#Do you think fascism will stop existing in the US?

[brick-van-dyke]

I'm gonna need people to take a minute to realise that sometimes the best way to be fascist is to get up and start actions against the fascists instead of yelling at people online to stop supporting one of the two fascists.

[bendgineer]

I think one of the reasons the Harris / Walz ticket has so much momentum is because the campaign is genuinely trying to put out this vibe of fun. Like that's all the "brat" thing is, the coconut jokes, just being kind of silly and fun.

And I think it's working, because let's be real, we are all exhausted. It's been all about preserving democracy, defeating fascism, the past eight years. The message has been "vote for us because the country is literally on the line". The vibes are not good when we are stuck back at that fight, and not even discussing trying to make progress on things like housing, healthcare, education, etc. And the fight to just stop fascism? All still true. Project 2025 is real and is extremely scary. We can't let that man back into office.

But the vibe was "vote for us otherwise we're all fucked :(" and now has shifted to "get in, we're making popcorn and then bullying fascists." Like a lot of the issues conservatives bring up, the Harris / Walz is just not engaging them in good faith, as they shouldn't. Republicans bring up abortion, and some of the Dems are just like, "you want 14 year old to give birth? Weirdo" and just leave it at that. Like YES, that's what you should do. Because it SHOULDNT be a debate. And it's working. This is how you defeat the identity politics thing Republicans have been trying to push for a while. Just mocking them for the stupidity of it all. "Like seriously? You think a book can make someone gay??? Hahaha." None of the Republicans are reacting well. They can't stand it. Vance even complained about bullying!!! Like do you KNOW who picked you as vp??? It's actually laughable, because they have no room to stand on when it comes to bullying.

And a huge part of the mocking and dismissing of Republicans is that the message is clear - we are done debating all this stupid stuff. We've won the last two elections' popular vote - most Americans do NOT want christo-facism. It's time to move on. And that's what gives me hope, and the feeling of hope I think a lot of people have picked up on. It's time to address all the issues we've all wished we've been addressing the past decade. It's important we move onto that, and that's the message I'm getting from this campaign (We're not going back). I think it will resonate with a lot of people, because plainly, we're all just sick of this same old news cycle and fake rage bait over things like "should women have rights?", "Should gay people be allowed to exist?" The general populace have answered YES to both these multiple times, and it is time to move on. Maybe I'm being naive, but I am genuinely excited at the idea of putting to bed these debates (it's exhausting trying to fend someone's very existence ) and moving on to actual economic and social policies that could fix a lot of deterioration over the last 2 decades.

[anexperimentallife]

Project 2025 would ban anything the far right considers pornography. The far right considers anything queer-positive to be pornography, and they WILL encode that into law if given just a TINY bit more power.

Have queer fanfic (or trad published literature) or pics of your transition, or of two men kissing, saved to your hard drive? If the GOP get their way, you'd be guilty of possession of pornography. Did you share any of it? You'd be guilty of distribution of pornography. Have a sweet coming of age story with a queer protagonist? That'd be child pornography.

Even now, states are trying to make it a crime to be openly queer in public (by, among other things, classifying dressing as the "wrong gender" anyplace kids might see as a sex crime against children). Oh, and Florida tried (and thankfully failed) to impose the death penalty for the above.

This is just one example of the horrors awaiting us if the project comes to fruition.

And the far right is already screaming that any adult who mentions around kids that queer people exist is "grooming" children. Wear your Pride shirt past a playground? You're now a child groomer. Think they won't put that into law if allowed? You're naive.

The GOP currently controls the Supreme Court (which is how they overturned Roe v. Wade) and has a majority in one branch of congress. Imagine what will happen nationwide with the GOP controlling every branch of government, including supermajoroties in both houses of Congress.

Oh, and top GOP officials have also announced their desire to NUKE Gaza, so don't come at me with, "but I can't vote blue because Biden..." Or tell me how you think Gaza would somehow be better off with Trump and the GOP.

In France, the left and center joined together--even though they disagree vehemently on many issues (get two leftists together and they'll have three positions on any issue)--to stop the far right from totally taking over, because the one thing they ALL agree on is that fascists dictatorships are BAD.

Much the same with the UK finally kicking out their own neo-fascist party, the Torries, to install 400 Labour MPs. Not everyone loves Labour's policies, but virtually everyone with a brain cell recognizes that the Torries are fascists, and that FASCISM BAD.

"Every election, they tell us this is the most important election if our lives!" Yeah, because each election over the past several decades has been more important than the one before, until we are now at a tipping point between remaining a fucked up oligarchy with SOME resemblance to freedom, and an outright neo-fascist military dictatorship.

Trump has literally stated publicly his intent to criminalize dissent, use US armed forces against protesters (Kent State, but multiply it by thousands), purge all agencies and stuff them with those personally loyal to him, and use the DOJ to go after anyone he perceives as a threat to his political power, among other things.

And remember the things he did in office, like pulling the teeth of federal workplace protections for queer folks (which Biden reatored).

I don't care if you don't like Biden or Harris. Neither do I. But the alternative is Trump, and anyone telling you not to vote in 2024, or to vote third party, is rooting for Trump, and for Project 2025. Anyone telling you not to vote does not give one single solitary flying fuck about vulnerable populations in the US or anywhere else in the world.

"You're just being an alarmist!" Right. Like I was being alarmist when I predicted the failed Jan 6 coup attempt. Like I was being alarmist when I said the GOP would try to use control over SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fucking vote.

