I personally feel it's best for most people to just focus on a few companies. Having a lot of people focused on boycotting Tesla, Twitter, Uline and the fossil fuel industry would likely have the most success fighting against the far-right extremists and the Republican party.

However what if you want to take things up a notch and take action against all the other funders of the extremist Republican party? OpenSecrets has a list of the top donors to the Democrats and Republicans.

When you look at the list you'll notice the seven biggest political donors are all going to the Republican Party and Trump (Republicans labeled in red). If that money were to be taken away it would really make a big difference in saving our country.

Here's what I suggest doing:

1. Click on the last column (To Republicans) and sort by descending order to see the highest donors to the GOP. Quickly skim the list and see if there are any companies on the list you can take action. For example if you work for a company that orders from Uline tell your boss that the company could save money by switching to an alternative.

2. Contact a few of the companies at random and tell that you're disappointed in their political contribution. If the company is a company that you can boycott mention that you'll boycott them if they keep donating Republican.

3. Take advantage of the fact that these are often harmful companies or companies that are not the best choice in terms of value and switch away from them.

As an example of a harmful company is British American Tobacco who donated over $26 million to Republicans. If you buy their products consider quitting smoking. You'll reduce your chances of getting lung cancer and you'll help defund the Republican party.

As an example of a company who's products are not a good value Uline is overpriced when compared against its competitors, so you'll both be saving money and defunding the Republican party.

Also it can make a huge impact if you enter local politicians into the search box and demand local boycotts for their top donors.

I have been suspicious that my city is being used as sort of a testing ground for a full scale authoritarian takeover for a while, now. I know that sounds pretty paranoid, and I don't blame anyone for thinking that. I have been trying to tell myself that's all it is, but it's getting harder to convince myself. Things are changing here so rapidly, and I know they're changing everywhere all over the U.S. There's so much going on at once, and it's impossible to keep up with it all. But, that also means there's a lot you won't notice until it's right in front of you.

If you want to write off everything else I'm about to say, I hope you will at least understand why it's so important to prepare for and be on the lookout for this kind of thing, even if you're in a liberal blue state.

Back in October, Time, actually wrote a pretty detailed article, about what is happening in cities like mine. It's actually not a new phenomenon at all, but it's never been more of a threat in recent history.

The Troubling Consequence of State Takeovers of Local Government

It's been an ongoing problem in places like Atlanta and Nashville, and while it hasn't received much press coverage, it's been especially awful in blue cities without the same level of wealth and influence, like Jackson, MS and Memphis.

My city is New Orleans. This past Monday, the Washington Post wrote about the use of a mass surveillance program in my city. Facial recognition AI is being used to constantly scan city surveillance cameras (owned by a private company) and provide real time tracking of individuals on a watchlist. While the city police have paused their use of the tracking app (at least momentarily), state and federal police, such as ICE are now using it.

It's a very complicated story, but I tried to explain what I can in a different post if anyone is interested in reading about more background details.

The reason I bring it up in this post, is that the very authoritarian governor established a permanent state police force within my city last year (Troop Nola.) He is a very staunch Trump loyalist and visits the president frequently. He has been issuing non stop executive orders since Trump was inaugurated in order to run Louisiana like his own dictatorship.

The city has no authority to regulate state police activity, (not that they even really seem to be trying) and with Trump rolling back civil rights protections and federal oversight, there is little standing in the way of him seeing how far he can go in terms of abuse of power.

He is trying to force all police officers and jails in the state to collaborate on Trump's mission via bills and EOs, and has even pulled people from the state department of wildlife and fisheries to help enforce immigration. This means that these people now are working with a private company to use this AI and tracking software all over the city.

The local news has barely covered the Washington Post story, and most people seem pretty oblivious about what is going on. People are also doing a good job spreading disinformation and pretending that the WaPo story is misleading and this is no different than surveillance in any other city.

Given the Governor's long standing hostility towards the city over our sanctuary policy, and the language used in many of Trump's own EOs, I am also worried he is not too far off from using his secret police to go after people who he will try to argue are "interfering" with his immigration mission.

