1/ I mentioned this AM how I'm attuned to small details of society so I spend time trying to figure out what people can't see that's obvious to me

So it's weird to see how too many important/powerful people haven't figured out that the GOP is fascist. https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1308053255155523584

2/ It's incontrovertible at this point. The GOP, the RedHats as I nicknamed the 2020 equivalent of Brown Shirts, check every single box.

The GOP uses familiar 'patriotic' language to disguise their bad-faith, yet the MSM keeps both-sidesing our descent into fascism

3/ The MSM does this b/c the major media has 4 major groups/forces that drive the bad faith narrative. In short:

1) Fascist partisans
2) Sympathetic full platforms
3) Sympathetic owners
4) Conventional wisdom of the political landscape

4/ Group 1 are the open drivers of fascism: FoxNews & Sinclair broadcasting. A shocking % of Americans get their news from these pure propaganda networks & they are openly in favor of destroying the Union & finishing the Civil War in favor of the slave-lusting Confederacy

5/ Group 2 is another huge, and overlapping, portion of online platforms that are amoral & greedy, so they create an environment for cancerous fascist ideas to thrive.

Chief culprit is Facebook and their menace is stupefying in scope.

6/ Group 3 is harder to prove, but I think it's clear that there are MSM owners/editors/gatekeepers of non-RedHat media who are sympathetic to fascism & as rich white men, they're natural constituents of Trump's (ym'sh) appeal.

CNN & the NYTimes appear to be this category.

7/ My decades of fighting abusers shows me that not only are many organizations filled with abusive people, the Patriarchy makes it both easy to normalize their evil and easy for them to bully others into being enablers.

8/ Rich/powerful white men, often literal thinkers or just acculturated to believe they were Born To Own/Lead, control many levers of power, and they will actively or passively keep a system of abuse in place.

And they see Trump (ym'sh) as everything they want to be.

9/ Many studies are showing that the RedHats love how DJT gets away with being horrible. They want to do that too, and we've seen since 2016 how many now feel open to act that way.

They can finally 'tell it like it is' & be 'honest'

10/ Others point out accurately that fascism isn't an ideology but a methodology - it's a set of tactics to maximize power. The desire for power could come from greed for resources, but that discounts the real value weak, fragile people place on *status*

11/ Fascism in social systems, in politics, is about open, macro, power. But abusers use the same tactics in the interpersonal setting, the micro level.

Ultimately, it's the same thing: it's abuse as politics (fascism) or relationships (predators)

12/ The number of abuse-practitioners (the predators) and abuse-enthusiasts (the enablers) is still stunning to me. Both for the number & scope, but also for how their presence is normalized & accepted.

It's downright sick.

13/ Group 3, the owners of media who are happy that Trump (ym'sh) is acting like they want to act & kashering the behavior they wish to perform, are gatekeepers for the media landscape in major orgs.

I allude to their power & infiltration in this thread: https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1237445517828857856

14/ I will find the links & support for my point about the gatekeepers who are sympathetic to Trump (ym'sh) out of a Patriarchal affinity (they're around somewhere)

But these first 3 groups create an over-abundance of media sources that are cheering on fascism. No joke.

15/ The last group are the regular editors, pundits, and journalists who are influenced by the culture created by the first 3 groups to believe the USA is a center-right country where 'real Americans' are Midwestern white men w/o college degrees.

16/ The mainstream of the MSM (MSMSM?) are convinced that the GOP speaks for Real America due to (1) general US patriarchal, white supremacist culture (2) the majority of other media sources in 2020 that act that way, & (3) because that's where the money is coming from.

17/ #3 is part of a social theory I've temporarily labeled the Pareto Marketing Rule.

As defined by Wiki, the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 rule): "states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

18/ What many have seen (as encompassed in this Rule) is that a minority of people will make up a majority of effects.

I apply it to marketing in this way: companies recognize that they make a lot of money glorifying niche products that a small group are fanatical/addicted to

19/ Looking at commercials, I'd think everyone desperately wants Pumpkin Spice Everything or Buffalo Hot Wings On Everything.

It's more likely that people who love those tastes REALLY love them & will spend enough money to make up for those of us neutral to/repelled by it.

