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erronis

(24,038 posts)
4. This is a very important post and article in The Observer (Guardian)
Sun Aug 18, 2024, 08:59 AM
Aug 2024
The streets are – for now – quiet. The violence has been crushed. But this is Britain, where extremist political violence is someone carrying a brick and throwing a chair leg. In America, there aren’t just automatic weapons and rights to openly carry firearms, there are actual militias. Regardless of how well Harris is doing in the polls, America is facing a singularly dangerous moment, whoever wins the election.

Because as Trump has already showed us and as Jair Bolsonaro learned, it’s not even necessarily about winning any more. Or even about a single day. The entire period between the result and the inauguration is an anything-can-happen moment not just for America but for the world.

In Britain, the canary has sung. This summer we have witnessed something new and unprecedented. The billionaire owner of a tech platform publicly confronting an elected leader and using his platform to undermine his authority and incite violence. Britain’s 2024 summer riots were Elon Musk’s trial balloon.

He got away with it. And if you’re not terrified by both the extraordinary supranational power of that and the potential consequences, you should be. If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.


It still surprises me that so many people continue to use his platform without understanding the dangers.
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