#anti-communism hysteria

[liskantope]

Looking back at the culture war battles of 2022, one development that particularly sticks out to me is the American Republican/anti-woke side latching on to the idea of everything social progressives call for that involves minors being a form of "grooming" and/or adjacent to pedophilia. This welled up during the 2022 midterm campaign season and I doubt it reached its final boil during the elections; it probably isn't dying down anytime just yet.

My first reaction, around mid-2022, to seeing this new-ish trend was that it was once again an example of the Right looking at a rhetorical tactic of the Left (in this case, finding a near-universally despised personal trait and relentlessly tarring as many opinions as possible from the opposing side as coming from that trait) and deciding that hey, two can play at this game. The main name that the Left has taken to using against as many opposing opinions as possible is "racist"/"racism", and what's arguably the one label even worse to have attached to you than "racist"? Probably "pedophile" or (more mildly) "groomer".

From that point of view, I can see where this Republican/anti-woke strategy comes from, to the extent that it's been consciously employed and regardless of how blatantly hypocritical it is. But it still caught me by surprise and feels strange, I think because of my impression of being anti-grooming as more of a liberal progressive cause. Now mind you, I know that anything adjacent to pedophilia is reviled by pretty much all parts of the political spectrum, and I also know that the conservative Right (at least in America) has a history of tarring gay people as secretly pedophiles, insinuating that open homosexuality (and other forms of queerness) corrupts and endangers children, and so on. But over the 5-10 years or so previous to the rise of "groomer" accusations from the conservative side, I had come to firmly code raising the alarm about grooming behavior as more of a progressive SJ-ish thing, naturally occurring as a part of the Me Too movement. I had been exposed to a lot of talk in progressive circles about the power differentials that come with age differentials and so on. The whole Josh Duggar scandal some years back seemed split roughly along political lines, with only conservatives (most infamously Mike Huckabee) being willing to come to his defense. And I had a vague notion that liberal people took child molestation and terrible behavior adjacent to it as a sort of higher-priority societal crisis than conservatives did, much as this was clearly the case with rape in general.

So I had thought of cries of "Groomer!" and "Pedophile!" as similar to cries of "Racist!" in that they involve a name that absolutely nobody wants to be branded with, which refers to a type of person that almost everyone looks down upon and is determined not to be but which the Right has a stricter definition of, doesn't see in as many places, and tends to think the Left is overly paranoid about. And yet, for the time being at least, the Right seems to have gotten hold of "Groomer!" and "Pedophile!".

I found this a sort of bemusing (and also of course disturbing) irony, given the extent to which so many socially progressive people around me see grooming / pedophilia / child abuse as a very serious problem and are very sincere in their concerns about it. And to be honest, one of the things I couldn't help saying to myself was, "Let's see how this goes and how people feel when 'Groomer!' is used against them, when the other side stretches at every possible opportunity to compare our side to something we truly find despicable whenever we stand for something they don't like. Maybe this will give some people a new insight about how ineffective it is to blast everything they don't like on the other side as "racist" or other -ists or otherwise coming from something purely evil. It's going to be interesting to see how this changes the dynamic."

(It's worth mentioning as a qualification that the American Right did do something like this as recently as the mid-00's with comparing everyone less hawkish than them with terrorist-sympathizers, but that was a little less direct and seems to have already faded from many people's memories. A closer example would be some decades earlier when an awful lot of Americans seemed determined to brand anyone to the left of them as a Communist sympathizer, but of course this is even further removed from the present.)

It's interesting to look back on this half a year later, because I definitely intended to write a more sharply pointed post expressing most of my paragraphs above sometime around last summer, but it got lost in the shuffle as many of my potential blog posts do. And now it seems like it sort of came to an anticlimax. Anti-woke conservatives did quite well in the midterms as long as they weren't too Trumpy, but Democrats put in a better-than-expected performance. My liberal colleagues and acquaintances mostly seem to have ignored conservative rhetoric about groomers or just dismissed it as idiotic (which, to be fair, it basically is) rather than let it bother them beyond that, either on a direct, immediate level or in terms of making them rethink messaging or persuasive rhetoric from their/our own side. All of this seems to be fizzling over, relative to what I imagined back around July.

[thediaryofarevolutionist]

Sometimes I just wish I was ignorant and didn't know anything. I wouldn't care about politics and would no longer break down when I find out about injustice against women. I just can't do it. I'm not strong enough and this misogyny is getting to me. It’s tearing me apart. I feel paralyzed and don't understand why women must go trough this. All i want is women to be safe and liberated but i dont see any hope.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"During the panic of the fall of 1939, the RCMP began harassing communists, arresting them for violating Defence of Canada Regulations (DOCR) regulations 39 and 39A, even before the Party published its position against Canadian participation in the war.

On September 9, Philip and Gordon Tonner, from Toronto, were arrested for distributing Party materials. The court quickly threw out the case against the two men. The Party published its position against Canadian participation in the war on October 14, 1939. On November 10, the RCMP arrested 23, including ten in Montreal, for distributing communist documents. The Canadian Press reported on November 13 that four more communists in Toronto, eight more in Montreal, as well as one man in Lacombe, Alberta were arrested and charged for having distributed anti-war flyers. On November 21, the Canadian Press reported that Douglas Stewart, business manager of the communist newspaper, Clarion, was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for printing the Comintern statement of opposition to  participation in the war. In Oshawa, an ex-soldier, Frank Towers, was sentenced to three months imprisonment for having sold Clarion, even before it had been banned along with its French-language equivalent, Clarté.

