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Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 26, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anyone have any thoughts on “day of hate”? Might make post about it this week

Near as I can tell, the original source is this Telegram post. Some nobody with virtually no engagement. Their group's only sign of real-life activity is a banner drop done by 2 people. I found dozens of channels with hundreds to thousands of times the exposure mocking it as an obvious fed trap, and zero promoting it. Looks to me like the usual batch of activist groups lifted this out of obscurity to scare people, promote themselves, and get more donations. Oh, and also waste a ton of law enforcement time chasing ghosts and protecting things that were never threatened.

The Counter Extremism Project is responsible for pulling it out of obscurity. What’s so odd (telling?) is that nobody really wants to link this back to them. This is billionaire Thomas Kaplan’s project. The reason for this spectacle is to reinforce the idea of Jewish victimhood status. Now, Kaplan has funding ties to ultra-orthodox yeshivas and rabbis. Bear with me on this leap: the reason for this spectacle is to increase the funding allocation for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. This is a 200mil slush fund for nonprofits to increase their “security”, broadly defined, and Jewish groups want to increase it to 400mil. Since 2010 (when the fund was smaller), up to 97% of all funds went to Jewish groups — I have read numbers indicating 75% or 97% depending on year.

So it’s… actually much more nefarious. Like something out of James Bond. A billionaire mining magnet, who has previously bet his money on war with Iran (sacrificing thousands of American lives), and who funds actually racist ultra orthodox groups, has created (out of thin air!) a national spectacle involving a day of hate. Now, sure, it’s obvious stereotype of a gold-investing billionaire able to control the media like a puppet master and thanos snap his finger into existence more than 120,000 tweets on his day of hoax… but this is essentially what happened. And all for a nefarious end.

Never heard of it. Googled it--found a bunch of articles declaring "resistance" and "resolve" in response to a "day of hate" declared by unspecified actors who I could never manage to source. I'd say "Streisand effect" except that your post is the only way I would have heard anything at all.

Imagine giving some midwestern loner of dubious psychological stability that much attention for so little effort. Or, for that matter, imagine ginning the whole thing up in hopes of generating some new faux-holiday for the terminally progressive and excessively online. Truly, the demand for hatred exceeds the supply by several orders of magnitude.

I'm very suspicious. The point is to record yourself posting antisemitic fliers and then put the recordings online. Not to blame everything on the FBI, but is this a trick?

Also I skimmed a few news articles but couldn't find a primary source for the day of hate. Is this all some tiny discord group or other tiny group? Is this real in any sense other than overblown articles and public statements?

In short, the origin is one guy from Iowa, who does not belong to a group, who may or may not be real or a fed, who is only known for giving out free heil hitlers at the Iowa capitol building. His telegram post got limited engagement (four emotes) and only 1000 views when I saw it, up to 999 of which could be journalists / curious people and not supporters. The group who originally put this out is funded by a prominent billionaire, whose wife’s family runs a major bank in Israel, and who is best known for lobbying to get us into war with Iran and funding ultra-orthodox groups which want to make the conversion process more difficult. It is very interesting, I’ll make cited post later this week

I posted most of what I was able to find. If you know more or better, I'd be interested to hear that.

The TLDR I'm getting is that none of this even tries to sound real.

Please do, this sounds interesting.

First I’ve heard of it. I could believe it was alt-right, alt-left, astroturfed corporate, or all of the above.

On what? Fuck, did I miss hate day? That's like sleeping through Christmas.

(Seriously though I have no idea, please do a cafesplainer for us clueless boomers if you've got thoughts to share)

This is the first I've heard of it too. Tried looking it up, and all the links are self referencing back patting by "day of resolve" people, so it's unclear if it's real or fake.

It was the official hate day indeed, and came as a shock to many, including every single far right extremist on Twitter

What if they declared a day of hate and nobody came?

They did. Then they declared that the absence of hate meant their warnings worked and they called it a day of resolve.