![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mahnmut posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpolitics‘A total failure’: The Proud Boys now mock Trump
"In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.
But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Trump had changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel Monday.
As Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Trump or the Republican Party."
How quickly the tide turns, eh? All it took was losing an election, inciting violence leading to many of his followers getting jailed, not participating himself in said insurrection, disavowing the violence and then not handing out pardons... oh! And getting banned from Twitter and Facebook and...
As much as I loathe these guys, I can't help but find it sad that it took them being thrown under a bus to wake up. They didn't mind that for the last few months of his presidency he continually lied about a healthcare plan that would come out in a couple of weeks. Then a couple of weeks more. Only to NEVER happen. This is just one example of how pathetic he was as a leader. But they disavowed him because he no longer supported them. They have no concern or care for their country and its well being. Only themselves. Just like him. Which is why they deserve exactly as much sympathy as he does - namely, zero.
"In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group urged its followers to attend protests against an election that it said had been fraudulently stolen from Trump. “Hail Emperor Trump,” the Proud Boys wrote.
But by this week, the group’s attitude toward Trump had changed. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said in the same Telegram channel Monday.
As Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, the Proud Boys, once among his staunchest supporters, have also started leaving his side. In dozens of conversations on social media sites like Gab and Telegram, members of the group have begun calling Trump a “shill” and “extraordinarily weak,” according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. They have also urged supporters to stop attending rallies and protests held for Trump or the Republican Party."
How quickly the tide turns, eh? All it took was losing an election, inciting violence leading to many of his followers getting jailed, not participating himself in said insurrection, disavowing the violence and then not handing out pardons... oh! And getting banned from Twitter and Facebook and...
As much as I loathe these guys, I can't help but find it sad that it took them being thrown under a bus to wake up. They didn't mind that for the last few months of his presidency he continually lied about a healthcare plan that would come out in a couple of weeks. Then a couple of weeks more. Only to NEVER happen. This is just one example of how pathetic he was as a leader. But they disavowed him because he no longer supported them. They have no concern or care for their country and its well being. Only themselves. Just like him. Which is why they deserve exactly as much sympathy as he does - namely, zero.
(no subject)
Date: 27/1/21 15:46 (UTC)The question now hinges on to what degree Trump can leverage having *had* power versus some budding Jake Featherston in the wings chafing to produce a much more efficient Population Reduction and howling about FREEDOM!
Plus, the Proud Boys and their ilk crossed the line from modern meme-online radicalization fascism to the post-WWI model with the Capitol Putsch, and with the attacks on state legislatures that happened on the same day.
The question now is if someone able to wage politics as low-level civil war on a 50 state basis is out there and if said individual gets in the wrong place at the wrong time or not.
(no subject)
Date: 27/1/21 15:51 (UTC)Yeah, this. I don't know that they feel betrayed by him since they were going along with his lies and his incompetency for so long, so much as Trump lost and they're looking for the next "alpha male" winner ("alpha male" in the sarcasm quotes here because that redpill mentality is bullshit). Fascists gonna fash.
(no subject)
Date: 27/1/21 15:57 (UTC)^This.
I don't have a lot of fucks to give for able-bodied, white males from middle-class (or higher) backgrounds who feel oppressed because people in marginalized groups are starting to get civil rights and they think this is exactly the same as their own white-boy rights being taken away. The Proud Boys are predatory sociopaths incapable of feeling any empathy for suffering people, so fuck them.
I do feel sorry for working-class people who are being fed the "divide and conquer" lines about how immigrants are supposedly taking their jobs and they should blame Mexicans instead of the Republicans profiting off slave labor from undocumented immigrants... I feel sorry to a point. I come from "white trash", the same kind of people Trump tried to appeal to and I somehow managed to see through the bullshit and the "let's you and him fight" game (and that it's not just about class struggle but it's all intersectional, because this country was founded in colonial racism and on the subjugation of women etc etc etc). A lot of the Bernie Bros I know who were all like "yeah, fuck the elites! fuck the 1%!" ended up voting for Trump when their boy lost, at the end of the day they're "fuck you, I got mine" just like the Proud Boys are.
(no subject)
Date: 29/1/21 08:12 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 30/1/21 00:02 (UTC)Trump is a Hollywood phony who has disappeared into his own character. The Proud Boys see him as their fearless leader? People on the left notice that the Proud Boys consider him their fearless leader? Oh my god, he must be their fearless leader! No, it's not just bullshit here at the last moment. It's been bullshit the entire time, remember? Five years of media-whipped fire and fury, full of eulogies about the forgotten poor rural white man and how he's going to burn the whole country down with his master Trump leading the charge, and it's never been anything but bullshit.
Oh, Trump is a racist. He's on tape saying more than enough dumb crap to make that clear. And I get the impression that if you run a real estate empire in the US, you have to swim uphill to avoid being racist. But that's the point: He has also been extravagantly wealthy since the day he was born. He was never going to chuck away his empire for the sake of a desperate social club of rust- and bible-belt rejects, but he sure would enjoy playing the part, all the way to the corner of the stage, until the last inch of curtain falls.
Now we're all standing around going "how much of that was just a complete hallucination?" Or at least, that's the reckoning we should be having.