#because justice only works if the situation is clickbait-able

[toothlespoggers]

can someone on tumblr do the whole Twitter situation thingie but with like. This

I don’t want todo that cause I hate Twitter but I feel like someone should like. Make this viral to raise awareness, tell some sort of commentary YouTuber, or like. Start a Twitter rampage

not only is that video literally nazi content that got recommended to me but it is also literally characterised as “made for kids content” which in itself is incorrect as 1. It’s fucking nazi glorification. 2. It literally fucking says 13+ on it. And also can this be like. Brought up I want the internet for once to like stop talking about dreams asshole or whatever the fuck and like actually not bury important shit caus I know the internet only deals with problems that are like

oh no! Some famous person sneezed in public! Let’s make this news instead of talking about actual issues.

okay so just so we’re clear. We are to mass report this guy, raise awareness of shithead people like this. And whoever has the power todo something should probably bring YouTube’s attention to bullshit like this on Twitter. Because this is literally a blatant example of the corruption in their moderation.

best case scenario, we get the YouTuber banned, videos taken down and they get punished for their behaviour.

the scenario that’ll probably happen; if I’m lucky the internet will actually notice this post and people will try todo something about it.

but I’m like. Fully prepared for this to completely get ignored and buried like all my shit that isn’t undertale/deltarune content.

I love tumblr but it makes me so genuinely angry that people only give a fuck about my content when it’s a specific type.

also tags are fucking stupid because how tf do I tag 99% of shit that isn’t for a specific fandom? What am I supposed to tag this as? How the fuck will people see this? What the fuck am I supposed todo? Just type nazi in tags and pray????

[keyofjetwolf]

We’re All Just Guys

Well it took the entire fucking season, but I FINALLY get the purpose for Henry Fondle: Sex Robot. And while the entire episode (and season, honestly) has been tremendous, that this ridiculous fucking punchline was the vehicle to deliver the overarching point with a solid knockout punch of meaning AND pathos? Absolutely floored. That BoJack Horseman can be (and often is) brilliant isn’t a surprise, but the ways is keeps proving it often are.

So “The Stopped Show”, a tale of accountability and responsibility and how we’re all just guys.

Each of our main characters closes out this season alone (sort of), in assorted stages of realizing the main themes, or completely failing to. I find Diane’s arc the hardest for me to make a decision on, which isn’t surprising, as I think in many ways, Diane’s the most complicated character in the show. She delivers, directly and succinctly, one of the major points of not just this season but the entire show, but how does it relate to her? I’M NOT COMPLETELY SURE. I think part of the problem with (and for) Diane is that she knows better. She’s the most insightful character, she has a fantastic head on her shoulders, but only for everyone else. She’s this fucked up little disaster prophet, her vision clear and her message concise, unable to ever apply her gifts to fix herself.

Diane is just as trapped as BoJack, but in a fun twist, is now lagging behind him in trying to do something about it. Nearly every single scene with Diane this season has been in this sad little room of her sad little apartment with all her sad little unpacked boxes, and no matter how much truth and wisdom she spits out, HERE SHE STILL IS, failing to correctly assemble IKEA furniture with names like Bȧcksleid. She already feels like shit for sleeping with Mr. Peanutbutter, so what does she do? THE SAME FUCKING THING. To which I groan and roll my eyes, while simultaneously being proud of her for directly and immediately setting him straight about not getting back together. Diane rides this constant line where she gets it but also doesn’t, which is so interesting to me in the level of additional frustration this makes me feel. BoJack is so self-absorbed you don’t really expect any better of him, which has the flip side of your expectations being so low that even the whiff of progress feels exceptional. Diane doesn’t come with any of that though, she knows better, you KNOW she knows better, and the consequence of this for the audience is that she winds up being more unlikeable than the guy who literally last episode nearly strangled his girlfriend and co-star in the middle of a paranoid drug-induced frenzy.

Which is fucked up! It’s intensely fucked up! And also, I think, the point! We expect more of Diane, and so feel more disappointed when she doesn’t deliver. Is that fair of us?

But there’s more here, as we pivot to the accountability portion of this episode/season. From the beginning of the show, it’s been incredibly upfront about how everything is unfair. We come back to this time and again. Privilege rules the day in the world of Hollywoo. Fame, money, charisma, gender, power. BoJack has been an asshole from pretty much the moment he set foot in the spotlight (possibly before?), and the only thing ever even attempting to hold him back has been the moments his guilt manages to scream loud enough to be heard over his internal narrative. Whatever he does, however he fucks up, he always stumbles back to his feet, and NEVER with any (broad scale) consequences. Meanwhile, here’s Diane, in her sad shitty apartment. Consequences haunt Diane, even if she’s the one doing the haunting. The crap things she’s done and the shitty choices she’s made cling to her.