[wilwheaton]

Hey man, I could use a few talking points to help convince a friend that Musk is horrible. I'm reading 'Think Again' by Adam Grant (good read btws) and he says to help convince people to come to your viewpoint that it can be good to have 2 or 3 strong points instead of 10 mixed points. The counter argument I get from people about Musk being good is that he did spacex and tesla, and without him we'd be decades behind. Maybe, but I don't have good ammo. Please help as I get too angry tobe critical

Well, listen, the fascism, the transphobia, the chaos, and the unwavering support for autocrats all over the planet really ought to be enough to outweigh anything else, if you ask me. It sounds like you know some people who got excited about the companies he threw money at, and they are having a tough time updating their feelings due to current events. Or maybe they share his values and don't want to admit that.

But I'll try to offer some simple facts.

He did not do engineering with Tesla or SpaceX or even PayPal. He is a fraud. He walked into these existing businesses, where people had done actual work and engineering, threw some of his Apartheid money at them, and took credit for their work. He claims, over and over again, to be a founder of these companies, and that's just straight up a lie that is easily disproved.

He literally did nothing except throw money at people and take credit for their work. Look at every Tesla up to the (chokes back laughter) Cybertruck. Those Teslas look like cars, because they were designed by engineers. Look at the Cybertruck. When you stop laughing at what a joke it is, know this: that's what happens when Elon Musk is in charge. It's like a ten year-old with some crayons drew it on a menu at Denny's.

All of the things his weird fans claim he made possible, are things that would have happened, and were in the process of happening, without him. He literally did nothing to advance the technologies or engineering. In fact, SpaceX whistleblowers have told reporters how they had to keep Musk occupied with bullshit, so they could do the real work without him fucking it up all the time with his incompetence.

But even if he were telling the truth, even if the myth were fact, it would not outweigh the damage, the pain, the chaos, and the suffering he has inflicted on millions and millions of people, all over the world with his lies, his spread of misinformation, and his incitement of angry incels.

Also, don't forget, when Ukraine was trying to defend itself, he turned off Starlink access when they could have decisively ended Russia's aggression. A lot of people have suffered and died as a direct consequence of that action, which he took to support his buddy and fellow autocrat, Vladimir Putin.

That's more information than I think your friends will be willing to hear. Studies indicate that people who are heavily invested in the myth of a person will fight hard to hold onto the myth, and reject truth and facts, because it's so jarring to them. Musk has built a cult of personality, and maybe your friends are stuck to it.

I'd gently encourage your friends to consider one key fact: he has lied about his entire origin story, he has lied about his contributions to Tesla and SpaceX. He lies about everything, except when he posts on Twitter like a 12 year-old edgelord, because that's who he is, emotionally.

Finally, and this is for you, specifically: if your friends insist on supporting a fascist, a racist, a misogynist, or a bigot, because they think rockets are cool, maybe it's time to look for new friends.

I hope this helps.

And fuck Elon Musk.

[traegorn]

Girl you can rant and rave all day but we all know for a fact you can't vote your way out of this mess so your "genuinely, what else can we do?" sounds like pure cucked defeatism. This downward spiral of American fascism has proven stable, so no, voting isn't going to stop it. The democrats will never be pushed left - as proven by blatant history. I know this is your cue to list a bunch of social services or civil rights concessions a la #bidenwins but the drip violence of homophobia and abortion restrictions under republicans does not come close to the bipartisan armed tyranny that murders people in broad daylight.

Voting isn't going to solve any of this, and no voting isn't going to "clear the way" or make it easier to resist. Democrats have proven over and over and over again they will use the full force of violence to stop anything that truly threatens them and the ONLY WAY to stop American fascism is to threaten them, to threaten the very foundations of the system itself.

You exert all this effort, have all this pained frustration, over the weakest political action you can take. You are not challenging fascism or tyranny or helping any of the people harmed under bipartisan violence. You ignore these people and focus on "harm reduction" for the few who do benefit from the pitiful social safety nets democrats eke out only to be undermined in the next four or eight years as republicans INEVITABLY take back power. Such is the case of a two party system, as history proves. You're staving off the inevitable by exerting all this energy into electoralism, and the people you "save" by electing democrats are inevitably hurt anyways when republicans INEVITABLY take back power - because that's what the system guarantees.

You exist in a cycle of abuse with the American government, a punishment-reward system under the 2 parties that keeps you afraid of punishment and too desperate for reward that you ignore how the hand that feeds you is also putting kids in cages and blowing up babies overseas. You, and everyone who thinks like you, will never be the ones to save anybody.

Idk I was pissed and now got all sad again after writing this. Just so you know my being sad at the state of your ideology isn't a representation of my passivity that people like you like to construe - I am painfully politically active. But it's just...sick. You're stuck in an abusive cult and now I just feel bad for you

I'm usually a lot nicer when I reply to folks, but you brought a certain energy that deserves a different response. I want to be clear to any passersby who I'd normally be polite to in this kind of conversation: This energy is reserved only for chucklefucks who bring this kind of shit to me. Please do not take this as a reflection as to how I'd treat people willing to engage honestly and civilly with me. This anon came to me unprovoked, so they're getting a rather unique response.

So here we go.

Oi, shit head. This was the stupidest thing I've read all day.

Democrats 100% have moved left in the last 40 years. Are we still recovering from when they got dragged right by Reagan in the 80s? Yes. But we've made headway getting things back on track. You claim a lot of stuff here, but don't cite a single example. Likely because you just repeat what someone else told you on TikTok that one time. You couldn't find your way through actual theory if it smacked you in the face with its dick. But you don't want me to actually justify it.

Because your own words told me you'd dismiss any evidence I provided:

I know this is your cue to list a bunch of social services or civil rights concessions a la #bidenwins but the drip violence of homophobia and abortion restrictions under republicans does not come close to the bipartisan armed tyranny that murders people in broad daylight.

