#Pandemic Preaching

[nyxfaei]

We should have never stopped fucking masking. We should have never fucking started pretending that the pandemic was over.

Not even my dad will mask around and for me ugh

[snoopkat14]

Something some people have been doing to me that's grinding my gears is saying "to fight what's going on you need to get comfortable being the 'odd' ball out in society. Be different! Don't conform!!!"

And yeah I'm all for that but I do that everytime I'm in public? I wear a mask. If y'all wanna discuss being the "odd ball" out at the grocery store or mall put a mask on.

"Show solidarity and support for people!!!"

I do, I wear a mask to protect my community and others even when they don't care to protect me or others. Every. Single. Day.

School, work, shopping, movies, concerts, etc.

[leeloooonfire]

based on this post about Steve's internalized bi-phobia:

Steve has known for years.

And how could he not when Tommy's freckles come back tenfold each spring like a flower peaking it's head through the last layer of snow? Or when Matthew Carver's hair have a reddish brown tone that turns blond after they spent the last days before summer break practising outside and remind Steve of liquid gold? Or when he watches Star Wars and Harrison Ford, rugged and witty, comes into view and twists his stomach in knots? How could he not know?!

Steve knows he finds guys as attractive as girls, known for many, many years. But.

But he can't. Not when Tommy sneers at that boy in their literature class who likes flamboyant clothes and wants to be an actor on Broadway. Not when the people they meet in Indi who are like Robin and Eddie 'fully queer' and talk about people like Steve as if they're traitors and scams. Not when he reads the newspaper and is assaulted by Reagan and his folk preaching about the 'fag pandemic' or how his father nods in approval and mutters 'another sinner gone for good' when the news play on TV and they occasionally mention the crisis that kills people like Robin and Eddie and him.

Like him....

It doesn't matter how much he loves sleeping with his nose pressed against Eddie's collarbone or that he thinks he'd like to kiss Eddie and hold his hands and wake up beside him until they're old and wrinkly and complain about bad knees.

He is, but he cannot be a queer, half a fairy '50% like me, 50% like Eddie' as Robin jokes.

He will not be a bisexual, he can keep it inside, keep it hidden, buried deep inside him no matter how much it pains him. He can be the straight friend who goes to pride and bakes rainbow cakes and marries a woman even though his heart screams in an ear ringing cacophony, 'Eddie, Eddie Eddie Eddie!'

This is how his 20s go: loud and hurting and yearning and hiding and more noticeably being disgusted and ashamed of himself for simply being able to love men the way he can love women.

He's 29 when his wife, Becky, leaves him. It's not just Eddie and this shameful secret that weights heavy on their relationship, but the scars and all the other secrets he is unable to explain to her that drive Becky finally away - back to Boston. She leaves him alone in that tiny house they bought three years ago with their Saint Bernard puppy they lovingly named Bernadette.

He's 30 when he goes to a coffee meeting of the bisexual group meeting in Chicago, nearly turning the car multiple times, hands and knees sweaty with fear that they won't want him there. They do want him there, welcome him with open arms, and talk about things Steve knows all too well: 'When I fell in love with the first girl, I ran. I like men just fine, so I hid my crush. It's just easier, when your parents hate gays, when the world is shaming our community, when we're dying.' He finds a second home there, and learns - learns about queerness and bisexuality, about trans and gender non conforming people and physical attraction versus emotional attraction. He learns about his past and present and about his future, about their history and where they want to go, how they want to mold their world to fit people like them into it without the pain and the hiding.

Steve is 33 when he finally comes out to everyone dear to him. To the kids who aren't kids anymore and to Joyce and Hopper, and then his parents. this does not go well, but Steve doesn't want, doesn't need their validation anymore. He has his family, his friends, his support system who love him not regardless of his sexuality but because of it, love him because it's part of him. He comes out to Becky, too and that goes much better. they want to be friends, in the future. She's also met Gary who works the the NY Times and wants her to follow him into the big city. So Steve is looking forward how that goes, their tentative friendship.

He is 34 when Eddie comes back from his latest world tour and wants to take a break to rekindle with his uncle, to write new songs, to take a breather. It's only natural that Eddie moves into Steve's guest room and takes over his space on the couch where he cuddles Bernadette while Steve is in the kitchen and makes them grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner.

Its even more natural when their feet meet while watching a movie and they lean into each other in the kitchen, dawn barely there, while they wait for the coffee maker to finish.

Steve's 35 when Eddie finally kisses him and he kisses back. No hurt, no shame, no guilt gnawing on him, Steve finally allows himself to be with the person he truly wants - regardless of their gender.

[conceptofjoy]

this is why i take my conundrums to the internet. brilliant idea

theres an anime con in a month or two that i cant rly think of what to cosplay for.. id do amanda saw if it wouldnt be a bajillion degrees outside lol

[fuck-customers]

I read the articles that Rodney attached on that one ask about people being more rude after the pandemic. I do agree with all of that, but none of those articles talked about the part that I'm worried about: the future.

From what I've seen as someone who has worked continuously pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic (at the same job, so there's a sample bias maybe) is that yes, there 100% has been a clear and definitive shift in the way people talk to/treat others and a dramatic increase in rudeness/disrespectful behavior, what about the future? The articles don't really touch on whether or not this is reversible. Of course no one can truly know, but still. Is this what I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life whenever I have to interact with a stranger? Especially in a retail environment? People calling me stupid to my face, being passive-aggressive and backhandedly saying that I'm too stupid to do my job, or just blatantly telling me I'm stupid, tattling on me to the manager for saying "have a good one" instead of "have a good day."

These are all real things that have happened to me recently, by the way. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I wanted to stress that I had a woman be passive-aggressive and say things like "wow they'll hire anyone here, huh?" and then escalated to blatantly calling me stupid to my face YESTERDAY. (12/19) From what I've seen, I fear there is no hope for the future. I fear that this will be the way people behave forever, or at least the rest of my life. I'm only 27, the idea of having to spend the next 50+ years dealing with these kinds of people (and they'll still be around, even if I don't work retail) makes me want to jump off a bridge. I don't want to be so negative and depressed, but I'm having a very hard time envisioning a positive future.

Posted by admin Rodney

[blackpilljesus]

Why I'm no longer a feminist

For context I've been heavily involved in liberal & radical feminist spaces, skirted around marxfems but they're all similar behaviour wise while claiming to be better than others which is what all the below points are based on. All of these apply irrespective of the type of feminism.