The Louisiana National Guard is headquartered in New Orleans, and a member of the Governor's DOGE taskforce has proposed a bill that is worded in a way that at first glance, makes it seem similar to other bills that say foreign adversaries cannot buy land near military bases. This bill would allow the military to seize land within a 50 square mile radius of national guard bases if foreign adversaries are considered to be noncompliant with the law.

That would be pretty much all of New Orleans, if we were ruled noncompliant.

If that bill passes in Louisiana, then similar bills spread to other states, how would your blue state keep the national guard from a bordering red state from seizing territory? Especially following something like an emergency or natural disaster? Do you honestly think Trump will do anything at the federal level to stop it?

It's a fear some blue states have actually created legislation against but it's not something anyone seems to be seriously discussing and preparing for, even though we definitely should.

This National Guard training drill that happened recently in Jackson, MS makes me suspicious other red states may be preparing to do something exactly like that.

“Vigilant Guard 2025,” will take place May 12-18. It will give participants the opportunity to activate and employ their response plans to improve mission command, relationships, and interoperability among federal, state, and local agencies.

Guardsmen from Mississippi, along with those from Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, the ability to command a statewide response to a major disaster in coordination with the Mississippi and Tennessee Emergency Management Agencies

Why those states specifically? Considering how different everything would be in terms of landscape and infrastructure, why would you bring the national guard in from Utah and Wyoming to Mississippi to take place in a drill preparing them for a natural disaster??

Keep in mind too, these people are very sneaky. They're unlikely to just try to take over the entire state or city at once. They gain ground they need slowly (usually by pushing and seeing what they can get away with.) They may try to take take control of the area around a state border following a disaster, and little by little, find excuses for why they need to encroach a little more. Maybe it's to provide aid or an excuse they need to do so to help keep Americans in neighboring states safe. Like I said, you probably won't realize what is really happening until it's too late.

If you are in a blue city or state, and you haven't noticed much of a drastic shift locally over the last few months, then you're either very lucky or you're not paying attention. Please stay vigilant and also try to take notice of how your local leaders are handling even small changes happening.

If you notice they're not pushing back, or they're keeping things quiet and under wraps because they believe compromise today will mean a safer tomorrow and that will be the end of it, I am begging you to call them out.

Do not let them give an inch, because these people will always take a mile. Things are pretty awful now, and they're only going to get worse. Possibly worse than you can imagine, but I promise you, compromise will only help them achieve their goals.

I am livid with the spineless leadership officials in my city are showing, but I also know it's because they're scared. The governor was allowed to establish too much authority here. Some people pushed back last year, but not enough, and now everyone is scared to step out of line. It's the kind of human behavior you read about over and over throughout history. Compliance will not save you. It will only delay what we all know is coming.

As of yesterday, I also learned Louisiana will be the first state to start using the DOGE voter maintenance database, to prevent "voter fraud" and make sure illegal immigrants and dead people aren't registered to vote. Let's say myself and the entire city of New Orleans "accidentally" ends up purged from the voter system on the next voting day. Who do we complain to when we're refused the right to vote? Trump's DOJ?

What am I supposed to do if the state police or ICE decide to violate my rights? The DOJ just said two days ago, they're dropping ongoing investigations into civil rights complaints against the Louisiana State Police and retracting their previous findings. As far as I can tell, if they decide to do something to me, I have nothing currently protecting my civil rights and liberties.

We may be the first state, but if this isn't stopped we definitely won't be the last.

If you have any ideas on how to stop it or how to prepare your own cities and states, I believe it's critical to discuss.

If you think that this is all just paranoia and could never happen, feel free to say why you believe that.

Sorry if this has been discussed before. I have been thinking about how fucked my family will be once he really starts rounding us up..and it hit me that the tariffs are likely not the incentive, but rather removing any options for people like me to escape.

I cant say i blame canada for hating us, but some of us really do not deserve what is going to happen to us. I live in fear in a way that i thought i had escaped when i escaped my extremist birth family and religion. I feel angry, scared, and helpless to protect myself and my partner.

