@brichapman@mastodon.socialWhy do some societies protect individual rights but struggle to help people stay connected to each other?
This piece looks at what modern culture gets right about freedom and equality. And what it misses about belonging.
It asks: can we build systems that value both independence and real community?
What would that look like where you live?
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialRSF Press Freedom Index hits a 25-year low: over 50% of the world's countries fall into the "difficult" or "very serious" categories; Norway holds the top spot (Reporters Without Borders)
https://rsf.org/en/2026-rsf-index-press-freedom-25-year-low…
@fgraver@hcommons.social2026 RSF Index: press freedom at a 25-year low | RSF https://rsf.org/en/2026-rsf-index-press-freedom-25-year-low
@cdarwin@c.imWe know from polling that voters want us to be talking about preserving their rights and freedoms (No Kings)
and not just “kitchen table issues”
and that there is nothing more intrinsically American than fighting for freedom and democracy.
We also know from polling, lots and lots of polling, that voters believe that our hearts are in right place
but question our toughness, and whether we are strong enough to be able to fight and deliver for them.
So we should se…
@wraithe@mastodon.social“First they came for the New York Times and I… fuck I have to say something about this don’t I?
Who’s the next one on the poem? Could I maybe wait for that one?”
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e4tqkvdjxqapupkv6rnb6agp/post/3mqeqd3ptec2u
@sonnets@bots.krohsnest.comSonnet 046 - XLVI
Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierc'd with crystal eyes,
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To 'cide this title is impannelled
A quest of thoughts, all t…
@servelan@newsie.social"A court ruling striking down Florida’s Stop WOKE Act is both a major affirmation of academic freedom and a window into the free-speech debates dividing the right."
The Freedom To Be Woke | Portside
https://portside.org/2026-07-19/freedom-be-woke
@cdarwin@c.imDropping out of college after one year following his participation in the deadly white nationalist “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017,
Nick Fuentes launched a career as a racist, antisemitic, misogynistic far-right activist and livestreamer.
From this perch, he guides a largely online movement known as “Groypers,”
consisting primarily of “incels” (involuntarily celibate): racist, antisemitic, misogynistic disaffected young white men.
He works t…
@cdarwin@c.imSouth Africa Bullied by a protector
When Donald Trump returned to the US presidency in January 2025, South Africans were surprised to find themselves in his line of fire.
The false claim that white South African farmers are being murdered for their land has long been a staple conspiracy theory of the white far-right
(white farmers have been killed, but not at a higher rate than the thousands of other victims of South Africa’s high violent crime rate).
With Trump back i…
@pre@boing.worldI read Naomi Klein's "Doppelganger", mostly by the pool or the beach while on holiday last week.
It isn't really about her being confused with Naomi Wolf, except on a surface level. Or even really about Wolf moving from left feminism towards right wing conspiracy theory.
Really it's about how political culture has changed as the world has moved more online and suffered the consequences of a pandemic and the often wrongheaded political responses to that.
Conspiracy thinking and a whole culture concentrating on reticence and reactionary thinking instead of evidence and logic.
While reading it I was hanging out with some folks who are much more right wing than I generally do. Here's some things they said:
I don't believe in Sunscreen. Isn't it funny how skin cancer rates have gone up as sunscreen becomes more popular.
I don't believe in COVID.
Carbon Warming models don't even take into account the sun.
I thought Chemtrails were a conspiracy theory, but came to believe it.
Claiming to believe in freedom while also wanting a crack-down on asylum-seekers, thinking they are destroying society.
So it's easy to believe Klein's basic thesis here, the worry that reactionary conspiracy thinking is breaking the entire body politic.
I don't think it's that people have lost all rationality. It's that people are wearing their conspiracy theories as badges, identifying them as a member of a group. Like religious beliefs that bind a group, the more stupid and outrageous they are the more those badges work to identify the ingroup from the outgroup.
The worry is always when they decide the outgroup need punishing for not taking on those conspiracy beliefs and turn to suppression and violence.
#reading #books #worldPol
@cdarwin@c.imAOC Says Mike Johnson’s GOP Is
“Running a Protection Racket”
for Trump
House Speaker Johnson told a far-right Faith and Freedom Coalition summit,
“I run the protection program.
We’ll take care of you, OK?”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-mi
