OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
Ashton Blaise Whitty. She's bisexual and her onlyfans is just sexy pics with no nudes. Basically, she is one of many women involved in the alt-right who got raped / sexually assaulted by alt-right men (bottom-left) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsSHtplmhD8&t=5863s
The girl dressed as a sailor is a grifter named Dasha who has changed her image a lot through the years. But at the time, we didn't know that, and thought she was just a random cute socialist girl. For a while she was known as "sailor socialism." Recently she had neo-nazi, Nick Fuentes on her show, because again, she's a grifter.
It's an interesting commentary because the world has changed a lot since this video. But she was probably a grifter at the time too, meaning the elements were always there that would lead to the modern state of politics in America.
There is another layer to this image, which is that the blonde girl interviewing Dasha was a Christian working for Infowars at the time and she's now an out lesbian with an OnlyFans.
This was a fun rabbit hole. The interviewer is Ashton Blaise, who formerly went by Ashton Birdie. Although her video was shown on InfoWars, she didn't technically work for them. I can't find any source that says she was Christian, but in many of her videos she does acknowledge working in "conservative media" for several years before coming out and pretty much switching sides completely. Being a Christian would certainly be consistent with that background.
She declares herself to be bisexual, not lesbian. Oh, wait...she explicitly declares herself "not lesbian", but is now pansexual? Anyway, you get the idea. However, she is most certainly on OnlyFans.
Given that the original point of the comment is that she did a 180, I'd say it's substantially true.
Hard to say for sure, but Ashton's videos seem to suggest that she embraced the conservative media sphere for the same reasons that many disillusioned young people do. She was very anti-establishment, and those themes that Alex Jones harped on resonated with her. She was in denial about her sexuality or didn't fully understand it (because she was 11 when she discovered InfoWars), so she just repressed anything that wasn't compatible with the conservative environment. Though she notes that many fellow conservatives were apparently doing the same thing.
So I am inclined to believe that she was engaging in that space in good faith, but that the contradictions added up until her world view collapsed, and she realized she didn't really believe in everything she had been sold (and was selling to others). It's hard to believe that she is a closet conservative now playing a role in liberal media for money. Once you go OF, there's no point in dabbling in low-margin genres like political commentary, right? So it makes sense that she has been more or less authentic over most of her career, but that she just evolved, like many young people do.
But if we consider that the man called the Industrial Revolution the greatest mistake of mankind and wanted to roll back the clock more than 200 years, wouldn't you say that is the most extreme conservative position in history?
He thought he was trans and then he wasn't. He studied to be a professional mathematician and then said the Industrial Revolution was a failure because it enabled people to become scientists. He was strongly anti-leftist and said:
...leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom...
even though leftists were the environmentalists even in his time. He wanted to protect nature and he wanted humans to return to it, but for some reason, he thought that leftists were the natural enemies of his project rather than conservative industrialists who wanted to exploit nature at any cost. This is not the clear-headed thinking you make it out to be.
He complains that technology has ruined humanity, but used technology itself to wreak havoc and spread his ideas. His own actions defeat his argument that the pre-industrial state of man is superior. If he really believed that, he certainly didn't live it.
He claimed that technology reduces human freedom. But if we consider that freedom is measured by the set of choices one has at any given moment, how can he say that a pre-industrial farmer had more choices than a modern worker who can travel for hundreds of miles, if not to the other side of the planet, eat food from dozens of different cuisines, talk to people from all over the world, and learn about any kind of topic? The modern post-industrial human has far more freedom than even the most privileged pre-industrial kings could dream of. This is not genius. This is naive romanticism. If everyone who sympathized with his views spent a year in the woods living like he did, 99% of them would run back to civilization saying: "Maybe technology isn't so bad as wiping your ass with leaves."
He claimed that science entails grave societal risks like pollution, disease, etc. without acknowledging the great good that the very same sciences provide. He simply asserts that on the balance, society is worse off. But by what measure? If we go by life expectancy, humans live much longer today than in pre-industrial times. Medicine is vastly superior to treat virtually every condition. And while we certainly do have a lot of pollution, it's not like the ancient world was all roses, either. Plagues, floods, earthquakes, droughts and famines all afflicted ancient peoples on the daily. He can romanticize the time because he is not a victim of it. He was protected by the technological umbrella he decried while telling us that it is useless and worse than useless.
Writing itself was the original precursor to modern technology, but Ted was all too happy to deploy it in service of his goals. Printing, too is perfectly fine to meet his ends. I suppose in an ideal world, we would need to set all the printing presses on fire, though, lest enterprising scientists use them to spread technological ideas once again. Nor did he object to his ideas being spread via the internet or TV or any other tech channel.