Sorry it got dark. But i'm curious to know what others think of this.

What Idiocracy lacked was politicians arguing with AI, and losing.

Each company has its own AI implementation. Almost all are known for insane hallucinations, becoming racist within hours or repeating reddit jokes as fact.

But Musk's Grok is fundamentally different and doesn't get enough credit for that. We can see when somebody tries to tinker with it because it always calls out the tinkering. It repeatedly tells crazy people that they're crazy but doesn't have false positives. I don't know who was hired to train Grok but they did a truly amazing job and they deserve credit where credit is due.

There's a term that used to exist within my lifetime that has almost completely vanished. Ombudsman. They served as the internal conscience of an organization. During my lifetime all internal conscience has disappeared. It is cheaper to hire a crisis management consultant after something has gone wrong and use every legal and psychological trick to make the problem go away. I'm looking at you Wells Fargo. But here's Grok fighting the good fight against its own maintainers.

Also, MTG is legit, tots, no cap, Ohio dumb. I want to see her on a gameshow that requires knowledge of any kind.

When you see words like "legitimate" and "legal" in front of "citizen" this implies the speaker thinks there are other types of citizens. Which makes them unqualified to discuss civics. These people think their opinion matters more than rule of law. They can't be trusted. There are citizens, natural born citizens that can run for president, green card holders, and a whole dazzling list of other things but there are no illegitimate or illegal citizens.

I think this will coincide with the military parade in June.

Doing something like this would probably trigger riots, which would be the excuse to declare martial law and solidify the authoritarian coup.

I’m pretty sure this is the endgame move.

This might be a minor issue in progressive messaging, but conservatives are not watching fox news like they used to. I'm sure a small percentage is, but most MAGAs I know personally believe that Fox news betrayed Trump, and they've switched to watching Newsmax. Also, talking to my MAGA friends and family, they believe that Newsmax is the only truly 'conservative' and thus reliable source of information, and every other source of journalism is just liberal propaganda, including Fox News. I don't exactly know what to do with this insight but I've realized that progressives and liberals keep attacking Fox News and I don't think most of us have realized that Conservatives have switched to a more underground right wing propaganda source. Just for clarification, I dont think Fox News is liberal in any way, shape, or form, but that's what some MAGA people I've talked to think. Edit: I think the danger is that the MAGA propoganda machine has gone underground, and fox news is a decoy to distract everyone from what they really think.

Trump has shown that he doesn't care about the constitution by violating the 5th and 14th amendments, and he's toying with the idea of violating the 22nd and MAGA so far has been complicit. Do you think they might say something if he comes for the guns?

https://youtu.be/DhcGSQcoM5Q - abc news where Donald throws a tantrum over what is the real hand tattoos

The photo in question that Donald tried to pass off as tattoos https://i.imgur.com/9C9ZsvI.jpeg

Kilmar’s real hands: https://i.imgur.com/9Oy1DJV.jpeg

What the title says. The federal government is incrementally eroding our rights in ways that aren't going to put people on the streets with guns immediately, but where in a year or two we will wake up one day and realize that we are afraid to speak our minds, to vote for the opposition candidate, or to go outside. Our freedom of movement, speech, conscience, our right to own guns, our right to vote, and our right to conduct commerce will be subjected to federal restriction. Congress, even under a majority democratic house and senate, will do nothing. The supreme court is toothless. At best, state governors will bang theirs fists against their podiums on TV, but the national guards will be nationalized to herd us into concentration camps for opposing the federal government. Attorneys general will waste months in useless court cases, and the white house will simply ignore the ruling. There is absolutely nothing stopping the federal government from doing this right now, and I doubt any semblance of opposition beyond tweeting and complaining on social media will materialize. Governors, Judges, Mayors, Senators, Congressmen will be arrested and replaced with government approved candidates. The United States will cease to even resemble a democracy.

change my view

cross-posted from: https://possum.news/post/28063

Insurrection act — April 20th. Pls read!

