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eretzyisrael · 10 months ago

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Opinion

By MICHAEL KAYE Published: FEBRUARY 28, 2024 03:04 THE WRITER speaks at a marketing conference in New York City wearing a #EndJewHatred T-shirt.(photo credit: COURTESY MICHAEL KAYE)

It’s been almost five months since October 7, a day that completely changed the lives of more than 15 million Jews around the world. But the aftermath of the attack is still present, months later. In many ways, it feels as though this nightmare just happened, while at other moments, it’s hard to remember what life was like before that day of terror.

I am not fluent in Hebrew. I do not wear a kippah. I have almost 30 tattoos. I am not your stereotypical Jew, but I have become a proud Jewish activist. But October 7 changed me, as it did many others. Who I was before is someone I can never be again. I cannot be complicit or silent. I donate to the Anti-Defamation League; I speak at conferences wearing an #EndJewHatred T-shirt; I never leave home without Jewish-themed jewelry; and I use my social media platforms to discuss the rising antisemitism on college campuses across the United States and around the world.

As someone who was educated at a Jewish school and learned about the Holocaust, I am no stranger to antisemitism or the dangerous impact it can have. My earliest memories include being taught by my parents to be proud but quiet about my Judaism, having swastikas carved on my school playground, being immediately evacuated on September 11, and always leaving my Star of David at home when traveling.

During my childhood and teenage years, I heard from and met many Holocaust survivors, including Elie Wiesel. I listened to their stories about how the world remained silent.

Today, it feels like the beginning of a second Holocaust. That is why I cannot remain silent.

A scary time to be Jewish

For this Jewish New Yorker, it’s a scary time to be Jewish. The American Jewish Committee’s State of Antisemitism in America report found that 93% of American Jews surveyed think antisemitism is a problem in the United States and 86% believe antisemitism in the country has increased over the past five years.

In November, I attended the March for Israel in Washington. Around me were Jewish people from Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Diego, and Queens. A man from Brooklyn put tefillin (phylacteries) on me; it was the first time I had worn tefillin in almost 20 years. I even got to meet Julia Haart and Miriam Haart from Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life, who grew up in a religious community not too far from me. While there, I realized this gathering had the most Jews I’ve been around since I was in Israel in 2006. It was the safest I had felt in years. But there were also allies, including Congressman Ritchie Torres and CNN contributor Van Jones. That day reminded me of why I am proud to be Jewish and why I cannot be silent about my Judaism any longer.

Since October 7, I have lost hundreds of followers on social media. I have received anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages, even threats. But I am not alone. The AJC found that six in 10 people have come across antisemitic content online, and 78% of American Jews feel less safe as Jews in the United States since that horrific day.

To many of us, the current climate feels different. We’re feeling angry, confused, and isolated. In my lifetime, I have watched the nation unite after domestic and foreign terrorist attacks, social justice actions, and wars. Rarely, outside of politics, have I seen us this divided: the Jewish community against everyone else. Overnight, people who had never spoken about any Middle Eastern wars became experts on the conflict. Disinformation spread like wildfire across social media, and much of it felt aimed at damaging or discrediting Jews and Zionists. Almost immediately after October 7, it was not only taboo to express sympathy for the Israelis who were captured or murdered; it was discouraged and forbidden, often met with attacks, both physical and verbal.

BUT THROUGH these painful months, there have also been glimmers of light.

During this period of mourning, I have watched people of all backgrounds come together – to educate, to grieve, to hope, and to pray. A Christian connection on social media thanked me for sharing educational resources. Jewish friends from elementary school and high school reached out. A Muslim friend held my hand as I cried, and another has been checking on me periodically for months. These are the moments I have chosen to cling to.

Our future is not where one side loses and another wins. It’s where we all unite.

The writer is an award-winning communications strategist, data storyteller, purpose-driven marketer, and educator based in New York City. He often speaks about antisemitism, LGBTQ+ rights, and social justice issues.

#Israel #antisemitism #israel hamas war

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skyler10fic · 2 months ago

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WonderGirls: Ch. 1

Summary: Daisy Johnson is cast in her first big starring role as a superhero in a Wonder comic-book action film after her long-running TV show ends. She's out as bisexual in the industry and to her show's devoted fanbase, but it's hardly newsworthy in comparison to the A-list celebrity stardom of her idol-turned-new-costar, Carol Danvers. America's Sweetheart has a secret and she's under a lot of pressure to keep it that way as Wonder Studios tries to market their characters as love interests for Pride clout without infuriating the haters and bigots. Will rainbow capitalism land on their side toward real progress or will fear win out over love, both in the movie and behind the scenes?

Read on Ao3

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“Cut!”

Daisy relaxed as the director conferred with the assistants. It was their third straight day of shooting and Daisy still hadn’t met her co-star in this superhero film, aside from a group Zoom for script read-throughs. Carol Danvers, a gorgeous blonde bombshell, was a Hollywood darling of the moment with her previous work on a historical romance, an all-female Top Gun remake, a beloved sci-fi instant cult classic, and a charming family-reunited comedy. Daisy, however, had spent the last decade in a spy TV series. She was grateful for her big break going on so long, of course, but it was time to show she had more to offer as an actress than being the IT-geek-turned-action-hero sidekick. The TV show writers had eventually given her more than teen genius comedic relief lines as she had grown into a young adult, but as sad as she was to say goodbye to the cast that had become a family, it was time to spread her wings.

Her action scenes in the spy show had landed her a spot in the next big superhero film, WonderGirls, from the Wonder comic-book movie franchise. She was playing one of the four titular girls and Carol played another. Specifically, Carol’s character and her own were supposed to fall in love, in a groundbreaking, much-hyped will-they-won’t-they romance. Wonder had limited the script to a vague love confession and embrace so they could still distribute the movie overseas where a sapphic storyline would be frowned upon or even banned completely.

Instead of “taking five” and drinking expensive bottled water alone on set between awkward stunts, Daisy had wanted to ask Carol how she felt about it, both the scene and the politics of it. And she wanted to strategize for their promo tour during Pride month next year, designed to turn the film into a lauded progressive summer blockbuster without losing any international revenue.

But so far all Daisy had done was train with a personal trainer from the studio and her stunt double, attend script readings with the whole cast, and film flying scenes in a harness in front of a green screen. Her character didn’t technically have the power of flight the way Carol’s character did, but she could jump high enough that it resulted in a similar effect, so only one of them could use the harnessed set at a time. Daisy was scheduled first for everything since she was now technically otherwise unemployed with the conclusion of her TV series and Comic-Con behind her. She had her own diehard fans at the cons, but even she hadn’t been able to get close to Carol’s panel and signing table. She’d barely glimpsed her future co-star before Carol was swept off to another studio to shoot a promo for her latest family comedy, coming soon to theaters.

Between brand deals, international film festivals, promo spots, and only the most prestigious con panels, Carol had been wrapping late reshoots and starting her press tour. Daisy, meanwhile, had come home to an empty house after a very emotional trip to San Diego full of closure and ice cream. And she didn’t know what to do next. Scripts from her agent started to come in after a few days, but the parts for moms (she was only 28!) and eye-candy love interests of male main characters depressed her, and the parts for spy/crime show tech support felt too type-casted.

This part, a WonderGirl, seemed too good to be true. Not just a sexy side character or a quirky support role, but a film starring hero. It was somewhat familiar with the action, yet also totally different, a broader audience, and a chance to inspire queer girls everywhere. And, of course, working with Carol Danvers was a huge draw. Daisy might have had a bit of a celebrity crush on her, if it were cool for celebrities to have crushes on bigger celebrities.

More importantly, her career was not dead—despite having to hang in the air from a wire while pretending to be unconscious from the blast of a villain’s weapon, all of which would be added in postproduction.

At the end of the day, Daisy grabbed some pizza from craft services and headed back to her trailer to eat dinner alone and study her lines. She had one night shoot scene tonight and then she could go home. And then back to the studio again early in the morning for more.

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Carol Danvers was exhausted. She was constantly surrounded by people telling her she was running late, needing more things from her, and trying to get her to sign pieces of paper or pose for a photo. The fans were not the exhausting part so much as just the general busyness of it all. The lights flashing and the international flights and the relentless pace of everyone’s success and futures riding on her.

It was her name on the billboards, her face on the latest issues of all the magazines, but in reality, she had a team of people financially depending on her ability to charm and impress.

Today’s New York rain had slowed down the day considerably, plus mobs of press and fans. Her agent, publicist, assistant, and bodyguard worked together to keep everything on schedule for today’s photo shoots and publicity videos and more, but some things couldn’t be helped.

