#EXISTENCE IS RESISTANCE

[geldatchonfury]

“There's something liberating about fighting an obvious enemy as opposed to one you have to prove exists.”

This quote comes from Trevor Noah who answered an audience member’s question about the difference between racism in the USA versus racism in South Africa. But it’s starting to feel relevant again now that there’s a white South African, billionaire goonicus throwing Nazi salutes on live television.

In Trevor Noah’s answer (which has lived rent free in my head for years) he even says, “I often think the greatest gift the Apartheid government gave us is that it was there. It was happening to you. It wasn't hidden.”

I think it would be too easy and wrong to cave to defeatism when, honestly, I think we should be rejoicing. Our enemies are peeling off the masks declaring themselves. It’s not a question anymore. They’re not hiding, which will make it easier to call them out for what they are.

So, yeah. They can try to scrub this from the internet, but we won’t forget. Those fuckers are on the wrong side of history and always have been.

Do not let them erase this. Do not let them tell you he meant "my heart goes out for you."

This man is the grandson of a Canadian Nazi sympathizer who moved to South Africa BECAUSE he thought the apartheid was just the coolest.

He has a gaggle of kids specifically because he believes his genes are superior and need to be spread to improve humanity.

He has thrown his support behind the neonazi party in Germany and the far right party in the UK, not to mention how far he's wormed up the ass of the Republican party.

He threw two sieg heil salutes back to back at the inauguration of the president of the United States and is trying to scrub the evidence off the internet.

Elon Reeve Musk is a fucking Nazi.

[bingusteaweeb]

Upon recent events — stay safe my fellow american-based trans ppl 🏳️‍⚧️💚

[kinetic-chaos]

Hateful, bigoted fucks will never be able to dictate if you can or cannot exist.

Keep existing, keep resisting. Nobody, no matter how ignorant, will ever be able to erase us.

[triaelf9]

Hey

The biggest middle finger you can send, the most basic way to resist is to just EXIST.

Focus on existing for now, and go from there.

❤️

[butchdogfight]

your masculinity should scare people who are afraid to be themselves / self-made man ✂️

[permit-the-clod]

simultaneously feeling dread but also the intense desire to exist out of spite, no matter what happens i will always be trans and no orange dipshit can take that from me

n e ways here's a flag i made in honor of this feeling

[userautumn]

download fics. download wikipedia pages. buy history books. read history books. start writing in a journal by hand. do what you can to preserve the past. it's all we have.

[kizsumi]

Little pride headshots! Also, happy MLK day!

[netscapenavigator-official]

If you’re feeling down because the people who want you dead have won, why would you then turn around and side with them, surrendering your life to their cause?

The phrase “existence is resistance” is not without meaning. It’s overused, sure, but it isn’t some phrase that’s just supposed be “wow how radical.” It means exactly what it says. You hate these people and anyone who thinks like them. So why would you ever think like them and believe that the world is better off without you in it?

You know they’re wrong when they think it, so what’s it gonna take for you to realize that you’re wrong when you think it too?

[miguel-owhora]

Please do not give up. Do not stop fighting, do not stop living, I know it feels scary and disappointing, I know it feels like the end of the world, but it's not. The fight will be harder, we will suffer, but we will not die and we will not cease to exist. Existence is the most powerful form of rebellion and resistance; we cannot afford to submit to our oppressors, we cannot afford to give up. They fear our existence and our hope for a better future, and if we give up, we lose everything we've fought for. Things will not be easy, but it's not the end. It never is, and it never will be. We'll see the sun shining once more, on a very bright and clear blue sky.

[henry4wenry]

[oistrong]

Tired of the pain

Tired of being sick

Tired of the nightmares coming back

I'm tired. And I'm tired of resisting being tired.

My existence is resistance. For all those reasons and now for more reasons. I don't want to resist anymore....

[victusinveritas]

Credit: gardenfullofslugs on Insta

Note: there's no supposed to be, only is. The moon still exists, people still get together and mock cybertrucks...

Never obey in advance. Don't let fear and hatred win. If nothing else out of spite and rage (my chosen motivators).

[dreamerandthedarkhalf]

Just in case it gets lost or put behind a paywall or something, here's the full article. 1 When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Last week Donald Trump appointed a director of intelligence who spouts Russian propaganda, a Christian nationalist crusader as secretary of defence, and a secretary of health who is a vaccine sceptic. If Trump was seeking to destroy American democracy, the American state and American values, this is how he’d do it.

