#Arguing Against The Activist Left
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Queer Theory is Language Based
Queer theory has its origins in postmodern thought. The use and misuse of language is a key part of how activists move the ball in arguments and society. When up against an activist it is advisable to define terms and always name the dynamic present. The responsibility lies with you to inform the low information audience exactly what the activist means when they say things that, ostensibly,âŠ
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I think part of the reason so many radblogs throw around "libfem" as an insult when it's not applicable (or similarly, referring to cultural misogyny as "liberal feminism") is because half the people orbiting radblr aren't leftwing in any way. therefore anything with "lib" in the title is stupid and what they oppose
#in america (this site is predominantly american) there is a long history of conservative 'feminist' factions & groups#some people argue its impossible to be feminist and right-wing (and im inclined to agree purely based on the activist work done#by conserva-fem groups- it is certainly anithetical to the activism I think is helpful to women) but many conservative women would disagree#those who orbit radblr or any other feminist circles while being rightwing dont think being conservative contradicts#with their desire to advocate for women. they view conservative values as rational for society but oppose male involvement in#womens issues/advocacy. and this is why being a libfem is so laughable to them. its not that they are staunchly radical#its just that they are reactionary against all things 'liberal' and havent made the connection that radical feminism is overwhelmingly left#in principle#but thats just a theory... a fem theory [B)]#my posts
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The Courtâs decision to hear the Trump immunity case was outrageous, legally indefensible, and handled procedurally in a way that made it clear they were no longer acting as a court, but rather as the judicial arm of the Republican Party. They took a case they should not have accepted, agreeing to hear arguments that were already rejected in an expertly argued appeals court decision. Just as damagingly, they did so in a way thatâregardless of their final rulingâwould mean American voters would likely not hear a verdict before Novemberâs election. It is a dark irony. They have chosen to hear the Department of Justiceâs case against Donald Trump for election interference in a way that is itself election interference.
Supreme Court Picks Up Where Jan. 6 Mob Left Off
Itâs so important to understand that, at a minimum, Thomas and Kavanaugh are not jurists who fairly interpret law according to Constitutional principles.
They are political activists and operatives who are abusing the power granted to them by the Constitution they will not uphold to force upon a nation that did not elect them a set of rules and conditions that are overwhelmingly -- overwhelmingly -- opposed by Americans.
I do not respect them. They have no credibility. They are Fascists who are taking apart the entire 20th century of American Democracy as quickly as they can.
If America survives this election, SCOTUS must be reformed immediately. The Trump justices must be removed, and Thomas must be impeached, then face a trial for his bottomless corruption.
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Transition care is being outlawed and institutionally gatekept the world over.
Trans existence is the reactionary scapegoat du jour, a convenient symbol for regressive ideologues to rally against because we constitute a convenient effigy to burn, an existential threat to the patriarchal ideology of 'immutable', 'biological' sex upon which their 'natural order' (of male-supremacy and misogynistic exploitation) is founded.
During a cultural moment where the right's intentions to directly attack bodily autonomy and non-heterosexual, non-reproductive modes of existence are being plainly stated, where the nativist and natalist violence upon which states and their colonial orders are founded is being made most explicit, the response to this overt declaration of war on our ability to do what we will with our bodies is ... non-existent.
Feminism is being thoroughly repudiated by the left, by advocates of collectivization and queer activists alike. The "male loneliness crisis" is spoken of as our most pressing cultural issue, eliding the reactionary turn among men who are responding to deepening capitalist contradictions by demanding their patriarchal entitlement over women's labor and bodies. Trans people's existence is considered a luxury belief, established and proven healthcare is called 'experimental', and we are perceived as affluent eccentrics seeking novel forms of costuming rather than a thoroughly brutalized, impoverished, and stigmatized demographic sinking further and further into the margins.
Conservatives who rail against abortion and no-fault divorce now claim the label of "women's rights" because they also call for the eradication of transsexuality. The connections between the opposition to trans existence and the threats to women's political and economic independence are obvious, but no one is making them.
We are not organizing a robust, materialist, ideological opposition to this reactionary backlash on the basis of bodily autonomy, the emancipation of marginalized genders, or the right to exist independently from patriarchal structures such as the nuclear family.
We are arguing with each other about validity, about whether it's "biologically essentialist" to observe that society enables men to exploit women, and about whether anyone who speaks plainly about misogyny is a "TERF".
I stand here seeing things get worse for my sisters and my siblings, cis and trans and non-binary and intersex and queer and even heterosexual and more, watching us devour each other while working class men settle for dominion over their wives and families in exchange for being compliant for their bosses, and I wonder if we'll realize what must be done before it's too late.
I don't know. I don't have an answer for you.
At least, not a good one.
#transfeminism#gender is a regime#materialist feminism#social constructionism#sex is a social construct#lesbian feminism#feminism#reactionary politics#antifeminist backlash#transmedicalism#medical gatekeeping#transition healthcare#bodily transition#queerantagonism#homophobia#misogyny#patriarchy#anti capitalism#late stage capitalism#anti natalism#third sexing
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The Jewish definition of Zionism is very different than the popular definition of Zionism. For Jews, Zionism has its roots in a 3,000 year old tradition of wishing to return to our homeland. I would argue that while the political Zionist movement is not integral to Judaism, Zionism, by its Jewish definition is. You do not have Judaism without Israel. Jews traditionally call themselves and the land they come from Israel.