There’s no fairness in that either, no justice. But Hollywoo (and the entire world around it) (and our world too oh yes) has that privilege carved into its bones, and Diane bears none of its marks. Her situation is very different from but parallel to Gina, who is just so fucked over, it keeps legitimately making me angry for her.

Gina, of course, brought none of this on herself. She made the mistake of caring about BoJack and trying to help him. OOPS YOU WERE A GENEROUS PERSON WITH AN OPEN HEART FUCK YOU LADY. For her trouble, Gina has been assaulted and traumatized, AND she is in very real danger of her career being over when it’s only just finally beginning. And she KNOWS THIS. That’s the part that I keep coming back to. All this should be an aberration, an anomaly, and while that may be true of the specifics, conceptually, it’s so commonplace that Gina already knows how it’s going to play. She’ll stop being Gina and become The Woman Nearly Strangled To Death By BoJack Horseman. Even if she’s able to keep working, this is what she’ll be asked about in every interview forever. Even if she convinced people to genuinely listen to her, BoJack would, at worst, get a slap on the wrist as he stumbles back to his feet. We know that, WE ALL KNOW THAT, because it happens all. the. fucking. time. Gina did nothing wrong, but this would still define her for the rest of her life, while for BoJack, it would maybe become a footnote on his Wikipedia page.

Nothing about that is FAIR. Nothing about it is JUST. Gina’s choices shouldn’t have to be “this becomes my entire life” or “swallow this down and pretend it never happened”. But it is, as it has been in perpetuity for the victims of the privileged.

So then what can we do about it? Well that’s really the question, isn’t it? This episode answers it in an assortment of ways (I think the entire SHOW is very much about this, really, but this episode is for sure coming with guns blazing), while also showing us why none of those answers can work. It’s funny and sad and awful and true, but also, ultimately, the most hopeful answer because it’s the only one you can actually affect: It’s you. It’s me. It’s each and every one of us, individually, making a choice to be better.

And believe it or not, we embody this with Henry Fondle: Sex Robot.

I thought the whole thing was so unbelievably stupid. Half the season, we’ve had this goddamn multi-dildo’d juvenile frat boy joke running around with its stupid ass Speak-and-Say voice, doing the same shtick over and over, and I’m like, “okay this is just the shit I have to put up with to get the clever stuff, I guess.” BUT THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT I’M SITTING THERE LIVING THE ENTIRE GODDAMN POINT AND MISSING IT. Henry Fondle: Sex Robot is seventeen shades of overt horribleness, AND WE ALL JUST GIVE IT A PASS. It’s just the way it is, the way the world works, the price of doing business. When the whole time -- THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME -- all it took was one person to say no. One person who could see the game we all are playing and was willing to give up everything to stop it.

Hilariously, Henry Fondle IS a metaphor, sort of, but of the saddest kind. He is literally a robot, he can’t possibly change. What’s more, media fervor will never affect him, fallout will never touch him, and the powerful will always rally around themselves to retain their power. It takes Todd, the head of the company, the creator of Henry Fondle, and the one person who would benefit most from the unending efforts of the rest of the world bending over backwards to avoid the truth, to put a stop to it. In doing so, he immediately returns to his old, homeless, destitute self, but doesn’t once hesitate or look back.

It’s Todd, and only Todd, that stops that madness, because while individual people are a problem, the world at large is too. Stefani makes a great point that Diane holds herself and everyone else to impossible standards and a little forgiveness and grace wouldn’t go amiss, but when Diane suggests they apply that philosophy to their clickbait gossipy shit on their website, it’s just

Which again, is beautifully cynical and depressing, but not untrue. Fostering a more forgiving culture isn’t in stopping websites from posting clickbaity takedown articles, it’s each person deciding not to take the clickbait. We can absolutely have a conversation about the people creating their world or the world creating its people, but when you boil it down, only one of those things can you yourself absolutely and directly change, and it’s not the entire world.

A THING DIANE GETS BUT SIMULTANEOUSLY ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT.

I can’t take myself away from this Diane thing, I know, but only because she’s the fucking CORE of each and every one of us struggling with this idea. She’s the simplicity of it and the complication all in one. Not BoJack, which is NOT where I thought we’d be when we started this journey. BoJack is more an action on the people around him at this point in the story, he IS the world you cannot change. He’s pointed to rehab, and off he goes -- or doesn’t! I don’t think it’s coincidence that we stay with Diane and watch her watching him.

Oh, Diane, indeed. As she tells her story of her friend Abby, who threw her over for the cool kids, who turned every confidence into a scar. Who Diane still helped anyway, because Abby needed her. Did Abby learn from that, did she get better? We don’t know; we stay with Diane and watch her watching Abby. Diane, who can so completely understand about personal responsibility while failing to recognize her own enabling for the shitty things that keep happening to her.