Most of these cases were thrown out of court, although some did receive sentences of up to six months in prison and fines of $500. Four communists were arrested for violating regulation 39, or for merely saying things that police judged to be dangerous to the security of the state or the prosecution of the war. Nick Tuchinsky, from Tilsonbury, Ontario and Alfred Neal, from Kingston, were arrested in December, 1940, but each case ended in acquittal. Nevertheless, two men from Kirkland Lake, Ontario, B. L. McMillan and Charles Stewart, each received sentences of three months and fines of $200 for having expressed sentiments judged to be dangerous or subversive. Four people were accused of having distributed Party newspapers, and twenty-one were charged with possession of communist documents, while eight Winnipegers were arrested for being Party members. The most common reason for arrest was distribution of subversive flyers, for which 44 were charged.

Most cases were thrown out of court for insufficient evidence. In fact, this was the case for twelve women from across Canada, while Olive Swankey, wife of Hull internee Ben Swankey, was held for ten days of interrogation in Edmonton, then released without being charged. Hull internee Charles Weir was arrested for distributing anti-war literature, but was freed since there were no witnesses, only to be soon interned. Another Hull internee, Patrick Lenihan, a Calgary alderman, was acquitted by jury of having expressed statements likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty, only to be interned soon after.

Not all was failure for the authorities when charging communists for specific offences. Nine women were successfully charged, including three in Manitoba and four in Saskatchewan, where authorities seemed to be more successful in prosecuting precise offences. The unfortunate Annie Buller and Margaret Mills each received sentences of two years, while Ida Corley received a sentence of one year. All were from Winnipeg, while Regina resident Gladys McDonald was imprisoned for a year, followed by fourteen months of internment, making her the only communist woman to be interned during World War II.

Two cases of imprisonment in Manitoba deserve special mention. In the fall of 1940, Mitch Sago, a Ukrainian community leader, and Tom McEwen, a member of the political bureau of the Party, were charged with being members of the Party. On November 8, 1940, Sago and McEwen were tried and sentenced to two years less a day of hard labour at the provincial jail in Headingly. Nowhere was hard labour to be found within the DOCR, therefore, on October 10, 1941, McEwen and Sago applied for habeas corpus on the grounds that the original magistrate had exceeded the law with the hard labour sentence. Justice Donovan of the Manitoba Supreme Court agreed and granted Sago and McEwen their freedom, however, on September 9, 1941, Justice minister Lapointe had issued an order for internment, which took effect immediately after the men’s liberation from Headingly, whereupon they were interned in Hull. Internment was to prove a much more useful tool for repressing communists, as opposed to imprisonment for specific offences, especially after the Party was made illegal in June, 1940.

Approximately two-thirds of those detained were held using articles 21 and 39C of the DOCR read together. The official history of the Communist Party of Canada cites that “according to the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, 64 persons had been arrested by the end of February, 1940, of which nineteen received prison terms ranging from one month to two years, while the rest were fined amounts ranging from $1 to $500.”

- Michael Martin, The Red Patch: Political Imprisonment in Hull, Quebec during World War 2. Self-published, 2007. p. 121-123.

[taliabhattwrites]

The most widespread form of transmisogyny within the queer community is denying trans women epistemic authority.

Which means: people do not believe us on our own experiences. They frequently assume any and all oppression we face must be mild or must simply be anti-effeminacy instead of "real misogyny". We are considered to be exaggerating the material consequences of bigotry on us and assumed to not experience various harms that we in fact do, including medical misogyny, sexual violence, CSA, being infantilized and dismissed, being inadequately represented (since most popular depictions of us are cissexist caricatures and do not authentically portray our lived realities!), and more besides.

Perhaps the most hysteria inducing aspect of this is being told that our testimony is not frequently dismissed, BY PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTIVELY DISMISSING OUR TESTIMONY ON HOW MUCH MISOGYNY AND DEGENDERING AND VIOLENCE WE EXPERIENCE.

We are not "new to oppression". We do not have to be taught what it is like to be feminized and dehumanized under patriarchy. We are painfully familiar with how misogyny operates and experience it regularly, in addition to having to justify even to "our" communities that we do in fact experience it!

That, my friends, is the core of transmisogyny: being dehumanized while being denied the right to even name one's oppression or have it be acknowledged as such!

[beardedmrbean]

Centrist Democrats are slamming their far-left colleagues following Election Day, arguing that their emphasis on "identity politics" and other issues handed huge victories to the GOP.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., argued that President-elect Trump has "no greater friend than the far left." Like-minded Democrats say racial politics, anti-police rhetoric and gender hysteria are alienating millions of voters.

"There is more to lose than there is to gain politically from pandering to a far left that is more representative of Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok than it is of the real world," Torres wrote on X. "The working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling."

Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville put it more bluntly in a Sunday interview with the New York Times, calling "defund the police" the "three stupidest words in the English language."

"We could never wash off the stench of it," he said.

Torres is one of several Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate who have called out his party's "nonsense." One centrist House Democrat complained to Axios on Monday that the "identity politics stuff is absolutely killing us."

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., argued on Sunday that Democrats are "out of touch with the crisis of meaning/purpose fueling MAGA."