To be a Jew and call yourself antizionist, you must necessarily isolate yourself from your community. You believe that your community has been brainwashed en masse by âZionism.â You stop going to community events because theyâre too âZionist.â You try to create your own way to mark Judaism without Israel but it falls flat and meaningless, breaking from the tradition of thousands of years of ancestors who yearned for Zion and who each slowly helped create Judaism as we know it today. You either have to be in denial about harm to your community or you have to accept it on some level. You have to be okay with throwing the majority of your own people under the bus, and definitely at least all Israelis. You have to deal with people who tell you your own history with half truths, who know nothing about your culture and have no respect for it.
I called myself antizionist for several years as a teenager, and this coincided with a complete removal from my community and a stark stop to my education about Jewish history and peoplehood. When I re-engaged, the more I learned about Judaism and Jewish history the more âZionistâ (in the Jewish sense not the popular political sense) I became. Within a few months of actually dealing with antizionist activists, I stopped calling myself an antizionist, because I realized very quickly that I was being tokenized and that for all the people around me claimed to know, they were deeply ignorant about anything to do with my culture and people. When I left my on campus group they replaced me with another token Jew almost immediately. When he fucked off they found another one, whom they weaponized against my campus Jewish community to try and evict our Jewish student centre.
So donât you dare talk to me about the Jews in the encampment protests. Just donât.
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Rule No. 1: Believe the autocrat. I argued against the expectation that Trump would change in the months following the election, becoming somehow âPresidentialâ and abandoning his more extreme positions. This belief, it seemed to me, stemmed from the inability to absorb the fact of a Trump Presidency, and not from any historical precedents of similar transformations. The best predictors of autocratsâ and aspiring autocratsâ behavior are their own public statements, because these statements brought them to power in the first place.
Rule No. 2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Most catastrophes unfold over time. Following the shock of a disastrous electionâor a Presidential tweetâthe sun rises again in the morning, and life appears to proceed as before. One adjusts, until the next shocking event.
Rule No. 3: Institutions will not save you. During the election campaign, one often heard the argument that institutions of American democracy are strong enough to withstand attack by Trump. A year ago, I pointed out that many of these institutions are not enshrined in lawârather, they exist as normsâand even those that are enshrined in law depend for their continued survival on the good faith of all actors. There is no law, for example, guaranteeing daily press briefings at the White House and media access to these briefings. I predicted that the investigative press would be weakened and that reality would grow murkier.
Rule No. 4: Be outraged. If you follow the first three rules, you ought to be outraged. But I know from experience how hard it is to be the hysteric in the room.
A year on, progress is mixed. Activist groups like New York Cityâs Rise and Resist, founded by alumni of the aids-activist organization act up, stage regular, vivid, act upâstyle actions. On the occasion of the first anniversary of the election, they vowed to begin weekly demonstrations demanding impeachment. The A.C.L.U. continues to file lawsuits; late-night comedians continue to amplify the painful absurdity of Trumpism. On the other hand, Washington has absorbed Trump, and so has the Republican Party. (Itâs the other party whose national organization is imploding these days.) No single event or revelation has produced enough outrage to cause Trump to be removed from office, nor has one seemed to hurt his chances for reĂ«lection. Not Charlottesville. Not the revelation of a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer who promised to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton. Not the regular revelations of past acts of corruption and of current lies. Not the continued spectacle of a government of haters and incompetents. The outrage dissipates, and Trumpism persists.
Rule No. 5: Donât make compromises. I predicted that Republican Never Trumpers would fold and offer their loyalty to the new President. I also feared that a great many federal employees would face an impossible choice between staying in their jobs under a reprehensible Administration and leaving, forfeiting the chance to do good within a system that had started rotting from the top. Trumpâs attacks on the institutions of government have been so fast and brutal, however, that many people made the choice without torment: they left. (Remember the Presidentâs arts and humanities committee? Or the business advisory councils?) Still, a few people remain in whatâs left of the State Department; some people have joined the Administration with the explicit goal of using their expertise to help minimize damage. But to watch General McMaster struggling to mislead journalists on Trumpâs behalf is to see the built-in problem with the project of minimizing damage: one inevitably becomes an accomplice.
Rule No. 6: Remember the future. There will come a time after Trump. What will we bring to it? I wrote that the failure to imagine the futureâto offer a vision in opposition to Trumpâs appeal to an imaginary pastâhad cost the Democrats the election. A year later, the national Democratic Party does not seem closer to proposing a vision (or a candidate); instead, the last week has seen the Party plunged into a vicious re-litigation of the 2016 primaries.
(full article here)
#politics#masha gessen#republicans#donald trump#autocracy#election 2024#autocracy rules for survival#surviving trump
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im going crazy with how people are starting to agree with snow that sejanus was really stupid and deserved what was coming to him. reading the books first should be a pre requisite to the movie idcccc if that takes away the wider audience, the wider audience all have smooth brains anyway.