You can control yourself. That’s it. That’s the only playground with a guarantee.

Will BoJack go off to learn that? Will Diane stay and figure it out?

THAT’S WHAT NEXT SEASON IS FOR

Something I was toying with including in this, but ultimately decided against for a variety of reasons, was the contrast between BoJack’s take on personal responsibility independent of external response, and The Good Place’s argument that people need external support for personal growth. An idea I may not have even considered contrasting save that Doc’s talked before about these two Jewish creators with what are clearly very different philosophies, and basically, if she were ever able to manage a discussion between them on this, I’d love to be in the room. I’ll be very quiet and not get in the way, I promise.

[theivanteru]

My two cents on the whole AOA situation.

This is going to be long, I’m sorry.

I’ve seen lots of people sharing their thoughts and opinions on this matter so I thought I would do the same...I think I actually needed to do this.

I, for the time being, cannot listen to their songs, I don’t want to...and yeah it kind of hurts, I know I’ll be able to later and i think I will still like the songs because they are good.

I was so interested in AOA even before their debut, I saw all the teasers, and I’ve kept track of them as a fan since then, they even were my favourite group for a while.

Learning that this whole situation began ten years ago was heartbreaking because it was even when they were trainees and nobody knew them, they still chose to debut like that (all of them). It really shows how the mindset of any person who wishes to debut can be, and gives a new light into how devious and dark the kpop world can, sometimes, be.

In any situation, bullying is horrible and we should not stand by it. But us regular people have it easier. That’s why I think that taking care of yourself and your dreams or goals by not participating is valid and, specially in the kpop industry, is probably more common that we think. Even outside, I cannot judge people who don’t intervene or defend other because, while I’ve had the chance to help others being bullied and even stopped it, I’ve also lived situations where helping was not an option and even where I chose not to. I think it’s part of society and human nature to have this duality and it’s even more intelligent to think how can you help the victim, instead of attacking the bully.

On the other side,bullying (in early stages) takes two roles (bully and victim) Most people get to choose who they are and wether they are going to let it happen or not, whatever you choose, you should accept the consequences. 

I’ve been picked on (never physically fortunately) for different resons since my childhood, sometimes I defended myself, sometimes I didn’t, sometimes I chose to ignore and sometimes I chose to respond. Some memories hurt still, but I’m ok, I was back then and now I can see how processing them made me stronger now. That is not the case for lots of people.

That being said, and sorry for rambling, I’m really glad Mina spoke about it, she needed to release it, I do believe everything she said and I actually find it not surprising 8which is even more heartbreaking). However I definitely don’t think it was the right, clean way to do or even healthy for her. 

I think this bullying situation should be solved between Mina, Jimin and the real professional authorities (doctors, lawyers, police) even mabye the company since they let the situation happen (which is sad how not surpising it is). If Jimin bullied anybody else, then it’s a problem between them specifically.

Just a few days back she posted a picture of her wound, made believe that it had just happened and then cleared out that it was from months back, was it necessary? To me, that post and what she said in it didn’t help her situation, not did it affect Jimin anymore...Honestly I don’t blame her for doing that but then again, to some, she ends up looking unstable and chaotic, and with the experiences she lived she probably is.

As for us (the fans) and regular people and netizens and whoever followed her shouldn’t  have a say in the matter, we weren’t there and we’ll never be...we really don’t know.  I honestly think we should limit ourselves to support Mina or whoever you want to support or believe without involving the other parties and doing justice for them, we’re not saviors nor we should try to be. We are fans, our job, if we even have one, is to support and thats all.

Something that really makes me mad is that I’ve seen videos incriminating others and clickbaiting to sound dramating...I know that’s how it works and thats why I hate it, it really makes us biased and suddenly we’ve lost the ability to think and reason, we’ve become sheep to a title,a perspective and even more so the person that wrote it.

There’s a reality but the perspective depends on the person who is living it, they are ALL VALID so...

As for Jimin...I’m glad she left, it was the healthiest option for her. I don’t see her promoting ever again and maybe it’s for the best, an example for others to think better before bullying.

I just cant empathize with bullying in general, but even more so with someone who shares your goals, dreams, and is even an important part of the team that was given to you in order to achieve success.  I don’t understand what made her do something like that, specially as the leader of the group and a person who is talented, why waste all of yourself on something that is so obviously wrong.

I still don’t think she is a monster who needs to be vanished from existence though so I hope she reflects a lot, gets the treatment she needs, pays her due and comes out a better person, for her and the people that will surround her in the future.

As for the other members... IMO they are not the same or worse that a bully.