Feminism failed - Around 2020/2021 when I was still a feminist, I read an article about how feminism failed and realised it was right. It highlighted how it's been decades of feminism yet it took a pandemic to set women back (women turning to sex work to survive, women quitting their jobs to take care of kids) and it got me thinking. All this pandering to moids, all this work, yet women are always one political disaster away from losing it all. Now tbf it isn't exactly a fair battle with decades of established feminism going up against millenias of oppression but the below points certainly do not help feminism move womens freedom/rights forward.

So much infighting - Nobody is ever a true feminist. Despite everything feminists would say about maIe violence & how it affects womens lives; they'd lash out, smear, or block women that actually hated maIes. I'll never forget being blocked by a big feminist page for saying how women would be better off living without maIes in our lives using their poll data collected on what women would do if maIes didn't exist for 24 hours. They claimed I was being hateful to maIes like come tf on everyone else gets to hate their oppressor but women. Also I've noticed feminists are generally nicer to maIes despite all the abuse but harsher to women they disagree with. Complaining about maIes is just a hobby to them, when a woman more serious comes along they attack that woman more than they attack abusive maIes. Similarly they defend maIes more fiercely than they defend women & girls. Says a lot about their character. I'll expand more on these phenomenons on lower points. Having civil disagreements among feminists is rare (which is what happens when there's no direction) as disagreements will end up in explosive fights full of abuse, smearing, doxxing, etc. It's especially worse as a lot of the time these fights are over moids.

No clear goal or direction - It can't even be agreed among feminists who the movement is for, who is benefitting & being harmed by the system, and the goal. I get that there's usually factions within big ideologies but there's almost no cohesion among feminists which makes it difficult to even discuss let alone advocate so instead of moving forward, feminists go around in circles. Feminism doesn't seem to actually be going anywhere.

Not helpful to marginalised women (in the west) - Despite claims of adopting Intersectionality, marginalised women are often left out of serious mainstream conversations by feminists i.e. black women left out of blm as voices & efforts are focused on marginalised maIes.

Lot of copium - Rather than addressing problems, many feminists want to pretend the problem doesn't exist with a sister circle of women that'll do the same.

Realised how toxic & complicit women are - Even several feminists can be toxic maIe lovers willing to drag any woman & her name through mud for maIes sake. So much enabling behaviour is peddalled in the name of "sisterhood" but let it be a woman that doesn't want anything to do with maIes and feminists have no problem excluding & hating on her. Feminists speak about how women are just too kind & empathetic for their own good which is very misleading. Women are manipulative & also calculative with their actions, they aren't the innocent victims feminists preach them to be (not saying they have to be innocent but it's disingenuous & reckless pretending otherwise). Women (including feminists) will be gentle with maIes but harsher with women; especially women that merely disagree with them. Another issue I have with feminists is that (especially with radfems) they push "men bad women good" agenda when women are also bad. Just because they're oppressed doesn't mean they cant be bad. Whenever women have power (esp over other women) they can be evil. Besides the fact that women still love moids despite everything they do & their "bountless empathy goodwill nature" mostly extends to maIes says a lot about their so-called "goodness".

Realised most of this is just a pass-time until women find & lock in their nigels - Even fierce radical feminists of the 80s that went all out eventually settled down with a moid & kids reflecting on their radfem days as a hobby. I'm not looking to do the same. Many feminists, even the most staunch ones eventually end up bragging about finding a good man that's not like the rest, he's different they're sure of it (said every woman ever). The thing that gets me is that they cant even shut up about their nigel in a space supposedly for women, they want to affirm their ego by flaunting their special nigel to other women then months down the line it's "actually he was a manipulative POS" sure sis.

Saw how common maIe panderering is - each type of feminist accuses the other of pandering to maIes when they all do it, just in different ways and yes this includes radfems which was my last straw. Also many feminists prop up maIe voices even for the most simplest thing, they'll stand behind maIes being treated like crap by other ones for defending women but they wouldn't do that to women. I've realised that for most feminists it isn't about helping women advance irrespective of maIes but reforming maIes for their personal desires which takes me to the next point.

Despite all the complaining, statistics, news, theory, analysis; most feminists want to be with a moid & reproduce at some point completely overlooking everything they preach - I've realised how performative most feminists are. Separatism & the notion of not dating or reproducing with maIes gets so much hate bc these women only want to complain & get dopamine off playing victim. They want to have their cake and eat it and I want to part in that. Gets draining being in these spaces if you actually want nothing to do with moids & their evil. You get attacked for hating or wanting nothing to do with maIes instead of wanting to reform them. It's at a point where I'm agitated seeing the same headlines, discourse, theory, etc repetitively. It's like a pest, it irritates me because nothing will change. Moids will continue to abuse women with no consequences & women (including feminists) will continue to love them. I just dont care anymore. I've noticed the maIe panderers & reformers obsess over the repetitive theory, headlines, stats, etc because they want to change maIes to make it easier to settle down with them. Those of us who see that moids are past the point of redemption & want them gone aren't spending our days dolling out the same stats & theories. Look at many serious separatist/4b et al pages, many of them don't talk about maIes much (second half of this anons ask was questioning why I don't prominently speak about men & misogyny) and this is because we see the pattern, have drawn our conclusions, and now want to move forward. Saw the below photo in my gallery & it sums up this point tho it applies to all feminist communities. Drives you crazy when you're not invested in maIes or forming relationships with them. SN; bear discourse is also an example of this.

Realised that this goes beyond witty one-liners & comebacks - I feel like many feminists have created a culture of who can have the hottest take & it's become a thing of snapping back at maIes sorta like the below video explains rather than caring about women.

At some point when you actually don't care for maIes, you don't feel much & the discourse means nothing. I dont care if their behaviour is social or biological, I dont care if they can be reformed, I don't care if I or my actions dont make sense to moids, I just view them all as threats & want to be safe from their evil. No amount of throwing stats & headlines at moids will get them to change. Even if you "win" debates it doesn't bring material value for women but of course this pads many feminists egos as they've got an interest in changing maIes.

Saviour complex - many feminists have saviour complexes which causes arrogance fuelling many of the problems above. People are more aware than they let on and this includes about misogyny but a lot of feminists care more about looking like heros to feel good about themselves rather than actually helping women & girls. P.S todays set of feminists aren't the first set (or even first 3) of women to have the 'theory' of patriarchy that they do.

Feminism has generally done good work over the years for women but with what I want I dont see feminism achieving it. The light switch flipped for me when I saw that these issues from feminists weren't because of a minority but a majority. This isn't even personal I've seen feminists treat other women like crap for maIe validation. Look at what happened when the depp v heard trial was going on & how several feminists initially sided with depp to prove they can hold "female abusers" accountable & claim moids are victims with the expectation maIes can do the same. Feminists even went against andrea dworkin herself when she was raped. I've realised most women do not want liberation as this will likely come without their happily-ever-after life with maIes so they settle for reformation; however this cant be done without other women also taking hits which is why they'll pull the "we're all in it together bs".