"We don't listen enough; we tell people what's good for them. And when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base," Murphy wrote.

Not all Democrats are ready to make a change, however. When Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., broke with his party to condemn biological males playing in women's sports last week, he faced an avalanche of hate.

"Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face," Moulton said in a New York Times report. "I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that."

The statement resulted in calls for Moulton to resign, and at least one of his staffers quit in protest.

Massachusetts state Rep. Manny Cruz suggested Moulton's stance was "a betrayal" in a post on X.

"Congressman Moulton, your commitment then was protecting the LGBTQ community, standing up for their rights, and compassion. Now, on a political whim, our Congressman has betrayed the words he signed onto just last year by scapegoating transgender youth in sports for the failures of the national Democratic Party and leaders to win the presidential election. You said you 'would stand with Nagly and with all our community … against all forms of bigotry, discrimination, bullying, and harassment,'" Cruz wrote. 

Salem city Councilor Kyle Davis, another Democrat, called for Moulton to resign. 

"I’m not looking for an apology from [Moulton], I’m looking for a resignation," Davis wrote in a post on X.

Moulton refused to apologize and instead doubled down in a statement late last week.

"I will fight, as I always have, for the rights and safety of all citizens. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and we can even disagree on them. Yet there are many who, shouting from the extreme left corners of social media, believe I have failed the unspoken Democratic Party purity test," he said.

"We did not lose the 2024 election because of any trans person or issue. We lost, in part, because we shame and belittle too many opinions held by too many voters and that needs to stop. Let’s have these debates now, determine a new strategy for our party since our existing one failed, and then unite to oppose the Trump agenda wherever it imperils American values."

[possiblyunhinged]

I really wish I could remember where I heard this from, but I remember listening to a podcast that said the hysteria amongst some white men and their push towards the alt-right is because they know full well that the only thing they've had to offer is their whiteness and maleness. They've relied on that for years, and the idea of this privilege being lessened petrifies them.

I love how their response is to fall into the hands of the far-right and not, y'know, do some soul searching, find what you are passionate about and work out who you are separate from 'masculinity'. It's too feminine, I guess.

I don't mean this to sound unkind, but all the images coming out of Sunderland, Hartlepool and Aldershot... like they're just fucking embarrassing. I feel sorry for them. These 'men' really don't have anything else to offer apart from hate. They don't know who they are. They don't feel a part of anything.

But they can't work out that they feel like that because who the fuck wants to be around people so hateful? Who wants to be around people whose response to children being murdered is getting pissed and ruining communities? Make more kids scared. That'll do it.

Meanwhile, we're seeing anti-racist protests, thousands raised for Alder Hey, people volunteering their time to rebuild and clean up the mess these 'men' left behind in their communities.

[sysmedsaresexist]

To the anon asking about my username...

There's a bit of confusion here, I'm going to answer many of your questions but I may not post the ask itself, hopefully it'll make sense :)

When I started my blog I was heavily anti endo and I specifically posted bad pro/endo takes, debunking or just laughing. To this day, most of it is still pretty hilarious. I wasn't focused on cringe, but totally crazy, out there claims that made zero sense and were flat out wrong. Check out my tags #shit endos say, #shit singlets say, and my newest tag, #shit anti endos say, I hope you have a laugh at a couple of them.

In my pinned post, you'll see the thing that started it all. A pro endo saying that sysmeds are sexist.

I would also like to know how they came to that conclusion. I'm right there with you. Also like you, I still have many issues with the pro/endo community. I believe CDDs are trauma based disorders. I post research pretty much weekly about it (check out #debunk and #research). I think endogenic plurality and CDDs are completely different things.

And you know what, my pro endo friends support me. We're all learning. I'm kind with my opinion, I'm open to talking about it, we debate, we share resources, we change our views and adjust based on new info.

This blog corrects misinformation from both sides, now. Some of it is worse than others. Antis can and do spread just as much misinformation as pro/endos.

What I would encourage you to do is start with the multiple selves theory. It actually developed right alongside Freud's theories on hysteria (which included early versions of CDDs at the time), and if Freud hadn't been such a perv, it might actually be much more well-known. It's a nonpathological theory on consciousness and philosophy. People have been describing this phenomenon for a very long time, "endogenic" is just the newest term for it. Here's a couple examples.

2015 - at any given moment in time, one or another of our subselves is in control and determines how we think and act.

1987

2012 - this one has so many links to other people talking about this theory

2023 - These results suggest that the normative principles by which agents have adapted to complex changing environments may also explain why humans have long been described as consisting of “multiple selves.”

2020

2010

Like I said, though, you can find this stuff as far back as the 50s with ease, anything older might take a bit more digging, but it's not a small or new theory.

I think an overlap in language has created a lot of confusion, but it's really not out of the realm of possibility for people to be more in tune with these parts of themselves. It's been documented for over a century outside of psychology, in other areas of research-- anthropology, philosophy.

I'm going to be honest, I don't think a single one of the headmate sale blogs are real. I think they're antis trying to start shit. Like maybe one out of every ten is actually someone misguided behind the screen.

Even CDD systems still incorrectly believe in core theory, endogenics picked it up from us and don't know any better. System resets aren't real, but there are real experiences that can FEEL like a reset-- try being patient and educating people. Ignore the others, because some people just can't be helped, and you're better off spending your time spreading good, accurate posts than arguing with people who don't want to learn anything.

