trump was supposed to be another useful idiot like Reagan

...and to a less successful extent Bush the Dumber. Hey, he was actually a professional showman, right? But he turned out to be his own animal and his followers were a force the GOP establishment couldn't control. Reagan obediently read his lines and Bush v2 didn't really have a cult of personality. Trump doesn't take direction and while he doesn't have enough rabid followers to dominate the entire culture, he does have enough to dominate a political party. He managed to win the GE by basically lying about everything he intended to do, including paying lip service to enough GOP ideals to earn the elders' grudging support. But once he had the Presidency he used the very mechanisms that had been intended to make sure no populist ideals snuck into their platform to kick out everyone who wasn't willing to kiss his ring. The GOP might not even be the opposition party any more by 2024.

[sop]

11. I guess the GOP didn't anticipate how thoroughly diseased Trump's brain actually was.

In a perverse way, Democrats are lucky Trump turned out to be so batshit crazy; a rational Trump could have done much more long-term damage.

[localroger]

12. Those who weren't really familiar with him

...mostly held their noses and hoped that this "successful businessman" would have enough sense to do what was necessary to hold the line. A few knew from the beginning, mostly New Yorkers and those whose business interests had intersected Trump's, but nobody listened to them. Over the years as people have realized what he really is some have tried to keep him inside the coloring book lines, some have cravenly tried to use him for their own ends, and some have tried to do something about him -- but there have never been enough of the latter all at the same time to keep from just getting themselves purged. I suspect that if all the GOP people who have come to realize what he is today had known in 2016 he would not have been the GOP candidate.

[NoRWNJ]

14. The Anti-Marxist Crowd

I have been watching the anti-Marxism sentiment grow for awhile now and Nichols references it in this thread. I am wondering how many right wing anti-Marxists have actually read Marx and understood what they read? As far as the number of Marxists in the US goes, you might need a third hand to count them, but that's all. I wonder how many US Marxists you can place on the head of a pin???

[Warpy]

16. Probably as many as those in the SDS in the 60s

On, they read the Manifesto, SDS types thinking they knew it all and right wingers using it be work themselves into Commie bashing hysteria.

You see the same thing at work among the most passionate Christians who have never read the bible cover to cover.

True belief of any type seems to require not reading whatever texts one passionately supports or decries the most.

I read my way through Marx when I was a kid. I also read my way through Ayn Rand (although I readily admit to skipping the multipage polemics in the interest of following the silly plot in "Atlas Shrugged," the only way I got through it) and I did find Marx more nourishing, his description of capitalism and its various forces was spot on.

Marx came in handy when I tested out of Sociology, the CLEP exam was a good 80% Marx that year.

And I did know a few Marxists, literate ones, they used to collect in smoky discussion groups in the Red Book Store in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston. Most were so bogged down in minutiae they were no threat to anyone.

Tl,Dr: are you kidding? Read? They rely on people who agree with them to tell them what's good and what's bad.