“Shoots on WonderGirls start tomorrow,” her assistant reminded her as the small entourage ducked into a restaurant they knew would keep out the paparazzi.

“Yeah, I have some concerns about the script,” Carol admitted. They were seated and confirmed their “usuals” would be fine. “It’s not so much what’s there as what… isn’t.”

Her publicist sighed. “You have that look. The one where you’re about to get serious with unserious people. It’s Wonder. It’s comic book movies. Don’t overthink it.”

Carol frowned in thought. “But they are trying to make it a breakthrough film for queer representation. That’s how they pitched it to me. So, where is it? Where’s the queer scenes or lines?”

“I’ll talk to my people at Wonder,” her agent promised. “I’ll see what we can do to make it more explicitly stated, but I don’t know that they can push it much more between the protests of Concerned Moms for American Values and the political climate, especially in the international market right now…”

The waiter brought out some champagne samples for them to try and approve for Carol’s official endorsement. As he passed out the glasses, he explained each brand too fast for Carol to remember any of them and disappeared back into the kitchen.

As soon as he was gone, Carol’s agent kept talking, but Carol’s attention wandered. She looked around to the people who knew her best and realized that they were all her employees. She didn’t think of them like that. She thought of them as a team, and they were each the best in the business. But at the end of the day, this was a professional business dinner, not friends venting together without real-world consequences on the table. Even drinking champagne together was about a business decision.

So instead of unburdening her heart about what it was like to be “an open secret” and “Hollywood out” and being told now wasn’t the time to be visibly queer or that it would hurt box office sales to talk about LGBTQIA+ issues, she nodded along and ate her meal. By the time they finished, the crowd outside the restaurant had been driven away by pounding rain, and the entourage rushed to the waiting luxury SUV with dark coats held up and open like umbrellas to shield Carol and themselves from the worst of the storm.

As they drove back to their hotel to pick up their luggage and head to the airport, Carol watched the rain against the window and wondered what it would be like to twirl an umbrella in it as long as she wanted, maybe even to kiss a real girlfriend in real rain—not a male co-star with a practical effects machine dumping water on them.

Unfortunately, reality was not on the schedule. Tomorrow, she’d be back in LA and acting her way through the day, not just as her character but as the perfect, shiny, Hollywood star from dawn to midnight with coworkers who’d be doing exactly the same and then plotting her downfall behind her back. When she’d had her big break at 16, it hadn’t seemed so different from high school. Now at 30, boarding yet another red-eye flight, she was ready for a change.

#daisy johnson #carol danvers #aos #agents of shield #the marvels #captain marvel #daisy x carol #carol x daisy #wlw #sapphic fic #femslash #lesbian carol danvers #bisexual daisy johnson #skywriting #hollywood AU #actors AU #welcome to my new multichapter! Subscribe for updates on Ao3 #short chapters to start with

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned.

Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank.

The first day includes panel speeches about the Ukraine war as well as topics such as Transatlantic Culture Wars. It is expected to feature guests including Magor Ernyei, the international director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights, the institute that organized CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary. Kelley Currie, a former ambassador under then president Donald Trump, said she was invited “but declined”.

According to a Republican source, some of the attendees, including Republican members of Congress, have been invited to join closed-door talks the next day.

The meeting will take place against a backdrop of tense debate in Washington over Ukraine’s future. Last week the White House warned that, without congressional action, money to buy more weapons and equipment for Kyiv will run out by the end of the year. On Wednesday Senate Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine.

A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy said: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”

Orbán is a frequent critic of aid to help Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Seen as Vladimir Putin’s closest ally inside the EU for the past few years, he was photographed smiling and shaking hands with the Russian president two months ago in Beijing.

Orbán recently demanded that Ukraine’s European Union (EU) membership be taken off the European Council’s agenda in December. The Hungarian leader posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “It is clear that the proposal of the European Commission on Ukraine’s EU accession is unfounded and poorly prepared.”

The Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a coalition preparing for the next conservative presidential administration, and has in recent months hosted speeches by leading British Conservative party members Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith.

The thinktank has also been a vocal opponent of US assistance to Ukraine. Last year Jessica Anderson, the executive director of its lobbying operation, released a statement under the headline: “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last.” In August, Victoria Coates, Heritage’s vice-president, posted on social media: “It’s time to end the blank, undated checks for Ukraine.”

When Heritage celebrated its 50th anniversary last April, Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), was invited as a speaker for the event. Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, repeatedly praised the Hungarian leader on X: “One thing is clear from visiting Hungary and from being involved in current policy and cultural debates in America: the world needs a movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families, and for the average person.”

In recent years Orbán has championed a transatlantic far-right alliance with a hardline stance against immigration and “gender ideology”, staunch Christian nationalism and scorn for those who warn of a slide into authoritarianism.

Hungary has been portrayed by conservative media as an anti-“woke” paradise and model for the United States. Some far-right Republicans, such as Kari Lake and Paul Gosar, said they would like to see the “Hungarian model” transplanted to the US, especially when it comes to immigration and family policies. CPAC went to Hungary for the second time this year, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson shot multiple episodes in Hungary touting Orbán policies.

Orbán has returned the favour by lavishing praise on Trump. During this year’s CPAC, where Roberts was also featured as a speaker, he claimed that if Trump were president, “there would be no war in Ukraine and Europe”. The Hungarian prime minister has criticised the multiple federal indictments against the former US president and called the judicial procedure a “very communist methodology” in a recent interview with Carlson.

Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington, said: “The Hungarian embassy in DC has been very active lately, trying to repair ties with the Republicans and strengthen them where it’s appropriate.

“It is also not surprising that Heritage is the venue of these talks because they are different from other thinktanks in DC; they are more partisan, and their funding model heavily overlaps with the Trump base.”

But, Rohac said, despite his good relations with some Republicans it was “unlikely” that Orbán would have any leverage over US funding for Ukraine.

Supporters of Ukraine have also been making their case to Republicans in Congress. This week David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, held meetings on Capitol Hill. He told a press conference: “I am sure that goodwill will prevail and the money will be voted through, and it will have a huge effect not just on morale in Ukraine but also making sure that European countries keep asking themselves what more can they do.”

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coochiequeens · 2 years ago

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Let me just clarify this: I don’t like Turning Point USA or other conservative media sources or that Riley was part of that. However violence against a woman because she has”wrong think” is still violence against women.

Footage of ex-college swimmer Riley Gaines being chased and verbally abused by protesters, who shut down a talk she had been due to give at San Francisco State University (SFSU), has been widely shared on social media.

Gaines alleges she was "physically hit twice by a man," with video posted on Twitter showing her being escorted to safety by police whilst demonstrators chant and heckle.

An intense debate has developed about the role of trans athletes in women's sport, with Republican-controlled states passing a wave of laws banning their participation.

On Thursday Gaines had been due to address a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event at SFSU, but this was unable to proceed after demonstrators gained access to the venue.

A video Gaines shared on Twitter, which appears to show her being escorted out of the venue whilst protesters chant "trans rights are human rights," has been viewed more than 180,000 times.

Gaines commented: "The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU...I was ambushed and physically hit twice by a man. This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces. Still only further assures me I'm doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder."

Another video of Gaines leaving the room, whilst being protected by police officers, was shared on Twitter by David Llamas, the "TPUSA College Field Representative for the Bay Area."

In this footage, demonstrators chant "trans women are women," whilst one protester shouts slurs at Gaines, labelling her a "b*****."

This footage, which was retweeted by Gaines, has received over 280,000 views.

Nancy Hogshead, CEO of the 'Champion Women,' campaign group, tweeted that "trans radicals punched Riley Gaines" who "is in police protection now." This post, which added "male violence is the bane of our existence," was also retweeted by Gaines.

In a statement sent to Fox News Digital, Eli Bremer, Gaines' agent, commented: "Instead of a thoughtful discussion tonight at SFSU, Riley was violently accosted, shouted at, physically assaulted, and barricaded in a room by protesters. It is stunning that in America in 2023, it is acceptable for biological male students to violently assault a woman for standing up for women's rights."

Newsweek has contacted San Francisco State University and Turning Point USA for comment by email.

Gaines had previously competed against Lia Thomas, a University of Pennsylvania student who in March 2022 became the first trans woman to win the NCAA Division I women's 500-yard freestyle event.

Speaking to Fox News in December, Gaines accused Thomas of having "an utter disregard and disrespect towards women."

Thomas insisted trans athletes aren't a threat to women's sport, during an interview with ESPN in May 2022.

She commented: "Trans women competing in women's sports does not threaten women's sports as a whole.