2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI director is on record as wanting to prosecute certain journalists. Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train. It’s already later than you think.

3 To name is to understand. This is McMuskism: it’s McCarthyism on steroids, political persecution + Trump + Musk + Silicon Valley surveillance tools. It’s the dawn of a new age of political witch-hunts, where burning at the stake meets data harvesting and online mobs.

4 If that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan.  Trump’s administration will be incompetent and reckless but individuals will be targeted, institutions will cower, organisations will crumble. Fast. The chilling will be real and immediate.

5 You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not. If you’re a US institution or organisation, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice.

6 Do not kiss the ring. Do not bend to power. Power will come to you, anyway. Don’t make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs to bend the knee until there’s an actual memo to that effect. WAIT FOR THE MEMO.

7 Know who you are. This list is a homage to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder. His On Tyranny, published in 2017, is the essential guide to the age of authoritarianism. His first command, “Do not obey in advance”, is what has been ringing, like tinnitus, in my ears ever since the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris. In some weird celestial stroke of luck, he calls me as I’m writing this and I ask for his updated advice: “Know what you stand for and what you think is good.”

8 Protect your private life. The broligarchy doesn’t want you to have one. Read Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: they need to know exactly who you are to sell you more shit. We’re now beyond that. Surveillance Authoritarianism is next. Watch The Lives of Others, the beautifully told film about surveillance in 80s east Berlin. Act as if you are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the Stasi. It is.

9 Throw up the Kool-Aid. You drank it. That’s OK. We all did. But now is the time to stick your fingers down your throat and get that sick tech bro poison out of your system. Phones were – still are – a magic portal into a psychedelic fun house of possibility. They’re also tracking and surveilling you even as you sleep while a Silicon Valley edgelord plots ways to tear up the federal government.

10 Listen to women of colour. Everything bad that happened on the internet happened to them first. The history of technology is that it is only when it affects white men that it’s considered a problem. Look at how technology is already being used to profile and target immigrants. Know that you’re next. 11 Think of your personal data as nude selfies. A veteran technology journalist told me this in 2017 and it’s never left me. My experience of “discovery” – handing over 40,000 emails, messages, documents to the legal team of the Brexit donor I’d investigated – left me paralysed and terrified. Think what a hostile legal team would make of your message history. This can and will happen.

12 Don’t buy the bullshit. A Securities and Exchange judgment found Facebook had lied to two journalists – one of them was me – and Facebook agreed to pay a $100m penalty. If you are a journalist, refuse off the record briefings. Don’t chat on the phone; email. Refuse access interviews. Bullshit exclusives from Goebbels 2.0 will be a stain on your publication for ever.

13 Even dickheads love their dogs. Find a way to connect to those you disagree with. “The obvious mistakes of those who find themselves in opposition are to break off relations with those who disagree with you,” texts Vera Krichevskaya, the co-founder of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent TV station. “You cannot allow anger and narrow your circle.”

14 Pay in cash. Ask yourself what an international drug trafficker would do, and do that. They’re not going to the dead drop by Uber or putting 20kg of crack cocaine on a credit card. In the broligarchy, every data point is a weapon. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app. Turn on disappearing messages. 15 Remember. Writer Rebecca Solnit, an essential US liberal voice, emails: “If they try to normalize, let us try to denormalize. Let us hold on to facts, truths, values, norms, arrangements that are going to be under siege. Let us not forget what happened and why.”

16 Find allies in unlikely places. One of my most surprising sources of support during my trial(s) was hard-right Brexiter David Davis. Find threads of connection and work from there.

17 There is such a thing as truth. There are facts and we can know them. From Tamsin Shaw, professor in philosophy at New York University: “‘Can the sceptic resist the tyrant?’ is one of the oldest questions in political philosophy. We can’t even fully recognise what tyranny is if we let the ruling powers get away with lying to us all.”

18 Plan. Silicon Valley doesn’t think in four-year election cycles. Elon Musk isn’t worrying about the midterms. He’s thinking about flying a SpaceX rocket to Mars and raping and pillaging its rare earth minerals before anyone else can get there. We need a 30-year road map out of this.

19 Take the piss. Humour is a weapon. Any man who feels the need to build a rocket is not overconfident about his masculinity. Work with that.

20 They are not gods. Tech billionaires are over-entitled nerds with the extraordinary historical luck of being born at the exact right moment in history. Treat them accordingly.

[nando161mando]

"No al genocidi, existir és resistir" (CA: Català)

"No to the genocide, existence is resistance" (EN: English)