Bitch, this shit is a sliding scale. Trump authorized more drone strikes than Obama did in eight years. Are they bad? Yes. But if you're telling me you want more murders, Trump's your guy. Guess what, living in America means dealing with the fact that you've been complicit in genocide this whole time. Look at the land you stand on -- it is soaked in blood. Look at the smart phone you're reading this on, it literally came out of a genocide.

You bathe in blood every day, fucking figure it out.

We do our best to minimize harm. And if you'd ACTUALLY read or watched anything I've said, your two half dead braincells would have noticed the part where I constantly say "voting is not the end of your activism." It's the fucking start.

Either Harris or Trump will be the next President. Trump will be worse. If you aren't doing everything you can to stop him, you're not a leftist, you're a grandstanding piece of shit who doesn't care about anything other than the smell of your own farts.

You want to fuck up the two parties? Great. Put in the fucking work -- because the Presidential election ain't it, shithead. Build a real movement from the ground up. Build community, build a party system, run local candidates. When's the last time your ass went to a city council meeting or a school board meeting? Do you even know when they're held where you live?

But let's face it, you couldn't coalition build if you tried because you're so far up your own ass you kiss your small intestine goodnight.

Daddy Revolution ain't coming, shithead. There's work to do, so get your head out of your ass and do it.

You want Trump to win? Netanyahu would kiss you on the lips for it. Fuck off.

[gingerswagfreckles]

I know everything that can be said on this topic has been said to death and no one but Jews will ever acknowledge it but it is still absolutely infuriating how every brand of gentile from every part of the political spectrum has collaborated to turn the word "Nazi" into a generic word for "fascist" or "bad person" or "person I don't like." Nazism isn't just fucking fascism and it isn't a synonym for bad person. It's a specific ideology that is centered at its root around blaming Jews for every problem in the world and wanting to exterminate them.

No, generic racist Republicans are not "Nazis." No, TERFs are not "Nazis." No, your crappy corrupt European leader is not a "Nazi." No, cops are not "Nazis." You know why they aren't Nazis? Because their entire ideology and behavior, as harmful as it may be to certain groups, is not centered around hating JEWS.

Nazism is an ideology centered around hating JEWS. Other people and groups may be caught in the crossfire, but ultimately, a Nazi's goal is to exterminate Jews, and you cannot just ignore that! I read a 12 paragraph essay yesterday written by a gentile analyzing the reasons people in Nazi Germany flocked to Nazism, and antisemitism wasn't mentioned as a motivation even once! They thought it was all because of gender norms and sexual repression! Oh my god!

The comfort with which gentiles have near universally divorced Nazism from antisemitism in colloquial speech is a direct precursor to the separation of Nazism from antisemitism in academic discourse. It's a direct predecessor to the rise of institutionalized antisemitism that we are seeing happen in real time now, because you have all gotten so used to appropriating Jewish trauma and Jewish oppression to the extent that you have convinced yourselves it isn't even uniquely real. That antisemitism doesn't exist as a specific bigotry that stands on it's own, that antisemitism is always some kind of footnote tied to some other, more important form of oppression. Do you think that Jews don't see what is happening here, that we don't see the deliberate generalization of Jew hatred and appropriation of the language we can use to refer to it? Jewish trauma becomes everyone's trauma, Jewish oppression becomes everyone's oppression, and soon enough the world at large has stolen the language of Jewish oppression right out of our mouths, until huge swaths of people can say "Jews are the new Nazis" and not see anything absurd about that at all.

Because you won't. Fucking. Acknowledge. What Nazism actually is. You won't fucking acknowledge that any ideology is specifically targeted at JEWS, and not YOU. Stop it!! Stop it! Cut it the fuck out. Nazism cannot be divorced from antisemitism and the insistence that it not only can be but MUST be by gentiles just shows how deeply ignorant and biased against Jews most of you really are.

[quasi-normalcy]

I know that this is the "Turning social problems into matters of individual virtue" website, but here's one change that you can make to yourself as an individual that I honestly think will have beneficial collective effects:

Stop Thinking You're Better Than Other People.

Do I mean that you should go through life thinking that you're the lowliest and most wretched scum who's ever lived? No. I mean that there exists no meaningful criterion by which one human being can be said to be absolutely 'better' than another. And even if there was, you don't know enough about other people's circumstances and interior thoughts to meaningfully judge them in these absolute terms. So don't even try! It's a futile endeavour.

"But what about fascists? Surely I'm better than them!"

Okay, so let me preface this by saying that fascists are dangerous, they're misguided, their acts and intentions are evil, and they need to be stopped, including through physical violence. But you're not better than them. I know that this is a difficult pill to swallow; I myself used to pat myself used to pat myself on the back because, well, at least I wouldn't have been a Nazi. But you know what? If the circumstances were right, I could have been. We all could have been, just as we all could have joined a cult at some point.

Looking at myself, for example: there was never any serious possibility that I could have been swept up into the alt-right movement. Why? Because I'm transgender, and I was raised to be a socialist. How easy it is to *not* become a fascist when you're one of their scapegoats! How much harder it would be to avoid if you're one of the people they flatter and groom, if you're raised by people who are sympathetic to fascist ideals, if you grow up in a community where such ideals are common! The fact that fascist movements can seemingly emerge amongst every nation and people--including those who have historically been victims of fascism--confirms this. What if I had lived a hundred years later, at a time when transgenderism was a complete non-issue, and they'd moved on to some new scapegoat? What if they had approached me on my absolute worst day and told me that all of my problems were caused by moochers and parasites, and that I could fight back and claim my birth right by joining them? Can I really say that I wouldn't? Can anyone?