"The NCAA rules regarding trans women competing in women's sports have been around for 10-plus years. And we haven't seen any massive wave of trans women dominating."

In August Gaines appeared alongside former President Donald Trump at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event in Dallas.

#USA #San Francisco State University (SFSU)#Riley Gaines #trans activism is male violence #Turning Point USA #Champion Women

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warningsine · 7 months ago

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Mexico will have its first woman president following a landmark vote on June 2, 2024.

After an election period marred by violence, ruling Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor, emerged as the victor with about 60% of the vote – a larger share of the vote than her mentor and predecessor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, won in 2018. Sheinbaum beat rival Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator for the center-right National Action Party, who trailed with less than 30% of the vote.

Acknowledging the significance of the occasion, Sheinbaum said: “For the first time in the 200 years of the republic I will become the first woman president of Mexico.”

But as scholars who study politics and gender in Mexico, we know that optics are one thing, actual power another. Seventy years after women won the right to vote in Mexico, is the country moving any closer to making changes that would give women real equality?

Uneven fight for gender equality

Women now represent half of Congress, after electoral reforms nearly a decade ago mandated gender parity in nominations to Mexico’s legislatures. And two women, Ana Lilia Rivera and Marcela Guerra Castillo, occupy the top posts in both chambers of Congress. Meanwhile, Norma Lucía Piña is the first woman to serve as chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court. Preliminary election night results also favor Sheinbaum’s Morena party, giving them a supermajority in Congress. As such, Sheinbaum will very likely have ample support for a feminist political agenda should she pursue one.

But electing women to high office doesn’t necessarily shift power in meaningful ways. It’s what experts on women in politics call “descriptive representation” – when political leaders resemble a group of voters but fail to set policies designed to protect them. In contrast, “substantive representation” occurs when officials enact laws that truly benefit the groups that they claim to represent.

Scholars who study the difference between the two, including Sonia Alvarez, Mala Htun and Jennifer Piscopo, have found that wins in public spheres, such as the right to vote or hold office, have rarely led to progress for women in private spaces – such as the right to reproductive freedom or protections against domestic violence.

In other words, Mexico may have surpassed many countries, including the U.S., in promoting women to political leadership positions, but it still hasn’t shed its stigma of machismo and its history of authoritarianism.

In the 1990s, a resurgent feminist movement throughout Latin America led to major breakthroughs in women’s rights. By the end of the decade, many countries had passed legislation against gender-based violence and reforms requiring gender quotas in party nomination lists. In the past 17 years, seven women have been elected president across Central and South America.

Yet the fight for gender equality has advanced unevenly. Mexico is a country still rattled by high rates of femicide. Government data shows that, on average, 10 women and girls are killed every day by partners or family members.

Government accused of harassment

A big question now is whether Sheinbaum will be able to address the issue of gender violence, which her predecessors failed to do.

Any skepticism surrounding the willingness of Sheinbaum’s government to implement a truly feminist agenda would be justified: Her campaign theme was one of continuity, and she has hesitated, to date, to deviate much, if at all, from López Obrador’s agenda.

Under López Obrador, Morena was accused of downplaying the extent of the femicide crisis, with at least one critic claiming that López Obrador was “the first president to outright deny” the violence.

Rather, López Obrador used his daily “mañanera” news conference to issue verbal assaults against women in office, including Sheinbaum’s defeated rival, Gálvez. In July 2023, the independent National Electoral Institute found López Obrador guilty of targeting Gálvez in derogatory statements related to her gender.

López Obrador also denounced Piña, the Supreme Court chief justice, in what Mexico’s National Association of Judges has described as hate speech and the federal judiciary condemned as “gender-based violence” and hatred against her. His statements at a rally in March incited his followers to burn Piña in effigy, prompting critics to suggest that such attacks don’t simply reflect López Obrador’s distaste for checks and balances but aim to undermine women in positions of power.

Mexico’s patronage politics

Observers see Sheinbaum as López Obrador’s handpicked successor: He publicly endorsed her, and she has vowed to continue his “fourth transformation,” a campaign promise to end government corruption and reduce poverty that’s had mixed results.

Sheinbaum’s record as mayor of Mexico City is equally mixed. She has publicly described herself as a feminist and has criticized state prosecutors for covering up the killing of Ariadna Lopez, a 27-year-old woman. At the same time, Sheinbaum attempted to criminalize participants of a mass protest over the thousands of women who’ve disappeared in recent years, claiming that these demonstrations were violent.

Political scientists have shown that even when the faces of politics change, the operatives behind the scenes can stay the same – especially in Mexico, where political parties are mired in patronage politics – when party leaders reward loyalty by deciding who gets to run for office and who gets to keep their jobs when the government is handed over to a new administration.

Sheinbaum will likely still be beholden to the Morena coalition and will rely to a large degree on López Obrador to help push through her policies.

A feminist future?

On the campaign trail, Sheinbaum, along with her rival, Gálvez, championed women and shared their experiences as women.

But in the closing stages of the campaign, neither Sheinbaum nor Gálvez offered much more than the “historic first” argument to potential voters. As a result, the extension of women’s rights under the new government remains uncertain.

Aside from front-line politics, women’s rights in Mexico have moved forward when leaders have committed to substantive change.

Notably, Mexico’s Supreme Court under Pinã has declared all federal and state laws prohibiting abortion unconstitutional. When Piña took office, she promised to take on women’s rights in her agenda. So far, she’s delivered.

If Sheinbaum hopes to have similar success, she’ll need to follow Pinã’s lead by centering her platforms on the issues that most affect women in their day-to-day lives, beginning with rising femicide rates. Women may be gaining political power in Mexico, but the question now is whether they’ll use it to fight for the women they represent.

#mexico #politics #femicide #gender equality #Claudia Sheinbaum

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 10 months ago

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Clay Jones

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 10, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 11, 2024

As predicted, last week was an important one for the Republican Party.

The Republicans’ rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday stayed in the news throughout the weekend. On Friday, independent journalist Jonathan Katz figured out that a key story in it was false. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) described a twelve-year-old child sex trafficked by Mexican cartel members, implying that the young girl was trafficked because of President Joe Biden’s border policies.

Katz tracked down the facts. Britt was describing the life of Karla Jacinto, who was indeed trafficked as a child, but not in the present and not in the U.S. and not by cartels. She was trafficked from 2004 to 2008—during the George W. Bush administration—in Mexico, at the hands of a pimp who entrapped vulnerable girls. Jacinto has become an advocate for child victims and has told her story before Congress, and she met Britt at an event for government officials and anti-trafficking advocates.

Britt’s dramatic delivery of the rebuttal had already invited parody and concern about the religious themes she demonstrated. The news that a central image in it was a lie just made things worse. “Everyone’s f*cking losing it,” a Republican strategist told The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”

On Friday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to replace former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who resigned effective Friday, with Trump loyalist Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. They will co-chair the organization and have made it clear their primary goal is to put Trump back in the White House.

Friday night, on Newsmax, Donald Trump Jr. recorded a video announcing that the old Republican Party “no longer exists outside of the D.C. beltway…. The move that happened today…that’s the final blow. People have to understand that America First, the MAGA movement is the new Republican Party. That is conservatism today.”

Just what that means was crystal clear on Friday night, when Trump hosted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at the Trump Organization’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago. The darling of the radical right, Orbán has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and hosted former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and his policies inspired the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation Florida governor Ron DeSantis has championed.

The right wing’s fondness for Orbán springs from his having rejected democracy and replaced it in Hungary with what he calls an “illiberal state.” Orbán and other far-right leaders working against democracy maintain that the central principle of democracy, equality before the law, undermines society. It permits immigration, which, in their minds, dilutes the “purity” of a people, and it requires that LGBTQ+ individuals and women have the same rights as heterosexual men. Such a world challenges the heteronormative patriarchal world traditionalists crave.

Orbán’s takeover of the press, elimination of rival political parties, partisan gerrymandering, capture of the courts, and control of Hungary’s government are not just ideological, though, but also economic. Corruption and the capture of valuable factories and properties for cronies have allowed Orbán and his allies to amass fortunes.

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” Trump said on Friday. Trump said that Orbán simply says, “‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and…he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

On Saturday, Republicans in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, censured Senator James Lankford (R-OK) over his work negotiating the border security measure. In January, state Republicans claimed they had passed a resolution “strongly” condemning Lankford; others said the vote for the resolution was “not legitimate and definitely does not represent the voice of all Oklahoma Republicans.”

Lankford is a far-right senator whom Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tapped to represent the Republicans in the negotiations. House Republicans had demanded the border security measure before they would allow a vote on a national security supplemental bill that funds Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.