They made decisions that now have consequences but I don’t think badly of any of them, I hope they continue to be great, grow up as a person, can be happy and succeed in whatever they choose to do from now on. I completely disagree when people say that they are worse for not helping...we don’t get to choose how someone should have acted, we don’r know how the other members lived the situation.

Mina. I hope she feels liberated and better, I’m gald she is now receiving treatment and I hope she never has to experience something like that again and maybe uses her experience to help others and become a better person herself. I believe her, but no more than limit myself to believe that that is how SHE lived and felt it, it’s her truth and it’s valid. I hope she gains strength to defend herself better in any situation needed and get the happy life she deserves.

I’m now glad Choa and Youkyoung left when they did, let’s remember they knew about this cause of the time frame, but they left. If they were bullied, just unconfortable, had their dreams change, tired, left out, wanted to or they chose to leave as we “officially know” thats what they chose and it was the best option for them, I applaud them and hope they are happier and successful now. IMO, to end bullying sometimes it’s better to remove yourself from the situation before trying to change the bully. Maybe unfair, yes; but I think it’s healthier, brave, strong and maybe even mature as (I believe), you get to take the bully’s streght from them while you can get better and use it to do something else, or the same somewhere else.

Mina said that Seolhyun never once joined Jimin in the bullying, she didn't stop her and was a bystander for that, while still (generally) wrong I think she chose that to be safe, and in that industry I can't blame her for that. I actually think it’s possible that Seolhyun chose to be Jimin’s friend to avoid that scenario with her, or maybe she saw another side of her, she knows her truth and will grow from this scenario. I wish only good thing for her too.

As for Chanmi, she’s always been my favourite. Mina said that she did nothing even when she herself was being scolded cause she's/ was too young and she’s also believed to have been bullied as well, I believe this as well and it was her defense mechanisim, not only Jimin but probably the managers, antis and company staff. She worked hard and will definetly grow from this, I hope she succeeds and gets to be happy and safe.

Yuna is, not surprisingly either, probably the member who is been talked about the least, Mina said she cherised her well but was to afraid to act which makes sense. I don’t see Yuna as a problematic person and I hope she succeeds, gains strength and confidence to become better, as well as the others.

Lastly, it was said by Mina that only Hyejeong said something to Jimin sometimes and that all the others were either too afraid or not participating at all. I really admire Hyejeong for that and hope she continues being strong and making her dreams and goals come true.

Them I like, I still do. I know I say not to judge but I can’t dislike them not even blame them. With that little information I have on the matter and the context of behind the scenes of kpop I’ve learned, I understand why everyone acted the way they did.

The real truth, only the girls know (each their own) and it should be something they (all of them) sort out with professionals, individually and between themselves.

I wish they were taken care of better, that they were treated better so that this never had to happen. This I blame on the peson that chose and for some reason needed to bully her members but MORE IMPORTANTLY I blame it on the companies who treat their trainees and artists badly or just see the money they can get. They forget (and sometimes we followers do too) that they are people, humans chasing their dreams and sacrificing a lot to do it, even their lifes.

The kpop world is awesome sometimes but it can really suck and be so toxic.

Thinking about this, most groups, probably, have cases like this, I think real friendships in groups are rare TBH and thats fine, they are a team, coleagues and that´s all that matters...If they happen to become friends all the better, but thats not necessary to me anymore. 

Today I choose to believe that for every group I follow. And really, I choose to just limit myself to support and enjoy their personas (as in who they are on screen) from afar. What happens behind is only theirs to bare.

If you read this, thanks...I just needed to get this out of my chest to let it go. If you agree, I’m glad and if you don’t thats fine too.

[brianwilly]

So apparently I wanna talk about Secret Empire

[Shows up a month late with Pete’s Coffee]

There’ve already been a lot of well-written thinkpieces and entries about this comic, about Nick Spencer, about it all.  But I wanted to maybe throw my two-cents into the pile because, to this day, I think most people are still a little confused about where the outrage is coming from, what exactly is making people uncomfortable, and why it all just keeps snowballing on itself.

And honestly I don’t blame those people; this whole situation is kinda hard to parse.  You think it’d be easy to understand why “They turned Captain America into a Nazi” makes people upset, but the thing about Secret Empire is that it honestly does a good pretty job of covering its own ass, of not doing anything overtly offensive, of leaving in all the loopholes and technicalities and escape clauses to its own premise. “It’s going to be undone in the end.” “He’s not actually a Nazi, he’s just brainwashed (even though the story goes on and on for pages about how he’s actually not brainwashed and is in fact a Nazi).” “We’re treating Nazis as bad guys, not glorifying them.” “And they’re not really Nazis, they’re Hydra, it’s totally different.” “We’re tackling topical issues!  Aren’t we brave!  And daring!”

