a short but hopefully noteworthy PSA

Submitted by wendy davis on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 10:55am

You’ll decide, of course. (smile)

‘DOJ Now Says There Was No Plot to Kill Elected Officials; Fevered reporting about efforts to abduct and even kill members of Congress and the vice president are without foundation, the Justice Department admitted, after prosecutors falsely asserted such a plot in court’, Joe Lauria,  January 18, 2021, consortiumnews.com

“Instead, the head of the DOJ investigation into the Capitol siege admitted that federal prosecutors filed a misleading statement before a federal judge in Arizona that was intended to prevent Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, from being released on bail.

The DOJ said that though there were calls to kill officials during the two-hour takeover of the Capitol, no evidence has been discovered yet to prove any serious effort to carry out such a plan.

“There is no direct evidence at this point of kill-capture teams and assassination,” Michael Sherwin, the Washington DC federal district attorney running the investigation of the attack, told reporters, Agence France-Presse reported.  Sherwin said it may be “appropriate” to raise it at trial, but at this point it could “mislead the court.”

The original story of intentions to kill officials has entered the media discourse and is likely to remain a Democratic talking point despite the DOJ reversal. The only major media outlets that reported the new story is NBC News and The Washington Post. It has not appeared in The New York Times or on CNN’s website, for instance.

Having saturated the public with days of lurid tales of intentions to hang Vice President Mike Pence and abduct House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it will be hard to shake such beliefs without reporting the DOJ’s reversal with the same intensity.”

There’s much more here.

One case in point:

‘What would have happened if Trump’s fascist mob had seized hostages?’, 16 January 2021, Joseph Kishore, David North, wsws.org

“On January 6, 2021—in an event for which there is no precedent in the history of the United States—several thousand right-wing extremists, mobilized by various white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant neo-Nazi and fascist organizations—stormed the Capitol in Washington DC. They intended to murder and take as hostages those whom they perceived to be enemies of Donald Trump, including Democratic congressmen and even Vice President Mike Pence. Timed to coincide with the congressional certification of the results of the Electoral College vote, the purpose of the attack was to stop the official recognition of the election of Joseph Biden as president of the United States.

Had the tactical objectives of the operation been achieved, the political outcome would have been not only the delay of the constitutionally mandated certification of the Electoral College balloting. Having murdered congressmen and congresswomen, and taken hostages, the fascist leaders would then have demanded that the outcome of the balloting in states Trump falsely claimed to have won—such as Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—be overturned. The demands of the hostage-takers would have received overwhelming support from the Republican Party, not to mention Trump himself. Inspired by the power exercised by the fascist leaders in Washington DC, there would have been, in all likelihood, similar operations carried out in various state capitals all across the United States.” [long snip]

“It is true that the principal target of state and corporate censorship is the socialist left and the working class. The Socialist Equality Party does not advance the demand for the illegalization or banning of right-wing parties by the capitalist state. However, the socialist left and those who are concerned with the defense of democratic rights do not see it as their duty to safeguard the “free speech” of a fascist president who is directing an armed mob that is seeking to bring about the nullification of an election.

Justifying their defense of Trump’s right to uninhibited free speech—even if that means in practice allowing him to mobilize and direct his followers all over the country in the midst of a fascist insurrection—Lauria, Hedges and others remind their readers of all the terrible crimes committed by American imperialism, supported by the Democratic Party. John Pilger, for example, calls attention to the crimes being committed by the United States against the Houthis in Yemen. This is nothing more than petty-bourgeois demagogy. Pilger fails to explain how the establishment of a neo-fascist regime in the United States will improve the conduct of American foreign policy in Yemen or anywhere else.”

One of 128 comments dated Jan. 18:

“I see Lauria is jumping on the Dept. of Justice claims that there was no planned murder of Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, etc, as if the armed Capital (sic) invaders needed a specific order of battle to take, or kill, hostages.

And who’d trust what the Trump DoJ says just ten days later?

Furthermore, Lauria can’t seem to explain how many of the Capital (sic) police did nothing, or actively aided the invaders, the Pentagon slow walked a request from the governor of Maryland for the National Guard, and why there just weren’t that many police outside the Capital building to stop the mob say 1/10 of a mile away from the building.