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Outbreak Pt 1 (LU in Healthcare)

(Content warning: This is likely to hit close to home for everyone as it's essentially a pandemic fic told from healthcare workers' POV. It's as mild as I can make it, with the boys dealing with their usually lives and stuff, since I don't want this to be a drawn out fic, but still. FYI.)

It started like a whisper.

One case. A new illness, a variant of a disease that had torn through Hyrule's military during the war, had popped up in the outskirts of the Gerudo Desert. Someone who had traveled there recently brought it to Castle Town. But it was just one case.

Everyone had been put on alert with emails from the health department, but no one had really thought much of it. Legend had seen plenty of scares in the past - just as recently as two years ago, there had been another stir like this over a far deadlier disease, and nothing had come of it.

But this new disease--officially named Respiratory Failure Influenza, colloquially called Arfy by healthcare workers, and unofficially called Yiga's Revenge by the public given its point of origin and how it was tearing cities in the desert apart--was starting to make an impact.

To the world at large, the media would not stop talking about Arfy and stirring up the public. Inside Hyrule General, though, the staff was pretty calm about it.

"Who names a disease Arfy, anyway?" one of Legend's coworkers chuckled.

Legend shrugged and stretched. "I've heard worse. At least it's not based after somebody's name - I hated memorizing all those names for diseases. Nowadays the naming scheme's much better - respiratory failure influenza makes it pretty straightforward to figure out what happens."

"Preach," a tech who was in nursing school grumbled.

Time walked by as they chatted, and Legend nodded in greeting, throwing out, "Whatever reason you're here for, it wasn't me, my patients are fine."

The trauma surgeon smirked. "I'm not here for your patients, no."

Legend bristled. "Look, this is my first night shift, I haven't been working insane hours."

Time outright cackled now. "I was consulted for someone else. Relax."

"Good," Legend huffed. "Anyway, did you hear there's a case of Arfy in town? I haven't seen them pop through here, though, think they got diagnosed at an urgent care clinic."

Time hummed thoughtfully, growing serious. "Hopefully it just stays one case."

"Eh," Legend shrugged again with a noncommittal sound. "The media stirs everyone up. This happened last time, and it was contained and never came here."

"Arfy's cousin nearly killed me during the war," Time noted gravely. "Don't underestimate it too much. The fact that it's a brand new strain, and the typical medications for its cousin don't work on it, isn't promising."

"Look, I'm not saying it isn't something to take seriously," Legend argued mildly. "But it's isolated to three cities in Gerudo Desert, and then the one guy who came here. The media makes it sound like the world's ending."

"They tend to do that," Time agreed, looking down the hallway. "But in either case... let's just hope it stays as one case."

Wild wandered over at that point with an empty stretcher, having just transported someone to the floor, and both men honed in on him. He looked pale and distracted, but he somehow still managed to notice their scrutiny.

Wild watched them silently, not seeming eager to speak. So Legend talked first. "You want to explain what happened earlier?"

Time glanced between the two, brow furrowing in confusion, and he silently observed the exchange. Wild seemed to grow colder, crossing his arms, but Legend wasn't going to back down.

When his friend remained silent, Wild pressed, "Rulie said it looked like you had another absence seizure when we were dealing with that heart attack patient. Tell me what's wrong. Now."

"I didn't have a seizure," Wild assured them as Time took a protective step towards him. "Look, I just..."

The young man sighed, shriveling into himself further.

"Link," Time said sternly. "I understand you have a lot of things in your past that you're trying to reconcile. But not telling us led to you going undiagnosed and getting into a wreck that almost killed you. What's wrong?"

"When I have absence seizures, sometimes I just zone out. But other times, I get hit with... I don't know, I feel like seizures don't give you memories, okay? I don't think it was a seizure. It was a trigger."

"Trigger?" Legend repeated. "You got PTSD?"

Wild blinked, thought about it, and shrugged while shaking his head. "Probably not. Sorry. Bad phrasing."

"You have said before that you don't remember much of the war and your past because you sustained serious injuries," Time supplied. "I know you did. I operated on you. Twice."

"Sorry," Wild mumbled sheepishly.

"Just tell us what's wrong," Legend insisted as gently as he could. "What set you off?"

Wild was silent for a long time, and Legend almost grew impatient. However, eventually, he finally said, "I... I know the guy. The one who you were taking to the cath lab. I knew him be-before. Please, I don't want to talk about it right now."

Time and Legend exchanged a look, and the surgeon shook his head. Legend sighed, backing off. "Okay. But you're okay? Like physically?"

"Yeah," Wild answered, voice growing raw. Legend watched him worriedly.

"You know, you can talk to us," the nurse tried to say, but Wild shook his head.

"I don't want to talk about it," he repeated.

Time nodded, putting a hand on the young man's shoulder. "When you're comfortable, we're all here for you, okay?"

Wild stared at Time for too long, eyes watering, and he cleared his throat, nodding and walking away.

Legend bit his lip, swallowed, and looked back at Time. The surgeon was still watching Wild go down the hall. A call bell light went off, as well as a cautionary alarm on the monitors, and the nurse had to return to work, brain filled with too many thoughts and worries.

Time found himself far more nostalgic than he needed to be. Wild's words about his past, about the war, and this new virus that was kin to the one that had almost killed the surgeon were mixing together. He sighed, shaking his head. This all just needed to resolve.

He would keep an eye on Wild. That was the bigger issue than anything else.

It started like a whisper. But the roar of their pasts was coming for them, haunting and rumbling and demanding everyone’s attention.

[evergreen-femme]

long post and probably schizoposting but i think this is genuinely super interesting.

i don’t think that the nature of religion itself is conservative or even lends itself very well to conservatism.

real religion in history has been an agent of transformation. religion can be seen as an innate force in humans that drives our macro-scale differentiation, indeed acting as a macro-organism in the social sphere of human ecology. religion governs social norms, how we address each other, what we value, what we think of others. it causes us to act as civilizations in a geopolitical religious ecology. this is an emergent property of human society and it does seem to be innate to us. but what if it was not only innate to us and a biological phenomenon, but a signal of something else? that we by chance have evolved to be able to pick up on?

human religion development can be seem as a response to divine stimulus - this is undeniably in us. god is a biological imperative, but what if it were the opposite? if we imagine the big bang as an experiment by a metaphysical entity, life developed that was capable of perceiving the signal that “God” has been sending out perhaps unconsciously from the beginning. well, to me it is “God” since i was raised in a nominally christian culture. if you examine religion’s role in history and current life, its obvious that:

so many people disdain being compared to animals; we innately feel that we are something greater because we can sense the divine. it is an anthropogenic flaw in us to assume that no other living thing can sense the divine. why do spiders make their webs like that and why are they so beautiful for real? that feels like it has to be something more than “we are all biological robots” (one of the founding principles of the religion of Economics, actually). more on that later. the point is the VAST majority of us feel innately that we are more, that we have a drive to find ethics and treat our neighbors kindly and generally to love each other. SOME of us feel that this makes us better than animals and tries to corral inconvenient swaths of humanity into animal-dom so they can concentrate power. a danger for the priestly class at any time in history. (but also the main value of our currant global Church, allowing dark priests to control our entire society for their own enrichment).

most of us are normal. some of us normal people feel the call of the priesthood as well. but they cannot all change the world, or even the perception of their neighbors. sometimes they do, though, sparking true evolutionary moves on the geopolitical ecological paradigm.

