But you are the one arguing “what she is really saying is…”, so is that a concession?
Where? No it doesn’t. As you just yourself quotes, she said, “ads to make fascism look benign”. She did not say that the ad is fascist, that is you putting words in her mouth.
If I say that Dianetics ads are ads to make cults benign, am I calling Dianetics ads a cult?
Do you really believe that the people behind these ads equally love the BLM protestor and MAGA insurrectionist?
I am aware of their PR. I am also aware of who is behind the ads. And the people who are behind the ads do not love the BLM protestor.
I do love that the articles I’m reading are saying young people, who are a target group for the ads, are media savy and aren’t falling for it. They are going online to find out who is behind the ads, not just blindly going, “I never knew Jesus was so cool. I’m gonna check out that Christianity thing…”
So seriously do you believe that people (a large minority if not a majority) are not going to read “ads to make fascism look benign” as “AOC says the ads are fascist”? And secondly that any significant number of those people are going to hear and believe the argument that “really AOC didn’t say they were fascist she said…”?
Neither of us believe that interpretation of what she said, but I guarantee we are in the minority in the country. AOC could have chosen her works more carefully (she is a politician that’s her job after all), it would have both made for a better criticism of the ads, and not given the impression that the democrats “think everything is fascist” (at a time when there are real actual fascists out there in the corridors of power)
On the hand if someone makes an ad that actually makes fascism look benign, portrays the Nazis as the victims of WW2, who were just protecting Europe from the Soviets, and the allies as the bad guys (not completely hypothetical there’s been threads on this board where people have been trying to debunk this kind of thing online), is that same thing as a fascist ad? I’d say yes, absolutely.
That’s why we shouldn’t bandy about “fascist” accusations about stuff like this that is not actually fascist.
I certainly do believe that there will be people who will make that claim. There are people right here in this thread that make that claim.
But, as someone said in this thread, ‘if you have to argue “well actually what she is really saying is…” then you’ve already lost the argument,’
There are a lot of people out there that will think the worst of someone, and twist their words into something other than what they actually said. I don’t know that it’s a majority of people, but if you are that pessimistic to believe so, I have no direct evidence to the contrary.
I’m sure there is lots of tone policing that could be done. But, it really wouldn’t matter, as things will constantly be taken out of context and reinterpretted no matter how careful someone is.
I wouldn’t say it’s a fascist ad. I’d say it’s an ad that makes fascism look benign.
Now, if they have commercials suggesting the people do fascist things, that would be a fascist ad.
I don’t believe in walking on eggshells to protect the feel feels of fascists.
Now, if you want to get into semantics, and say that she shouldn’t have called it fascism, but instead a totalitarian theocracy, that’s an argument that, while splitting hairs too thin for an angel to dance upon, is a reasonable conversation.
To say that people shouldn’t give their opinions because bad actors will take them out of context and misrepresent what they said is basically just telling people to shut up.
I think right wingers will misinterpret her no matter what she says, and self-described centrists will fail to ever give her the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think what she said was unclear at all. If I were the OP, I would ask a mod to change the title of this thread, because it’s clearly wrong.
This is more problematic than anything that happened during the superbowl. If you find a website (or any other form of media, this is is not hypothetical there are a lot of them out there which people are consuming right now) that is saying that, it is not just “making fascism look benign”. It is absolutely 100% definitely a fascist website attempting use “the Germans were victims in WW2 too” as the thin end of the wedge to supporting nazism, holocaust denial etc.
They are are one and the same things, to say anything else is encouraging nazis.
It’s really not. I’m not talking about some hardcore MAGA who thinks AOC is Stalin reincarnated and powered by dead babies. An ordinary apolitical American who is not interested in parsing the semantic difference between “a fascist ad” and “an ad designed to make fascists seem benign”, will see the correct, factual sentence “AOC said the ad was meant ‘to make fascists seem benign’” and interpret that as AOC calling that ad fascist.