Because the Democrats are desperate to fund Ukraine, they were willing to give up things they had never laid on the table before, including a path to citizenship for those brought to the United States as children, making the bill that emerged from the negotiations strongly favor the Republican position on immigration. The Border Patrol Officers’ union, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal all endorsed it.

But the House Republicans’ demand for a border measure appears to have been an attempt to kill the national security supplemental bill altogether. As soon as it became clear that there would be a deal, Trump came out against it. He demanded that Congress kill the measure, and his loyalists agreed.

Lankford, who had helped to produce the strongest border measure in years at the request of the nominal head of the party, has now been censured because he crossed Trump.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Biden signed into law one of the consolidated appropriations bills that must be finished to fund the government. The other must be finished by March 22.

Biden has continued to ride the momentum built by Thursday’s State of the Union speech. His campaign has released a number of advertisements, and today he was in Georgia, where the largest political action committees representing communities of color—the AAPI Victory Fund, the Latino Victory Fund, and The Collective PAC—endorsed him and pledged $30 million to mobilize communities of color to vote in 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #SOTU #election 2024 #Lankford #CPAC #Right wing extremism #authoritariansim

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stevetonyweekly · 2 years ago

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SteveTony Weekly - March 26th

Hello and welcome to this week’s reads. I was on a bit of a superfamily kick this week, so there’s a fair bit of kids in the mix. Enjoy and be sure to give your fic authors a kudos/comment!

~*~

A Partial Dictionary Of The 21st Century By Captain Steve Rogers, US Army by copperbadge

Steve is adapting well to the new millennium, and he has the dictionary to prove it.

***we survived the great war by meidui

When the dust settles and the blood dries, they reach for each other.

***Unbearably Adorable by iam93percentstardust

Steve's boyfriend gets stuck in his animal form by one of Loki's spells. Somehow, this is not the hardest part of Steve's day (that would be the Avengers' Instagram account).

***I Watch Your Fingers Working Overtime by royal_chandler

“Who knew that a heatwave could make Steve Rogers so petulant?” There’s a brightness to Tony’s eyes, like his brain is whirring behind them and hurriedly filing away this brand new piece of information.

Stuck in Chicago during a heatwave, Steve and Tony find a way to cool off.

winged by meidui

Steve temporarily grows a pair of wings on the sides of his head. Tony uses this to his advantage.

I don't care (go on and tear me apart) by AvengersNewB for Kiyaar

Tony finds himself tied up in an unknown place. Steve is there but not to help Tony; he has a whole other agenda.

————————

“No Tony, that’s not how it works. I don’t wanna ask you. I wanna make you. I wanna hurt you, fuck you, and then hurt you some more, and I don’t need your permission for it.”

Tony holds Steve’s gaze breathing hard, terrified that he can’t find the earnest, sweet stars that always shine in Steve’s eyes.

“That is what I want. The fact that you’re so fucking into it is a bonus.” He reaches down to palms his own cock from over the fabric. “You’re so good for me, Tony, even when you don’t want to be.”

Christmas, My Child, Is Love In Action by royal_chandler

It doesn't take too long for Peter to make a decision. After his dad leaves to go finish his last minute gift-wrapping, Peter heads to the living room. It's dim, shadowed by the twinkling holiday lights. His pop is staring into the Christmas tree, startles when Peter says by way of greeting, "According to Google, you’re nesting."

More Than the Average Good by royal_chandler for

Tony hadn't taken flight in nearly five months before Steve Rogers—plunged into the Potomac—finally gave him a reason to.

I'm Here, Sweetheart by DaftPunk_DeLorean

When Tony gets grievously injured at a press conference, Steve just about loses his mind with worry. And not only because they are best friends, or teammates, or colleagues. No one could blame Steve for his reaction, knowing that he and Tony were married. The problem was, no one knew.

Caffeine, Otherwise Known as the Key to Tony Stark's Heart by sol-nox (parasoling)

A new coffee shop opens across the street from Stark Tower. Steve is the hot, sweet and predictably clueless owner. Tony tries to do what he does best.

Steve Rogers' Life Is Not A Romance Movie (He Wouldn't Get The References, Anyway) by someonelsesheart

Steve hasn't always had this ridiculous crush on Tony Stark.

(Or, the one where Steve is his polite old self and doesn't really hate Tony Stark (unfortunately), Tony is a child progidy and apparently a cab driver now, too, and high school is still high school, even when you are the son of a billionaire.)

Looking After America by copperbadge

Steve tries to shake off a bullet, but Tony takes charge.

finding steve rogers by jacobby

Steve sighs. “Sorry. I wasn’t a very good tour guide. Ma always told me about the town, but she never got into specifics.”

Tony takes Steve’s hand in his and places it close to his lips. “It’s your first time here too. We understand.”

AKA

After a botched mission with SHIELD, Steve takes a vacation with his family to a town in Ireland.

Sit on the floor wearing your clothes by Raw_Ramen_Noodles

If Tony was being honest, he just wanted to go home. Actually, if Tony was honest, he would probably still be at home. Unfortunately he’s trapped in another universe with its own set of problems, and he’s going to need help to get back. Double unfortunately, he’s not quite sure who to trust.

Parent/Teacher Night by CapnShellhead (orphan_account)

When Steve's best friend James Barnes died overseas, his son James was given to Steve to raise. Steve did the best he could, throwing himself into being a parent with the same focus he did everything else. So, when he showed up to Parent/Teacher night, he was determined to make a good impression on James' favorite teacher.

Of course, like everything else in Steve's life, things didn't go according to plan.

From The Past by sara_holmes

"When Steve turns up at the tower late one night in December, looking gaunt and exhausted and like he could fall down right there in the lobby, Tony doesn’t say a word about how long it’s taken."

every dong has its day by orphan_account

it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.

-ancient chinese proverb

(aka that time z wrote 8k worth of dick jokes.)

I'll Picture You by royal_chandler

Even with having no idea where he'll land, Steve jumps.

Parentheses by royal_chandler

The only thing that could maybe redeem this entirely unfair situation is the Tom Ford that Steve’s immaculately dressed in.

#stevetony weekly #stevetony #stony #stony fic #stevetony fic #stony fic recs #stevetony fic recs #stteve rogers #tony stark #captain ameriqueue #iron man #fic rec #rec list #fanfiction rec list

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xtruss · 9 months ago

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Latin America’s New Hard Right: Bukele, Milei, Kast And Bolsonaro! Crime, Abortion and Socialism, Not Immigration, Are The Issues That Rile Them

— April 1st 2024| Santiago, Chile 🇨🇱

A montage of right-wing Latin American leaders on a red and blue background with Donald Trump throwing maga hats at them. Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy

“Mr president!” Javier Milei could barely contain himself when he met Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington in February. The pair embraced and exchanged slogans, with Mr Trump intoning “Make Argentina Great Again” several times and Argentina’s new President yipping “Viva la Libertad, Carajo” (“Long Live Freedom, Dammit”) in response.

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Popular Autocratic President, had already addressed the conference. “They say globalism comes to die at CPAC,” he told enraptured Republicans. “I’m here to tell you that in El Salvador, it’s already dead.” Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Hard-Right Former President, was a star guest in 2023. He, like Mr Trump, claimed without evidence that his bid for a second term was thwarted by fraud. His supporters also attempted an insurrection.

These scenes suggest a seamless international alliance between Mr Trump and the leaders of Latin America’s hard right. Its members also include José Antonio Kast of Chile, who has spoken at cpac in the past too. This new right basks in Mr Trump’s influence. It has turned away from a more consensual form of conservative politics in favour of an aggressive pursuit of culture war.

Its ascent began with the surprise victory of Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, followed by that of Mr Bukele in 2019. In Chile Mr Kast, the founder of a new hard-right Republican Party, got 44% of the vote in a presidential run-off in 2021 and his party won an election for a constitutional council in 2023. Mr Milei won his own surprise victory in November. Would-be leaders of the radical right jostle in the Politics of Peru and Colombia.

Unlike its older European and North American equivalents, the Latin American hard right does not have roots in the fertile soil of public anxiety about uncontrolled immigration (although this has become an issue recently because of the arrival of millions of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s rotten dictatorship).

The new group shares three hallmarks. The first is fierce opposition to abortion, and gay and women’s rights. “What unites them is an affirmation of traditional social hierarchies,” as Lindsay Mayka and Amy Erica Smith, two academics, put it. The second hallmark is a tough line on crime and citizens’ security. And the third is uncompromising opposition to social democracy, let alone communism, which leads some to want a smaller state.

