If you're on Facebook, you're supporting white nationalism

[Blecht]

Remember when Peter Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook, then donated $1.25 million to Donald Trump right after the Access Hollywood tape?

The donation was well known. But what has not been previously reported is just how much Thiel was willing to gamble on Trump’s MAGA movement during the 2016 election. His bet went far beyond money, speeches, or even mainstream Republican politics. Even as Thiel staked his reputation on the candidate in public, he met in private with the racist fringe that felt emboldened by Trump’s rise to power.

BuzzFeed News can reveal that in at least one instance during the summer of 2016, Thiel hosted a dinner with one of the most influential and vocal white nationalists in modern-day America — a man who has called for the creation of a white ethnostate and played a key role in an effort to mainstream white nationalism as the “alt-right.” And then Thiel emailed the next day to say how much he’d enjoyed his company.

Among those on the racist right, Thiel’s outreach raised hopes that his financial bet on Trump would extend into the ascendant alt-right movement, which despite its prominence was a collection of small and often cash-strapped organizations. One avowed white nationalist privately speculated that Thiel’s money and influence could have made him “our George Soros.”

Thiel’s wager on Trump paid off, at least at first, and the Republican candidate’s victory ushered him into a new echelon of political power. Thiel seeded allies throughout the new administration and won a direct line of communication with the White House.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support

[Phoenix61]

1. That's a reach. nt

[Phoenix61]

7. Yes it is. What do you suggest. We boycott

Hobby Lobby, Chik-Fil-a, Publix, any company that donated to Twilter?

[Phoenix61]

9. You would have to move off the grid.

To achieve the goal of making sure none of the money you spent ended up in Twitler’s hands.

[cyclonefence]

3. + 1000

Break your FB habit--there are other ways to keep in touch and to have political discussions.

As my grandmother used to say, "Save your money and starve the whores." If enough of us stop using FB it will die.

[brooklynite]

11. But that's the point; I don't use FB for political discussions.

I use it for family news and cat pictures.

I suspect that nobody here would meet your purity standards if we looked at everything they spend time or money on.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

23. Same here.

Plus, if we're concerned about such things, if you shop at Walmart you are seriously supporting Republicans and a company that so badly underpays its employees that new employee orientation includes a how-to on applying for food stamps.

I myself never shop at Hobby Lobby or Walmart, the only time I ever ate at Chick-fil-A I thought the food was terrible and never went back. I use a local bank, not one of the giant ones. I can only do so much, but I make an effort.

[madaboutharry]

4. I guess all the Mah Jongg Lady pages are full of people who support white nationalism.

Come on.

[Thomas Hurt]

5. This morning it was social media were filthy socialists who were horribly biased against cons...

sounds like no one trusts social media.

[Sympthsical]

18. Exactly

I read around conservative sites and blogs sometimes (know thy enemy). They are forever whining that this or that right-winger has been deplatformed or suspended from various social media sites. They see Big Tech as a communist plot to take over all political discourse and enforce a uniform, authoritarian Leftist, socialist view upon the entire country.

Which is it? It cannot be both.

I'm a pretty absolutist First Amendment type. I like discourse. Assholes gonna asshole. I'm not much a fan of the woke Left either. There is some crazy racist, homophobic, sexist shit that comes out of them (Horseshoe theory?). And they want to clamp down on free speech just as much as the loony Right does.

I just don't like authoritarians who want to control speech. From any side.

So, a hard pass from me on all this nonsense.

[Croney]

6. No I'm not.

[Different Drummer]

12. I'm on FB and will continue to be. I don't support white nationalism. That is all.

[Heartstrings]

13. +1000

[Blecht]

14. I truly don't get the denial

That is all.

[BannonsLiver]

15. My friend in PA

Has been laid off from one job and had hours cut by 80 percent at another. Selling vintage items on Facebook Marketplace is keeping a roof over his head. So I tend to avoid painting with a broad brush aboit FB even if I don’t like it. For some people it’s a ways to make ends meet.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

16. That's what I like about DU: the logic. NT

[Sympthsical]

17. Do you have a cell/smart phone? You support human rights abuses then.

At least by your metric. Anything made in China is going towards what is resulting in a genocide and the crackdown in Hong Kong. Have you seen a list of companies doing business and manufacturing in China? You'll basically be living in a cabin in the woods if you hold them to the same standards. And what China is doing is leagues beyond what FB is doing. FB just allows posts from a bunch of racist assholes.

95% of my FB consists of liberals. I do not discuss politics there. It is merely friends and family sharing their lives. I ad block, so I never see anything.

This is slacktivism at its finest. Hating FB is fashionable, so people boycott and feel like they've done Important Work. I promise, it's not. Hell, when I don't use an ad block on DU, all I see are pro-Trump and right-wing ads half the time.

And I never see these calls about Twitter, when it is just as toxic, if not more so. Half the posts on DU nowadays are just copies and pastes of Twitter posts. Why not calls against them? Hell, Trump does a hell a lot of damage from Twitter. No Tweetcott there? Huh. Curious. Maybe because people find it politically useful?

If you have pretty much any technological device, you're supporting a lot worse than a group of white supremacists on a social media site. So maybe ease off on accusing people of supporting things they clearly do not.

[Brainstormy]

19. utter nonsense.

Just baloney.

[msongs]

20. seen the ads on DU lately, wonder if any are for un-democratic groups nt

[Dem2]

22. Social Fixer

& block the trolls.

[hunter]

24. Mostly I blame television.

Do you watch television?

[SlogginThroughIt]

25. JFC really?

Come on this is tiresome.

[SlogginThroughIt]

26. Did you turn on a light today? You are endangering the planet!!!

[Nitram]

27. Bullshit. Like if you take any transportation using hydrocarbons you are contributing to

climate change. Or if you use electricity powered by fossil fuel, your are a climate change denier. Or if you buy food packaged in plastic you are destroying the planet.