I forget what I was saying.

Anyways, I'm a pro endo sysmed.

I hope you'll stick around and see what's going on.

[leviathan-supersystem]

with UFO sightings being reported left and right and a new wave of hysteria surrounding it, could you please explain why are the US so damn fixated on UFOs and aliens as a cultural phenomenon? i am not from the US, and i don't even consider myself some kind of ultraskeptic who rejects all weirdness in this world as either delusion or wrong data. but there's something uniquely deranged about how americans approach these reports and stories. what are the origins of this? anti-communism? WW2?

yeah the whole thing's basically a psyop so that anyone who's interested in finding out about Hidden Truths gets misdirected into dumb made-up sci-fi bullshit instead.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Luke Hallam at The UnPopulist:

For the past seven days, the U.K. has witnessed its worst riots in over a decade. What started off last week as a wave of protests over the horrific murder of three young girls, fueled by false claims about the identity of the attacker on social media, has metastasized into something far more profound: a deep fracturing of relations between communities that threatens to do lasting damage to Britain’s social fabric.

Origin of a Race Riot

Last Monday, a knife-wielding teenager entered through an open fire door at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the seaside town of Southport and killed three participants, all girls under the age of 10. He also injured eight more young children and two adults. It was an evil crime, the horror made all the more acute by the youth of the victims and by the fact that someone would target for such an atrocity, of all things, a joyful summer dance party. What came next should be considered a textbook example of how harmful lies can spread on social media. There are generally good reasons to be wary of finger-pointing when it comes to “fake news” and social media’s role in spreading it. But in this instance, it’s hard to overstate the extent of the hysteria that was unleashed. Mere hours after the attack, the killer was seemingly identified as Ali al-Shakati, a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived in the United Kingdom by boat, and was known to the British security services as a potential threat. Within minutes of the first social media post identifying al-Shakati, the story was picked up by a dubious news organization calling itself “Channel 3 Now.” The al-Shakati story was then parroted by Russia Today, and began appearing in a raft of viral posts on social media, including X, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Right-wing influencers with huge followings, like Andrew Tate, amplified the story, and various posts amassed thousands, often millions, of impressions.

Unrest broke out initially in Southport, Hartlepool, and London. Rioters released smoke flares and set fire to a riot van; they threw trash cans and bottles at police officers. As the unrest spread, it was the far right—an ad hoc coalition of former members of the English Defense League, supporters of notorious far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, and ordinary people swept along on social media—fueling the violence. It was common to see English flags and chants of “English till I die.” Mosques and Islamic centers were targeted in a horrific wave of xenophobic thuggery. It was, in large part, a genuine race riot—not a phrase to use lightly. In the first three days, it was well known that the suspect was only 17 years old, which means that by law they couldn’t be identified in the media. Still, in an attempt to head off the violence, the police released some limited information confirming that the alleged perpetrator of the atrocity was in fact born in the U.K. Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist-right Reform UK party and a newly-minted member of parliament, echoed a widespread fear that the establishment was conspiring with the police forces to protect an illegal migrant for fear of fueling an anti-immigrant narrative, irresponsibly declaring: “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us.”

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, a judge took the unusual step of allowing the media to release the full identity of the alleged perpetrator despite his being a minor, noting that the suspect was only a few days away from turning 18. It turns out that Ali al-Shakati doesn’t exist. The real suspect, Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old born in Wales to Rwandan parents, was not a refugee. We don’t know that he’s not Muslim, nor that his motives were unrelated to some sort of Islamist ideology—though, given that only 2% of Rwanda’s population is Muslim, it seems unlikely. Of course, it hardly matters. There’s no earthly justification for violently attacking mosques, harassing the public, and setting fire to police vans.

[...]

Far-Right Xenophobia Capitalizes On Britain’s Integration Issues

There are two things to say in response to all of this: two things that may at first glance appear to be mutually exclusive, but are nevertheless both true. The first is that the right-wing polemicists have long been packaging these problems together into one overarching, catastrophist narrative of British decline. The problem is, there is no evidence that the knife crime wave has been directly fueled by asylum seekers. As bad as knife crime and other problems may be, it is also simply incorrect to assert that the country has in recent years become, in the words of one representative commentator, “a lawless country where there is no justice at all.” What’s more, right-wing catastrophism is hypocritical insofar as it has often been fueled by the very same politicians who were in government until last month, and spectacularly failed to tackle most of these problems. Indeed, it was the Conservative government that slashed the number of police officers and presided over the arrival of a record number of refugees, while failing to find a humane, durable solution for processing them. (In addition, it’s notable that even as one part of the country, Scotland, managed to successfully bring its knife crime problem under control by adopting a community-led agenda, Conservative politicians in Westminster made vacuous pronouncements about law and order that amounted to nothing for most of the country.)

The second thing to say is that there are real problems with Britain’s model of dealing with ethnic and religious diversity. Whenever there is social unrest or communal strife in France, for example, Brits and Americans like to put the blame squarely on the French model of laïcité—an imperfect approach to the separation of church and state that is often caricatured as consisting in naked animus against religious minorities. But Britain’s own highly communitarian approach—which often gives a free pass to the most radical elements within a religious community—does not seem to be faring much better, with the result that elements within some immigrant communities in Britain’s major cities have failed to properly integrate, and, as the present riots show, longstanding resentments have been left to fester.