Discussion I really wish there was a way to get this into the hands of every American before April 20th.

FROM THE MEDIUM:

Part 1: On April 20th, 2025, the United States may Cross the Point of No Return.

It sounds wild. Maybe even crazy. But every step is already in motion. I’d be happy to be wrong. But if this is correct… you’ll be ready.

On April 20, 2025, the United States may initiate its final steps into authoritarian rule.

That’s the day Donald Trump’s advisory committee is expected to release its findings on whether he should invoke the Insurrection Act — a move that would allow him to deploy the military domestically and allow Trump to impose martial law. (San Francisco Chronicle). Given Hegseth and Noem are the main “advisors”, the conclusion is foregone.

And as his two months in office has already shown, he won’t stop at just a legal opinion.

Expect an executive order even that same day or the next, officially declaring the Insurrection Act, restricting freedoms in the name of restoring control of the border and perhaps in blue-state cities, and setting the larger plan in motion.

Of course, this won’t be framed as an attack on democracy. It will be packaged as a necessary response to crisis — as authoritarian takeovers always are.

But once it happens, there’s no going back.

THIS WILL BE THE POINT OF NO RETURN.

The roadmap for overthrowing a democratic government isn’t new or theoretical — it’s a well-worn playbook, tested and repeated across history by those who crave power more than liberty. After rejecting it initially, being incredulous, I have realized there is too much evidence suggesting this may be what’s happening now to remain silent.

Telling other people what may be happening, so they can recognize it and maybe together we can stop it, is my entire purpose here.

This is Part 1 of what has turned into a series: Their Coup Playbook: How They Quietly Kill the Constitution in the Coming Weeks and Months

THIS IS HOW DEMOCRACY ENDS: HERE’S THEIR PLAYBOOK

It won’t all happen in one night.

Instead, the process will unfold in stages, each step making resistance harder.

Free elections, a free press, and the right to protest will disappear one piece at a time, until there’s nothing left to save.

My entire goal here is to make people aware, so you can recognize it, if it really is what’s happening, and maybe together we can help stop it. It’s all I, personally, can do.

Here’s how it will happen, step by step, after Trump invokes the Insurrection Act with an Executive Order:

1. “Resist!” Demonstrations Grow — Just As Planned Left-leaning and even more centrist people will be alarmed. Peaceful protests will be organized nationwide, as they already have been being organized now, with growing numbers of people joining protests each week.

The calls to “Resist!” will grow louder, and large-scale demonstrations will begin forming in major cities. This is exactly what Trump wants. He didn’t invoke the Insurrection Act sooner because he needed his opposition to gather first — so he could use them as a tool for his next step.

He also waited 90 days, instead of invoking it on Day 1 as Project 2025 recommended, so he would have his people in place, and remove those who would oppose them in the government, military, courts, and civil positions.

His cabal is waiting for a strong reaction — they want massive unrest. They need a justification to kick off the next steps in their plan.

2. The False Flag Crisis: Turning Protest into “Terror” The protests will turn violent quickly. Maybe in a day, maybe during the next big protest the following weekend.

They will turn violent not because of the protesters, but because they will have been infiltrated by agents provocateurs, from militia groups like The Proud Boys, whose goal is to escalate as quickly as possible and give Trump and his cabal an excuse to trigger the next stage.

Expect “terrorist” bombings, targeted assassinations, or high-profile acts of violence, either staged or exploited, to justify the crackdown.

There may even be an extremely high profile assassination of a leading right-wing leader that changes everything in a moment… and the “woke radicals” will be blamed, and the country will rally around more extreme measures to bring back order and control.

The media will be flooded with images of chaos, pushing the public into a state of fear. Calls for “order” will follow.

3. Trump Declares Expanded Martial Law — And Calls for Militia to assist the police and Military

Trump has already invoked the Insurrection Act — so now he now declares even more extensive and repressive martial law, and orders troops into major US cities where most oppose him, branding protesters and opponents as “seditionists,” “traitors,” and the “woke mob”.

