#MAGA censorship

[tomorrowusa]

« Why do children’s stories about the Civil Rights era generate such visceral MAGA opposition, including passionate demands to ban books in schools and libraries? Because the savages in these stories are not hatchet-wielding Indians on the prairie or slaves bound on ships from Africa. They are Southern white Christian conservatives who blow up little girls in church, shoot Black heroes in the back and murder courageous young men under the cowardly cover of a Mississippi night.

[ … ]

There was a time when mindless natives whooped and scalped their way through the stylized plains of 1950s Hollywood. Conservatives continue to view that era as a cultural lodestar. But the old sets have been struck. »

— Francis Wilkinson at Talking Points Memo, one of the most enduring political blogs.

Yeah, concepts like the "winning of the west" and the "paternalistic plantation owner" will die hard with rightwingers.

It's true that Hollywood and even the early years of TV programming had much to do with perpetrating these distortions of history. But as long ago as the late 1960s attempts were being made to take a more reality-based view of history.

This is actually from a comedy group called "The Firesign Theater" The blurb at YouTube gives the original release date as 1968. Although it's obviously satire, it must have given people back then a more unvarnished view of history than John Wayne films.

So the effort to demythologize the more blatant distortions in US history goes back more than half a century. The difference is that it's now trending mainstream and therefore is being strongly resisted by those with an interest in preserving such distortions.

[lenbryant]

MAGA parents will have our school theater departments producing drivel instead of drama before you know it. They wouldn't want children feeling uncomfortable or raising WOKE issues. I guess the 2,500-year old "Oedipus" with all its murder, incest, suicide, mythical beasts, and bloody, self-inflicted eye disgorgement is out of the question now?

(NYT) It’s Getting Hard to Stage a School Play Without Political Drama

At a time when lawmakers and parents are seeking to restrict what can and cannot be taught in classrooms, many teachers are seeing efforts to limit what can be staged in their auditoriums.

July 4, 2023

Stevie Ray Dallimore, an actor and teacher, had been running the theater program for a private boys’ school in Chattanooga for a decade, but he never faced a school year like this one.

A proposed production of ���She Kills Monsters” at a neighboring girls’ school that would have included his students was rejected for gay content, he said. A “Shakespeare in Love” at the girls’ school that would have featured his boys was rejected because of cross-dressing. His school’s production of “Three Sisters,” the Chekhov classic, was rejected because it deals with adultery and there were concerns that some boys might play women, as they had in the past, he said.

School plays — long an important element of arts education and a formative experience for creative adolescents — have become the latest battleground at a moment when America’s political and cultural divisions have led to a spike in book bans, conflicts over how race and sexuality are taught in schools, and efforts by some politicians to restrict drag performances and transgender health care for children and teenagers.

For decades student productions have faced scrutiny over whether they are age-appropriate, and more recently left-leaning students and parents have pushed back against many shows over how they portray women and people of color. The latest wave of objections is coming largely from right-leaning parents and school officials.

The final act in Dallimore’s yearlong drama in Chattanooga? He learned that his position at McCallie School, along with that of his counterpart at the nearby Girls Preparatory School, was being eliminated. They were invited to apply for a single new position overseeing theater at both schools; both educators are now out of the jobs.

“This is obviously a countrywide issue that we are a small part of,” Dallimore said. “It’s definitely part of a bigger movement — a strongly concerted effort of politics and religion going hand in hand, banning books and trying to erase history and villainizing otherness.”

A McCallie spokeswoman, Jamie Baker, acknowledged that the two school theater positions had been eliminated so the programs could be combined but said that “implying or asserting in any way that the contract of McCallie’s theater director was not renewed because of content concerns would be inaccurate.” She noted that the school has a “Judeo-Christian heritage and commitment to Christian principles,” and added, “That we would and will continue to make decisions aligned with these commitments should be no surprise to anyone.”

Drama teachers around the country say they are facing growing scrutiny of their show selections, and that titles that were acceptable just a few years ago can no longer be staged in some districts. The Educational Theater Association released a survey of teachers last month that found that 67 percent say censorship concerns are influencing their selections for the upcoming school year.

(Photo) After a production of “Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood” was canceled by a school in Fort Wayne, Ind., the students staged it at a local outdoor theater.Matt McClain/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

[sjw-irritant]

[godisarepublican]

[relaxedstyles]

[dosesofcommonsense]

I’ve reached a point where I cannot respond to the hateful, “you should kill yourself”, “you’ve got a small dick” projection messages.

So, to everyone who sees these, some housekeeping items.

To my outright followers, THANK YOU. I made this page for us. You are not alone. #wwg1wga

To the people who look in time to time, by all means search, learn, comment, reblog, share away.

To the hateful, the only people - and I repeat the ONLY people who ever drop those hate-filled, projection messages - those people are communists and socialists.

Like Elon Musk recently said, “Free speech isn’t free unless you let people say things you disagree with.” I’m all for free speech. And while there is no such thing as hate speech, you can say hateful and reprehensible things. Furthermore, while there is no hate speech, there are things that most baseline moral people agree don’t belong on social media, like telling someone to go kill themselves. Not every adult can deal with that, and not every account on here is used by a legal adult. Suicide messages aren’t cool.

So, if you see a “go kill yourself” message, report it.