There were common factors in their ascents, too. They were helped by a sense of crisis—about corruption and economic stagnation in Brazil and Argentina, gang violence in El Salvador and the sometimes violent “social explosion” in Chile.

Cousins In Arms

But each leader has adopted a different mix of these ideological elements. The hard right in Latin America are “cousins, not brothers”, says Cristóbal Rovira of the Catholic University of Chile. “They are similar but not identical.”

Mr Bolsonaro’s constituencies were evangelicals, to whom he appealed with his defence of the traditional family, and the authoritarian right in the form of the army, the police and farmers worried about land invasions and rural crime. But he was lukewarm about the free market and fiscal rigour. Mr Bukele made security the cornerstone of his first presidential term, overcoming criminal gangs by locking up more than 74,000 of El Salvador’s 6.4 Million Citizens. His economic policy is less clear and, despite his claim at CPAC, is not self-evidently “anti-globalist”.

Mr Milei was elected for his pledge to pull Argentina out of prolonged stagflation and to cut down what he brands as a corrupt political “caste”. A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, he is a fan of the Austrian school of free-market economics. Unlike Mr Trump, he is neither an economic nationalist nor protectionist on trade. He has only recently adopted his peers’ stance on moral issues. His government supports a bill to overturn Argentina’s abortion law, and says it will eliminate gender-conscious language from public administration. Mr Bukele followed suit.

Mr Kast attempted to put conservative morality in the constitutional draft his party championed, which was one reason why it was rejected in a plebiscite. He wants tough policies on security and against immigration. “We should close the borders and build a trench,” he says. He wants to “shrink the state and lower the tax burden”. Whereas Mr Bolsonaro is a climate-change sceptic and anti-vaxxer, Mr Kast is not.

Democracy For Thee, Not For Me

Right-wing populists also have differing attitudes to democracy. With his attempt to subvert the election result, for which he is under police investigation, Mr Bolsonaro showed that he was not a democrat. Mr Bukele is contemptuous of checks and balances. His success at slashing the murder rate made him hugely popular, allowing him to brush aside constitutional term limits and win a second term in February.

Mr Milei’s “disdain for democratic institutions is clear”, says Carlos Malamud, An Argentine Historian, citing Mr Milei’s break with convention by giving his inauguration speech to a crowd of supporters, rather than to Congress. But, Mr Malamud adds, Mr Milei may yet learn that he needs to include the parliament in government.

“I’m a democrat,” insists Mr Kast, and his opponents agree. “On security and shrinking the state, we share views with Bolsonaro,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we are the same as Milei or Bolsonaro or Bukele.” As Mr Kast notes, policy choices are shaped in each country by very different circumstances.

So are the prospects of the various leaders. Mr Bukele is by far the most successful, with would-be imitators across the region and no obvious obstacles to his remaining in power indefinitely. In contrast, Mr Bolsonaro’s active political career may well be over. The electoral court has barred him as a candidate until 2030 (when he will be 75) for disparaging the voting system at a meeting with foreign ambassadors. He may be jailed for his apparent attempt to organise a military coup against his electoral defeat; he denies this and claims he is a victim of political persecution.

Mr Milei’s future is up for grabs. Succeed in taming inflation, and he could emerge strengthened from a midterm election in 2025. But if he refuses to compromise with Congress and provincial governors, he may be in trouble before then. In Chile, Mr Kast seemed to overplay his hand with the constitutional draft. The election in 2025 could see the centre-right take power. One influential figure of that persuasion argues that Mr Kast is unable to represent the diversity of modern Chile.

Ultimately, the group is bound by an international network built around common political discourse and cultural references. Mr Kast chairs the Political Network for Values, an outfit previously led by an ally of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Populist Leader. Vox, Spain’s hard-right party, organises the Foro de Madrid, a network of like-minded politicians mainly from what it calls the “Iberosphere” in Latin America.

These gatherings offer a chance to share experiences and sometimes a bit more. Mr Bukele has advisers from Venezuela’s exiled opposition. Mr Trump’s activists have shown up at Latin American elections. Recently, Mr Bolsonaro took refuge in the Hungarian embassy in Brasília for two nights when he feared arrest.

But there are no signs of central direction or co-ordination. The right in Latin America has long claimed that the Foro de São Paulo, a get-together of Latin American left-wingers, is a highly organised conspiracy. All the evidence is that it is a loose friendship network. That seems to be true of its right-wing peer, too. ■

— This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The Anti-communist International"

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whatisonthemoon · 2 years ago

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Ten Years After Jonestown, the Battle Intensifies Over the Influence of ‘Alternative’ Religions (1988)

by Bob Sipchen - November 17, 1988 - Los Angeles Times

Eldridge Broussard Jr.’s face screwed into a grimace of such anger and pain that the unflappable Oprah Winfrey seemed unnerved. It hurts to be branded “the new Jimmy Jones” by a society eager to condemn what it doesn’t understand, the founder of the Ecclesia Athletic Assn. lamented on TV just a few days after his 8-year-old daughter had been beaten to death, apparently by Ecclesia members.

At issue were complex questions of whether the group he had formed to instill discipline in ghetto youth, and led from Watts to Oregon, had evolved into a dangerous cult. But Broussard couldn’t have found a less sympathetic audience than the group gathered around the TV in the bar of the Portland Holiday Inn.

There last month for the annual conference of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network were people whose kin had crumpled onto the body heaps at Jonestown, Guyana, 10 years ago, and people who believed they or family members had lost not their lives, but good chunks of them, to gurus and avatars less infamous but no less evil than Jim Jones.

One group’s cult is another’s “new religious movement,” though, and in the 10 years since Jonestown, a heated holy war of sorts has been mounting over the issues of how to define and contend with so-called cults.

The battle lines aren’t always well defined. Ongoing guerrilla actions between those who see themselves as crusaders against potential Jonestowns and those who see themselves as the persecuted members of outcast religious groups comprise the shifting legal and political fronts. On the outskirts of the ideological battleground is another loosely knit force that sees itself as the defender of a First Amendment besieged by vigilantes all too eager to kiss off the Constitution as they quash beliefs that don’t fit their narrow-minded criteria of what’s good and real. As one often-quoted definition has it: “A cult is a religion someone I don’t like belongs to.”

“It’s spiritual McCarthyism,” Lowell D. Streiker, a Northern California counselor, said of the cult awareness cause. To him, “the anti-cult network” is itself as a “cult of persecution,” cut from the same cloth as Colonial witch hunters and the Ku Klux Klan.

The key anti-cult groups, by most accounts, are CAN, a secular nondenominational group of 30 local affiliates; the Massachusetts-based American Family Foundation; the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults and the Jewish Federation Council’s Commission on Cults and Missionaries.

Although they contend that their ranks continue to fill with the victims of cults or angry family members, they concede that the most significant rallying point came in the fall of 1978 when the leader of one alleged cult put a rattlesnake in an enemy’s mailbox and another led 912 people to their deaths.

Even though nothing so dramatic has happened since, cults have quietly been making inroads into the fabric of mainstream American life, and the effects are potentially as serious as the deaths at Jonestown, cult critics say.

With increased wealth and public relations acumen--with members clothed by Brooks Brothers rather than in saffron sheets--the 1,000 or more new cults that some estimate have sprung up in America since the ‘60s have become “a growth industry which is diversifying,” said Dr. Louis Jolyon West, director of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. “They have made steady progress on all fronts.”

Uglier Connotations

In the broadest sense, Webster defines a cult as simply “a system of religious worship or ritual.” Even before Jonestown, though, the word had taken on broader and uglier connotations.

To make a distinction, critics use the term destructive cult, or totalist cult. The issue, they say, pivots on the methods groups use to recruit and hold together followers.

CAN describes a destructive cult as one that “uses systematic, manipulative techniques of thought reform or mind control to obtain followers and constrict their thoughts and actions. These techniques are imposed without the person’s knowledge and produce observable changes in the individual’s autonomy, thoughts and actions. . . .”

A 1985 conference on cults co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and the American Family Federation came up with this definition:

“A group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control . . . designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.”

The “manipulative techniques” in question are what cult critics call mind control or brainwashing.

To critics of the critics, on the other hand, brainwashing amounts to hooey.

And both sides say the weight of evidence is on their side.

New Beliefs, Personalities

Cult critics often point to classic surveys on brainwashing, which catalogue methods which they say are routinely used by cults of every color, religious and secular, to manipulate unsuspecting people into adopting new beliefs, and often, in effect, new personalities.

