Fanone was abducted by the mob on Jan. 6 and nearly killed when a MAGA-hatted rioter who believed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election drove a stun gun into his neck.

Michael Fanone, a former police officer who was nearly killed by a mob during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, spoke outside the courthouse during closing arguments in Donald Trump’s hush money trial Tuesday, calling Trumpan authoritarianwitha violence fetish.”

Hours later, Fanone’s mother was “swatted” at her home in Virginia.

On Tuesday, a fake “manifesto” attributed to Fanone was sent to a number of email addresses, including some associated with a high school that Fanone attended for a year more than two decades ago. The “manifesto,” viewed by NBC News, claimed that the writer had killed their mother and planned to go to the recipient’s school Wednesday and shoot more people. It provided Fanone’s mother’s home address.

        • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          29 days ago

          That’s the thing I don’t get. These “strongmen” are fucking cry babies.

          Like the media darling Kyle Rittenhouse. Fucking cries while he’s on the stand.

          Beer pong Brett Kavanaugh fucking crying on national TV from questioning.

          Trump, literally, any day every day about how he’s some sort of victim.

          How the alt right sees these men as the paragons of strength and leadership is beyond me.

          • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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            29 days ago

            I am strong, powerful, manly man, so therefore any weakness/failure cannot be because of my failings, but a sign of how powerful the Jews/globalists/antifa/comintern/etc are

            It’s not a complex ideology, but it’s an easy panacea - like conspiracies- for the hard reality that is modern existence

            • Promethiel@lemmy.world
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              29 days ago

              It’s not a complex ideology, but it’s an easy panacea - like conspiracies- for the hard reality that is modern existence.

              Damn but that’s some high grade poignancy early in the morning.

              But it isn’t a panacea. They’re just told by the hate oil salesman it is, but they’ll choke on it same as they would have with snake oil, just taking the rest of progress with them. There has to be a way to hijack the methodology and change the message.

              • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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                29 days ago

                You’re right that it’s ineffective, but the messaging and emotional hooks are powerful. “The left” at its core challenges the ego. It sees society, culture, economics, politics, etc and says “Do better”, or if we’re being pleasant “We can do better, let’s build it”

                “The right” tells your id what it wants to hear. Everything is as it ought to be, you don’t need to improve yourself, this is the best place to be, failures are because of ‘our enemies’.

                “You’re fine, it’s their fault” is a very easy pill to swallow, and the mental gymnastics start quietly

                hate oil salesman

                Oh I’m definitely stealing this

          • OpenStars@discuss.online
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            29 days ago

            Easy, they are told so, sometimes from behind a pulpit. The sheeple aren’t trusting their own eyes, they are trusting their neighbors to crowd-think the correct answer.

            And then on the other side, you have things like Hillary Clinton’s email scandals - like when she colluded with agents of a foreign government, told the Supreme Court to fuck off rather than deliver her emails (I have decided that you will need to wait for a week while I delete all the ones I don’t want you to see first…), illegally conspired with the DNC to do things like give her the questions in advance of a debate (but not give those to Bernie Sanders), and so on. When Trump says that the Democrats are corrupt - he ain’t lying!!! He just left out the part where he would be 100x worse.

            People didn’t vote for him, they voted against her. But anyway, unlike any Democrat except Bernie, he did stand up to her by running for office. Anyway, voting for Trump was people rolling the dice to see what happened, as in better a random outcome than her.

            The Powers That Be decided to use Trump bc he was convenient, and for sheeple who follow authority rather than individualistic logical thinking (especially the less educated ones, bc voting properly requires a rather enormous investment of time, energy, and attention to build up - over a decade of research for sure), it makes sense to them that if everyone around them is saying the same thing, then it can’t be wrong!? (Cognitive dissonance, so they ignore what they see with their very own eyes.)

        • General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          Weak person’s idea of a strong man.

          Poor person’s idea of a rich man.

          A liar’s idea of a man with integrity.

          An uneducated opinion of what it means to be smart.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      29 days ago

      Time after time maga proves to be as bad as any seemingly hyperbolic comments made about them by others.

      Basket of deplorables indeed.

  • eran_morad@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    Yeah whatever happened to all that “thin blue line” horseshit?

    Republicans are worthless traitor shitcunts and must be pushed to the margins of society.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      Enough consecutive Democratic wins and both parties will be forced to shift further left to capture more of the vote. That requires people to show up and vote in all elections, not just presidential. You can blame Bush and his shift of the Overton Window on the disenfranchisement of Gen X, but it’s starting to sound like young Millennials and Gen Z are willing to let Israel justify an even larger shift to the right.

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        29 days ago

        i don’t get the logic in expecting leftists to vote for someone who neither represents or respects their views and solely use some ultra vague promise that some hypothetical candidate will represent them in some equally hypothetical future.

        taking action right now is what matters to leftist and choosing between 2 candidates that share the same view, but only to different degrees, is the crux of the issue.

        • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          And that short-sightedness will not only fail to yield results, but will allow for a shift in the opposite direction. They’re not the first generation to face this problem. They could be the first generation in decades to do something about it.

          • ShepherdPie
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            If it’s short-sighted as you call it, then please educate us on when this has ever happened in the past.

            Please explain how the Democratic party dominating the political landscape will make them abandon their ways and move to the left. Do you think winning elections will make them abandon their political donors? If anything, losing to Trump in 2016 should have driven the party further left but instead we got another Republican-lite candidate who barely beat Trump. The same person who lost to Clinton in the primaries previously and that is who we have as a candidate once again. “Winning” doesn’t usually make people reflect on their actions and decide they need to change.

            • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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              It’s not an immediate shift. As I said in my previous comment, we’d need sustained representation in multiple branches to shift the Overton window. It wouldn’t be difficult if we just showed up and voted. That’s where Democrats fail, time and time again. Republican success is directly tied to voter turnout. It’s the reason why Trump advocates don’t try to convince you that he’s great, they just try to get you down on Biden so you abstain.

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                28 days ago

                You still haven’t explained how this shifts the Overton window. You speak as if the only reason why they can’t get anything done is because of Republicans yet the Republicans somehow get their shitty agenda passed time and time again while making up a similar percentage of the legislature.

                And Trump supporters do try to convince everyone that he’s great. That’s what the ‘G’ in MAGA stands for on the hats they all wear…

                • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
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                  28 days ago

                  If Democrats repeatedly win elections, they’ll begin competing more aggressively in primaries to capture more of the vote. The more progressive the winners of the primaries, the more the window shifts. Republican candidates will have no choice but to come closer to center to capture the moderate votes. They’re in control of the right-wing propaganda machine, so they’ll continue to shift the narrative to whatever encompasses their candidate while pointing a finger at opposition, and their loyal supporters will follow suit. That’s how they got the lemmings to the edge of the cliff in the first place. They’re the only ones that can reel them back in.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          27 days ago

          How about expecting leftists to vote for the one of two likely candidates to win who isn’t a Nazi rapist who openly says he wants to be a dictator?

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      You can’t really expect logical consistency from any large group of people. It will always be trivial to find 2 people with conflicting views, so trying to paint the group as hypocritical is worthless.

      But Republicans are indeed worthless shitcunts, so it’s never hard to find an individual being hypocritical. Unfortunately, the accusation means nothing to them. They don’t care if they’re hypocritical, immoral or bigoted, they only care about getting what they want – and there’s nothing they won’t say to get it.

      • root_beer
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        27 days ago

        He not the root, he’s just another leaf on the gympie gympie that the right has become over the last fifty years. The FBI itself is another part of it.

  • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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    The other day, at the libertarian convention, some MAGA hats went and harassed other participants who were calling Trump authoritarian. It’s amazing how they’ll just go and take denunciations of their nature as a challenge to enact it, unable to see that they’re actually harming themselves.

    • treadful@lemmy.zip
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      A libertarian convention sounds like it would have been so chill before like 2016. Maybe my views of the past are a little naive though.

      EDIT: I thought they said librarian…

  • jobby@lemmy.today
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    There are three sorts of MAGA asshole.

    1. Cynical as hell and only supporting it because they want to make money in the chaos.

    2. Genuinely evil, cruel and racist (Steven Miller) and wants to hurt people in the chaos.

    3. Ignorant as fuck and frequently also coupled with lower intelligence. Honestly has no fucking idea about anything beyond their daily existence or the tip of their nose, and doesn’t care to become informed. Low information voter and proud of it. Opinions and raised voices count far more than being able to read. Hopes they can get cheaper gas and beer in the chaos.

    • lennybird@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      Don’t forget the 4chan incel meming nihilists!

      Our society is full of ignorant assholes. The only thing I’ll say is the red dunce cap makes them easier to spot and filter.

    • eldavi@lemmy.world
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      Ignorant as fuck and frequently also coupled with lower intelligence. Honestly has no fucking idea about anything beyond their daily existence or the tip of their nose, and doesn’t care to become informed. Low information voter and proud of it. Opinions and raised voices count far more than being able to read. Hopes they can get cheaper gas and beer in the chaos.

      this describes fanone before jan 6th based on the interviews he’s given since then and i wonder if he has any unique insights into the psyche of the people who believed as he once did.

      i’ve also come to understand that people who “don’t like politics” are the biggest part of this group and can be used as a dog whistle.

      • jobby@lemmy.today
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        I have, in younger years, not been particularly informed about politics and was glib in saying things like ‘they’re all the same” etc. but I was at least lucky to have a family background with enough smarts to never have given the time of day to a piece of shit like Trump.

        To be charitable, there are unimaginably VAST numbers of people who are not actually idiots, but lack any point of intelligent reference in their family or community with which to leverage any thinking outside of the purposely-regressive framework set up by the GOP types; the RW media, the business grifters, the churches, the impassioned-but-warped-and-misguided funders, the downright evil. They are all in that mix.

        Ever since he was the front runner in 2016 I’ve become determinedly interested in politics and the courts and become loquacious in attempting to describe their importance to people who claim the disinterest I used to.

        Help spread the word to people you know need the help to understand the importance of it!

        Yes politicians can be self-serving, but GENERALLY on the Left, particularly the progressive Left, politicians are not there to line their own pockets. This absolutely cannot be said for the Rightwing.

        • eldavi@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          Help spread the word to people you know need the help to understand the importance of it!

          in my experience they either don’t want to hear it or know it but disregard it when it suites their goals (eg biden administration on the gaza genocide).

          how do you get people who refuse to listen?

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    29 days ago

    Back in the day, someone said that it wasn’t the big Hitler in Berlin that was making life tough. It was the million little Hitlers in Paris.

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    If they caught the fuckers that did that, I hope they go away for attempted murder.

  • Dave V
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    29 days ago

    The “law and order” party has become the anarchy party.

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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      29 days ago

      Don’t insult anarchy like that. Anarchy requires respect for each other, that’s why you don’t need a leader or rules.