And that’s the kind of stuff I wanna try to cut through here, but it’s gonna require...well...yet another thinkpiece.  Sorry about that.

So I think that Tumblr has covered much of this pretty well, but something to be aware of is that, for a while now, genre media has had A) really iffy mindsets about Jewish issues and B) a sort of casual flirtation with "cool Nazis" as some edgy cool thing to hype and market.  It’s not glorifying Nazis exactly, but it’s using that kind of imagery and ideology as tools to sell your books and movies and TV.  And when I say "genre media" has been doing these things, I actually am specifically referring to Marvel comics and studios for a notable chunk of these instances.

When you combine those instances with the state of the world where Nazism has been regaining traction with the 'chans and redditors and within the White House itself, with Holocaust denialism and Jewish defamation being a regular fixture of the news cycle...it's no wonder that members of the Jewish community and blogosphere has been feeling disenfranchised by a lot of the old entities and structures that had seemed like they should be able to count on as a matter of course. That includes the government, that includes our fellow citizens, and it also includes the media.

(sidebar, I am not Jewish, I just enjoy their comics!)

That's what readers mean when they say this feels like the worst sort of climate for a story that reveals and is marketed on the premise that Captain America was secretly a Nazi all along. It's not that people don't want the current political climate to be examined and lampshaded in media, it's that this specific method of examination comes across scarily comparable to all the antisemitic media and rhetoric that's been released throughout the years which has led us to this current political climate in the first place. It's the media-slash-rhetoric where Jewish (and other) characters have their origins retconned and whitewashed into homogeneity, where pontificating supervillains are just misunderstood revolutionaries who might have a point or something, where fascist police-states are shock value tropes to engender hype and interest amongst audiences.

Spencer's argument is that this story, which depicts a universe where the fascists win, is intended to incite discourse and criticism against such a universe. Hydra are still clearly the bad guys of the story, we're obviously intended to want to see them lose, of course they're going to lose by the end. But the way that the story has been constructed up to this point exhibits a lot of the same signatures of various antisemitic story beats we've had throughout the years. Captain America being retconned from a stalwart defender of Jewish people into being a Nazi agent, for instance, evokes Wanda and Pietro Maximoff being changed from prominent Jewish-Romani superheroes into whitewashed Hydra recruits on the big screen...and there was certainly no secret message or hidden allegory behind the Maximoffs' change; all it was was offensive and tone-deaf and that was it.

For another instance, Nazi Steve delivering issues-long sermons about how the heroes of this world have gotten complacent and misguided and that the world needs someone willing to make the tough choices, to do what it takes to protect it, is reminiscent of Tony Stark and Carol Danvers making fascism-apologia for months on end throughout the two Civil War event comics, like, hey maybe these guys playing the hardball roles have a point right? Hey aren't we so hardcore and edgy for tackling the hardcore and edgy topics?  CHOOSE YOUR SIDE!...and in the end this fascism-apologia is just played completely straight, no hidden critique, no last-minute swerve, just Marvel turning its heroes into borderline supervillains and that was the end of the story. But hey, this story here and now will be totally different from that! Becuuuz...for some reason.

To be direct about his: This isn’t our first rodeo, Marvel Comics.  Let’s not pretend that Marvel...and DC, let’s be fair...haven't in fact made a lot of legitimately terrible in-canon offensive character assassinations of iconic characters and that it's not that unreasonable to be afraid of it happening again at any given point.  Let’s not pretend that Marvel hasn’t done a lot of those things for the specific reason of angering readers and then feeding off of that anger and attention.

At the very least, there's been this weird romanticizing of Hydra Cap from Spencer in what I've read of these books so far; it doesn’t exactly refute the premise that Steve being Hydra is bad, but Steve is still the protagonist of these books no matter how brainwashed he is, so these issues seem to have come across less like "Our heroes have to prevail against this nefarious schemer and his nefarious schemes!" and more like "Watch in wonder as this shadowy agent prevails against all the clueless establishment and does badass things throughout his mission!" It falls into the "cool Nazi" trend where it's like, of course we're consciously aware that he's the bad guy here, but isn't he so edgy and hardcore and badass anyway? I haven't read as many issues of Hydra Cap as Spencer would probably like so, I dunno, let me know if I'm way off here.

So, to summarize...well, not summarize exactly, but to organize these points, lets’ do a list.  Everyone likes lists, right?

1) Showing the "bad guys" losing in, like, probably the very last issue of this year long storyline (which also included the main Captain America book which led up to the actual event) doesn't suddenly omit all those issues where the "bad guys" were shown being edgy and hardcore and badass and smart and powerful and pulling one over on all those dense clueless liberal "good guys," except in this case the bad guys are people who directly abetted in the Holocaust and not the guys who stole forty cakes.

