• LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This article was written by Jeff Charles. A podcaster and political contributor who has appeared on fox News and Newsmax. He’s also anti sensible gun control, transphobic and believes being trans is just ignoring biology, believes that schools should ban books that have “ideology” in them (anything queer), thinks kids are being indoctrinated just because it occasionally comes up that there are different ways of being a person, says he’s an anarchist but will say libertarian sometimes to avoid “making people think he’s crazy” but just doing that shows that he doesn’t actually understand what anarchism is (or how crazy some libertarians are), and also talks about how the left wants Americans to be dependent on the state (all social programs). He’s also on point for some things, specifically things that most libertarians ascribe to, like fuck cops and anti drug war. But like most libertarians, he only believes in his “do whatever you want and leave me alone” mentality when it lines up with his personal beliefs.

    I don’t disagree that there are black voters who are frustrated with the dems, but this is not a very good article and is written by an ass who has to push the idea so he can continue to be brought onto Fox News and Newsmax to talk about it and so his site gets new subscribers. Subscribers that have to pay 50 bucks a year for his premium content. Which I’m honestly surprised doesn’t cost more. He’s also partnered with Doni Anthony who has his own site/substack, which when you’re on the landing page, the second article is, well, it requires subscribing and I’m not gonna do that. But it’s about a bill called the Inclusive Democracy Act of 2023 which is about restoring voting rights to people with criminal records/felonies who have done their time, the article is about the “hidden” reason the democrats support the bill, which is a far right conspiracy that average voters would never vote for a democrat so they have to make new voters to be able to win. It’s all baseless conspiracy stuff and is the same thought process for the “illegal immigrants voting” conspiracy.

    The point is that an article is only as reliable as the author is, and this author is just crap.

    • Hypx@fedia.io
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      8 months ago

      The poster of this article is almost certainly some kind of troll. If not a Russian agent, a fascism sympathizer. If you look at his posting history, it is almost entirely about attacking the Democratic party and Biden. Even when he is “pro-progressivism” it is usually in the form of a concern troll.

      As a result, everyone should ignore return2ozma. And it’s probably time to block him entirely. Also, report him for being a troll, since he breaks the rules on a regular basis.

      • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        If not a Russian agent, a fascism sympathizer.

        Even when he is “pro-progressivism” it is usually in the form of a concern troll.

        I have observed the same pattern with other users who are pro-Trump and pro-Russia. They would claim to profess an ideology and say they don’t support Russia and Trump, but then put their heads into the sand and pretend Trump and Russia did not do anything wrong.

      • Neato@ttrpg.network
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        8 months ago

        Yeah. He’s the second “both candidates suck” account I’m having to block. Seems like posting to generate voter apathy which helps Trump.

        • Hypx@fedia.io
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          8 months ago

          Saying “both sides are equally bad” is a common tactic for those who want the bad side to win.

      • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Please feel free to block him, but the articles are usually interesting and they bring up topics that the mainstream media doesn’t like to.

        • Hypx@fedia.io
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          8 months ago

          The problem is his dishonesty. It’s likely watching Foxnews or Newsmax. Sure, you can do it, but unless you’re intentionally about seeing the “other side” then it’s a waste of time. You’re just exposing yourself to right-wing and fascist propaganda.

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            I don’t find them dishonest and at least one mod is certainly aware of the controversy surrounding them - they’ve commented on this article themselves.

            Nearly all the articles they post are factually interesting - they may be uncomfortable to think about (and politics is heavy shit so feel free not to engage) but they’re news. This isn’t right wing propaganda but it is a lot more centrist than what you’ll see on NBC or CNN - but that camp of the media was absolutely flabbergasted when Hillary lost to Trump (electorally).

            I’d prefer to keep seeing stories from this poster so I don’t get blindsided.

            • Hypx@fedia.io
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              8 months ago

              Everyone on the left that is reasonably informed is aware of the danger. Trump could plunge the US into a fascist dictatorship. As a result, we are all vigilant on trying to avoid it. But guys like return2ozma are trying to muddy the waters as much as possible.

              So be careful with this line of thinking. Same goes for mods who tolerate him. History of such characters tells us that sooner or later, return2ozma will say something outrageous, like making statements blatantly in favor of overt fascism or whatever. Eventually, the mods will have to respond or face a crisis.

              • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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                8 months ago

                Oh, we’re all aware. But here’s the thing, they aren’t breaking the rules and the sources they are posting are all above board.

                We get it, the demo of Politics currently is VERY pro Biden, but when major news orgs like Newsweek and NBC are putting out negative press like this, it needs to be concerning to everyone.

                Burying their posts does a dis-service to the community by removing a contrarian opinion.

                Now, if they were posting links to Fox, or OANN, or, I don’t know, is Breitbart even a thing anymore? I’d remove that shit with a quickness and I’m pretty sure they KNOW that, which is why their links come from reputable sources.

