They literally tested Nazism on their focus groups and decided it was a winning message.

[MelissaB]

Trump used a campaign strategy firm run by his campaign manager that decided the best way to appeal through voters was a combination of racism of authoritarianism. They literally tested Nazism on their focus groups and decided it was a winning message.

Link to tweet

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-oversaw-cambridge-analyticas-collection-of-facebook-data-according-to-former-employee/2018/03/20/8fb369a6-2c55-11e8-b0b0-f706877db618_story.html?utm_term=.9817163f8736

[octoberlib]

1. Evangelicals and other wing nuts love authoritarianism.

That they were actually testing Nazism and these deplorables were just fine with it is more than disturbing.

[volstork]

12. "Evangelicals and other wing nuts love authoritarianism"

That must be why their god is such an asshole.

Jesus, on the other hand... not so much.

[BigmanPigman]

2. Lovely!

I wish I could say I am surprised but that would be a lie.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

No surprises there.

[central scrutinizer]

4. This is George Lakoff's interpretation as well

Highly recommend his books, especially on the subject of "framing"

[poboy2]

5. excerpts-

In an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post at his lawyer’s London office, Wylie said that Bannon — while he was a top executive at Cambridge Analytica and head of Breitbart News — was deeply involved in the company’s strategy and approved spending nearly $1 million to acquire data, including Facebook profiles, in 2014.

“We had to get Bannon to approve everything at this point. Bannon was Alexander Nix’s boss,” said Wylie, who was Cambridge Analytica’s research director. “Alexander Nix didn’t have the authority to spend that much money without approval.”

Bannon, who served on the company’s board, did not respond to a request for comment. He served as vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica from June 2014 to August 2016, when he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign, according to his publicly filed financial disclosure. In 2017, he joined Trump in the White House as his chief strategist.

-

The year before Trump announced his presidential bid, the data firm already had found a high level of alienation among young, white Americans with a conservative bent.

In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intended the “drain the swamp” of Washington’s entrenched political community and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called “race realism,” he recounted.

[winstars]

6. it seems to have worked out very well for them. Sorry Grandpa, you died for nothing in WW2!!!

The Nazi's have won, in the end of the day…

D-day, Anzio, Battle of the Bulge….

These fucks are about to take over our country??? Or have they already???

[ProfessorPlum]

27. that pisses me off, too

I think about that all of the time. fucking nazis.

[Scurrilous]

7. K&R

[Takket]

8. the ultimate irony that rethug voters go on and on about freedom........

while unwittingly supporting the party and policies that strip freedom away

[Squinch]

9. I feel like going into a fetal position and staying there. This whole thing is

making me feel sick.

I don't know why. We've been seeing the results of it for a long time, and now we finally know why. That's a good thing, but still. It's so horrifying. These people are so disgusting, and they're running everything.

[DemocracyMouse]

11. I love that graphic. I've noticed that a lot of Democrats...

... are familiar with the exploited fool on the left, but still haven't been introduced to the fellow on the right...

[Squinch]

22. I don't understand this. Could you explain it?

[GreenEyedLefty]

26. They're referring to the graphic in your signature with the working class guy and money guy

[Squinch]

29. Oh! Thank you! Now I get it.

[backtoblue]

15. Me too Squinch

[Silver1]

18. They are disgusting. But they're not ruining everything.

I once heard something I'll never forget. The philosopher Sartre was talking with his friend, a painter name Gerassi. Gerassi had just come back from the front in Spain, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Sartre asked him how it was going, and Gerassi said not so well, but he was going back to the front. Sartre protested and asked him why, and Gerassi said: "You don't fight Fascists because you think you're going to win, you fight them because they're Fascists."

See, they're not ruining everything. But we need to fight to get back on track. Fascists burn hot and short.

[meadowlander]

25. This +1,000,000

And when you get Congress back, you don't "move on" because it's politically expedient or because impeachment hearings would just deepen the division or because the next election is right around the corner. You prosecute fascists into the dust because they are fascists and because you need to send a message to proto-fascists.

[Silver1]

33. Yes.

The country has been so rattled, I really can't imagine this just going away. People expect for it to be dealt with in a meaningful way, and I think politicians will have to respond. Or make room for those who will at election time.

The thing is, will those who were duped and manipulated this time around recognize another attempt?

[ProfessorGAC]

28. The Poster Said "Running" and "Ruining"

Good post on your part, but you were giving an answer to something the first poster didn't say.

[Silver1]

34. Thanks.

Maybe I saw what I fear.

[ProudLib72]

10. "Race Realism"

Is still being promoted by Jared Taylor of American Renaissance. I just googled the term and found a disgusting Youtube video by him from January 23, 2018 discussing how there are distinct human "races" with many differences.

[TeamPooka]

13. America: There's a sucker born every minute.

[Johnny2X2X]

14. Horrifying

This is so scary.

[YessirAtsaFact]

16. Interesting- in one of the videos from channel 4

Nix was telling the reporters posing as potential clients that voter suppression was the key.

We lost because a lot of voters stayed home.