2) This is during a time in the world where antisemitic rhetoric is seeing a startling resurgence -- or maybe just coming back into the light again after hiding away for a bit -- and Holocaust denialism, vandalism of public Jewish spaces, and outright physical violence being more and more common occurrences.

3) Readers in general have been consistently burned by Marvel's consistently tone-deaf depictions of moral or social narratives throughout their events (Civil War: police states are great!) (Civil War II: police states are great!) (IvX: Cyclops is goddamn HITLER for some reason). Jewish readers, in particular, have good reason to not to trust Marvel to be respectful and tactful of their issues. Any such complaints or concerns have been responded to with derision or misunderstanding on Spencer's part, which only makes everyone angrier and more wary.

4) Indeed, Marvel and Spencer's go-to insistence that Hydra are totally not Nazis at all and you're just being nitpicky if you say they're Nazis just further makes them come across as tone-deaf and bullish on the matter, on top of (probably unknowingly, if I’m feeling generous) mirroring the talking points of actual real life Nazis, who've been trying to rebrand themselves as something different for years in order to come across more fluffy and palatable to mainstream sensibilities.

5) I mean there's also the fact that Hydra is -- as currently depicted in this very event by the very writer who keeps saying they're not Nazis on Twitter -- a completely fascistic political regime that stifles free thought and rewrites history through fear, violence, and propaganda and oh hey did someone mention concentration camps? ‘Cuz there are concentration camps in this book.  Hydra is functionally indistinguishable from Nazis in this actual book. This is not a book about Captain America being brainwashed by Saturnians to plant death lasers on the moon, this is a book about Captain America being a Nazi and doing things associated with Nazis in absolutely every respect.  But sure let’s get comic shop owners to dress up like them and stuff

6) "I don’t care if this gets undone next year, next month, next week. I know it’s clickbait disguised as storytelling. I am not angry because omg how dare you ruin Steve Rogers forever. I am angry because how dare you use eleven million deaths as clickbait." Copypasted directly, because how can you get clearer than that.

7) Spencer's work with Sam Wilson Captain America, which generally turns him into a centrist apologist at best who couldn't believe that he himself was ever that much of an annoying liberal activist or something and occasionally fights literal "social justice warriors" on college campuses throwing bombs and internet slang, isn’t a particularly encouraging thing to have hanging on the back of your mind while reading this story about how Steve Rogers was actually a Nazi all along. 8) In a world where an X-Men artist is literally sneaking secret antisemitic propaganda into books that are supposed to celebrate diversity and civil activism, can you really blame people for being antsy about a comic book that is making members of Stormfront cream themselves by revealing that Steve Rogers was a secret Nazi all along?

So yeah, I dunno if I have any great point to make with any of this.  I just felt like collating all the outrage and shedding a little light on how the situation comes across to me.  Secret Empire isn’t exactly the sort of clear-cut idiocy where, y’know, some dense writer fridged yet another female character or replaced yet another hero of color with his white predecessor from forty years ago.  Its problems are a bit more intricate, which means the blowback is a bit more intricate as well.

[englishchinesetranslations]

1. Serious About Socialism

2. Gender and Identity Politics Are Ascendant

3. Open Borders Is Becoming a Litmus Test

4. ‘Clickbait’ Communism Is Being Used to Propagandize Young Americans

5. The Green Movement Is Red

6. Socialism Can’t Be Ignored as a Rising Ethos on the Left

While you were enjoying your Fourth of July weekend, I was attending a national conference on socialism.

Why? Because socialism is having its moment on the left.

Since there’s often confusion as to what socialism really is, I decided to attend the Socialism 2019 conference at the Hyatt Hotel in Chicago over the Fourth of July weekend.

The conference, which had the tag line “No Borders, No Bosses, No Binaries,” contained a cross-section of the most pertinent hard-left thought in America. Among the sponsors were the Democratic Socialists of America and Jacobin, a quarterly socialist magazine.

The walls of the various conference rooms were adorned with posters of Karl Marx and various depictions of socialist thinkers and causes.

Most of the conference attendees appeared to be white, but identity politics were a major theme throughout—especially in regard to gender.

At the registration desk, attendees were given the option of attaching a “preferred pronoun” sticker on their name tags.

In addition, the multiple-occupancy men’s and women’s restrooms were relabeled as “gender neutral,” and men and women were using both. Interestingly enough, the signs above the doors were still labeled with the traditional “men’s” and “women’s” signs until they were covered over with home-made labels.

One of the paper labels read: “This bathroom has been liberated from the gender binary!”

While the panelists and attendees were certainly radical, and often expressed contempt for the Democratic Party establishment, it was nevertheless clear how seamlessly they blended traditional Marxist thought with the agenda of what’s becoming the mainstream left.

