news

Further analysis, and I've rethought my most likely candidate:

Mentioned candidates:

• Bog-standard lanyard-lib campaign volunteer: has access to phone number lists and basic demographic info from phone banking. Is pissed Kamala lost. Feels betrayed by minorities. Wants to "educate"/"teach a lesson": you didn't vote for us so congrats you're gonna be slaves. Bonus if they can implicate the right wingers in doing a bad thing. Uncomfortable using a slur though, because that's something that actual racists do, and they're totally not a racist (they are).

• State actor: maximize fear, maximize distrust, inflame tensions--message would probably be more formal (unless this presentation was intended for whatever reason), no reason not to use slurs, theoretically has access to identity info and ability to customize messages, i'd expect being named by name in the message, or even more effectively and dehumanizingly by id# of some sort.

• fash: aims to maximize racism/make people feel bad, they're gonna dig out the bigot's thesaurus and really go to town. Does have a mild post-fren sort of feel to it.

Other possible:

• Neolib: express anger at loss, bonus if inflaming tensions against right wing. Only real difference from the first case is that I'd expect the true die hard neolib to be so into government stuff that this would be more form-letter like. More formal language, more matter-of-fact this-is-happening kinda tone. Probably dropping a Spanish black in there for fun and emphasis. Still doesn't consider themself racist--at least not racist enough for a hard R, but Kamala only lost because she was a black woman and the party needs to move farther right (is very racist)

• weird internet incel centrists ( fans): just want to stir up shit, mad at minorities for making them lose. They're definitely comfortable slinging soft-Rs around everywhere internally, maybe less so with sending a hard-r publically. Message does read like a poor attempt to sound official, and centrists are notably not good at anything.

My best guess though:

• Just some fucking teenager. The article only lists recipients ages 15 and 16. Do they all go to the same school? Could be the edgy kid trying to start shit. Could be a racist kid being genuinely racist. Even could be an in-joke between friends that an adult saw, and they lost their shit and this spiralled way out of control. No fucking clue or lead on what sort of kid, honestly, but the words, the spelling, the phrasing, the formatting, all seem like a young kid trying to imitate what a government message would sound like.

Fash wouldn't pass up the opportunity to use slurs.

I'm reminded of that purge parody where the masked guy outside the black protagonist's house at the onset of the purge uses the n-word over the intercom camera and all his friends and himself are taken aback and he apologizes immediately.

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