Over the past week in the United Kingdom, far-right race riots over the UK’s immigration policies and the Southport stabbing have sprung up all over the Home Nations, especially in England.

These riots are fueled by paranoid Islamophobia, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and fake news.

[thediaryofarevolutionist]

I sometimes feel like I can feel people's suffering. I just have to look into their eyes and see how much they are suffering. I see what this system is doing to them and not giving them what they need and rightfully deserve. I see that they hoped for more in life than this...

It really breaks my heart that I sometimes feel paralyzed by all the pain and suffering in this world. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it really feels that way, I remember this feeling from before and I was hoping it would go away, but it hasn't. I still feel it and it's just getting more intense. I see the injustice and inhumanity and I can't look anymore because it hurts me so much. It's not fair. I know I'm too sensitive and sensitive, I know it and telling myself doesn't help me, I need to know how to get rid of these feelings. I feel everything too intensely and strongly, I can't feel “nothing”, even if I hate you, I feel too much for you. Why did I have to become like that? Writing all this here makes me cry. I can't stand or digest anything. Everything gets stuck inside me so that one day I'm afraid of suffocating. Why me and no one else?

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"How did the Canadian government see the war after the first, German conquests in  Western Europe? On April 30, 1940, O.D. Skelton wrote a document called The Present Outlook. Skelton was [Prime Minister Mackenzie] King’s under-secretary of Foreign Affairs, thus King’s deputy  minister, his most trusted advisor, one of the leading public servants in Ottawa. Skelton’s document was remarkable for its lack of foresight. For example, it suggested that Japan represented no danger to the allies. It also linked as one force the two, bitter enemies, communism and fascism, as rival forms of totalitarianism, which now united. Skelton  described the horrifying possibility of a victory of the associated Germans, Italians, and  Soviets as if Canada were in an undeclared war with the Soviet Union, now allied with the Nazis. Writing about U.S. neutrality, Skelton wrote that, in the recent past, probable victory for England and France against Germany meant that the American people rightly saw no need to fight against totalitarianism. With the possibility of a victory of a German-Italian-Russian coalition, American public opinion would now change. All this nonsense from one of the most powerful men in Ottawa, a man who had the ear and respect of King about Canada’s war policy. In actual fact, Skelton probably believed the government’s own propaganda about the nature of the war as being a war upon totalitarianism and, therefore, an undeclared war against the U.S.S.R. The nature of anti-Soviet manipulations in Europe during the phoney war was clarified eventually when Swedish diplomatic archives revealed that a week before the German blitzkrieg was launched upon the French, the French government and military had been preparing to  send 50,000 troops to wage war against the U.S.S.R. in Finland, rather than preparing to  defend France against Germany.

After France and the Low Countries fell to the Germans in the Spring of 1940, the character of the war changed for Canada. A general panic among the public ensued. Canada was now the most important ally of the British, isolated and beleaguered in Europe. Canadians rushed to volunteer for the military. The King government insisted upon the voluntary aspect of Canada’s contribution in military manpower. In October, 1939, Duplessis had sought re-election in Quebec by using the threat of conscription, against which Duplessis was to be the bulwark. Federal Liberals, led by Justice minister Ernest Lapointe, promised there would be no conscription, and pledged their seats in Quebec towards this commitment. Duplessis was defeated when Quebeckers voted for the provincial Liberals, led by Adélard Godbout.

What then was to be Canada’s contribution to the defence of Britain? King prepared Canada for a war of limited liability in terms of its contribution to the war effort. The priorities were to be economic aid, which would help Canadian capitalists make profits, re-launch the economy, and create jobs; national unity, especially the unity of King’s Liberal Party, powerful in Quebec; and defending Canada’s borders and infrastructure but even more importantly, Canada’s internal social order. In the immediate flush of pro-British enthusiasm after the start of proceedings, King had sent an army division of 20,000 troops to Britain. He soon regretted this decision when negotiations were held between Britain and Canada to train aviators in Canada as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. During the acrimonious negotiations with Britain, King fought and scrapped about the costs of the plan, $600 million per year, of which  Canada was to assume $350 million, in order to train 20,000 airmen per year for use by Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. King insisted that Canada’s contribution to the plan would be its most effective contribution to the war effort. Emphasis on the plan also permitted King to envisage a reduced loss of military lives, which might also ease pressure for conscription.

Many English-Canadians felt that King’s proposed contribution to the war was too calculated, too timid. They wanted Canada to do more than help Britain financially, guard borders and infrastructure, and train aviators. They wanted Canadians to fight alongside Britain, this in spite of the Phoney War early in WWII that precluded immediate, actual combat. In Ontario, the provincial Liberal government of Mitchell Hepburn said so in a resolution, adopted on January 18, 1940, which criticized King’s lack of vigorous execution of the war. King used this occasion to call elections, which were coming due as King was now in the fifth year of government. King manoeuvred the leader of the Tories, Robert Manion, into approving the no-conscription pledge to Quebeckers. On March 26, King won an overwhelming majority, 181 seats out of 245 in the House of Commons. The Liberals were now free to conduct a war of limited liability according to their priorities. King’s priorities for this war of limited liability illuminate the real reason why Canada went to war. Writes Jack Granatstein: “Canada went to war in September, 1939 because Britain had gone to war, and for no other reason. It was not a war for Poland; it was not a war against anti-semitism; it was not even a war against Naziism,” even though the horrible atrocity of the Nazi genocides against Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and  political opponents did provide post facto moral justification for World War II and  Canada’s participation therein."

