#christian politicians are terrorists

[ohkate]

I'm so tired of Christian fundamentalists being given the weight of public office instead of treating them like they have a serious mental illness, which is what they have.

If you are not aware, Louisiana just passed a law that the ten commandments be hung in every public classroom in the state, that trans people be addressed by the gender assigned at birth only, and gives schools the right to employ chaplains to make sure they are 'expanding faith'. Last month, they also signed into law that abortion pills be listed as 'a dangerous controlled substance'.

This is the first step. Contraception will be next. Then women will be arrested for trying to get contraception. Chaplains in schools will suddenly be 'counselors' and schools will remove actual psychologists. Students won't be allowed to be honest about things going on at home or with personal issues that are against Christian belief systems. Abuse will be swept under the rug and gay kids are going to be in huge danger.

Trans people will be forced to be deadnamed and will be in the line of fire not only from other students but now from the administration.

I think a law that the ten commandments being hung in classrooms is absolutely disgusting. Where the fuck do these people get off??? If you don't want an abortion, no on is forcing you to get one. But I'm being forced to have their fundamentalist and, frankly, mentally unstable beliefs forced upon me or my kids?

These are PUBLIC schools! If I was a kid in one of those schools, I would absolutely be demonstrating and even doing whatever I need to do to tear them down every chance I get. I would flip them off every time I walked into the room. Send me to detention I don't give a fuck. This is really horrifying. It's like the government is telling the people of Louisiana that if they're gay, they'd better watch out.

I'm a member of the lgbtq+ community and it's making me so sick to see these fucking disgusting christian agenda terrorists being allowed to force their beliefs on others. And they can't see the hypocrisy when someone else tries to do it to them.

[yokelfelonking]

Post 9/11 Trivia

Most folks on this site were either children on September 11, 2001, or weren’t even born yet.  But America went crazy for about a year afterwards.  Here’s some highlights that I remember that might not be in your history books:

There was national discussion on whether or not Halloween should be canceled because…fuck if I know why.  After planes crashed into buildings in NYC it follows that 6-year-olds in Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to dress up like Batman and ask their neighbors for candy, I guess.  (Halloween wasn’t canceled, by the way.)

On a similar note, people asked if comedy - any sort of comedy - was appropriate anymore, ever.

People sold shitty parachutes to suckers “in case your building gets attacked and you have to jump out the window.” There were honest-to-God news reports warning people not to jump out of the window with shitty mail-order parachutes because they wouldn't work.

As a follow-up to the attacks, someone mailed anthrax to some prominent politicians and news anchors - you know, famous people - along with some badly-written notes about “you cannot stop us, death to America, Allah is good” and after that every time some random dumbass found a package in the mail they didn’t recognize they thought that the terrorists were targeting them, too.

Everyone was similarly convinced that their town was going to be the next target, even if they were a little town in the middle of nowhere. "Our town of Bumblefuck, South Dakota (population 690) has the largest styrofoam pig statue west of the Mississippi! Terrorists might fly planes into that too! It's a prime target!"

People started taping up their windows and trying to make their houses or apartments airtight out of fear of chemical and biological attacks. There were news reports warning people that turning your house into an airtight box was a bad idea because, y'know, you need air to breathe.

"[X] supports terrorism!" and “if we do [X], the terrorists win!” were used as arguments for everything.  "Some rich Arab you never heard of donated to his organization that backs Hamas which backs al-Queda, and also owns stock in a holding company that has partial ownership of the Pringles company, so if you eat Pringles you're supporting terrorism!" "The terrorists want to tear down our freedoms and our way of life and rule us through fear! Eating what you want is one of our freedoms as Americans! If you're afraid to eat Pringles, the terrorists win!" (I promise you that this sort of argument is in no way hyperbole.) (This argument is how Halloween was saved, by the way.  “If we cancel Halloween, the terrorists win!”)

People worked 9/11 into everything, and I mean everything, whether it was appropriate or not.  If you went to the grocery store the tortilla chips would remind you to support the troops on the packaging. Used car sales would be dedicated to our brave first responders. You couldn't wipe your ass without the toilet paper rolls reminding you to never forget the fallen of 9/11, and again, this is not hyperbole. My uncle, who lived in Ohio and had never been to New York except to visit once in the 70′s, died of a stroke about 8 months after 9/11, and the priest brought up the attacks at the eulogy.

On a similar local note, on the day of 9/11, after the towers went down, gas stations in my home town immediately jacked up gas prices.  The mayor had the cops go around and force them to take them back down.  I doubt any of that was legal.

Before 9/11, Christianity in America - and religion in general - was on a downward swing, with reddit-tier atheism on the upswing. Religion was outdated superstition from a bygone age. The day after 9/11? Every single church was PACKED. (This wasn't a bad thing, but the power-hungry on the Evangelical Right saw this as a golden opportunity to grab power and influence.)