(religion is how humans will evolve to become gods, or become one with the divine)

this is the appearance of a “prophet.” we low key need one so fucking bad right now. an eye opens to the divine and begins to preach in a way that everyone adjacent to them suddenly adopts a genuinely new world concept and it spreads like a pandemic. but usually, these developments are positive in some way, ALWAYS seeking to elevate us beyond being mere biological machines.

we have FORGOTTEN true religion, because it always happens like that. our biological nature strikes back. we seek to evolve defenses against this divine antigen. however, for most of is, i believe this antigen is good. we are thirsty for meaning. it drips from everything everyone does.

when religion sparks, or rather, the divine antigen breaks through our biological defenses; you can metaphorically see it as a priest receiving a revelation, eyes and mouth glowing white and spilling light. if it takes over a whole society, if we all agree “this is the good way to live, i love the divine antigen actually,” then a new geopolitical superorganism is born.

the united states and actually all of imperial europe from the 1400s on has not been christian in the way that europe before that was. the religion that actually took over was Economics. our real priestly class has evolved into the financial sector. this has led us astray because Economics is against the nature of the divine antigen. its founding principle is that humans are biological machines, when that isn’t likely true even of most complex animals. or plants, fungi, literally who is to say. divinity cannot be comprehended by material science. that is its fundamental nature. we all know it, it is deeper in us than the Economic indoctrination.

we all want something better than this. we all know we are not biological machines. we are all crying it in tears of blood and sweat.

the mask is now OFF. too many people are being affected by the anti-human, anti-divine, metaphysically evil nature of capitalism (an offshoot of Economics). NOBODY wants to worship money anymore.

attempts to overthrow capitalism from within the religious paradigm of Economics have mostly failed to subdue the metaphysical disease for half a millennium. the end of Economics will come from a genuine religious uprising and worldwide war and chaos, or more likely, cooperative dismantling of the Economics Earth after a mostly bloodless global holy war.

[firstumcschenectady]

“Yes to Hope” Isaiah 49:1-13, John 20:1-18 Easter, April 9, 2023

I have heard it said that no one under 40 expects anything good to happen ever again. The traumas of the pandemic, the realities of climate change, the exploitative nature of how we practice capitalism, and the big money interests preventing our government from functioning have led people to conclude we're just doomed.

You might have gotten lost in my depressing list, so I'm going to remind you of the start of that idea. “No one under 40 expects anything good to happen ever again.” Here is the thing. I'm 41. So, I'm not under 40!! But I'm also not in a particularly distinct group from those under 40.

It is a little bit too easy for me to get pulled into “everything is broken and also impossible to fix.” Here is the really yucky part – being a preacher who focuses on the life and teaching of Jesus often makes this worse. I know it isn't supposed to work that way, and I really appreciate the chance to spend my life wrestling meaning out of parables and getting challenged out of complacency with the teachings by and of Jesus.

And yet, as you may have noticed if you've heard me preach before, I think it is important to understand Jesus and his teaching in the context of first century Galilee and Judah, in the realities of empire and exploitation, in the disenfranchisement of the masses, and the ways that power was used and abused. The problem is that there are differences in specifics between then and now, but not so many in overall structure. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg refer to the economic and political system of the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus as a pre-industrial, agricultural domination system. They contrast that with the post-industrial, non-agricultural domination system of today and I find that they're horrifying similar.

Now, I love the Bible, I love the visions of God for a good society, and I am in love with the ways that Jesus cast God's vision in terms of non-violence, distributive justice, collaboration, and shared care for each other. I love it enough to devote my life to it.

But there is a little problem with the fact that there have been nearly 2000 years since Jesus, and there have been “followers of Jesus” in an extraordinary number of positions in of power and influence, and for a long time it was even fair to say a few continents were “Christian” and yet the only thing that changed was the DESCRIPTIONS of the domination systems.

This being Easter, I could feed you sweet stories of moments I see the kindom of God at hand, metaphors about flower bulbs that bring life, or even experiences of utter awe that might communicate how very good God is. But if it is true that no one under 40 expects anything good to ever happen again, and if it is true that people have been following Jesus for 2000 years and the overriding economic and political systems are largely the same, it seems to me that this moment calls for a larger response to what is actually a very large scale problem.

By the grace of God, I have one.

You see, I sat with God in prayer this week and raised up the concerns already mentioned, and laid out my angst about preaching Easter into those realities. As I sat in my own discomfort, I also slowed down enough to become attentive to the Divine Presence. And then I started to think about the book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Because of my massive respect for David Graeber, I'd read “The Dawn of Everything” as soon as it came out, but it is now nearly 18 months later and I'm still processing it.

The book starts with sharing critiques of the European way of life from the perspective of Native Americans who'd were first exposed to it. There is universal horror at the idea of a society that allows anyone to be hungry, cold, or unhoused. A member of the Wendat Confederacy, Kandiaronick, offers a critique that could almost fit into the mouth of Jesus:

I have spent six years reflecting on the state of European society and I still can't think of a single way they act that's not inhuman, and I genuinely think this can only be the case, as long as you stick to your distinctions of 'mine' and 'thine.” I affirm that what you call money is the devil of devils; the tyrant of the French, the source of all evils; the bane of souls and slaughterhouse of the living. To imagine one can live in the country of money and preserve one's soul is like imagining one could preserve one's life at the bottom of a lake. Money is the father of luxury, lasciviousness, intrigues, trickery, lies, betrayal, insincerity, - of all the world's worst behavior. Fathers sell their children, husbands their wives, wives betray their husbands, brothers kill each other, friends are false, and all because of money. In the light of all this, tell me that we Wendat are not right in refusing to touch, or so much as look at silver?1

The authors preserve those critiques as a way of clarifying that the way of life that seems “normal” isn't the only option. Indeed, that is the point of the book! That there have been many, many ways that people have organized themselves into societies. The authors aimed to disrupt the common historical myth about the origins of agriculture and social inequality. Many of their examples feel downright weird, the decisions on what people valued as society and how they made decisions. Humans are quite quirky. They establish, that having an abundance of grain doesn't necessarily lead to being at peace with some people having warehouses of it and others having none.