It was a coup attempt. Lauria, on this subject, is either delusional or lying in aid of some plan. Thankfully the coup attempt, at least the one of Jan. 6th 2021, doesn’t appear to have been very well organized or thought out.”

5 days ago:

“For all those pontificating against silencing Trump, think of this. If someone had captured, imprisoned and silenced Hitler and his followers early enough, it may have prevented the holocast (sic)

It would be great if there would be an investigation of what the Capitol Police did…or didn’t do.  The Truth must be out there somewhere.  Will we ever know it?

Yes the aforementioned original talking point’s likely been set in stone already, much like ‘Putin’s Puppet Trump’, ‘Assad gassed his people’, no matter how many OPCW whistleblowers have tried to set the record straight.  And let’s not forget this breath-taking psyop lauded by both the Intercept and Democracy Now!: ‘The White Helmets dig children out of the rubble from Russian bombs in Syria!’, and ‘Russia Stole the Crimea’.

But it’s clear already that Blue War Crimes will be Good…once again.

Vicki Nuland at Biden’s European Desk, Ukraine will receive weapons from the US, Biden’s still an Israel-firster, and the new bosses of the US Empire Project look much like the old ones.

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

Tags: 
psyops and propaganda; Truthiness
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Submitted by Johnny Q on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 1:34pm

were they lying then or are they lying now?

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They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore

Submitted by wendy davis on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 4:00pm
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@Johnny Q

And who’d trust what the Trump DoJ says just ten days later?

that's one thing you'll decide. another would be do you believe this?

“For all those pontificating against silencing Trump, think of this. If someone had captured, imprisoned and silenced Hitler and his followers early enough, it may have prevented the holocast (sic)"

i know what i believe, but it's not a popular opionion. ; )

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Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 7:20pm
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@Johnny Q

The question is were they lying then or are they lying now?

Yes. And yes.

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 9:39pm

@Johnny Q the answer is yes.

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Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 4:40pm
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as Big Lies never are.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by wendy davis on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 5:11pm
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@TheOtherMaven

what you mean, please? it's a bit enigmatic...

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Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 9:13am
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@wendy davis

around the world before truth has even got its boots on. Given the nature of modern mass media, including the internet, many many more people hear the lie first and believe it - then when the truth comes slowpoking along, it has a hard time gaining any ground.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 11:33am
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@TheOtherMaven

that, but i did want to be sure, so thanks.

as i'd been digging a lot this a.m. yves smith at NC had said on this long l. strether piece:

They made clear they were mad at the reps and wanted them to understand who they were working for. That isn’t an attempt to overthrow the government but an effort to pressure it to bend to their demands. If you think this was a coup, by your logic, so was BLM when it burned down a police station.

A coup would be a plan to violently overthrow the government AND replace it with a new one. “The government” is the US is the Executive Branch, not the legislature. That is why when we run coups, they are about getting rid of the President and his backers, or did you miss that?

and

Making Shit Up is a violation of our site Policies. Our John Siman went to the Trump speech/rally, and it was the antithesis of an angry throng, consistent with the fact that the ones that wanted to mix it up left well before the speech was over, suggesting they didn’t think it was going to lead to a wave rushing over, so they might as well get on with it.

From Siman by e-mail (oh and he has pix too to prove he was there) Jan 6, 12:49 PM EST:

3 hours of Michael Jackson, Elton John, the Village People, & Laura Branigan.
Macho Man twice!
people in crowd are very relaxed & friendly
Trump = beyond boring
was this an official fuck-you to Trump supporters??
*******
now there are rumors that Antifa people dressed as Trump protesters have stormed the Capitol??
tear gas??
rubber bullets??
I do see lots of fire trucks heading towards the Capitol.
Walking over to check it out.

2:11 PM EST:

Sort of like a very large high school pep rally.
A few people have been tear-gassed & maced, but a couple of the Capitol cops accidentally maced each other & protestors helped them
also a few rubber bullets
overall, though, goofy
everybody seems happy too, including the cops
need to catch train home
guy who got into Rotunda is emailing me film
more later

So it appears, in a strong parallel to BLM, most were peaceful but enough were not to seem/be threatening. And the ones who were most aggressive probably self-selected to be at the front of the throng. Siman would have been well back and not seen the action where the protestors were scuffling with the police and eventually overwhelmed them."

now 'blm burned down a police station' was a psyop, too, if she's talking about setting fires in one in minneapolis, the only arrests were of white people; opportunists?