They did so by weaving their views with the identity politics that now dominate on college campuses and in the media and popular entertainment. The culture war is being used as a launching point for genuinely socialist ideas, many of which are re-emerging in the 21st century.

Here are six takeaways from the conference:

1. Serious About Socialism

A common line from those on the modern left is that they embrace “democratic socialism,” rather than the brutal, totalitarian socialism of the former Soviet Union or modern North Korea and Venezuela. Sweden is usually cited as their guide for what it means in practice, though the reality is that these best-case situations show the limits of socialism, not its success.

It’s odd, too, for those who insist that “diversity is our strength” to point to the culturally homogeneous Nordic countries as ideal models anyway.

It’s clear, however, that while many socialists insist that their ideas don’t align with or condone authoritarian societies, their actual ideology—certainly that of those speaking at the conference—is in no sense distinct.

Of the panels I attended, all featured speakers who made paeans to traditional communist theories quoted Marx, and bought into the ideology that formed the basis of those regimes.

Mainstream politicians may dance around the meaning of the word “socialist,” but the intellectuals and activists who attended Socialism 2019 could have few doubts about the fact that Marxism formed the core of their beliefs.

Some sought to dodge the issue. One was David Duhalde, the former political director of Our Revolution, an activist group that supports Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and that was an offshoot of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

Duhalde said that Sanders is a creation of the socialist movement—having had direct ties to the Socialist Party of America in his youth—but hasn’t maintained an official connection to socialist political organizations throughout his political career.

Sanders’ position, according to Duhalde, is “anti-totalitarian” and that he favors a model based on “neither Moscow, nor the United States, at least in this formation.”

It’s a convenient way of condemning capitalist-oriented societies while avoiding connections to obviously tyrannical ones.

It was also difficult to mistake the sea of red shirts and posters of Marx that adorned the walls at the conference—or the occasional use of the word “comrades”—as anything other than an embrace of genuine socialism, but with a uniquely modern twist.

2. Gender and Identity Politics Are Ascendant

Transgenderism, gender nonconformity, and abolishing traditional family structures were huge issues at Socialism 2019.

One panel, “Social Reproduction Theory and Gender Liberation,” addressed how the traditional family structure reinforced capitalism and contended that the answer was to simply abolish families.

Corrie Westing, a self-described “queer socialist feminist activist based in Chicago working as a home-birth midwife,” argued that traditional family structures propped up oppression and that the modern transgender movement plays a critical part in achieving true “reproductive justice.”

Society is in a moment of “tremendous political crisis,” one that “really demands a Marxism that’s up to the par of explaining why our socialist project is leading to ending oppression,” she said, “and we need a Marxism that can win generations of folks that can be radicalized by this moment.”

That has broad implications for feminism, according to Westing, who said that it’s important to fight for transgender rights as essential to the whole feminist project—seemingly in a direct shot at transgender-exclusionary radical feminists, who at a Heritage Foundation event in January argued that sex is biological, not a societal construct, and that transgenderism is at odds with a genuine feminism.

She contended that economics is the basis of what she called “heteronormativity.”

Pregnancy becomes a tool of oppression, she said, as women who get pregnant and then engage in child rearing are taken out of the workforce at prime productive ages and then are taken care of by an economic provider.

Thus, the gender binary is reinforced, Westing said.

She insisted that the answer to such problems is to “abolish the family.” The way to get to that point, she said, is by “getting rid of capitalism” and reorganizing society around what she called “queer social reproduction.”

“When we’re talking about revolution, we’re really connecting the issues of gender justice as integral to economic and social justice,” Westing said.

She then quoted a writer, Sophie Lewis, who in a new book, “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,” embraced “open-sourced, fully collaborative gestation.”

3. Open Borders Is Becoming a Litmus Test

It’s perhaps not surprising that socialists embrace open borders. After all, that’s becoming a much more mainstream position on the left in general.

The AFL-CIO used to support immigration restrictions until it flipped in 2000 and called for illegal immigrants to be granted citizenship.

As recently as 2015, Sanders rejected the idea of open borders as a ploy to impoverish Americans.

But Justin Akers-Chacon, a socialist activist, argued on a panel, “A Socialist Case for Open Borders,” that open borders are not only a socialist idea, but vital to the movement.

Akers-Chacon said that while capital has moved freely between the United States and Central and South America, labor has been contained and restricted.

He said that while working-class people have difficulty moving across borders, high-skilled labor and “the 1%” are able to move freely to other countries.

South of the border, especially in Mexico and Honduras, Akers-Chacon said, there’s a stronger “class-consciousness, as part of cultural and historical memory exists in the working class.”