Among the techniques are constant repetition of doctrine; application of intense peer pressure; manipulation of diet so that critical faculties are adversely affected; deprivation of sleep; lack of privacy and time for reflection; cutting ties with the recruits’ past life; reduction of outside stimulation and influences; skillful use of ritual to heighten mystical experience; and invention of a new vocabulary which narrows the range of experience and constructs a new reality for cult members.

Margaret Singer, a former professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, describes psychological problems that have been attributed to cultic experiences, ranging from the despair that comes from having suddenly abandoned ones previous values, norms and ideals to types of “induced psychopathy.” Other psychologists and lay observers list similar mental and emotional problems linked to the indoctrination and rituals of cults.

Sociologist Dick Anthony, author of the book “Spiritual Choices,” and former director of the UC Berkeley-affiliated Center for the Study of New Religions, argues the exact opposite position.

“There’s a large research literature published in mainstream journals on the mental health effects of new religions,” he said. “For the most part the effects seem to be positive in any way that’s measurable.”

He and other defenders of new religions discount so-called mind control techniques, or believe the term has been misappropriated by anti-cult activists.

“Coercive Persuasion is a bombastic redescription of familiar forms of influence which occur everyday and everywhere,” said Streiker. “Someone being converted to a demanding religious movement is no more or less brainwashed than children being exposed to commercials during kiddy programs which encourage them to eat empty calories or buy expensive toys.”

“An attempt to persuade someone of something is a process protected by our country’s First Amendment right of free speech and communication,” said attorney Jeremiah Gutman head of the New York City branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and an outspoken critic of the anti-cult groups. “What one person believes to be an irrefutable and obvious truth is someone else’s errant nonsense.”

‘Fraud and Manipulation’

But anti-cult spokespeople say they have no interest in a group’s beliefs. Their concern is when destructive cults use “fraud and manipulation,” to get people to arrive at those beliefs, whatever they may be. Because people are unaware of the issues, though, cults have insinuated themselves into areas of American life where they are influencing people who may not even know where the influence is coming from, they contend.

The political arena is the obvious example, anti-cult activists say.

Followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a major impact on the small town government of Antelope, Ore., and Jim Jones had managed to thrust himself and his church into the most respectable Democratic party circles in San Francisco before the exodus to Guyana, for instance.

But recently the process has expanded, with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church the leading example of a cult that is quietly gaining political clout, they say.

“What Jim Jones did to Democrats in San Francisco, Sun Myung Moon is doing to Republicans all across country now,” Kisser said.

Moon’s most obvious stab at mainstream legitimacy, critics say, was his purchase in 1982 of the Washington Times, a D.C. daily newspaper, and his financial nurturing of the paper’s magazine Insight--both of which have an official policy of complete editorial independence from the church.

In September, 1987, the conservative American Spectator magazine published an article titled “Can Buy Me Love: The Mooning of Conservative America,” in which managing editor Andrew Ferguson questioned the way the political right is lapping up Moon money, citing, among many examples, the $500,000 or more the late Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Alliance accepted in 1984. When the church got wind of the article, the Spectator received a call from the executive director of the Unification Church’s World Media Assn. warning that if it ran, the Times “would strike back and strike back severely,” Ferguson wrote in an addendum to the piece.

‘Everyone Speaks Korean’

Therapist Steven Hassan, a former “Moonie” and the author of the just-released book “Combatting Cult Mind Control,” estimates that the church now sponsors 200 businesses and “front organizations.”

Moon “has said he wants an automatic theocracy to rule the world,” explained Hassan, who, on Moon’s orders, engaged in a public fast for Nixon during Watergate and another fast at the U.N. to protest the withdrawal of troops from Korea. “He visualizes a world where everyone speaks Korean only, where all religion but his is abolished, where his organization chooses who will mate, and he and family and descendants rule in a heroic monarchy.”

Moon “is very much in support of the democratic system,” counters John Biermans , director of public affairs for the church. “His desire is for people to become God-centered people. Then democracy can fulfill its potential”

Besides, he said, “this is a pluralistic society, people of all faiths inject their beliefs into the system on every level . . . Using terms like ‘front groups’ and ‘insinuating,’ is just a way to attack something. It’s not even honest.”

Some observers dismiss concern about alleged Unificationist infiltration as self-serving hysteria whipped up by the anti-cultists.

“How much actual influence (the Unification Church) has seems questionable,” said David Bromley, a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and the author of the 1981 book “Strange Gods, the Great American Cult Scare.”

Bromley estimates, for instance, that the church brings $200 million a year into the U.S. from abroad. But he sees no evidence that the money, much of it spent on all-expense-paid fact-finding tours and conferences for journalists, politicians and clergypeople, is money well-invested as far as political impact goes.

The church, he estimates, is losing about $50 million a year on its Washington Times newspaper and the ranks of Unificationists, and most other new religions, in America are thinning as well.

Veterans of the anti-cult front, however, say that the appearance that cults are fading is an illusion. “Like viruses, many of them mutate into new forms,” when under attack, West of UCLA said. And new types of cults are arising to fill the void, they say.

Cult critics point, for instance, to the rise of such groups as the est offshoot called Forum, and to Lifespring and Insight--all of which CAN characterizes as “human potential cults” and all of which are utilized in mainstream American business to promote productivity and motivation.

Observers such as Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of Religious Institutions in Santa Barbara explain that many of these New Age-type trainings have their roots in the old fashioned motivational pep talks and sales technique seminars that have been the staples of American business for decades.

But critics see the so-called “psychotechnologies” utilized by some of these groups as insidious. For one thing, they say, the meditation, confessional sharing, and guided imagery methods some of them use are more likely to make employees muzzy-headed than competitive.

Other critics say the trainings violate employee’s rights. Richard Watring, a personnel director for Budget Rent-a-Car, who has been charting the incorporation of “New Age” philosophies into business trainings, is concerned that employees are often compelled to take the courses and then required to adapt a new belief system which may be incompatible with their own religious convictions. As a Christian he finds such mental meddling inappropriate for corporations.

He and other cult critics are heartened by recent cases, still pending, in which employees, or former employees, have sued their employer for compelling them to take trainings they felt conflicted with their own religious beliefs.

Most observers scoring the action on the broader legal battlefield, however, call it a toss-up, and perceived victories for either side have often proved Pyrrhic.

Threats of Litigation

Richard Ofshe, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, fought three separate legal battles with the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization Synanon over research he published on the group. Although he ultimately won the suits, he said the battle wound up costing the university $600,000. And evidence obtained in other lawsuits showed that Synanon had skillfully wielded threats of litigation to keep several other critical stories from being published or broadcast, he said.

Similarly, a recently released book “Cults and Consequences,” went unpublished for several years because insurers were wary of the litigious nature of some of the groups mentioned, said Rachel Andres, director of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles’ Commission on Cults and Missionaries and the book’s co-editor.

But the most interesting litigation of late involves either a former member who is suing the organization to which he or she belonged, or a current member of a new religious group who is suing a deprogrammer who attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the person to leave the group.

The most significant case, everyone agrees, is last month’s Molko decision by the California Supreme Court, which anti-cult groups have cheered as a major victory.

In that reversal of lower court decisions, the justices agreed that David Molko and another former member of the Unification Church could bring before a jury the claim that they were defrauded by recruiters who denied they had a church affiliation and then subjected the two to church mind control techniques, eventually converting them.

Mainstream religious organizations including the National Council on Churches, the American Baptist Churches in the USA and the California Ecumenical Council had filed briefs in support of the Unification Church, claiming that allowing lawsuits over proselytizing techniques could paralyze all religions.

“What they’re attacking is prayer, fasting and lectures,” said Biermans of the Unification Church. “The whole idea of brainwashing is unbelievably absurd. . . . If someone had really figured out a method of brainwashing, they could control the world.” The church plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Paul Morantz, the attorney who was struck by the rattlesnake placed in his mailbox by the “Imperial Marines” of Synanon, gave pro-bono assistance to the plaintiffs in the Molko case.

“For me, it was a great decision for freedom of religion and to protect against the . . . use of coercive persuasion,” he said.

Morantz currently is defending Bent Corydon, author of the book “L. Ron Hubbard, Madman or Messiah” against a lawsuit by the Church of Scientology. He said he’s confident of how that case will turn out.

But he shares the belief of others on several sides of the multifaceted cult battle, in concluding that education rather than litigation should be the first defense of religious and intellectual liberty.

He’s not, however, optimistic.

“If anyone thinks they’re ever going to win this war, they’re wrong,” he said. “As long as we have human behavior, there will be sociopaths who will stand up and say ‘follow me.’ And there will always be searchers who will follow.”