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 5:23pm
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no matter what the current talking point is. Democrats are calling it an insurrection, an attempted coup, and attack on democracy and other such nonsense.

People actually believe that Russia changed votes in the'16 election and has now hacked its way in to the deepest bowls of our government even though its possible that Israel was behind the attacks. Mintpress has an article on it.

I’m going to wait until the trials start before I decide on whether people were there to harm congress. There is talk about some military guys storming the walls of congress and might have had violent intentions, but for the most part I think most or a lot of people thought they had permission to go into the capital. Especially when they walked right past the cops who were supposed to be guarding it. I don’t want them charged. Nor do I think that 22 year old girl was going to sell Pelosi’s laptop to Russia. The media is running with that story and fluffing it up to more than what it is. Her ex boyfriend told the cops that. He might be mad at her. But hey it’s Russia so there.

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

Submitted by wendy davis on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 6:05pm
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@snoopydawg

information you're seeking comes out in the trials.

i'd read two pieces at mintpress news earlier, and just speed-read two more, but nothing about israel having funded the 'Capitol riots'. i'd almost mentioned it on this PSA or PMed it to you, as you'd mentioned 'the funders' on another thread.

but FWIW: 'The Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries', wallstreetonparade.com, jan. 20, 2021

i will offer that their recent work has seemed quite partisan to me, especially their homages to janet yellen and gary gensler.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 7:20pm
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@wendy davis

Whitney writes somewhere else now. Unlimited hangout I think. Lots of rich people funded the capital stunt, but I doubt any of them will be held accountable for it. Life here doesn’t work that way. I read that 21 republican senators went to the insurrection and they are all in trouble for it. But they were at the Trump speech at the WH which I believe is still legal here. This out for blood attitude from the 'left' is scary as hell. Some people want them sent to Gitmo. Unbelievable.

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
~Hannah Arendt

Submitted by wendy davis on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 9:27pm
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@snoopydawg

pithy comment. webb is at the last american vagabond now, but oh, my: their twitter account has been suspended. likely over covid-10 'lies and misinformation'.

here's her oeuvre there. i'm too tired to look for the correct one, so i'm closing down for the night.

i'd hoped that this might attract more free speech advocates, to say the truth.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 10:35am
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@snoopydawg

and as it turns out, now all webb's oeuvre at vagabond is by interview, i got on her still extant personal twit account, and she does write at unlimited hangout. her tab.

but this a.m on the msm homepage was: 'Bloomberg: Organizers of Trump Rally Had Been on Campaign’s Payroll'. zounds, did those folks have a hella lotta paymasters!

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Submitted by Battle of Blair... on Fri, 01/22/2021 - 10:14pm

https://www.bitchute.com/video/1SU7VuX-Ip8/

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Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 8:44am
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@Battle of Blair Mountain

as video interviews are not my allies. and this one's an hour. i did rad the comments, which shed a wee bit of light on what she'd said. she's a peach, isn't she?

an e-friend had told me that given that fascism is on the rise, he's very leery of free speech rights. he'd mentioned books on german fascism, iirc. but as far as i know, hitler's rise to power was largely due to post-WWI depression economic issues, huge unemployment numbers, etc.

i had recalled that the AfD (neo-nazis?) had been gaining seats in the bundestag, but i can't find much about the party's rhetoric.

and given that mussolin's fascism pre-dated hitler's, i did some digging and found that his own definition of fascism was:

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

adding more terms to my bing search, i ended up reading this impressive (imo) work by rob urie at counterpunch: January 15, 2021, 'Neoliberalism is Fascism with Better Manners'

"This tie of neoliberalism to fascism and political repression comes courtesy of Italian fascist Benito Mussolini. Mr. Mussolini defined fascism, following from Giovanni Gentile, as ‘as merger of corporate and state power.’ The Patriot Act gives the Federal government— not just the FBI as is generally reported, access to all of the information being gathered by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and social media platforms. Whatever else it is, social media is an information warehouse for political repression. And the tie of state to corporate power defines the relationship as fascism.

