In general I love the idea of mocking the ridiculous things Trump says. Mockery is such a great strategy against him! But I’m uncomfortable doing so in the case of dangerous hate speech that is causing real harm. I'm not sure Haitian immigrants find it amusing to hear the blood libel against them set to music *while they are suffering real-world attacks.* Even Springtime for Hitler, years after, didn’t set specific vitriol against Jews to music (although there was plenty other mockery).
As Anat Shenker-Osorio says: “I know it feels like all fun and games with the eat dogs comment. That it is so obviously ridiculous that repeating it exposes how heinous Trump is and thus moves voters away from him. But there's no evidence to support this claim, and plenty refuting it. 🧵”
Yep. But, we will be off to the next thing soon! My feed is blowing up today with my right wing friends asserting a massive conspiracy by the left re: yesterday’s golf course incident. That will take the heat off of Springfield Ohio, probably.
I hope Springfield can be out of the racist spotlight soon, but I think it's more the social media algorithms that flit from thing to thing. Racists seem to be able to multi-task and hate more than one group and place at a time. And the trauma people have felt won't go away soon even if the bigots move on. I'm happy to mock and laugh at ‘concepts of a plan’ - it's not funny to threaten to take away health care from millions of people either, but that's policy (or lack thereof). But lies that lead to locking down schools and hospitals is a whole other level. :(
In general I love the idea of mocking the ridiculous things Trump says. Mockery is such a great strategy against him! But I’m uncomfortable doing so in the case of dangerous hate speech that is causing real harm. I'm not sure Haitian immigrants find it amusing to hear the blood libel against them set to music *while they are suffering real-world attacks.* Even Springtime for Hitler, years after, didn’t set specific vitriol against Jews to music (although there was plenty other mockery).
As Anat Shenker-Osorio says: “I know it feels like all fun and games with the eat dogs comment. That it is so obviously ridiculous that repeating it exposes how heinous Trump is and thus moves voters away from him. But there's no evidence to support this claim, and plenty refuting it. 🧵”
https://x.com/anatosaurus/status/1834301447930085636
Yep. But, we will be off to the next thing soon! My feed is blowing up today with my right wing friends asserting a massive conspiracy by the left re: yesterday’s golf course incident. That will take the heat off of Springfield Ohio, probably.
I hope Springfield can be out of the racist spotlight soon, but I think it's more the social media algorithms that flit from thing to thing. Racists seem to be able to multi-task and hate more than one group and place at a time. And the trauma people have felt won't go away soon even if the bigots move on. I'm happy to mock and laugh at ‘concepts of a plan’ - it's not funny to threaten to take away health care from millions of people either, but that's policy (or lack thereof). But lies that lead to locking down schools and hospitals is a whole other level. :(