                So long as it’s not written by the usual batshit crazy types like convicted fraud Dinesh D’Souza, we’re good.

                https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newyork/news/press-releases/dinesh-dsouza-sentenced-in-manhattan-federal-court-to-five-years-of-probation-for-campaign-finance-fraud

                • Hypx@fedia.io
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                  8 months ago

                  The demo is focused on being anti-fascist. Biden just happens to be the main line of defense, if not the only one. Hence the sensitivity to those that only seem to attack Biden.

                  Anyways, if these people aren’t going to be banned, then I will say this: Everyone should block every users that seems like a troll on this topic. And the same goes for any communities that seem “off” on this issue. And for problematic instances, demand your local instance defederate them entirely. Hopefully, decentralized social media will be able to avoid the disasters that happened in centralized social media.

                  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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                    8 months ago

                    The demo is focused on being anti-fascist. Biden just happens to be the main line of defense, if not the only one. Hence the sensitivity to those that only seem to attack Biden.

                    The anti-fascists sure get upset when people say that Biden should stop supporting genocide.

              • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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                8 months ago

                The goal of this sub is not to boost a candidate we as mods prefer to another. The reality is a lot of people have a lot of views I dislike, my role is not to suppress them.

                • Hypx@fedia.io
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                  8 months ago

                  There are limits to that type of thinking. As someone that is very familiar with what happened at Reddit, Twitter, even Digg before them, you are absolutely playing with fire here.

                  • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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                    8 months ago

                    Yes, the limits are defined in the rules, which we try to enforce to the best of our abilities.

      • LovingHippieCat@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Sure I’ll bite. This article was written by John Burn-Murdoch, and from what I can tell, he is not related to Rupert Murdoch and just seems like a boring centrist. So let’s look at his first graph. It says it shows diminishing support for democrats among non-white voters, supposedly showing they’re now at 60% support for non-white voters entirely. So the argument is that they are leaving the dems because they’re being disillusioned. That 60% figure is suspicious though since actual voting shows completely different dynamics. In 2022 the breakdown actually shows around the same amount of support in particularly black voters, 93% of black voters supported the dems, which was around the same amount as the election in 2020 and 2018. But in the graph in your article it does not use those numbers. It uses share of non-white voters who identify as democrats, not actual voting patterns. The author uses that to show that black voters and other non-white voters are separating from the democrats, but never mentions the actual voting data showing that despite not identifying themselves as democrats, they still vote for democrats.

        The next graph does the same thing, uses how people are identifying themselves in a poll as opposed to actual voting data and doesn’t even make much sense when actually looked at, especially since the y axis isn’t labeled so it’s confusing. I mean, does it show how nearly 100% of white voters in 2022 are republicans and close to 100% of white voters are liberal? It just makes no sense and is not a good representation when the author doesn’t even provide context to what the graph is trying to say. It makes no sense. Then he uses a book to try to illustrate that black voters are abandoning the democrats, but that book “Steadfast democrats: how social forces shape black political behavior”, was released in 2020 and is about how black voters are unified around the democrats and examines the reasons for this. So this author is using data to say what he wants to say that actually says the opposite of what he is trying to say. Then the next graph supposedly shows racial breakdowns for different more conservative beliefs and for those that identify as liberal or conservative. But it as a graph that also makes little sense. 75% of black voters identify as conservative while close to 90% or above identify as liberal? How can you have those numbers when they don’t add up to be 100%? There’s not 165% of black voters. This graph is suspicious as fuck, if you are gonna use percentages and want me to take you seriously, they need to add up to 100%. I’d also like to acknowledge here that multiple of the links in this article that are supposed to lead to actual other articles, actually just lead to the main page, that could be because I am not a subscriber, it’s just annoying and not the important part.

        Anyway, lets go to the next graph which the author introduces by saying that he extended the books research to include all non-white groups, despite it again not actually showing what he wants it to show. He claims it shows that different races are increasingly identifying as conservative, but it uses the book and a Pew Research Center American Trends Panel Wave 43 to make that case. But from what I can tell in that pew research trends panel, there is no mention on how many non-white voters identify as conservative, so I have no clue where he is getting that information unless it’s from the book which I also doubt given the book being about how black americans rally around the democrats consistently. The article finishes by saying that as the US becomes less racially segregated, more black and non-white Americans will change party affiliations to republican. But all it uses for that is just the census data which never mentions less racially segregated america leading to more non-white GOP voters. It also uses a republican pollster named Patrick Ruffini and his book “Party of the People Inside the Multiracial populist coalition remaking the GOP” as evidence, again, for showing how black voters are abandoning the democrats despite the fact that the share of republican black and non-white voters hasn’t changed much in the last couple of elections, the distribution is the same, it’s just that turnout was higher so there were more non-white GOP voters. Okay last thing on this incredibly long post, the article actually ends by saying that these voters are likely to become swing voters and that they likely will be won back by the dems, or at least can be. Essentially saying that all that he was saying in the article wasn’t actually influential and that the distribution in the voters could still be the same. He doesn’t use voting data for the entire article, which is the most important data to use when it comes to this.

        Anyway, I couldn’t find a lot on John Burn-Murdoch, but this article is still trash.

        • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
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          8 months ago

          Ah, so then the Dems have absolutely nothing to worry about come November with non-white voters? Got it!