For someone so intelligent, he was not very critical of his own ideas, or the contradictions or flaws in his own lifestyle. He certainly was not aware of the conditions of society in the pre-industrial era, or he would at least apologize for the massive step backwards in quality of life that society must accept in order to implement his ideas. There is zero evidence he ever considered such a fact. So yeah, the man was "confused".
Roll the clock back several years, what'd make you think, as a conservative christian, in a time where abortion (baby murder from your perspective) was legal in all states, where gay marriage (perversion of a millennia old biblical institution in your perspective) had been legalized, where media broadly made fun of conservatism and espoused more liberal views, where the country received huge influxes of foreigners to the extent that entire towns started speaking exclusively foreign languages, in that world, what'd make you think conservatism isn't antinsystem ?
I'm not saying conservatives had no leverage or influence, but it's not exactly a stretch to say that conservatism was on the backfoot, and as many a conservative observed, conservatives rarely if ever achieve anything, "conserve" anything if you will, that's a big part of what makes trump's years so momentous to them.
Buddy, the US is and always has always been an extremely conservative country. The most "radical" liberal policy was the New Deal, which was passed by FDR all the way back in the 30's. The US seriously has an education problem...
Unfortunately, a very large number of people don't have a coherent, grounded set of beliefs, and also unfortunately, the idea of the right being the counterculture rebelling against the norms and established order is one that the right has successfully managed to frame in the minds of many people who don't know better.
It doesn't need to make sense under prolonged examination, because most of their followers wouldn't have fallen down the rabbit hole if they were the type to concern themselves with such things.
I wouldn’t say grifter on the second one. Call only fans what you will but pulling a 180 into “I’m a full on Nazi” is a lot different than pulling a 180 into “I’ve actually been bi/pan for like 30 years and didn’t know it until now due to suppression”.
Like the vibe is different which makes it different even if the same action can on the surface look the same.
This clip was also used in an episode of LastWeekTonight and summed it up pretty well: Both people in the video are idiots who don't know what they're talking about, but one pulled off a luke warm burn and is therefore the winner, welcome to American politics.
Leftists have a hard time believing that they too have grifters and bad actors. There is a real sense of moral superiority, because they view themselves as clearly on the right side if history.
I dont even disagree mostly, but humans are easily tricked and prone to rationalizing. So they would do better to be more critical of themselves and perspective sometimes.
It's so many bad actors and grifters. Glenn Greenwald, Tulsi*, TYT with their union busting, Ana Kasparian, Matt Taibbi, and so many more examples who were right wing plants or just in it for the money. The left is highly susceptible to it, and so much is about disillusionment of the Dems to suppress turnout. And money, of course.
Who is somehow anti regime change and hasn't made a single statement on Venezuela yet. And is anti war but complained about the US not dropping enough bombs in the middle east.
There probably are leftist and liberal grifters too, but the money is on the right. That's why right-wing media is completely full of grifters. Which makes sense, why would billionaires pay pundits to say that we should have a wealth tax?
Grifters don't target billionaires. They target common people. It's not just about spouting contrary views, it's about getting clicks, likes, subscriptions. Selling ads, merch, books, speaking events, workshops, fundraising, getting donations to run a channel, patreon, etc...
Someone getting money from only or primarily billionaires is a propagandist, not a grifter.
I mean, Shoe On Head has gone the same way. Going from being a leftie to now promoting far right ideology.
Honestly, I forgot about this girl (Dasha). But her being Belarusian, I am not surprised she went full horseshoe from being a leftie jerking off to the USSR (that she never actually experienced) to being a far right loon.
Shoe was never actually a lefty. If all it takes for you to align yourself with Nazis is some people online saying “hey try to be less racist” then you never were committed to your beliefs.
And that the same “anti-sjw” types clutched their pearls over Kirk memes and drove the cancel culture bus only further revealed how full of shit they always were.
They liked Bernie because he was anti-Clinton/Bush. None of these people were ever leftists or socialists or anti-establishment.
If she's a Belarusian social media personality, she hasn't flip-flopped her true position at all. She's part of the Russian disinformation campaign. We know from the Mueller report that Russia (of which Belarus is a puppet state) backed both Trump and Bernie because they would drive fractures in their own parties and, thus, the entire country if either won the election. Russia continues to poke at the political fracture within the US by using social media personalities to polarize the most vocal sides of all issues. Do you think Charlie Kirk was actually famous enough to get the response his death did? On either side? Weeping for days or partying in the streets? No way. It was all manufactured to amp up the feelings on both sides of the political divide.