[Silver1]

17. I would really like to see how this questionnaire was worded.

I mean, did they ask anyone if they would prefer an alternative to authoritarianism? Like, a strong leader willing to talk about the issues who doesn't resort to hostility in a nanosecond? Diplomacy? How would people have responded to a question like that? Were they ever asked if this is something they might prefer?

I wager they would. We all want strong leaders, and no one wants an idiot in power.

The people who crafted this political strategy - the PR firms hired by politicians - are part of the problem from the get go. They are pushing Nazism and Fashism because they themselves are combative and hostile. They need to win, they want to win. They simply can't see or look beyond anything beyond their immediate gratification.

As I'm writing this, I feel strongly our only way out is a strong socialist government. There is just no other way. We must stop awarding "winners" at any cost to us.

[peggysue2]

19. O.M.G.

They tested Nazism and it was a winner (without labeling it, I'm sure). The authoritarianism is no surprise; the Republicans have been leaning in that direction for a long time.

But true blue Nazism is scary as hell. Realistic racism? What does that even mean? Although it explains the over-the-top language, the call outs and insensitivity.

I don't want to hear one Republican say this is 'disturbing' if questioned on this information. It's disgusting, reprehensible and unAmerican.

These people are traitors, period. To our country and the whole frigging world.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. RepubliCons con & herd their base with Fear & Uncertainty. . . . nt

[lunatica]

21. I knew this in my 20s after reading a lot about the Holocaust

I can’t remember what it was that got me interested in the Holocaust. I think it may have been my parents who were both highly intelligent college grads.

In any case I read a few books about it and I remember that it was when Martin Luther King Jr was marching for Civil Rights. I saw all the tv footage of the horrible treatment Black people were subjected to in the South. The violence was sickening. The hatred was irrational. The bravery was intense and almost unbelievable in the face of such vicious retaliation even in front of the cameras. The white police unleashed attacking dogs on peaceful marchers who just wanted equal rights. I think that in many ways it was much worse than the worst that happens today. The streets in the South were filled with heroes taking the punches and the dog attacks and the bare faced hatred as they were knocked to the ground with water cannons. And they never raised a fist against the aggressors.

I remember telling my mother and believing it with all my heart, that fascism could thrive in this country under the right circumstances.

I never believed that it couldn’t happen here. I knew it could. I’m so disappointed.

But maybe it’s very important to see our dark side. If we face it maybe we can evolve past it. Evidently the Germans did.

[Ezior]

24. Re: Germany

I remember telling my mother and believing it with all my heart, that fascism could thrive in this country under the right circumstances.

Not just in your country. In every country. This includes modern-day Germany. Many Germans thought that it could not happen again in Germany (at least within the foreseeable future) because we've learnt our lesson, but now I think we were wrong. It could happen as soon as 2025 – sure, hopefully we won't start building concentration camps by then, but it's a slippery slope. We might see an AFD politician lead one of the German states (Bundesländer) within the next couple of years, and most AFD members have made it clear that they have learnt nothing from our past. Especially in eastern, ex-GDR states. Some of them basically claim "Muslims are like Nazis, and we're Widerstandskämpfer (resistance)". They call for Putin's help in protests: https://goo.gl/images/aTqA9Y

I’m so disappointed.

Me too!

[DFW]

23. Remember the words of one of Hitler's most trusted men

Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe, in an interview in his cell at the Nürnberg War Crimes Trial, April 18, 1946:

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

[poboy2]

30. Always relevant. Propaganda WORKS-nt

[DFW]

31. It didn't work on my father-in-law

When Göring said "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?" that "poor slob" was my 17 year old father-in-law, who was drafted off his farm, sent to Stalingrad in the winter of 1942, and did NOT return in one piece.

[workinclasszero]

32. 20,000 Republicans just voted for an actual Nazi

in Illinois last night.

Republicans are out to destroy this country. I swear to God, people better start taking this shit seriously NOW!

Every Jewish person, every PoC, for damn sure better get behind the Democratic party one million percent and do everything in your power to make them win because they are the only thing standing between you and a Nazi state with all the horror that entails!

[Mc Mike]

35. A good chunk of wealthy and powerful repug pols and money people helped Hitler rise to power.

A good chunk of them always wanted fascism.

The birchers are just nazi loving repug dead enders, who needed to rebrand their love for nazism.

And the birchers took over the repug party completely, within the last decade. All that work by the Hunts, Kochs, and Mercers really paid off. But those creeps are underlings for the actual big money Standard Oil New Jersey et al crowd.

[shadowmayor]

36. And another good chunk of these deplorables

Last edited Wed Mar 21, 2018, 09:06 PM - Edit history (1)

Take their cues while sitting in the pews on Sunday morning.

[IronLionZion]

37. Rise up by stepping on the heads of others

it really brought out the worst in humanity, encouraging people to blame "others" for problems and the only solution is brutal punishment of those "others"

You can see a similar mentality here with the DUers who think they know who is on an H-1b and who is a US citizen. Hint: it's the same way Trump knew where Obama was really born. Some assholes really do believe they are somehow "more American" than others and they are entitled to tell us to get out.