âwhy was he colluding with rebels when he couldâve just thought about it pragmatically đâ iâm in your fucking walls. sejanus was never dumb, snow just kept pushing that perception of him through the book to deflect the fact that sejanus was an actual good person. snow thought himself the personification of good and benevolence, which was why everything he did had to have some half-assed excuse as to why he was justified in doing it. it was why he was actually tweaking in the woods when lucy gray left him, because he wanted to rid himself of her but he didnât have an actual reason so he convinced himself of the most random scenario ever to justify trying to shoot at her. so we can establish that snow was an evil broke boy who clearly wasnât goodâ then sejanus was a direct confrontation of snowâs own shortcomings towards that (i donât think i have to detail how sejanus was genuine, it was obvious). coriolanus and sejanus are like the direct opposite characters of each other, and snow knew and took pride in this to an extent. which is why snow couldnât admit that sejanus was good to himself, thus sejanus was deemed âstupidâ to protect his own deluded self actualisation (but this also includes other aspects like how the war made the plinths rich and the snows poor, leading to resentment and jealousy from snow).
âbut that still didnât mean he wasnât doing dumb things throughout the bookâ was it really that dumb? a rebellion will always include some level of risk but i donât hear anyone calling heavensbee stupid because it actually worked out for him. plus sejanus is district, so if we use our common sense of who he is as a character and emotional intelligence of his situation, itâs pretty easy to see why he would get in touch with rebels. heâs literally always yearned for the districts, he never once cared about his money or safety, which isnât stupid, itâs sad. this was his way of dealing with the guilt of profiting from his peopleâs sufferingâ again, not stupid. you could argue he was reckless, especially when he went into the arena, but most people who simply cast him as a âdumb characterâ ignore how troubled he is and fall into the very filtered lens of snow who was just concentrating on his stupidity.
sejanusâ growing radical actions had nothing to do with stupidity and everything to do with feeling helpless and like nothing was changing. he tried minor/low-risk things such as attempting to change the perception of the districts in the capitol, advocating against the hunger games etc etc. of course it didnât work, so his options grew limited to more radical courses of action. its a natural line of thoughtâ activists literally do it in real life when they feel as if their cause isnât getting enough attention (eg. setting themselves on fire). sejanus is a desperate character who is so selfless in light of snowâs constant self-preservation. snow will always put himself first and be paranoid that he will be betrayed like heâs betrayed others, so he never understands sejanusâ disposition to help and trust people, so he labels him dumb. omg. like. sejanus is so not-stupid iâm actually gonna start freaking out!! this is defamatory leave my boo alone!! plz go read a book and work on media literacy i am begging!!!
#maybe the stupidity was the friends we made along the wayâŠ..#i saw someone say that since the book was in third person then it wasnât told from snowâs pov so it was reliable đđ#like are we stupid now???#this was supposed to be a short post but now im ranting and tweaking out#sejanus haters catch these handz leave this boy alone#he is literally the best!!! i hate yall sm đđ#some of yall have the WORST takes about tbosas ever.#dont even get me started on the âlucy gray was manipulating and using snow the whole timeâ bcuz i will freak out worse#sejanus plinth defender 4EVAAAAA#sejanus plinth#coriolanus snow#snowjanus#lucy gray baird#tbosas#the ballad of songbirds and snakes#thg#the hunger games#rewriting
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A day of protest was called on Friday, September 27, across the whole of Spain in solidarity with Palestine. The strike was coordinated and backed by hundreds of organizations throughout the country, including numerous workers syndicates, student unions, and groups focused on a diversity of fields, like human rights, the environment, housing, women, and minorities, among many others. Some left-wing political parties have also shown their support. It is definitely a historic first for any country in Europe.
The general strike comes at a time when Israeli aggression in the Middle East has reached its highest point in decades. After bombing the Gaza Strip for a year and killing tens of thousands of Palestinians during the course of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuâs administration has now turned its focus towards Lebanon. Hundreds of civilians have already died in the last ten days, and the governments of the Global North finally seem to have been urged to put an end to Israelâs onslaught.
Spain has been at the forefront of Palestinian solidarity during this last year with numerous demonstrations, while the Spanish government formally recognized the State of Palestine at the end of May. It has also been highly critical of Israelâs actions in the Gaza Strip. However, activists argue that it has not gone far enough.
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this is the type of thing I mean when I say that aphobes simply have to lie in order to argue against the legitimacy of aspec activism. I've left the emojis unredacted to show that this isn't some random conservative getting mad at an activist, this is a queer leftist who's seriously trying to make it out like they've really never heard of any situation ever where women have been systemically pressured into sex or punished for trying to avoid it.
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This article hits a lot of my discomfort around comparing the LTTE to Hamas, or any of the Palestinian resistance.
Do I believe in Tamil self-determination? Yes. Should they have a sovereign state? Yes. Should they have won the North instead of the SL military? Absolutely. Does any indigenous Tamil or Muslim person in the North and East have the right to armed resistance against majoritarian rule? Also yes. Was the LTTE rank and file fighters resisting annihilation and the SL military to a man was committing murder? Yes.
Do I believe the LTTE as an organisation and Prabhakaran as its head actually stood for anything but replacing the Sinhalese ethnostate with a Tamil one of their own choosing? Fucking no.
Navaratnam, after splitting away from the Federal Party, also published a newspaper, Viduthalai. I read the paper in the 1970s, when it often compared Tamils and Jews in terms of cultural characterâincluding a supposed predisposition for intelligence and entrepreneurshipâand argued that they were similar. (This line of thinking survives to this day: I know of Tamil nationalists in the diaspora who invoke the establishment of Israel as an example for their own goals, and see similarities in the Tamil and Jewish struggles.) Viduthalai also serialised Exodus, a popular 1958 novel by the American Jewish writer Leon Uris, which was translated by Navaratnam and published in Tamil as Namakkoru NaaduâA Country of Our Own.