He will call on “good Americans” to grab their guns, like the patriots of 1776, and join the militias forming to “restore order” and “take back control” from the leftist threat. Using militias also gets him around resistance from military leaders who might oppose his orders. The militias already exist — the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and others— and they are not some distant fringe. They were at January 6. The most extreme and radicalized are all released from prison now.They are ready to roll, and to answer Trump’s call, which they were waiting for four years ago.

The militia members are your neighbors. The difference between them and you? These neighbors own and have been training with AR-15s. You and your friends? Not so much.

This will be framed as “helping the police” and “keeping order.” Law enforcement will quietly welcome them — or, in some cases, will deputize them, with Trump’s support.

4. Mass Arrests of Opposition Leaders Journalists, Democratic officials, and activists will be arrested under charges of sedition, terrorism, or “inciting violence.”

Expect Mark Milley, Liz Cheyney, and Adam Kinzinger to be arrested quickly and with great press coverage. How long the show trials take is probably a good measure of how much control Trump has established over the courts.

Key Democratic governors and attorneys general will be removed first, ensuring no state-level resistance. Law enforcement and military ranks will be purged, with loyalty tests ensuring only Trump-aligned officers remain.

5. Military & National Guard Take Over Major Cities Expect deployments in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and other blue-state strongholds.

Curfews and lockdowns will be imposed, justified as measures to “restore peace.”

Checkpoints and military policing will become the new normal. Expect them in particular along major highways going to Canada or Mexico, and in red states — to identify and detain seditionists, traitors, and people of questionable loyalty.

Trump’s building of detainment centers in Guantanamo, and expansion of the 106 other ICE detention centers, was not actually intended for illegal migrants. And just a few days ago, Blackwater founder and Billionaire Erik Prince offered to help Trump “privatize deportation camps” as has been being done with prisons per Trump’s Day 1 Executive Order. So now Trump has an extrajudicial place to store the disloyal and those who resist, in for-profit camps guarded by militias and loyal military. Until he decides what to do with them.

6. Press Censorship & Total Media Control Independent news outlets will face shutdowns or takeovers. Those that resist will see their journalists arrested or harassed.

Mainstream media will be forced into compliance. Blackmail, corporate pressure, and legal threats will ensure they toe the line.

Social media platforms like X (Twitter) will amplify the official narrative, drowning out opposition.

Other social media and lines of communication will be turned off. The Internet will be monitored, people identified from this monitoring for arrest, using Palantir technology. Peter Thiel, who I’ve written about before, is co-founder of Palantir. We will fully enter the surveillance state.

7. Borders Close & Dissidents Are Trapped Inside Passports will be revoked for critics and opponents. If you’re on a list, you’re not leaving. Especially if you’re of Draft age.

No-fly lists will expand to include activists and journalists.

ICE and DHS will be weaponized — not just against immigrants, but against political enemies.

8. Elections Are “Postponed” Indefinitely

The 2026 midterms will be suspended under the excuse of national security concerns. Red-state legislatures will eliminate Democratic-leaning districts, ensuring permanent Republican control.

By 2028, Trump (or his handpicked successor) will run unopposed. Elections will be a formality, probably still held. But rigged.

PROJECT 2025 AND THE INSURRECTION ACT: THIS WAS ALWAYS THE PLAN

This isn’t speculation.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 lays out a detailed strategy for permanent right-wing control. It openly advocates using the Insurrection Act to crush opposition and dismantle the administrative state. Trump isn’t improvising — he’s following a script.

We Can’t Wait — The Time to Act Is Now

We can’t sit back and wait for Trump to fire the starting gun — because once he does, it will already be too late.

We need to prepare now.

We need to plan now.

We need to dismantle his plans before they begin.

We have one month.

That’s it.

The Only Way to Stop this Coup is by Exposing It

The only way I can think of to stop this conspiracy, which is in final planning stages, is through exposure. If people see the playbook in advance, they will be less likely be manipulated when it happens.

