I received this in my email below. Instead of asking you to donate as this email asked me to do I ask you to RESIST by any legal means necessary by opposing so called Nationalist candidates that Trump says he is. Know Hitler was a nationalist, Mussolini was a nationalist, Huey Long was a nationalist but called himself a populist. The Republican Party is filled with right wing extremists who call themselves nationalists, populists and even American Nazis which were never given credence before. Now it does. Be careful of the news they sponsor. Nationalism goes by seemingly friendly names like populist but whatever name is goes by it is decidedly dictatorially fascist and know fascists have zero scruples about killing their adversaries. They are mean, they are racist and they are violent. RESIST their onslaught and be careful whom you support. Elections have consequences as we can see by what the uber corrupt Trump and his henchmen have unleashed on us. This must never happen again!
Hi! You may have missed our call to join us in defending our democracies from a fascist takeover. In case you're keen to know more and maybe even chip in, here's the email again :) And sorry if we’re annoying you with too many emails, we just really believe THIS one matters so incredibly much for everything we want to do together to build a better future for our children.
The internet was supposed to connect all of humanity like never before -- beyond any boundaries, race or religion.
But the fascist forces that led the world into darkness 80 years ago are spreading their tentacles again, deploying vast armies of fake accounts to turn us against each other. To make us distrust, hate, even kill each other!
In India, innocent men and women were massacred after fake stories about them stealing children spread on WhatsApp like wildfire. A landmark study in Germany found the more people used Facebook, the more attacks on refugees. And a neo-fascist is Brazil’s new president after toxic lies about his opponents went viral on social media -- until 89% of his voters believed them!
It’s an all-out propaganda war -- not through the radios in our homes, but the smartphones in our pockets.
But there’s a way to stop this.
During Brazil’s election, Avaaz ran an experiment -- just six people were given basic training to investigate the propaganda networks, and they shut down online fake news factories that reached *16 million* people. Imagine what ten times as many could do!
With crunch elections in Europe, Canada, India and beyond just months away, we need to act fast. Chip in now -- if we raise enough, we’ll hire, train and deploy the most sophisticated teams of specialists to defend our democracies. Our grandparents said “Never again!” and now it’s on us to live up to their promise. If we don’t fight for the truth to prevail, no one will:
Fear and anger bring out the worst in humanity. And those who want to drive us apart have found a powerful weapon in social media, where fake blogs can get more engagement than a BBC news story.
Avaazers have been fighting this from the start. We’ve pressured social media executives to act, advocated to lawmakers from Berlin to Brasilia, and investigated some of the world’s biggest disinformation networks. But it’s not enough. Europe and Canada have mainly resisted the far right until now, but this year’s elections could completely change that.
Our Brazil experiment showed how to stop it -- catching fake stories early and reporting those who posted and spread them. But for this to work, we need to hire and train many more to investigate, infiltrate and break down these massive propaganda networks -- and with key elections around the corner, we need to do it NOW!
The Avaaz movement is powered by the truth that more unites us than divides us. That unity is the trolls biggest fear -- so chip in now to unleash it, and let’s launch this people-powered push to defend the truth, before it's too late:
