#and historically fascists have specifically targeted those things for a reason

[eisthenameofme]

if local community building is something unrealistic/currently inaccessable/etc for you, developing skills or accumulating knowledge that could be useful is an option with a lot versality. there are skills that can be developed alone/for little to no cost/etc and a lot of wildly varying options that all have the potential to be useful in some context, so you can more easily focus on things that are accessible to you or are most applicable in your situation/etc. You can also prepare for things getting worse ahead of time to mitigate damage (eg if someone might not be able to safely access abortion information in the future but can access it now, processing legal shit before it gets rolled back, learning about first aid Before it becomes suddenly necessary, etc).

[petrified-aspen]

there is a common misconception that our marginalized identities act as a sort of Shield of Principle™ or whatever, that prevents us from having fascist or racist leanings. but there are inconceivably (and subliminally) powerful forces that do the exact opposite, systems of white supremacy, cisheteronormavity, and class that galvanize us and our identities against one another.

There are examples of this everywhere; entire tomes have been written on it. But lately, I am noticing a particularly worsening problem among a lot of people in my Jewish communities. Aimless, usually incomprehensible vitriol sprayed at nebulously-defined "pro-palestine leftists", trying to paint them all as jihadists, religious fundamentalists, anti-Semitic.

It seems almost deliberate, scrolling through some of these tags, and watching the rhetoric evolve. First, someone finds an incredibly-specific, cherry-picked representation of something indefensible, either on the grounds of it being unproductive, or on the grounds of it being actual violent bigotry. It's usually the same 4 or 5 things, re-posted across thousands of blogs. What was once a shitty cardboard sign that, often times, was at a protest for all of 30 minutes before it was destroyed, or before the protest organizers removed it and denounced it at teach-ins and meetings, is now permanently saved on thousands of Tumblr blogs. What was once an easily-identifiable and fixable problem becomes a gut-punch that steels thousands of anxious, scared groups in preparation for violence.

These 4 or 5 gut-punches then get surrounded by the more on-the-fence statements. They are statements that, in my experiences having worked with pro-Palestinian demonstrators at 2 universities, are well-intentioned, but filled with pain, grief, and sometimes, anger. These statements challenge the validity of Israel as a state, or attempt to appeal to a mutual sorrow and grief by imploring people to learn from the Holocaust.

But chances are, as you came across that post, you're recovering from the violent, inflammatory post from earlier. And so your eyes see the same green, red and black colors, and you feel the upwell of emotion behind it, and by pattern-recognition alone, you're more likely to take it in bad faith. To assume that this person wants the safety of all Jews to disappear along with the Israeli state, rather than understand their ideological opposition to any state that thrives at the expense of the colonized. To conclude that they are co-opting your family's tragedy rather than recognizing that the same rhetoric, the same tactics, are being used to justify more death, according to actual Holocaust scholars.

Then it devolves even further, with completely benign statements, like "From the River to the Sea", a slogan that has been used to represent Palestinian-Jewish solidarity since before Hamas even existed, being received as though it's the 14 Words or some shit.

This is how communities manufacture outrage that only hurts us in the long run. Yes, the person who held up a sign saying "carpet bomb Tel Aviv" is wrong and they should be removed immediately. But when someone shows you that sign, then shows you a sign calling for solidarity between ethnic groups, and they try to tell you that those two are the same, that person is lying to you.

There's a very specific reason why a nebulously-defined "left-wing" is so often the first target of this manufactured outrage; because leftists have been historically united by ideals of solidarity, mutual aid, and community support and defense. To a regime built on imperial power--be that the U.S. regime, the Third Reich, whatever--nothing is scarier than that. By attacking the solidarity between the people you want to keep in line, you ensure that you will have fewer enemies should some of them have doubts about keeping in lock-step with their own oppression. This was the reason behind the Red Scare, and it was a key step in fascist Italy and Germany as well.

Our identities alone are not a bulwark against fascism. Our best tool to lead our communities forward is solidarity, and with that comes communicating, listening, and reflecting.

[clangenrising]

Something that strikes me is how the herb stores were intentionally destroyed. Colonists and fascists often don't know what or why certain things are important to the cultures they are destroying, but they DO know the common signs of "hey, this is meaningful to us" that commonly occur throughout humanity.

The invaders intentionally urinating on the herb stores is a targeted, malicious action. They KNOW that it's important, even if they don't know how or why.

the destruction of important cultural aspects is a key goal in fascism and colonialism, and you've displayed it well! These are some of the most realistic fascists I've seen in fictional media for a long time.

All of this is well said, but I want to add a bit more.

Sardine sought out the herb stores deliberately. He said "the herb stores should be around here somewhere." They were a specific target that he calls "actually important work". Given those circumstances, I think its reasonable to say that the city DOES know what those herbs are for.

They are for healing the sick. As well as destroying cultural aspects of a colonized people, historical colonists are famous for weaponizing disease against the colonized. American settlers gave indigenous peoples blankets that were contaminated with smallpox. Israel is currently doing everything it can to prevent medical supplies from reaching Palestine. They have destroyed every hospital in Gaza. These are all exterminationist behaviors designed to kill the colonized population.

[briteredoctober]

The MYTH of The ‘Red Fascist’ Tankie

In the modern arena of the USAmerican left, the most often used (yet least understood) insult hurled by those on the ultra or fringe left is the term ‘tankie.’ The term originated as a derogatory term meant to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). This included agreeing with the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and later the Prague Spring of 1968 by Soviet tanks, thus the phrase ‘tankie.’

Since its historical origin, however, the meaning of the term has transitioned in its entirety. The ultra leftists of the modern era tend to cling to either the utopian views of socialism that predate scientific socialism or the concept of a ‘world revolution’ put forward by theorists such as Leon Trotsky. In both cases, they overwhelmingly deny the concepts of ‘socialism in one nation,’ ‘Democratic Centralism,’ and ‘critical support for nations fighting against imperialism’ that form the foundational elements of scientific socialism and Marxist-Leninist theory. As this segment of the USAmerican left has grown, they have adopted and reinterpreted insults of the prior utopian left to specifically target those with whom they hold ideological splits.

I have come to realize that in modern context, when insultingly using the word ‘tankie’ what those within the utopian left truly mean is that they are against anti-imperialism as all of their complaints are rooted in those of the Marxist-Leninist persuasion having critical support for nations fighting against imperialist aggression. This is rooted in a belief among the ultra left that true socialism can only be achieved via an international proletarian revolt. Their beliefs in an international proletarian revolution and the spontaneous achievement of communism exclude the transitionary period of a socialist state. For this reason, they attribute the concept of a one-party democratically centralized dictatorship of the proletariat as being equivalent to a fascist dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Within this viewpoint, those nations victimized by modern imperialism are in their mind no better than the aggressors themselves. This ideological structure is what spawns the left-wing concept of ‘authoritarianism.’

This ‘authoritarianism,’ contrary to what they profess, is not inherently a bad thing. I feel as though that flawed perception is one of the USAmerican left’s biggest hurdles to move past.

Until a classless system is achieved, the core dynamic of society will always be the exertion of one class’s authority over another. The only variable is whether the class in power will be the elite minority or the working majority.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

if the GOP could win for real, they would do a lot less cheating

Something you have to understand about recent American history is that the Republican party lost its shit in the 1960s. There are always plenty of reasons for decades-long historical trends, but arguably the core one is that Lyndon Johnson’s administration made a bunch of human rights advances known collectively as the Great Society, the cornerstone of which was a sincere and substantive effort to address the unfinished business of Reconstruction with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Racist white people who didn’t want to share democracy with everyone else became reliable Republican voters, but they’re nowhere near enough to win an election on their own. Republicans realized that their ideology is a miserable death cult that can’t win a fair fight. They could have gotten better ideas, but instead, they started sabotaging democracy.

I am not here to overwhelm you with a list of all the American right wing’s assaults on democracy. But there is a relatively narrow subset which forms a pattern that has become increasingly urgent: times Republicans have abused, usurped, or radically and unilaterally bastardized the power of American government in order to limit voters’ ability to hold them accountable in free and fair elections.

Because it only includes events backed up by reliable and freely available sources, it necessarily only includes the times times they were ham-fisted or sloppy enough to get caught. It has over two dozen entries and is almost certainly incomplete.

1968: Richard Nixon sabotages peace talks to end the Vietnam War because anger over the war is a winning campaign issue for him. Johnson catches him and calls him out, but doesn’t tell the public. Nixon wins and takes office.

1972: Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP, because these people are fucking Bond villains) goes on a crime spree which includes multiple break-ins at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

1992: President George H.W. Bush asks British Prime Minister John Major’s government to dig through official archives for anything compromising on his rival Governor Bill Clinton from Clinton’s time at Oxford University.

1992: A political appointee at the Bush State Department has Governor Clinton’s passport files searched for potentially embarrassing information.

1992: Bush’s Attorney General William Barr pressures federal prosecutors in Arkansas to make some public movement on a white collar crime case tangentially associated with Governor Clinton.

2000: The Florida state board of elections does a racist voter purge, targeting largely Democratic communities of color.

2000: A mob, mostly Republican congressional aides, force election officials in Palm Beach County to shut down its recount.

2000: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents shut down the Florida recount in an unsigned opinion so specious and nakedly partisan that it irreparably damages the legitimacy of not only the Bush presidency but the Supreme Court itself.

2004: Republican election administrators in Florida attempt another racist voter purge, only abandoning it when they get caught.

2006: The Bush administration leans on federal prosecutors to influence the midterm elections with bogus investigations into Democratic politicians and prosecutions of non-existent “voter fraud” cases. After Republicans lose the midterms, several attorneys who resisted the pressure are fired.

2010: Five Supreme Court justices appointed by Republicans, in an existential fiat, reclassify money as speech, opening the floodgates to swamp every level of politics with dark money.

2013: The same five Republican Supreme Court justices gut the Voting Rights Act, specifically and explicitly because it has been relatively effective in preventing racist voter suppression.

2010s: Republicans in various state legislatures pass a bunch of laws to suppress the ability of voters to hold them accountable.

2016: Associates of Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani loudly and unprofessionally conduct numerous bullshit investigations into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. They successfully pressure FBI director James Comey – himself a veteran of the corrupt and politicized Bush Justice Department – into several improper and decisive actions against Clinton.

2016: Donald Trump conspires with Russian intelligence and business interests to sabotage his opponent in a presidential election.

2016: Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blackmails the Obama administration out of explaining the Russian government’s sabotage of the presidential election, leaving state boards of elections and the general public vulnerable to the assault.

2017-18: The Republican administration sits on evidence that Russian military hackers have penetrated state voting equipment.

2018: Republican Georgia secretary of state Brian Kemp insists on overseeing the election in which he is running for governor. He squeaks out a “win” after purging thousands of voters, arbitrarily closing or refusing to equip polling places, and baselessly accusing his Democratic opponent of trying to hack the election.

2018: A Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina hires operatives to defraud local senior citizens who were attempting to cast absentee ballots.

2018: Republicans lose the governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, but keep control of the state legislatures due to gross gerrymandering. Before the new governors can be sworn in, they cram through laws stripping power from the incoming Democratic governors.

2019: Trump administration officials try to warp the data which will be collected in the 2020 census in a way that will enable future gerrymandering by undercounting largely Democratic constituencies. When they get caught and stopped, they try to justify themselves by lying to the federal courts.

2019: Donald Trump privately tries to extort the president of Ukraine into announcing bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: Donald Trump publicly pressures the government of China into opening bullshit investigations into prominent Democrats during the 2020 election.

2019: All but one House Republican opposes impeaching Trump for his extortion of Ukraine – until that one guy is pushed out of the party. Therefore, no House Republicans vote to impeach Trump.

2020: With one exception, every Republican in the Senate validates Trump’s attempts to rig the 2020 election by voting to acquit him.

2020: Republicans dig in their heels and refuse to take easy and obvious steps to keep voters safe from COVID-19 at the polls.

This is just the list of things that I could remember off the top of my head and could find receipts for with relative ease. It doesn’t include things that are plausible but unproven, like the allegations that Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff tried to repeat Nixon’s first stunt by working to prolong the Iran hostage crisis because it was a winning campaign issue for him. It doesn’t include dirty, bigoted campaigns that you might call awful but lawful, like the racist “Willie Horton” ad campaign in 1988 or the repulsive homophobic ballot initiatives that were engineered to bolster George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign. It doesn’t include the wide array of brutalizations of a constitutional small-d democratic system which aren’t specifically and concretely about elections – everything from eroding the credibility of scientists, experts, and reporters to packing the courts with proto-fascist hacks to lying the American people into war in Iraq.

It really doesn’t matter whether or not I think Republicans win elections legitimately. It’s extremely important that Republicans do not believe they can win elections legitimately.

Now think for a second about their cherished “voter fraud” trope. All this time, Republicans have been screeching that SOMEONE was out there trying to steal elections FROM THEM. It is absolutely correct to focus on and be upset about the racist history and intent of this particular conspiracy theory. I would simply argue that white supremacism is not the only unforgivable aspect of this nonsense trope. The other is the way those claims make it impossible to deal with actual threats against legitimate elections.

This is similar to what psychologists call projection, or the tactic domestic violence experts refer to as DARVO. It is not unrelated to “swiftboating” or the phenomenon students of genocide refer to as the “accusation in a mirror.” It is the axiom small children cite when they say “he who smelt it, dealt it.”

I don’t know the ONE WEIRD TRICK to make it not work. I just know that it – maddeningly – does work, not least on the Very Serious Experts whose ONE FUCKING JOB it is to know better.

So I’m sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a “many bad people on all sides” disclaimer about who does political dirty tricks, but “both sides” is not operative, no matter how desperate the hot-take-industrial-complex is to make fetch happen. It hasn’t been operative for twenty-five years, and it’s really not operative for the next six months. You can bury yourself deep in literature about asymmetric polarization, but you don’t have to do all that to understand what’s important here. Democrats support democracy and want to stop the plague, Republicans support the plague and want to stop democracy, and you should be extremely skeptical of anyone who claims not to know the difference.

[him-e]

hi i’m really confused why people who hate ben say the first order/ben is/are nazis? like ???? how does that even exist or work in this story? am i just dumb and don’t ~see it~? i hope you don’t think this is me baiting you into something else (regarding your last ask) that’s what made me ask this since it mentions nazis in the article. i really am just confused since i loved tlj and didn’t see any problem with it.

It’s okay, don’t worry. First off, don’t let the discourse get in the way of your enjoyment of fiction, especially when it’s comprised essentially of guilt-tripping, manipulative buzzwords. 

Now. The nazi coding in the First Order (and the Galactic Empire in the OT) is there—from the uniforms to the insignia to Hux’s speech to the troops in TFA, everything screams “evil space nazis”—but it’s mainly for the aesthetics. It’s window dressing. It’s a literary trope. 

It’s make up, essentially, a shortcut to help the audience identify easily the bad guys as, indeed, Bad Guys. It’s the equivalent of dressing up your villains as monstrous, stinky orcs in tolkienesque fantasy. That’s because Star Wars is a mash up of different literary and cinematic genres, and one of those is classic WWII movies from the ‘40s and ‘50s, the ones that established the trope of nazis as action/adventure/historical drama villain material. The original trilogy in the late ‘70s was targeted to a young audience, an audience entirely born after wwii, who grew up with the imagery of nazi as fictional villains rather than present, tangible real world threat.

So basically the nazi imagery in Star Wars is a homage to a certain movie genre and its tropes and trappings more than a political statement. And the sequel trilogy deconstructs those tropes, which adds an extra layer of distance from actual political discussion of *real life* nazism. (please note that both TFA and TLJ were written before Trump’s election and before alt-right became a pressing matter in the us political scene).

This doesn’t mean Star Wars doesn’t have a political message. It absolutely has one, and it’s powerful precisely because it’s universal, not necessarily localized to this or that specific ideology or political climate: it’s a statement against imperialism, militarism and antidemocratic oppression, which applies to WWII nazi Germany just as much as it does to other (present-day) dictatorships or to the current rise of populism across the world, BUT most of all it refers (in its original intent) to post-wwii US’ politics. In fact, despite the undeniable pseudo-nazi-fascist aesthetics, George Lucas conceived the Empire as a parody/criticism of the united states’ imperialistic politics in the 60′s–70′s and of the Vietnam war, with Palpatine as a Nixon-like figure.

The superficial nazi metaphor, decontextualized from the other influences and taken in isolation as the only possible real world parallel to the First Order, is neither a particularly deep nor an accurate political reading of it. I would also add it comes from a shallow, imprecise idea of what makes nazism different from other fascist ideologies. Consider this: the most defining aspect of the nazi party—the belief in a superior race and the systematic extermination of Jewish people through the Holocaust—has no recognizable in-universe equivalent neither in the Empire nor The First Order ** (we can guess both are sorta racist—the term would be speciesist—towards non-human species, given the fact that you can’t see a single alien among their ranks, but it’s never a Plot Point, and in any case I hope nobody is under the impression that alien, aka non human or subhuman, creatures can be an acceptable metaphor for Jewish people. Right?). 

** and by the way: no, the destruction of Alderaan or the Hosnian System is not an equivalent to the Holocaust. The intention there was to wipe out a political/military target, not an entire race because of their race. The real life equivalent to the death star and starkiller would be the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Guess who dropped those?

So what makes a nazi analogy effective, exactly? Just generic imperialism and world domination? Evilness™? War crimes? The use of weapons of mass destruction? Aren’t other real life ideologies and military superpowers guilty of those things too? How do you strip a fictional representation of nazi ideology of its most important and atrocious aspect, antisemitism, and still expect the audience to take that metaphor literally? 

Spoiler: it isn’t supposed to be taken literally.

It doesn’t have to, in order to speak to the heart of the audiences all over the world. The nazi coding might be superficial, but this doesn’t mean that the First Order as presented by the new trilogy isn’t absolutely, unequivocally bad. Why is it bad? The narrative doesn’t get too specific about it—in fact many criticized how vague the politics both in tfa and tlj are—but we know they’re bad: they have a rigid militaristic structure, they blow up planets and entire solar systems, they oppose democratic-looking entities called the Resistance and the Republic (names are important just as coding is), they summarily execute prisoners. We just KNOW that those things are bad—we aren’t sure what their political vision is (beyond obvious galactic domination. To quote GRRM, what is the First Order’s tax policy?), but if they do those things, it must be bad, period. That’s all we need to know to understand this story.

The nazi aesthetics help broadcasting this evilness to the audience loud and clear, because we’re all children of the same culture that (thanks to the aforementioned movies and tropes) taught us to instantly recognize those black-dressed, seriously-looking guys marching in lines and swearing allegiance to an ominous-looking red-and-black symbol as evil incarnate (except we fail to recognize fascist and nazi ideology when it manifests in other, less obvious forms).

BUT here’s the thing that antis constantly get wrong, like abysmally wrong. While the First Order is portrayed as bad and unsympathetic, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo isn’t. 

Kylo Ren being made of a different cloth was clear since TFA (you cannot deny the truth that is your family) and insisting to claim otherwise at this point is willfully misinterpreting canon and loudly communicated authorial intent.

Aside from the stormtroopers (who were groomed into their role and are used as cannon fodder by the Order, and who I think will be eventually liberated by Finn), Kylo is the one part of the First Order who is clearly REDEEMABLE, because his nature is essentially extraneous to it. He’s a Skywalker. He’s the last of a breed of wizard-warriors who worship the Force and whose political views, for better or worse, will be always secondary to the way they perceive this energy in the galaxy and their role in it. His enormous power might be dark, but it’s not evil, and right now he’s misplacing it in the hands of an evil organization which he erroneously considers as a chance to bring “a new order” to the galaxy.

Is Kylo a nazi, or at least is he as superficially nazi-coded as the rest of the first order is? Let’s see:

there is no indication of Kylo being racist (or speciesist). Classist? Hell yeah, you can see it mostly in his interactions with Rey (which are, however, complicated and in part contradicted by the fact that Kylo seems to respect and value force users more than “regular” people, including those on his own side). Racist? There’s zero reason to believe that. Or at least there’s no satisfying in-universe equivalent of real world racism emerging in Kylo’s character.

the only group of people Kylo wants to exterminate (like Snoke, and like Anakin before him) is the Jedi order, but the Jedi aren’t an ethnicity or a species. You aren’t born a Jedi. You become one. Destroying the Jedi order is a purge, not a genocide. It’s like killing all the members of a political party, or the supporters of a religious heresy. STILL BAD! (and definitely something nazism, as many other dictatorships, did.) But not steeped in racism or eugenetics. It’s interesting that upon meeting Rey and discovering her force powers, Kylo proposes to teach her. He doesn’t have a problem with force sensitive people per se, he has a problem with those who adhere to the Jedi order. This grudge against the Jedi exists in the context of the eternal hostility between lightsiders and darksiders in star wars canon. It’s not the first time that one side of the Force tries to completely destroy the other, and yes, the Jedi have tried to exterminate the Sith too.

Kylo’s outfit marks him as different than the rest of the First Order, and specifically different from Hux (who is, in many ways, the epitome of the “evil gay nazi” trope, which in turn is a bastardization, mostly for the lulz and/or for fictional purposes, of nazism). Kylo doesn’t wear an uniform or display any official first order insignia indicating that he is, indeed, a believer of that ideology. His TFA costume is reminiscent of a monk or a knight templar (see also how his saber is essentially a red cross shape) while also evoking the classic image of the Grim Reaper (when he’s in full cowl+mask attire), while his TLJ one, while not very different from its earlier version, gives him a dark prince vibe, with the long, willowy black cape and the elegant shorter tunic resembling a medieval/renaissance doublet. Not a lot of nazi coding here, and believe me, how a character looks is very, very important to convey this sort of messages.

So.

What makes a(n allegedly) nazi-coded character convincing, aesthetics aside? 

His politics.

Do we know what Kylo’s politics are? 

No.

If the First Order’s political vision is vague because it works essentially as a stand-in for “evil organization” and we don’t need a lot of details about it, Kylo’s political views are more than vague, they’re non-existent. That’s because Kylo isn’t a political figure, at all. He got involved with this organization because his dark side master was the Supreme Leader, but we have no way of knowing whether his political ideas really align with those of the First Order, or if he has any at all. We believe they must align, to an extent at least, because why would he stick with them for so long if they don’t. The problem is that Kylo is too fucked up to discuss him this way. We actually see in TLJ how he keeps doing things that “split his spirit to the bone” just because his master asked, and because he sees no choice. He just keeps rolling like a wrecking ball towards complete (self) destruction. He’s a mess. He’s the opposite of a political thinker.

Antis insist to see Kylo as the embodiment of the first order when he’s actually (probably) the seed of its destruction. He exists at the margins of the organization, as a scary, but essentially extraneous presence, who follows his own rules and whims (proof of this is Hux’s seething hatred and distrust for him). We now see him rise as its Supreme Leader, but he, like Snoke before him, is an outsider, a custodian and wielder of an ancient magic/religion that the First Order is very willing to use for their own profit, but seems to be inherently skeptical of. And this conflict is 100% going to come to fruition in IX, make no mistake.

Framing Kylo as a nazi is such a massive misunderstanding of how his character is constructed, his role in the story and what he’s meant to represent to us. And of course it creates a VERY unfortunate dissonance in the fact that we’re EVIDENTLY meant to sympathize with him and root for his redemption. 

This is a character who isn’t meant to represent a political allegory, but an existential one. He’s an archetypal figure—the prodigal son, now become the Usurper. His political views remain largely unexplained and unexplored because they don’t matter. What matters is the archetypal ball of negative, destructive energy he represents, as well as the psychological horror of his personal and familial drama, which is the bulk of his motivation in everything he does. Kylo lashes out because of his unresolved trauma with his family and with Snoke, not because he knows what he’s doing or because he wants to achieve a specific goal. Even at the end of TLJ, he’s using the First Order war machine as a weapon to enact his personal, and deeply masochistic, vendetta against Luke, who tried to murder him, and Leia who (in his mind) rejected and betrayed him for the Resistance. He’s also externalizing the blind terror, the hurt, the confusion of having just killed his mentor and long time abuser to save someone who (from his point of view) only used him and then dropped him like a sack of potatoes (yeah, that would be Rey).

There’s no sound military strategy or even logical thinking in his almost delirious attack on the resistance base on Crait, to the point that even Hux is appalled. This isn’t a man who is pursuing a political ideology. This is a deeply broken individual who is fumbling to deal with some major unresolved issues from his past and childhood and who for some reason believes that burning everything to ashes is the only way to achieve some sort of peace. The “order” he wants to restore is more on a personal scale than on a galactic one. The galactic scale is always a byproduct of the personal, as it’s always the case with these thrice damned Skywalkers, tbh.

so to summarize

the nazi aesthetic is superficial and is meant to convey that the first order is Evil

the political message of sw is more universal than “fight the nazis”, not because the nazis aren’t bad, but because the nazis aren’t the only form of political evil people should fight against, and depending on where and when you are in the world, there might be more immediate forms of imperialism and oppression that the local audience might want to see reflected in the First Order (note that the current nazi discourse is incredibly westerncentric and especially us-centric, because that’s where we’re unfortunately experiencing a resurgence of these ideologies, but other parts of the world might have their own oppressive powers to fight that have nothing to do with nazism)

the First Order is 100% evil but Kylo isn’t integrated within it, and even as the Supreme Leader he represents an outsider

Kylo’s relevance in the story is broader than his affiliation with the First Order

in fact, the main themes of his character aren’t political at all

Kylo matters as an archetypal and tragic figure, the continuation of the very archetypal and tragic familial saga of the Skywalkers

Kylo is neither a “literal” nazi nor nazi-coded

insisting that Kylo is a nazi makes you (not you, anon, those who propose this interpretation) look stupider and stupider as it becomes increasingly clear that he’s a HUGELY sympathetic character who is on a redemptive (and romantic) arc

seriously, disney ain’t gonna “normalize” nazis

stop saying that

stop worrying about that

this is the least of your problems

the first order will eventually be destroyed as it should be. Kylo, who is not a nazi, will not

end

[kendrixtermina]

I'm growing irritated with people saying the concept of Rhea is antisemitic because, uh, if people see a shapeshifting lizard/dragon lady who is (at least to some extent) the shadow ruler of the continent and think "oh, must be a metaphor for Jews"... maybe the problem is with them? Like, I always thought the Church of Seiros was meant to be the medieval Catholic Church, if we absolutely must make comparisons to real life. Even their past persecution fits with that.

I’m not Jewish so I’m not the best person to talk to about this, so big caveat first that I’m not in any way an authority and not in any position to tell people not to be mad especially ppl who have no shortage of legit reasons. 

Objectively I agree that there’s a very blatant very obvious  “corrupt medieval pope” thing going on (it’s actually really fascinating to see this refracted through the lens of someone to whom it is simply foreign myth/ historical aesthetic. Much like Bleach had a villain vaguely based on the christian god.) and that you’re right but this isn’t something I feel comfortable going off on a rant about. 

I mean there are literal, non-metaphorical persecuted minorities in the game no need to grab the fantasy creatures for that. Though really the argument I’ve seen is not so much that “the concept is antisemitic” as that “Edelgard is a fascist cause she’s enemies with ppl from this group thsat was massacred once upon a time” - She doesn’t actually want to kill em all she just doesn’t want an individual she knows to be inept and tyrannical to be an unaccountable government(and while she’ll use force to remove them she has no issue letting them go if they surrender),  she’s dealing with like, three people whom she mistakenly believes to be in cahoots. 

I wouldn’t make too many assumptious about the ppl saying such things because no group is monolithic and few opinions are tied to particular groups except for those defined by opinions. Some of the ppl complaining might be trying to be upstanding but oversimplistic in their understanding; some might actually be jewish, others might just dislike the game or certain characters in it and be willing to use whatever rhetoric gets ppl to shut up. 

But something that imho gets lost in political discussions about “oversensitivity” is that Hypervigilance is a legit symptom of trauma. you encounter some insidious prejudice often enough you start seeing it everywhere. Many such prejudices really are… not everywhere but in alot of places.  Enough places that it is reasonable to start expecting it. Little things innocuous looking things will set you off because some real examples look exactly like that. See facists coming up with deliberately confusing secret symbols or how being asked to make your co-worker a coffee can be an instrument of sexist oppression in certain contexts.  You wouldn’t believe how many surprisingly specific antisemitic conspiracies and dehumanizing slander there is. I probably wouldn’t believe it if I had to live the life of someone who’s affected. 

I mean this isn’t just a smear talking point to insult each other with it’s a legit issue because of which people have to fear being shot. My town’s got a Synagogue, one of my sister’s been inside once for a school excursion, and she tells me they got armed guards. I’d rather people ring the alarms once too often than once too few and this should not be treated as a frivolous complaint

So when I see ppl calling every possible little detail sexist or racist or whatever my thoughts are neither “they are frivollously complaining about everything” or “They must be right because they’re the only ones who’re allowed to have an opinion” but that for all that the person might actually be being touchy, that touchyness is a symptom of the constant bombardment of crap they had to live with - not to mention that there’s a gradation here and that in many situations nuanced problem solving oriented discourse is more helpful that morally loaded labels. 

But imagine having a target painted on your back that makes the very worst 5% of humanity come seek you out and ruin your life for no reason, legit want you dead since you were a child. You’d think the world is very full of terrible people out to get you and you wouldn’t be wrong.

And often enough there might turn out to be an actual specific issue that might be too subtle for the uninitiated to perceive but makes perfect sense once explained. For example to a non-American like me it would be completely confusing at first how watermelons and chicken could be a racist trope but thers a history behind it. 

i dont think it remotely applies in this specific case but this is very much a discourse that needs to be had precisely because this stuff can be so subtle or specific the unaffected dont get it

There’s ppl saying the very concept of any sort of greedy fantasy creatures is immediately antisemitic when it strikes me as very obvious that it’s just a reflection of human nature which contains greed. Same with shadow rulers - it’s an universal human fear to not be in control of your destiny. A pretty basic thought that “Maan some of those corrupt leaders seem really damn inhuman”. 

The prejudice is rather in painting persecuted ppl as such bogeymen same as other minorities get painted as different sorts of bogeymen. Obviously basic universal tropes can still be made antisemitic if it’s strewn with actual dog-whistles or specific preexisting caricatures.

To summarize, this is a FAR too serious topic for casual video game discourse it ruins the lives of generations. 

[journalismmasscommunication]

Do perceptions on terrorism contrast between different racial groups?

An interview between 4 vastly different Americans.

      White privilege is being able to label yourself an extremist, white supremacist, white nationalist, neo-nazi, neo-fascist, and an alt-right member. Everyday domestic terrorism fills the national airwaves - turning the channel from the basketball game to Wheel of Fortune you get a glimpse of the local church that was shot up, the headline describing a mentally unstable man who was bullied in his youth. The next day you hear about the most recent “homicide bombings” and how the need for border control against there ‘thugs’ is now more necessary than ever. These news coverage's all have on thing in common -- both were acts of terrorism to plant a seed to hatred amongst the American people. But why does one story get people to act more considerate towards the coverage than the other? Racial groups may perceive certain events and cultural aspects distinctively, but even more transparent than that - simple words can be defined different amongst contrasting societies. The subject surrounding tyrannical violence brings up the question if perceptions on terrorism contrast based on different racial groups, if this even matters in today's society, and are there any disparities between different ethnicity? Despite any research to be held or answers from interviewees, these issues are undisputed important because domestic terrorism happens more often than not in today’s society. But, many aspects of these events are spoken about, especially when in regards of racial backgrounds and how that affects impressions on these issues. Is this to move away from such a deleterious way of speaking or a simple act of favoritism to people with a lighter skin tone? According to The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? by Rex A. Hudson, different types of individuals are more prone to terrorism in attempt to guide counterterrorist procedures and policies within the United States. Compared to this, Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, discuss how instead of terrorism being a direct reaction to low market opportunities or general ignorance, it is a response based on the frustrated political conditions within America that have very little to do with economics. Whilst the Theories of Efficacy of Terrorism by Nicholas O. Berry, considers why terrorism works and how one important variable that affects personal bias towards their response is the target’s own perception of the terrorists. Nonetheless, the position involving how violence is interwoven with perceptions on different racial groups is what affects the topic of terrorism. Through the use of racist values and nationalistic historical events, race impacts the view on terrorism which then translates to anxiety provoking situations for young adults since they have proximal contact with these events and the ways to improve the situation would be to educate people nationwide to combat the epidemic of terrorism.

    Moreover, the conversation surrounding who is involved within terrorist attacks drives the notion of who is seen as a terrorist and who is not. The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? by Rex A. Hudson discusses this in depth, deliberating on topics such as why terrorist databases become outdated as well as terrorist profiling. This sociology article is of importance to the topic of perceptions on terrorism contrasting between different racial group because the hazards of terrorist profiling is based off of an isolation of attributes. Hudson summarizes the aspects within a terrorist profile, details included were: age, education, occupation, socioeconomic background, general traits, marital status, physical appearance, origin, and gender. These are what a terrorist was defined as in the past, where analysts would compare characteristics of members of numerous terrorist groups in various regions of the world and then make generalizations about these characteristics. However, what is argued in this article is that “unfortunately for profiling purposes, there does not appear to be a single terrorist personality” which means that certain racial groups themselves will define a terrorist differently (60). In addition to this, Education, Poverty and Terrorism: Is There a Causal Connection? by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova argue that “[there is little] connection between poverty or education and participation in terrorism” as well as “poverty at the national level may indirectly affect terrorism through the apparent connection between economic conditions and the proclivity for countries to undergo civil wars” (141). Krueger and Maleckova also discuss how “there is little reason for optimism that a reduction in poverty or increase in educational attainment will lead to a meaningful reduction in the amount of international terrorism, without other changes” (142). Lastly, Nicholas O. Berry argues that “terrorism demands that the target perform and induces a test of the target's competence, whether the target is a regime or an insurgent group” leaning toward the conclusion that terrorism is a mixture of racism, not a specific group, and ignorance.

    For the interviews that took place there were four interviewees, six questions that was then concluded with their own personal opinion, as well taking note of direct quotes about their beliefs, attitudes about this issue, and what they think causes it. Conversely, many people in modern day society define terrorism differently from others, however, many bring up a lot of exceptional discussion points. The first interviewee, Christopher Moschella, spoke about his perception on if terrorism contrasts based on different racial groups. He describes how there are different ways you can look at terrorism and he thinks about it through the lens of conditions that are wrong with America today. On one hand, he has a lot of the same values of Anglo Saxons so he sees things in a contrasting view than most left leaning Americans. However, that group of white Americans that talk about terrorism tend to look at it in fear of ethnic religious groups and because of this, it leads to racism towards a whole group of people which is not want we want. He says “it doesn’t solve any problems” because this way of thinking is a trap in seeing terrorism in a one sided perspective. Another thing he’s seen especially living in California and interacting with a lot of people from a homogenous society, those people (Asians from his personal experience) see it differently because they do not have that acknowledgement that terrorism and racism is blended together. So from this perspective, sometimes they struggle understanding why terrorism is a big problem because they do not live through those things that much. The second interviewee, Cora McClain, talked about how there is a difference but she is not sure the exact specifics and can only speak from the white perspective where she says they usually point their finger at other people. Jennifer Moschella, the third interviewee answers this question by saying there is a generalized perception on terrorism especially with 9/11 in which there is an obvious polarizing American standpoint. She says, “there’s been so many terrorist groups, events like the Japanese internment where the government wasn’t seeing these things as unconstitutional and illegal caused a lot of people of color to protect other minorities from future discrimination (ie. the muslim ban) as a lot of people were there in support of one another”. But there are a lot of layers of discrimination within racial groups as “people who are comfortable with their privilege tend to not want to help other groups, hence they don’t recognize their privilege”. The last interviewee, Andrea Paterno, discussed how there are different classes within a race in which they are going to have different opinions on terrorism. Most of them are similar, yet there is a spectrum of how radial their ideas are, hence there are a multitude of opinions.

    The next question that was asked was: why are white Americans less likely to be called a “terrorist” despite being a bigger domestic threat? Christopher answered this by describing how it is a mixture of race and terrorism where this country was founded by a white population, so inherently there is credibility in that because that was the dominant race in this country. However, it is no different from any other country where the local race is the dominant one; what is hugely different here in America is that “this country was kind of founded on a different principle”. So you have -- excluding slavery -- forced intermingling, where there is generally a lot more diversity and mixture of culture than other places. But because of the founding part of it, that culture, they (white Americans) are going to see outsiders of more of a threat until and unless something really big happened, an overwhelming type of event to change that mindset. Cora answered explaining how it is because of systematic racism where because white people are the dominant race that control law enforcement and other authority type jobs, that is the reason why someone who is paler gets through things such as TSA quicker than somebody who is of a darker skin tone. She says, “it’s in the structural systemic racism especially in this era of terrorism, where it’s connected to radical Islam which is a muslim religion that originates in the middle east, and people’s racist outlook on that culture is that people there are usually a darker skin tone”. Jennifer explains that people associate terrorism with outsiders of America and that “there’s not an equivalent personification or label that has the same weight as a ‘terrorist���” and that’s why they use that word; what white Americans are doing is still horrifying, but why should you focus on a label rather than the atrocious acts? This is an example of why one racial group should not be targeted as a terrorist nation because there “are people in your own country doing the same thing” and that labels are not the point of the conversation. Andrea describes how American favors the white male because everyone else just thinks that people who are not white are just terrible people. Americans like to “make that generalization of non whites” because whites get off scot free especially when it comes to the sentence times in prison since “America likes to favor white rich people only because they think it’s going to ruin their life if they get into jail”.

    Subsequently the question, how does someone’s personal definition of terrorism affect their opinion on immigration and/or border control? was asked. Christopher explains that it does affect their opinion because there are groups of people out there that are against what American society is based on and values. The trap is that “you then lump all those people together with another group that you say are similar to them and if you lump them all into a religious group, that’s where the problem is” because that is what people in America tend to do. He concludes, “So you then naturally ask, how you know the good people from the bad people? Then of course, it’s an easy solution to just be against immigration”. Cora describes how they more likely to be afraid of terrorism or more ignorant on it, than the stricter immigration policy. It is equating any sort of immigration to letting dangerous people in because of the xenophobic nature of this perspective. She believes that it also means there would be tighter border control and the train of thought is that if they “are letting less people come in, there’s the mentality of: less likely terrorists will be able to get in”; through this, it allows political parties to target and use these ethnic groups as a scapegoat and a propaganda topic. Jennifer communicates her opinion on how people think terrorists only come from the middle east and that “there is a need to ban all immigrants because they are the only source of bad things”, however, ignorant people do not know the extent of anything. She explains the “American military and government agreed to do many terrible things in Iraq and the middle east, they did a lot of fucked up shit and put a lot of bad people in power in the middle east”; basically describing how people need to learn their history and that history was built on minorities through events like Chinese people building the railroads and black women building the NASA rockets. She says that “even though politicians say that they’re all about border control, you look at what companies are associated with and how they run on immigrant labor for cheap labor, even though it’s illegal and wrong -- it just doesn’t line up”. Moreover explaining how it is not safe because people die and that these major companies are lobbying their funds to major politicians in which they do not mind the unethicalness since they are making a lot of money, it is overall hypocritical. Andrea says that sometimes it does and sometimes it does not because people are naturally hesitant with having immigration because of what is going on in the world. People think terrorism is causing havoc and that is “where it differentiates between people, because it’s not the opinion on terrorism that makes things horrible, but the racist spectrum people have on immigrants as terrorists”. She explains that this way of thinking makes them always want to have border control because “it’s generalizing a whole race of people, just because they’re that specific race” and that “everyone likes to blame it on the immigrants because it’s the easiest”.

    Following this, the question -- based on opinions of terrorism, how does it affect personal perception on dark-skinned and/or Muslim people? was asked. Christopher describes how you can not be naive about these things since there are groups of people who are Muslim that are “bad” but people will wrongly make it about a person of a specific skin color. From his point of view, “you can easily have white people, white muslin fanatics out there that do believe those kinds of values that will eventually be harmful against ‘us’”. Cora answers this by explaining how it depends on how versed you are on the topic, the more ignorant or just by making assumptions, the more negative of a view on dark skinned and Muslim people you have. Because terrorism is related to radical Islam, it equates to the middle east where these places are “war torn by these groups that are trying to instill their religion, a non-Anglo Saxon religion, and they are violently trying to enforce their political control so it is painted by the bad people who are using it for their own gain”. Because of this, it leads to the generalization of people east and political figures are framing this as only being connected to the religion of muslim, the people from the middle east, and it creates the idea that terrorism only comes from someone on the outside. She says that “people don’t expect it from within the country, but outside of the country trying to tear down America” since people within are not seen affiliated with terrorist. Andrea describes it as it just being racism, a favoritism of white people, and then Americans just blaming it on those things. Jennifer explains how this does have an affect because there are videos and posts on Twitter describing how “sure, women are scared of men walking down the street, but more women are likely to move away if it’s a dark skinned or ethnic man, and less likely to if it’s a white man”. There is no correlation but the media portrays ethnic men as monsters and the villains while white men are the heroes for white women, hence forcing people to see “darker skinned and ethnic men as a threat”.

    So what causes it? The interviewees had many answers, and starting with Christopher he explains that fear is a big part of the conversation, but besides that, people do not take an effort to learn what other people go through. Knowing other people, it is easy to stay inside a group that you are comfortable with, but “as far as staying within your group, people kind of go with their family values, which might not be good”. Being open to talk about these things and trying to make their kids have their own opinions on things will help fix the problem, and he “[doesn’t] think there’s enough of that”. Cora explains how it depends on the actions that happen since terrorism was not huge or really seen until 9/11. This event impacted American directly because before this, America just looked at outside problems. For example she describes “before WWII we didn’t want to get involved until America itself got attacked, because yes there was communism and genocide, but we were more focused on the alarm of getting attacked specifically”. War on terror was not very big until America was personally attacked and she believes that 9/11 was the beginning of America entering the gray because “it was a problem over there -- until it hit American soil”. For Andrea it is about close mindedness, the fear about being around “‘those types of people’”, the influence of the news, and most importantly, racism. Jennifer describes how it is to keep white people in power and everything else that happened throughout history. She explains how the Japanese were allied with Germany but nobody really cared and that it was not a big deal that they were slowly taking over China and all these other places. But when power was starting to shift, “America was scared of having a non white empirical power in charge, and they wanted to have their control back because whenever there’s a change, there’s such a strong negative reaction to it”. People do not like change so history is very important to show that these things happen and that the ability to progress has never worked because “people’s grandparents and their friends were lynched, like as a common occurrence, and that was only two generations ago”. It has just been happening for centuries that it is now normalized; anything to hinder white privilege causes fear within that community because it is not natural since white people have been in power and “they do not understand that feeling of unnaturalness and fear is what people's lives are every single day -- they like their privilege and they don’t want to give it up”.

    For their own personal beliefs and opinions, Christopher starts off by describing how race weaves with terrorism and that “it is important to remember our perceptive as Americans comes from a place of privilege - even ethnic people in this country, and a lot of the times it’s forgotten. While things aren’t perfect and that there’s still problems, other racial discrimination happens, reverse racism still happens”. He explains that the benefit that we have of living here, should be remembered and something we all are proud of. There are a lot of other places in the world where things are a lot worse, but there has to be a balance that was to take place “so that the older generation doesn’t get complacent and the younger generation doesn’t feel like nothing's been done and to not be proud of the society”. Andrea says that people need to stop generalizing Muslin people because “there are so many other dangerous people like school shooters and I never see anything that involves Muslin people. People need to open their eyes an see the truth because these people, these shooters are white and it’s so annoying to have to see everyday racism be so normalized by people because it happens so often. People are just joining in on it because that’s what they think they are and supposed to be -- they need to see the truth, and nobody wants to see the truth, and when people do they just get attacked over it”. Jennifer explains that “bad people can be anywhere just like how good people can be anywhere. The concept of war on terror is stupid because it’s just a never ending campaign of hatred that doesn’t make any sense”. She points out that people “don’t know what a terrorist looks like because there’s no code of what a terrorist is” as well as how there is “a lot of narrative around the fight of terrorism that is based on fear, and fear isn’t an emotion you should have when declaring war. And that’s why there are so many mistakes post 9/11 because everything was based of of fear and panic and jumping to conclusions”. Lastly, Cora describes how terrorism is “using public violence to forward a political view, any sort of view. It can be a person driving through a crowd of people, planes going through a building -- it’s really using violent actions to create and forward a symbolic ideal. Even a person going into a bar specified for gay people and shooting it up because they don’t like gay people is terrorism”. She explains how it happens a lot more often than the media likes to portray because they do not like the idea that it is someone within the nation wanting to change it because many believe it always has to be someone on the outside.

The origins of this social issue starts from historical events where the only terrorist acts widely reported were those of middle eastern nature or by darker skinned/ethnic individuals. In 1991 there was a reported terrorist attack where Islamic militants in Lebanon “release[d] kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity”, then the tragedy of 9/11 occurred, and in 2010 there were terrorists who attacked Ahmadiyya Mosques in Pakistan which killed 94 victims and injured over 120 innocent people. All of these events were deemed as terrorist attacks and threats to other people, but a common thread was that these major headlines were about darker skinned individuals (HISTORY). However, terrorist attacks caused by lighter skinned individuals such as the anthrax-laced letters weeks after 9/11, the gunman that attacked the Pulse Nightclub in Florida, and General Pinochet's agents murdering Chile’s former Ambassador in American soil in 1976 are acknowledged, but not a staple of terrorism that most Americans are familiar with (Sarah Pruitt and Becky Little). Terrorism is an act of mass violence in which causes divided nations; this internally displaced young adults since many are refugees running from hostility labeling themselves as survivors of war. Recent findings explain “children’s distress and the disorders they may developed consequent on their direct and indirect exposure to war”  as well as “they suffer from guilt as well as [experience] many violent distressing events” (Williams and Hazell). Beyond children themselves, teens often experience discouragement, disillusionment, mood swings, irritability, anxiety emotional distance and isolation, as well as substance abuse; there are many different ways that young adults have an collective trauma that impacts their social, emotion, development, psychological, coping and emotional regulation, sociopolitical attitudes, and their general beliefs about the world (Barringer). Hence, by not learning together, people will say ignorant about conflicts in a specific region of the world they are unfamiliar with and not do further research.

     There are many ways we can improve this situation, first being that schools can offer classes in school that everyone has to take, either sometime in high school or middle school where these things can be talked about amongst students and have those kinds of discussions built into class. Another ways is to offer reassurance, support through active listening, regulate media exposure, develop safety plans, and promote positivity amongst Americans starting at a young age (Barringer). In The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism, Hudson, terrorists “cannot be detected by personality or physical traits” and “even a watch-list is not foolproof” which means that by avoiding stereotypes and generalizations can develop modern day society (71). According to Krueger and Maleckova, “neither social background, educational opportunity or attainment seem to be particularly associated with terrorism” imposing the conclusion that terrorists do not act based on racial motives or can be defined by them (141). By indulging teenagers opinions, society can now gauge emotional complexity that will eventually support and reassure them to explore the topic of terrorism and everything it unpacks. Through discussing this further, it can educate society, people of both young and old age, hopefully moving towards a more homogeneous and joyful community.

                                                    WORKS CITED.

Barringer, A. (2018, February 19). Talking about terrorism and mass violence with teens: What can parents do? Parenthetical. Retrieved from https://parenthetical.wisc.edu/talking-about-terrorism-and-mass-violence-with-teens-what-can-parents-do/

Berry, N. O. Theories on the Efficacy on Terrorism. Conflict Quarterly.

HISTORY. (2019). Terrorism. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/tag/terrorism

Hudson, R. A. (1999, September). The sociology and psychology of terrorism: Who becomes a terrorist and why?. The Library of Congress.

Krueger, A. B & Maleckova, J. (2003). Education, poverty and terrorism: Is there a causal connection? Journal of Economic Perspectives. Volume 17, Number 4, Pages 119-144.

Little, B. (2018, October 16). How a dictator got away with a brazen murder in D.C. in 1976. History Stories. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/pinochet-terror-attack-dc

Pruitt, S. (2018, October 4). When anthrax-laced letters terrorized the nation. History Stories. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/anthrax-attacks-terrorism-letters#gid=ci02349043000326cb&pid=antrhax-letter-1993224

Williams R.  Hazell, P. (2012). Children and young people who are refugees, internally displaced persons or survivors or perpetrators of war, mass violence and terrorism. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/co-psychiatry/Abstract/2012/07000/Children_and_young_people_who_are_refugees,.5.aspx

[stfudiscoinfernoed]

Radicalization of White Men

A friend recently pointed me towards this thread on twitter where a man discussing how white supremacists had “recruited him” via the internet when he was younger. It’s a topic that doesn’t get discussed enough. I’ve transcribed the thread below for accessibility and readability reasons. It’s also really long, so I’ll be putting most of it under a read more.

Hey guys, I know I’ve been doing a lot of hot takes lately, but there’s something rather important I need to talk to you about. This is some personal shit and it’s been on my mind for years, but I’ve always been afraid to talk about it for fear of losing my friends.

I used to low-key subscribe to white nationalist views, back in my early 20s. Not going to make excuses for it, I should have known better. The reason I want to talk to you guys about it is that you - particularly my younger followers - need to know how these people recruit.

This is really difficult to talk about even though to the greatest extent it didn't affect my behaviour. Didn't start screaming epiphets. White nationalists are exceptionally clever in the way that they recruit people. It is a terrifyingly insidious process. I never even met the person who "converted" me in person. In fact, I'm fairly certain he doesn't even know that he succeeded.

We were talking through anonymous imageboards - britchan, britfa.gs, back in the days of the Chanology protests in 2008/2009. The initial moves might not seem like recruitment at all. He constantly, relentlessly insulted me, in a tremendously condescending manner. I was 20 and not particularly good at structuring my arguments, so he was able to easily tear apart almost any argument I put forward. Everything he said was drenched in pretentious melodrama. From an outside perspective it would've seemed comical and ridiculous. He literally referred to himself and his allies as "the forces of good." Anyone who disagreed with him was evil, intentionally malicious.

These behaviours weren't meaningless. They were meant to make people like me emotionally invested in the argument. I was meant to feel offended and affronted by his behaviour so that I wouldn't just disengage from the debate and stop listening to him. The more I lost arguments against him, the more insulting he got and the more desperate I became to "defeat" him.

Now, the vitally important to note about white supremacists is that not everything they say is a COMPLETE falsehood. This is the danger. White supremacists are very, very good at curating snippets of verifiably true information to support their arguments. They will present, for instance, the IQ statistics or crime rates of African Americans without any reasoning other than "they're black." Of course, there's a whole lot of context behind those figures. But that context takes more time to present than the statistics do. And if you try, they will misuse the principle of Occam's Razor. "That's all very complicated reasoning. There's a simpler answer."

We continued in this manner for a while. Then suddenly, the "recruiter" did a 180 turnabout in tactics and plotted a new course. All the insults stopped abruptly. Suddenly, he was saying things like "you're clearly a very intelligent individual. I can respect that." He explained very articulately the concept of cognitive dissonance, which was, of course, what I was feeling at that point. White nationalists are VERY fond of argumentum ad lapidem - dismissing an argument as ridiculous without explaining WHY it's ridiculous. The insults returned, but they weren't REALLY directed at me anymore. They were directed at "ridiculous" things like liberalism and equality. With the subtle implication that I, as an intelligent young (white) man should be able to see through all of these falsehoods.

There was an extensive use of motte and bailey arguments as well, whenever I started showing discomfort with a suggested course of action.  What he really wanted, of course, was the removal of all non-white individuals from Britain. That was often implied or outright stated. But whenever I showed discomfort at this idea, he'd say "well of course we wouldn't evict legal residents, just the illegal ones."  This sort of maleable, amorphous ideology is a very useful asset for white nationalist recruiters. You can't nail them down to a viewpoint.  The white nationalist recruiter has some core beliefs they won't compromise on, but only he knows what they actually are. One day he'd express billious hatred for atheists, Jews and gays, and the next he'd discuss how Islam was a terrible threat to their rights. The recruiter lovingly, carefully tailors your understanding of what white nationalism "actually is" to your personal preferences.

Then there was the 2009 MEP elections, where he swore that the BNP would get 12 seats minimum. They got only 2. He vanished. Completely. I have, from May 2009 to this day, never knowingly spoken to him again. That, also, was by design. There was no closure. There was no "victory." There was no embarassed scratching of head or admittance of defeat.  He just disappeared without a trace, and I never got to prove the supremacy of my ideas over his. THIS WAS BY DESIGN. Since I, in my own head, hadn't proved to him that he was wrong... I hadn't really proved to myself that he was wrong, either. So those ideas just sat and festered in my head. Ready for someone else to come along and continue where he'd left off.

See, it's useful for white nationalists that their ideology is somewhat difficult to discuss their ideas with anyone other than them.  White nationalists are actually exploiting the stigma attached to racism for their own benefit. Recruitment targets are scared of it.  They feel like they can't discuss the things that they've been told without being shunned for being racist. And white nationalists love that. They'll tell you that society is afraid of people discovering the truth of their ideas, and so will shut down debate on the subject. They set up this drip-feed of "true" information that cuts through society's "lies" and then when it starts getting good, they cut you off.  So that if you want more of this "truth" you need to go to them and seek it out on their terms, in an environment they control.

They are the EXACT opposite of "it's not my job to educate you." They are OVERJOYED to show you all their painstakingly-curated information. And they will heap praise on you for having the perspicacity to see through society's "lies." You're welcomed like a long-lost brother. I never got to the point where I was hanging out on nationalist forums, or attending real life gatherings, or even insulting people online. I just had these ideas bouncing around my head, unrefuted, because I was too afraid of social censure to seek deprogramming. That's sort of a failure state for white nationalists, but not an unrecoverable one. They have ways of making you useful.

See, with that toxic shit in the back of my mind, it was in some subconscious ways affecting my ability to interact with others. I sometimes felt deeply uncomfortable interacting with people of other ethnicities because I'd have these intrusive thoughts in my head. And it made me vulnerable to another insidious tactic that they've developed and perfected in recent years - co-opting liberalism.

White nationalists have played dog-in-the-manger with a lot of ideas that are generally thought of as liberal in recent years. Free speech, freedom of expression - "listen, you may DISAGREE with white nationalist views, but don't they have a right to state them?"  "If they censor white nationalists, who will they censor next? It could be your video games! It could be YOU!" In a horrifying twist of historical revisionism, they turned arguments used against the Nazis against people who opposed white nationalism. Hell, they've even made a brave effort at co-opting the concept of egalitarianism, painting themselves as the oppressed underclass. And all they needed was people like me, insecure people with a head full of cognitive dissonance, to make their arguments look respectable.

See, if white nationalists can't advance their views directly, they'll do it by proxy. Someone with hair, not covered in swastika tattoos. Someone like me. I’m a crossdressing liberal bisexual furry with a bunch of ethnically diverse friends. I COULDN’T be advancing a nationalist agenda, right? White nationalists love it when people like me do their work for them. It's so much more palatable than skinheads and jackboots.

God this is fucking hard to write. I was part of the GG movement for a while. Not that I think GG is actively white nationalist, despite all the other things it is/was/became. But it was that little splinter in my mind that kept me there for so long, the "what if society is trying to contol our viewpoints?"  It stopped me from immediately seeing how toxic a lot of the people I was associating with were. That's not an excuse, incidentally. I'm not trying to diminish my responsibility for my own actions. I should've known better. It also didn't help that a lot of the people that opposed GG were and continue to be genuinely dreadful people.

That's a thing. That's always useful for white nationalists and other hate movements - moral failures on the part of the opposition. White nationalists love to paint any hypocrisy or failing by a specific adversary as hypocrisy or failing of their opposition as a whole. "This one anti-fascist turned out to be a paedophile, so that means all antifa are paedophiles!" When the people who you're up against are billious, spiteful and hypocritical, it can make you feel like you're on the side of good. This is why I'm slightly more cautious than most about the whole "punch a Nazi" thing. Avowed white supremacists? Sure, punch 'em. But you need to be careful around people who are on the fringes, who are having the same doubts and cognitive dissonance that I was. That was me, once. And I feel like there's pain in my life that could've been avoided if I felt safe to reach out to someone for help.

I lost a friend over this shit. That was @tornewuff. We only recently made up. I wish I'd told him all of this a lot sooner. I'm glad I had people like @hoodednomad and my age-old schoolfriends Peter and Julian to (verbally) slap some fucking sense into me. And I'm glad I got talking to @HYENAMISERY and reading his Twitter feed. He helped me understand a lot of stuff I didn't understand before.

The thing about all of this is I think I managed to stave off falling headfirst into ethnonationalism because I never WANTED it to be true. I think a lot of people who get fully into it are overjoyed to have a reason to hate people they already didn't like. I never wanted any of this bullshit to be true. I was terrified by the possibility that it was, and desperately wanted an out. One of my oldest friends was an Indian boy called Sanjay. I went to primary school with Muslims and Koreans. I never hated any of them. That's one of the most toxic things about white nationalism. It can make you have second thoughts about people you love. And there are some people who, like me, don't want all this hate to be true. They'll do anything for it not to be true. Show them it's not.

I had people there when I needed them, but it was a fucking close thing. Not everyone is as lucky as I am. Please, help them.  It was a terrifying fucking experience writing this, and if you feel like you can't associate with me anymore, I understand. I don't want to believe that I hurt someone because of all of this, but if I did, I'm sorry. This is sort of my apology note. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I think I'm going to work out to blow off some of this nervous energy and then cry a little. Not gonna lie, I was worried coming out with all of this would ruin my reputation in the fandom. But then I felt like it was too important. People need to know this shit. Because there are a hell of a lot of emotionally lost young white guys (and girls, they recruit them too)  (In fact the recruitment of white girls by white supremacists is ugly as sin. They LOVE to bombard them with rape statistics.)

[strangledeggs]

Compare And Contrast - Like The Corleones: Grimes vs. The Knife

It’s been several years since I’ve seen The Godfather. Perhaps it would have been worth re-watching it before delving into this thing, but I think my vague memory of it should suffice for the comparison I want to make here.

Before I properly begin, though, I’d like to point out what seems like the sheer unlikelihood of the comparison I’m about to make even existing; it’s an oddly specific shared reference point that two separate alt-electronic pop songs should build off intertwining themes of gender and The Godfather. Nevertheless, both Grimes’ “Kill V. Maim” and the Knife’s “One Hit” do indeed share improbably close subjects. Maybe Grimes was inspired by the earlier Knife song, seeing as it follows nearly a decade after? This is, however, besides the point.

The point being that despite “One Hit” and “Kill V. Maim” containing similar material on a surface level, they seem to take their actual philosophies of gender in very different directions. Both tackle a sort of “two-faced” masculinity, but the Knife aim for a kind of broader social critique of traditional patriarchal family structures, while Grimes reaches for what appears to be a more personal and anarchic approach to gender. As I distinguish between these approaches, I’d also like to draw attention to how the songs differ musically as well, and how this may be related to the lyrical content.

But for clarity’s sake, let’s start at the beginning and explore why the two songs may have chosen such similar reference points and why they may not be as similar as they first appear. Why The Godfather? Well, we should begin with a certain assumption, based on the public images and auxiliary projects of both Grimes and the Knife, that both are very much interested in art philosophy and film. Additionally, both being (or at least being fronted by) women, they’ve picked up on the gender disparity throughout art and film history. Often, feminist critique involves what the kids in critical theory call “hermeneutics of suspicion”, in which historical and “canonical” works are viewed with a critical eye towards the power structures that may have allowed them to be considered “great” in the first place. Seeing as The Godfather is directed by a man, concerns largely men and a kind of archetypal masculinity and is considered “one of the greatest films of all time”, it should come as no surprise that it’s a perfect target for both artists.

However, while both artists enact a kind of parody of the central men of the films, they go about it in very different ways. The Knife’s approach is subtle, as is the Godfather reference; you don’t think about the gangster-like attitude of the song’s central male character until you hear the line “Spending time with my family, / Like the Corleones” (more on that one later). Grimes, on the other hand, has explicitly stated in interviews that her song’s character is something a little more, er, outrageous...specifically something to do with a gender-shifting vampire version of Michael Corleone, like “The Godfather meets Twilight”.

From here, we may begin to see how each artist takes this theme down different paths. The Knife’s central character is a true “family man”, at least in the patriarchal sense. His is a story of violence told violently, as the opening verse declares, “It was headline news, / One more abuse, / I’ve got to tell it with a fist”. His power is exerted over the inhabitants of his domestic sphere, introduced in the second verse: the archetypal trophy/stay-at-home wife and the children. This verse also ends in the titular phrase, which comes to symbolize a key split in the man’s personality, that of “one hit, one kiss”. Here, we see an apparent duality that actually serves the same purpose: the man wants to be seen as powerful, but also loving, and his actions reinforce this. In the end, both become mechanisms by which he maintains power over his family; the promise of love brings them close while the threat of violence discourages them from leaving (”If you enter, you’ll stay”). This is the Knife’s parody of the archetypal masculine gangster, as is made suddenly explicit in the previously-mentioned line on “spending time with my family”. Just as the gangster’s family’s very structure contains violence, so does that of the character developed in the song.

The song goes on to explore to more parts of this masculinity which also merit some attention. The song’s third verse details a supposedly “not” pornographic scene, as it’s considered art, “if you do it with a twist”. This segment seems to further emphasize the elaborate guise this song’s character dresses his violent masculinity in, attempting to couch the institution that favours his sexual desires in the language of art. Finally, the last verse, perhaps the most chilling, has the man making apparent concessions as to further mask his absolute power: “For a reasonable salary, I will wash the world”; it’s meant in reference to housework at its most literal, but I hear something eerily fascistic in that phrase as well. He goes on to claim that this sharing of house duties is not only more equitable, it doesn’t demean him (which makes the listener question if this same would apply to his wife): “No need to mark my territory, / It’s all obvious to me”. For the Knife, this is “manhood’s bliss”: the power to quietly slip in and out of traditional roles and keep the face of the benevolent dictator, while remaining a supreme patriarchal ruler.

It should be noted that the music the Knife sets these lyrics to is remarkably well-suited to the themes. Probably the most interesting aspect of the song is that it has something of a vocal drag-performance of its own from singer Karin Dreijer Andersson (something that will probably come as little surprise to those already familiar with the group): for the duration of the song, her voice is pitched down to take on the approximate sound of a deep baritone. While this pitch/tone-of-voice technique could potentially have troubling gender essentialist ideals behind it, it’s Karin’s delivery that really makes it, as she takes on a sort of swaggering confidence atop the beat’s muscular shuffle that, combined with those lyrics, seems like it could only belong to a (as Hop Along might put it) “Powerful Man”.

While Grimes may share an initial character template in Corleone, and it’s probably interesting to note that the similarity is more than skin-deep: her fantasy version of the gangster also undergoes a kind of gender-bending, as she sings the song from his(?) first-person perspective and evokes some vaguely violent imagery from the very first line. However, the difference begins to reveal itself by way of a number of subtle signs; for one, Grimes doesn’t adopt the “vocal drag” that Karin favors. In fact, she seems to strive for a consciously more “hyperfeminine” voice in the song’s pre-chorus, imitating a sort of cheerleader-like chant and even shifting up the pitch of her voice, further exacerbating the gender-bending elements.

But pay close attention to the lyrics here, as they too signify an important shift that is mirrored in Grimes’ vocal delivery: the final lines of each verse refer to a kind of diminished power, claiming “I’m only a man, and I do what I can”. And the chorus is dripping with ironic defiance: from the spelling-out of “B-E-H-A-V-E” to the chipmunked refusal to do so, Grimes is rejecting something here with a distaste that could hardly be less clear. My guess? Though it’s unspoken, she seems to be rejecting the very strict gender roles that the Knife’s narrator seems so confident in. In fact, this makes the pre-chorus line “I’m only a man” even more ironic, as its supposedly male Corleone speaker is already gender-bending through Grimes’ vocalization, making him hardly “only a man”.

This is where I believe Grimes really begins to depart from The Knife’s vision of gender is a truly distinct way: her vision of gender transgression seems significantly more optimistic than “One Hit”’s. Whereas the narrator of the previous song saw this ability to move beyond his assigned gender role as a way to further exert his power without harming his “essential masculine nature”, Grimes appears to employ gender-defying actions as a way to deconstruct gender and free one’s self from the constraints of being purely masculine or feminine.

The music seems to match this instability; at first listen, it seems to have an almost simplistic “bubble-gum pop” production job with bouncy synth riffs and the works. The chorus, however, seems to take on an almost rock-like feel, with a real driving pulse behind it, making the genre of the song itself somewhat ambiguous. And obviously, as with The Knife, Grimes’ vocal delivery is crucial here too: the squeaky tone she uses in the verse jars with the exaggerated faux-cheerleader chant and chipmunk vocals of the chorus, which suddenly give way to outright screaming as the climax. It’s a masterful composition and performance, seeming to morph before your ears as its central character might before your eyes.

So who’s right, The Knife or Grimes? I don’t feel qualified to make such a grand judgement myself, but regardless of which conveys the better philosophical/political truth about gender, both are fascinating examples of the ways in which gender can be performed in pop music as a kind of critique in itself. At the very least, they are artistically formal marvels.

[leftpress]

Responding to Fascist Organizing

Jan. 27 2017 | William Gillis

The great economist and early anti-statist thinker Bastiat famously pointed out the way our attention is often drawn to the most immediate, losing sight of the wider array of consequences and causations. Such myopia is how modern statism flourishes, obscuring the threat of the policeman’s pistol and the swing of his truncheon, so that a proposed tax for instance is sliced away from all context and rendered into a seemingly inert, docile thing.

Through centuries of hard fought progress the public has increasingly grown adverse to violence and explicit acts of domination. It is impossible to understate the accomplishment this represents. And yet our rulers have compensated not by lessening their brutality but by obscuring it. Every sociopath intuitively knows to exploit the limits of human attention through complicated misdirection. What is seen is a politician standing before an adoring crowd, what may go unseen is the brutality their policy depends upon, the threat they implicitly make.

A society might appear peaceful and idyllic, with acts of brutality not only invisible but entirely absent, and yet “that peace” be the result of the threat of incredible violence. If the citizens of a totalitarian regime do not resist, do not incur repression, but simply hang their heads in submission, it would be wrong to say no violence or aggression is present. And yet a particularly bureaucratic soul might look around and dismiss the claims of the oppressed, might demand that they lay their bodies on the line to make visible the implicit threat of the state, and even then dispute that there is not enough data. Might request that their bodies be stacked ever higher to “prove” the systematic nature of the threat. And god forbid the threat be delayed, the promise be made years out of violence to come. When the implicit but very clear threat is, “We will murder you and your entire family. Not today. But soon. Once our power has finished growing. Resist now and die then.”

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Such violent “peace” is not exclusively the product of the state. It sneaks into human affairs on all levels. It shapes and twists our society, our economy. The gangster in the streets whose theft is tolerated, even made invisible, uncommented upon, because the threat is perceived as so overwhelming. The “Move along, n—-r” that contains mutually understood volumes of collective threat, the word resonating and cutting with centuries of lynchings and beatings behind it, but its meaning deniable in an instant. “How do you knoooow I meant that as a threat?” and a flash of white teeth at the interlocutor. Such implicit violence becomes fractional, fungible. Not every use of a racial epithet contains it in full, but they often trade off the watered down possibility of violence. What is 1/200th of a threat of lynching, or a beating? Violence suffuses our world, it flows unseen through complex circuits, accumulates in silent but vast reservoirs, rearranging and curtailing what is possible.

When fascists or white nationalists talk of “voluntary” ethnic cleansing we all know what they mean. The word “voluntary” is a laughable tissue, the confident sneer of a bully who knows how to play within the shortsighted rules, but wants almost all observers to note his audacity, and to — in letting it pass — demonstrate their own weakness. A detailed threat is delivered by mail and deniable reference to it made in person. The game is simple. One oily fascist wears his suits in front of the cameras while a broader ecosystem of fascists delivers the violence. People of color are murdered for sport, anti-racist activists are assassinated, prison nazis sand off people’s skin and dump their bodies in public. Shaggy sings, “it wasn’t me.”

They know it’s a game, their with-a-wink pretenses of distance, “nazism was about a particular historical context”, “I have my critiques of Hitler”, “oh I don’t hang with those specific guys” are never meant to stand firmly, they’re more about poking fun at the self-constraint of formal systems and dissolve under even a moment’s scrutiny.

When neonazis march through a town their action is precisely that: an action. A demonstration of force. A threat. A two part declaration: “We will exterminate you. Here are the tools we will use, the strength we have amassed for the task.” Its character is hardly invisible to those targeted.

And yet, true to form, most liberals are seemingly incapable of recognizing the act for what it is, of looking beyond their noses to any semblance of context. In the liberal’s mind a march of goosestepping nazis carrying weapons through a black neighborhood is just a parade of people with bad opinions.

Similarly when a representative of a neonazi group sets up a table at a metal show or steps before the cameras the oh-so-astute public notices that they’re not murdering anyone at the moment. Just recruiting people to murder in the future. Like the army recruiter that likewise preys on disaffected youth the public largely cannot see such recruitment as inextricable from a larger mechanism of violence. The very point of such individual acts of recruitment is to add up into an unstoppable army when it finally decides to initiate force en masse.

Yet just as the state’s necessarily simplistic legal system discretizes every single action, stripping away vital context, so too have the public’s moral analytic capacities atrophied to only recognize the most immediate, the most apparent. There’s utility to such constraint in certain arenas, we would never want to give the state the capacity to determine what discourse is permissible, or to prosecute nazis for their beliefs (despite conservative hysteria by all accounts the vast majority of antifascist activists are anarchists who have consistently opposed state legislation and the “antifa bolts” famously stand for opposition to Bolshevism as well as fascism). The reality is that every individual is capable of greater perception and intelligence than the state, of directly seeing realities the state is structurally incapable of parsing. When a trusted friend tells you someone raped them you’ll likely cancel your date with him, even if your friend’s testimony alone wouldn’t and shouldn’t be sufficient to convict in a court of law. As autonomous individuals we can and should take actions that based on our more intimate and direct knowledge — knowledge it would be impossible to systematize or make objective in some legal system. It will always be possible to construct threats of violence sufficiently obscured as to be rendered invisible or plausibly deniable to some observers but crystal clear to the recipient(s). This is one of the innate failings of codified justice systems, abstracted to some level of collectivity, and part of the reason ethics enshrines individual agency above legality.

If the first step on the road to fascism is blinding ourselves to its violence, the second step is denying our agency to respond.

Let us be absolutely clear though that formal “fascism” and the broader white nationalist ecosystem around it constitutes but one type of authoritarianism. While its aspirations are grave and its spectre is on the rise, there are many other flavors of authoritarianism alive in our world, currently wielding far more power. These authoritarianisms are presenting killing far far more people than some scrawny white nationalist pricks hanging out in /pol/ and occasionally shooting up protesters, and these other authoritarianisms absolutely must be countered.

But. Nevertheless the history of the last century overwhelmingly shows that fascism constitutes a relatively unique threat that must be diligently resisted, lest certain dynamics particular to it otherwise spiral into runaway growth. The threat it poses to ethics, modernity and to civilization is always present (despite its occasional opportunistic adoption of those mantles), it can be countered, but to do so requires us to get serious. To understand its function and its motivation.

There are broadly two common sources of authoritarianism:

The first is a kind of inane and “edgy” consequentialism that, upon realizing ends can justify means, leaps to grab onto the most stupid and violent of means. If you want to bake a blueberry pie then obviously you should ban independent press and gulag all the kulaks. While these authoritarians sometimes start with relatable aims, their misstep is to view “power” as a universal currency and without externalities. At some point they internalize the assumption that if you want to get ___ done you should obtain power, whereupon you will just be able to do it. They fail to grasp that some ends are impossible to accomplish through social control and coercion, and that such means have tendencies of their own. This authoritarianism is the blind tantrum of a child demanding that their parents make water less wet. Its watchwords are “There should be a law.” Obviously it’s the dominant form of authoritarianism found in liberals and socialists.

The second kind of authoritarianism views power not as a means but as an ends. In practice these are typically people for whom the unfortunate homo sapiens preoccupation with social standing has festered into a blistering wound. In this virulent pathology power is near enough to the sole ends in life and everything else is a delusion that risks rendering you instrumental in someone else’s power. This ideological sociopathy is utterly uninterested in reality. To paraphrase Scott Alexander, there are no philosopher Trumps. Fascism has from the start demonstrated a well documented postmodern mutability, happily contorting its stated beliefs or tenets into all kinds of incoherencies and absurdities. This sort of authoritarian intuitively understands discourse as just another arena of positioning and ideology as just another shell game. Every statement is reduced into terms of affect, allegiance, and the disruption of any process that might be bent by the pressures of objectivity. Karl Rove’s “We make our own reality” hangs among a pantheon of other Orwellian admissions by this sort of authoritarian. This form of authoritarianism is widespread among conservatives, who often admit to seeing liberal democracy or even religion as useful lies when pressed. And individuals with such nihilistic perspectives can be found in literally any social space — certainly inclusive of social justice movements — usually acting as predators and climbing social ladders. But its most consistent and large-scale ideological expression lies in fascism.

There are of course in practice many other niche mutations and subspecies of authoritarianism. One increasingly prominent example are reactionaries who seek to disable and impede technological capacity — ideologically committed to a world of immediatism or a return to some ‘essential human nature’, they seek impose a material state of affairs where possibility is dramatically curtailed. If you bomb everyone back to the stone age then you no longer need active jailers to prevent creativity and connection, the muddy ruined landscape itself provides the constraint. In such case the kernel of authoritarianism lies in the ideological fixation, the hunger for a certain simplicity, that is then achieved through the suppression of others’ options. But like other niche expressions such an authoritarianism is thankfully still quite rare.

What’s important to note is that every species of authoritarianism demands a different response.

The authoritarianism of a liberal or socialist, being instrumental and arising from profound ignorance, lacks a self-awareness and can be effectively challenged in debate. That is not of course necessarily to say that the authoritarian liberal or socialist will themselves retreat from their ridiculous policies upon evidence, but that they lack the conscious duplicity to really prepare for counter-evidence. Bring to light the vicious physical brutality hidden in their cigarette tax or the clear ludicrousness of a transitional dictatorship that will “wither away” to create a free society and the sincere liberal or socialist is left spinning in circles, trying to find places of retreat on the fly, the ineptitude of their proffered means apparent to all direct observers, and defanged of serious recruiting capacity.

Nothing could be less the case with a nazi. An actual fascist is well aware that some proposed policy may not have much of a leg to stand on. They are prepared for objective reality to line up against them. They know at heart that their race statistics are often false, misrepresented, or actually evidence for the reverse of their claims and insinuations. Not only does this not matter to them, they strategize from the beginning with it in mind. A fascist cares only about the landscape of power and how they can shift it to make them “win”. I want to be clear here: the problem isn’t merely that they’re arguing in conscious bad faith, fascists have no monopoly on that — nor even do authoritarians — the problem is what this arises from: a hunger for social power, and how fundamental it is to their position. Fascist recruitment doesn’t function in terms of persuasion, it functions in terms of promises of power.

Authoritarian personalities flock to movements that promise them comfortably easy solutions, but more self-aware authoritarians flock to movements that promise them power.

The primary recruitment tool of the fascist is the appearance of power.

This is why fascists — and those other self-aware authoritarians in their general orbit including Stalinists and Maoists — focus so strongly on aesthetics and rituals that reinforce perceptions of broad popularity, community, strength-by-association and general social standing. Those movements that only whine, offering victimization narratives and promises of power without any tangible content to them, rarely recruit any lasting base of self-aware authoritarians (although a few will surreptitiously set up shop to prey upon the few true believers and deadenders). Appearance of strength and legitimacy is everything, without it fascist movements dry up. No self-aware authoritarian wants to back a loser cause.

This is why refusing fascists the legitimization of a platform and violently countering their rallies has worked so well historically. The authoritarian base that fascists recruit from, don’t share the instincts of proponents of liberty, they aren’t attracted to underdogs with no hope, they aren’t compelled to self-sacrifice in defense of the weak, they’re attracted to supermen on the rise. When a nazi gets up on a stage to call for genocide his arguments don’t matter, it’s the potency of the act, the very fact that he was able to get on that stage and say such things in the first place, that recruits.

Fascists make a mockery of debate intentionally, in the authoritarian mind it’s inherently just positioning and only fools take ideas seriously. From such a perspective the fascist that discards the existing norms, that dances around in a flagrantly bad faith way, demonstrates a kind of strength in honesty. The only honesty, in their mind, being that truth and ideas don’t matter. Power matters, power through deception and manipulation — the capacity to get someone to put you on a stage, in a position of respect, despite your flagrant dishonesty — and power through physical strength — the capacity to march in the open, in great numbers, with weapons, with muscles, trappings of masculinity, displays of wealth, etc. Widespread mockery can hurt fascists by demonstrating their unpopularity, but so long as they have other sorts of power to fall back on the fascist can simply tell himself “this is the real power, this is the only thing that actually matters, what those people have is fake and hollow, that they will be overthrown.”

Regardless of whether or not you agree with it or consider it ethical, people punch fascists because it frequently works.

When you hurt a proponent of liberty we flock to each other’s aid, when you hurt an authoritarian other authoritarians are instinctively disgusted by his weakness and most scuttle further away. Sure, a tiny embittered core remains, some fools without the self-awareness of their own authoritarianism and other authoritarians now too invested to escape, and some misguided defenders of underdogs might come to their aid, but the compounding growth of the movement is derailed: few authoritarian personalities feel much inclined to join a bunch of powerless whiners.

There are, of course, complexities. Many authoritarian communists, for instance — despite similar totalitarian aspirations as explicit fascists — vary in degrees of self-awareness among their base about their hunger for power. Movements like Stalinism and Maoism depend on broad bases of leftist fools who swallow the simplistic doublethink necessary to see Assad or Bob Avakian as noble oppressed underdogs. Still, when anarchists have fought them in the streets, as for example in Athens or Minneapolis, there has appeared to result a shrink in their base, or at least a bluntening of their power. Certain currents in today’s alt-right follow a comparable dynamic, mixing self-aware authoritarians alongside psuedo-libertarian fools who swallow the doublethink necessary to see people organizing for racial genocide as allies and feminist media reviewers as dire enemies.

It will certainly be the case that the tactics and strategies employed with such success against boneheads in the 80s that drove them off the streets and largely dissolved their ranks will transfer in their entirety to the fight against garbage-tier memelords like Richard Spencer, but it also does not appear that antifascist groups are copying them over fullcloth. There have been many eras and contexts of resistance to fascism, with many differences between them. The awkward dance of someone like Spencer as opposed to an outright prison nazi is to try to look like a hardass to cement his base while playing the victim for liberals to milk them of prestige and legitimacy. This is not an easy dance, and is prone to derailment from multiple fronts.

We are in a new landscape, and people oppose fascism from all sorts of angles and perspectives, it is up to us to find effective means of countering them. To flood the market of antifascist resistance, as it were, with diverse innovations and let the best rise on their own. But we should also not neglect the lessons of the past and insights of antifascists in communities throughout time and around the world. When an army is being built, when it is rolling toward you, is not the time to debate it, or to snicker in complacency at its lies and contradictions. When a force openly plans to exterminate you, we cannot afford the naivety of waiting for it with open arms — as Gandhi advised people do of the Third Reich — hoping you will last long enough to dissolve it from the inside. When generals talk of plans to invade and suppress free speech, when politicians propose legislation to bar freedom of movement, you do not waste time worrying if your resistance will in the process undermine the free speech or freedom of movement of those generals and politicians. You resist.

Anarchists and libertarians come in many stripes, consequentialist and not.

Personally — as a consequentialist seeking to maximize the liberty of all — my perspective is straightforward: while there are externalities to some acts to stay mindful of, and we have social norms and detentes of significant value, one cannot afford to take a reactive stance, to merely wait while fascists mobilize — drunk on their own perception of power — and hope for the best. There are dangers, slippery slopes, and corruptive human instincts to watch out for in our resistance, but such demand vigilance not total abstention or a bureaucratic shortsightedness.

On the other hand those who closely heed to pacifism or non-aggression in good faith must still ask themselves when an act or threat of violence despite being obscured or ‘unseen’ is still a pressing one, what proportionality and prioritization looks like, what preparations are called for before the seen “moment” of aggression, and generally what can still be done to counter fascist organizing efforts on all fronts. Even if you oppose punching a nazi leader, there’s still much that can be done. If nazis march through a town in a demonstration of force, show up with your own guns ready to fire back. When nazis organize online, systematically disrupt and expose their efforts. Yes, today’s alt-right is a mealymouthed lot, mixing self-aware authoritarianism with whiny pretenses of libertarianism, and much can be accomplished peeling off the small swamp of useful fools they depend upon, forcing into the light the audacity of their pretense to the accomplishments of liberty while fetishizing nationality and borders — a claim of collective ownership as absurd as any Soviet gosplan proclamation and inherently murderous and totalitarian in implementation. But we must recognize that claims to the legacy and aspirations of liberty are rarely made with any sincerity. The core of these people are not mistaken about means, their authoritarianism is not the idiotic quick-solution authoritarianism of most liberals and socialists; their draw is power itself. The boneheads and trolls slathering at the thought of genocide and apartheid are open enemies of discourse and rationality itself. They believe they can bypass debate, derail it, make a mockery of it, use it to hide the circuits of their violence, the shell game of their aggression. They believe that physical force is the only thing that matters. We cannot afford to ignore that language.

Related Stories on LeftPress:

► ANARCHY WORKS - INTRODUCTION

► THREE CONCERNS REGARDING HAUNTOLOGY

► TRUMP AND EVERYDAY ANTI-FASCISM BEYOND PUNCHING NAZIS

[originalcontent]

On the Topic of Logic

Uuuuuugh okay. I don’t want to write a whole fucking essay in Skype of all things so here we go. Plus, I’m sure everyone is fucking tired of hearing from me rant from my polarizing anti-fascist biases. I guess I’m writing this here instead because while I will defend my ideals to the grave, it can get pretty exhausting.

If there’s something that I find morally objectionable, I have to go out of my way to argue it. I mean, I don’t always, I don’t even as much as I should, but leaving things unanswered gives me a gross feeling for a number of reasons. It’s fine if you’re looking to discuss things with me, but please, please, please actually look at my responses if that’s what you want to do? I can’t let other people in my direct circle of influence spread harmful ideologies in good conscious, I’m sorry. Something that people like to do is take my arguments and assume I’m making absolute statements, so I just want to say I’m not saying to never use logic, I’m not saying don’t call bullshit when necessary, I’m not saying violence is good. I’m sure you were all abundantly taught the merits of the converses by society already. You don’t need me to explain those to you. This isn’t a condemnation of well-accepted ideas, it’s just saying that there are flaws to them as well.

Part 1: Ethics do not follow formal logic

Before I start, I would like to ask a general favor. Please for the love of god, stop trying to explain logic and fallacies to me. I fucking know what a fallacy is. I’m especially partial to the straw man, or I must be, because that’s the one that I find used against me the most often. Some other fallacies that deserve honorable mentions. The slippery slope fallacy, that I may often seem to fall into. Except that historically, things actually are slippery slopes to bigger things. Plus, if you’re not going to speculate on potential consequences, what’s even the point of analyzing current events? I personally think it’s best to prepare for the worst case scenario, especially if the things you do to prepare are good and revolutionary acts that our society probably needs anyway. I know that I cannot predict the future. Next honorable mention is proof by repeated assertion. I will say statements and then a couple days/hours/minutes/whatever later, I will see the exact same arguments, again, that I had already refuted in the first place. I’m glad you like the nonviolent movements of the past in India and 60’s America! I’m glad you’re happy with the results! I hope that you can acknowledge that these movements were only successful because they were partnered with more radical, violent movements! Like, I understand that you don’t always want to read through all of the links I post, but in that case take my word for what they say, don’t just ignore them! And then there’s ad homenim. You know what, I think that itself needs its own section so let’s shelve that one and come back to it later. Same with false equivalencies, I’ll get to those soon. Point being I know what fallacies are. I know what logic is. I’m betting on the fact that most other people can conceptualize basic logic as well. They may not show their work every step of the way, but assuming that they don’t and that they need you to explain logic to them is incredibly disrespectful. If you’re telling someone to “be logical” then you’re really, really an asshole. If logic is flawed, sure, you can point that out, but that doesn’t discredit a whole argument, nor does it replace a counterpoint.

The title pretty much says it all here, but I’m currently taking philosophy classes, so let’s talk about formal logic.

First off, logic should not be your gold standard for truth. The (albeit very, very simplified) way that logic works is you take a set of precedents and deprive other statements from them. (You know, Socrates was a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates was mortal. Not rocket science.) The way you measure logic is if it’s valid or invalid, not true and untrue. That’s right folks, just because logic is invalid, that doesn’t mean the conclusion is false! And the reverse is also true. Assuming that logic and reality match up is my actual, absolute, personal favorite fallacy, the fallacy fallacy, the assumption that imperfect logic leads to a wrong conclusion. For example: “others using formal logic as the end-all of discussions frustrates 312, 312 is frustrated, so others must be abusing their abilities to cite formal logic.” There are plenty of other things that could have frustrated me, the logic here is unsound, but the conclusion is still true. (Apologies for passive-aggression, although to be honest I’m not feeling all that kind right now.) Furthermore “312 enjoys debating ideas, 312 is currently debating ideas, so 312 must be enjoying this!” Here are some true premises with perfect logic and a false conclusion.

You might argue for the first case that the result was just come up with by chance, but it can’t be independently accepted as truth because the premises didn’t contain enough information to form a valid conclusion. For the second you might argue that my issue is in my premises here. My statements were true, but they weren’t universally true. And then I would congratulate you on having come up with such a great and original points that had in no way ever occurred to me before you so graciously enlightened me. Then, we can proceed to break them down. The first example was in fact a case where precedents didn’t fit together into a clear message, and the second indeed did not have precedents that always held. But I can’t possibly think of a real-world example that doesn’t have clear and objective premises. Oh wait, now that I’m typing it a few examples are coming to me.

Am I straw-manning your argument? I’m very sorry. You know what, to clear up the confusion, why don’t you send me all of your opinions on these issues and logically why you have them, fully explained and everything. If anyone needs that from me, message me because I’ve literally already done that on several occasions.

In the meantime, I’m going to do my own little logical proof, right here.

Premises:

There is no objective moral truth

Logic without inherently true premises will never lead to inherently true conclusions

Conclusion: You can’t use fucking logic to discuss moral issues and have it be correct.

I may have skipped a few steps there, but I don’t have the patience and I think you get the idea. When discussing ethics, you have to make up your own criteria, your own precedents, because nothing about ethics is logical. Sure, you could argue lots of things. For example, that if people are good to each other then that helps society which therefore benefits the people, but not all people benefit from society, and who’s to say what makes any society better than anything else? I have a set of premises that I deem to be correct. They basically boil down to “A fair and just society for all people is good.” And how about “all people deserve basic human rights.” I don’t know what yours all are! I do know that I don’t have any rational explanation for these ideas aside from that I believe them to be right. Because that’s how this whole thing works. There’s no formula for right and wrong, so stop trying to find one. Instead just do your best to make the world a better place however you feel that’s possible.

Part 2: Ad homenim does not necessarily apply in cases of politics.

Well, if that isn’t a provocative title. As I stated above, nothing in ethics is right by any objective measure. I really wish we could set down some objective truths, like say, genocide is a bad thing, but apparently that’s fucking controversial. So here we go.

I do need to put a huge disclaimer on this to say what I am not saying. I am not saying I think you can just take anything that anyone you don’t like says is false. 7+5=12 no matter who the person who says that is. As much as I hate it, you can’t always just listen to assholes and take the opposite of whatever they say (although honestly that’s not as bad a strategy as one would think.) I’m not saying that it never applies, I’m saying that it doesn’t necessarily apply.

For anyone who doesn’t know, ad homenim is the practice of targeting the person who made an argument rather than the argument itself. It is my belief that that should be reserved for purely logical debates, not as applied to society at large.

Some context for what specifically inspired me to make this post, earlier this week there’s been a theme of discussing violent resistance to nazism and fascism. On Wednesday someone posted, in response, “‘An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind’ -Mahatma Gandhi.” I made a comment that we should keep in mind all of the bad things Gandhi had done. The response was of course “ad homenim.” I had to go right then, but when I got back there were a shit ton of messages. One person said that I hadn’t argued with the quote, I had just made a statement, to which his response was “why bother putting that there in the first place.” Someone (bless her soul) cited the fallacy fallacy at him, and he responded with “well yeah but this was a very simple case of ad homenim. You shouldn’t use fallacies like that because they’re very easy to refute.” The two who had tried to defend me started trying to address him and the quote, and they kept getting the response of “well what 312 said wasn’t even relevant to the quote, you need to argue with the quote itself.” They were effectively shut down in terms of having an actual discussion, and I’m sorry for that because I had supplied him (and one other) with the means by which to do that. By the time I was online again I scrolled up to read the whole exchange, but everyone had moved on from this topic and it was abundantly clear that no one wanted to return to it, so I let it be. Then of course, I did as I do and grew bitter that I hadn’t been there to argue and started to stew in my bitterness until this post came into being. There we have it, the secret origin story of my unbridled rage.

Call that bullshit for unreliable narration, whatever. I’m not here to talk about that exchange any more than I’m going to express my pissed-off-ness at a couple people. I’m going to talk about why my original statement did not qualify as ad homenim!

