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Recently Trump's campaign published a massive list of calls to violence against him by Democratic operatives in government and media. There are clips of Democratic operatives on cable news saying someone needs to put a bullet into Donald Trump.
It's old now, but I wonder if anyone remembers the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I haven't watched it in probably 15-20 years, but a major plotline from it is that the intelligence services essentially meme an assassination attempt of a prominent politician into reality. They craft this narrative around the politicians inevitable assassination at the hands of an unstoppable and mysterious foe, The Laughing Man, and a "Stand Alone Complex" kicks in and rando's take up the call to be the Laughing Man. And all this serves as misdirection to the security forces trying to protect the politician, because they are on the lookout for a elite assassination scheme, and instead an army of tards attacks.
Anyways, what was I saying?
In the first season, it's a combination trying to meme the assassination of a corrupt police chief, lead primarily by a retired military corrupt politician ("General Secretary" in the dub, probably a mistranslation of cabinet secretary). ((It's also marginal as an example of a Stand-Alone Complex. The original hacker Laughing Man did exist, and the protagonists meet him; the lack of a true original comes from him discovered the underlying conspiracy of his time thanks to either an accident or someone airdropping a file on him, and because the violent actions the Laughing Man archetype developed after the original friendly kidnapping were a result of said cabinet secretary trying to play up the 'bad acts' and the Laughing Man logo getting used everywhere... as it did in real life.))
It's the second season where intelligence services other than Section 9 are involved; the Individual Eleven manifesto (which doesn't actually exist as a written text) is somewhere between an invasive meme and a straight-up brain-computer virus built to force those with certain traits into a murder-suicide plot targeting the Prime Minister, masterminded by a high-level incredibly annoying Central Intelligence Service bureaucrat.
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Just pointing out Rick Wilson is an anti-Trump Republican though, he is certainly not a Democrat, given his positions on anything except Trump. And the attempted shooter at the golf course had also voted for Trump before sharply turning away from him. How much of this is about dissident Republicans or supporters who feel very strongly about Trump?
This is not to minimise it, I really do not want Trump to be assassinated. But sometimes those who hate the most are those who feel betrayed by their own side/choice. Splits or schisms within religions or ideologies are often more vicious than between opposing ideologies. We expect the side we don't like to suck, but when its your own side it hits deeper. See Protestant vs Catholic, Night of Long Knives, Stalin vs Lenin/Trotsky etc. Both Wilson and Routh clearly hate Trump, but neither are examples of standard Democrats.
This sort of framing, while beneficial to the Rick Wilsons of the world, is likely untrue.
His political positions on most things except Trump aren't really compatible with Democrats. And he was part of the Republican party since the 80s. He is just a Republican who really hates Trump.
Is that why he's favorably citing David Corn?
https://x.com/DavidCornDC/status/1836776564916174907
He's switched many positions and is not coming back (he can't his site is funded to be this way)
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This appears to be untrue.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-ryan-routh-actually-vote-144911519.html?guccounter=1
Right, his tweet was that his choice to support was Trump in 2016 not that he voted for him.
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I think it is a cultural thing. Almost all of the members of all the political tribes (myself certainly included) are at most armchair activists who mostly post on social media. The people who are willing to use gun violence to further their political aims are always a tiny minority, but the size of that minority differs very much dependent on the tribe.
In a bizzaro world where Trump dropped out of the race and Adolf Hitler became the replacement candidate, the blue tribe would certainly feel that Hitler needs shooting. But the average coastal city-dweller who puts their pronouns on twitter is certainly not going to snipe Hitler. On the other hand, if parts of the red tribe feel that Hitler needs shooting (which they would), a small fraction of these actually have the capabilities to carry out a serious assassination attempt.
So if say 10% of the blue tribe think that the US would be better off if someone killed Trump, and if 1% (Lizardman constant and all that) of the red tribe also thought that, I would expect most serious attempts to come from from the people at least vaguely associated with the red tribe.
This is not universal, but specific to the US. Gun culture, 2nd amendment (violently resisting tyrants) and all that are very much red tribe coded. In post-war Germany, the highest profile assassinations (such as the RAF killing an AG) were carried out by left wing terrorists, who picked up gun handling skills over a few years in the underground.
There is certainly the possibility that some fringe left people decided to get really good at long distance shooting in 2020 for the specific purpose of murdering anyone who would in their eyes turn America into a fascist dictatorship. But that is a very lonely path, you would have to tell all your blue tribe friends "I practice rifle shooting because it is fun" which would be received about as well as "my hobby is tuning my diesel engine so that it emits as much smoke as possible". From the state's point of view, keeping tabs on a few blue tribe activists who own long arms is much easier than figuring out who among the zillions of rifle-owning red tribe activists is actually likely to climb on some roof and shoot a candidate and who is only cosplaying with their tactical vests.
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At a certain level this is a distinction without a difference. Trump wasn't attacked by his enemies on the left, but by other enemies allied with the left who... Taking the Rick Wilson example. Rick hates Trump, endorses Democrats, takes money from Democrats, etc. etc. Maybe at some level he'll call himself a Republican, but at this point that sounds like marketing. If tomorrow Tulsi Gabbard called for Biden to be shot, we wouldn't say, "wow, the radical left at it again." But we all know where the lines are really drawn.
This is really one of the key points of American politics over the last 15 years: Conservatives feel that elected Republicans don't represent them. Conservatives would overwhelmingly not identify Rick Wilson as one of them. So it feels like bullshit to pin him (or other such) on us just because he continues to call himself a Republican for rhetorical purposes. If I rob a store in shoe polish does that prove black crime?
This is probably true, but being a Republican and being a Conservative are not the same thing. He presumably feels that his party is no longer what it once was, and I think he is correct. Whether it is better or worse depends on who is doing the judging, but he at least clearly feels Trump has hijacked the party.
I am not saying he is right to feel that way, or that the Republican party is not more representative of much of its electorate now (I think it is, or at least is cosplaying it while Trump is around, we'll see how things go after him), but rather his level of hate is driven by that feeling of betrayal, which looks to be much stronger than even the average Democrat. So strong he created an entire organization to try and stop Trump getting elected and is willing to work with people he also disagrees with just to do that.
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The “Hitler 2.0” argument proves way too much. Do Democrats hate fertilizer bombs so much they wouldn’t use them on Turbo Hitler? How about samurai swords?
No, people don’t assassinate Presidents because of a more general principle: it’s fucking stupid. It’s difficult, it’s suicide, and there’s so much better to do with their time. They go ride a bike or chat up girls instead. The exceptions are a long tail of nutjobs. Some tiny percent of them make the dumb fucking choice and try to impress Jodie Foster.
Which means the load-bearing part of your theory is the last line. Are the Democrats doing a better job corralling the crazies? Does the kind of illness that gravitates to radical leftism tend towards lower functionality than the radical right? I’m not sure. I just know you can’t use it to understand more mainstream motives.
I do think that the radical left tends to attract lower-functioning nut jobs than the radical right, for what it’s worth. We don’t hear about white supremacist compounds in Idaho disintegrating because no one did chores the way anti capitalist coffee shops do.
Yeah, but where's the right-wing equivalent of, e.g. the Symbionese Liberation Army, or black bloc?
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The spread between democrats and republicans in gun ownership is real, but it’s not that big- there’s plenty of democrat gun owners. And while AR-15 ownership probably skews way more right wing, a deer rifle would work just as well.
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I guess the implication here is that Trump will eventually get got by an elite hacker who can’t appear on cable news?
His name is 4chan.
Who is this “Four Chan”?
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