EDIT: By Popular Demand - Freedom Fries. I initially left these off because they came a couple years after the initial panic and most people thought they were kind of absurd (and I don't recall anyone really going along with it other than maybe some local diners here and there). France didn't want to get involved in our world policing so some folks were like "TRAITORS!" and wanted to call french fries "Freedom Fries" instead, so as to stick it to the French.

Besides dumb shit like that…it’s really hard to overstate how completely the national mood and character changed in the span of a day, or how much of the current culture war is a result of the aftermath. (9/11 was the impetus for the sharp rise in power of the Evangelical Right, who made themselves utterly odious and the following backlash helped the rise of the current Progressive Left, for instance.)

And if all of this seems batshit...well, it was. But I want you to think for a moment how people react today over even trivial shit. People send death threats over children's cartoons. They call for blood if the maker of a video game had an opinion they don't like. If someone made a racist joke a decade ago when they were a teenage edgelord, folks will go after people who even associate with them. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ALL THE HARM THEY'RE DOING!?"

Now take that same level of over-the-top histrionics and apply it to the unprecedented event of passenger planes crashing into crowded buildings in America's most populous city and killing thousands of people all at once. "DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WE WERE ATTACKED!?"

[saintsenara]

What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicate the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.

[kick-a-long]

for those who don't remember 9/11 or why terrorists are literal poison in humanity:

my dad was working in fidi and had a meeting at the twin towers at 9:30am that day. He was late but had to walk home in the ash. the cell phones didn't work and the subway was down so he had to walk a hundred blocks to get home. I didn't have any contact from my parents and had to wait in school alone for hours while the kids who lived in brooklyn had to find kids who lived in manhatten to room with. no one had a car or anything so everyone was just walking and calling on the one pay phone. no one knew who's parents were alive and who's were dead. my friend's step dad died, bett middler sung at his funeral, but because her mom hadn't married him she was left homeless and I never saw her again.

we didn't know if my dad was alive or dead for the entire day, she was pretty sure he was dead because his office was in the building.

the flip side of the islamaphobia after 9/11 is the rabid hyper christian cultural reaction. suddenly the tv was flooded with shit from south park and other "jokes" about jews, and how terrorists wouldn't have attacked if not for all the jews. kids from a visiting school chanted shit about bagels and kosher food at our games.

but funnily enough... my dad looked too middle eastern for the airport and the subway. He had to change his passport photo and shave his beard. he even stopped playing tennis and swimming outside for a long time so he wouldn't look as tan.

anyone who 'jokes' about it is at best a naive infant and at worst a school shooter wannabe in my opinion.

for those people: try to empathize with how it would feel to suddenly lose your parents, everything about the best and worst parts of your relationship permanently unresolved, and then have to watch whoever survives them try to figure out how to financially and emotionally restructure their lives. how to cope with how your parent has become a symbol instead of your dad. how you have to hear about 9/11 constantly, grifters raking in the cash, politicians doing things in your name, and you can't get away from it. your tears, or lack thereof, become a performance for strangers across the country to spend 20 years fighting when you have no say out of it. how depersonalizing it is to have left and right fight about what it means to them and who deserves vengeance with no respect to what it means to you.

anyway, fuck 9/11 jokes and all the fucks slurping up the terroristic and USSR style tankie propaganda.

[c-rowlesdraws]

browsing twitter for longer than a few minutes gives me radiation poisoning these days, and it’s worse in the evening, in the hours when the dark feelings creep in anyway. So even though I’m really apprehensive to talk politics on my art blog (I mean, if the backlash to a hyperbolic post I made about a famous youtuber is this bad, posting about politics would turn my activity page into a window to hell), I have to vent some of my feelings or that radiation damage will just keep getting quietly worse. And a fair number of people read this blog, and seem to like things that I create and say, so for what it’s worth, I want to say some things I hope people will think about.

Someone I really admire tweeted recently about how hopeless they feel. They said that after many years of fighting for social change, they had no fight left. They said they were too exhausted to vote in the upcoming US presidential election. And I tried to understand where they were coming from, because this is someone I look up to. But I can’t. I understand feeling burnt out. I feel nauseous and heartbroken and scared, thinking about the situation in Palestine and the situation in my country. I understand that it seems like there is no good leader to rally behind.

But I can’t tap out. I can’t give in to hopelessness and say, “I can’t choose. I’m tired and I’m done”. When a choice is between maintenance of an imperfect society with incremental steps towards better things, and cranking human misery and suffering enthusiastically up to 11, I’m going with the former. We are all tired every day. But voting is not physically difficult. Even if you are tired, you can do it. There is a day where you go to a building, and you fill in a bubble next to a name, and you go home. They even give you a sticker. I said voting isn’t hard, but actually, it’s very important to say that for a lot of people in the US, voting is hard to access, and for some groups, impossible. It is made difficult on purpose, by people—Republicans, it’s fucking always them, I don’t know why I’m using vague language—who want to disenfranchise as many people as they can. If voting was really a useless gesture, if it really meant nothing— they wouldn’t be working so damn hard to stop poor people and immigrants and prisoners and folks in general from being able to do it.