I stress, earlier this week we had already been discussing violent resistance. We had already made all sorts of arguments on both sides. We had already pointed these people to a number of sources discussing why nonviolence is objectionable. Posting an image with this quote that all of us probably already knew added nothing new to this discussion. This quote did not stand alone in place of arguments. All it really managed to achieve was bringing famous people into the midst, in this case Gandhi. Whether or not you realized it, posting that quote was an entirely ethos-based argument. Ethos, for those who haven’t taken an english class, refers to an rhetorical tactic that appeals to authority. Thus it’s separate from pathos, emotional rhetoric, and logos, logical rhetoric, aka the literal only one of these three where logical fallacies apply in the first place. Like actually. The only response to appeals to authority is attack of character? How do you even expect me to argue with that quote? There’s nothing to argue! All the quote is is a baseless claim making a general statement meant to be inspirational. Which is great if there’s something new to take from it, but there’s not. Seriously, the fuck do you expect me to say? “No, actually the first person would lose an eye, then the second person would lose an eye, and then everyone else would be left alone”? Oh huh, I guess there is a logical response to that quote, my bad.

Actually, if you’ll indulge a tangent, remember when up there discussing fallacies I said I’d come back to false equivalencies later? Specifically the whole “eye for an eye” or “hate breeds hate” kind of thing. Other people on this website have stated that you can’t equate the hate of oppressors to the hate of the oppressed for their oppressors in far more eloquent terms than I can. Nazis hate jewish people, for instance, because they view them as inferior and inherently deserving of death. Jewish people might hate nazis because they literally want them dead. That hate is not just as bad! Violence coming from jewish people is self-defense! They can’t make a choice about their ethnicity, and nazis will want them dead regardless, whereas nazi ideologies are absolutely a choice, it’s people choosing to believe they’re superior and everyone else should be killed.

Back on the topic of ad hominem, in terms of politics and social change, everyone has an agenda. Many quotes seem very reasonable if you just take them at face value. You need to look at who’s saying them and why they’re saying them to understand what they mean. For example, the statement “Make America Great Again” might not sound too bad in of itself, but when you look at the platform associated with that line, you’ll realize that that’s a white supremacist statement. There’s nothing about that statement that’s white supremacist. It’s advocating for greatness, that’s all. I’m sure you know that to not be true. Political figures do this all the time, where they make a general, wide-reaching statement that you can critically analyze to see it doesn’t necessarily benefit who you think it would. (Such as conservatives calling for “safer neighborhoods,” when really what they want is stronger police forces.) Or where they call an initiative something seemingly unprovocative while including not-so-great policy in it if you bother to look past clever wording. Who says things matters. Who pushes things matters. Freedom and opportunity mean very different things to me then they do to libertarians, for instance. We could say the exact same sentence about wanting to protect freedom and opportunity, and it would still mean completely different things. So I’m just saying that if you decide to focus on statements themselves rather than who’s saying them, especially in the case of anything even remotely having to do with politics, you’re blind sighting yourself.

I had more to say, but to be honest I’m somewhat tired. Sorry, I’ll try to write more later.

One more thing:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/playing-devils-advocate/ Normally when I send this one to people I make sure to do it very nicely, but you know what? Right now I’m not feeling very nice. The role of a devil’s advocate is to represent perspectives not present in order to get somewhere constructive from a different angle. The role is not to argue against any points brought up. Read this, memorize this, love this, learn to live by this, I am actually 100% serious here.

That’s it for now.

Hope you got something out of it. I’ll probably write something about opinions, that’s another important issue. Well, 312 out.

[serenagaywaterford]

7) Honestly, the only things that I truly ship on that show (as far as canon goes) are: handmaids & unwomen & marthas/freedom (duh), Moira/happiness, Emily/therapy, comfort and her kid -- she needs those badly, Janine/happiness, Serena/actual remorse for what she's done to all women and June/her 2 kids (platonically -- bc there are pervs out there). *I mentioned "unpopular opinions" earlier. By that, I did not mean the types that use "freedom of speech" as an alibi in order to spread bigotry and

8) harass/attack real life people, especially minorities** and women. I wonder why those types think that THT is a “propagandistic”, unimportant show. /s **Btw, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this: I think the show missed a good opportunity to address racism. I understand why Gilead is post-racist, I really do. Their focus is on fertility and that’s why a) fertile women of color are needed, b) infertile women and non straight people are considered useless/a threat. But on the other hand, the

9) series is supposed to be set in the near future. I mean, come on. They’re not even a little bit prejudiced?

———

It’s funny talking about shipping on THT. Cos I’ll diverge from you here in that I definitely do have a ship, and I very much enjoy it. However, it’s so AU and it will never, ever be canon and I’m fully aware of how incredibly problematic it is. But, meh. It’s a fun thing to play around with in my mind. I’ve stopped feeling bad about it tbh. But it definitely comes in second to thinking about the show overall and it’s not my sole reason for tuning in. Which is where I think things differ from other factions of fandom who’s sole purpose seems to be shipping and worshiping the man in a woman’s story.

I am 100% on board with all of those ships! I ship Gilead/Destruction, and all the rest should follow :)

Yeah, the racism thing. I’m probably the worst person to talk about this cos I’m white af. And really, it’s so difficult to manage the racism. Cos, if you deal with racism as it was addressed in the book (race was sort of talked about a tiny bit), then you don’t get Moira in such a prominent role. You wouldn’t have any actors of colour, as extras or minor characters playing Handmaid’s. No Handmaids or children could be anything but white. So, they’d face criticism for not having a diverse enough main cast. 

They would have had a really hard time having Luke be black, and therefore Hannah mixed in a society that only wants pure white kids. I doubt, in such a racist fascist society, they’d want to keep around Hannah as a rich, pampered young girl and we’d lose that whole subplot. So, Luke would have had to be white. 

And Moira, if they chose that route, her story would be SO divorced from everyone else’s that it probably wouldn’t mesh well overall. Arguably. (I’d argue that they’ve already fucked some of that up anyway.)

Maybe they thought it was too complicated to address properly so they just said, “Yeah, racism doesn’t exist! Only babies!!!”

BUT it’s absolutely asinine of the show to suggest that Gilead is post-racial. I don’t care how many babies are dying, there is literally no theocratic society/genocide/dictatorship in history that does not involve race in value judgement. I cannot for one second accept that Gilead wouldn’t be insanely racist and scapegoat not only “sinners” but also people of colour. Like, that is a hallmark of the creation of almost every fascist state? Blaming the Other is key! And skin colour is such an easy target. And lbr, white evangelicals of all types are racist. Like, really fucking racist. And fascists are SUPER racist. If we’re to believe SOJ were an extremely far right radical-terrorist group, it just makes ZERO sense that they wouldn’t be WILDLY racist and that would be a core component of their ideology. I personally don’t know of a single far right group that isn’t insanely racist and bigoted. Some claim they’re not, but they totally are.

Like... how did all that racism that is ingrained in conservative religious fanaticism and America just magically disappear? Nah. Not buying it. It seems lazy not to address it. At least ACKNOWLEDGE it any way, even the smallest possible way.

The lack of attention the programme showed to that aspect just made the protesters at Serena’s rally make no sense too. Why is the main protest calling her a Nazi? Nazi is a specific ideology, and race (ethnic cleansing) is a HUGE fucking component of it. Its main goal was to eradicate an entire race/ethnicity from the planet. From what we know, that doesn’t even come into play with Serena/Gilead’s ideology at all. I have no doubt that Serena was intent on legally/forcibly mandating women to give birth (very much like historical examples of this in El Salvador or Romania, even Russia), at least at that point. Basically removing women’s bodily autonomy completely. But that… isn’t exactly Nazi. The Nazis weren’t attempting to do that to white German women (They banned abortion for Aryans, but they weren’t forcing white women to give birth or be sex slaves. Abortion was just fine for Jews; in fact it was encouraged). Would the Nazis have got there eventually had they won the war and birthrates were plummeting? I wouldn’t put it past them but it’s never been an established cornerstone of their ideology. I guess there could have been more to it than we’ve seen on the show but based on TV canon, I don’t get it. It’s like they wanted to bring race into it… but forgot to actually reference it at all prior to 2x08 lol. 

I do think THT missed a huge opportunity to look into the intersection of various crises. Like, do I honestly believe a bunch of white evangelical radicals would just ignore their inherent racism for the sake of a few more babies? No way. And I think it’s been shown multiple times that the SOJ don’t really care about babies anyway; they want power and total control over women, period. The birthrate crisis was just a tool to manipulate people (including Serena and Wives) into accepting Gilead as necessary.

I think THT could have even addressed the lack of WOC as Handmaids. Why, if they were targetting all women, are there not far more WOC as Handmaids? As Econopeople? There’s only a handful. The majority are white IIRC. You’d think if they really are just after more babies, they’d have a lot more girls of all shapes, sizes, ages, colour. But they seem to be–with the exception of Moira, Emily, and June–fairly young (which seems odd logically simply cos their criteria for determining if a woman is fertile is her already having a child. Not that teen moms don’t exist, but so many of the Handmaids seem really young. You’d think there’d be a few more older 25+ women who actually have had kids. But hey, I don’t think Gilead really cares about logic anyway.), and with the exception of Moira and Brianna, mostly white. (Oh, and Lilly.) There are a few extras of colour. But it seemed like the ratio of actual American society vs Gileadean society was way off, and it would have been good to have an explanation for that, and it could have also set up more understanding about why they consider Serena a Nazi. From what I saw, she’s not a Nazi (so just a horrible violent anti-feminist religious whacko) so I’d really like to know what I’m missing.

Not to mention, I get that the book was VERY much from a single white woman’s POV so why would she feature much about race. It wouldn’t personally affect her much. It is the Handmaid’s Tale, and so she tells it as she knows it. However, the show can’t make the same claim. While June is the main POV character, the POV shifts often to other characters and there’s plenty of opportunity to show how race effects different characters. It doesn’t need to be a huge focus. Just acknowledge it, at the very least. Like they did with homophobia. This isn’t a show about homophobia specifically, but they included gay characters so acknowledged (quite a bit considering) about homophobia in Gilead (and pre-Gilead). I don’t see why the same treatment couldn’t be done with Moira and/or Luke’s POVs (way better coming from Moira lbr), or even RITA! Rita would be a great character to explore more, and add some layers to the overall world in the process.

I liked this article: https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/the-handmaids-tale-greatest-failing-is-how-it-handles-race.html

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Leading a double life When my partner, Barbara, first opened an account on Facebook, she used it in a way that most people in Yankeedom use it. Her network was an eclectic assortment of family, current and former workmates, new and old friends, neighbors and relatives living in other parts of the country. Most of what was posted on this account were pictures of kids, dogs and kitty cats, vacations, dinner outings, jokes – nothing too controversial. Like most members of Yankeedom, religion and politics were off limits. However, there was a kind of politically unconscious assumption operating that liberal values prevailed and that somehow the Democratic Party embodied those values. I nicknamed her Facebook account the “Suzy Cream Cheese” account after the Mothers of Invention’s album because it only dealt with surface preoccupations. As the most recent US presidential primaries heated up and people took sides about Hillary, Bernie and Jill Stein, the Suzy Cream Cheese page started to be “not nice”. The political unconscious became conscious. The assumption was that all women – in the name of feminism – should vote for Hillary. My partner thought this was a very shallow understanding of feminism and posted an article she wrote that was published in a number of online radical newsletters titled, “Feminism is Bigger Than Gender: Why I’ll Be Happy in Hell Without Hillary.” Oh dear. After she posted that article on Facebook, she got the cold shoulder and lost a couple of friends. Around that time she opened up a second “political” Facebook account and started adding to it a whole new group of far-left friends and acquaintances. She continued posting “suitable for family viewing” comments with her Suzy Cream Cheese account while posting and responding to socialist and communist posts on her political account. The Two Faces of Facebook Neither Barbara nor I are sociologists of social media or specifically of Facebook, so what follows is experiential. However, we do know a thing or two about how capitalist institutions operate in general and Facebook is no exception. The primary purpose of Facebook is to sell ad space to marketers. But how do you reach the Yankee public? You make it easy for Yankees to set up individual accounts so that Yankees can do what we do best—talk about the micro world of family, dogs and friends. In the process, hopefully people will purchase some of the products or services touted in the ads. Facebook has also made it possible for individuals to join groups and set up pages that then allow them to place ads to publicize their group or organization. For Facebook, reading groups, hobbies and support groups are fine. But Facebook has encountered a problem that many other capitalist institutions have. The problem is that you can set up the conditions for selling your products, but you can’t control people’s motivation for buying the product, (joining a group or setting up a political page) or what they will do with the product (what kind of group they will form). Facebook could even tolerate political groups. But the political imagination of Facebook consists of Republicans and Democrats. What Facebook had not counted on is the proliferation of political groups that exist outside both parties. As most of you know, there are many anarchist groups, Leninist groups, social democrats and even council communist groups. On the right there are all sorts of nationalist and fascists groups. It is safe to say that Facebook, as a capitalist institution, does not want to host these groups but until recently has not been able to do anything about it. Planning Beyond Capitalism Meets Suzy Cream Cheese Facebook Six years ago Barbara and I co-founded an organization called Planning Beyond Capitalism. The name pretty much says what we are up to. As an anti-establishment organization our main problem was, and still is, outreach. We stumbled and bumbled our way with the help of some anti-establishment social media whizzes who convinced us we could reach a lot more people through placing ads on Facebook. Facebook calls it “boosting”. At first, we were skeptical because the language used in placing an ad on Facebook seemed to have nothing to do with politics. They were ads for businesses. They encouraged us to “pick the right brand” and “target our audience” for best “market return”. We weren’t a business and we weren’t a non-profit. The best category we could find was “community organization”. One of the things we do on Planning Beyond Capitalism is to select one article from a left-wing news source and write one post and commentary each day. We call this “Capitalist News Interpreted”. We publish these posts daily on Facebook, but don’t “boost” them. But every couple of months or so we write a longer article, in which we make an analysis of world events, mostly in the United States, from the perspective of our organization. We put these in the category of Perspectives. Over the course of two or three years we found four or five political newsletters in which to publish our perspectives. In addition, we decided to “boost” those perspectives on Facebook. Our pattern was to boost our perspective for one week for the cost of $30.00 to run for one week. This money came out of our own pockets. We were able to select our demographics – age, gender, interests – and we could post it to almost any country in the world. In selecting our audiences when we first started boosting our posts, the choices of “anarchism” and “socialism” were available for us to select. Typically, in a single week we reached about ten thousand people – with a ratio of people in that audience of people who “liked” our perspective from about 20% to 33%. The number of “shares” in a week ranged from 75 to about 250 depending on the article. In the process of doing this, we began hearing from people in other parts of the world. Some of those people then began to write for us. We were pretty amazed that Facebook approved of virtually all our perspectives in 2016 and 2017 despite our anti Democratic Party, anti-capitalist slant. Here are some of our titles: No Pink Wooly Caps for Me Open Letter to the Sandernistas: The Political Revolution Continues – Hearts, Bodies and Souls Planning Beyond Capitalism meets Big Brother Facebook Things began to change for us on Facebook when I published an article on April 1st of this year claiming the Democratic Party was worse than the Republican Party for 90% of the population. After we posted a link to it on our Facebook page we tried to boost it. Greater of Two Evils: Why the Democratic Party is Worse than the Republican Party for 85% of the U.S. Population Facebook rejected our ad and we contested that rejection. They said it was sensationalistic, involved hate speech and promoted violence. We contested this rejection and after two arguments from us, won our appeal. We ran the ad for two weeks because of its popularity. It reached 38,000 people, had many hundreds of shares and we gained about 100 new followers. The next article we published was written by an Iraqi comrade of ours living as a citizen in Russia. The article was about why Russians are upset with Americans. Why Russians are Upset With Americans – Seen Through the Eyes of an Iraqi This ad was again disapproved by Facebook but for different reasons: it was “political”. We contested this as well. Below is our argument: We have been boosting posts on FB for 2 years. Every single one of them has political content. Why is this particular one being singled out? However, this is the first article that we’ve published about Russia, written by someone living in Russia. We believe that you are not authorizing this ad because it is a favorable account of the Russian people, which does not conform to the Democratic Party’s anti-Russian ideology. This article was written by a Russian citizen and is written from his own observations and viewpoint. Furthermore, his sources are documented and it is neither sensationalistic nor violent. We are not advocating for Russian foreign policy. We are talking about average Russian citizens. If you read the article, you would see that your response is exactly the reasons Russians are upset with Americans. Their experiences are suppressed, while we maintain the stereotypes of them as in the cartoon image that leads the article. This, to us, constitutes blatant discrimination.  Facebook’s response was a boilerplate line about what constitutes a political post. Their policy about political ads had changed as of May 7th, 2018. It implied that their disapproval had nothing to do with its content. It was because the category was “political”. We were told that in order to consider having our ad approved, we had to register as a political organization. In order to do this we needed to: * Be citizens of the United States * Provide proof of citizenship * Provide a residential address * Provide a drivers license number * Provide a Social Security number All this – simply to place a political ad. Doesn’t this sound like we are registering to be investigated by the FBI or CIA? Oh, no that’s just left wing paranoia. Further, they said it would take up to six weeks to verify this and to approve our ad. But not to worry, they would delete all our information once it checked out. As the author of the article on Russia, Jamal pointed out his other two articles that had been accepted by Facebook were far more political than the one they just rejected. But that was before their change of policy. Jamal rightfully pointed out that the rejected article was more historical, sociological and cultural than political. However, the upper middle class honchos of Facebook, having taken one class in political science in the United States, cannot tell the difference between sociology, political economy, and culture. Their formula is: Russia = political = bad America = Democratic Party = good To paraphrase an old country tune, “Take this job and shove it”, we told Facebook to “take your political registration and shove it”. No, there is no “Iron Curtain” in the US. That is for Russians. Our Analysis of Facebook We think it is reasonable to suspect that Facebook wants to get rid of its “political underground”, the groups that exist beyond the two party system. Why? For one thing people at both extremes of the political spectrum are likely to buy the products that are advertised on their pages. The second reason is that our ads are chump change for them. Getting rid of us will cost them close to nothing in revenue. The third reason is political. Facebook, like most media institutions, is committed to the Democratic Party. Cleaning its house of “Fake News” (the news and opinions of the socialist or fascist sides of the spectrum) will steer people back to reasonable choices like the Democratic Party. It is our belief that this change in policy requiring organizations like ours to register as political groups has occurred in 2018, in part, because this is an election year. There are other indicators Facebook is closing ranks. In selecting an audience for our article, we noticed the choices given under political interests on the left, the furthest left available to choose was “very liberal”. There was no socialist choice even though a self-proclaimed socialist ran as a Democratic in the 2016 primaries. If anyone reading this has recommendations for alternatives to Facebook that would allow us to place political ads to broaden our reach, please contact us. It’s time for those of us on the far left to find an alternative to Big Brother Facebook. • First published at Planning Beyond Capitalism http://clubof.info/

