Today in Radical Free Speech News

Free speech absolutist at work shot and chaser lol – wherein Musk immediately accepts yet more censorship requests by authoritarians, in this case, in Turkey.

Twitter censors so much more than it used to, seriously. Literally the only thing it censors less and promotes more is the fascists Musk actively recruited and/or restored to the platform, Musk himself, and other authoritarian rightists.

This is by design and this is what Twitter is now: a far-right authoritarian disinformation and propaganda platform.

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Fascism Watch for 15 May 2023 – the Don’t Fall For It edition

This is going to be a bit choppy, it’s been a really busy several days in ways not related to this so I haven’t had time to keep up.

First off: Don’t fall for the fucking “No Labels” party. It’s not a real political party. It’s a stalking horse designed to hand the 2024 election, and that’s all it is. Yeah, they’ve wooed a couple of old conservative Democrats into it, because old conservative Democrats are completely out of touch fucking idiots. The money comes from David Koch, Peter Thiel, and Harlan Crow, amongst other far-right authoritarian political activists. It’s a fucking op, okay? Don’t fall for it. And don’t let friends fall for it either.

Talking of things to watch out for, watch out for stealth candidates in 2024 – people running as Democrats who will flip Republican after the election and betray everything they stood for, like in North Carolina, where this monster Tricia Cotham ran as an aggressively pro-choice candidate in a reasonably safe Democratic district and then flipped Republican once in office to give Republicans a veto-proof supermajority and voted with them for a 15-week abortion ban. (Which the Democratic governor did in fact veto, and now they’re trying to peel off one (1) Republican to uphold the veto. We’ll see.)

Part II of Bloomberg’s series on “what happens when MAGA takes over your town” is up, talking about what’s happened in Washington, Pennsylvania. Spoiler: it’s not good.

“Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said that she witnessed first-hand former President Trump’s alleged sexual harassment, describing it as “really bad, to the point that I was extremely uncomfortable.”” This was, again, while he was in office.

Republican Ron DeSantis is helping raise money for the white guy who murdered a Black homeless man on a subway in New York City. The entire Republican Party is pro-street-violence at this point. Some years ago I pointed out that they were auditioning the Proud Boys as a paramilitary wing, but I guess they’ve decided to go more with independent contractors.

Federal Republicans are now starting to go after Disney, following Republican Florida’s lead, and also a former Navy digital ambassador who performs as a drag queen.

International fascist conspiracy theorists, now that they no longer have COVID protections to loon against, are going after weather forecasters because they… apparently… control the weather. Because sure, that’s how anything works.

Alabama:

Pro-‘medical freedom’ Alabama Republican pitches charging women who get abortions with murder, because of course, that’s who they are.

Florida book bans:

• Two new Holocaust-themed textbooks have been rejected by Florida’s state education department and another book was forced to change a passage about the Hebrew Bible in order to be approved by the state.
• Florida schools weaponize DeSantis’ baseless ‘pornography’ claim to restrict book access, banning books with no sexual content at all. But they do talk about white racism.

Florida, otherwise:

DeSantis signs bill blocking his own state travel records from public disclosure, because nothing says upright transparent business practices like making state travel records secret.

Missouri:

You may remember a story I covered about Missouri trying to make it difficult to impossible for citizens to overturn legislative actions via popular vote as they – like many western states, ours included – can do by majority action. The attempt failed, but it came close. Beau has relevant commentary, pointing out that Republicans don’t want to represent you: they want to rule you.

Pennsylvania:

Judge who ruled for Trump in 2020 election could become a Pennsylvania justice. Very, very few judges pretended Trump’s post-election conspiracy lies were real, but this one was willing to play along before being overturned by the state Supreme Court. She’s on the primary ballot on Tuesday. If you’re in Pennsylvania, watch this carefully.

Texas:

Republican who called drag shows a threat to kids quits after sex with intern, because of course. Always. I’ll be the first to say 19 isn’t a “kid,” but jesus christ.

Musk Twitter is Going Great:

Cat and dog torture videos litter Twitter, because Musk only believes in moderating content at the behest of fascists and authoritarian leaders. Defector has an interesting article on why Elon Musk is the worst possible person to run a social media network.

Twitter’s new CEO knows an absolute fucktonne about advertising and social media, and that includes knowing enough to know that making Twitter safe for advertisers again basically involves undoing everything Musk has done. So that’ll be an interesting point of tension.

Finally, a bit of good news for once: Christian anti-LGBT guidance counsellors were both encouraging and covering up for severe anti-LGBT bullying at Amherst Regional Middle School until students themselves got coverage going at their own school newspaper and exposed the whole thing. If you’re in the area, pay attention, get involved if you can.

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