- Michael Martin, The Red Patch: Political imprisonment in Hull, Quebec during World War 2. Self-published, 2007. p. 59-62

[touchd0wn-boy]

Since I keep seeing it in certain corners of the fandom:

Chromosomes = gender is a transphobic statement. Genitalia/secondary sex characteristics = gender is a transphobic statement. I can't believe I have to explain this. It's "real transphobia" not just a fun argument you can co-opt to use against other queer people online. It's the basis for why transphobes want to bring back chromosome testing and sex verification in all sports so only Real Women and Real Men can compete against each other, something that's not only damaging to trans people but pretty much everyone who doesn't fit the very narrow definition of what a "normal" body and "normal" hormones are, even cis people, as the whole controversy around Imane Khelif has shown during the Olympics. It's why bathroom access for trans people has become such a point of hysteria and conspiracy theories. It's why anti-transgender laws are on the rise all over the world.

Last month, the ACLU published a very illuminating research brief on the impacts of anti-transgender laws and policies that I HIGHLY recommend (you can check it out here).

Instead of posting performative bullshit about what an Ally you are, and how we should all focus on "real transphobia" instead, you could reflect on why immediately falling back to transphobic rhetoric 101 as a cheap gotcha argument against the actual queer and trans people in your fandom saying things about your favs you don't like and don't agree with, is not actually??? a good thing? If your first gut-jerk reaction to shut down queer people is to rehash the talking points of every conservative politician and every Elon Musk Verified Alt-Right Twitter Influencer, then maybe do some introspection on WHY that is. When you perpetuate arguments about chromosomes and gender, you’re giving oxygen to the same ideologies that justify anti-trans laws and discriminatory policies. You're contributing to the environment that makes life harder for trans people, even if you don’t realize it.

By all means, donate to trans and queer charities and inform yourself on the issues impacting trans and queer communities.

But performative allyship is not a substitute for genuine support and understanding. Donating without actually challenging your own biases or engaging in meaningful discussions isn't enough. Being an ally means being willing to listen, learn, and grow—even when it makes you uncomfortable. It means understanding that harm can be done through ignorance, and being willing to address that ignorance within yourself and your circles.

Anyway. Translegislation is a wonderful website to track anti-trans bills that are being considered and passed in the US. Contact your representatives. VOTE, not just in the upcoming presidential election but also—and ESPECIALLY—in your local elections.

Besides the Trans Youth Equality Foundation, I also recommend

The Trevor Project

Mermaids (UK-based, God knows they need the support, considering Ms. Joanne R. still has internet access in the year of our lord 2024)

your local Planned Parenthood

your local trans/queer organization

mutual aid requests for gender affirming care

[eretzyisrael]

Shlaim falsified timeline in order to blame Zionists for Iraqi exodus

The Oxford professor Avi Shlaim’s memoir ‘Three Worlds’ has been amply reviewed, but few reviewers have treated the book to an analysis as forensic as Gilad Ini’s. Writing for CAMERA,   Ini  finds that Shlaim is torn between his twin roles as historian on the one hand, and mudslinger against Israel on the other.  At times he acknowledges that Iraqi persecution of Jews was “the main reason for the Jewish exodus from Iraq,” but ends up concluding that the Zionists planted bombs to cause the Iraqi Jews to flee, going as far as to falsify the chronology of the explosions in order to reverse cause and effect.

Avi Shlaim: questionable chronology

We felt vulnerable because we were Jews,” he admits. It was already in 1948, before the series of bombs but after an anti-Jewish gang threatened to kidnap or kill members of his family, that his mother began “thinking about leaving Iraq for good.”

The bombs, he later elaborates, compounded a feeling of insecurity that had already existed:

The real reason for leaving, according to my mother’s later account, was that life in Iraq had become too dangerous by 1950, for the Jews in general and for our family in particular. Persecution of the Jews was intensifying, and it assumed many different forms. The government, the judiciary and the public became overtly hostile. Restrictions were placed on Jewish trade and commerce. Jews in the civil service were dismissed and the entire community was placed under surveillance. Young Jews were barred from admission to colleges of further education. The police arrested, tortured, imposed arbitrary fines and extracted money from innocent Jews in what looked like a government-sanctioned campaign of harassment.

And yet he allows himself to conclude elsewhere, “My family did not move from Iraq to Israel because of a clash of cultures or religious intolerance.”

This is part of a pattern. Though Shlaim is willing to detail antisemitic mistreatment, he is equally willing to shrug it off when making sweeping judgments.

Were Jews “subjected to a host of discriminatory regulations” over the centuries? Yes. But no matter. They were “the living embodiment of Muslim-Jewish co-existence.”

Was there an “infamous pogrom” —the anti-Jewish bloodbath known as the Farhud? Sure. But just one. “The overall picture, however, was one of religious tolerance, cosmopolitanism, peaceful coexistence and fruitful interaction.”

What of the “harassment,” “Nazi militarism,” “official persecution,” “anti-Jewish propaganda,” “strident anti-Jewish … sentiments,” the “powerful popular wave of hostility toward … the Jews,” demonstrators who “marched through the streets of Baghdad, shouting ‘Death to the Jews,’” a “government that actively whipped up popular hysteria and suspicion against the Jews”? Rest assured. “Iraq was a land of pluralism and coexistence.”