For me, the overarching narrative of the book was: IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. I suppose that's supposed to be obvious. There are examples of it! There were hundreds of years before King Saul when the Ancient Proto-Israelites lived an equalitarian communal existence. The very people quoted critiquing Europeans for letting people struggle lived in societies that took care of everyone!

However, being born and raised in the United States starting in the 1980s, I've only ever seen exploitative capitalism as the way society functions. Additionally, I've been taught to look at socialism and see the pragmatic ways it is also exploitative. And then I look at the life of Jesus and his critiques of the exploitative domination systems of his day, and at the prophets pointing the exploitative domination systems of their day, and the last 3000 years or so just seems pretty bad and maybe we're stuck.

But we aren't.

The exploitative domination system of Jesus' day wanted to silence him and his movement so they wouldn't be threatened. And so they killed him. And whatever happened on that first Easter, the impact was that the movement of Jesus simply continued without him. Jesus could be killed. God's work in Jesus could not.

And, fine, here we are 2000 years later and it hasn't all worked out yet. That IS depressing, no kidding. But, it DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY, and God is at work in the world to bring change, and I tend to think God has laid a whole lot of invisible groundwork to bring change that will one day break free.

It is POSSIBLE to be people who take care of each other. It is possible to have great healthcare available to all people without burning out the care-givers or sacrificing the care receivers. It is possible to have healthy, delicious food available to all the people of the earth, without poisoning the food with chemicals, copyrighting the seeds, impoverishing the local farmers, or pricing the poor out of food. It is possible to house all people, in safe housing without mold or other dangers, without making people choose between housing and medicine. It is possible.

It is POSSIBLE to take care of each other. It is possible to allow parents to care for and savor their babies, and to have well-educated and loving caregivers take over when it is time, and to care for the ill and aging with humanity without undercutting the needs of caregivers OR care receivers.

Isn't it funny? What simple things I'm saying are POSSIBLE? And how far away they seem? And how it takes faith in a God who can bring life out of death to even consider these possibilities?

Now, dear ones, you may want me to lay out the road map from here to there. I can't. I don't see it. But I am reminded that I am a PART of the Body of Christ, and I am called to do my work and no one else's. My job, today, is to remind you that things don't have to be like this. Because until we remember that God dreams of justice, and joy, and abundant live for EVERYONE, we can't even start to move towards it. Because the story of Easter is the story that life can emerge even when it seems it can't. And today is Easter. Things look pretty rough out there. But God isn't done with us yet.

I believe in the LIVING Body of Christ. If I can name it, and you can dream it, and God is with us, we're gonna get from oppressive domination systems into life abundant for everyone. I fear it may yet take some time. The powers that are, are pretty significant. But, it is worth working towards anyway. Especially with God.

We work with a God who brings life out of death. God isn't done with us yet, and God isn't about to make peace with domination, or exploitation. God is a God of life abundant!

There is plenty of death around us, Holy One. We are willing to work with you on life. Guide the way! Amen

1David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Picador | Farrar, Straus, and Girouz, 2021), p. 55.

April 9, 2023

Rev. Sara E. Baron  First United Methodist Church of Schenectady  603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305  Pronouns: she/her/hers  http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Amanda Marcotte at Salon (12.16.2024):

In the face of Vice President Kamala Harris losing the presidential election to Donald Trump, the punditry's focus has been almost exclusively on asking how the Democrats couldn't beat a relentless liar with 34 felony convictions and a previous attempted coup under his belt. Everyone has a different theory about Harris' "messaging," with every critic inevitably arguing that if she had just talked more about their pet issue, she would have won. Another option, however, is to listen to what swing voters who backed Trump said about their decision. That would seem the wisest choice, but to be fair to people who don't want to go there, hearing these people out is a truly miserable experience. What quickly becomes evident about the median voters in an American focus group is how profoundly opposed they are to even the most basic factual information. On the contrary, it's a community with a pathological aversion to reality, where people compulsively react to anything truth-shaped with hostility, running as hard as they can toward disinformation. They are addicted to BS. Of course they voted for Trump, the country's most reliable dealer of their favorite drug. 

This may sound ungenerous to these voters, but only if you've been sparing yourself the torture of engaging their actual opinions. If you hold your nose and dive in, it's startling how much the typical swing voter is allergic to facts. It's not just ignorance, but overt hostility to anything that smacks of veracity. Such as the Trump voter who insisted to the New York Times that Democrats are "lying about pregnancies," by conveying factual information about abortion bans. Or the one who falsely believed "so many people just walk right across the border and get free housing, free food." Or the one who was excited that "Trump brings a Robert Kennedy Jr. or a Tulsi Gabbard and Elon Musk." Or the one who said the  "Democratic Party [is] going after average people who disagreed on Covid, who disagreed on school boards, who disagreed on boys playing in women’s sports," which is just a way to complain about liberals who criticize him on social media for saying things that aren't true. 

Sarah Longwell's "Focus Group" podcast ended the year by interviewing Joe Rogan fans who voted for Trump for the first time this election. It was a smart choice, and not just because Rogan's endorsement likely pushed Trump over the top in a shockingly close election. Rogan's audience perfectly illustrates the way the firehose of disinformation online — his conspiracy theory-hyping podcast has over 16 million followers — has pickled the brains of so many otherwise normal people. Most of the people Longwell interviewed couldn't go two minutes without coughing up a conspiracy theory. Everything is a shadowy plot, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the guy who shot Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The straightforward details of the shooting of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson came out after the arrest of Luigi Mangione, and yet these voters refused to believe the banal facts. Some are wallowing in theories that Mangione is a patsy, or that the shooting is a psyop. The truer any information was, the more they rejected it. 

After the insurrection of Jan. 6, a lot of attention was paid to the rise of QAnon, because so many rioters were adherents to this online cult that preached that Trump is a savior prophesized to stop a worldwide Satanic conspiracy. Alarming reports showed millions of Americans believed QAnon myths, such as the divinity of Trump or that Democrats drink children's blood. QAnon is still around, but it gets much less media coverage these days. One likely reason is what we see in these focus groups: bonkerballs levels of conspiracy belief is no longer a fringe phenomenon. QAnon-style beliefs are simply the norm in American society.  I wrote about this right after the election, but it bears repeating: One of the best predictors, if not the best predictor, of a Trump vote is how poor a person's information ecosystem is. People who read or watch real news outlets voted overwhelmingly for Harris. People who get their political information from social media voted for Trump. Subsequently, polls showed that Trump voters couldn't answer basic factual questions about what the candidates believed. Harris voters were far more accurate. 

