I read this as pro-piracy and anti-AI, generally speaking, since the former is for personal use (art should be free to share and enjoy) while the latter is for commercial use (you should not be allowed to freely profit off the work of artists).
I think our democracies have trouble adapting to new times. They’re like an old OS where all the exploits have been figured out and are freely shared among attackers, yet we refuse to slap on an antivirus.
Case in point: anti-democracy candidates should be banned from the democratic process. They’re using democracy against itself. Călin Georgescu was banned for this reason as well as the 0 funds thing, because really his biggest issue was that he had direct ties to the modern day legionary movement (the Legion were the Romanian nazis back in the day, even collaborated with Hitler and did a bunch of pogroms under the military dictatorship of Ion Antonescu). So now this new guy George Simion, leader of our far right party (of which CG was a member a few years ago but then kicked out for being too on the nose about his sympathies for the Legion and Ion Antonescu), he’s literally running as his proxy and said he’ll install him as PM. So, I ask you: why is this possible? Why ban CG from running but not ban his BFF who literally everyone agrees is only running as a proxy for CG? It’s just bad law enforcement. Democracy OS needs an antivirus update.
EDIT: Forgot to tie the idea to what you said.
So, in this context, the exploits are basically the same. Information is also global, so all you need is some guys in a central place (like, say, USA) being heavily financed, and foreign influence can spread easily to local influencers looking to make a quick buck by just copying the talking points. A foreign government which wants the EU dismantled, such as Russia or USA (yes, USA: the authors of Project 2025 are gearing up for this next, and all the Trump-like leaders that popped up in Europe in the last decades were part of Steve Bannon’s efforts to create a fascist internationale), can additionally just directly fund local influencers throughout Europe as they did during CG’s campaign in Romania, or as they did with USA influencers at TENET Media who they gave $10m (which in the context of a foreign government’s budget is peanuts — it’s obvious there’s a lot more money being spent on such operations, and they admit it).
To get an idea for the kind of money conservative influencers are paid, we can look at an example of USA money funding USA influencers: Steven Crowder was offered a contract by The Daily Wire which he performatively turned down in public, calling it a “slave contract”, because really he wanted to make his own media conglomerate to complete with them. TDW in response revealed that they did this because Crowder (who pretends he’s independent, like all conservative pundits do) had a previous contract with The Blaze that was just expiring, and then showed the unredacted contract they offered him: it was for $50m.
Put together all the dark money with the opportunists who think that by emulating these influencers/politicians they can get rich or powerful quickly, not to mention the real extremists who seize this opportunity to revive their sick ideologies, and you have a thriving ecosystem all pulled in the same direction by greed and lack of morals. It’s really just scams all the way down.
This is ridiculous. Wtf Sweden!
I subscribe to this belief too. There’s no way in hell that an experienced spy like Putin would have any trouble manipulating the easiest to manipulate person on the planet (literally just flatter him). Plus, Putin is exactly the kind of guy who Trump wants to emulate, so he naturally looks up to him.
Bookmarking this. Well put.
bullets and bombs
I think it’s enough to just do: arrests of leaders (and banning them from public speaking but for life) + breaking up the party + outlawing the party + banning people who decide to take up the mantle of/act as a declared proxy for the party and attempt to visibly pick up where they left off.
That last one I learned from my own country’'s current situation: in Romania, a crazy far right candidate came out of nowhere (on the wings of illegal undisclosed campaign donations) to win the first round, and as soon as that happened our mainstream far right party’s candidate started supporting him. Then they canceled the election because of the undisclosed donations (he literally declared 0 campaign spending!) so now, in the redo of the election, this other guy is basically running as his proxy and will likely try to appoint him PM if he wins.
IMO it’s not that blue check equals credibility, but rather it equals that you are who you say you are. This is a good thing particularly when it comes to public figures/officials — not for their sake, mind you, but for the sake of other people who may see a tweet from them. If the checkmark is there, then it’s them. If not, then it’s an impersonator. Right now it’s difficult to tell.
Tl;dr: it doesn’t make what they say real, it just makes them real.
Always has been.
Mf is acting like whether or not you have a job isn’t life and death for the majority of people. That’s why people were upset with him — not because of an avatar but because their existence depends on their ability to find a job.
There have been countless stories of tourists trying to take them home followed by the bomb squad clearing part of an airport.
Jfc…
I didn’t prove your point, you’re just being inconsistent: you started by saying this “mafia” of yours is supposedly imposing a trend, but now they’re just following the trend — they can’t do both. If they’re just mimicking support, then they’re just following… so who’s leading? Who’s the boss of the “LGBT mafia”? That was my original question: who’s incentivizing all the wokeness?
As for “forcing behaviors”, they’re not forcing anything more than some KPIs that can be skirted by hiring a consultant to do some bullshit sensitivity training. Just take a look at how shallow the environment pledges have been: all that posturing and nobody’s actually hitting their targets, not companies and not even countries (because it’s a neoliberalism problem). They talk a big game then bury the lede when it’s time to show results. They do the same crap with all progressive issues, and their hypocrisy is delegitimizing the actual movements, because people associate the real issues with this shallow pretend support, and come to believe it’s all fake. We’re so cooked, man.
Ah yes, the CEO of Blackrock is definitely an ally to LGBT people (head of their “mafia” even, according to you) and not just cynically pandering to whichever way the wind is blowing for exactly the amount of time it’s beneficial to him and not a second more.
Just so you know, no progressive likes these evil companies or considers them or their CEOs allies. Their DEI initiatives are as fake as their environmental ones, it’s just virtue signaling. They don’t actually do anything for LGBT people — or any people for that matter, because believe it or not, real DEI includes straight white guys too! — they just adapt their marketing and product offerings to growing progressive sentiment. But the second the culture shifts, so does their “very serious commitment” to ESG/DEI/whatever.
And don’t get me started how the rainbow marketing is non-existant in countries without widespread acceptance of LGBT people, which you’d think would be a crucial piece of their activity if their goal was actually to spread an ideology, right? (By contrast, think how MAGA-like movements exist in even the most progressive countries, and they push on regardless.) But this supposed “LGBT mafia” doesn’t push at all, they’re reactive to the environment and they shift gears the second it becomes a perceived liability: Musk, Zuckerberg, all of Big Tech and other supposed global wokeness spreaders, they all pivoted away from performative progressivism the second they realized it wouldn’t harm their profits.
So there’s your LGBT mafia chief. Got any more?
“The left is sniff so mean!”
New shiny trend like…education? Or more broadly: workers’ rights, unions, due process, civil rights?
Are the LGBT mafia in the room with us right now? Who is their leader?
The fact that she’s a lady might actually save her from that hellish place because they apparently refuse to take women and turn them back. But of course there are other hellish places.
While they do play a part, race and gender are not the deciding factors here. This is clearly about class — and more recently, allegiance.
We told you…