When we are young, people in Germany are told about what happened in WW II. It’s such a central point in our education that it recurrs in multiple school subjects over years. We know what happened and how it could happen. Why people voted for Hitler, how people stood by in pretended ignorance and used Jews, POC, disabled people and LGTB as scapegoats for everything that went wrong and ignored what happened to them because it wasn’t their problem.

Now, we see something similar in America. We see a man use such violent racism and hatred rise and become the most powerful man in the world. The parallels are there no matter how hard some people try to deny it. If you ask yourself: How could Hitler rise? You have your answer now.

It’s a true reminder that people do not learn from history, but the thing is history will not forget. 

Whatever will come out of this? We don’t know.  

People in germany have watched the election unfold with so much worry because we know what could happen, but we felt secure because ‘there is no way he would win. It’s so obvious people can’t be that stupid.’ but well…

Take this advice from a german history student: Stay together and support your minorities. If you are white and cishet then it’s not the time to ignore what might happen only because you are going to be unaffected by it. Be a decent human being, if you see discrimination fight against it for the good of the people, speak out against it, make them feel secure because this is their country as well. If more people had felt that way 70 years ago, maybe it might’ve changed something. Do not make the same mistake my grandparents generation did and be a passive supporter of a regime based on discrimination and hatred.

The first sentence of our constitution is ‘Human dignity shall be inviolable’, and it’s not a sentence that should only apply to Germany, but a sentence that should apply to all people.

people who fucked up 2016 are like "omg when will you libs let go of 2016" while the 2024 DNC has featured the stories of multiple women who've been medically tortured by Republican abortion bans since the fall of Roe, as a long-term consequence of 2016. So the answer is never <3

I am absolutely dead serious about reporting anyone who spouts bullshit about voting doing nothing. Because I REMEMBER why we have the option to report for election interference on tumblr, and it wasn't someone lying about polling locations or lying about voting dates.

It was because there was an actual coordinated psyop attack made up ENTIRELY of people posting what looked like perfectly normal voter opinions about not believing in the system, not liking how the democrats' policies, not thinking those policies were Far Left enough, and not wanting to support the democrats- and then ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO NOT VOTE OR VOTE THIRD PARTY.

I have been on tumblr this WHOLE TIME and SEEN THIS SHIT, you do not get to tell me I'm being paranoid or "McCarthyist" (wtf) for reacting to THE ACTUAL SITUATION I HAVE SEEN FIRSTHAND.

Report the psyops and the propaganda. Vote blue. Do not buy into their bullshit.

And don't forget how we got here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305120961783

The 2016 psyop sucked me in hard and directly contributed to a breakdown I had in 2017. I remember getting an email from Tumblr that was a list of blogs I had interacted with that turned out to be fake Russian accounts deliberately running election interference and sowing despair and defeatism. There were over a hundred.

They exploited my desire to listen to people more marginalized than myself (disabled folks and black folks in particular) and my desire to be critical of authority. I spent months looking at these accounts, trying to hold space for what I thought was the anger of real people.

All the while that was time and energy I DIDN'T spend listening to and meaningfully engaging with marginalized people in my own community. It was time and energy I didn't spend campaigning for Clinton, because I felt embarrassed and worried about being ostracized from leftist spaces. It was energy that could have been put towards coalition building, towards studying actual policy, towards literally anything other than feeling increasingly powerless and defeated!

I still voted. I even managed to get myself out for an afternoon of door to door volunteer campaigning, even though my heart wasn't really in it and it showed.

I am seeing the same tactics again this year. The same defeatism, cynicism, and the same insidious use of disabled and Black people as a shield while simultaneously undermining the work of real people in those communities-- aiming towards a political project to further harm and kill the very people they're pretending to be. The same tactics of screenshots and memes.

It makes me furious.

Yes, paranoia in leftist spaces sucks and there needs to be disagreement for healthy discussion. This is not disagreement or good faith discussion among people trying to make the world less shitty. It makes my skin crawl.

I think one of the reasons why people don’t talk much about the regression of feminism since like 2014 is because you can’t honestly talk about the backlash to feminism over the past decade without talking about the gleeful misogyny involved in Hillary Clinton’s loss, and people still refuse to admit they were wrong about 2016. This used to be the feminism website, as imperfect as that feminism was, but you’ll get yelled at if you say misogyny played a role in men cheering that the serial rapist beat the woman, and in them laughing at crying women on 11/8/16. Crushing women’s hopes for the first female president was a crucial part of Trump’s appeal and part of the backlash to the social progress during the Obama years.

I feel like the psyops are back…

Ok let’s go over this again, for those with short memories:

The psyops work by taking (screenshotting or paraphrasing) REAL leftist takes by REAL people, (very often American POC,) generally where they are upset or discouraged about the us government or democrats specifically.

Then, the psyop either adds to the post (or in a separate post) something to direct the conversation into “things will never change” “voting does nothing” “politicians are all the same” etc.

The POINT of the psyop is to make leftists who agree with the REAL person who made the original post ALSO agree with the psyop, by conflating the two as being the same person, or at least being on the same side.

anyone who tells you not to vote is not on your side

Voting works or they wouldn't care if you did it