Exodus presents a factually inaccurate but heroic account of the Zionist project to establish Israel as a Jewish nation state, and follows a group of Jewish arrivals in Palestine after the Second World War. It makes no mention of the mass dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist forces in 1948. Edward Said, the Palestinian activist and intellectual, has highlighted how the novel dehumanises Arabs. Said has also argued that, when it comes to Israel, âthe main narrative model that dominates American thinking still seems to be Leon Urisâ 1958 novel Exodus.â The British journalist Robert Fisk once described the novel as a âracist fictional account of the birth of Israelâ in which Arabs are ârarely mentioned without the adjectives âdirtyâ and âstinkingâ.â
Velupillai Prabhakaran, who established the LTTE in 1976, was a supporter of the Self-Rule Party as a young man. He would also have been a Viduthalai reader, and was inspired by Exodus. I was informed by a former LTTE member that the organisation also separately translated Exodus in full in the mid-1980s, and that it was widely distributed among LTTE cadres and supporters. Two prominent members of the organisation told me separately that the film adaptation of Exodus was also screened to LTTE cadres at camps in both Sri Lanka and the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Following long-term disillusionment with the LTTE, and seeing no democratic space to raise my concerns with the organisationâs autocratic leader, Prabhakaran, I quit the LTTE for good in April 1984. Many others also left, both before and after me, with the same concerns â among them the one-man leadership and complete intolerance for political discussion or difference. Some of them were murdered by the LTTE for leaving. One tragic example is Patkunam, one of the groupâs founding members, who was murdered by Prabhakaran sometime in or around 1977 with the agreement of the appointed central committee of the LTTE. Prabhakaran suspected that Patkunam had been influenced by EROSâs leftist ideas and wanted to leave the LTTE. The LTTE had a policy that those who wanted to leave and join another group or establish another organisation would face capital punishment.
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As it increasingly gained control of the North and East of Sri Lanka, the LTTE arbitrarily declared itself the âsole representativeâ of the Sri Lankan Tamil people. On this basis, it targeted Tamil activists from leftist and progressive organisations, killing or otherwise silencing them. The leadership of the TULF, the Tamil parliamentary party, was also wiped out. From as far back as the mid 1980s, the LTTE also suppressed other Tamil militant organisations such as TELO, PLOTE and the EPRLF. Eventually this meant targeted killings and massacres of both cadres and leaders from rival groups. Sections of EROS were forcibly absorbed into LTTE ranks. The LTTE also killed numerous EPRLF and PLOTE cadres who had received training from the PFLP in Syria.
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In 1990, the LTTE executed a plan to ethnically cleanse Muslims from territories under its control in the North of Sri Lanka. The entire Muslim population of the Jaffna, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Mannar and Kilinochchi districts, numbering approximately 75,000 people, was evicted at gunpoint. This demonstrated the LTTEâs desire to establish an ethnically exclusive Tamil state, much like the Jewish state of Israel envisioned by the Zionists. The LTTEâs entire ideology was based on exclusive Tamil nationalism; its idea of a homeland and a nation meant treating Muslims and other minority communities in Tamil-dominated areas as second-class citizens at best. In this, it had uncomfortable similarities with the Zionist outlook on Palestinians and Muslims.
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The LTTE was a right-wing organisation, with a statist approach to popular struggles. Prabhakaran made it clear that the LTTE would not interfere with âdomestic issuesâ in other countries. I know this because, while I was with the organisation, he did not want to have any links with Marxist-Leninist parties in India as he did not want to antagonise the Indian state. The LTTEâs international network consistently aligned with Western governments and lobbied for their support. Although the LTTE was deemed a terrorist organisation and proscribed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, these governmentsâ notices stated clearly that the LTTE had no intention of targeting Western interests.
The LTTE leadership was a corrupt bunch of autocrats that ethnically cleansed and killed anyone that got in their way, including their own people, having solidarity with no one and led by a personality cult not so different from MR's. Nurturing Karuna and Pillayan at their breast while they massacred Muslims, conscripted children and killed and disappeared Tamil activists and journalists, and then crying foul when they defected to get away with their loot? Nah son. Just like the SL government, the LTTE didn't care what they were doing as long as they didn't do it to them. Because in their ego-driven ideology, Tamil self-determination began and ended with them. Even now, it continues to obstruct the Tamil struggle because, since the LTTE made itself and its own nationalist project the sole representative of Tamil freedom, their defeat in 2009 makes the Tamil resistance itself look like it's dead in the water. Tamil Eelam's generational legacy of varied ideologies, factions, alternative enterprises and coalitions that preceded them all erased by this one failed cadre.
Hamas is far from perfect, but there's a continuity to its evolution, a devolution of power within their ranks, a willingness to work as a coalition with other resistance groups, and a generational network of anti-imperialist, anti-colonial solidarity and diplomacy behind them. The LTTE was just cut from the same post-colonial ethnonationalist cloth as the Sinhalese majoritarian state. Freire spoke truly when he said that the oppressed see their model of manhood in their oppressor. As long as we continue to identify with the powerful instead of the powerless, we will never be anything but pawns in the imperial project of coloniality.
