• supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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      1 month ago

      Wow what a gotcha!

      I have watched hours and hours of Krystal Ball on her shows and speaking on other shows about progressive topics. Reliably, for years, even when surrounded by much shittier people she has stuck to a fundamentally progressive ideology without fail. The argument that she is actually saying she supports Nazis here is childish and insults your own intelligence.

      The idea you can gotcha her with this is pathetic, I am open to hearing criticism of progressive voices, people change, people lie… but this is just lazy. If you want to take down progressives, try harder, you just embarass yourself and expose the biases you are trying to manifest into truth with bullshitting.

      • KazuyaDarklight@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Ok, so as a less informed person let’s try to ignore the “gotcha” element of this and address it more directly. With your greater depth of background on her, what are your actual thoughts regarding her support for this person?

        • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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          1 month ago

          Krystal Ball has been a progressive commentator for years. Check her wikipedia page, she has done and said a lot of stuff. In all of the things I have seen her fight for and cover in her work I have never seen her do something like casually defend a Nazi. Anything is possible but Occam’s Razor here is that she didn’t just abruptly decide to start publicly supporting Nazis and she sees this as an obvious blatant attempt to sabotage a candidate with politics she thinks will genuinely help americans vs Susan Collins.

          Krystal Ball is also married to Kyle Kulinski, another extremely consistent and longstanding voice of progressivism. They got married AFTER they had both become prominent progressives who publicly would stood up for their beliefs. Yeah, Krystal could secretly be whatever, but it doesn’t fit the facts at all to say so.

          Here is a recent interview with Krystal Ball about politics and media in the US in Current Affairs.

          https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/krystal-ball

          Does this read like someone who only superficially gives a shit about progressive ideas? Who is faking it just to get in position to betray everything? She sounds like a progressive nerd who follows this stuff like sports nerds who follow sports, she is EXTREMELY passionate in a way that has always felt 100% genuine to me. That doesn’t mean I think she is perfect or hasn’t fucked up in the past but no, there is no reason to think Krystal Ball isn’t a mad as hell progressive who is utterly genuine.

          Also Krystal Ball is smart as fuck and quite often right, I should have put that at the top. She is worth listening to and reading first and foremost because you learn, she doesn’t waste your time.

          Check out Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski’s show/blog “Krystal Kyle and Friends” and look at what they highlight and focus on, do these people seem like secret Nazis to you? Doesn’t this feel like a lazy distraction to try to smear progressive voices because they bring up inconvenient topics?

          https://krystalkyleandfriends.substack.com/

        • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          Promoting someone who didn’t know the specific configuration if skull and crossbones was a Nazi symbol, who’s much more recently decried racists in those leaked Reddit posts

          • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Have they said they are going to.get it covered up or removed now they know it’s association?

            I have heard one person who works to deradicalize white supremacists, who was in the movement, not remove them so he can reach more of them. However this isn’t that sort of situation.

            • frosty99c@midwest.social
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              1 month ago

              He already got it covered up. He did so as soon as he learned about the nazi association.

              I’ll say that I don’t know every hate symbol out there, and I know tons of people that get tattoos without any deeper meaning than “I think it looks cool.” I can believe that he genuinely didn’t know what it was and got it corrected once he found out what it stood for.

            • foodandart@lemmy.zip
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              1 month ago

              Have they said they are going to.get it covered up or removed now they know it’s association?

              Yeah. It’s aready been covered over. Gone and done.

            • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Yes. As soon as he found out about the oppo research he wanted to get it removed but since that takes repeated sessions over an extended period he instead went and got it covered up with a new tattoo. There is no evidence this guy is a Nazi or has ever supported white supremacy, he expressed horror at learning his tattoo could be associated with Nazis and immediately took action to rectify the situation. There isn’t really anything else you can expect from someone who made a dumb ass mistake like this, he appears to be doing exactly what one would hope someone in this situation does.

        • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          You don’t seem to understand that this guy is not actually a Nazi. He is just an ex-Marine who once drunkenly got a stupid tattoo which is now being used by right-wingers against him because he is a leftist. There is literally no evidence this guy is actually a Nazi, it is just an insinuation being perpetuated in the media to motivate people like you to do what you are doing. Please, start thinking critically about you see in the media because you are being manipulated to spread divisiveness when what we need is solidarity.

    • GorGor@startrek.website
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      1 month ago

      lets be honest, which is more likely

      A dumbass kid gets a skull tatoo that he doesnt know the history behind

      He is a closeted nazi who is running against Susan Collins on a platform railing against the oligarchy so he can turn around and enact his racist agenda.