[psotu19]

People's State of the Union Address Tuesday January 30th, 2018 Light Club Lamp Shop Burlington, Vermont

People’s State of the Union Address

Tuesday January 30th, 2018

Light Club Lamp Shop

Burlington, Vermont

  Share a story about an experience that gave you insight into the state of our union

Share a story about a time that you felt a sense of belonging, or the opposite, to this nation or your community

Share a story of an experience that gave you hope in the past year

  Hi everyone! Honestly, I’m so happy to be here with everybody today on such an important day. [1:56] My name is Devin Alejandro-Wilder. I’ve lived in Burlington for the past six years and attended at a local liberal arts college for four of those six years. I’m a working artist and I was born queer & disabled and i live in an independent co-op in the Old North End with seven other friends, two kitchens and 3 cats. In this past year, I was fortunate enough that my little sister raised the $5,000 needed to get myself a hearing aid, and it’s been extraordinarily helpful. Let me tell you, hearing footsteps and secrets and whispers has been something that I’ve never been able to experience before. [2:47] While the prosthetic that I use has a lot of faults, my friends certainly don’t, because they always help me keep track of it. It’s really small and black, and it’s meant to be invisible I guess, like myself… But, my buddies see me take it off, and they see me put it on, and turn up the volume and turn down the volume, and they never forget. They repeat questions, sentences, jokes, and punchlines and I don’t have to fake laughter so much anymore. I didn’t used to tell people that I had a disability because I firmly believe that we are told that we’re not supposed to tell people this. We’re just supposed to ‘pass’ and ‘make it work’. But when I did get my prosthetic, there was no more hiding what was going on, because people could see it pretty clearly. Even though it’s small and meant to be invisible, there’s nothing invisible about a piece of robotic technology attached to your my skull (especially when you have weird hair like mine). So, I just want to thank them, constantly, for their patience and understanding and seeming infinite kindness, because while I have employers who look at me differently for my disability, my friends don’t and that gives me hope every single day. Thank you [4:09]

  [4:32] Hi, I’m Max Engle-Strike. I moved to Burlington in May at age 29 to become a brewer, because Vermont beer is so good. I moved from across the country, which gave me a unique perspective on seeing anti-trump sentiment on all sides of the country. It also gave me an insight into the state of our union, which is that it is extremely scattered, and shattered, and torn and divided, in that not even people who are against Trump can agree on how to be against Trump. The story I want to share is about my brother, with whom I am extremely close but we disagree often, to the extent that we were talking about policies in the United States vs the Russia probe as it came down to letting Jeff Sessions being in place or getting expelled. He was in favor of making sure the Russian investigation was completed, those responsible are punished, and that Trump is held accountable for soliciting, confusing Facebook ads. I was extremely disturbed by the policies that the attorney general was putting in place, bringing back mandatory minimums, recriminalizing marijuana, bringing back racist and divisive rhetoric in a way that hasn’t been seen in decades (for good reason) [6:00]and it really scared me that to him, it’s more important to take down a figurehead than to remember that these policies are affecting thousands of Americans every day. So, in wondering how to proceed in the next three years, let’s not miss the forest for the trees: let’s not focus on just the figurehead, let’s focus on the community and each other [6:25] Sorry, Benny, but I’m not with you on this one. That’s my story.

  [6:47] My name is Jane, I’m a graduate student here in Burlington. I’ve been here for six years (I moved here from Boston) and I’m 23 years old. I think that, back in 2016, when everything changed in a really big way, I became very disheartened and sort of felt unempowered about being involved in politics. It wasn’t until really this year that I started looking for pieces of hope and wisdom in my local community, and recognizing that there’s tremendous potential for us to organize in really small ways. Really, the personal is political, the local is global, and so by us meeting here today and actually having these conversations, we are setting an example for people all over the country to do the same thing. [7:45] So, while the conversations that you have with your neighbors or in your classrooms or with your friends and family may feel insignificant, they are part of a greater dialogue, and we really do have the potential to change things. Thank you all for being here.

  I’m Hallie Berksengold. I’ve been in Burlington for almost nine years now. [8:28] I’m originally from the New York City area, and it’s actually kind of become a little joke in my identity about how I’m a Vermonter in a group of New Yorkers and a New Yorker in a group of Vermonters, and that dichotomy almost rules how I look at things and approach the world a lot of the time. So, I’ve been up here for a long time (oh, by the way, I’m 26). I grew up in a—I wouldn’t call it a super religious, but relatively, comparatively observant—Jewish household. I was raised not quite as religious as a lot of other New York Jews that I knew (and I know a lot), but we followed every major holiday, and every somewhat-major holiday. When I moved up to Vermont, I initially didn’t find any Jewish communities that really resonated with me, and I tapered off that a bit. [9:58] It’s been interesting because for a long time, that tapering off was kind of accidental, but then it became very intentional as I became way more disillusioned with Israeli politics over the coming years. Looking back on this now, it seemed really silly that I ever really thought this way, but I did, up until about a year ago, felt like I was literally the only Jewish person who was upset about how Palestinians and African Jews were being treated. None of my original Jewish circles that I had grown up with really either seemed to care or seemed to want to confront the hypocrisy between “healing the world”—"Tikkun olam"—and social justice, and yet there was this very glaring problem in our midst. I came across an organization (totally by accident) and this happened a little bit after the election in 2016, and it was totally by accident because by that point I had sworn off of any Jewish spaces, but this was one was one where young adult Jews primarily were coming together to oppose Israeli occupation. And I was floored; I was like “Wow, there’s a whole group of Jews specifically who do this!”. I was definitely really vocal about my opinions up here, because I felt this need to prove to other people who are predominantly not Jewish up here that, “Hey, guess what? Not all Jews support this”. So I went down to New York last year and went to a training and then, pretty shortly after that, we did a major action in D.C. against the American-Israel public affairs committee by shutting down and blockading the front and side doors. I did take appropriate time off work because this hit me in a rather personal way. I remember just locking down with other people and looking out at the giant crowd of all different kinds of people and feeling wildly at peace in that moment, whatever happened later. Thank you. [13:07]

  [13:14] My name is Ali, my pronouns are ‘they’ and ‘them’. I’m here from San Francisco—I’m on tour for a show—it’s my second night in Burlington, thanks for welcoming me. I live in San Francisco’s oldest housing cooperative. It was founded in 1957 by a group of beatniks, and we just celebrated our 60th anniversary. I grew up in a very conservative family, predominantly Trump supporters. I’ve been a community organizer and activist for 10+ years, ranging from "lets do nice sweet fundraisers” to really militant direct action, so quite a range there. My story is about the first prompt in the State of the Union: I’d been going to and showing up for racial justice meetings starting in September 2016. In San Francisco, the core organizing group fluctuated between like 10, 15 people, sometimes 20. The Bay Area chapter is a lot bigger, but the San Francisco one was just starting. I like to call Trump “Mussolini Kardashian” because I feel like that’s the best way to describe our fascist reality star, and in the meeting after Mussolini Kardashian was elected, we had like 100+ people there. People were there in this visceral state of panic almost, and it actually really pissed me off. I was so happy to see so many people and see people mobilized. We went around and did this big check-in, and people were so utterly panicked, and the reason it bothered me was this: Under President Obama, there were almost 2 million people deported. The U.S. was at war with eight different countries. The Dakota Access Pipeline all progressed under Obama. Michael Brown was killed under Obama. Kalief Browder hung himself under Obama. All of these things were happening in that era. There’s a way in which Trump’s particular brand of being heinous and viscious and brutal is so in-your-face, but then I look at George W. Bush and I look at the invasion of Iraq, and I look at Andrew Jackson and the Indian Removal Act, and I look at this historical amnesia that makes Trump into this exceptionalized boogey man, when the history of our country is genocide, theft, and slavery. There’s this aspect of the contemporary zeitgeist of panic around his behavior as if it’s different from the rest of America’s history, and I look at this too with some of the campaigns that target and attack the Confederate flag, and I’m like “what about the U.S. flag?!” Like, if we need a symbol of heinous, viscous, barbaric actions, that flag really wins the cake. So there’s this aspect for me of certain types and kinds of panic, and the reality star aspect of it for me is important because it’s this flashy, showy, outlandish in-your-face version, but the quiet and subtle aspects of white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy has been going on and will continue to go on. I feel like there’s a fireworks to the current thing that really is blinding us, in a way, from the history of it all. Thanks. [16:53]

  My name is Laurie. I am 56 years old, and I was born and raised in Burlington, Vermont. I’m a Burlington, Vermont native. Well, I’ve got kind of mixed feelings about Donald Trump and his actions. Even during his campaign, I always felt that he’s gonna be contradicting, he’s gonna do a lot of firing, and hiring, and the one’s he’s hiring are not staying in, as far as the Senate is concerned. I’m afraid for our country. What I understand is that he’s got so much money, but he ain’t got no brains to use it, so that’s my perspective. I didn’t want him to be our president. I actually wanted Bernie Sanders to be our president. I figured he was more down to earth with us, and he was the better choice. Anyway, I just really was upset when Donald Trump was elected, and I still to this very day wonder, “why did all these people elect him?” My sense of hope in my community is that we can get Trump out, and get somebody else in who knows how to run the country a lot better than it is right now.

  [18:56] My name is Chai Gang. I was born during a depression, and we had people sleeping on our floor every night, and nobody ever said the word homeless. They said, “I can’t find a job". “Homeless" was not a word yet. When I heard Trump talking about how he’s going to get everybody a job, and people voted for him for that reason, I have no respect for those people. I wouldn’t want a man running my country the way he runs this country because he promised me a job. When I was in the Occupy movement, I met a woman who had her mother living with her, and her mother babysat while she went to work. The mother was kicked out of the apartment because she wasn’t on the lease, and the woman lost her job because she didn’t have a babysitter anymore. I met another woman who had her grandfather living with her, and he was in a wheelchair, and he was kicked out because he wasn’t on the lease. So he was homeless. Well, in the old days, no landlord would kick anybody out if the rent was paid and if the place was being taken care of decently. So I’m disgusted and angry, and I feel Trump is supposed to be President, because it’s time for a change, and the change is going to be horrible. What can we hope for? I want to say ‘except that we die’… I don’t want to be here anymore, for what’s coming. And yet, when I think of dying, somebody has to fight. Somebody has to go against what’s coming, so maybe I’m one of them. [21:32]

  My name is David. I lived in Burlington and the Williston area for 56 years. I’m 56 years old now. 29 years ago, I started a career as a taxi driver, which I had for 25 years. I was pretty lucky because I did a lot of runs in Burlington, a lot of runs around Vermont, runs into Canada and all over the U.S. It used to be pretty mild conversations about “Yeah, things are going okay, my job is okay" and the longer I continued, the more I saw old problems just kinda got shoved under the rug, and the people that voted for Trump, there’s a lot of these issues that happened before Trump. Trump is just kind of a beacon of what had been going wrong for a very long time. About four years ago, I lost my house, and I lost my job, and so I ended up being homeless. Luckily, about four years ago, and I moved into a housing complex here for seniors and people with disabilities, both learning and other forms. I’ve learned in where I live that all our differences are making us stronger, and I think all this pressure from the top is finally getting to the point where we’re all starting to organize. More in the last year, we’re all starting to understand that we don’t want this anymore. Let’s go back to caring about each other, getting rid of the power and the money. Let us—the residents and the folks with jobs that are merely making a living—let us take over and head in the right direction. Thank you. [24:10]

  My name is Jen. I’ am a resident of Burlington for three and a half years. I’m a teacher, a community organizer and an artist, and.. I was the one who said that you wouldn’t not have a story, so I have an opening, we’ll see how it goes: So in 2008, when Obama was elected—it was right after the Bush years, which doesn’t seem quite as terrible anymore—I was at Nectar’s when the election results came in, and I was part of a crowd of hundreds and hundreds of people that literally took to the streets and flocked all over Burlington and celebrated this huge victory. It was the first and maybe the only time I’ve ever been that excited about a presidential election. That being said, shortly after that we went right back to the politics and it was kind of a similar but different national thing was happening in D.C., and a friend of mine was doing a local one, and it was this whole idea that we get hope from people, not from presidents. I was really happy to participate in this visual art event. So when I saw that this was happening, I got really excited because something that I always believe very strongly is that we are the power and we can make change. We are living in—I wouldn’t say an unprecedented time, because it’s happened before (before I was around, I think)—but how I’ve seen it affect my friends and my community in ways that I wasn’t expecting. But particularly, I remember—so, I teach college at CCV and up until this semester my classes have always been on Tuesdays—we were talking about the election, talking about it the whole semester, and so, we talked about it all day, told people “If you’re eligible to vote, go vote”, and I felt like we had covered all the bases about who was eligible and everything. So we left and I felt really, really confident that I was going to come into class the next day and I had already planned out how we would talk about what it meant to have our first female president. So I went out with my friends that night, I went down to Nectar’s and we watched, and we went to the OP and we watched, and then we came here, and I sat right there with my friend. As it was close to midnight, and it became clearer and clearer that things weren’t going in the direction that we thought they were going to go, we started losing words, we started having tears, and we started getting fearful. So, when I decided to do this event, we were brainstorming where to do it, and I thought, “let me call Lee, and see if the Lamp Shop is open”, and he said “Yes!”. For me personally, how really hard it is to have this event with people talking about what’s going on, in the same exact place where I felt like I personally got this initial wound, it’s really important, and to be here with people tonight is super helpful. So, thanks for coming and for listening.

  [28:01] Alright, I got one for ya. My name is Luc Arseneau. The first thing about me I guess I tell everybody seems to be—I don’t know how people aren’t bored of it now—I had chronic night terrors since I was a little kid: sleep paralysis, all that shit, for years. I was told to draw them in order to get them to go out, and eventually I did, and eventually I got good at drawing, and then eventually went away. Now I’m a lucid dreamer, and I take those same drawings and I put them up in stories so I can put out something that isn’t taxing on me. So, there you go, there’s a lot of things out there. So, that being said, I got something that I think might be the third one, was it ‘hope’? Yeah, I’ve got ‘hope’ for ya. You can be the judge or whether or not it is, but I’ll leave that up to you. It was the summertime, it must’ve been two years ago maybe, and I was walking across the blue bridge. You know, you might not know but it’s called the blue bridge by anybody who walks across it, it’s railroad tracks. I was going down there, and I live now at the place I was crashing at then, so I had this big backpack, it was my grandfather’s, and I’d used duct taped on the strap on the side to keep it from falling off. So I go down, and I noticed one thing about the bridge was that somebody shot out the streetlights above it again, so I can’t see anything other than, you know, this one lone light, ‘cause the other ones are broken. So I go up to the edge of the bridge and I think I hear a sound, but I don’t stop, because I’m counting the next wooden beam that it takes to get across. I can’t see them, but I know they’re there, so I count them. One, two, three, four, five… and I go across. I hear a sound behind me but I still don’t turn, because I don’t want to break my pace. In the middle of the bridge, I decide to stop, because I hear footsteps. I turn around, and I see a tall figure walking towards me. So I turn forward and go. One thing I didn’t mention is, having night terrors (not that anybody would know) makes you very paranoid, for no logical reason, so you insert logic into it. So I figured, “oh, it’s just a guy going by”. My hand still goes into my pocket, to where my knife is, just there. I hear “hey, boy! Hey man! Hey yo! Slow down, hey hey!” Well, I keep going, and I hear “hey man! Yo yo yo! Stop stop stop!” So I said, “Hey, what dyou want?“ 'cause I’m an idiot. ‘Cause I’m curious. Being curious makes you an idiot. I’m full of idiocy (not as much as our President though, I’ll say that. I’m not curious about what happens there). So I turn around and I say, “Hey man, what dyou want?” and he says “Yo, yo, d’you got a light, man?” I make it clear that my hand’s in my pocket, jingling around the loose change that’s in there and say, “Yeah if all you want is a light”. I realized that for some reason, at that point, I had said something that was very important. I didn’t know why, but I had said something that changed the air. He stops, and he says, “Well yeah, you know”. I realize from the shadow of the light shining past him at me that he’s got his hand in his pocket too. So I said “Yeah, well, yeah, alright I’ve got a light” and I take out some matches, and I give them to him. Then I started talking with him. He was a kid, probably 19 or 18, had a Four Loko, flat brim hat, and we just start to talk. As we start getting into talking, one of the things I notice is that he’s as drunk as I am, he wasn’t certain, he was just trying to light his cigarette. As we’re getting into this conversation I realize he’s not that bad of a guy, and I was like, “I gotta tell you man, I had my hand on my knife in my pocket, ‘cause I thought you were gonna try and mug me” and he’s like, “Yo dude! I didn’t know who you were, I had my hand on my knife too!” And I was like, “Shit, well hey, d’you want some rum?“ ‘Cause it’s 3 in the morning, it’s dark, we’re alone on a bridge, of course I’m gonna, well, you know, who cares… And he goes “No, I’ve got my Four Loko!” and I was like “Oh I’m not touchin’ that”. So we sit down, and we get to talking for about 3 hours, and I learned about his life. He was from Somalia. He got shipped off somewhere else. He was a child soldier for about a year, and then he got free somehow (I don’t know, it was broken English). But one thing he told me, I remember, was talking about how, if you were caught with a beer in his hometown, they cut off one of your hands. I said “Fuck, I’ve heard stories about that, but I never knew…”, and he says “Well, now you know”. So I was like, “Well how nice is it to be in harmony, now, to be in peace?” and he said “What’s harmony, what’s peace?”. And I was like “you know, peace”. I tried to explain to him whats harmony is, and I realized, fuck. That’s the same thing as me asking him, “if all you want’s a light”: yeah, that’s what he asked for. But the thing that we’re not certain about is whether or not we say what we mean, and whether or not somebody understands what we mean when we say it. And that’s all I have to say. [34:08]

  [Lee] As an American, I feel like there is enormous potential with the people that I share nationality with to take this country over. Living in Vermont, living in this little tiny city in this little tiny state has enormous influence to take this fucking country over, and the first thing we have to do is take over our city and start leading by this example. By being an example city, people look at Burlington, Vermont already, with 40,000 people, to lead. Because people like Bernie, and people like things that are happening here. Even though people are like “Oh fuck, they’re building a mall, oh fuck, they’re doing this”, it’s still a really fucking awesome city with a small population. Given the size of the population, we have the ability to take it over and rule this small city, to give an example to the state. People look to the State of Vermont for an example, and we can lead the world if we just take it over. I think Bernie should become the governor, and we should just be like— he has so much popularity, he could get sweeping agendas done. Vermont’s a little green splitting wedge pointing its way at Washington, D.C., and I totally believe that the revolution starts in this city, now. [35:36]

  [37:20] [Chai Gang] The two fantasies I have are: A hundred people marching down Church Street, and one fantasy is that they’re holding signs that say how they were evicted, or how somebody they knew was evicted; the other fantasy is everybody playing music and singing ‘What’s Going On?’, the Marvin Gaye song. Everything I try to get going never happens, so I’m putting this out there and hoping somebody will make it happen.