It's not like Americans got hit with a stupid bomb, sending millions of us away from the real news and toward nonsense peddlers like Rogan. On "Focus Group," they briefly discussed how people's boredom during the pandemic caused them to spend more time on social media and listening to podcasts. Many got deeply addicted to disinformation during that period. (Interest in QAnon certainly spiked.) COVID-19 isn't the threat it was, but millions of those people still have the conspiracy theory monkey on their backs, as evidenced by Rogan's enormous audience. 

Why are conspiracy theories so addictive? Having researched the issue for an investigative report last year, I think there are two main reasons. First, like actual drugs, conspiracy theories relieve boredom. As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times argued during the height of the drone mania earlier this month, the "drones" were mostly planes, hobbyist drones, and stars, but "life does seem more exciting if you think the Iranians are specifically interested in the everyday activities of New Jerseyans." Boredom was especially high during the pandemic, which is why so many otherwise stable people went straight down the conspiracy rabbit hole. 

But while boredom is the gateway, ego flattery is why people keep coming back. The allure of the conspiracy theory is that you, Joe Nobody, understand a topic far more than the experts who spent their lives working on this issue. You understand viral transmission more than medical scientists. You see the hidden secrets of the "deep state" the journalists on Capitol Hill are missing. You, with your enormous brain, understand every field from nutrition science to American history far more than those people who study and research. This is why people who get into one conspiracy theory start digging into others.

Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon recently about how the normalization on QAnon-type conspiracy theories helped put Donald Trump in office.

News consumption and which sources of news someone consumed was a big factor as to how someone voted this election, with those getting news primarily from podcasts (esp. right-wing and right-adjacent) and/or social media leaning majorly towards Trump and those getting news primarily from legacy outlets leaning majorly towards Kamala Harris.

[chlobody]

What got you into posing nude? Like, how did you get comfortable sharing your body the way you do?

Here comes my novel response to this awesome question - sorry in advance!

Nature was my number one inspiration. I fell in love with being in my natural form outside, as we were intended to be. One thing I preach as a nudist - I AM NOT MY BODY. I am so much more than a flesh bag with limbs that my soul resides in. I am my heart, my mind and beliefs. Sharing your words, thoughts and love is so much more sacred and sexy than flashing a nude body ever could be. To me, being naked in front of people non-sexually couldn’t feel less awkward for me. Those who know my soul, my dreams and hopes… receive my true sacredness. Understand that just because someone saw your naked body, DOES NOT mean they own any part of you, or know anything about you on the inside. Nudity is not sacred unless you hold it in your mind as that. Then, you will forever feel uncomfortable being nude unless it’s with a special someone (which is totally fine, too). Just don’t judge others who ARE comfortable with something you view as the most vulnerable a human can get. Because it’s just not.

What got me into posing nude, is truly my journey of OnlyFans and content creation. I had no choice but to turn to creating content as a source of income during the pandemic while living in the rural country. Soon, “professional photographers” - aka, horny men with cameras - started to contact me asking to shoot, they could help me shoot content, etc.. as you might think, that did lead to some uncomfortable situations and learning lessons.

Diving into the world of posing nude is not easy nor self-explanatory. You eventually find your people, who respect you and have safety and comfort as top priorities, but that normally does not happen at first. I’m lucky to have learned all my lessons with who is and who isn’t safe to work with right off the bat. By learning how to get references for photographers and staying away from unsafe ones, I’ve gotten to embrace and open my nudist world up completely, meeting beautiful people in the process. I hate that I had to learn the hard way, but now I can give other aspiring nude artists a bit of guidance from my experience.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Hey there—this is completely spontaneous on my part, but I just saw your post from a few hours ago about how good the SW fandom used to be, and, dunno, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you. Your SW analyses were always so interesting to me, especially when you got into a debate with someone, because of how you backed your arguments up with evidence. I wish I could write rhetoric like you do. Anyways, you're especially cool to me because you're French and I've got French citizenship from my mom (though I grew up in the States), and despite not being Jewish, you've been really, really kind to us. So thanks for everything—the lengthy, passionate, convincing SW posts that got me through the pandemic, the interesting religious takes (I vaguely remember you going off on someone who said that religion was irrelevant in the modern world, arguing about the impossible-to-understate role it has had in the history of humanity, including in the present day—which, to a history and IR fan who'd gotten used to the sight of anti-religious takes because it was rebellious and trendy and cute, was like a breath of fresh air), and even now, your words since October 7th. I don't know if I ever reblogged or even liked a post of yours, I'm more likely to take a screenshot and put it in a folder on my desktop, but I just wanted to let you know of the impact that you've had in my life. 💛

Awww, it's so cool to find out about people who liked my stuff even if they never said! Idk how to explain why it makes me so happy but it's like it adds more to the whole experience as I look back, it's one more piece of the full picture that I'll never have. Like finding a new detail in a familiar setting and going 'oh! that was there all along? :D'

What was it about my SW stuff that you liked? the constant ranting and raving about the Jedi or the fawning over Obi-Wan? xD (And yes, yes I *did* get into a row with antitheists because I vented about being frustrated with Richard Dawkins' worldview lol. I don't think it really went anywhere.)

I'm glad reading my posts was ever comforting to you. I constantly want to be saying more since October 7th, but I really think using the internet as a battleground would be spectacularly unwise in my case. I've always tried to only argue my opinions from a position of complete confidence and thorough knowledge of all the facts, and that's a lot easier to do with a nerdy fictional universe that's contained to easily accessible media vs complex current global events. I can be stubborn and arrogant and I always want to be right, so in order to not get sucked into propagating self-righteous misinformation and turning into exactly the type of ignorant know-it-all who'd preach to others about geopolitics they learned yesterday on twitter, I preferred to step back.

That said, there is one thing I can and always will say with utter confidence and full knowledge that it's right: the worldwide spike in antisemitism and the horrifying abuse all Jews have been subjected to for over a year both irl and online is appalling and must be called out. The Jewish people are very close to my heart because of my family history, my upbringing and my personal faith in God and my saviour. So from one ~vaguely Jewish~ Frenchie to a vaguely French Jewish person, שׁלום and salut! 💙

Also, telling me you've taken screenshots???? of my posts???? to SAVE THEM???? ON YOUR COMPUTER????? is genuinely one of the highest compliments you could ever give me wow thank youuuuu. I hope you can still have fun going back to them from time to time 😄

[milatibrahiim]

Subhan Allah, by the Qadr of Allah a lot of our beloved telegram accounts have gotten deleted including our own, the kufār are trying their best to remove us from spreading the dawāh of Allah سبحانه وتعالى, but Allah سبحانه وتعالى will aid the believers who spread the call to Islam.