*I do wish the author hadn't just...glossed over the horror that was the Indian Peace Keeping Force. Those freaks somehow managed to commit worse massacres and rapes than the Sri Lankan military. Absolutely heartbreaking because so many Tamil people believed they would be their allies. It says a lot that both the government and LTTE had enough of their shit within two years that they came together to kick them out. This alliance also came in useful because it allowed the government to crush the JVP's Marxist insurrection in the South without having to fight a war on two fronts. By that I mean Premadasa was grand chums with the LTTE while his forces killed over 60,000 innocent people in the rest of the country. At least right up until the LTTE killed him. Lol. The late '80s was their trollface era.
#(yes I am on break. i had to come back to post this)#funny story though: israel once trained the SL army and the LTTE at the same time#without either knowing#the army was in tel aviv and the ltte in haifa i think#this settler colony runs on war profiteering lol#sri lanka history#sri lanka politics#tamil eelam#tamil struggle#tamil genocide#decolonization#anti imperialism#armed resistance#anti zionism#islamophobia#free palestine#LTTE#palestinian history#palestinian resistance#knee of huss
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Most Queer Arguments are Linguistically and Ethically Challenged - Example #348847938732987
 And the rebuttal from Professor Gary Francione. Please note this is the way you must always answer queer arguments and conclusions â the identification of where they intentionally blur boundaries or insert esoteric meanings to common words must be highlighted.  âTRAs use this argument all the time. It is a silly argument.  Hereâs an easy rebuttal to keep in mind: Segregation and homophobiaâŠ
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#Against Queer Bullshit in Society#Arguing Against The Activist Left#Blurring words and mixing meanings
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Andrew Prokop at Vox:
The leftâs hopes for sweeping change from the 2010s have crashed into the reality of the 2020s. The energy of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns and the George Floyd protests is a distant memory. Some members of the Squad have moved toward the Democratic mainstream, while others lost primaries. Several of the progressive prosecutors elected in recent years have been ousted from office (by voters or due to scandals) or appear headed that way. In Democrat-dominated spaces â like cities and mainstream media outlets â thereâs been growing pushback against the left. Ambitious progressive rallying cries of just a few years ago, such as defunding the police and Medicare-for-all, are now absent from the discourse. Politicians who assiduously cultivated left activists are now increasingly tacking to the center â most notably Vice President Kamala Harris, who has abandoned many of the positions she took while running in the Democratsâ 2020 presidential primary. Altogether, itâs seemed that progressives have moved from being on the offensive to being on the defensive â in both politics and the nationâs culture.
Of course, itâs not as if progressivesâ gains over the past 20 years or so have been entirely wiped away. The Democratic Party remains significantly further to the left than it was a decade ago and certainly two decades ago (see, for instance, my recent article about the rise of the New Progressive Economics). Yet, as bloggers Noah Smith and Tyler Cowen have argued, there are growing indications that the leftward drift of the party and of the countryâs culture broadly has stopped. On some fronts, there has indeed been a reversal. âNo matter who wins, the US is moving to the right,â Semaforâs David Weigel argued last week, citing âimmigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change policies, and criminal justice reformâ as issues where progressives are on the defensive. Being on the defensive is not new for the left â itâs the historical norm. Bursts of activist energy and successful reform are typically followed by long stretches where either the new status quo persists or a backlash reverses at least some recent change.
[...]
The era of rising progressive ambitions lasted from about 2005 to 2020
Historical periodization is a tricky thing, but hereâs a rough attempt at it. From about 1980 to 2005, the left was mostly irrelevant to national politics. The Cold War was over, and capitalism reigned ascendant. The Republican Party moved right, while the Democratic Party moved to the center. The country cracked down on criminals, unauthorized immigrants, and non-working welfare recipients. 9/11 made patriotism mandatory. Same-sex marriage was viewed as politically toxic. But 2005 to 2020 was, broadly, a period where progressives and the left became increasingly influential inside the Democratic Party, in Democrat-dominated spaces, and in the larger culture. Call it the era of rising progressive ambitions. The disasters of George W. Bushâs second term kicked off the shift, discrediting Republican governance. This enabled the election of the nationâs first Black president, Barack Obama, whose agenda was strikingly ambitious and progressive when compared to the Clinton years. Democratsâ leftward shift accelerated in the 2010s, which saw:
The increased cultural influence of the social justice left, which transformed how much of the country thought and spoke about racial and gender issues (âthe Great Awokeningâ)
The launch of viral protest movements like Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Me Too
The nationwide spread and Supreme Courtâs protection of same-sex marriage rights, followed by increased advocacy for trans rights
The rise of more economically progressive and even democratic socialist politicians, as seen in the support for Sandersâs campaigns, the Squadâs arrival in Congress, and party leadersâ embrace of some of Elizabeth Warrenâs ideas
A leftward move of mainstream Democrats on issues like immigration and criminal justice, where activists had made the case that status quo policies were cruel and harmful
Increased public discussion about causes like Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, and student loan forgiveness
Basically, on a host of issues, the âOverton windowâ â the boundaries of which political and policy ideas are deemed fit for mainstream discussion, rather than fringe or self-evidently absurd â opened far further left. Trumpâs election didnât stop the leftâs rising influence. Indeed, it intensified it, raising the stakes of politics and heightening passions. (Trumpâs rise simultaneously opened the Overton window further right on some issues, as leading Republicans increasingly embraced bigotry and flouted democratic norms.) The assumption spread among Democrats that the establishmentâs approach had failed and that bold new progressive ideas were necessary. During the partyâs 2020 presidential primary, most candidates â including Harris â scrambled to the left, wooing activist groups. Joe Biden, the most old-school major contender, won, but rather than a full-on pivot to the center for the general election, he embraced much of the progressive agenda. It was a political necessity for helming the Democratic Party of 2020.
