Holy shit.

@cstross There is a need to get down improving life rather then than to get political hang-ups. Every one comes with the same political gimmick throughout the world. We call it Democracy, but at the end of the day is there any real difference?

ravenonthill@mastodon.social

@cstross see https://bsky.app/profile/emptywheel.bsky.social/post/3mjhbhrv3mc22

gimulnautti@mastodon.green

@cstross Viktor Orban’s Hungary was more meaningful to MAGA than you think. Steve Bannon and many others visited there frequently, and many think-tanks operated from there!

klausfiend@mstdn.ca

@W6KME @GhostOnTheHalfShell @Kierkegaanks @cstross The first CPAC was during the tail end of the Cold War so I think it's reasonable to assume it wasn't always a Republican-flavored Gathering of the Juggalos, and at least once serious policy discussions occurred. (No offense intended to any Juggalos who might be reading this.)

jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io

@cstross @pluralistic And CPAC was taking the money

timolaine@mastodon.green

@graydon @cstross This fits nicely with @anneapplebaum's thesis in Autocracy Inc. All these autocrats form a network of mutual assistance.

Some nodes, like Putin, are more important to the network, I guess. Orban was mostly a satellite?

xs4me2@mastodon.social

@cstross

A treasonous crime and Orban and his whole regime should pay for this.

militant_dilettante@mastodon.social

@cstross a person, whose Telegram channel I'm reading since 2022, has this take: every known (far-)right politician contemporary to us is a scam, a fraud, a con artist, a grifter, and a thief. This heuristic more or less holds, with almost no exceptions.

militant_dilettante@mastodon.social

@graydon @darkling @cstross pretty grim point of view. Fundametally correct though (well, I give it inordinately high probability of being correct). And, as with many other general things, it came to different parts of the world at somewhat different times.

cstross@wandering.shop

@militant_dilettante I suspect there used to be some who weren't, who genuinely thought they were doing the right thing for their nation … and they got shoved out of the way or trampled by the mob. And then there's Liz Truss, who *believes* every scam, fraud, and grift they feed her and earnestly regurgitates them without understanding what it's really about (she's the comic relief on the lecture circuit).

militant_dilettante@mastodon.social

@Kierkegaanks @cstross wouldn't be surprised, if from Russia. The balding little man was, and is, very fond of spending our nation's endowment on such things.

ghostdancer@mastodon.sdf.org

@cstross The main far-right party in Spain Vox is known for their ties and money coming from Hungary.

militant_dilettante@mastodon.social

@cstross oh, yes, there might be some types of "true believers", and there might be some incredibly gullible persons. I think, we have both locally, within the so called "Z-movement" for example, and in other places.
Liz-Who-Didn't-Outlive-A-Head-Of-Salad?

fgbjr@indieweb.social

@cstross @militant_dilettante If Liz wanted to remedy her public image, she could (pay whatever gatekeeping fee they charge and) join Reform, and then attend a public event with a Comic Relief nose-pincher.

militant_dilettante@mastodon.social

@fgbjr @cstross Would the Reform take her, though? Taking into account that her campaign slogans/punchlines would be something along the lines of "I WILL CUT YOU, SALAD!!"

I might be using an incorrect grocery term for a leafy vegetable, a refrigerated specimen of which had outlasted Truss in her shooting-star-like career as a Prime Minister of the UK. English is obviously not my first language.