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-17-vw-257-story.html

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justinspoliticalcorner · 7 months ago

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Kayla Gogarty and Justin Horowitz at MMFA:

Less than a week after being reinstated to Twitch, misogynistic pro-Nazi streamer Sneako (real name Nico Kenn De Balinthazy) attended an event associated with Nick Fuentes’ white nationalist America First Foundation. Sneako has repeatedly defended and praised Fuentes’ extremist group since his reinstatement. This “off-service conduct” seemingly violates Twitch’s policies, which assert that “some off-service offenses committed by Twitch users can create a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community,” and do not allow “individuals or organizations who engage off-service in … leadership, membership, or sponsorship of a known hate group.” On June 10, Sneako was reinstated on Twitch after being banned from the platform in 2022, at a time when he's said he was “peak red pill raging.” Discussing his reinstatement, the streamer claimed: “I sent them a proper email explaining that I want to be a good member of the community and all this stuff. So if you are banned, just make sure to send Twitch a proper email and explain that you want to be involved, and you'll get unbanned.”

But less than a week after his reinstatement, Sneako was in Detroit on June 16 for what was supposed to be the 2024 America First Political Action Conference — an event organized by the white nationalist America First Foundation. The group was founded by Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist who attended the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Sneako is linked to Fuentes and spoke at a Fuentes rally in 2023.) Fuentes and his organization reportedly attempted to hold their event in two different locations in Detroit but were kicked out of both venues. While the group did not end up having an official location, it appears that Fuentes did speak from a podium for a short time to a crowd of attendees who mingled in and around the venue spaces.

Twitch reinstated misogynistic manosphere streamer Nico Kenn De Balinthazy (aka Sneako), only for him to attend the AFPAC event associated with vile antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

#Twitch #Sneako #Manosphere #Misogyny #Rumble #Nick Fuentes #Lauren Chen #Nico Kenn De Balinthazy #America First Foundation #America First Political Action Conference

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haggishlyhagging · 1 year ago

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The quotes below the cut are about the tension between consciousness raising and political action. All are from Alice Echols’ Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75.

Quote 1: p. 61

With Koedt's article, Firestone's summary of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade protest, and Sarachild's D.C. speech, "Funeral Oration for Traditional Womanhood," NYRW's Notes from the First Year was an implicit, and sometimes explicit, rejection of the politico analysis. Within two months of its publication, Evelyn Goldfield of Chicago's Westside group issued a rebuttal of sorts in the The Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement. Goldfield took women's groups to task for concentrating on consciousness-raising rather than action. And in contrast to those New York women who argued that women needed to organize separately to build a power base from which to attack male supremacy, Goldfield advised that if men were to be excluded initially from women's meetings, it be for the "tactical" reason that women had difficulty expressing themselves around men, and not as a "matter of principle." In fact, Goldfield argued that the very notion of a separate women's movement was divisive. She admitted that the bromide "there can be no liberation for women outside a general movement for liberation, and no such movement can exist without a movement for women's liberation" had failed to silence those who asked which movement came first. But Goldfield proposed shelving any further debate by declaring that radical women should henceforth "not think of the women's movement as separate but as a united force within the radical movement." She chastised the women of Notes for envisioning "the women's movement as very separate from other movement struggles," and declared that a "women's movement which confines itself to issues which only affect women can't be radical."

Quote 2: pp. 113-114

Some women at the conference also discussed the upcoming Counter-Inaugural demonstration to protest Nixon' inauguration. The action was being organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (Mobe). Webb and Baxandall, in particular, had ties with people in the Mobe. In fact, Webb's husband, Lee Webb, had informed her that there was a slot available on the program for a women's liberation speaker. Barbara Mehrhof reports that during the car ride back from Lake Villa, Firestone, Atkinson, Koedt, Margaret Polatnik, and she discussed the proposed action. According to Mehrhof, all the women agreed that consciousness-raising, as it was practiced in NYRW, was leading to more consciousness-raising rather than to action. They discussed reorganizing the group, making it "more action and theory-based." Margaret Polatnik suggested that they "give back the vote" at the Counter-Inaugural protest, and the others agreed. According to Ellen Willis, the action was intended to demonstrate that "suffragism"—which they contended had eviscerated the first wave of feminism—was dead and that "a new fight for real emancipation was beginning." They announced the action at the next meeting of NYRW and welcomed others to join them in planning the protest. Firestone, Willis, Peslikis, Mehrhof, Kearon, Forer, Baxandall, Linda Feldman, Barbara Kaminsky, and Sheila Cronan were among those involved in planning the protest.

Quote 3: pp.142-143

In early April, Sheila Cronan proposed that for their next action the group hang a banner which would read "Liberty for Women: Repeal All Abortion Laws" from the Statue of Liberty. However, Cronan and her allies encountered technical problems in constructing the banner, and opposition to the action when Sarachild returned to the group. Sarachild argued that the action was poorly conceived and that the group's energy would be better spent writing a manifesto. When the group voted in mid-June to scuttle the action, the discussion reportedly "broke down into great recriminations."

The Statue of Liberty action became a point of contention because members disagreed about the importance of consciousness-raising. Not everyone in the group was as committed to consciousness-raising as Sarachild, Peslikis, and Mainardi. Certainly, Mehrhof, Kearon, Cronan, and Linda Feldman—who eventually left Redstockings to join The Feminists—felt that consciousness-raising should be de-emphasized. Even Firestone reportedly wanted the group to be more action-oriented. There were also disagreements about the pro-woman line. Mehrhot, Kearon, Cronan, and Feldman were its most vocal detractors. But Willis contends that both she and Firestone were far more psychologically oriented than Sarachild, Peslikis, and Mainardi of the pro-woman faction.

The tensions over consciousness-raising and the pro-woman line seem to have been exacerbated by Sarachild's re-entry to the group. She reportedly let the group know that she was returning to Redstockings despite her differences with the group. She then reportedly tried to recruit to the group women who she thought shared her political vision. Baxandall, who was at that time in a study group with Anne Forer, Judy Thibeau, and Helen Kritzler, was among those Sarachild succeeded in recruiting. Baxandall asserts that Sarachild told her that she was shifting the group's focus from action to consciousness-raising and that the meetings were, as a result, much improved. Indeed, the group became less action-oriented following the March 1969 abortion speak-out. The group did disrupt another all-male abortion panel at Cooper Union and helped to organize a number of joint actions. But from the spring of 1969 until its demise in the fall of 1970, the group devoted most of its time to consciousness-raising, organized c-r groups for new women, drafted its manifesto, and distributed movement literature.

#alice echols #consciousness raising #political action #radical feminist theory

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eretzyisrael · 10 months ago

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by Fuzzy Slippers

And it wasn’t enough for Abuhamdeh to just break off and do her own thing, so now she and a handful of Hamas-supporting Girl Scout troop leaders are actually demanding an apology from GSA and a change of the organization’s national policy that permits fundraising for “humanitarian aid.”

Fox 2 reports:

A group consisting of Girl Scout troop leaders and other advocates is pushing the Girl Scouts organization to issue a public apology to a St. Louis troop that disbanded last week and to take a stance in support of children in Gaza, among other demands. The former troop’s adult leader, Nawal Abuhamdeh, says the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri warned her of legal action over a fundraiser plan to sell bracelets and donate money to a Palestinian children’s relief fund. . . . . In previous emails with Nawal, the local branch cited concerns that the fundraiser was political, partisan, and against Girl Scout policies. Nawal’s troop has since disbanded from Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts of the USA organization offered a statement on Tuesday, noting that they “sincerely regret any hurt” caused by developments leading up to the warning. Officials described the situation as “a learning moment for our organization.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Missouri branch considers the statement a “positive first step” in addressing the situation. Nawal feels it wasn’t good enough. During a roundtable Zoom conference on Thursday, Nawal says the former troop’s girls, which included two of her daughters, “feel discouraged and unheard by Girl Scouts because no statements have been [directed] towards us, and our questions [about fundraising for causes in Gaza] were still unanswered.” “Their silence is very loud to us,” said Nawal. Tasneem Manjra, an adult leader for a northern California Girl Scouts troop also on the conference call, said, ‘To us, it looks like the Girl Scouts are backtracking because they got called out.” . . . . “The Girl Scouts celebrate young women finding their voices on causes they care about. Our council recognizes Troop 149 for identifying the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and creating a fundraiser to help. Our troops have always had the ability to support causes they care about, within the guidelines published by Girl Scouts. This has never been about the cause, but rather meeting Girl Scouts’ governing documents and maintaining our tax-exempt status. We were in communication with Ms. Abuhamdeh for several weeks and provided her with multiple options to find a way to continue the work, which are still available to this troop. We are sorry that Ms. Abuhamdeh chose to disband. We would welcome them back to the Girl Scout family.”