The absurdity seems to know no limits. If during the Farhud “an angry mob armed with knives, sticks and axes set upon the Jews on buses, in the streets, and in their houses,” and if Jews were “murdered, raped, looted” until 179 Jewish corpses were tossed into a mass grave, Shlaim still finds someone to insist that the pogrom was “not an antisemitic episode.”

Shlaim’s mother didn’t get the memo. After the Farhud, she and her Jewish friends “began to wear abayas, the loose black overgarment worn by Muslim women, in order to conceal their Jewish identity. They also imitated the dialect of Iraqi Muslims, fearing their very voices would give them away.” Just as Ms. Shlaim made clear that their family left Iraq due to anti-Jewish persecution, she left little doubt that she understood the antisemitism behind the Farhud.

But Avi Shlaim knows better than his mother. He is, after all, a professional historian. One who changes dates. One who ignores chronology. One who dismisses facts that don’t suit his politics. But a professional—for what it’s worth.

Read article in full

More about Avi Shlaim

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against ASIANS

Between 1956-65, the Chinese Confession Program sought confessions of illegal entry from US citizens and residents of Chinese origin, with the (misleading) offer of legalization of status in exchange. The program resulted in 13,895 confessions, with about 10,000 in the San Francisco region (where the bulk of the illegally entering Chinese population was concentrated. This was far less than the number of people suspected of having entered illegally, and the less than complete usage of the program was attributed to lack of trust in the United States immigration enforcement agencies among the Chinese population, the lack of clear benefits from confessing, and the risk of deportation faced by the confessor as well as his or her (blood and paper) family. Since confessions by neighbors could implicate a person and cause him or her to be deported, the program created fear and distrust in many Chinese-American communities. Anybody who had illegally entered and came in contact with the FBI before he or she had confessed was subject to immediate deportation. The confessions had a significant impact on the Chinese-American community: as a result of the confessions, 22,083 people were exposed and 11,294 paper son slots were closed. For comparison, the 1950 Census listed 117,629 Chinese in America (excluding Hawaii).

From 1942-46, FDR imprisoned ~120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps after the attack on pearl harbor. The conditions of the camps were notoriously horrible, and most were forced to make “loyalty oaths”, or risk deportation and separation from their families. It was later admitted that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. Most lost their homes and jobs, as whites took over vacated homes.

The repression faced by Chinese Americans in the 19th and 20th century are found in the articles, History of Chinese Americans, and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the US.

The Immigration Act of 1917 imposed literacy tests on immigrants, and created new categories of inadmissible persons and barred immigration from the Asia-Pacific Zone.

The Scott Act of 1888 was a law that prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning. It left an estimated 20,000-30,000 Chinese outside the United States at the time stranded.

In 1882, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, illegalizing Chinese immigration, in a long chain of anti-chinese legislation. It was repealed in 1943.

The San Francisco Riot of 1877 was a two-day pogrom waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, California by the city’s majority white population from the evening of July 23 through the night of July 24, 1877. The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city’s Chinese immigrant population.

The Page Act of 1875 prohibited entry of immigrants considered undesirable, classifying that as any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a forced laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. It was introduced to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women”. The Page Act was supposed to strengthen the ban against “coolie” laborers, by imposing a fine of up to $2,000 and maximum jail sentence of one year upon anyone who tried to bring a person from China, Japan,or any Asian country to the United States “without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service”. However, these provisions, as well as those regarding convicts “had little effect at the time”. On the other hand, the ban on female Asian immigrants was heavily enforced and proved to be a barrier for all Asian women trying to immigrate, especially Chinese.

The Chinese Massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot which occurred on October 24, 1871 in Los Angeles, California, when a mob of around 500 white men entered Chinatown to attack, rob, and murder Chinese residents of the city. An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were systematically tortured and then hanged by the mob, making the event the largest mass lynching in American history.

The Pigtail Ordinance was a racist law passed in 1873 intended to force prisoners in San Francisco, California to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. It affected Han Chinese prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their queue, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off.

The Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 was passed by the California legislature in an attempt to appease rising anger among white laborers about salary competition created by the influx of Chinese immigrants at the height of the California gold rush.The act sought to protect white laborers by imposing a monthly tax on Chinese immigrants seeking to do business in the state of California.

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

Republicans Are Soft on Fascism

(I try to put my head in the sand, but I suffocate.)

Stephen Jay Morris

9/7/2023

©Scientific Morality.

Billionaire Elon Musk blames Jews for the failure of his social Media venture, “X” (formerly “Twitter). It has something to do with the ADL. I saw recent videos of neo-Nazis on a Florida bridge, waving their swastika flags left to right in view of the oncoming traffic. Hitler fan and podcaster, Nick Fuentes, tells the world he hates poor people. Anti-Semitism has come full circle, again, to being blatantly expressed in public. There used to be repercussions for talking shit about the Jews. I am watching this cadre of Jew haters unfold in front of my very eyes.  Lots of American Jews once thought that if they converted to Christianity and married a Gentile, they would be immune to being put in concentration camps or thrown into ovens. I can still hear my father pounding his fist on the dining room table, in a rage, yelling that the Jews are a religion not a race. “Why is he yelling at his family and not to real Jew haters?” I thought. That is a story for another time.