If you see a “fuck off you little, dicked weasel”, let it be and know it’s being posted by a communist/socialist who’s projecting their fears of inadequacy onto someone, anyone else.

To my followers, thank you.

To everybody, check out the video.

The haters: “You post pro-America, love of country, love of patriots, pro-individual rights, pro-liberty, anti-corporation, small government, common sense things. I’m offended.”

[kinialohaguy]

Liberté Perdue

Aloha kākou. Liberté Perdue. Once the government controls the free flow of information, nothing else exists except approved state-run propaganda. When Marxist democrats say President Trump is a threat to democracy, but then restricts free speech upon others, then their definition of free speech comes into question. There are very few social media sites that allow free expression on their…

[undergroundusa]

"The socio-political ideology that champions censorship only exists on the far-Left. Then, we shouldn’t be surprised. Censorship and re-definitive propaganda are a staple of Marxists and fascists, and today’s far-Left is a cadre of Marxists who employ fascist tactics…"

ORIGINAL CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/the-misinformation-and-disinformation

READ, SUBSCRIBE, SHARE & EDUCATE

The Misinformation & Disinformation Con

[commiepinkofag]

Across the internet, communities of queer and trans youth have mobilized to oppose KOSA as the legislation became increasingly entangled in longstanding culture war debates over sex education and queer visibility in schools.

By Mike Ludwig , Truthout Published August 13, 2024

Despite many changes to the bill’s language since it was first introduced in 2022, KOSA continues to face stiff opposition from LGBTQ and digital rights groups. They take umbrage with the bill’s so-called “duty of care” provision for content recommendation, which makes internet companies responsible for designing their products to mitigate for broad threats to minors, such as “suicide,” “gambling” and “sexual exploitation.” Digital rights groups argue the provision would encourage tech companies to overcorrect and respond to threats from politicians by censoring reproductive and mental health resources, particularly for transgender youth and others who rely on the internet for support and information to navigate the marginalization of their identities. Across the internet, communities of queer and trans youth have mobilized to oppose KOSA as the legislation became increasingly entangled in longstanding culture war debates over sex education and queer visibility in schools. “The changes that I, LGBTQ+ advocates, parents, student activists, civil rights orgs, and others have fought for over the last two years have made it less likely that the bill can be used as a tool for MAGA extremists to wage war on legal and essential information to teens,” Wyden recently wrote on social media. “While constructive, these improvements remain insufficient.” Wyden and LGBTQ rights groups have reason to worry. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who worked with Democrats on KOSA, said in 2023 that the bill could be used to censor content and shield young people from “indoctrination” and, as she put it, “the transgender.” After Democrats updated the bill earlier this year in an attempt to appease LGBTQ groups, Republicans, fed a diet of online misinformation about queer people, began to see KOSA as part of some liberal conspiracy to promote gender nonconformity, which does not exist.

[ralfmaximus]

A Texas county has mandated public libraries move a well-regarded children's book documenting the mistreatment of Native Americans in New England — Colonization and the Wampanoag Story — from the "non-fiction" section to "fiction." The decision was made after the government of Montgomery County, under pressure from right-wing activists, removed librarians from the process of reviewing children's books and replaced them with a "Citizens Review Committee." Colonization and the Wampanoag Story was "challenged" by an unknown person on September 10, 2024. The Committee responded by ordering that the book be moved to the fiction section of public libraries in Montgomery County by October 17, 2024

Note that it usually only takes one person to "challenge" a library book for the whole process of book removal/banning/reclassification to begin. In many cases where hundreds of books are challenged, all the challenges come from one person.

And in this case, the librarians made the correct, informed decision but the MAGA weirdos in charge didn't like that. So they changed the rules.

Happy Columbus Day Indigenous Peoples Day!

[tomorrowusa]

Trump is emo because he's claiming that Google search results make him look bad. Maybe this will encourage him to sell a new official (and overpriced) product: Trump Crying Towels®.

If you act like an asshole, make frequent threats against others, and promise to destroy American democracy, of course the search results for you will be negative. D'oh!

In his typical sore loser mode, Trump is promising to prosecute Google if he's put back in the Oval Office.

Donald Trump threatened on Friday to direct the justice department to pursue criminal charges against Google if he is elected president, claiming the company was unfairly displaying negative news articles about him but not his 2024 election opponent Kamala Harris. The complaint – the latest threat on the campaign trail from Trump to wield the power of the presidency in response to enemies real or perceived – came in an abrupt post on Truth Social. “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump said in the post.

Trump is trying to influence the refs. More precisely, he's trying to intimidate the refs.

There are already countless trolls (real and bots) and foreign agents of disinformation working on Trump's behalf. He won't be happy until every outlet of information stops reporting the truth about his depravity.

[nando161mando]

Tell me again how the right has no dictator or authoritarian tendencies. They still love democracy, right?

[sjw-irritant]

[godisarepublican]

[jangillman]

We’re fighting for the future of the Free World!

[kinialohaguy]

Political Trinity

Aloha kākou. Remember when Marxist democrats promised us “Hope and Change?” And all we got was Fear and Doubt. There’s a reason why Trump, Kennedy, and Musk are Here and Now. We have the best opportunity to achieve Peace and Prosperity once again. Let’s not squander it.  POWERFUL MOMENT! WATCH as President Trump calls Robert Kennedy Jr. to the stage, and the crowd lights up instantly! This is a…