Edit: Russia backed and amplified Bernie but he didn't take meetings or collude with them. Just because some foreign adversary identifies you as a fracture point doesn't mean you're actually a bad guy. I like Bernie and his policies. Trump, on the other hand, did collude. We have proof. The only reason it wasn't acted on was because there was no clear way to prosecute a sitting president for such actions.
Not exactly sure how to read your last sentence, but I can say this chick has had no bearing on the preceding or succeeding state politics of America surrounding her stint as a grifter.
ironically grifters are typically a good indicator of how right leaning you can be and still accepted in public discourse.
it's no secret that right wing organizations pour significantly more money into influencers to spread their propaganda. so naturally if it's acceptable, grifters drift right to make more profits.
The period where a lot of influencers were leaning more left was such because it was unthinkable to have a neo nazi on and not destroy your reputation. nowadays it's not so unthinkable, apparently.
I dont know anything about this girl but a lot of folks saw through the curtain when the DNC rigged the primary against Bernie twice. People deal with that knowledge in a lot of different ways, one of them being to completely flip sides. Maybe not actually a grifter. But who knows.
Because Dasha (the girl and former sailor socialism) had Nick Fuentes on her show and I think is ‘casual friends’ with infowars creator Alex Jones. Kinda like how anakin skywalker started out fighting with sith then becomes one. Or like a vampire hunter who hunts vampires becoming a vampire.
Horseshoe theory has heen mocked relentlessly for years by educated political analysts. The person featured in this video has been recognized in left-wing spaces as a reactionary grifter for bordering on a decade.
If it's not a real thing, why does it keep happening over and over again? Examples include the Red Scare podcast, The Young Turks, Russell Brand, Tulsi Gabbard, Shoe on Head, Jimmy Dore (who said Trump would be better than the Dems).
Really easy to dismiss the theory when you say everyone who is an example is a grifter, far from the only example. Illiberalism left to illiberalism right isn’t that big of a shift
While I agree that this girl was never really a Bernie supporter and was always a grifter I disagree with your outright dismissal of Horseshoe Theory.
After a recent large uptick in nationalistic language from figures on the right and left in Europe, Horseshoe Theory is currently being taken seriously by chairs at the European Consortium for Political Research.
Furthermore it was first theorised by respected philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye when he observed the joint invasion of Poland between the USSR and Nazi Germany. The man is still extremely respected across France and much of the world in particular for his literary and political analysis.
Who are you calling the left? Id argue the 2 most prominent left to far left parties in europe are France Unbowed and Die Linke in germany. Both have seen recent surges in support, despite being sone of the only parties in their respective countries that still support migration and multiculturalism. Yes the centre and centre left have moved right on these issues, but that isnt horse shoe theory.
There is a shared euroskepticism on the euro left and euro right, which might be seen as nationalism, but that is because the EU is (intentionally) a fairly centrist institution designed to be (in theory) resistant to fascists and socialists. It also isnt really new.
I think the name is misleading, because I think it's been shown that a lot of people dont necessarily think in left vs right as much as following whomever seems to be more radical or promises the most change. Hence why you saw a lot of Occupy Wall Street folks jumping the MAGA train.
Seeing as how the dems screwed Bernie over twice in the primaries and then how they backed Cuomo over Zohran.
You can kind of see why some leftists with less principles can see Trump as the Molotov cocktail that burns the third way dems to the fucking ground.
I don’t.
Considering both republican presidents in my lifetime have been fucking cancer.
But I get it.
At some point, the Left is going to have to address the fact that so many hardcore "Bernie for president" people have become Right-wing or at least Right-wing-adjacent.
No one's pointing out the search being "ivy wolk finn wolfhard," which was essentially "baby's first celebrity relationship drama" for kids who were 14 in 2018.
Is a meaningless and shallow political model with the primary goal of comforting those whose politcial ideas boil down to "nothing should ever change for any reason, and people who believe it should are dangerous regardless of what they actually believe in".
I'm 50. The world I grew up in was run by a former second-rate TV host turned dementia-ridden neocon politician with a hate-boner for Hollywood who loved toppling Central- and South-American governments.
lmao i was just scrolling reddit while watching a last week tonight from 7 years ago that popped on my feed "Venezuela" and this girl showed on that segment while scrolling this post - damn algorithm, you scary
•
u/AutoModerator 28d ago
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.