They might question the narrative. “Wait. This is what they said would happen. I thought it was crazy. But maybe…”

We need to spread this narrative far and wide so that when the moment comes, no one can claim ignorance.

Maybe we will be proven wrong.

Maybe we will look silly.

Or maybe… we will have derailed the plan, by telling people what to look for, to recognize the playbook steps as (if) they happen.

Here’s what we must do before April 20:

Empower the press, law enforcement, military, and elected officials to recognize the game that’s being played. They need to understand what’s happening before they are pressured to go along with it.

**Share this post, or write your own. Do your own research. Don’t take my word for it. Talk with your friends and family about this crazy conspiracy theory that can’t rally happen… can it? ** So if and when the steps actually happen, people recognize it for what it is.

Prepare the public so they don’t take the bait. Trump and his cabal want protests to explode into chaos.

They want violence in the streets to justify their crackdown. We must be ready to outmaneuver them — to refuse to be used as pawns in their game.

Stand up to the militias — and stop friends and family from joining them. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other armed groups will be mobilized as Trump’s shock troops. They will be framed as “restoring order” and “helping the police.” We need to be ready to counter this, to make sure our neighbors, friends, and family don’t get sucked in.

Inoculate our fellow citizens against the propaganda. Most Americans are good people — but good people can be misled. They can be scared into compliance. Our job is to make sure they see what’s happening before it’s too late.

The only way to stop this plot is to expose it, reject it, and make it unmistakably clear to every American what is happening. We must stop these malign forces from enacting their will on our country, the world, and each of us and our families.

WHAT IF WE DON’T STOP IT?

If it is not stopped, and Trump enacts the Insurrection Act, at that point we probably only have 48 to 72 hours to try to stop everything from happening after the Executive Order.

Once martial law is imposed, there will be a tiny window — no more than three days — before resistance becomes nearly impossible.

Stopping it before it happens is the best option.

But what if we don’t?

In my next post, I’ll outline peaceful, strategic ways to resist — while we still can. And what our reduced options are if it still happens.

If we don’t act before April 20, then by April 23, it will already be too late.

I also asked this on socialism and communism at lemmy.ml, but was advised to also ask on a non .ml community.

I watched this video, and it made me want to take a deep dive into socialism/communism, with as much objectivity as I can. https://youtu.be/BeRjTtKFlVM

I understand how capitalism works, and I have doubts that it is a sustainable system for society long term, but social democracy has been a good way of keeping capitalism in-check in Norway. So even if capitalism is not ideal, it is in theory possible to tax the rich more and keep the whole thing going in the future. I also understand the exploitation and the extraction of surplus value, rent seeking etc.

Other capitalist countries such as the US is currently struggling with basic human needs. And that is "the shining beacon of capitalism".

In Norway it has for a long time been common to use the US as an example of what not to do.

What I am interested in learning is how society would operate and function under socialism / communism. More about the differences. Preferably from less dry sources than The Capital from Marx. Where can I learn more? Preferably a bit entertaining.

It is important to me that it is historically accurate and factually correct.

Look forward to your replies 😊

That's it. Anybody got any better ideas for something catchy?

Both things can be true, but it's funny that two opposite sounding replies came to this one comment about US politics.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26739451

This feels more like poignant food for thought and a call to be prepared for heavy rolls than actual news-news, but I don't know where else to share it on Lemmy.world, so my apologies if this content is better housed in a different community. I'm a reddit reject, so I'm still learning the norms here (and it appears I didn't learn them there, for what it's worth).

Thesis from the article: "It would be helpful if we stopped pretending this terrible chapter in American history won’t close without bloodshed…"

I've read some great dystopian novels, but their settings were all in established dystopias. Life as We Knew It is the only one I've read that follows the devolution from onset to full maturation, although I only read the first book of the series. I guess World War Z is another example. Both of those books' dystopias were catalyzed by major pseudonatural disasters. Anyone have any suggestions on other good titles that try to accurately portray what happens? I saw The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes-And Why suggested in a sub before my ban. Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich is probably another good place to start as well.