“My experiences in Mexico and my experiences working with immigrant workers, and my experiences with people from different parts of this region, socialist politics are much more deeply rooted,” he said.

That has implications for the labor movement.

Despite past attempts to exclude immigrants, Akers-Chacon said, it’s important for organized labor to embrace them. He didn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

For instance, he said one of the biggest benefits of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was that there was a brief boost in union membership amid a more general decline in unionism.

Besides simply boosting unions, the influx “changed the whole AFL-CIO position on immigrants, [which was] still backwards, restrictive, anti-immigrant,” Akers-Chacon said.

“So, there’s a correlation between expanding rights for immigrants and the growth, and confidence, and militancy of the labor movement as a whole,” he said.

4. ‘Clickbait’ Communism Is Being Used to Propagandize Young Americans

The magazine Teen Vogue has come under fire recently for flattering profiles of Karl Marx and promoting prostitution as a career choice, among other controversial pieces.

It would be easy to write these articles off as mere “clickbait,” but it’s clear that the far-left nature of its editorials—and its attempt to reach young people with these views—is genuine.

Teen Vogue hosted a panel at Socialism 2019, “System Change, Not Climate Change: Youth Climate Activists in Conversation with Teen Vogue.”

Teen Vogue panel SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE at the @socialismconf with @SatansJacuzzi @TeenVogue (Lucy) @SunriseMvmtChi (Sally) and me @usclimatestrike! Thanks @haymarketbooks!

The panel moderator was Lucy Diavolo, news and politics editor at the publication, who is transgender.

“I know there’s maybe a contradiction in inviting Teen Vogue to a socialism conference … especially because the youth spinoff brand is a magazine so associated with capitalist excess,” Diavolo said. “If you’re not familiar with our work, I encourage you to read Teen Vogue’s coverage of social justice issues, capitalism, revolutionary theory, and Karl Marx, or you can check out the right-wing op-eds that accuse me of ‘clickbait communism’ and teaching your daughters Marxism and revolution.”

The panel attendees responded enthusiastically.

“Suffice to say, the barbarians are beyond the gates. We are in the tower,” Diavolo boasted.

5. The Green Movement Is Red

It’s perhaps no surprise that an openly socialist member of Congress is pushing for the Green New Deal—which would essentially turn the U.S. into a command-and-control economy reminiscent of the Soviet Union.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti recently said, according to The Washington Post: “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.”

“Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti asked Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who is running for president in the Democratic primary. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Economic transformation barely disguised as a way to address environmental concerns appears to be the main point.

One of the speakers on the Teen Vogue climate panel, Sally Taylor, is a member of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-oriented environmental activist group that made headlines in February when several elementary school-age members of the group confronted Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., about her lack of support for the Green New Deal.

The other speaker on the Teen Vogue climate panel was Haven Coleman, a 13-year-old environmental activist who has received favorable coverage for leading the U.S. Youth Climate Strike in March. She was open about the system change she was aiming for to address climate change.

She noted during her remarks that she was receiving cues from her mother, who she said was in attendance.

Haven said the answer to the climate change problem was moving on from our “capitalistic society” to something “other than capitalism.”

Interestingly, none of the glowing media profiles of Haven or the Climate Strike mentioned a link to socialism or abolishing capitalism.

6. Socialism Can’t Be Ignored as a Rising Ethos on the Left

According to a recent Gallup survey, 4 in 10 Americans have a positive view of socialism. Support among Democrats is even higher than among the general population, with a majority of Democrats saying they prefer socialism to capitalism.

But many who say they want socialism rather than capitalism struggle to define what those terms mean and change their views once asked about specific policies.

As another Gallup poll from 2018 indicated, many associate socialism with vague notions of “equality,” rather than as government control over the means of production in the economy.

What’s clear from my observations at Socialism 2019 is that traditional Marxists have successfully melded their ideology with the identity politics and culture war issues that animate modern liberalism—despite still being quite far from the beliefs of the average citizen.

Socialists at the conference focused more on social change, rather than electoral politics, but there were still many core public policy issues that animated them; notably, “Medicare for All” and government run-health care, some kind of Green New Deal to stop global warming (and more importantly, abolish capitalism), open borders to increase class consciousness and promote transnational solidarity, removing all restrictions on—and publicly funding—abortion, and breaking down social and legal distinctions between the sexes.

They were particularly able to weave their issues together through the thread of “oppressor versus oppressed” class conflict—for instance, supporting government-run health care meant also unquestioningly supporting unfettered abortion and transgender rights.

Though their analyses typically leaned more heavily on economic class struggle and determinism than what one would expect from more mainstream progressives, there wasn’t a wide gap between what was being discussed at Socialism 2019 and the ideas emerging from a growing segment of the American left.