If you hate Biden, god, fine, whatever. But he is going to be the nominee of the political party made up of judges and politicians that, for the most part, believe that climate change is real and ought to be mitigated, that the US should not be turned into an evangelical christian theocracy, that firearms should be regulated, that businesses should be regulated, that healthcare should be more affordable and accessible, that people should be able to get safe abortions, that trans and all lgbt people deserve to live their lives, and that asylum-seekers shouldn’t be shredded by concertina wire trying to cross the border. The wheel of social change is huge and fucking heavy and sometimes it looks like it isn’t moving at all. But we can feel it move if we all push together.

I caught a Trump ad on the radio the other day and it was some of the scariest shit. “Trump will bring order to chaos,” it said. “He will ban travel from terrorist countries, and end the disastrous open-border policies allowing illegal migrants and deadly drugs like fentanyl to flood into our country.” The fucking anti-muslim travel ban. It’s back, baby. That was the exact phrasing: terrorist countries. If Biden’s foreign policy with regards to the Middle East is frustrating and despair-inducing already, Trump’s would be a catastrophe. The Republicans think Democrats are soft on terrorism. As much as anyone with a conscience is horrified by the US’s continued passivity with regards to Palestine, this motherfucker getting back in office would bring greater horror. I’m really sure about it. I don’t know what that part of the world will look like next fall, but I’m confident that if this dumb bloodthirsty motherfucker regains office, there would be absolutely no hope of public pressure swaying US foreign policy towards “less murder”. Protesting against war and genocide or for any progressive or civil rights cause would become even more dangerous. I still think about the woman who was run over by a car at the protest in 2017

…I’m rambling. I can’t help it. But I don’t want to just ramble unproductively. I should end this with something I hope makes sense to people snd can’t be easily dismissed, even if you already disagree with something I’ve said. I want to say how I genuinely feel.

I believe that imperfect activism is valuable, because it is better to show up and stand in solidarity with other people fighting for a more just world than to not show up at all. I believe all activism is in some way imperfect, because activists are people, and people are imperfect. That is to say, one middle-aged woman who showed up to a DC protest wearing a hand-crocheted pink pussy hat, who maybe hadn’t been to many (or any) protests before but who felt fired up about this one, was worth ten of the smug “real leftists” sneering about her on twitter. Maybe more than ten. Your own activism will be imperfect. But keep an open mind— to your own learning and to others’. Doing “the bare minimum” (and, ugh, what a discouraging phrase) is still doing. We have to encourage everyone who feels drawn to fighting for social good. We have to link arms with one another and be strong. Even if you think the person next to you is a lame-o liberal, if they believe that (for example) trans people deserve access to gender-affirming care and should not be smashed flat into fruit-by-the-foot and sent straight to hell, they are your comrade.

Be wary of people who self-identify as Cassandras and unheeded prophets, especially if their messages consistently emphasize how everything is garbage and the world can’t be saved. If someone is telling you that only they understand how uniquely horrible things are, that no progressive or leftist political philosophy is viable except for the specific one they adhere to, that no news or media sources are worthwhile or even trustworthy except for the small handful of ones they endorse… I won’t say to stop listening to them or following them, but I’d recommend listening to other people, too.

Do your own reading about issues that are important to you. Read many people’s words, watch videos, think about what you believe, and how those beliefs have changed over time, and stay open to being further changed. We are all constantly learning and shaping ourselves, and teaching, and being shaped by others. All of us are tired. But we can hold each other up.

I don’t have a rousing call to action. Just the same things many people are already saying that I’ve felt encouraged by, in a grim sort of way: protest and donate when and where you can, support political candidates on the local and national stage who do support policies you agree with, who could do real good. It feels very hard right now to be hopeful. But we all have to live in whatever future comes eventually— so I think we have to still participate, and that means things like voting. We are all tired. But we have to keep going. There is, ultimately, no sitting out. People who opt out of voting still must live under the social climate and policies imposed by the person who gets elected, and who they endorse and empower and appoint, and who those people empower and appoint, and so on.

This post doesn’t have a good conclusion. I didn’t write it thinking about what would make for a satisfying structure in general. But if you read it, then thank you for reading.

[catgirl-kaiju]

Just curious, what's the "pink scare"?

I misspoke; I was referring to the Lavender Scare.

The Lavender Scare was an American political movement that lasted roughly from 1947 to 1956, paralleling the 2nd Red Scare. It was largely helmed by Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn and was a targeted campaign of political attack against queer people. The reasoning behind it was that gay men and lesbians constituted a threat against national security because their "subversive behavior" (not being straight) meant they somehow had strong connections to communism and, therefore, the USSR.

The movement resulted the outing and firing of hundreds of queer people from government jobs (ranging from politicians, clerks, military personnel, and contractors working with the government) with the State Department reporting that by 1953, they had fired 425 people under allegations of homosexuality. It also resulted in Dwight D. Eisenhower's Executive Order 10450, which fully barred any "homosexuals" from working any positions in the federal government.