But even beyond that, what is a fascist but the ultimate example of someone who needs to feel superior to others? What is scapegoating but the act of selecting an entire group of people and declaring them to be inferior to you? And if you just refuse to believe these things; if you refuse to accept the premise that some people are better than others, and call it out whenever it comes up; then you're cutting these movements off at knees! The ideological force of fascism comes from imagining humanity as a strict hierarchy, with the master race on top and the degenerates on the bottom. Simply refuse to believe in such a hierarchy! Refuse to even entertain it!

"But then how can I feel self-esteem? How can I feel that I matter and have value?"

You have value just by existing as a person! But if that's not enough for you, then try this: instead of trying to increase your sense of self-worth by finding people to feel superior to, increase it by being of value to others. Help them! Make their lives better! Contribute to society! Not even in a way that you can (necessarily) put a dollar value on, but in any way you can! Create art! Plant a pollinator garden! Tell a joke! Make someone happy! If nothing else, you can at least give someone love, and I guarantee you that that will be of value to them. The universe is so vast and we're all so small that any value we can ever have will only ever be to each other. And surely it beats spending your life trying to be king of the microbes.

[thyfleshc0nsumed]

hey crazy question, since you said there is no evil what would you call hitler evil? trump? mussolini? genghis khan? jeffrey dahmer? jeffrey epstein? KKK members? IDF? and if they're evil then i guess you're telling me child rapists are the only ones that shouldn't be called evil? why is that?

I'm gonna ignore your bad faith misreading of my ideas and your attempt to insinuate I am a child abuser and answer your first question for other ppls sake, cuz I think it is a reasonable thing ppl might be grappling with.

In a word, no.

In a few more words, I think the question fails to properly interrogate what I mean when I refer to evil. 'Evil' is a component of a moral framework, and I feel that moral frameworks are by and large shallow and not very useful in furthering for understandings of the world around us, or very conducive to creating material change, from an individual scale to a societal scale.

The central idea I put forward in that post is that it is not some grand moral badness that enables violence and abuse, but rather systems of power. All of your examples speak to this. You mention the wealthy, political leaders, a state backed by a global superpower, and a group that was comprised of people with systemic power over their victims.

Viewing them merely as "evil" is frankly uncurious and in some ways, cyclical and thought terminating. It begs the question: "they're bad because they're bad because they're bad."

We have NO disagreement in the fact that what those people do or did have produced violence and harm, many on a scale which is difficult to fully comprehend the magnitude of. It is equally difficult to understand even how one could act with such cruelty towards fellow human beings. But just because it is difficult to understand does not mean it is impossible. They didn't do those things because they were born with some kind of evil gene or soul.

They, like you and I, were created by the context of the world around them. If Adolf Hitler died as a child, would Germany have been rid of its antisemitism or have lost its imperial ambitions? Would war have been averted? Certainly not. There were specific, relatively measurable conditions which allowed fascism to flower. If not him, someone else would have helmed that movement.

If Adolf Hitler were born in another place and time, he would not be Adolf Hitler in any meaningful sense. A person is more or less a sum of their environment. People cannot exist outside the context that they do in fact exist in.

And so to then declare someone as 'evil' amounts to saying just about nothing. It's zero sum. If people do harm simply because they are evil, then what can be done? Create a list of them and then systematically exterminate them?

Many people have twisted my words and claimed that what I am saying is that we should expose our bellies and allow bigots to gut us, or that I equivocate violence against oppressors and violence against the oppressed. This is categorically untrue. When violence is brought against you, violent response can be prudent.

But what happens after the relations of power have been altered? When the abuser or oppressor no longer has the power to harm you? Is there reason to harm them besides to punish or sate a desire for revenge? If they no longer have the means to do 'evil,' then what purpose does violence against them serve besides for the sake of our own bloodlust?

You will not see me shed a tear for Israeli settlers killed by opposition forces, or for abusers killed by a victim defending themself because those relations of power are still in place. Settlers can leave, soldiers can dodge the draft, and abusers can stop abusing.

But if they settle, kill, and abuse because they are 'evil,' then what choice did they have to begin with? And what can be done to stop colonialism, state violence, and abuse in the future? Are evil people just going to stop being born?

The framework of evil adds nothing, gives no solutions, and hinders progress by giving us amnesty for not looking at our own relationship to power structures. But a materialist, analytical framework provides us tools to deconstruct those structures and hopefully move beyond them.

[alloalouette]

It’s pretty clear that the men in my life, even the ones who oppose trump, think it’s just going to be another shitty four years filled with “stupidity”, merely.

They genuinely do not comprehend the immediate threat to safety and mortality this new era is to women, to any person who is non-white and non-conforming to conservative christofascist nationalism.

They can still go about their lives relatively unscathed if they don’t say much and just make it through what they perceive to be four years of drudgery. As much as they are concerned, and care about me and the other women in their lives, they have not grasped the deadly seriousness of the situation.

They genuinely have not perceived the future that will come soon and, once things are set in motion, will decline with extreme rapidity. Just like with roe v wade: there one day, gone the next, and life-saving care just vanished all over the country and women started literally bleeding out in parking lots.

Open misogyny and assault will become the normative social behavior, more than it already is in online right spaces, because the punishments will be few or dismissed entirely.

Men who secretly are intrigued by or even love the idea of controlling and harming women will behave with what appears to be “mob mentality”—once it is permissible they will let it all out of hiding. Just as we saw ugliness we did not dare to believe existed in family and friends come out unhindered and without shame during the first term, we will be shocked, just as we were then, at the way trump et al. will have changed, broken, people we thought we knew. The same will be true for any person with social privilege turning on anyone they deem beneath them, unworthy of dignity or safety or care.