While Mussolini’s definition may read as too generic and bloodless to be of much value, two points. The 1994 Crime Bill that Mr. Biden authored produced massive political violence against mostly poor people. Given racial composition by class, through the identitarian lens favored by neoliberal Democrats, the Crime Bill makes Mr. Biden one of the most ardent racists of the twentieth century. And while the merger of corporate and state power might read like a definition of ordinary industrial policy, it gives motive to a preponderance of the Nazi’s military expansionism.
..............................
The Patriot Act, which President-elect Joe Biden claims to have written, both codifies the corporate-state form and gives it an explicitly political character. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg testified publicly that the company uses data-mining techniques to create political profiles of both its users and people who have never had a relationship with the company. To be clear, Facebook is profiling everyone. Through supplying this information to the American government— the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc., to be used towards political ends, the entire technology industry was made a de facto branch of the Federal government.

Conceiving this relationship within the liberal frame of civil liberties is to misunderstand the political-economic form that it takes. The technology industry has grown in close symbiosis with the Federal government through research and development undertaken by the government that was handed over to nominally private technology companies to commercialize. Facebook, Twitter, and the internet for that matter, grew as commercial enterprises in proportion to the Federal government’s ability to gather ‘intelligence’ and disseminate propaganda through them."

urie made a chart labeled:

Chart: through five decades of instantiation, neoliberalism is now the state religion in the U.S. The focus of the political left on the street theater and localized violence of racist, neo-confederate and neo-fascist groups is a sideshow relative to the propensity that neoliberal institutions have to commit political violence. Ironically, or not, claims that Koch related right-wing organizations are tied to fascist street violence miss that the Koch-family brand of fascism is called neoliberalism. Pappa Koch introduced economist, and co-founder of neoliberalism, Friedrich Hayek to the John Birch Society. The irony lies in the posture of neoliberalism in opposition to fascism. For the record, all of the leading Democrats are neoliberals.
..........................
This ongoing crisis of legitimacy will only be resolved by holding existing power to account. The point of the illustration (above) is to identify power separate from the ideology that Americans tend to associate it with. This task won’t be undertaken by the political class, and it won’t take place within the existing distribution of power. Therefore, the crisis of legitimacy is destined to persist. Revolutionaries don’t cause revolutions, concentrated political and economic power does. This (concentrated power) is the problem in need of resolution. But closing down dissent is the most probable near term ‘solution.’

Biden's 'domestic terrorism' bill would be the icing on the cake of Amerikan Fascism.

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Submitted by on the cusp on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 1:17am

and confirms we never get the truth from out gummint.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 11:31am
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banderists: azov battalion, right sektor etc. with a stylized swastika on their flags. the most recent piece i could find is from 2019: Ulson Gunnar, Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis “Suddenly” a Problem as Power Grows, journal-neo.org:

"The central role right-wing extremists and literal Neo-Nazis played in Ukraine’s “Euromaidan” protests was obvious from the beginning. The square in Kiev the protests unfolded in were filled with the flags of ultra-right party, Svoboda as well as the red and black banners of the Neo-Nazi Right Sector movement.

The Western media never scrutinized who these political parties and militias were leading the protests and often times the violence that eventually overthrew the elected Ukrainian government in 2014. This was a deliberate attempt to portray the protests as spontaneous and popular rather than the efforts of fringe extremists merely portrayed as spontaneous and popular.
..........................
It is clear that despite “official” US policy being not to arm or train Neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, the fact that the Ukrainian government whom the US does arm and train, in turn arms and trains militias like the Azov Battalion, makes such US policy mere window dressing than anything else.

Again, the US arming and supporting the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who in turn admittedly are arming and funding US designated terrorist organizations, is in actuality Washington’s enthusiastic support for such militant groups simply “laundered” through its Gulf ally intermediaries.
....................................
The real problem is that Washington lacks any credible partners in its “Ukraine project.” Those like Azov and its backers in Kiev were always going to inevitably rise to the top in an atmosphere corruption, foreign-backed subversion and counterproductive policies determined in Washington and aimed at hurting Russia regardless of the cost accrued by Ukraine itself."

