- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- politics@beehaw.org
Outside of typical remarks from Donald Trump, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and a Fox News report, party stayed mum
Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.
Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.
It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.
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I went to one and it had pretty good turnout for a town in the middle of nowhere in Maine
Two small towns in Ohio also had a surprising turnout considering they’re both pretty damn red.
Dude, it’s insane. I live in the middle of nowhere. Hundreds of people showed up.
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It was supposed to be this dark, violent uprising of slavering feral ANTIFA Commies, and instead, it was a just a huge national street party/ MAGA Roast that MAGAs weren’t invited to.
Now they have to explain to their cult how wrong they were about the left being violent and hating America, without looking like their feeling are hurt for not being included in the fun.
The right wing media is just waiting for the handful of police reports to come in from the weekend to fixate upon, and talk about non stop, so they can make that “violent uprising” a reality for their viewers.
I just heard an ABC reporter saying that the protests were non-violent, “for the most part.”
“FOR THE MOST PART?” He said that without pointing out a single instance of it, and I haven’t heard of any reports of violence. So why does he have to suggest, on national TV, that there was at least some violence, somewhere? All that does is feed MAGA lies. Now that can say that the protests were violent, they heard it on ABC, and they’d be accurate.
News organizations, whether left or right, should be required to be accurate.
Unfortunately the major outlets that claim to be more left are really just right wing lite, and at the end of the day they are still part of the propaganda machine.
The “left wing media” is only as left as their right wing owners will allow them to be.
it pisses me off the way they are trying to paint newz nation as the reasonable middle.
It’s worth noting that there was an instance of a hit and run driver injuring a protestor, but this sort of violence is hardly what is implied by the ABC reporter’s statement. Of course, this is all on top of the unprovoked use of force by the feds.
Apparently, the LAPD and a few other California municipalities did choose violence at the end of the day. Not the protesters, but the police.
“I came here to bust some heads, and goddammit, I’m gonna bust some heads!”
“She said that she was working for the ABC News. It was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.”
There was a bomb threat at a nearby Walmart that day.
The truth hasn’t stopped them before, why do you think they’ll wait for it this time?!
It’s looking like every single arrest was a MAGA.
the whol anti anti facist thing is a pretty daring stance for trump and johnson. So funny they act like they are the real americans.
They may actually be scared to mention it at this point.
Ours coincided with our Pride, they actually marched with us in the parade up to the capitol and then joined us. It was incredible, unlike anything I’ve seen in this city. Do I think Trump is going to magically be unseated? No. But let’s make a habit of this, since I am not sure voting will actually happen in 28, and we need mob size forces to be easily called up.
A lot of these protests, especially in bigger cities, have all kinds of booths at them too. The one near me had like 6 for just one congressional candidate, one for a mayoral candidate, and multiple for revolutionary socialists/communists, along with people walking all over the rally handing out fliers about a general strike.
Tons of people sign up for these things, or even if they don’t sign up to strike/canvass, end up changing their voting habits accordingly. A lot of local stuff can be really impactful, since a lot of the policies most directly felt by people are local policies (e.g. is the pothole in front of your house fixed? Is your rent expensive? Is there visible poverty on the streets? Are the buses slow?) rather than federal ones (e.g. “we cut billions in research grants but you’ll only really start noticing the overall effects yourself many years from now”)
I do wish we could just get all the people going to things like this to head over to ICE facilities and block 'em day and night, but it’s a good consolation that they’re taking some other actions regardless.
Glad to hear your protests had some local political activism attached! Great place to platform and remind people that qualified candidates are everywhere!
They’re silent because they know all the protestors will go back to work tomorrow. If you want to force them to acknowledge it you need to show up the next day as well.
This 💯. No kings was a protest, it is not a movement and is not trying to be a movement.
I actually agree. The shit going down in the USA certainly deserves a General Strike.
And that’s why unions were invented, to put that option on the table. How many % of workers are unionized in the US? Is there historical precedence of a general strike without unions?
If these parades are ever to work, they need to stop being predictable. Stop giving the enemy info about them like how long they’ll last of where they’re being held. Find ways to spread the word without them finding out and make it a continuous thing that has no end in sight until demands are met. Make sure you showcase you will escalate if they feel they can safely ignore you.
When the enemy goes low, you kick them in the face as hard as you can.