The legal frameworks that in that past would have kept men like trump, Fuentes, Elon, and everyone they are shouldering up with from doing what they already have done to arrive at this moment—frameworks that should have been used to prevent this, their integrity having already been crippled by not being applied to stop him et al. from advancing—those remaining scaffolds of decency he is going to dismantle swiftly.

In every instance of autocracy and fascism throughout history, again and again is the shock and awe at how rapidly democratic norms, public institutions, and acceptable human behavior just unraveled.

Do not — DO NOT — imply to women, to non-white and non-conforming people in your lives that the next “four years” are going to “suck”. If that is your belief, your feeling, your impulse to say or think, hush.

Read project 2025, thoroughly.

Watch Walsh, Fuentes, and those adjacent to them, to hear their glee at owning women, at controlling and ruining, at smashing their faces into brick ceilings (gloating in their abuse and suffering, and their delight at being the hand that delivers it metaphorically and literally).

Listen to the people who are terrified. Fucking remember what trump did in four years when it was a “fluke” and everyone with a shred of decency left was scrambling to hold everything together through tenuously and wide-spread grasping fingers, futilely in many cases. Fucking remember.

Read Sarah Kendzior, Jared Yates Sexton, Heather Cox Richardson, Dave Troy, and anyone they retweet or quote. These are historians and analysts, experts in political history, especially fascism and autocracy. They are the ones running out of the mines shouting that all the canaries are dead. Pay attention.

If you want to know what to do next, start reading Octavia Butler, George Jackson, James Baldwin, and expand from there. Start listening to indigenous people and reshaping your concept of social bonds, social cohesion, and how we survive this.

It’s not how you think, men in my life. It’s not how you think, those of you who think this is reactionary and extreme. Indigenous communities that are still here today have survived every empire, for good reasons. Learn them. Learn from them.

For the rest of us, and those of you who make the inward journey and meet up with us, cultivate resistance. It begins in your heart and mind. Existence is resistance. Joy is resistance. Empathy is resistance. Anything that supports freedom for others (which will always come back to you), is resistance. Get after it.

[vintageseawitch]

this is what i think of when third party voters go around acting morally superior because they don't want to get their hands dirty like the rest of us. they're toddlers having temper tantrums because instead of using the system in a way that could benefit them in the long term like the extremist Republicans have been doing for decades, third party voters refuse to participate in local civics & then claim the entire country is already fascist. they're so cute in their naivety if they think the US can't get any worse.

what the fuck do you think will happen if you try to protest against a government with a military as massive, lethal, & expensive as ours. who do you think will be sacrificed first? oh what's that? crickets? thought so. i'm a white woman but i will absolutely use my voice to point out leftists can be racist as fuck & the anti-blackness in your spaces can be absolutely fucking wild. not everyone leftist is white, but many that are can be pretty problematic.

if you think i'm selfish then fine. if you state that you would gladly exchange my life for a Palestinian like one of you said in a comment to me a few weeks ago then fine. i'm out here fighting to make sure the people who live here in this country don't experience our own Holocaust.

if you have a problem with people wanting to fight this while claiming you're anti-genocide, you're a fucking liar & a hypocrite. you won't know what the fuck to do in a true fascist country. i don't doubt there are pockets of fascism already existing here but you thinking it's already the worst it can be is as infuriating as people who think the government is creating their massive hurricanes using weather machines. you sound just as childish & delusional. you already sound like children because you will never take responsibility for your choices if it ends up helping him win.

jill stein's campaign is a sham. she is deliberately running as a spoiler. she's a wealthy white woman who lives in a mostly white affluent neighborhood. she's going around lecturing black people about white supremacy. she is getting funds from Republicans as well as help from trump's lawyers. Lockheed Martin has given her money. she's involved in shady as fuck index funds for companies that harm the environment. she only started talking about Gaza during this election cycle to hit you in the feelings so she can bank on it. she made a whole stink about needing a recount, raised a bunch of money for that, & then that money disappeared who knows where. do you all hear this? do you care? no, you're just like maga with their orange Jesus. you don't give a FUCK about stein's red flags because she's "different."

if Harris loses & you blame anyone but yourselves, you're cowardly traitors who threw us regular Americans to the wolves because of your precious fucking principles. history has shown time & time again that protest voting typically allows something worse to take control. it's hardly ever beneficial to the people. you're vile. you don't want to make this world a better place by allowing so many near you to suffer & die. if both sides are the same then please tell me you're okay with another trump presidency. or just shut the fuck up.

i look forward to more potentially heartwarming messages saying that my life doesn't mean shit from people who allegedly are against the death penalty & are pro-human rights 🥰

please vote, don't stop talking about Project 2025, etc. i hope enough of us vote in a way that these pathetic third party voters don't gain any kind of traction. at this point i'm just angry at their hypocrisy when they don't even listen to other protestors who live here & are begging them to not vote third party. i refuse to listen to y'all not take responsibility for your part. Project 2025 will hurt us all but apparently you're okay with that or you think it's already here. smooth brain takes all around. anyways good luck & stay safe to anyone who votes blue 💙

[a-very-tired-jew]

I’ve posted about this person before, but as a refresher; I have a former friend that I’m keeping on social media to watch their spiral and how far they will go to justify their anti-Israel hatred. This person is an artist and has very anti-Western positions which are staples of this community, and is a self confessed AnCo Tankie and anti-Zionist Jew.