And of course they have a list of “demands.”

#girl scouts #girl scout cookies #cair #gaza #hamas

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reasoningdaily · 1 year ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.

Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking.

“This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’”

The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending.

FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when the Republican president’s team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance — by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump’s own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.

While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans.

And if Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business.

“The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,” said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America.

Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.

Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump — and other presidential hopefuls — now vow to reinstate it.

“It frightens me,” said Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, who warns the idea would bring a return to a political spoils system.

Experts argue Schedule F would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in an attempt to ensure a professional workforce and end political bias dating from 19th century patronage.

As it now stands, just 4,000 members of the federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with each administration. But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professional jobs at risk.

“We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun,” Guy said.

The ideas contained in Heritage’s coffee table-ready book are both ambitious and parochial, a mix of longstanding conservative policies and stark, head-turning proposals that gained prominence in the Trump era.

There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.

There are proposals to have the Pentagon “abolish” its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the “woke” agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it’s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language.

A chapter written by Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field “to maximize law enforcement capacity.”

At the White House, the book suggests the new administration should “reexamine” the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is “deeply committed” to the president’s agenda.

Conservatives have long held a grim view of federal government offices, complaining they are stacked with liberals intent on halting Republican agendas.

But Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said most federal workers live in the states and are your neighbors, family and friends. “Federal employees are not the enemy,” she said.

While presidents typically rely on Congress to put policies into place, the Heritage project leans into what legal scholars refer to as a unitary view of executive power that suggests the president has broad authority to act alone.

To push past senators who try to block presidential Cabinet nominees, Project 2025 proposes installing top allies in acting administrative roles, as was done during the Trump administration to bypass the Senate confirmation process.

John McEntee, another former Trump official advising the effort, said the next administration can “play hardball a little more than we did with Congress.”

In fact, Congress would see its role diminished — for example, with a proposal to eliminate congressional notification on certain foreign arms sales.

Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and was not part of the Heritage project, said there’s a certain amount of “fantasizing” about the president’s capabilities.

“Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says — and that’s just not the system the government we live under,” he said.

At the Heritage office, Dans has a faded photo on his wall of an earlier era in Washington, with the White House situated almost alone in the city, dirt streets in all directions.

It’s an image of what conservatives have long desired, a smaller federal government.

The Heritage coalition is taking its recruitment efforts on the road, crisscrossing America to fill the federal jobs. They staffed the Iowa State Fair this month and signed up hundreds of people, and they’re building out a database of potential employees, inviting them to be trained in government operations.

“It’s counterintuitive,” Dans acknowledged — the idea of joining government to shrink it — but he said that’s the lesson learned from the Trump days about what’s needed to “regain control.”

#Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision #maga #white lies #election interference #election fraud #trump #trump lies

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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay—The campaign posters along Artigas Boulevard in the Uruguayan capital were striking, featuring Guido Manini Ríos, a former army chief, grimacing in his military uniform. So was his campaign slogan, “For Security,” and his promise to declare a public security national emergency. Crime was a top voter concern in this election, and Manini Ríos’s tough-on-crime Cabildo Abierto party saw opportunity amid high public anxiety.

As it turned out, Manini Ríos won less than 3 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election on Oct. 27, down from 11 percent five years ago. Cabildo Abierto will hold just two of 99 seats in the House of Representatives and none in the Senate, compared with the 11 seats in the House and three in the Senate it controls today. Meanwhile, only 40 percent of voters approved of a constitutional reform to reverse a ban on nighttime police raids on private homes. The nominee for Uruguay’s leftist Frente Amplio opposition coalition, Yamandú Orsi, opposed the referendum and aggressive policing, yet he finished first in the first round of the presidential contest.

In an era when fear of violent crime increasingly shapes—and distorts—politics throughout Latin America, Uruguay’s election offers an important lesson. Traditional political parties, by adopting sensible crime-fighting strategies, need not cede space to political outsiders hawking heavy-handed approaches that might threaten civil liberties.

On paper, Uruguay seems vulnerable to a populist offering mano dura (“ironfisted”) security strategies. Once known as the “Switzerland of Latin America,” it saw its homicide rate double from 2011 to 2018, according to the most recent U.N. data. The murder rate fell between 2018 and 2021 and then began rising again, according to Uruguay’s National Observatory of Violence and Crime. In recent years, gruesome killings have highlighted the rise of organized crime, including the death of a 1-year-old boy in a drive-by shooting in October that targeted a gang leader. In late May, a suspected drug-related shooting left four dead, including an 11-year-old boy.

The port in Montevideo is an increasingly important node in global drug markets, where South American cocaine sets sail for Europe. Experts say gangsters from neighboring Brazil—including the First Capital Command—and from Colombia and even Mexico now operate in Uruguay. That has drawn comparisons to Costa Rica, another historically serene democracy ill-prepared for a recent spike in organized crime—a scourge that does not jibe with its pura vida (“pure life”) catchphrase.

Elsewhere in the region, these conditions would provide fertile ground for radical security policies. In 2022, for example, Honduras imposed a state of emergency to reduce extortion. In January, Ecuador declared a state of war against organized crime groups, following the escape from prison of two crime bosses and an explosion in violence.

El Salvador is the most notorious case. The biggest innovation from its ruling New Ideas party was the March 2022 suspension of constitutional rights that paved the way for a crackdown on gangs. The state of exception, still in force, has permitted mass arrests that are filling a new mega-prison and led to allegations of the deaths and torture of detainees.

Instead of criticism, El Salvador’s success in sharply reducing murders and extortion has attracted cheerleaders and copycats. Earlier this month, Costa Rica’s president, Rodrigo Chaves, awarded Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele with the Orden Juan Mora Fernández, its highest honor. In February, Bukele headlined the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in the United States. At the conference, Bukele met with Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who said she hoped to “follow the model you’re carrying out.” In late September, Bukele huddled with Argentine President Javier Milei in the presidential palace in Buenos Aires.

For now, however, Argentina’s smaller neighbor, Uruguay, has opted for a more moderate response. In part, that reflects its pragmatic political culture. During the pandemic, President Luis Lacalle Pou promoted libertad responsable (“responsible freedom”) over the type of prolonged and strict lockdown imposed by Argentina. In last month’s election, voters actually rejected a referendum to return the retirement age to 60 from 65, amid warnings from economists that it would break the bank. In the presidential race, nearly 90 percent of voters cast a ballot for one of the three traditional political movements.

The country’s reluctance to militarize crime-fighting also reflects memories of the military government that ruled Uruguay from 1973 to 1985. It is hardly ancient history. Uruguay’s last president, José Mujica of the Frente Amplio, spent 14 years in prison during the dictatorship. Pedro Bordaberry, senior figure in the Colorado Party, a member of the ruling Republican Coalition, is the son of Juan María Bordaberry, the president who shut down Uruguay’s legislature in 1973 and invited the armed forces to rule. Today, 40 percent of Uruguayans have little or no confidence in the military, according to Latinobarómetro, a pollster. Support for the police is somewhat higher.

But the failure, so far, of “Bukelismo” to take hold in Uruguay is also a vote of confidence in the capacity of the country’s democratic institutions to step up to the challenge of organized crime. For a decade, Uruguay has been toughening its approach to money laundering, though there is room for improvement. In 2013, it became the first country to legalize marijuana for recreational use, a partially successful attempt to deprive criminals of a popular product. Lacalle Pou came into office promising that “playtime is over for criminals.” In 2020, the legislature passed a series of security reforms, including improvements to intelligence collection by law enforcement agencies, tougher sentencing, and reduced opportunities for prisoners to leave prison early. In 2022, a national referendum to repeal the reforms failed.

In this year’s presidential campaign, the candidates for the Colorado Party and its coalition partner, the ruling National Party, promised to accelerate security reforms. They floated plans for a task force modeled after Italian strategies to fight the Mafia, increased spending on police wages and training, and deploying more officers to violent neighborhoods. All the proposals emphasized addressing the underlying causes of crime, including poverty. None of them would compromise the rule of law that has made Uruguay stand out in the Americas.

Not all governments in the region are aping El Salvador. Crime is also the top concern in Chile, but its democracy remains strong as ever. Still, Uruguay’s success matters beyond the borders of this nation of 3.4 million people.

Latin Americans—not only in Mexico and Central America, but also in the Caribbean and South America—are increasingly demanding greater safety. The same is true across the West. In response, governments are obliged to provide new approaches. The question is whether those answers will help tear down democracy or build up the rule of law.

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