Many of us are upset and immensely saddened at this, but it has happened by the Qadr of Allah سبحانه وتعالى, therefor there is hukum within in it, والله يعلم ونحن لا نعلم

Amongst social media there comes muwahideen that invite to Islam with sincerity, then alongside that comes the fitna of followers/likes/comments and praise, that starts to corrupt and darken the heart and remove the light of sincerity and righteousness that was once within…

The muwahid who once called to Islam for the sake of gaining the pleasure and reward of Allah سبحانه وتعالى, is now preaching for the sake of gaining followers and hearing the praise of the people, who will not benefit him in the slightest, he starts to speak about matters in which he has no say in, he answers questions in which he has no knowledge of, he lacks Adab, he increases in arrogance and subhan Allah starts to look down upon his Muslim brothers and sisters!

If you are from amongst these people, I advise you to go have a read of the lives of the 4 imams! رحمهم الله

Another thing is Subhan Allah, what starts to happen? When listening to a khutba you’re not paying attention to what the sheikh is saying for the sake of benefiting your Akhira, or boosting your imān, but listening out for “what can I clip from this khutba and post on my social media that will get me immense likes and shares?” When reading a book, you’re not taking in the mountains of knowledge that Allah سبحانه وتعالى has placed before you, but instead looking out for, “what can I quote and post that will earn me praise? What will boost my likes?”

This is Riyā, which is a form of minor shirk... for your actions should be for Allah سبحانه وتعالى who has provided and taken care of you despite your disobedience and ungratefulness towards his majesty…

Subhan Allah, so the hukūm I see from this is Allah سبحانه وتعالى is protecting us from losing our sincerity, والله اعلم.

So my brothers and sisters I advise you, if you are on platforms like instagram which I know likes can be turned off then do so, if your actions are purely for Allah سبحانه وتعالى, then post your reminders for Allah سبحانه وتعالى says, “وذكر فإن الذرى تنفع المؤمنين، and remind, for indeed the reminder benefits the believers.“, and do not look at those who have liked/commented/shared your posts, nor accept their praise, but follow the pious actions of Abu Bakr رضي الله عنه who would say when praised, “Oh Allah make me better than what they think of me, and forgive me for what they do not know about me, and do not take me to account for what they say about me.“

So my brothers and sisters, if you’re spreading dawāh on social media, and this reminder I say to myself before anyone, you need to purely ask yourself, are my intentions in the right area? Am I posting this Fi Sabil Illah? Or for likes/followers/praise? And is this platform causing Kībr to grow within me? Am I lacking Adab and hayā? Am I looking down on my brothers and sisters fillah and shaming them instead of guiding or advising them? This is an illness, a pandemic

and if you find yourself catching the symptoms of ilness ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to purify you, and protect yourself from it for the outcome is lethal…

I ask Allah سبحانه وتعالى to grant us Hidaya, to keep us steadfast, and to protect us from going astray.

ربنا لا تزغ قلوبنا بعد إذ هديتنا وهب لنا من لدنك رحمة، إنك انت الوهاب.

[musemelodies]

hey folks, sorry it's been pretty slow on here. work has been really hectic and it's only gonna increase with the holiday months. still searching for a new job and trying to stay positive in the meantime. i did the morning shift yesterday and i'm closing tonight and then i gotta be back in tomorrow morning and it's...a lot.

a few years ago, i was thinking about going back to school for library science but the only one around here that offers it is ridiculously expensive and i got rejected anyway and then the pandemic happened and welp, here we are. i don't wanna cue the violin music or anything but i've just been feeling so stuck and in low battery mode a lot of the time. so much of my life consists of working and being exhausted and dreading going back to work.

i know it could always be worse, i could be homeless again or living with my terrible mom but it just feels like there's no balance. i would love to just walk out tomorrow (this place is embarrassingly anti-union and the current ceo is a third generation nepobaby and i have to deal with that micromanaging coworker way too often) but i don't really have a backup plan. also anxiety and the whole needing money to live thing.

anyway, i know i'm preaching to the choir and again, it could be a lot worse but it's really been wearing me down lately. as a wise philosopher once said: when the working day is done, oh girls, they wanna have fun...

[anarchotahdigism]

"

This narcotizing blanket of small lies, slowly nudging us toward acceptance of fascist policy, has also functioned by being distinct from the more blatant, bizarre and openly violent right wing culture wars, which have served as a convenient ideological cover for the Biden admin's slow dismantling of the Covid safety net.

The archetypal move here, I think, was the CDC stopping tracking and collating Covid data at all. After 40 years of preaching transparency, studies and "more information", liberals have made the distinctly fashy pivot to "less data, more vibes" (see also Democratic governor of New York Kathy Hochul saying that subway crime is "not statistically significant, but psychologically significant" in justification of deploying soldiers to the MTA). This has gone hand in hand with the dismantling of the journalistic apparatus, which seems to be reaching its apotheosis over the last 12 months. Not to mention the rise of AI and the collapse of internet searchability.

While the right has been busy attacking the institutions and idea of history itself, in book bans, school board and university takeovers, the liberals have been engaged in an active campaign of forgetting the very thing we're literally experiencing right now." ... "They want us to forget that, a mere four years ago, the president of the United States cowered in a bunker underneath the White House as rioters shook the gates and destroyed the guardhouse at its entrance. They want us to forget what it felt like to take the streets with one another, they want us to forget that we fought the police and won, they want us to forget the promises to defund the police, they want to forget that ACAB became a slogan on every lips, that the burning of the third precinct in Minneapolis had higher approval ratings than either presidential candidate, that few things have ever been so beautiful as that hideous building given over to the flames." ...

"We can not afford such comfortable forgetting. In an age of mass gaslighting and mass misinformation in the name of mass disablement and death, where the state offers us nothing except the comforting lie that this is normal, the simple stating of the facts, standing up for our own memories, becomes an act of resistance.

Do not forget what you know. Do not forget who you are. Forgetting is an active process, and it's one we must resist and refuse."

[mariacallous]

The right-wing wave surging through Europe picked up size and speed on Sept. 29 as Austria’s hard-right Freedom Party won the country’s general election. Following on the heels of far-right victories in eastern Germany and the Netherlands earlier this year, Austria joins the likes of Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, and Hungary as European Union members where extreme rightist parties have—armed with unabashedly illiberal, authoritarian agendas—rendered the political establishment impotent.