EO 10450 was partially repealed in 1975 largely in response to young men using claims of homosexuality to dodge the Vietnam draft, and again in 1995 when the Bill Clinton administration instituted the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy for military personnel. It wasn't fully and completely repealed until 1998 with the Bill Clinton passing Executive Order 13087, which prohibited any such discrimination in federal employment and wasn't EXPLICITLY repealed until Barack Obama's Executive Order 13764 wich took effect in 2017.

The cultural effect was an amplification of pre-existing societal homophobia to violent extremes and the promotion of the idea that queer people are inherently dangerous to "American freedom and democracy". Fun fact, Roy Cohn was actually a gay man who was very openly in sexual and romantic relationships with many men, even during The Lavender Scare, bit considered himself to be different from other gay men, basically because he was a dominant top. He died of AIDS while being part of the federal government's inaction campaign in response to the pandemic.

If you want to read more about it, the Wikipedia page is a decent place to start.

The point I was making in regards to there being a 2nd Lavender Scare happening right now is in reference to the growing wave of targeted transphobic policies and violence from the political right and the liberal inaction in response to it.

I'd say that this new Lavender Scare started in 2017 with Trump's banning of trans people from entering the military and has continued to the present day when it is rapidly escalating with no end in sight.

The main characteristics of this new scare, in my opinion are:

A targeting of trans people, gender non-conformity, and drag performance as subversive elements in society that pose a danger to the "traditional family", christian hegemony, and the wellbeing of children.

The platforming of extremist right-wing propaganda from various sources in mainstream media and political discourse, which all spout unified transphobic talking points that inspire discriminatory policies and violence through stochastic terrorism.

Transphobic policies being passed into law at a rapid pace on the state level in multiple states, with little to no federal intervention. (This refers to the US specifically)

Domestic stochastic terrorist attacks on queer spaces that prominently feature and support trans communities and drag performance, which are inspired by transphobic right-wing propaganda.

The boosting of TERF voices who pitch the same transphobic talking points as the right, from a pseudo-leftist perspective that serves as an alternate route of attack in the insemination of violent transphobia into the mainstream. (This is especially prevalent in the UK)

The "groomer" narrative, which links trans people, gender non-conformity, and drag performance to pedophilia in an effort to evoke strong emotional reactions from misinformed people prone to bigotry and reactionary thinking. This tactic can also be seen in action with the Q-Anon conspiracy cult.

Utilizing trans people, gender non-conformity, and drag performance as scapegoats for economic decline, political unrest, and poor quality of life in order to disract from the systems actually responsible for these problems.

Link to article

Link to article

Armed Proud Boy protest against the Holi-Drag Storytime in Columbus, Ohio, and counter protesters protecting the event.

Protesters against Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill

Link to article

I would also like to add that unlike the 1st Lavender Scare, this is not just an American phenomenon but part of a clear and roughly coordinated multinational right-wing movement and is presenting just as prevalently in the UK (albeit in a slightly different form). It is dangerous to leave this reactionary movement unstated and unnamed, lest is become normalized.

[feministfang]

Why is pro-watermelon 🍉 gang keep saying this is the first time they are seeing a live genocide and still nobody cares?? No this isn’t your first time!

Women around the world have been slaughtered, murdered, raped, and facing all other kinds of oppression since the dawn of time. There is already a world’s oldest and biggest genocide that is still happening today. And that is femicide.

But nobody seems to care about that because according to them there’s a "gender war" going on. I wonder if these watermelon people would be protesting and boycotting the same way if it was only the Palestinian women suffering in this genocide.

None of these people ever fought with this much vehemence for women in iran, for afghan women, for sudanese women, women in Congo, and all other women who are suffering around the world.

In fact, they’re busy glamorising terrorists like Hezbollah and Khamenieh (however the fuck you spell it) and mourning the deaths of the likes of iran’s terrorist leader who died in helicopter crash just because these bearded devils chanted "free-palestine" two, three times.

More than seventy per cent of the people who have been killed in this genocide are women and children. But the only time i see the pro-Palestine m@les talking about it is when they wanna blame it all on feminists. "WhErE aRe tHe fEmInIsTs?" "WhErE aRe tHe liBerAlS?"

Just shut the fuck up and tell me where are all the anti-feminist men and women who love to say m@n should be the leaders?? Where are all the muslim and christian conservative bigots who keep saying shit like women should obey men and men should lead?? These are your leaders now!

Muslim women commenting "BoYcOTT" under every female influencer’s post promoting an israeli brand while at the same time cooking and cleaning like slaves for their husbands so these men could become the next big leaders oppressing women using their power.

If you wanna boycott anything, then boycott these men. Stop coddling them and stop doing anything for them. Instead, use all that energy in making yourself a powerful leader.

But no, FemInIsts aRe sO eVil aNd wRonG fOr tElliNg wOmEn tO sToP coNfOrMinG tO gEndEr rOLes. FeMinIsTs hAve rUiNed EvEryThInG fOr wOmEn. ThEy aRe sOciEty bReAkeRs!