20/ The Pareto Marketing Rule can be seen in political coverage. The non-fascist-allied MSM have figured out that the money they need for clicks comes from people sympathetic to the patriarchal white supremacy narrative of Middle America Is Real And Coasts Are Not

21/ It's a combination of the (a) first 3 groups pushing the narrative hard, (b) the GOP needing the narrative b/c they're a patriarchal white supremacist grievance fascist party, (c) the US culture being just that for a long time & (d) the Pareto dollars rewarding the narrative

22/ All of the above has made the MSM, including many of the non-tankie orgs., believe that the GOP acts in good faith & their statements can be taken at face (literalist?) value

There's a full culture of both-sides normalization too, see @jayrosen_nyu & https://pressthink.org/2016/09/asymmetry-between-the-major-parties-fries-the-circuits-of-the-mainstream-press/

23/ There's thus a massive bias in MSM to normalize the fascism we're seeing. The non-fascists lack the tools & the language to fight it (see pressthink link above) and the rest of the media are now utterly on board.

We must know that this is why the MSM is failing us.

24/ The bias that says 'right wing = real America = normal' shows that the MSM is effectively not 'liberal.' Who cares if reporters are 'liberal' when their actions support the fascist/abusive culture?!

Also, I'd posit that abusers & enablers are by definition not 'liberal'

25/ I will pause for the moment - it's a fast day & it's hard to write while also catching up on the hellscape I missed over the weekend. More soon.

26/ Liberals need to understand that there's a massive media bias that credulously accepts the bad faith of the GOP & operates under the assumption that right wing uneducated white men are the norm.

This fact is known by e.g. Pelosi & colors the decisions that the Democrats make

27/ Those to the left of the Democratic party accuse them/us as not doing enough, and The Left describes how the MSM favors Dems the same way I describe the MSM favoring the GOP

We're both right, b/c the MSM thinks the GOP is normal, Dems are extreme & the Left as Too Extreme

28/ Note, the GOP thinks the MSM is not on their side either but (a) the GOP lies as a core of their methodology, so who cares what they say, seriously I feel crazy needing to point this out & (b) fascists demand 100% fealty to their shifting reality, so they hate a free press

29/ But the reason why the Democrats can't act like the Republicans do is twofold:
(1) The MSM denies even the Dems basic legitimacy b/c of the incorrect cultural assumption of normalcy I described above
(2) B/c the Dems must preserve democracy & that's done by following rules

30/ Point 1 is the purpose of this thread. For point 2, see @Teri_Kanefield who repeatedly points out that if the Dems want to preserve democracy, that demands acting according to rules. @RepAdamSchiff did this in impeachment & Biden is doing it now. It's important. See Teri K.

31/ But my thesis is on point 1: the GOP is either slavishly supported by the first 2 groups (see upthread) or passively supported by the 3rd or just treated as normal by the 4th.

Barr, Trump (ym'sh), McConnell are acting like dictators. Yet Biden/Harris/Pelosi can't misstep.

32/ Hillary Clinton's husband meets with Loretta Lynch? Massive scandal. Bill Barr fully politicizes the DOJ, claims he & the president are above the law, and there's nothing.

This is the playing field the Democrats need to work in.

33/ DJT breaks the law? That's a problem for *Biden* to convince voters. The examples are in the 1000s. But that's a massive straight-jacket around the Democrats.

Please understand this. Please know the constraints the Democrats are under!

34/ The dynamic reminds me of how the MSM treats Israel, so I'm familiar with the topsy-turvy feeling. But while that gets painted as a 'liberal bias' I wonder if its' the same process: that many in the MSM just prefer non-liberal Democracy.

35/ Either that, or they're just unfit at seeing bad-faith. The arguments of the war-mongers are taken at face-value while the messy process of governing a diverse coalition is taken as weakness.

It's the same disgusting dance.

36/ I'll stop for now. I just wanted to illustrate the social forces that are working now and just how difficult it is to maintain democracy even in the face of stupefying evil, incompetence, mendacity & bad faith.

@threadreaderapp please unroll, @threader_app compile.

37/ Later update: here's a story about CNN's Zucker tacitly supporting Trump (ym'sh) & why I put CNN in Group 3. The editors of the NYT are part of this category too (as evinced by their disturbing & consistent bothsidesism, not just Tom Cotton love) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/business/media/jeff-zucker-helped-create-donald-trump-that-show-may-be-ending.html

38/ Another update @jamisonfoser shows in this thread how the NYTimes doesn't seem to consider it important news that Trump (ym'sh) refuses to allow a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.

Needless to say, this shows the NYT has bad priorities https://twitter.com/jamisonfoser/status/1308957251491692548