LISTEN TO THE PROPAGANDA, LISTEN TO THE LATEST SLANDER.

 I feel better already. Getting rid of the Muslim Ban and the "Patriotic Education" bullshit is a good start.

But watchman, what of the Right? They keen, they burn! Attend one of the hot new vendors of wingnut poop, The Epoch Times, which today dropped this: 

That was actually just the email come-on: The thing itself is called  "Ideological Alignment Pushing America Toward Totalitarianism, Experts Warn," and it's a caution. Take this:

The formation of a totalitarian state is just about complete in America as the most powerful public and private sector actors unify behind the idea that actions to stamp out dissent can be justified, according to several experts on modern totalitarian ideologies.

(The "experts" actually cited by author Petr "Not A Typo" Svab, BTW, are "Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal arts professor at New York University" mainly famous for promoting Milo Yiannopoulos and his own r-u-triggered @antipcnyuprof account, and James Lindsay, another from an apparently inexhaustible supply of "gay people are oppressing us" types.)

So Tubby's only been out of office for a day and already we're Hitler's Germany! I'm not kidding either -- several grafs in the thing refer to "Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Workers Party in Nazi Germany." ("Socialist," you'll be saddened to learn, was not in boldface type.) For instance:

Hitler initially didn’t control the spread of information via government censorship but rather through his brigades of street thugs, the “brown shirts,” who would intimidate and physically prevent his opponents from speaking publicly.

The tactic parallels the often successful efforts to “cancel” and “shut down” public speakers by activists and violent actors, such as Antifa.

Gee, sounds awful -- until you realize they don't mention any specific canceled/shut-down people because even Epoch Times readers might think, "Oh, you mean like when Josh Hawley loses his book deal (at least for a couple of days)? Or students decide they don't like their commencement speaker? Who gives a shit?" (The people who really get persecuted for speech, as I have observed repeatedly, you seldom hear about.) Svab goes on:

Dissenting media in America haven’t been silenced by the government directly as of yet. But they are stymied in other ways.

In the digital age, media largely rely on reaching and growing their audience through social media and web search engines, which are dominated by Facebook and Google. Both companies have in place mechanisms to crack down on dissenting media.

For rightwingers, "Crack down on dissenting media" means "enforce their own terms of service on their own platforms" -- as when President Tubby, after whipping up his goons to storm the Capitol, got his plug pulled by Twitter and all the wingnuts cried censorship.  

Google gives preference in its search results to sources it deems “authoritative.” Search results indicate the company tends to consider media ideologically close to it to be more authoritative. Such media can then produce hit pieces on their competitors, giving Google justification to slash the “authoritativeness” of the dissenters.

See? Google considers the New York Times "more authoritative" than QAnon Catturd Infect Your Computer News -- clearly librulmedia BIAS.

It goes on and on like this -- they marvel that "Alex Stamos recently labeled the widespread questioning of the 2020 election results as 'violent extremism,'" as if the Capitol siege were a hundred years ago instead of two weeks -- and who needs it, but you should understand what ET is peddling is right in line with what a lot of these guys are focused on -- not only the usual pencil-necks like Rod Dreher but also now-former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who I am told to my astonishment is prepping for a Presidential run with material like this:

Stands to reason, I guess: You can't run against the disastrous mishandling of the pandemic, unemployment, racism etc. the day after you were in charge of them all. Maybe in a month they'll try it! But till then and in any case, the conservative cri de boor will be Liberal Fascism.

UPDATE. Also what all the wingnut kids are into: transphobia! From Holy Rod Dreher:

And so, on the first full day of a Biden presidency, female school athletics is sacrificed to wokeness. 

??? 

From an executive order sent down from on high today:

Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.  Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. [Emphasis mine — RD]...

 Gasp! 

This means that schools that get federal funding have to treat biological males who identify as female as if they were female. With this order, the federal government declares that the biological advantage that male bodies have over female bodies, in terms of strength and endurance, does not matter — at least not in schools that receive federal funding.

I can easily imagine Rod squinting at LSU women's basketball games, trying to figure out which ones used to be a dude so he knows who not to beat off to. (Ha, just joking -- Dreher and 99% of these guys never gave a shit about women's sports until it became something liberal to blubber over.)