Step Carruthers

In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll talk about the takeover of social media by illiberal, populist influencers. For the last ten years, social media has been dominated by these voices and it is one of the main reasons for the political rise of people like Trump and Orban.

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The number of #FakesForPoilievre posting toxic garbage, is endless. There is also no daylight between 🇷🇺 backed ops & “Canada Proud”, “Rebel” & other far right disinformation. Musk is using “X” for Poilievre in a similar manner as he did for Trump. Weaponized fakery & boosting of lies. #CdnDisinfo

DisinfoAlert: Russian State Media Targets New Canadian Liberal Party Leader Mark Carney - DisinfoWatch Sputnik, a Russian state media outlet, has published an article targeting Mark Carney, the newly elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and incoming Prime Minister. The article frames...

Russian state media targets #MarkCarney. 🇷🇺mounted op after op against Trudeau, but not against #PierrePoilievre. Now why do you suppose that is? 🤔
Sputnik & RT, are key instruments of the Kremlin &🇷🇺 intelligence services, used for information & influence ops targeting Western democracies #CdnDisinfo

Trump Unleashed: How the U.S. May Collaborate with Russia Solving Putin's problems by ending U.S. restrictions on Russian influence at home and by removing the footprint of U.S. power abroad

open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

The top disinformation spreaders on X, according to Grok, Musk's AI tool.
1. Elon Musk
2. Donald Trump
3. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
4. Alex Jones
5. RT (Russian Television)

I’m never going to finish Cold Harbor at this rate.

I’ve made a list of toxic troll accounts I highly recommend blocking. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Out of Chaos and Corruption, a Revelation and a Reckoning Welcome back to Lucid

open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

Crossing a line Borders between one kind of life and another

snyder.substack.com/p/crossing-a...

Nobody wants an emergency, but perhaps we should want some of the remarkable things that can happen during them. On the top of my list of those things is how in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane, a fire, an earthquake,  people take care of each other and work together without the kind of vetting and fretting whether they agree entirely about politics or religion or other matters. We are in an unprecedented emergency in the United States with fallout that poses threats to environments, economies, human rights and even survival beyond our borders, and we could use some of that energy. As political scientist Erica Chenoweth said in Saturday's Meditations in an Emergency interview, "The best study on the subject in my opinion suggests that in the long term, institutions really can’t save us; that civil society and mass mobilization are a more potent check on a backsliding democracy in the long term than relying on institutional checks and balances alone."  Right now the courts are doing important business as they render verdict after verdict against Trump and Musk thanks to lawsuits brought by states, federal employees, and others with standing. Some of the Democrats in office are being amazing, and others in the opposition party are being waffles, milquetoasts, cookies that crumble, and other  refined-carbohydrate items. As is now clear, the administrative branch of the federal government of the United States is engaging in a coup attempt against the legislative and judicial branches, against the law and constitution itself, and against your rights and mine and the security and stability of the world. They can be defeated and at a minimum held in check, and the sooner they are the more limited the damage. But as Chenoweth points out, it's up to us. Are we up to it?

In this emergency, I think it likely that we are going to need to pitch a very big tent and invite everyone in who doesn't want to live in a dictatorship... www.meditationsinanemergency.com/big-tents-an...

It's always lovely finding #5 people!

This one has a couple of albums in the hopper.

Of course it’s a coup Miss the obvious, lose your republic

Of course it’s a coup. Miss the obvious, lose your republic.
open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

We Are Not Who They Think We Are: How Human Nature Matters In This Emergency Rebecca Solnit 04 Feb 2025 — 10 min read Welcome to the emergency--or rather Meditations in an Emergency, this newsletter, not the national emergency, which is of course very unwelcome. What's striking to me about all the things our morally and imaginatively impoverished billionaires, notably Musk and Trump, right now is: they do not expect or imagine or understand consequences. Any of them– their theory of change seems to be that they are going to do stuff and then it will be done. Like they're moving furniture around, like you and I and the trans and immigrant communities and federal workers and Canada and Mexico are just so many sofas and chairs that are going to sit where they place us. Like we're inanimate objects. Maybe everything is dead in the sad lonely worldview inside their head. Which would also explain their recalcitrance about climate and nature: if you see it as a collection of inert objects rather than an intricate living system in which what you do to any one part may affect the whole, you grant yourself more license to meddle. But today I'm here to talk about the human--and human nature, and how they misunderstand that too.

from Meditations in an Emergency, my new newsletter, day three: But I do not believe the people of this country will submit to the destruction and the attempts at dictatorship. We are not submitting now. meditations-in-an-emergency.ghost.io/we-are-not-w...