The Mirror Can Be Scary
Need an example?
Have you heard of Antifa? Antifa’s label as a terroristic group has been spreading since the 2020 protests. The messaging has been popularized through political rhetoric - presidential administrations, congressmen (including speaker of the house), right leaning entertainment stations, and organized social media campaigns.
Antifa is presented as a group of liberal individuals who wants to sabotage the progression of The United States of America through political violence. Antifa is also presented as a group who is indoctrinating the youth of America through their protests at college campuses.
If no other information was gathered, would you understand what Antifa is? Have you asked yourself:
Does Antifa have a mission statement to research/review for yourself?
Who presented the information and did they include the objective information that you were able to find online?
Antifa is an abbreviated version of Anti-Fascist.
Anti-Fascist is an ideology that organizes against fascists, white supremacy, and neo-nazis. Due to anti-fascism being an ideology, it is a decentralized movement. This is not an organized political group like the Proud Boys with confirmed leaders and connections to political violence. Antifa is more aligned with people who support local businesses being anti-Walmart.
Fascist/Fascism:
A person who advocates or works to further the aims of fascism: an adherent of or participant in a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition.
An example of fascism: Mussolini
Authoritarian: A concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people.
The playbook for Authoritarianism:
Politicizing independent institutions
Spreading disinformation
Aggrandizing executive power
Quashing dissent
Scapegoating vulnerable communities
Corrupting elections
Stoking violence
Types of Government:
Democratic:
A form of government in which the people choose leaders by voting : of, relating to, or favoring democracy
Republic:
A form of government in which the power belongs to a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by the leaders and representatives elected by those citizens to govern according to law
Democratic Republic:
A democratic republic is a system of government where the people hold the supreme power and exercise it through elected representatives. It combines principles of both a democracy (majority rule and voting rights) and a republic (governance based on a constitution and rule of law).
How Individuals Identify Through Politics:
Democrat:
A member of one of the two major political parties in the U.S. that is usually associated with government regulation of business, finance, and industry, with federally funded educational and social services, with separation of church and state, with support for abortion rights, affirmative action, gun control, and policies and laws that protect and support the rights of workers and minorities, and with internationalism and multilateralism in foreign policy
Republican:
A member of one of the two major political parties in the U.S. that is usually associated with reduced taxation, with limited government regulation of business, finance, industry, education, and policing, with strong national defense, and with opposition to abortion, affirmative action, gun control, and policies and laws that are viewed as challenging traditional social and family hierarchies and structure
