Donald Trump’s administration is planning to spend $4 million to bolster right-wing media in Europe, part of a package of at least $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes in the region, according to four people familiar with the funding.
The grants risk deepening tensions between the Trump administration and European governments, some of which have already accused Washington of interfering in their domestic politics.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) says the funding is meant to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. It comes as European countries prepare for elections over the next couple of years, and as the Trump administration openly backs Europe’s populist right-wing and far-right parties.
The problem isn’t information; it’s actual things happening in real life. The far-right is as strong as it is because its lies contain a grain of truth: It offers (cruel and ineffective) solutions to people’s very real problems. This means the only realistic solution here is to deny them that grain of truth by offering effective solutions to those problems. Now some effort is being made here—it’s no coincidence that the left is rising as if in response to the far-right—but more of that needs to happen and fast. The focus on misinformation misses the fundamental reasons that misinformation works as well as it does (after all it’s not like lying was invented in 2016).
That’s a REALLY good point. We basically need a lot more Mamdanis.
While other lefties are arguing symantic nuances of political theory and purity testing and excommunicating themselves, this guy is fixing potholes and makes the busses run on time and gets workers paid. People SEE that stuff, they FEEL that stuff.
If the side of empathy and compassion moves in swiftly and shows how good life can be under them, people will see that abundance is possible.
'Pubbies and their fascist friends get followers because they pretend we’re forever on a deserted island, and their first move is
"We gotta make the ‘hard decisions’ and cull the people we personally conveniently don’t like and take all your resources…for survival." And it riles up everybody’s fear-monkey-brain into thinking they must know what they’re talking about.
Lord of the Flies was bullshit about fundamental human nature, but it got so lauded because the fashies get to tell us that’s what they’re “protecting us from.”
When we aren’t even on a desert island at all, and people actually enjoy helping each other get along. They need to condition us to cockfight for them.
Yes, high-control systems are like that, they demand obedience to the dogma even when data shows other way is better. Low-control systems encourage curiosity, discovery, update knowledge with latest for human benefit. For some it’s easier to do what told, don’t think much, and appeals at times of scarcity, some of which is controlled by the wealthy, to keep people worried and seek a “strong hero”, fall for the propaganda and vote right-wing. Please see through it, the pattern is clear, regression for the majority like Russia, Argentina and with maga policies.