• masquenox@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    6 months ago

    surveillance and stop and frisk

    Lol! That reminds me… about three years ago I was notified of a “town meeting to discuss local problems” held at a local school here in middle-of-nowhere South Africa. It turns out it was just a shady PR attempt by the local branch of the “white liberal” party I described above (the so-called “Democratic Alliance”), and the suit there doesn’t talk about our decrepit and failing water, electricity and sewage infrastructure or the fact that this mining town is being economically extinguished by privatized interests… instead, the only order of business was to brag about how they had set up surveillance in our main streets and handing off the data to the piggy for free.

    I feel like strangling that particular suit every damn time I lay eyes on him.

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 months ago

      I still don’t quite get how these people make sense of the world. We recently had a big reveal that our nazi party is using “anonymous social media accounts” to try and influence popular opinion. They claim that they don’t, and that the accounts aren’t affiliated with the party, but there was a whole report on the thing and it’s landed them in some hot water. The people voting for them are pretty much unfazed but the right-block alliance overall has taken quite a hit to their public support.

      One of the things these people who supposedly really love Sweden discussed, was how they could perhaps create some sort of campaign website to try and incide violence among migrants, and possibly incite terror attacks. Like, how do you reconcile your “patriotism and love for your country” with wanting people to perform terror attacks?

      Were I to play devil’s advocate I’d say that it’s possible that they were just shooting the shit, but even then? Isn’t it a bit over the top? As a gay guy I’m not joking about conversion therapy or forcible sterilisations.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        6 months ago

        was how they could perhaps create some sort of campaign website to try and incide violence among migrants,

        We had that exact thing here in South Africa in the late 80s and early 90s - the only difference was that it was actually enabled by the Apartheid-state through their terrorist proxies (ie, mainly the South African Police). When the anti-Apartheid groups didn’t act “terroristic” enough for their taste, they just did it themselves and used the media to create a narrative of “black-on-black violence” to try and destabilize the country.

        Like, how do you reconcile your “patriotism and love for your country” with wanting people to perform terror attacks?

        They “love” their countries in the same way that a rapist “loves” his victims - the feel themselves entitled to it and deserving of holding the power of life and death over it. They do not actually care about the real people living in Sweden in any way whatsoever. That’s pretty much standard fare when it comes to far right-wing ideology no matter what part of the world you find them in.

        The reason they want to “incite” (so-called) “terror attacks” among migrants they see as not “white,” “Swedish” or “Nordic” enough is two-fold.

        Firstly, they want the Swedish people to see these migrants the way they see them - as a (supposedly) bloodthirsty and rapacious “other.” Not much different from the way the Nazis portrayed the “Jewish-Bolshevik hordes” before and during WW2. A (supposed) “terror attack” that can be blamed on the “other” will essentially result in the media performing this function for them.

        Secondly, they want an atmosphere of panic - such as existed right after 9/11 in the US. They know that such a state of things will allow their ideology to suddenly seem “relevant” in the same way that militarism suddenly became standard fare in the US afterwards.