It’s not the feminists fault that there’s a genocide going on, it’s the men’s. Men are the ones who vote for these male politicians. Men are the ones who worship these male leaders. Men are the ones who ruin everything for women. The enemy is exposed yet your rage is directed in the wrong direction.

There’s not one male world leader who is not destroying the planet with his evilness. But all i see is comparisons being made about which one of them is more evil; the islamic ones or the zionist ones or the white ones??

Listen! Idgaf about your free palestine land or the entire boycott list of brands. I don’t even care about your brave palestinian m@les dying either. Y’all cry about pregnant palestinian women having a hard time and feminists doing nothing for them, but who the fuck is impregnating them????

Women of Palestine should be freed from both israel and Palestinian men. That’s just what i care about. And women of Israel should be freed from these men too. No, they don’t deserve to be raped or killed just because they support Israel. It’s not even palestine vs Israel, it’s men vs women; where men are the oppressors on both sides and women are the victims on both sides. Every war has always been a genocide against women.

[claraameliapond]

Flemish MP criticises Eurovision Song Contest for hypocrisy over Palestine ban: "How hypocritical is it, that israel today can simply participate in the Eurovison Song Contest while in the meantime in the same Eurovision Song Contest Palestinian flags and Palestinian keffiyahs are banned?

Well, I have a Palestinian keffiyah, and I wear it with great pride to show that we are for an end to that war, for an end to the genocide and for the ceasefire. And there are many of us in the world who want an end to the violence, no matter how much you keep trying. Free Palestine , Boycott Israel. "

Don't forget to boycott Eurovision completely - for allowing Israel to compete, as a comparison, they didn't let Russia compete when they began their war against Ukraine.

Israel is always treated as the exception. Don't let it be. Don't accept that.

It is antisimetic to conflate zionist Israel with Judaism.

Israel is a terrorist state currently engaging in a determined intentional genocide of Palestine, because they want Palestine for themselves. But it's not their country, nor are they a peaceful immigrant population. Real Jewish people have always lived in Palestine alongside Christian and Muslim Palestinians. Peacefully.

Israel is a terrorist state who illegally, and brutally occupies Palestine. Palestine must me decolonised to be properly liberated and safe.

Remember to boycott Eurovision to send the message that no, you can't commit a genocide and still be included in cultural events. Unfortunately Eurovision didn't stand up to them. So the viewers must. Tank the ratings. For Palestine 🇵🇸 ❤ 💖 💕 🍉 🫒 🕊

[ghelgheli]

Recognizing this central ambivalence in regard to so-called Western values—whereby they are cast out as “postmodern authoritarianism” only to be embraced as the “true spirit” of societies to come—is essential to understanding the strategic significance of the anti-gender misappropriation of postcolonial language. This ambivalence sheds light on the fact that the superficial takeover frames the “gender ideology” colonizer not simply as the “West as such but [rather as] the West whose healthy (Christian) core had already been destroyed by neo-Marxism and feminism in the 1960s” (Korolczuk and Graff 2018: 812). Very often, the anti-gender misappropriation takes on a decidedly Islamophobic hue; for all their catering to anticolonial sentiments, anti-gender thinkers often claim that “gender ideology,” with its historical roots in anti-European “neo-Marxism and feminism,” goes hand in hand with the threat of (Muslim) immigration. A blatant example of this can be found in former Cardinal Sarah’s proclamation against the two unexpected threats of our times:

On the one hand, the idolatry of Western freedom; on the other, Islamic fundamentalism: atheistic secularism versus religious fanaticism. To use a slogan, we find ourselves between “gender ideology and ISIS.” . . . From these two radicalizations arise the two major threats to the family: its subjectivist disintegration in the secularized West [and] the pseudo-family of ideologized Islam which legitimizes polygamy [and] female subservience. (Sarah 2015)

Sarah aggressively draws up a dual picture of the true enemy—the biopolitical survival of the family is threatened on the one hand by excessive secularization and sexual freedom, and on the other by “ideologized Islam’s pseudo-family,” which marks the degraded and uncivilized counterpart to Christianity’s proper tradition. This discursive construction of “terrorist look-alikes” as possessing an excessive, uncultivated, and dangerous sexuality yet again plays into the same fundamental racialized mapping of progress that colonial gender undergirded (Puar 2007). This rhetoric is mirrored by Norwegian right-wing politician Per-Willy Amundsen (2021) when he writes that:

I will never celebrate pride. First of all, there are only two sexes: man and woman, not three—that is in contradiction with all biological science. Even worse, they are allowed access to our kids to influence them with their radical ideology. This has to be stopped. If FRI [the national LGBT organization] really cared about gay rights, they would get involved in what is happening in Muslim countries, rather than construct fake problems here in Norway. But it is probably easier to speak about “diversity” as long as it doesn’t cost anything. (Amundsen 2021; translation by author) Here Amundsen draws on the well-known trope of trans* and queer people “preying on our kids” while at the same time reinforcing the homonationalist notion that Europe, and in particular Norway, is a safe h(e)aven for queer people—perhaps a bit too much so. In his response to Amundsen, Thee-Yezen Al-Obaide, the leader of SALAM, the organization for queer Muslims in Norway, aptly diagnoses Amundsen’s rhetoric as “transphobia wrapped in Islamophobia” (as quoted in Berg 2021). Amundsen mirrors a central tenet of TERF rhetoric by claiming to be the voice of science, biology, and reason in order to distinguish his own resistance to “gender ideology” from the repressive, regressive one of Muslims. In this way, his argumentation, which basically claims that trans* people don’t exist and certainly shouldn’t be recognized legally, attempts to come off as benign, while Muslim opposition to “gender ideology” is painted as destructive and anti-modern. This double gesture, which allows Amundsen to have his cake and eat it too, is a central trope in different European iterations of anti-gender rhetoric. In France, for example, such discourse claims that, “while ‘gender ideology’ goes too far on the one hand, the patriarchal control of Islam threatens to pull us back into an excessive past. Here of course, ‘Frenchness’ is always already neither Muslim, nor queer (and certainly not both)” (Hemmings 2020: 30). Therefore the French anti-gender movement sees itself as the defender of true Western civilization, both from Western “gender ideology” and from uncivilized “primitives” who are nevertheless themselves victims of “gender ideology.” A similar dynamic plays out in Britain: “Reading Muslims as dangerous heteroactivists and Christians as benign points to how racialization and religion create specific forms of heteroactivism. . . . Even where ‘Muslim parents’ are supported by Christian heteroactivists, they remain other to the nation, and not central to its defence” (Nash and Browne 2020: 145). In the British example, it is clear that white anti-gender actors represent themselves as moderate, reasonable, and caring—often claiming that their resistance to the “politicization” of the classroom has nothing to do with transphobia and homophobia.

Is “Gender Ideology” Western Colonialism? Jenny Andrine Madsen Evang

[makerinthemaking]

neil gaiman is a fucking zionist.

"b-but neil gaiman simply said both israel AND palestine have a right to exist!! that doesn't make him a zioni--" yes the fuck it does u privileged ignorant fucks. i shouldn't have to fuckin say this but y'all will say anything for the sake of defending the brits ig? even throwing those being mass genocided rn under the bus?

i used to admire the guy 'til i found out what he's believed, the genocidal state he supports the existence of, & continues to stand by what he said.

israel DOESN'T have a right exist.

not as it is, not as it's been & will always be. a genocidal state built on stolen land. its very citizens have shaped into a culture of discrimination, see the shit they post about palestinians. see questionnaires & statistics. segregation laws many of them gladly endorse. this ain't just the politicians (who have been loud in their prospects of ethnic extermination to allow for more land stealing) nor is it abt jews, abt neil's or anyone's jewish background. plenty jews speaking up against this bullshit, & already there were jewish ppl living in palestine before colonization (brought by an illegitimate act of imposed imperialism & not one palestinian representative in sight. the UK must also be held accountable but they won't be). dare y'all to tell me it shouldn't be the goal to give the land & the power back to its indigenous colonized peoples, regardless of the oppressing settlers already being... settled. it ain't the native peoples' problem to figure out, esp when so many of the colonizing settlers will support the shit thrown at palestinians. there's maybe like 1000 palestinians losses for very israeli casualty. US cops r trained by Israel, not to mention Israel equips them w shit to k1ll minorities in the US. Palestinians stand by BLM & gave advice on how to dodge gas & bullets during protests. they stood by Malcolm X & Black Panthers. BIPOC oppression & fight has always aligned w Palestinians'. israel freely enjoys basics & luxuries & will fuss abt the silliest shit like not getting enough diet flour at the moment, while publicly segregating & making racist mock of palestinians for literally not having access to basic shit like water & shelter & for getting their population violently cleansed & decimated while in an open-air prison. they're not even allowed to try & leave without risk of getting killed, & they're bombed even where Israel directs them it's safe to go (like South Gaza!) but why should they leave? it's THEIR land. would be successful cultural genocide. & now Israel declines offers to recover Israeli hostages just bc they don't wanna return infant Palestinian hostages, & instead Israel bombs places where ISRAELI hostages may be kept. even target-bomb hospitals, houses. freed Israeli hostages come out saying how appalled they are at how Israel failed them & keeps failing them. Israel's also been stealing & jailing/target killing palestinian children for ages. this mass killing's been going on for decades, yet Palestine is demonized by media when they try defend themselves. ain't no matter of "two sides" & "neutrality" when one side is oppressed & the other the oppressor. hamas is israel's oppression fault (& their politics actually see them as a convenience). actual palestinians have stated again & again they don't just want the genocide to end, they also want their stolen land back & the genocidal invasor state to be dismantled. which is what's right. the state of israel often has to delete its own posts cuz they're always found to be fabricated, falsified shit against palestinians, now western jewish AND christian celebrities post abt how "scared" they are, from the safety of their mansions & limos. it was already illegal to wear traditional muslim attire in anti-muslim countries such as france, now it's illegal to even peacefully protest for palestine & if u do ur thrown in jail as a terrorist or deported. these countries publicly support israel. israel has the army the means & the world's support, palestine's been in need of support & neilman ain't helping. should just shut his goddmn mouth. ain't he the one getting genocided this day. i dare that moron neilman to come at me i'll fucking have him, he's just like any other people who won't let themselves be educated anyway. not by us, much less by the oppressed people of palestine, the ones actually getting the shitty end of this situation. im so done. bland fuckin spineless "liberals". so quick to defend the british. stop fucking defending rich public figures online & do something for the persecuted ppl actually getting killed rn.