Today, October 1st, they repeatedly posted about the missile attack by Iran on Israel, and each post got more and more unhinged.

The first one I saw was full on denial that Iran was launching missiles at Israel. This was then coupled with them saying all footage of the attack was from the Ukraine and the “Zionists” were failing at their propaganda. Never mind that in the background you could see architecture and environment that clearly placed it in Israel or the Hebrew being spoken.

Their second post several hours later then blamed Israel for Iran’s attack. As if Iran hasn’t been using proxies to attack Israel in the past or this year.

Their third post then went off from the second and said that this attack is actually the US and the UK’s fault for overthrowing the Iranian government in 1953. Now this has some validity as this coup did set the stage for the 1979 rebellion as it undermined the democratic processes and shift in sociopolitical beliefs that had been developing. So of course people rebelled years later. However, Leftists allied with theocratic fascists and naively didn’t believe that they would follow through on the things they said they would do once in power. This same line of thinking it what underscore the current batch of Leftists supporting terrorist groups that would kill them for any one of the beliefs or positions they hold. But yeah, according to this person it’s only the West’s fault that Khomeini is in power.

They then continued with this and likened Zionism to Khomeinism and I had to actually stop and process what I was reading.

An ideology that at its most basic is a Jewish land back movement is equivalent to a religious and political ideology that is essentially theocratic fascism… I earnestly cannot wrap my head around the mental gymnastics it takes to get to that equivalency beyond being so removed from Jewish spaces, community, and culture that you can no longer tell what is what. And considering they can’t tell Hebrew from Ukrainian… well I think that’s the case.

And their last post that I saw then pushed the conspiracy that FEMA is under budgeted because the US government is sending aid to Israel. Anyone pushing this does not understand how our government works and how aid and funds are allotted. Considering this same person does not believe any state should exist and they’re a Bohemian AnCo Tankie anti-Zionist then their grasp of political systems, regulations, and processes is, at best, severely limited.

I’m still processing this tbh. I never thought I’d see a Jewish anti-Zionist justify Iran’s actions… but here we are. I think this goes beyond Bundism into straight up self loathing, which I am reticent in all aspects to label anyone a self-loathing Jew, but this is the worst I’ve seen.

[lacewise]

The same time the Brits caused the chaos that happened in 1948, the rest of the Middle East saw as an opportunity to expel their Jewish populations to Israel (to oversimplify, think about the reservations in Canada and the US—that’s how they envisioned Israel and how they expelled Jewish people while seizing all their belongings. A huge part of the reason many Middle Eastern countries are mad is Israel thrived anyway.)

Poland got rid of their Jewish population by literally committing the Holocaust

When you say, “Israel shouldn’t exist” or “Jewish people need to go back to Poland” what I hear is “we can have world peace if all Jewish people die” which is straight out of the “Protocols of Elders of Zion” (think “Birth of a Nation”) and “Mein Kampf”—this is also where ideas about Jewish people or a theoretical state of Israel wanting to “take over” the Middle East come from (they don’t, and you guys are ignoring actual Middle Eastern colonial empires engaged in society-wide human trafficking to scapegoat Jewish people. It’s weird, and I’m sure the victims find your callous disregard creepy, because they’ve actively said so—they would not feel safe in a room alone with you. Consider why that is.)

I have no idea if you guys realize you sound exactly like Adolf Hitler (who was inspired by “Protocols of Elders of Zion”) or Donald Trump (who kept “Mein Kampf” on his bedside table for years)

I’m frankly scared to ask

You cannot discuss Nakba without also discussing expulsions of Jewish people from both Europe and the Middle East—it’s disingenuous and I will not only assume you also support the Trail of Tears, I will tell other people you support the Trail of Tears

Think long and hard about if that’s something you want to be associated with, because I promise you, if other people look it up, they will see the similarities—they’re glaring—and they’ll also probably start asking questions like “why are you downplaying the Holocaust? Isn’t that Holocaust denialism?” (The answer is yes, by the way)

Depending on what else you say, I may also assume you support the enslavement of Black people by the tribes

Argue with your mirror, not with me

Regardless of what you know, some of the most prominent voices on antisemitic Tumblr and TikTok have almost certainly read “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and have been promoting hateful and baseless conspiracy theories found there, and either you haven’t noticed or you agree.

One of the main organizers is implicitly pro-other genocides and constantly spreads barely concealed hatred and bad paraphrases of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as threats directed at specific Jewish people and organizations. I have no idea how you all missed that, but I’ve always found people filled with gleeful hatred are easily distracted from both the particulars and the main facts

And you know what they say about Nazis—if one Nazi is welcome to a seat at your table, it’s a table of Nazis

The Nazism is not misguided. The calls for the death of every living Jewish person are not accidental. The flags calling for genocide did not appear out of overzealousness. It’s the point. Nazism, theocracy, fascism, and eugenics do not value mercy, and they will not give any to you, no matter how much you beg them. If you don’t quickly find your way out, you’ll find yourself dragged down, the rest of your actions discarded as tainted, and your names inscribed in the history books next to the rest of them. Decide if you want to be the shame of your families and cultures for decades to come.

May the memories of all those lost be a blessing, and may we find a way to stop repeating the mistakes of the past.

—signed a non-Jewish woman who knows how to read. You should really try it sometime.

Find a way to deradicalize yourselves.

P.S. In my offline research, I’ve found that in almost every subject, the popular information going around online is not just misinformed, but counterfactual. Especially on social media, it is the exact opposite of what every respected expert and researcher says. It’s often exact opposite of what primary sources say. If you’re getting a lot of your information from the internet, then the first thing you need to do is find offline sources. I didn’t have the information literacy to recognize how terrible the situation actually is before I started, and chances are, you don’t either. I would also recommend talking to people who spend time offline and getting some hobbies.

