BoycottPro

The book "48 Laws of Power" contains the exact answer for how you deal with fascists. It's rule 15:

Some people can be considered to be a “Dangerous Enemy”, and that if you do not vanquish the enemy totally that it will regroup, strong and better, and continue to attack you. Do not assume that everyone thinks, acts or behaves as you do. There are many kinds of people “out there” and some are very, very dangerous. Take no chances.

Crush your enemy totally. Don’t go halfway with them or give them any options whatsoever. If you leave even one ember smoldering, it will eventually ignite. You can’t afford to be lenient.

Kill or be killed. It’s the law of the jungle.

Fascism starts out as a fringe movement like as rule 15 says an ember smoldering, the flames spread and they grow until one day you wake up to a forest fire that has engulfed your country and left it in ruin.

That's why I'm calling on you to a fire extinguisher for fascists. Put them out with everything you got. The earlier you do it, the easier it will be.

I'll admit I don't have all the answers on what you can do about fascism and far-right extremists but I have a few suggestions:

1. Call it out and don't tolerate it. Don't put up with fascist friends. I highly recommend reading the Nazi bar story.

2. Ensure your dollars don't fund fascism. Boycott companies that enable or contribute to far-right extremists political parties. In particular I'd strongly recommend boycotting Twitter and Tesla and urging as many people to do likewise. Also try to reduce your fossil fuel usage however way you can.

3. Get to the root cause of why people turn to fascism and work to fix the societal and political causes for people turning to fascism. For example people feel left behind and the extremely wealthy are accumulating more power while some are barely getting by despite working hard everyday. The extremely wealthy realize what's happening and realize soon people will call for change so they create a scapegoat so people won't realize it's them who are really the cause of their problems. The solution is to ensure that people have their needs met, things like good healthcare, access to affordable nutritious food, good paying jobs.

4. Advocate for better education, teach people how to stop fascism and why it's bad, give people good media literacy, emotional resilience and intelligence, and classes designed to teach people how to recognize manipulation.

5. Advocate for laws banning fascism, ban things like overt hate speech, discrimination and far-right political parties that threaten your country. If laws are already on the books but are not being enforced demand enforcement of existing laws. I'd highly recommend reading about the Lapua Movement. The key reasons it was stopped was because people united against it and because judges banned it and imposed harsh penalties on those who were involved. This is why MAGA is trying to undermine our judicial system right now.

It's for sure a little bit of a longer read than news articles that typically get posted here but I feel it's still accessible and really can get people thinking about problems that cause democratic backsliding.

stabby_cicada made an interesting comment on how personal choice and leading by example can be combined with politics to effectively address climate change. This is a good article that combines the two approaches, it shows you some changes you can make along with reminding people the importance of voting, and being involved politically. The article mentioned the biggest user of fossil fuels in homes may be a gas fired furnace so if it's time to replace your furnace you may want to consider an electric heat pump.

One thing not mentioned in the article is if you have any incandescent light bulbs that receive regular use consider replacing them with LED. The payback period can be pretty fast for example if you replace a 60w light with a 10w LED assuming you use it for an average of two hours a day and you pay $0.20 kw/h you'll save $7.3 per year. This was calculated as follows:

(60 energy usage of old bulb - 10 energy usage of new bulb) * 2 hours per day average usage * 365 days in a year / 1000 to convert from watts to kilowatts * 0.2 cost per kwh = $7.3.

Over a 10 year period that's $73 in savings.

If the light bulb cost $2.5 to buy you'd break even in only 125 days (a little over 4 months) if we use the same usage assumptions.

Payback period can be calculated like this:

$2.5 cost of light bulb/(50 our energy savings*2 hours of average use)*(1000kw /0.2 price per kwh)

The article says:

Ken Griffin says Trump’s tariff strategy is eroding America’s global standing and investor trust in U.S. financial stability.

We already knew this was going to happen. On June 26, 2024 Reuters released an article with the headline "16 Nobel Prize-winning economists say Trump policies will fuel inflation". Trump campaigned on tariffs.

In my view this really undermines the creditably of Ken Griffin because an investor should be able to accurately asses information and determine its credibility to make proper investing decisions. Someone who falls for Fox "News" drivel wouldn't be a good investor. This is why Warren Buffet is outperforming other investors now, he properly prepared himself for Trump's tariffs.

Source for donation amount: https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/biggest-donors

You can see how much individuals associated with British American Tobacco contributed to campaigns. In 2024 it was over $26 million a vast majority of that going to Republicans. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/british-american-tobacco/summary?id=D000067317 they also spent over $5 million in lobbying in 2024.

Some other notable quotes from the article:

In February 2021, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Network (OCCRP) published an investigation according to which trafficking of BAT cigarettes had helped finance jihadist and separatist groups in northern Mali using, among other mechanisms, a system of oversupplying the country with tobacco. This has allowed billions of cigarettes to be smuggled out of the country.

