"Monster Liberty": That's how the otherwise excellent closed-captioning service in the auditorium at Pennridge High School interpreted "Moms for Liberty," while one of several dozen citizens who had waited in line to lambast the group spoke at the podium. A chuckle rose up among the parents in the crowded school board meeting, held on a late August evening after the first day of classes for the Pennridge School District in suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania. "Fair enough," one mother whispered to another.
Moms for Liberty meet their match: Actual moms and parents.
Who support actual liberty (as opposed to fascism).
More power to those parents. Fighting the good fight. Fuck "Moms for Facism".
We all need to devote more time to finding and voting against these groups in our local elections. especially in towns like this that seem to have a majority of rational parents.
Moms for Liberty is a fascist group. It's the Nazi Youth for suburban Karens, basically.
The alt-right are a cancer on the nation.
It was neither “rally” nor “riot.” It was a planned insurrection and you can bet the farm if it was blm or antifa doing it, we’d be witnessing public executions for it.
This makes it feel even more bleak. Where is all this money coming from?! Who is funding this and how?
The same fucks as always. Peter Theil, the Kochs, the Davos', pick your billionaire. They didn't become billionaires by being awesome people and y'know, bringing everyone up with them. More like, when their tide was rising, they paid goons to short leash the marina to the docks (which would sink them if the tide rose high enough).
Who's the squeaky wheel, who pays them and who stands to benefit.
Its always the rich behind fascists, because 1. They don't want the system they're so capable of gaming to change (unless it cements their position) and B. They are assuming they'll be above reproach if the fascists win.
Make no mistake, every billionaire alive would sell us all, and our children, out rather than become a $900 millionaire.
Davos is a city where the WEF meets, not a family of billionaires.
Yr right. I meant DeVos.
That makes more sense.
Because people having tens of millions of dollars in assets is a societal failure. Let alone people having hundreds of Millions, or billions, or trillions. You don't get to be a person that wealthy by being a good person. It requires deception theft and oppression. And it only gets exponentially worse. Because these bad people have outsized pools of resources to further damage society.
Until we as a society place reasonable limits on personal wealth and assets this will get worse.
✝️
Because why feed the poor with little ROI when you can astroturf education initiatives to increase indoctrination for $$$ in future donations?
local parents drowned out by AstroTurf-ed organized opposition.
Before the meeting, people exchanged wisecracks about “talented clappers” — an inside-joke reference to an email circulated among local conservatives that appealed for sympathetic outsiders to turn out and applaud the right-wing agenda: “You do not need to be a resident to attend and clap,” it advised, for “policies that bless and protect our children.”
Is this a form of paid protestors?
TL;DR please?
The title of the article, I guess?
a right-wing “astroturf” organization
What characteristics mean an organization is not an astroturf organization?
Astroturfing is:
The disguising of an orchestrated campaign as a "grass-roots" event
That definition seems overly broad to me. I wouldn't consider a labor union to be an astroturfing organization but, depending on the details, I think you could argue that by the letter of the definition, some of them are. I think there is a more suitable definition with a narrower scope.
Thanks for your help. I'm just rambling and pondering semantics. I don't have anything meaningful to say.
It's a rough definition, but astroturfing is usually rooted in goals separate from or even counter to the stated movement. E.g. in your example outside support for a labor movement wouldn't necessarily be astroturfing if it's genuinely supporting labor. A fake labor movement sprouted by the companies themselves to take the wind out of the sails of real labor movements would.
It’s a rough definition, but astroturfing is usually rooted in goals separate from or even counter to the stated movement.
I think that is a red flag, absolutely. That's a good indicator of an astroturfing campaign.
E.g. in your example outside support for a labor movement wouldn’t necessarily be astroturfing if it’s genuinely supporting labor.
Right. A big donation to the AFL-CIO doesn't turn it into an astroturfing organization.
Wikipedia has a more specific definition in the first paragraph:
Astroturfing is the practice of hiding the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious, or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from, and is supported by, grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial backers.
I think it's pretty hard to argue that labor unions can be astroturfing. It's not like they have a lot of wealthy donors who are secretly trying to push narratives to encourage workers organizing.
I think it’s pretty hard to argue that labor unions can be astroturfing.
If the definition for astroturfing is:
The disguising of an orchestrated campaign as a “grass-roots” event
You only have to show there is organized action to prove astroturfing is taking place. That is an extremely low bar. I think it is too low, in fact. What political organizations would not meet that standard?
The definition you provided from wikipedia is much better.
Astroturfing is the practice of hiding the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious, or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from, and is supported by, grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source’s financial backers.
I don't know why I didn't look at wikipedia in the first place.