[brazenautomaton]

I should come up with a name for this because I think it's the unifying thread I see between communism, and fascism, and censorship / anti-shippers, and homophobia, and a bunch of other shit. some theory that seeks to unify all that really should have an elegant name, shouldn't it? but it doesn't

rambly

I've said that it's impossible to deplatform fascism or communism because their ideas are so fucking childishly simple they can be independently re-derived by anyone who is upset at the world. "I'm upset. This is the fault of someone, who hates me and did it on purpose. Oh, I hate that guy so much. He does all the bad things, and if I kill him, there will be no more bad things." and that's why nobody's able to give a coherent definition of fascism, because you can't peg "emotional immaturity and righteous ignorance" to any specific teaching, you can't keep the concept of being emotionally immature and blaming others secret.

but despite the basis of these ideologies being so simple they don't need language, communism and fascism didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. what i think happened is, there's a personality trait people have that can expand immensely, that wasn't able to expand until the railroad and telegraph shrunk the world.

and that thing I wish I had a good name for is "the belief or assumption that a person's immediate environment includes everything they're aware of."

I think it's a thing people noticed but haven't identified as the causative factor, they just use it as an insult. but people want to be in control of their environment. they want things they don't like to not be there. the ability to control and affect our immediate environment is the basic definition of agency. if it's your house, it's your rules. that's reasonable!

but with the antis, and the homophobes, and the commies, and the fascists, they clearly behave as though their "house" encompasses everything that they are aware of.

the easiest example is the early 2000s homophobia where the refrain was "do what you want in private but don't get in my face about it," used to justify fucking with people who were in nobody's face. back then we all said "that's an agentically laid lie to justify their real opinion!" and guess what with an uncoordinated group of people it's never an agentically concocted lie. they did act only to get the gays out of their faces, but their "faces" encompassed everything they know about. gay dudes are gross, gross things make them upset, the only way to not be upset is to know there's no gay dudes being gross everywhere! and this mindset is something that only happened with the telegraph because before that, the area of your awareness wasn't that big! (the exception is probably Muslims in the Holy Land)

communism and fascism are both the assumption that everything you're aware of is right in your face, it's simple, it can and should be given to you to just Do Right. you can't have this idea that you have figured out everything wrong with the world until the area of your perception is big enough that you can think you're seeing the world. once your zone of perception is wide enough you instantly believe that all of it is directly your business, everything that upsets you is happening right in your face and you have to use your personal agency to control your environment by making the upsetting things go away.

this is why antis act the way they do. it's not an agentically crafted lie to get power. their behavior is compulsive like all political behavior is compulsive. the idea that someone is Doing A Bigotry somewhere makes them very upset, and it's right in their faces, and they want to make the upsetting thing go away, and the only way to do that is to take control of anywhere the upsetting thing might happen and make it not happen. the only way they know how to do this invariably destroys everything they touch but they cannot stop themselves, they have to take control of every environment so they won't be upset by the thought of people doing bad things. the communists have to take control of all economic activity so they won't be upset by the thought of someone getting rich. the fascists have to take control of every life so they won't be upset by the thought of someone not bowing to their supremacy. this mindset cannot conclude something is none of your business, because if you're aware of it, it's your business.

[axylolo]

So I've started unfollowing everyone who is still fucking around about not voting blue in November. I've had it with this shit. You all think you're so cool with your moral superiority bullshit. Let me ask you something; what's your plan for if trump wins in November? Because I see a lot about how "Biden supports Genocide!" and "Harris is a cop!" and pretty much nothing about how not voting is going to fix ANYTHING in this country. Because the truth is, it's not. The truth is our political system is messy and dirty and awful and a lot of it is voting for someone who kind of sucks to prevent someone who is a NIGHTMARE from winning.

We have a two party system. That's a fact. It's shitty, but it's true, and not voting, or even putting a write in candidate, is not going to change it. Many people are working towards that change, but it's not here yet, so this election you've got to suck it up and vote.

And since this seems to be a sticking point; let's talk about Gaza for a second. Because I want to know, how do you think trump being elected will help Gaza? By all means, protest, donate, keep screaming from the rooftops about Gaza, it's an atrocity and as human beings we have to do everything in our power to stop it; but that does NOT include handing trump and the heritage foundation the keys to the kingdom so that they can enact their own genocide right here at home.

So fuck you and your privilege to sit at home on your high horse, refusing to vote while the rest of us are scrambling to prevent the country from descending into open fascism. I have been having almost daily panic attacks worrying about what will happen to me, to the people I love, to my community if trump is allowed to take office once more. I am terrified, and if you're not then you are either stupid or willfully blind.

And if you disagree with me? Fine. Block, unfollow, whatever. I don't want to see or hear from you. You are cowards and infants who refuse to learn that nuance exists in the world, and your giggling, smug refusal to paricipate may actually kill us. So fuck off.

[gryficowa]

Leftists have been trumpeting the return of fascism for years, but people ignored it and called it "What you can have in your own opinion" or told us that we are the problem

It started with trans people, and all the way to entire LGBT+ groups, feminists also got hit and there was no reaction because "They could have stayed quiet and not done it" (When they were on strike)

In addition, using September 11 as an excuse to harass people of Arab origin all over the world (although they live in my country and it's more white people who do shit here), dehumanized people, but it's the Arabs' fault that one crazy person flew a plane into two towers , True?