[...]
The backlash and disillusionment of the 2020s
Things feel different in the Biden years. In part thatâs due to the constraints and disappointments that always exist when a party tries to turn a bold campaign agenda into governing reality. Narrow congressional majorities limited Democratsâ legislative possibilities (and then they lost the House). The conservative Supreme Court, meanwhile, blocked some Biden actions like student loan forgiveness and rolled back abortion rights protections. But the trend was broader. Democrats in cities disavowed police cuts as they struggled with rising crime and complained they couldnât handle a migrant influx. Corporations have laid off DEI workers. Mainstream media companies, increasingly influenced by progressive causes (and sensitive to left criticism) in the 2010s, are now more forthrightly asserting their journalistic independence and challenging progressive ideas. Activism in protest of Israel was met with fierce pushback at universities. Commentators started declaring that âwokenessâ had peaked as social justice controversies grew less intense and frequent.
[...]
All of this has happened before
Meanwhile, thereâs also been a conspicuous decline of energy and intensity among progressive activists. While many certainly remain committed to their longtime causes, others have disengaged or shifted their focus to opposing Israelâs war in Gaza (an issue that bitterly divides the Democratic Party and where Democratic leaders are disinclined to embrace the left). Perhaps if Trump wins, progressive energy would surge again in opposing him â but perhaps too many people are now burned out and apathetic, and the mobilization wonât match the bygone days of Trumpâs first term. And a backlash against Trumpâs governance would not necessarily spur the Democrats to resume their leftward march. Activists naturally get disappointed and disengaged when major change proves elusive. âEvery major social movement of the past 20 years has undergone a significant collapse,â the activist Bill Moyer wrote in 1987, âin which activists believed that their movements had failed, the power institutions were too powerful, and their own efforts were futile.â Fatigue, burnout, and organizational crisis then ensue; some move on to new causes.
This Vox article explains how the progressive left has been in defense and retreat mode since 2020 after being in the ascendency since 2005 or so.
#Progressivism#2020 Elections#2024 Elections#2016 Elections#Bernie Sanders#The Squad#Alexandria Ocasio Cortez#Kamala Harris
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by Seth Mandel
Durbinâs seething resentment at being asked to talk about the threat of anti-Semitism was on display from one of his partyâs two witnesses as well: Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute. She was made to look like a fool because she did exactly what Democrats asked her to do and said what they asked her to say. Her performance was atrocious from a moral standpoint but perfect from an âunderstood the assignmentâ perspective. Her main point was that focusing on any one group undermines the fight against all hate, a demonstrably false and frankly ridiculous belief.
But the key moment came during the witnessesâ questioning by Republican ranking member Lindsey Graham. Quoting the director of national intelligence regarding the pro-Hamas protests, Graham said: âWe have observed actors tied to Iranâs government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protest, and even providing financial support to protesters.â He asked if any of the three witnesses doubted the veracity of that report, and no one did. Graham then asked each witness the following: âIs it Hamasâs goal to destroy the Jewish state? Is it Hezbollahâs goal to destroy the Jewish state? Is it Iranâs goal to destroy the Jewish state?â
Two of the three witnessesâKenneth Stern and Rabbi Mark Goldfederâanswered in the affirmative. All three entities mentioned in Grahamâs question, after all, have said they want to destroy the Jewish state without shame or ambiguity. Which is what made Berryâs response so odd. âI think these are complicated questions,â she saidâimmediately earning a shake of the head from Graham and conjuring memories of the catastrophic answer given by several college presidents when asked before Congress if genocidal anti-Semitism counts as harassment:Â It depends on the context.
âIf you think itâs complicated to figure out that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran want to kill all the Jews,â Graham responded, âI should not listen to anything else youâve got to say. And I wonât.â And with that, Graham moved on to the next witness.
Berry was rattled. Though Graham left the hearing soon after, Berry referenced that exchange at least twice more with other senators, signaling that sheâd realized how poorly her comments made her look and desperately trying to claw back some credibility.
The bad news for Berry was that she could not undo the damage. The good news was that she would eventually provide another quote that might make people forget about the first quote, if only because it was potentially even worse. Asked by Sen. Josh Hawley about the inherently violent implications of the phrase âLong live the intifada,â Berry argued for the sloganâs ambiguity. ââLong live the intifadaâ can mean differentâ things, she said, catching herself before she got to the word âthingsâ but far too late to avoid the rest of the ridiculous comment, which was tailor-made for the sound-bite politics of congressional hearings.
She also defended âFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,â a call for all Jews to be cleansed from the land.
#antisemitism#hate crimes#dick durbin#josh hawley#maya berry#arab american institute#lindsey graham#democrats
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On March 9, 1977, Francine Hughes returned from business college to her Dansville, Michigan, home and put a frozen dinner in the oven for her husband, James. He didn't like it. Francine, he said, should be at home preparing meals for him, not running off to school. He beat her up, as he had done many times before; and to drive home his point he tore up her schoolbooks and term papers and forced her to burn them in the trash barrel. Twelve-year-old Christy Hughes called the police, who came to the house long enough to calm James down but declined, as they had many times before, to arrest him. They left James, tired from beating Francine, asleep in his bedroom. Determined to "just drive away," Francine piled the children into the family car. "Let's not come back this time, Mommy," they said. She carried a gasoline can to the bedroom, poured the contents around the bed where James lay asleep, backed out of the room, and set a match to it The rust of flame sucked the door shut.
