499
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
499 points (98.4% liked)
politics
31115 readers
2459 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
It's interesting that this trope about bussed or paid protesters gets repeated so often. In Germany, the AfD claimed that protesters were bussed and got paid, even with tax money. It's like they share talking points.
All of the far right movements use the same talking points now, they just tailor them for local audiences. The GOP started spreading its filth worldwide decades ago. None of this is an accident.
It's a pattern that was primarily established when the Reagan Administration (and Don Regan, the CEO of Merrill Lynch) took over in the 1980s. Most of the ideas come from Lee Atwater who was an absolutely horrendous human being.
They have been running almost exactly the same playbook since then.
Fun fact back in I want to say 2008 there was a big old anti-gay protest thing that filled up a stadium here in California, turned out a solid chunk of attendees were bussed in by the Mormon fucken church. Sadly this fact wasn't dug up particularly well until after prop 8(?) which banned gay marriage, luckily I think we have since voted it out. Also yes it did swing public opinion that badly, luckily I think it reaffirmed our weird xenophobia here in California so I don't think it'd work again.
Because for the right, the concept of people coming together as a grassroots movement and setting aside some political differences to unite as a group, was unheard of until Tea Party/MAGA.
It’s an implicit admission - how else could ‘those radical lefties/gays/immigrants/etc’ get these crowd sizes except by astroturfing like the right has to?
In countries that are ostensibly democracies to justify your actions you have to claim you have majority support. Any crowd of people is a threat to that perception, so it makes sense (in a shitty way) that we see the "paid protestors" attack so often.