Fascism was reborn at the beginning of this century, but with Trump and Rowling it became more and more visible, but people thought it was nothing bad

2020 was also the point where fascism became acceptable (In my country, there was a campaign against LGBT+ people and women on strike after the ban on abortion on a damaged fetus, and then the dehumanization of people at the border who were deceived by Lukashenko, but as you said, it was was, then they called you under the propaganda of Lukashenko or Putin, yes, being a good person means being a traitor, I'd rather be a traitor than their "Hero")

It's no better abroad either, tik tok has become the only place, which has caused a lot of damage, including the resurgence of pro-ana, the destruction of the postivi body and the acceptance of autism

In 2024, many people's eyes have been opened, when anti-genocide strikes are attacked and people fighting for a free Palestine are called anti-Semites (Even if they are Jews), unfortunately, as before, people woke up to the genocide and the awareness that it is taking place, the holocaust was not stopped either and people were terrified only when it all came to light, now we can try to stop it, but there might not have been a genocide if we had reacted earlier when Israel used segregation to separate them from the Israelis

I'm born in 01, i.e. a zoomer, I used the Internet only for flash games, although I preferred DVD games (I watched as many cartoons from CDs, I watched them on TV when they were on, but that didn't mean I liked them as much as the DVD ones)

I watched Mini Mini while others were watching CN, hence I was considered immature by people in my class (10-14 years old)

It is possible that it was cartoons that helped me develop empathy (I have ASD, and it is a myth that autism does not have empathy), although I was never able to show it, and being a scapegoat did not help me much

I encountered LGBT+ at the age of 13, but thanks to the propaganda from religion classes you can guess what my approach was (Howrse, forum, censoring the word "Gay" as if it was a curse, WTF)

I don't remember when I realized that I was an aroace, because I was always an aroace, but I didn't know, for me the word "Love" didn't mean what cis hetero people consider love, for me it meant relationships where someone is close to you (Family, your pet, friendship etc…)

The first glimpses that something was wrong, I saw a certain Polish YouTuber explaining his transphobia (This was the moment when young and stupid me got a warning light, because if knowing being trans was an option for me, it doesn't change the fact that there was something wrong here yes, cognitive dissonance from cartoons I watched as a kid about that the most important thing is to be yourself and accept yourself, that others should also accept you, and then you come across this, even if you don't understand, you know that this creator's thinking is bad)

I became more interested in politics in 2020, when President Andrzej Duda (Rapper of the Year) said "LGBT+ is not people, it's an ideology", then I already knew that I was LGBT+ (I didn't use "Aroace" then, but "Asexual" and "Aromatic" )

Then I realized how many bad people there are and how they hate someone for their very existence. I can't blame myself for not being interested in politics before, because I was a child (Although pedophiles will probably say that "You weren't a child, you were a teenager", shut up!)

I had Twitter for a year because they blocked it, classic for "Inciting suicide" (But pedophiles and fascists can go unpunished, Twitter standards, they complain that Elon Musk destroyed it, no, he didn't destroy it, he was always fucked up)

I feel like I've grown up too quickly, and I've come so far in my development that it turned out that many people I trusted turned out to be bad, well, maybe loneliness isn't so bad, I have a cat, a dog and my own third party liability insurance, maybe not people (Or real ones…), but it's better than fake friendships, right?

2020 was a turning point for everything, entering politics and discovering how many people were actually mocking you and weren't your friends (Wasted years, even when they started a separate group to mock me and made a remake of my photo from 2013, where they stuck my face into a drawing of a penis… And yet I forgave them + I blamed it on myself, that I reacted badly to everything, when they pointed it out to me, that I was "exaggerating", I left groups, they added me again and so on endlessly)

It doesn't make it easier that in high school I had a toxic support teacher who controlled and criticized me (and laughed at me) at every step, and called my "meltdowns" aggressive and turned them into a note for the diary

So I've been in toxic relationships in real life and online, and this realization is killing me...

But coming back, we had the return of fascism and now people were hit with the realization that "Not an opinion" is "Fascism", the question is how long this approach will last and everything will not return to the status quo

[cyberthot666]

the other night I spent a long time watching this hyper-christian woman’s videos. her entire ideology was basically that women were made to obey their husbands and have their babies and keep their homes blah blah blah you know how it goes. they were super triggering but I couldn’t stop watching. it shocks me people think like that. and it made me grateful I live in a country with freedom from religion. it was forced upon me as a child which was traumatizing. as a little girl being told that my only purpose and the reason for my existence was for men to use me however they please.

this woman on tiktok seemed to have a common theme in her thinking. she mostly stuck to topics of how women should dress, how women should behave, how women should speak, how women should believe, and how women should cater to their husbands. her advice was condescending. her tone prideful. I thought it must be miserable to hate yourself and other women this much. I thought about the hypocrisy in her superiority complex. modern western christianity seems to be full of hypocrisy, pridefulness, and entitlement.

it takes entitlement to be so convinced your belief system is the only correct belief system and that you’re doing others a favor by forcing it onto them.

even though I reject religious ideology as an adult I still retained a lot of its messages. and if there’s anything I learned, it’s that very attitude of entitlement that stands in direct opposition to the teachings of christ. these fake christians tempt me to convert back as a form of protest to their hypocrisy. did jesus not teach us to walk in humility? to “love thy neighbor” ?

religion and misogyny rot the mind. religion is used as a tool to control.

thank ~god~ I had the choice to walk away

there are women in countries who don’t have that choice. there are women in THIS country who don’t have that choice. and with the rise in christo-fascism in america, woman-hating has become rampant. it’s important to educate ourselves. it’s important to have open minds. it’s important to protect our freedom. and it’s important to love one another. walk in love not ego. and I don’t need a 2,000 year old book to tell me that.