Outside of typical remarks from Donald Trump, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and a Fox News report, party stayed mum

Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.

Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.

It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    10 minutes ago

    Soooooo

    No kings day came and went and literally nothing changed?

    What a surprise

    For this about to furiously type about how big this event was: it’s completely and utterly irrelevant if it doesn’t change anything

    Look at Europe: we protest and paralize the country until the right thing is done

    Just showing a sign somewhere for a day with your fellow Americans will do nothing

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      31 minutes ago

      Fascism on a national scale requires the consent or fear of the people in order to maintain power. They have to look strong. Anything that disturbs their voting bloc or contradicts the official narrative, especially on a broad stage, is going to cause them exponential problems because it looks like weakness. That’s part of why fascism is inherently weak. Being able to ignore dissent is a luxury afforded only to the truly strong.

      The fact that they aren’t saying anything in this case means that they’ve calculated that the erosion of their base is preferable to letting the news cycle keep running with this.

    • balderdash@lemmy.zip
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      2 hours ago

      The Woman’s March, BLM, Occupy Wallstreet, and the first No Kings were all successfully ignored. Millions of Americans marching is clearly not enough for us to be heard.

      • TronBronson@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        7 million people is roughly 2% of the population. It’s 10% of the people in this country that couldn’t be bothered to vote. There’s also no threat or demands to accompany this protest. Like what are the people in power supposed to think. An easily ignorable voting block is slightly agitated enough to spend a few hours holding a sign? Are they going to stop working or consuming? Are they going to gather votes and banish the two parties that have failed us? No lmao they’re just gonna get together once every couple of months, there’s absolutely no pressure to a public gathering.

  • fort_burp@feddit.nl
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    1 hour ago

    Are there many Republicans in the USA? I thought they won elections because they won the areas where votes are more valuable i.e. those places with very low population density. Same with American governance in general, like how California (pop. 39 MM & 732,189 people per electoral vote) has the same amount of Senators in Congress as Wyoming (pop. 587,000 & 192,284 people per electoral vote).

    Would you say 1 out of 4 American adults are Republicans? 1 out of 3?

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      38 minutes ago

      Tough to estimate. There are definitely fewer Republicans than the GOP would like you to believe; probably far below 50%. Many more people in the US are independent and will vote for a person over a party, or at least were. Republicans win due to a combination of the Electoral College (as you noted), coordinated misinformation campaigns (including by hostile nations), voter suppression, gerrymandering, low turnout, and the fact that older people both (1) skew conservative and (2) are more likely to be politically engaged than younger people.

      So, actual Republicans? Yes, almost certainly closer to 25%. Probably fewer. People who say they’re independent but functionally vote conservative in every election due to the aforementioned misinformation campaigns? Maybe another 10-15% at most. Remember, “did not vote” has run the board in every election for the past 40+ years, winning practically every state by a landslide.

      But this article isn’t about the rank-and-file Republican citizens. It’s about the grifters in elected office.

      • fort_burp@feddit.nl
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        31 minutes ago

        But this article isn’t about the rank-and-file Republican citizens. It’s about the grifters in elected office.

        Haha yes, it just got me thinking, that’s all. Excellent points, thank you.

      • fort_burp@feddit.nl
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        35 minutes ago

        Thanks for the link. That’s an interesting way of measuring it.

        About two-thirds of registered voters identify as a partisan, and they are roughly evenly split between those who say they are Republicans (32% of voters) and those who say they are Democrats (33%). Roughly a third instead say they are independents or something else (35%), with most of these voters leaning toward one of the parties.

        Of course we can’t know about adults who are not registered voters, but I would suspect they lean Democrat. I don’t really buy the 50/50 split though because that would be a blowout for Republicans in terms of electoral votes due to FPTP voting. There are also other forms of corruption like gerrymandering that allow Republicans to win elections with a minority of votes.

  • CircaV@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    Mostly silent?! Except for the video King Trunp posted of him literally shitting on Americans. Presidential enough for you??

  • Octavio@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Then nobody better tell me that protests don’t accomplish anything. Besides all the things you aren’t admitting they accomplish, getting republicans to shut up for a day is a damn miracle in itself.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      5 hours ago

      It was supposed to be this dark, violent uprising of slavering feral ANTIFA Commies, and instead, it was a just a huge national street party/ MAGA Roast that MAGAs weren’t invited to.

      Now they have to explain to their cult how wrong they were about the left being violent and hating America, without looking like their feeling are hurt for not being included in the fun.

      • HubertManne@piefed.social
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        1 hour ago

        the whol anti anti facist thing is a pretty daring stance for trump and johnson. So funny they act like they are the real americans.

      • allidoislietomyself@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        The right wing media is just waiting for the handful of police reports to come in from the weekend to fixate upon, and talk about non stop, so they can make that “violent uprising” a reality for their viewers.

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          4 hours ago

          I just heard an ABC reporter saying that the protests were non-violent, “for the most part.”

          “FOR THE MOST PART?” He said that without pointing out a single instance of it, and I haven’t heard of any reports of violence. So why does he have to suggest, on national TV, that there was at least some violence, somewhere? All that does is feed MAGA lies. Now that can say that the protests were violent, they heard it on ABC, and they’d be accurate.

          News organizations, whether left or right, should be required to be accurate.

  • starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    Can’t believe how many people haven’t even heard of it when it’s one of the biggest protests in US history. Those left-leaning news channels sure doing their job by covering it for 5 minutes I guess. None of my friends nor 3 other people I talked to today even knew what the protest was or that it was happening until I told them about it.

    • minorkeys@lemmy.world
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      And this is the threat posed by consolidating communication and media. Even if we want to organize a movement, we can’t communicate with each other to organize it or share it.

    • DupaCycki@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      A lot of media outlets worldwide are ignoring these protests or covering them very briefly when nobody’s watching. Most likely due to influence from the US.

    • MrSmiley@lemmy.zip
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      5 hours ago

      Most people live their lives wholly unaware of reality. If their entertainment programming doesn’t consist of anything informational, they will never know about events except second hand from others, like your case. The silent majority doesn’t vote in elections, not because they don’t see the point, it’s because they likely had know idea there were elections.

      I had to explain to my friends what “mid-terms” were. They vote in presidential elections…

      • m0stlyharmless@lemmy.zip
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        Uninformed and disinterested people are a very useful demographic to those in power. It’s also notable that even when they encounter information regarding important events, they won’t be aware of what actions they can take in response to it. Not being informed on important events and their progression also impacts how they perceive those who are taking action to change or influence those events. This can easily lead to the perception of justified responses being excessive or alarmist.

  • OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    It’s part of the propaganda strategy to pick their battles. They never speak on your terms. They only speak when they have the upper hand. Keep in mind in general they never directly acknowledge any of your talking points. Not unless they have an avenue to interject logical fallacies and pivot the dialog to their terms.

    The moment they start talking about this they lend credence to your side. It carves open space in public discourse. This is the exact same tactic they use against you. And people fall for it every time. You’re never supposed to lend credence to their trolling. You’re not supposed to feed the trolls. Yet here we are. A decade into this era of internet troll right wing politics. People started feeding the trolls and cannot help themselves.

  • 5in1K@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    There were a couple republicans on harleys driving past repeatedly that I made fun of and called pussies.

    • frog_brawler@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      We had a guy with a big truck driving up and down blasting “Proud to be an American” from a large speaker in the bed of his truck. It was awesome when all the protesters cheered to hearing the song and applauded the guy.

      Pretty sure that wasn’t the reaction he expected.

  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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    13 hours ago

    They’re silent because they know all the protestors will go back to work tomorrow. If you want to force them to acknowledge it you need to show up the next day as well.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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      8 hours ago

      I actually agree. The shit going down in the USA certainly deserves a General Strike.

      And that’s why unions were invented, to put that option on the table. How many % of workers are unionized in the US? Is there historical precedence of a general strike without unions?

    • FackCurs@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      This 💯. No kings was a protest, it is not a movement and is not trying to be a movement.

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      If these parades are ever to work, they need to stop being predictable. Stop giving the enemy info about them like how long they’ll last of where they’re being held. Find ways to spread the word without them finding out and make it a continuous thing that has no end in sight until demands are met. Make sure you showcase you will escalate if they feel they can safely ignore you.

      When the enemy goes low, you kick them in the face as hard as you can.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours ago

    I was at a rally all day today. I saw two noteworthy attempts to counter protest the HUNDREDS of “no king” protesters that showed up in my city.

    One was a guy who wrote couchfucker propaganda on his car in chalk paint. “JD Vance 2028” or something like that. He flipped us off at 50mph. Few saw it.

    The second was a guy that brought his Charlie Kirk flag to the last 25 minutes of the protest, after 2/3rds of the no kings folks went home.

    So, one was a coward that drove by one time. One time. I think he yelled something, but since Trump supporters don’t believe in science, he didn’t realize we can’t hear shit when he’s speeding by at 50 in a 35.

    The second guy… Man, what do you even say? How about ‘what the fuck even is a Charlie Kirk flag?’ These people are mentally fucking ill. They will villainize and glorify anyone and anything. If Trump told them douchebags were a hallowed object tomorrow, they’d be lovingly calling themselves ‘douchies’ by next week.

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    16 hours ago

    Ours coincided with our Pride, they actually marched with us in the parade up to the capitol and then joined us. It was incredible, unlike anything I’ve seen in this city. Do I think Trump is going to magically be unseated? No. But let’s make a habit of this, since I am not sure voting will actually happen in 28, and we need mob size forces to be easily called up.

    • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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      12 hours ago

      A lot of these protests, especially in bigger cities, have all kinds of booths at them too. The one near me had like 6 for just one congressional candidate, one for a mayoral candidate, and multiple for revolutionary socialists/communists, along with people walking all over the rally handing out fliers about a general strike.

      Tons of people sign up for these things, or even if they don’t sign up to strike/canvass, end up changing their voting habits accordingly. A lot of local stuff can be really impactful, since a lot of the policies most directly felt by people are local policies (e.g. is the pothole in front of your house fixed? Is your rent expensive? Is there visible poverty on the streets? Are the buses slow?) rather than federal ones (e.g. “we cut billions in research grants but you’ll only really start noticing the overall effects yourself many years from now”)

      I do wish we could just get all the people going to things like this to head over to ICE facilities and block 'em day and night, but it’s a good consolation that they’re taking some other actions regardless.