  Friendship and strength for us all [David]

  [38:20] Reset, ready… hope? Yeah, there’s hope, totally. Hope. [Jen]

  Vehemence, precognition, adverse, and doubting doubts [Luc]

  Invincible, in the sense that we break social, economic, racial, physical barriers, 'cause these are things that hold us together, instead of things that keep us apart. So I really hope that this movement breaks generations and bodies and spirits. I think there’s a lot more that we have in common than in difference, so, that’s cool. [Devin] [39:33]

  Confusion and kinship [Max]

  [40:24] [Phinn] Your story kind of resonated a little more, 'cause I do a lot of photography in my spare time, and it often leads me into very desolate places where I’m completely alone and not expecting to see other people. So basically, there’s this abandoned Cold War era radar base in eastern Vermont. It’s on the top of a mountain, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and it’s a place that I go to kind of be alone, ‘cause there’s no one around, and there’s no one up there, ever. A few months ago, I decided to go up there in the winter time. As I was walking up, I spotted someone ahead of me on the trail up. You know, I was a little hesitant, seeing this guy walking in front of me, but I just kept walking. I was walking significantly faster than him, so I eventually caught up. As I got closer, I could see he was holding onto something in front of him that looked like a gun, and so I got a little bit.. hesitant. As I got closer, I realized it definitely was a gun: he was walking with a gun on a hip and a rifle slung across his chest. So I was a little scared to be walking in the middle of the woods with no cell service past someone with a gun. I had no idea why he would also be up here, you know, out in the middle of nowhere. But, as I got closer—and I had a knife too on my chest and I had a knife on my side—I kind of just slid my hand down along my side as I walked past him, because I was just not sure what was gonna happen. As I walked past, I kind of turned and said “Hello”. He said it back, and then he asked me what I was doing up there. I explained I was taking pictures and he was like, “Oh, well I’m just going target shooting”. We began to talk, and I learned that his name was George and he had grown up in the area, and he was simply this guy going out for a hike, but I had had this heightened sense of urgency of there being any kind of issue with this person, because of an uncertainty of people. Something that I generally hadn’t been feeling, but it was because of the state of the environment that we were in. And now with the state of our country, there’s a little more uncertainty of other people, something I really haven’t felt before and hadn’t felt in Vermont especially, as a generally safe place, somewhere I’ve never really felt unsafe. But it was this moment of second-guessing this person, who also was just out there exploring this place. So I think that was something that really resonated with me, this kind of uncertainty. [43:22]

  [Phinn] Hope is a good one. It’s very wonderful to see everyone from a range of ages and occupations. The wide range is just very good to see. I really appreciate not seeing just a really select group of people talking.

  [Jane] Apprehension, and excitement. And gratitude!

  [Hallie] Improvisation, and connections, and empathy.

  [Ali] Pessimism, cynicism, and optimism.

  [Laurie] I am hopeful and I’m positive (or at least I try to stay positive!)

  [Chai] I’m happy to be here.

[nothingman]

By John Feffer | (Tomdispatch.com) | – –

Dystopias have recently achieved full-spectrum dominance. Kids are drawn to such stories — The Giver, Hunger Games — like Goths to piercings. TV shows about zombie apocalypses, pandemics, and technology run amok inspire binge watching. We’ve seen the world-gone-truly-bad a thousand times over on the big screen.

This apocalyptic outpouring has been so intense that talk of “peak dystopia” started to circulate several years ago. Yet the stock of the doomsday cartel has shown no signs of falling, even as production continues at full blast. (A confession: with my recent novel Splinterlands I’ve contributed my own bit to flooding the dystopia market.) As novelist Junot Diaz argued last October, dystopia has become “the default narrative of the generation.”

Shortly after Diaz made that comment, dystopia became the default narrative for American politics as well when Donald Trump stepped off the set of The Celebrity Apprentice and into the Oval Office. With the election of an uber-narcissist incapable of distinguishing between fact and fantasy, all the dystopian nightmares that had gathered like storm clouds on the horizon — nuclear war, climate change, a clash of civilizations — suddenly moved overhead. Cue the rumble of thunder and the flash of lightning.

The response among those horrified by the results of the recent presidential election has been four-fold.

First came denial — from the existential dread that hammered the solar plexus as the election returns trickled in that Tuesday night to the more prosaic reluctance to get out of bed the morning after. Then came the fantasies of flight, as tens of thousands of Americans checked to see if their passports were still valid and if the ark bound for New Zealand had any berths free. The third stage has been resistance: millions poured into the streets to protest, mobilized at airports to welcome temporarily banned immigrants, and flocked to congressional meet-and-greets to air their grievances with Republicans and Democrats alike.

The fourth step, concurrent with all the others, has been to delve into the dystopias of the past as if they contained some Da Vinci code for deciphering our present predicament. Classics like Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, George Orwell’s 1984, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale quickly climbed back onto bestseller lists.

It might seem counterintuitive — or a perverse form of escapism — to turn from the dystopia of reality to that of fiction. Keep in mind, though, that those novels became bestsellers in their own time precisely because they offered refuge and narratives of resistance for those who feared (in order of publication) the rise of Nazism, the spread of Stalinism, or the resurgence of state-backed misogyny in the Reagan years.

These days, with journalists scrambling to cover the latest outrage from the White House, perhaps it was only natural for readers to seek refuge in the works of writers who took the longer view. After all, it’s an understandable impulse to want to turn the page and find out what happens next. And dystopian narratives are there, in part, to help us brace for the worst, while identifying possible ways out of the downward spiral toward hell.

The dystopian classics, however, are not necessarily well suited to our current moment. They generally depict totalitarian states under a Big Brother figure and a panoptical authority that controls everything from the center, a scenario that’s fascist or communist or just plain North Korean. Certainly, Donald Trump wants his face everywhere, his name on everything, his little fingers in every pot. But the dangers of the current dystopian moment don’t lie in the centralizing of control. Not yet, anyway.

The Trump era so far is all about the center not holding, a time when, in the words of the poet Yeats, things fall apart. Forget about Hannah Arendt and The Origins of Totalitarianism — also a hot seller on Amazon — and focus more on chaos theory. Unpredictability, incompetence, and demolition are the dystopian watchwords of the current moment, as the world threatens to fragment before our very eyes.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s talk of a trillion-dollar infrastructure boom. His team has a very different project in mind, and you can read it on the signpost up ahead. Next Stop: The Deconstruction Zone.

The Zombie Election

In February 2016, when Donald Trump won his first primary in New Hampshire, the New York Daily News headlined it “Dawn of the Brain Dead” and likened Trump’s GOP supporters to “mindless zombies.” Not to be outdone, that conspiracy-minded purveyor of fake news, Alex Jones, routinely described Hillary Clinton supporters as “zombies” on his Trump-positive website Infowars.

The references to zombies spoke to the apocalyptic mindset of both sides. Donald Trump deliberately tapped into the end-of-days impulses of Christian evangelicals, anti-globalists, and white power enthusiasts, who view anyone who hasn’t drunk their Kool-Aid as a dead soul. Meanwhile, those fearful that the billionaire blowhard might win the election began spreading the “Trumpocalypse” meme as they warned of the coming of ever more severe climate change, the collapse of the global economy, and the outbreak of race wars. There was virtually no middle ground between the groups, aside from those who decided to steer clear of the election altogether. The mutual disgust with which each side viewed the other encouraged just the kind of dehumanization implied by that zombie label.

Zombies have become a political metaphor for another reason as well. What’s frightening about the flesh eating undead in their current incarnations is that they are not a formal army. There are no zombie leaders, no zombie battle plans. They shamble along in herds in search of prey. “Our fascination with zombies is partly a transposed fear of immigration,” I wrote in 2013, “of China displacing the United States as the world’s top economy, of bots taking over our computers, of financial markets that can melt down in a single morning.”

Zombies, in other words, reflect anxiety over a loss of control associated with globalization. In this context, the “rise of the rest” conjures up images of a mass of undifferentiated resource consumers — hungry others who are little more than mouths on legs — storming the citadels of the West.

During the election campaign, the Trump team appealed to those very fears by running ads during the popular TV series The Walking Dead that deliberately played on anti-immigration concerns. Once in office, Trump has put into motion his campaign pledges to wall off the United States from Mexico, keep out Muslims, and retreat into Fortress America. He has put special effort into reinforcing the notion that the outside world is a deeply scary place — even Paris, even Sweden! — as if The Walking Dead were a documentary and the zombie threat quite real.

The concentration of power in the executive branch, and Trump’s evident willingness to wield it, certainly echoes dystopian fears of 1984-style totalitarianism. So have the extraordinary lies, the broadsides against the media (“enemies of the people”), and the targeting of internal and external adversaries of every sort. But this is no totalitarian moment.  Trump is not interested in constructing a superstate like Oceania or even a provincial dictatorship like Airstrip One, both of which Orwell described so convincingly in his novel.

Instead, coming out of the gate, the new administration has focused on what Trump’s chief strategist and white nationalist Stephen Bannon promised to do several years ago: “bring everything crashing down.”

The Bannon Dystopia

Dystopians on the right have their own version of 1984. They’ve long been warning that liberals want to establish an all-powerful state that restricts gun ownership, bans the sale of super-sized sodas, and forces mythic “death panels” on the unwary. These right-wing Cassandras are worried not so much about Big Brother as about Big Nanny, though the more extreme among them also claim that liberals are covert fascists, closet communists, or even agents of the caliphate.

Strangely enough, however, these same right-wing dystopians — former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the (non-existent) death panels, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) on gun control, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on soda bans and other trivial pursuits — have never complained about the massive build-up of government power in far more significant areas: namely, the military and the intelligence agencies. Indeed, now that they are back on top, the new Trumpianized “conservatives” are perfectly happy to expand state power by throwing even more money at the Pentagon and potentially giving greater scope to the CIA in its future interrogations of terror suspects. Despite falling rates of violent crime — a tiny uptick in 2015 obscures the fact that these remain at a historic low — Trump also wants to beef up the police to deal with American “carnage.”

So far, so 1984. But the radically new element on the Trump administration’s agenda has nothing to do with the construction of a more powerful state. At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Bannon spoke instead of what was truly crucial to him (and assumedly the president): the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Here, Bannon was speaking specifically of unleashing Wall Street, polluting industries, gun sellers, while freeing a wide range of economic actors from regulation of just about any sort. But Trump’s cabinet appointments and the first indications of what a Trumpian budget might look like suggest a far broader agenda aimed at kneecapping the non-military part of the state by sidelining entire agencies and gutting regulatory enforcement. Bye-bye, EPA. Nighty-night, Department of Education. Nice knowing you, HUD. We sure will miss you, Big Bird and foreign aid.

Even the State Department hasn’t proved safe from demolition. With professional diplomats out of the loop, Pennsylvania Avenue, not Foggy Bottom, will be the locus of control for international relations. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is being reduced to little more than an ornament as the new triumvirate of Trump, Bannon, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner take over foreign policy (though Vice President Pence hovers in the background like a chaperone at the prom). Meanwhile, with a proposed $54 billion future hike in its budget, Trump’s Pentagon will remain untouched by the wrecking ball, as the new president presides over a devastating shrinkage of the government he dislikes and a metastasis of what he loves. (Think: giant, shiny aircraft carriers!)

Thus far, the Trump administration has acted with highly publicized incompetence: administration figures contradicting each other, executive orders short-circuiting the government machinery, tweets wildly caroming around the Internet universe, and basic functions like press conferences handled with all the aplomb of a non-human primate. Trump’s appointees, including Bannon, have looked like anything but skilled demolition experts. This is certainly no Gorbachev-style perestroika, which eventually led to the unraveling of the Soviet Union. It’s nothing like the “shock therapy” programs that first knocked down and then remade the states of Eastern Europe after 1989.

However, since deconstruction is so much easier than construction and Bannon prides himself on his honey-badger-like persistence, the administration’s project, messy as it seems so far, is likely to prove quite capable of doing real damage. In fact, if you want a more disturbing interpretation of Donald Trump’s first months in office, consider this: What if all the chaos is not an unintended consequence of a greenhorn administration but an actual strategy?

All that dust in the air comes, after all, from the chaotic first steps in a projected massive demolition process and may already be obscuring the fact that Trump is attempting to push through a fundamentally anti-American and potentially supremely unpopular program. He aims to destroy the status quo, as Bannon promised, and replace it with a new world order defined by three Cs: Conservative, Christian, and Caucasian. Let the media cover what they please; let the critics laugh all they like about executive branch antics. In the meantime, all the president’s men are trying to impose their will on a recalcitrant country and world.

Triumph of the Will

I took a course in college on the rise of Nazism in Germany. At one point, the professor showed us Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s famous 1935 documentary that covered the Nazi Party Congress of the previous year and featured extensive footage of Adolf Hitler addressing the faithful. Triumph of the Will was a blockbuster film, our professor assured us. It spread the name of Hitler worldwide and established Riefenstahl’s reputation as a filmmaker. It was so popular inside Germany that it ran for months on end at movie theaters, and people returned again and again to watch it. Our teacher promised us that we would find it fascinating.

Triumph of the Will was not fascinating. Even for students engrossed in the details of the Nazi surge to power, the nearly two-hour documentary was a tremendous bore. After it was over, we bombarded the teacher with questions and complaints. How could he have imagined that we would find it fascinating?

He smiled. That’s the fascinating part, he said. Here was this extraordinarily popular film, and it’s now nearly impossible for Americans to sit through the whole thing. He wanted us to understand that people in Nazi Germany had an entirely different mindset, that they were participating in a kind of mass frenzy. They didn’t find Nazism abhorrent. They didn’t think they were living in a dystopia. They were true believers.

Many Americans are now having their Triumph of the Will moment. They watch Donald Trump repeatedly without getting bored or disgusted. They believe that history has anointed a new leader to revive the country and restore it to its rightful place in the world. They’ve been convinced that the last eight years were a liberal dystopia and what is happening now is, if not utopian, then the first steps in that direction.

A hard core of those enthralled by Trump cannot be convinced otherwise. They hold liberal elites in contempt. They don’t believe CNN or The New York Times. Many subscribe to outlandish theories about Islam and immigrants and the continuing covert machinations of that most famous “Islamic immigrant” of them all, Barack Obama. For this hard core of Trump supporters, the United States could begin to break down, the economy take a nosedive, the international community hold the leadership in Washington in contempt, and they will continue to believe in Trump and Trumpism. The president could even gun down a few people and his most fervent supporters would say nothing except, “Good shot, Mr. President!” Remember: even after Nazi Germany went down in fiery defeat in 1945, significant numbers of Germans remained in thrall to National Socialism. In 1947, more than half of those surveyed still believed that Nazism was a good idea carried out badly.

But plenty of Trump supporters — whether they’re disaffected Democrats, Hillary-hating independents, or rock-ribbed Republican conservatives — don’t fit such a definition. Some have already become deeply disillusioned by the antics of Donald J. and the demolition derby that his advisers are planning to unleash inside the U.S. government, which may, in the end, batter their lives badly.  They can be brought over. This is potentially the biggest of big-tent moments for launching the broadest possible resistance under the banner of a patriotism that portrays Trump and Bannon as guilty of un-American activities.

And it’s here in particular that so many dystopian novels provide the wrong kind of guidance. Trump’s end will not come at the hands of a Katniss Everdeen. A belief in an individual savior who successfully challenges a “totalitarian” system got us into this crisis in the first place when Donald Trump sold himself as the crusading outsider against a “deep state” controlled by devious liberals, craven conservatives, and a complicit mainstream media. Nor will it help for Americans to dream about leading their states out of the Union (are you listening, California?) or for individuals to retreat into political purism. Given that the administration’s dystopian vision is based on chaos and fragmentation, the oppositional response should be to unite everyone opposed, or even potentially opposed, to what Washington is now doing.

As readers, we are free to interpret dystopian fiction the way we please. As citizens, we can do something far more subversive. We can rewrite our own dystopian reality. We can change that bleak future ourselves. To do so, however, we would need to put together a better plot, introduce some more interesting and colorful characters, and, before it’s too late, write a much better ending that doesn’t just leave us with explosions, screams, and fade to black.

John Feffer is the author of the new dystopian novel, Splinterlands (a Dispatch Books original with Haymarket Books), which Publishers Weekly hails as “a chilling, thoughtful, and intuitive warning.” He is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies and a TomDispatch regular.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 John Feffer

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