He’s telling us what he will do to his political enemies if he’s president again. Is anyone listening?

It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk He’s telling us what he will do to his political enemies if he’s president again. Is anyone listening?

I feel pretty safe in saying that we can now stop giving him the benefit of that particular doubt. His use—twice; once on social media, and then repeated in a speech—of the word “vermin” to describe his political enemies cannot be an accident. That’s an unusual word choice. It’s not a smear that one just grabs out of the air. And it appears in history chiefly in one context, and one context only.

    • @Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
      11•1 year ago

      Ironically it’s generally just that felons can’t vote. There is some understandablility for not making felons unable to run for office, in theory it could be used as a political tool.

    • TechyDad
      8•1 year ago

      Case in point: The QAnon Shaman is running for a US Senate seat. Seriously. He wants to be a legislator in the building that he was sent to prison for physically attacking.

    • @Schmoo@slrpnk.net
      6•1 year ago

      I strongly disagree. Being convicted of a felony is far easier than you may think. It is still a felony in many states to possess weed, to give only one example. It is too susceptible to being used for political persecution.

      In fact, it already is used for that purpose since convicted felons can’t vote in most states. The entire purpose of the war on drugs was political persecution.

      • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
        7•1 year ago

        “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

        -John Ehrlichman, one of Nixon’s advisors

    • @Maggoty@lemmy.world
      2•1 year ago

      There aren’t laws because we don’t want the government to be able to just imprison any opposition. There is however a Constitutional rule about government officials who lead insurrections. I’m excited for all the Constitutionalists to just ignore that though.