Francine Hughes drove immediately to the Ingham County sheriffs office, crying hysterically, "I did it. I did it." She was charged with first-degree murder.
Dansville adjoins East Lansing, home of Michigan State University and consequently of many social-action groups. Within two months feminists and other interested people in the Lansing area had formed the Francine Hughes Defense Committee to raise money and public awareness for her defense. They were careful to say that they neither advocated nor condoned murder, but they held that women confronted with violence have a right to defend themselves. They argued that "Francine Hughesâand many other women facing similar chargesâshould be free from the threat of punishment," for Francine Hughes was a battered woman.
At the time wife-beating was a growing feminist issue, following close on the heels of feminist attacks upon rape, a crime it resembles in many ways. Both rape and wife-beating are crimes of violence against women. Both are widespread, underreported, trivialized, and inadequately punished by the legal system. Both are acts of terrorism intended to keep all women in their place through intimidation. In fact, rape is often part of wife abuse, though so far only a few states acknowledge even the possibility of rape within marriage. The chief difference between the two crimes is that while the victim of nonmarital rape must live with a terrifying memory, the abused wife lives with her assailant. Rapists are, in Susan Brownmiller's phrase, the "shock troops" of male supremacy. Wife-beaters are the home guard.
American feminists took up the issue of wife-beating when they learned in 1971 of the work of Erin Pizzey, founder of Chiswick Women's Aid, the first shelter house in England exclusively for battered women and their children. Rainbow Retreat, the first American shelter for abused families of alcoholics opened in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 1, 1973; and in St. Paul, Minnesota, Women's Advocates, a collective that began with a phone service in 1972, opened Women's House to battered women and their children in October 1974. Rainbow Retreat, during its first two and a half years, sheltered more than six hundred women and children. In St. Paul the five-bedroom Women's House sheltered twenty-two women and fifteen children during its first month of operation; less than a year later Women's Advocates were negotiating to buy a second house. Across the country the shelter movement spread to Pasadena, San Francisco, Seattle, Boise, Albuquerque, Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, Boston, New York. To open a shelter was to fill it beyond capacity almost overnight. Suddenly it seemed that battered women were everywhere.
While activists opened shelters, researchers and writers set about documenting the problem of wife-beating or, as it came to be called more euphemistically in the academic literature, "domestic violence." The records showed that 60 percent of night calls in Atlanta concerned domestic disputes. In Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the nation's wealthiest counties, police received 4,073 disturbance calls in 1974. During ten months in 1975-76 the Dade County Florida Citizens Dispute Settlement Center handled nearly 1,000 wife-beating cases. Seventy percent of all assault cases received in the emergency room at hospitals in Boston and Omaha were women who had been attacked in their homes. Eighty percent of divorce cases in Wayne County, Michigan, involved charges of abuse. Ninety-nine percent of female Legal Aid clients in Milwaukee were abused by men.
The FBI guessed that a million women each yearâwomen of every race and social classâwould be victims of wife-beating. Journalists Roger Langley and Richard C. Levy put the figure at more than 28 million. Some said that one in four women married to or cohabiting with a man would become a victim; others said one in three. In some areas the incidence seemed even greater. In California the experts said one of every two women would be beaten. And in Omaha, the Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women estimated that 95 percent of women would be abused at some time. There scarcely seemed need of additional evidence, so the same statistics began to turn up in every new account, but repetitious as they were, they showed all too clearly that wife-beating is a social problem of astounding dimensions.
-Ann Jones, Women Who Kill
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"Feminists Deserve to Be Beaten": Jinju Convenience Store Assault Recognized as 'Misogynistic Crime' by Court
published Oct 15th
this article is originally in Korean and has been mtl and edited into English here. itâs not going to be 1:1 but the basic info should be there, if you see any discrepancies though lmk and Iâll edit it asap. thanks everyone for your continued help and understanding.
On October 15th, the appellate court ruled that the assault of a female convenience store worker in Jinju was motivated by "unfounded hatred against women." The court's decision overturned the initial ruling, which did not recognize misogyny as a motive, marking the first time in South Korea that misogyny was acknowledged as a valid and condemnable motive in a crime.
The Changwon District Court's Criminal Division 1, led by Chief Judge Lee Joo-yeon, upheld the three-year prison sentence for a man in his 20s, referred to as Mr. A, who was charged with special injury, property damage, and interference with business. The court rejected appeals from both the prosecution and the defendant.
In November of last year, Mr. A assaulted a female worker, Ms. B, at a convenience store in Jinju, and also attacked a man in his 50s, Mr. C, who tried to intervene. The investigation revealed that Mr. A targeted Ms. B because she had short hair, saying, "You're a feminist, so you deserve to be beaten." As a result of the assault, Ms. B permanently lost hearing in her left ear and now requires a hearing aid for life. Mr. C, who suffered a bone fracture and other injuries requiring three weeks of recovery, later lost his job and faced financial difficulties, ultimately being recognized as a meritorious person by the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
In April, the first trial court had acknowledged that Mr. A was suffering from bipolar disorder and was possibly in a state of diminished capacity during the incident, based on evaluations from the National Forensic Hospital and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's forensic division. The court sentenced him to three years in prison, considering his misogynistic remarks as evidence of his mental state but not as a motive for the crime.
