"It's no accident that the images of the Obamas are embedded deep inside a video about voter fraud conspiracies from the 2020 election ( which are untrue, if I need to say it again). This video is an escalation in the assault that is likely to come on voting rights and voting access in the midterms."
"I caught Levin the day after he turned in a chapter about authoritarianism for a new book, which happens to look at how discrimination and the imposition of social hierarchies ties in with power. Let me summarize. Vulnerable groups are smashed down as dangerous and not fit to be full citizens, so a smaller group of elites can justify power by any means to protect society from these lowly and nasty influences."
President Trump posted a video on his social media platform that included animated images portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House removed the post and initially called it a meme before labeling it a staffer’s mistake. The images appeared within a video promoting false 2020 voter-fraud conspiracies. Experts connect the imagery to a broader effort to undermine voting rights and restrict voting access ahead of the midterms. Scholarship on authoritarianism links the dehumanization of vulnerable groups to elite justification for concentrated power. The messaging reduces Black and brown citizens to dangerous outsiders to rationalize exclusion from democratic participation.
Read at Los Angeles Times
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]