In November 2012, the Zimbabwean government arrested several people for spying on factories owned by local tobacco companies, including Pacific Cigarette Company (PCC). BAT's involvement was suspected but not proven.[76][77][78] Later that month, President Robert Mugabe accused BAT of spying and hijacking PCC trucks to "kill competition".[79][80][81] In September 2021, a BBC Panorama investigation found evidence that BAT had enlisted Forensic Security Services, a South African Security firm, to sabotage and surveil factories owned by competitors, including PCC. After the spies were arrested, BAT negotiated a bribe so that the government would release them from jail.[82][83]

This is why I say politics matters more than individual action.

Yes, changing the lightbulbs in your house from incandescent to LED is great but it's just a drop in the bucket. Politicians can mandate energy efficient bulbs for everyone as an example, at scale this makes a huge difference.

We all have 24 hours in a day and a lot less of that is free-time, use it to contact your politicians and urge other people to do that.

I really hope after reading this post that you'll consider sending an email, calling or faxing at-least one politician. Your message can be really simple.

For example this could be your message:

Dear (politician),

I'm really worried about the effects on climate change. I believe it's hurting the economy much more than the cost of transitioning to renewable energy such as solar and wind. I'm calling for ending subsidies for fossil fuel companies and a faster transition to renewable energy.

Thank you so much for your consideration,
(Your name)

See that wasn't so hard was it? Sending an email could take just minutes a day and you're message could have a huge impact.

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/funnysnarkyjoke.bsky.social/post/3lmkfwebeuc27

In fact you can use your smartphone to change the channel on nearly any TV. In the comments on that post some people talk about how to do it. Basically you need a smartphone with either builtin IR or use a USB-C IR blaster or if your phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack you can also try one of those but I'm not sure if the 3.5mm ones are as commonly supported.

Basically take care of your mental health, don't get caught up in a cycle of despair. Focus on what you can do to make a difference and not worry too much about the things you cannot control.

What fuels the Republican party and Donald Trump? Money from big donors including fossil fuel money. The fossil fuel industry spent $219 million on the 2024 election according to Yale Climate Connections citing data from OpenSecrets.

If you're from another country and you're buying U.S. fossil fuels you are funding your own demise due to Trump's disastrous tariff policy and aiding of the global far-right authoritarian extremists.

Donald Trump and the Republicans are not just hurting Americans, they're hurting nearly everyone in the world due to damage to the global economy and damage to the environment which impacts everyone due to rolling back pollution regulations. It's the right of every person who's been hurt by Trump to fight back!

I have an easy way you can fight back! Reduce your dependence on fossil fuels, switch to electricity powered by renewable energy.

All you need to do is contact your politicians and build up public support for electrification and switch to renewable energy. When you boycott fossil fuels you're taking away funding from the fossil fuel companies who are hurting the planet and hurting everyone by promoting authoritarian, far-right policies.

I'm call on you to take the following action:

1. Contact at least one elected official and tell them you feel electrification and renewable energy is important and we need a faster transition to it.

2. Make at-least one post on social media urging people to move away from fossil fuels.

Then keep scaling this up!

Also another thing if you personally can switch to solar or wind, if it's right for your situation, do it! You'll save money on power bills in the long run.

The Wikipedia article is well worth a read! It looks likes the owner of Dubai-based Legatum Group made his fortunes in part with Russian gas money. The Legatum Institute which it seems is now called the "Prosperity Institute"* is registered in Bermuda and controlled by a company in the Cayman Islands.

* usually at-least speaking about things in the U.S. when a non-profit or a think tank has the words prosperity in it, it usually means that they advocate for a far-right viewpoint that screws over you and helps the billionaires become richer.

I recently posted an article about the effects of Fox News to the politics community.

Fox News is like a virus of the mind, it attacks and destroys reasonable thinking and puts people in a constant state of fear so they're addicted to watching the program. It tears apart families and infects other with their propaganda too. It spreads lies, misinformation and disinformation.

When I first found out about GB News I felt really worried that another country would have what is essentially a carbon copy of Fox News. It's the same brainwashing slop that differs only in accent. That's why I want to warn about this and do what I can to stop it, I don't want anyone else to suffer the way we're suffering in America. It's scary here, people are getting detained for no reason, even U.S. citizens who had valid ID on them.

I also see Fox News as being similar to a cancer. It will keep growing and growing until someone stops it. In America we didn't do enough to stop Fox News so the cancer has been growing, spreading to other parts of the body and now we're really sick. With advance treatment I think we'll make it but it's not going to be easy. Once we beat our cancer we'll probably have to spend a lot of time fixing the damage caused by the cancer.

My understanding is that GB News is still somewhat in it's infancy, like a stage 1 or stage 2 cancer. You can beat GB News a lot easier than we can beat Fox News. That's why I'm calling on you to take action now and defeat GB News.

You have the power to prevent the U.K. from becoming like the U.S. I recently found out about a campaign called "Stop Funding Hate". They do a great job listing who advertised on GB News on their Bluesky account.. Consider following them and contacting the advertisers. It could only take a few minutes a day and it will make a huge difference in defunding hate.

Another idea is writing to Legatum, the foreign Dubai based investors who own GB News. Contact them here: https://www.legatum.com/about/contact/. Tell them you don't like GB News.

Also consider sending this video: https://bsky.app/profile/stopfundingheat.bsky.social/post/3lnhwsu7h6c2j to Ofcom. Proof that the purpose of GB News is influence.