However, the appellate court disagreed, stating, "Mr. A's crime was driven by unfounded hatred and prejudice against women, making it a condemnable motive. His continued false claim that Ms. B attacked him first raises doubts about his remorse." The court did acknowledge some shortcomings in the original ruling, such as the characterization of Mr. A's bizarre act of putting Ms. B's phone in a microwave as evidence of his diminished capacity, but found that the prosecution had not sufficiently disproven his mental state.
The victim's side expressed disappointment that the sentence remained the same despite recognizing Mr. A's diminished capacity. However, they emphasized the social significance of this being the first legal precedent in South Korea to classify misogyny as a criminal motive. Activist "Solidarity D," who supports sexual violence victims, stated, "This ruling is the first to recognize misogyny as a motive worthy of condemnation. In the past, defendants would use misogyny to argue for diminished responsibility, but now it can be considered a motive that warrants harsher punishment."
Attorney Lee Kyung-ha, representing Ms. B, said, "While it's regrettable that the sentence remained unchanged, the recognition that the defendant's misogynistic behavior, including his statement 'feminist women deserve to be beaten,' constituted a condemnable motive is significant. This sets a precedent that may deter defendants from using misogyny as a basis for claims of diminished responsibility in the future."
#south korea#korean feminism#misogyny#violence against women#Jinju#Jinju assault case#Jinju convenience store#Article#court
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Some People are Still Good
I recently caught up with a friend of mine and offhandedly, sort of casually mentioned that Iâd been off instagram since October 7th. He didnât know what I meant. He'd heard something about a terrorist attack and Israel's military retaliating, but nothing else.
In another universe without tiktok history lessons, I might have been upset. In this one, I was immensely relieved. I didnât have to argue with him, or hear him rattling off whatever talking points are de rigueur for the Online Left, or get into a heated discussion about the meaning of the word âZionist,â or get accused of being an apologist for crimes against humanity. I could justâŠtell him what happened, and how I felt about it.
I told him about the massacre and hostage-taking. I told him how many of the people murdered and kidnapped were peace activists - easier targets, he noted, than anyone in the actual government that Hamas is supposedly resisting. How this was, in proportion to Israelâs population, a bigger terrorist attack than 9/11. That it wasnât just Israeli Jews who were killed or kidnapped, but Bedouins, laborers from abroad, Americans, and (this is something conveniently left out of a lot of the Discourse), Palestinians.Â
I told him about the Israeli government doing exactly what Hamas had counted on them doing in Gaza. I said that people arenât their governments. I tried to make it clear that I hope Netanyau, may his name be blotted out, lives out the rest of his days in shame and political obscurity (or, to save us all some time, quickly succumbs to some hideously painful disease). That I know there are miles of difference between going to war with Hamas and going to war with the Palestinian people. That if you express any hope that the rest of the hostages will be rescued, you run the risk of getting lumped in with people who think airstrikes on refugee camps are somehow justified, and that unfortunately those people do very much exist.
I told him how Jews are still reeling from what happened, and that it doesnât help that so many on the left seem to think itâs irrelevant. I told him how my boyfriend (who Iâve seen cry maybe twice over the last decade), spent the entire afternoon of October 7th sobbing at his desk as he watched everything unfold in real time. I told him how that same boyfriend posted about how frustrating it is for Jews to have their suffering repeatedly dismissed, and how one of his leftist friends responded by accusing him of being a genocide apologist. You know, how you talk to a person in mourning.Â
I told him how when the first news of the massacre hit, there were leftists who praised it as the start of some glorious revolution. How I don't know how many of them were my acquaintances, because I got off social media before I could find out. How a lot of them were probably ill-informed about what was happening and how and why, but others just think killing Jews is good, actually, and I don't have the mental or emotional fortitude to find out which fall into which category.
I told him how frustrating it is to be a leftist of Jewish background, sickened by the right and heartbroken by the left. I told him how many petitions Iâve been asked to sign that didnât so much as mention Hamas or the attack. I said I was worried to bring it up, because if you say âbut what about the Jews (and, you know, others) who were tortured and murdered and kidnapped,â you get accused of all sorts of heinous, improbable crimes, and I simply do not have the kind of time or energy for that discussion.Â
I told him how I still like my classmates, but I donât trust most of them. I canât let my guard down around them. I canât talk about how I feel about the conflict except in vague terms, which is ironic, because the people who are brave enough to say âpeace would be niceâ are accused of not taking a stand. How terrified I am that I'll use the wrong word and out myself as whatever they think that makes me. How Iâd hoped theyâd be my friends, before all of this. How theyâre all being really nice to me, and I canât shake the thought that theyâd hate me if they knew I thought the state of Israel should exist and that Israelis have the right to not be murdered. How I wish I felt like I could be in activist spaces without having to loudly and eagerly participate in my own dehumanization and that of so many people I love.Â
And he listened.Â
I donât think anyone Jewish is wrong to be cautious. But for all the leftist goyim willing to argue that murdering babies is actually a good thing if the babies belong to colonizers, there are others - many others, I hope - who genuinely want to understand whatâs actually going on. Who see a difference between resisting your oppressors and murdering them at a music festival or burning them alive in their homes. Who find âitâs wrong to kill civiliansâ to be an uncontroversial statement. I hate how many people I can no longer trust, but Iâm so grateful to have at least some non-Jewish friends who actually understand nuance and care enough to try.
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