The tricky part about a general strike is that you dont have much room for do-overs if it turns out you don’t have the numbers you need. Protests are largely symbolic, but are also a good way for organizers to gauge how willing/able folks are to engage in more drastic action.
If a general strike is what you think the movement should go towards, I recommend your next steps be strengthening community support systems - food banks, free clinics, shelters, etc - since these things will be needed to support a general strike (folks will choose feeding their children over political action, so make sure they can accomplish both). In the mean time, it also helps out folks who have been hit the hardest by republican and trump cuts to services.
I highly recommend folks read up on some of ICNC’s stuff, since they focus on the practical side of nonviolent conflict.
Mostly silent?! Except for the video King Trunp posted of him literally shitting on Americans. Presidential enough for you??
I had to find it for myself because I couldn’t believe what you wrote. But its true! He’s not even hiding how much he hates Americans anymore.
God, I can’t believe you went even exagurating: https://youtu.be/ugrn6DNAYEU
what in the actual fuck
No exaggeration at all.
I guess it was meant to be a bomb but they didn’t dare add that much violence to their propaganda, yet.
Poopaganda - and magats lap it up
No shit about staying silent. Even the media is silent. The only references I can find in my news feed regarding the No Kings rallies, is local reports from small local stations. Things like this make it obvious which side the mass media is on.
Red state navy town here. There were tons of former Republicans at my local protest.
I think AP covered it.
NPR too!!
I am guessing Monday will have more dedicated articles coming out from larger orgs. It is usually the way of these weekend events.
You all left social media. What the fuck did you all expect?
It’s so funny you have one of the largest protests in history but it’s like you all are starting to realize you forgot a key part of any of this.
It’s part of the propaganda strategy to pick their battles. They never speak on your terms. They only speak when they have the upper hand. Keep in mind in general they never directly acknowledge any of your talking points. Not unless they have an avenue to interject logical fallacies and pivot the dialog to their terms.
The moment they start talking about this they lend credence to your side. It carves open space in public discourse. This is the exact same tactic they use against you. And people fall for it every time. You’re never supposed to lend credence to their trolling. You’re not supposed to feed the trolls. Yet here we are. A decade into this era of internet troll right wing politics. People started feeding the trolls and cannot help themselves.
I go into republican forums and post stuff I read on Lemmy to troll the shit out of them.
I was at a rally all day today. I saw two noteworthy attempts to counter protest the HUNDREDS of “no king” protesters that showed up in my city.
One was a guy who wrote couchfucker propaganda on his car in chalk paint. “JD Vance 2028” or something like that. He flipped us off at 50mph. Few saw it.
The second was a guy that brought his Charlie Kirk flag to the last 25 minutes of the protest, after 2/3rds of the no kings folks went home.
So, one was a coward that drove by one time. One time. I think he yelled something, but since Trump supporters don’t believe in science, he didn’t realize we can’t hear shit when he’s speeding by at 50 in a 35.
The second guy… Man, what do you even say? How about ‘what the fuck even is a Charlie Kirk flag?’ These people are mentally fucking ill. They will villainize and glorify anyone and anything. If Trump told them douchebags were a hallowed object tomorrow, they’d be lovingly calling themselves ‘douchies’ by next week.
Point and laugh. Those types of people hate being the joke (that they are)
If they didn’t want to be the butt of a joke they would never try to park their pickup trucks in public.
If Trump told them douchebags were a hallowed object tomorrow, they’d be lovingly calling themselves ‘douchies’ by next week.
The thing with the golden diapers came pretty close.
I don’t even wanna know. 🤦🏼♂️
Douchie McDouchefaces for long
a guy that brought his Charlie Kirk flag
‘what the fuck even is a Charlie Kirk flag?’Well…can you tell us? You’re the one who saw it, lol.
Can’t believe how many people haven’t even heard of it when it’s one of the biggest protests in US history. Those left-leaning news channels sure doing their job by covering it for 5 minutes I guess. None of my friends nor 3 other people I talked to today even knew what the protest was or that it was happening until I told them about it.
A lot of media outlets worldwide are ignoring these protests or covering them very briefly when nobody’s watching. Most likely due to influence from the US.
MeidasTouch baby!
Most likely because the world has given up on the USA and is moving on. Your problems are well-deserved, they figure.
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Close. I’m a GenX Canadian.
First of all, I’m not an American. As much as I despise the American Empire, I hold no ill feelings towards the American people. They are as much victims here as the rest of us.