they're never on equal footing when it's 15 goliaths against 1 david.

no, israel shouldn't fucking exist & neil gaiman is a fucking zionist for even saying it should. not sorry i said this - palestinians r getting worse than rudely worded posts.

not a war. GENOCIDE.

[fionatheicicle]

Hello!

In a move that is a surprise to only a few nitwits out there… robert Kennedy has dropped out of the race and thrown his support behind the imbecile.

To those of you that were going to vote for him: he has come out in support of agenda 47, of project 2025, of christian nationalism, of fascism. He has come out in support of tax cuts for the ultra rich and corporations. He has come out in support of a christian version of sharia law. Because that is what his master intends to do.

There is no third party candidate capable of winning the election. Period. The only third party candidates are meant to be ‘spoilers’ to take votes from either side.

To those of you who think that not voting blue will help Palestine or BLM keep in mind which side the proud boys, the kkk, and the heritage foundation are on. Pay attention to the side that said to turn gaza into a parking lot. Pay attention to the side that calls BLM a terrorist organization. That isn’t the dems. Its every single red politician and candidate. Not voting means a vote for red. Not voting means you are voting for the klan, for the proud boys, for fascism.

The only side that cares about middle class Americans. The only side that cares about the economic prosperity of the people. The only side that cares about a ceasefire. The only side that cares about your individual liberties and freedoms. The only side willing to fight for your right to live a decent life in this country are the democrats. Vote in November. Vote blue. 💙

[determinate-negation]

im not jewish myself so i could be very wrong, but the current situation in palestine and gaza and israel seems like itll be bad for jewish people and antisemitism the world over. it seems like a lot of antisemites could use the world's response to israel as an excuse for antisemitism/"proof" that jews control the world or something. furthermore, israel calling anti-israel/anti-zionism stuff antisemetic i think could confuse well meaning but ignorant people on what is or isnt antisemetic. also, it seems that some people (mainly tumblr bloggers cause thats the only social media site i use (unless youtube is social media)) are using it as an excuse to be antisemitic while pretending to be propalestine.

wanted to hear your thoughts on it cause afaik your jewish and im like 90 percent sure youve talked about something like this before, if you dont mind.

ive been making and reblogging a few posts about this that generally sum up what i think because yeah

this is just actually so awful. we do not need to ontologically define our safety and identity and very existence in relation to a genocidal ethno nationalist state that is being propped up by the forces of american imperialism. it is so morally wrong and were choosing to side with an oppressor that doesnt actually have any commitment to us and supports israel for political economic and strategic reasons, rather than siding with oppressed people. also israel and pro israel organizations puts a lot of effort into redefining criticism of israel as antisemitism, and you can see reflected in everything the ADL puts out (more info here) and also the IRHA working definition of antisemitism that has been critiqued for this. i havent seen any antisemitism on tumblr in particular, but i think thats just bc of who i follow. in general the the radical right always is quick to capitalize off of how tightly controlled news on israel is and the left needs to have the real analysis. i also have seen instances of increased antisemitic attacks, in tunisia, france, and germany, and its really terrible but im glad at least to see a lot of organizations and popular pro palestine people denounce it and tell people that jews arent equivalent with zionists and this isnt a religious conflict, SOMETHING THAT ISRAEL IS ESSENTIALLY ARGUING THE OPPOSITE OF by the way. the us government and us media's relationship with israel is literally dangerous to us. but also, israeli politicians have connections to european neo nazis and shit. they benefit from jews in the diaspora feeling unsafe and being persecuted because it means people are more likely to settle in israel

[kick-a-long]

i feel crazy. i think Biden might have done a dark Biden that no one has noticed. i'm playing around with it as a conspiracy theory, but it's not something that's ever going to be proven one way or the other.

it's very weird for biden, an old guy who has been in american politics forever/lived through the iranian hostage crisis, and harris, married to a jew and a lawyer with experience with criminals and victims, both democrates, to not support Israel. it's pretty much a given if you know the situation and voter opinion among hard core christians, that all american politicians support israel. even if you want to say, "no, israel is the aggressor and biden was ashamed to support them." in an election year? against attention whore, liar and lower than mud, trump? you think he would alienate much more reliable older and more conservative dem voters who have been adults during the trump and obama years (a much more conservative time) and who are much more supportive of israel regardless of facts? you trust politicians to do the moral thing even if it ends up with trump reelected? that's the definition of letting the devil win for a pyrrhic victory.