 But alas, you can’t convince a Nazi that Jews are white. They think and feel that Jews are a mogul race of mud people and should be destroyed. Once they find out that you are Jewish—bye, bye!

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published a book, “It Can’t Happen Here.” It warned about the possibility of Fascism in America. I read that book in 1969. I told my parents and they thought I was crazy. America is the strongest country in the world, they said; it would never happen here!

It is now happening here. What about the owners of massive wealth and the military industrial complex? Do they care? First, the so-called deep state couldn’t give a damn about Jews at risk for death! Second, Nazis are pro-capitalism so long as White men control it. I’ve asked this question a million times: have you ever seen a Right winger protest a Nazi? Neither have I. Conservatives are soft on fascism. They get embarrassed by Nazis because they say the quiet rhetoric out loud. They say things like, “the East elites (Rich Jews) want to run our country” or “the globalists (Rich Jews) want to run the world!” They say, “the Jews will not replace us!” to which the conservative agrees, but thinks the Nazis are giving the game away.

But when it comes to Communism? Holy fuck burgers! Bomb them! Kill them all and let God sort them out! They know that Communists would take away their property and businesses and give it all to the poor. If you ask me, I’d rather live in Stalin’s Russia than in the 1950’s America, anti-communist hysteria. Fuck anti-Communism!!! Conservatives outlawed free speech in America in the 50’s. If you slightly inferred liberal tendencies in your speech, the FBI would tap your phone and follow you to work! You think I am exaggerating? Go through some time machine and find out. During the 50’s, if you were in America and, simultaneously, in the then Soviet Union, you wouldn’t know the difference! In Russia, The KGB would follow you around and, in the USA, the FBI would follow you around.

As an anarchist, I am not surprised. As a Jew, I am highly concerned. Oh, and your gentile spouse will not be spared. During the Nazi’s regime, many Aryans were put into camps for marrying non-Aryan husbands or wives. The price for race-mixing is death.

I sure miss the Jewish Defense League, even though they were Right wing, Zionist revisionists. They were pro-active. Whenever there were Nazi rallies, they were there with baseball bats. I am not pro-violence, but I am not pro-surrender, either. I’ll tell you one thing. I will not walk into a gas chamber peacefully. Never again, motherfuckers!

[sysmedsaresexist]

im a system trying to learn more about endos.

so far in syscourse ive only seen proof of cdds being traumagenic but they dont disprove non-cdd plurality, so what sources are there that have evidence of endogenic systems, if you have any?

Right now? There isn't any hard evidence that would satisfy anti endos. There's TONS of papers and articles talking about the recent emergence of endogenic systems, but they're mostly interview based. I debunked a lot of them when I was still anti. Small sample sizes, personal bias about dysfunction levels, all interviews. Those won't stand for those who are skeptical.

Now that I've calmed my gender neutral tits, though, I can look at where all this research is heading, and I can look back and find all the different terms that have been used to describe this same phenomenon. Those terms don't fall under psychology, they appear in journals about consciousness and self and philosophy, and they go all the way back to the 1800s, developing right alongside theories on hysteria and split personality, and the TOSD.

I don't need to do the work for you (/nm), just Google multiple self theory and fall down the rabbit hole. Trust me. One Google search, move at your own pace. It'll mean more when you find all this yourself and make the journey on your own. It was way more effective when I went alone.

That said, I'm not heartless.

The most promising research coming out is the tulpa studies.

Tanya Luhrmann and Michael Lifshitz are incredible, but it's Luhrmann who really stole my heart. She has a long list of work on religious communication with God and "others", and was a huge part of putting tulpas, and several other different voice hearing, religious communities into the fmri scanners to see what's going on. The reddit AMA is being passed around now, and it's largely being ignored by antis, without understanding what it was.

The tulpa studies began... shit, 5 years ago? Covid put a hold on the project, but it's back up and running and they're working on the final paper. The AMA was a chance for people to ask questions to the lead researchers about the project, including whether they found anything.

And they did.

The brains of tulpamancers and other practitioners lit up in unexpected areas and outside of conscious control (very basic overview).

Luhrmann also wrote about how this kind of research can help other voice hearers, and could potentially point to some new therapy opportunities for those struggling.

No, Luhrmann and Lifshitz are not dissociative specialists. Endogenic systems have screamed for decades about how they don't have CDDs and we just refuse to listen. This research is occurring in other areas and specialities. They don't need to be dissociative specialists to work fmri machines and see there's something happening.

My hope is that once the final results are published, we'll see some very quick movements comparing CDDs and endogenic systems. We're not there yet, but I think we'll actually have firm answers within the next couple years.

And after looking into other areas of research, and seeing the potential positives, and that they DID see some unexpected things on the scans...

Not to mention that I've spoken with Colin Ross, THE dissociative expert, who in the 1980s, wrote about "endogenous multiplicity," a subsection of those with MPD that had no trauma history, no dysfunction, no amnesia, etc, and he still stands by that to this very day. I've spoken with several other experts. Go look at Jamie Marich on Twitter and see all her colleagues in the notes.

Anti endo is a dying stance.

Learn nuance while you can (CDDs and endogenic plurality are different, occasionally overlapping), and jump ship before it's too late to take the harm back.

Happy googling and good luck!