Openly calling for a Volkskanzler (people’s chancellor) to lead the country—just one piece of Nazi lingo that party head Herbert Kickl regularly employs—the Freedom Party took 29 percent of the vote, catapulting it over the ruling conservative Austrian People’s Party, which sank to 26.5 percent, and the Social Democrats to a meager 21 percent. The Freedom Party’s record result though is not enough to form a government on its own. Moreover, the centrist parties’ totals, when combined with the spoils of one of two smaller parties—one liberal, one green—would constitute the makings of a majority.

But the Freedom Party is now front and center in Austrian political life. On the campaign trail, Kickl promised to turn the country into “Fortress Austria” by stopping migration cold, “remigrating” (that is, expelling) Austrian citizens with foreign roots deemed unable to integrate, purging the education system, and neutralizing the public media. He rants against “gender madness” and “climate communism.”

The Freedom Party also owes a particular debt to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the crisis, the Freedom Party alone assumed the stance of critic and championed freedom of choice in response to pandemic-driven restrictions and requirements. The conspiracy theories that swirled around the crisis fed the Freedom Party’s own body of irrational accusations and baseless explanations. The government did itself no favors by imposing four nationwide lockdowns, stiff penalties for noncompliance, and nearly 40 weeks of school shutdown.

The Freedom Party buttressed its prominent place in the annals of Europe’s postwar extreme right. It initiated the far right’s modern normalization in Europe when it took a place in government under the People’s Party in 2000, breaking the country’s mostly rigid pattern of conservative-social democratic leadership that had marked the Cold War era and beyond. When the Freedom Party’s charismatic frontman Jörg Haider temporarily became vice chancellor in 2000, the event was so unprecedented—even scandalous—that EU members isolated the Vienna government and imposed political sanctions until he resigned from the party leadership. Critics feared that tolerating an EU member with such questionable democratic credentials would legitimize it—and encourage imitators across the continent. (This happened even though Haider’s politics, when measured up against Kickl’s, were relatively moderate.)

And this is exactly what happened. In 2017, the Freedom Party returned to government—in control of six ministries, including defense, the interior, and foreign affairs—this time with no fuss from Brussels. Yet the coalition lasted less than two years, falling out in disgrace when Freedom Party leader and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was caught on video in an Ibiza hotel room soliciting funds from a purported Russian national and expressing intentions to take over and censor Austria’s most widely read newspaper.

It is a sign of new times that the possibility of today’s yet-more-radical Freedom Party coming to power is now acceptable in European company. There are no major protests or calls for sanctions. Moreover, it trashes the hypothesis—heard in Germany regarding the AfD—that stints in government will discredit incompetent, conspiracy-preaching populists whose outrageous pledges can’t possibly turned into effective policy. If the sordid 2019 video footage didn’t kill off the Freedom Party, presumably nothing will.

The extent of the right-wing shift within Austria—and its implication across Europe—isn’t superficial, and the results cannot be written off as a “protest vote” or as a diffuse swipe at the system. Kickl is an extremist among extremists who appeals to Austrians’ worst instincts—and with this triumph, he contributes to a playbook that Europe’s extreme right has been drafting since the 1990s.

“Our studies in recent years,” said Andreas Kranebitter, the director of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, a Vienna-based research institute, in an interview with Foreign Policy, “show that there is more racism and antisemitism in the population, and a higher number of people adverse to foreigners and hostile to immigration, than at any time in recent decades.”

The Freedom Party, Kranebitter said, has spurred and accompanied this trend, even reinserting into the party program Nazi terminology such as Volkskanzler and Volksgemeinschaft, the latter referring to a homogenous ethnic community. “These are code words that right-wing militants understand very well, and ever more new supporters are accepting of or indifferent to, too,” he said. “And this now includes more women, professionals, college educated, and young people.”

Ulf Brunnbauer, an Austrian historian at Regensburg University, agrees that Freedom Party backers are not largely protest voters. “This might have been the primary motivation of its voters in the 1980s and 1990s,” he told Foreign Policy, “when the party broke the political duopoly that governed Austria since 1945. But today, the Freedom Party is the party of the establishment, too. Austrians understand very well that the party is racist and authoritarian, Kickl himself full of hatred and notoriously pro-Russian and anti-immigrant. Most people voting for them do so out of ideological conviction. It almost reflects the average person in Austria society.”

And this, Brunnbauer said, is in part a consequence of the Freedom Party’s meticulous groundwork. “They have systematically invested into propaganda work and built an alternative media universe. The party has created a new sense of ethnocentric patriotism and engaged broadly in local government. The Freedom Party learned from [Italian theorist Antonio] Gramsci: Political power rests on cultural power. The Freedom Party has transformed Austria’s political culture.”

This process—again, much like in Germany—includes the consternating transformation of the country’s traditional conservative party, the People’s Party. Whether as a result of the shifts in societal opinion or the Freedom Party’s success in tapping it, the conservatives have put up no fight against the far right, but rather have embraced ever more of its stances on migration, even etching in its program that asylum-seekers should have their valuables confiscated at the border, purportedly to cover the costs of processing them.

This year alone, Karl Nehammer, the country’s conservative incumbent chancellor, has dangled one piece of populist bait after another in the face of conservative constituencies, such as the denial of social benefits to asylum-seekers during the first five years of their tenure in Austria. “Our aspiration is a social welfare system for those who can’t work—not for those who don’t want to,” he said, referring to migrants. And, in addition to offshoring asylum procedures outside of the EU, the party has proposed that there should also be prisons in third countries for sentenced migrants.

On the issue of immigration, opined Die Presse, a conservative Austrian daily, the People’s Party “is barely distinguishable from the Freedom Party.” And as in Italy, France, and elsewhere, it didn’t pay off: “All those in favor of such policies have long been voting for the Freedom Party,” the newspaper concluded. The 11 percent points that it shed went largely to the Freedom Party.

Kranebitter and other observers note that the pandemic played an important role in the Freedom Party’s reemergence. When Austria made vaccination compulsory late in 2021, Kickl exclaimed: “As of today, Austria is a dictatorship.” The Freedom Party’s poll ratings shot up to around 30 percent, concluding its brief stay in the post-Ibiza scandal doghouse.

“Austria not only pursued a very restrictive coronavirus policy,” argued the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a Swiss-based, German-language daily newspaper, “but many of its measures also differentiated between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. This caused deep resentment among those who felt discriminated against by the state. This feeling has occupied those affected much longer than the memory of arduous restrictions.” The fiasco wounded all three government parties (the People’s Party, the Social Democrats, and Greens) in one shot, while the Freedom Party stood defiantly against what many felt as injustice.

As it was in 2000, the Freedom Party is now among Europe’s far-right pioneers again, proving that a once-discredited, ultraright party can still upturn and defile an entire political culture. The lesson will not be lost on Central Europe’s other pro-Russia populists.