Hello from your friendly neighborhood antifascist! I've used redlib to keep tabs on the reddit mainstream narratives, ever since I abandoned accounts during the fascist pigboy API ratfuckery.

Th linked thread is a great example of corporate astroturfing against the left I've seen a thousand times before. After days of sustained anti-centrist threads, the most upvoted narrative in this one is pro-centrism, after an election where an anti-billionaire, anti-PAC, pro-M4A progressive candidate flipped the con stronghold of Texas by over 20 points. They're now claiming Talarico isn't a progressive/leftist, and that establishment centrist candidates "handpicked by Schumer" achieved the landslide. It's pathetic, but it works for the uneducated and apolitical who don't pay attention most of the time.

The most obvious indicator of reddit astroturfing has always been when a subs thread flips from the mean of that community, like back in 2020/21 when 9 of 10 threads in liberal subs about BLM were supportive of the protesters, but 1 of 10 flipped to demonizing them; filled with a bunch of troll comments and fash narratives rephrased a dozen times. Usually the astroturf threads will align narratives with those promoted across other social, conservative, and mainstream media.

Edit: also if you go through each username in that thread, a significant number appear to be karma farming accounts with several hundred thousand upvotes = accounts most likely to be owned by lobbyists, guerrilla marketers, and propaganda operatives.

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[–] 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

I'd be wary of trusting talarico personally, he already proved he'd be willing to flip-flop on issues if he doesn't think they're politically expedient with some of the anti-trans stuff he said in his campaign and then half-heartedly walked back, and now he's saying he wants to work with trump and MAGA to "secure the border" and called himself a "border security democrat". He definitely seems like he's taking positions closer to Schumer and Jefferies than he does an actual progressive.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/04/politics/video/border-security-democrat-james-talarico-erin-burnett-vrtc-digvid

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    Keeping the border secure is vastly different from the goal of ICE (terrorize civilians). I get the impression that living close to the border where the cartels have control, or family has fallen victim to fentanyl trafficking, does make one more sensitive to the issue. Republicans often warn that Democrats are going to “flood the border” and it’s at least worth making clear rules are going to stay in place.

    It’s also probably worth revising border policy to make it easier to get in legally; heck, we also need to seek out whether corrections are needed for the “gold card system” Trump was touting.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 23 hours ago

    I can already tell he will be too soft and willing to compromise with bad faith actors. Wouldn't trust him to hold the criminally corrupt accountable.

    We'll have to see whether he earns trust by following through with on rest of his rhetoric.

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