Sadly we can’t be that disengaged from the US because when your economy goes under from all of this, so will most of the worlds.
If the situation is anything like Canada in many nations, most media outlets are owned by US corps. Over half of our outlets are being controlled the same as US media.
Most people live their lives wholly unaware of reality. If their entertainment programming doesn’t consist of anything informational, they will never know about events except second hand from others, like your case. The silent majority doesn’t vote in elections, not because they don’t see the point, it’s because they likely had know idea there were elections.
I had to explain to my friends what “mid-terms” were. They vote in presidential elections…
Uninformed and disinterested people are a very useful demographic to those in power. It’s also notable that even when they encounter information regarding important events, they won’t be aware of what actions they can take in response to it. Not being informed on important events and their progression also impacts how they perceive those who are taking action to change or influence those events. This can easily lead to the perception of justified responses being excessive or alarmist.
All media are complicit. Don’t just look at one side. Both sides are causing division where there isn’t any. Hate for dollars is quite a lucrative trade in this fucked up world.
And this is the threat posed by consolidating communication and media. Even if we want to organize a movement, we can’t communicate with each other to organize it or share it.
And it’s such an obviously organic and grass roots movement too.
They know they are guilty.
To be honest, we shouldn’t even need Republicans to turn the tide. We just need to get people off their asses and stop pushing both sides bullshit.
Democratic primaries will be fast approaching and now is the best time ever to support Democratic candidates like AOC (likely to primary Schumer), Mamdani, Talarico, Chakrabarti, etc. and get out the AIPAC crap.
Had an asshole roll coal on us while they drove by
Still unbelievable to me that that’s even a thing.
N IL?
Was at a few events in North of Chicago and did see some coal rolling.
Same but west of the city
Apparently 5m people. Which is great, but we need 12.5m to make change, so the country needs to get like 700% worse
There’s not going to be a magic number of protestors that defeats fascism
Wish I could upvote twice, people keep thinking the number is magic
3.5% is the magic number decided by people smarter than you and me. Let’s just run with that and stop making excuses for coming short.
Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan are absolutely smarter than me but I still think it’s a red herring. Focusing on a number like that risks missing sight of the ultimate goal of overthrowing fascism, regardless of what it takes. Plus the math is not settled, it’s a complicated number and every situation is unique.
And to quote an especially important part about one of the Author’s views from that Wikipedia article:
(emphasis added)
Subsequently, Chenoweth has noticed that both nonviolent and armed resistance have been decreasing in efficacy since 2010, concluding that this is the result of authoritarian regimes learning from history, coordinating with one another, and training their armies and police to discourage defections within their ranks. Consequently, Chenoweth has advised that civil resistance movements take these changes into account and alter their tactics accordingly.
To quote even more from this publication, also by one of the authors. (emphasis also added)
The 3.5% participation metric may be useful as a rule of thumb in most cases; however, other factors—momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability—are likely as important as large-scale participation in achieving movement success and are often precursors to achieving 3.5% participation.
New research suggests that one nonviolent movement, Bahrain in 2011-2014, appears to have decisively failed despite achieving over 6% popular participation at its peak. This suggests that there has been at least one exception to the 3.5% rule, and that the rule is a tendency, rather than a law.
Large peak participation size is associated with movement success. However, most mass nonviolent movements that have succeeded have done so even without achieving 3.5% popular participation.
The key point is this:
The 3.5% figure is a descriptive statistic based on a sample of historical movements. It is not necessarily a prescriptive one, and no one can see the future. Trying to achieve the threshold without building a broader public constituency does not guarantee success in the future.
The very people who publicized this theory in the first place have been repeatedly, publicly trying to clarify that this is descriptive, not prescriptive, yet if you ran with the wording of 50501 and other related movements, you’d think that 3.5% is a magical number that if you pass, the administration instantly backs down. (source: 50501 - Hands Off protest statement: “History shows that when just 3.5% of the population engages in sustained peaceful resistance – transformative change is inevitable.”, emphasis added ofc)
The 3.5% participation metric may be useful as a rule of thumb in most cases; however, other factors—momentum, organization, strategic leadership, and sustainability—are likely as important
Another factor is how deeply entrenched the fascists you are trying to dislodge are.
The more levers of power they control (and the longer they control them), the stronger and more sustained the pressure against them needs to be.
People want to think if we just get to this. Umber it well change but it isn’t true. Also a protest once every couple of months don’t even think counts as a protest.
It counts as protest, but not sustained protest, which is usually a decisive factor for if a protest will succeed in affecting anything. Even if every employee of a company left for a day, if they all came back the next day and resumed working, it wouldn’t be hard for the business to get back up and running, then just put systems in place to account for that in the future, but if those employees strike for months, suddenly all the business’s systems begin to fail without maintenance, customers leave because of no service, and the business goes bankrupt.
I’m smarter than them and I can assure you the magic number is 2.4% not 3.5%
Pretty sure 100% ist a magic number
3.5% is a well established number. You can choose to argue over it, but please do it with someone else.
It’s an observation not a hard and fast rule. It’s also rooted in data from the pre-information-age, many rules have changed.
I agree the rules have changed. It will only be harder at this point. So that 3.5% is old news and needs to go up
No it isn’t. Read what the authors say. One protest had 6% and it didn’t work. So no it isn’t a magical number and they have other things that are more important and have worked with less people. Also they say protests both violent and peaceful seem to be working less and less.
Which protest had 21,000,000 all at once?
The author also said its a rule of thumb and not any sort of magic number that automatically triggers change.
No one actually thinks that the moment we pass the exact 3.499999999% of the population that the entire system will just switch over automatically. I can’t tell if your pedantry is spectrum or dopamine based.
I’m gonna bet it goes up. It did the last several times I saw early estimates for these events.
This IS an estimate you already read. Dude’s likely using Gemeni or ChatGPT for this data. Don’t trust it.
7m is what the organizers said but that’s probably including people who signed up and didn’t show up
Source: googled “no kings” and clicked abc news or something
But I showed up and didn’t sign up so who’s the real number?
Same I’m just being conservative (number wise, not politically) since there’s no 3rd party source yet
You are
Bullshit 5m people. Who told you that, an LLM? 5m was the prediction last time, and it was waaaay, way, off.
The news told me. Then they got updated numbers. Chill out. Talk your meds.
If you’re not willing to show up armed, massively disrupt, or even create mild inconvenience it doesn’t matter how many people are in your cute little self-congratulatory parade.
Fuck you, fascist. Trump wants this right now. If you want it, then you’re with him.
But but we have posters and inflatable frog suits!!!
When they report on the violence Trump is quelling, they can’t use any of this. That’s the point.
Pay attention instead of shoving your foot into your esophagus.
lol. Enjoy your fascism!
So all you’ve done is redeemed your own reputation as acceptable members of the broader normie society. You could have stayed home and accomplished that.
First of all, stop calling them Republicans. The Republican party is dead, replaced by the MAGA Party.
The Republican foundation of Smaller Government, Lower Taxes, Responsible Economic/Fiscal Policy, Family Values, etc. has been replaced by the MAGA foundation of Treason, Corruption, Racism, White Supremacy, Rape, Pedophilia, Violence, Cowardice, Ignorance, Incompetence, and Intolerance.
The Democrats get crazy when a MAGA calls them the “Democrat Party,” so hit them back, and make it official that the Democratic Party no longer recognizes the Republican Party, and will never refer to it again in speeches, interviews, campaign literature, etc. As far as the Democratic Party is concerned, it is now the MAGA Party.
Then stick by it, and watch them melt down. They LOVE being Republicans, they are proud of it, after building it up in the Conservative Propaganda Machine for decades as an honorable institution. Many of them have to be uncomfortable with being sidelined by MAGA, and getting lip service from them. They already know that the Republican Party is dead, but they are afraid to say it out loud.
So the Dems should do it, and give them their worst nightmare - they allowed the MAGAs to destroy the “Party of Lincoln.”
While I love the idea, they’d probably just come back and always refer to the dems as the Woke Socialist Party.
it really only works if the media also gets onboard, and i doubt they’d get onboard with either of those.
The old “I know you are, but what am I” Defense? That’s lame and pathetic, and everybody knows it.
And they don’t need the media to be on board. The media weren’t on board with calling it the Democrat Party, but they don’t do anything about it if a MAGA calls it that on their airwaves, either.
Dems just need to consistently call them MAGA, and NEVER use the word Republican.
There were a couple republicans on harleys driving past repeatedly that I made fun of and called pussies.
We had a guy with a big truck driving up and down blasting “Proud to be an American” from a large speaker in the bed of his truck. It was awesome when all the protesters cheered to hearing the song and applauded the guy.
Pretty sure that wasn’t the reaction he expected.