Yats couldn't control his nazis back in the day, and later neither could Zelenskiy, although he claimed to be trying. ; )

daniel lazare, strategic culture:

"It’s hard not to feel sorry for Volodymyr Zelensky. He’s the talented comedian who got himself elected president of the Ukraine last April by being everything the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, was not. Where Poroshenko ran on a slogan of “Army, language, faith,” Zelensky is a Jew who speaks better Russian than Ukrainian and is notably cool to the war against pro-Moscow rebels in the east. He was the un-Poroshenko, which is why the Ukraine’s huddled masses, sick and tired of war, right-wing nationalism, economic failure, and corruption, voted for him three-to-one.

Since then, he’s engaged in a high-wire balancing act worthy of the Flying Wallendas. Beset on one side by corrupt oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoisky and ultra-right followers of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera on the other, he’s meanwhile had to fend off Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and even Polish President Andrzej Duda. The last wants very much to welcome Zelensky into the fold of resurgent East European nationalism, but only if he plays along.

Like the Nazis, Polish nationalists were thus fighting a dual war against Jews and Bolsheviks. Rather than lamenting the Holocaust, they welcomed it in the interests of a Judenrein Poland. Today, the same elements are once again in control in Warsaw – people who, with US encouragement, blame the Soviets and Russia for all that ails them and who seethe with ill-concealed anti-Semitism. Zelensky is playing with fire by cozying up to such people, especially now that rightwing nationalists are once again on the march at home."

and NATO wants ukraine as an 'official member', advises 'control your coorruption, the IMF loans (?) them boatloads of (i've forgotten their currency), but not yet.

Ukraine, Nato and the U.N, agitprop central

although Pierre Omidyar's name isn't mentioned, even in 'friends of ukraine',lol.

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Submitted by wendy davis on Sat, 01/23/2021 - 4:42pm
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posterity:

‘Germany at odds over Twitter ban for far-right AfD party', John Silk 1/12/2021, DW: Freedom of speech is enshrined in the German constitution. This is proving to be a major stumbling block in putting a lid on far-right political groups' ability to galvanize support on social media.

“The AfD was founded as a Euroskeptic party in 2013, before gaining traction in 2015 when it took up an anti-refugee sentiment, particularly in eastern Germany. It has since managed to get into all 16 state parliaments, the European Parliament, and the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, where it is the largest opposition party. It has an extreme right-wing element, which is under observation by security forces, and it has recently teamed up with protesters against the anti-coronavirus measures, based on the mandate of freedoms. 

When the AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017, then German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel bemoaned the fact that "true Nazis" would once again be part of the parliamentary discussion.  

AfD is the most internet savvy 
The AfD is the most active and most successful German political party on social media. Its significant figures have been critical of the latest bans of social media accounts by Twitter and Facebook. 

"Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, are abusing their dominant position in the market to abolish freedom of expression," said AfD MP Beatrix von Storch. It was therefore time to use competition law to take action against the tech corporations and "smash the digital cartel," she said. 

He added that he found Twitter's practice of adding a warning to Trump's inaccurate tweets a more appropriate measure, particularly as the platform bore responsibility for ensuring public discourse was not poisoned by hate, lies, or incitement.
 
#AfDTwitterBanNow 

But many Germans have taken to Twitter to express their wish that similar bans be placed on accounts of far-right activists in Germany, particularly those associated with the political party Alternative for Germany (AfD). A wave of discontent emerged on Monday, with #AfDRausAusTwitter (AfD out) and #AfDTwitterBanNow trending on the network. 

The AfD was founded as a Euroskeptic party in 2013, before gaining traction in 2015 when it took up an anti-refugee sentiment, particularly in eastern Germany. It has since managed to get into all 16 state parliaments, the European Parliament, and the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, where it is the largest opposition party. It has an extreme right-wing element, which is under observation by security forces, and it has recently teamed up with protesters against the anti-coronavirus measures, based on the mandate of freedoms. 

When the AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017, then German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel bemoaned the fact that "true Nazis" would once again be part of the parliamentary discussion.  
AfD is the most internet savvy 

The AfD is the most active and most successful German political party on social media. Its significant figures have been critical of the latest bans of social media accounts by Twitter and Facebook. 

"Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, are abusing their dominant position in the market to abolish freedom of expression," said AfD MP Beatrix von Storch. It was therefore time to use competition law to take action against the tech corporations and "smash the digital cartel," she said. 

At the beginning of 2018, von Storch herself received a 12-hour Twitter ban for inciting violence against Muslims."

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