She could have not used those words and avoided this problem but she didn’t. Its not the worst thing in the world, but it is political own goal. Probably not the worst political own goal we’ll see from a democrat before the 2024 election (they are a big fan of them on the whole) but it is what it is.
…we’ve played this game before. “Black Lives Matters.” “Defund the Police.” “You are using the wrong words! And now its your fault that we have to give the police billions more dollars this year!”
Yeah, she could have used different words.
But the words that she used were fine. If you want to ignore the very real problem that AOC pointed out here then that’s fine. That’s on you. That isn’t anyone elses fault.
When everybody else is saying anything they want to, I think its perfectly fine for AOC to say something as benign as this.
No it isn’t. The degree to which people over think this stuff just astounds me. This isn’t going to hurt AOC in her district. Millions of other Americans will support this message. And if this gets a few centrists upset, Dark Brandon is still over there busting union strikes and funding the police and he’s got all the real power anyway, so they are going to be just fine.
But they really weren’t. I took the time to read the context of what she said and parse what she meant. In that I probably make up a fraction of 1% of the people who read her words. The other %99,99 of the people reading that have no idea she was actually referring the false equivalence of BLM protestors and MAGA insurections. That is pretty bad political communication.
You’ve just made loads of people think the democrats believe the ad is fascist (which they’ve seen, right? and know its not at all fascist) and almost no one think about the ad makes that false equivalence.
my point is that you shouldn’t be nice to actual fascist. You know actual real fascists who support genocide, and want fascism to be the ruling force in the country. Who at this moment advancing their political platform based on this agenda .
Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt and say "they aren’t really fascists’ they are just “making fascism look benign.” They are one and the same thing.
When there are actual fascists out there in the halls of power, its pretty ill advised for center-left Democrat political figures (and anyone else) to lightly throw about the word “fascist” to describe a dumb superbowl ad.
And exactly how many other people like you out there is bothering to do that? It was a tweet. Deliberate short-form content that goes viral. It gets read, consumed, we all take away what we want from it, we move on.
Except you haven’t moved on.
She has 13.4 million followers, and my guess would be (outside of bots) %99,99 of people follow her because they “approve of this message.” And I think the message is a lot simpler than a “false equivalence of BLM protestors and MAGA insurections.” And I think most people that follow her get that.
Its very good political communication. She is a master at Twitter and engagement. She understand the audience and that medium very very well.
Yeah I’ve seen it and I’ll be unequivocal here: I think its facist propaganda. It’s appalling, it’s insidious, it nearly made me barf. And I didn’t need AOC to tell me that.
…what are you imagining fascist propaganda looks like? Do you think that for the people it was targeting, would it obviously look like propaganda, or would it look like something else?
This was her point. Assuming, for the moment, that the people funding the ads are fascist (whether or not that’s true). Her point was that this ad looks benign, even though those backing it are fascists. You read it wrong from the beginning – the ad isn’t fascist, it’s benign. It’s a benign front for a fascist group.
Now, whether you agree with her that those backing it are fascist is another question. But, at least you can spend the time to read what she wrote and parse it correctly as a native English speaker, which I assume you are.
AFAIK, only part of the funding and only from one problematic group.
Which is exactly what the Ad is saying is bad.
Or “So, aren’t you tired of the MAGA mob pushing their political agenda into everything?”
Lots of Christians voted for Biden and hate trump. In fact, it sure looks like a majority of them did.
You seem to be tarring all members of a religion with a very broad brush. Some people call that being bigoted.
That message would be wrong, but it is not at all what they are saying.
Fascism is a form of capitalistic Government led by a dictator. But the yes side seems to be defining it as “anything i hate”.
Yeah, people overuse the term. Note that trump, Boris et al are Right Wing Populists, not “Fascists”. Mind you, both Mussolini and Hitler started as Right Wing Populists, so it can be a danger signal. But the two are not the same.
“Defund the Police.” is a rally cry for Republicans. It has done many times more harm that good. In fact, imho, the Dems would have won the House if that term had no been popularized by the radical Left.
You really think that AOC or MTG saying stupid shit just hurts their own re-election, and not their party?
