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Hmm... I just read the Powell memo... can't identify the part this tweet is referring to. Could only find a line about education being taxpayer funded. Some help? Definitely a weird doc though. Amazing how completely the plan succeeded. billmoyers.com/wp-content/upl
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Seems worth mentioning that one part of the strategy laid out in the Powell memo in the 1970s was to make college so expensive that students would graduate in so much debt they’d be less likely to work against corporate interests.
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This bit is the closest I found. Maybe I'm not an attentive reader, but I didn't find anything that says what the tweet claims, and the whole memo has a tone of injured victimhood and fairly careful language. Maybe the strategy was laid out in further events triggered by this?
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Ah a searchable version. Yep, as I thought, the text does not even contain the word debt. I don't doubt that something like this strategy was at least blessed if not deliberately crafted, but the claim seemed odd. Stratgery people don't talk that way
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This seems a little closer to the idea at least in spirit, but still not quite evidence for the claim.
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As Biden cancels (some) student debt, remember why the debt exists. A key Reagan advisor warned in 1970 that free college was producing the dangerously explosive "dynamite" of an "educated proletariat," and "we have to be selective on who we allow to go through higher education":
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There are enough good arguments to be made in support of subsidized or free higher-ed and against debt bondage... no need for fake provenances
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Yep, same. Though clearly the "plan" such as it was in the Powell memo succeeded through some mix of intentional execution (lobbying etc) and sheer luck/economic shifts, the overall tone is one of whiny weakness, not machiavellian scheming.
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Replying to @mutual_ayyde and @vgr
reading it i see it as a similar document to the trilateral commissions crisis of democracy report in that most leftists see it as a sign of conspiracy but i actually see it as a sign of weakness in the establishment
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Charitable, but if so, it is very dangerous sort of mistake. A Chomsky quote is a very different source for the charge.
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Replying to @vgr
I found this article, which talks about the Powell memo, and quotes Chomsky. Maybe the OP thought the Chomsky quote was from the memo? hipcrimevocab.com/2016/10/05/why
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I am not normally the sort to go digging in original sources to fact-check a loose claim... god knows I'm extraordinarily half-assed and shitposty myself in everything I say. But this seemed a little too cartoon-villainish to be true.
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Adding a screenshot of original quoted tweet in case it disappears. 9,982 retweets and 42,194 likes is non-trivial misinfo diffusion. And to repeat, I'm largely party-line in favor of the debt reduction. I'd just like "my side" to argue more rigorously and in better faith
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All the more reason to argue more carefully especially when you’ve had a little tactical victory. Power corrupts etc
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Replying to @vgr
I find with with political theses like one in the original tweet, there's a lot of apocryphal reading that comes into it and the guy is probably mixing up the Powell report with something else he read tangential to it. I would not be surprised at the main thrust, though
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