so why were they so weakly supportive on it, especially considering that the far left wasn't really a place to pick up votes? this sounds crazy but did biden intentionally give lukewarm support for israel because 1. it's pretty hard for an anti-authority movement to keep rolling when it gets support from the authorities, taking the air out of the anti israel protests. 2. as a way to show that israel is more independent than the rumors. that israel is a middle eastern country first and an american ally/lapdog a far second. 3. that even without an american administration's media support or direction, israel can handle it's own war tactically and offensively.

the pagers thing was a level of flashy and effective that's very rare in war. that kind of move usually only works once. it takes a huge amount of leg work and burns contacts but isn't as realistically effective as just doing a normal war. the pager bombs were a psychological attack as well. first it's impressive, clever and intimidating to the right americans and MENA muslims. it's pretty hard to go back to work as a terrorist when you are hearing exaggerated or real stories about dudes like you losing their dick and balls, especially as a macho man who wants to die for the cause not loose his balls for it. it's even harder to convince you're wife and parents that they are risking grandkids. idk if that's a cultural thing that carries over but i know for a lot of parent, the kid is an adult and you could care less if they live or die (especially if you are cool with martyrs) but you need grandkids like crack.

anyway. israel is taking hezbollah out like it's been planning the war for ten years. it's quite the message to send lebanon, who hates hezbollah and also hates israel, and american muslims, who probably hate hezbollah much more than israel even if they have been taught to hate israel, that israel is maybe, just might be, a potential liberating force from iran and can put together slick war shit in under a year. that americans are "skeptical" of israel. it's not like the dems were going to bleed jewish support after trump has been an open antisemite and supported literal neo-nazis CONSTANTLY.

maybe the surprise was that hamas was even involved since the IDF assumed hezbollah was the one's who were going to attack on oct 7? there's no way hamas's attack wasn't a surprise. the loses were too high putting it mildly, and terrorist attacks always make israel unpopular.

idk. maybe I'm coping because i don't love how wishy washy about antisemitism harris has been. it makes voting for her a bitter responsibility rather than a celebration of voting for hopefully the first female president. i also have a bias because i like to think that biden is a tactical genius. i like to think that harris is also on that level of tactical, given her history i wouldn't be surprised. I've known lawyers like that. smart about logic but also the tactics you need to move up.

well, if wishes were fishes... it would be pretty cool if it were all a thought out plan. real A team. time will tell if they get elected and there's peace (or peace adjacent) in the middle east. i don't think anyone will ever know if biden planned or nudged or just wanted to appeal to the hip younger generation.

I'm going to head cannon it as my personal conspiracy theory in any case if Harris does get elected and if a few MENA countries suddenly don't hate Israel as much. It's all so confusing and there's so little info i know about arab and/or Lebanese/Syrian/Yemeni/Iranian culture. especially what those terrorist orgs are actually like internally and what the citizens of those countries really feel about them. i know some history but that doesn't tell you what they think is funny or rude, ya know? whatever.

vote harris 2024.

[apollos-olives]

what are your thoughts about what's going to happen on the 11th and 12th? I'm south african and although we've got a strong free Palestine and anti zionist community, as well as being the country to get Israhell to the ICJ, the pro zionist/Israel is very strong and very big. my fear is that if my country can be so against Palestine (and this is mainly because Israhell has sold this idea that Israel=the Holy land and Christianity is very strong here in SA) how is it going to be in other countries. Islamophobia is so much worse in western countries and I'm genuinely fearing for the outcome because the reality is whether Israhell is condemned or not, there's going to be outrage.

I'm not educated enough to even understand the implications of the ICJ, but I do pray that it goes in my country's favour, thereby going in Palestine's favour. I don't know if this is ignorant on my part, so do forgive me if this statement is tone deaf, but I remember reading something regarding the Syrian Civil War: that the healing process is painful but the result is worth it.

I sincerely believe that Israhell will not win and that Palestine will be free. My country is far from perfect, but we achieved democracy and ended our own Apartheid. Despite what many believe or think, I refuse to condemn Hamas because although I myself believed them to be in the wrong and thought of them as terrorists, the ANC were considered terrorists and Nelson Mandela was only removed from the CIAs terrorist list when Obama came into office. So it became clear to me that any act of resistance will always be considered an act of terror in the eyes of the oppressor, and we in Cape Town recognize this and we pray for Palestine's liberation.

I was born 11 years after Apartheid and grew up free, so I know that I will never be able to understand your pain, but I pray to Allah that this current generation will give birth to Palestinians who are like me and never have to experience oppression.

Allah will save this Ummah, I believe in it, and a powerful statement that was made by Alan Busack, a politician and theologian in my country, when he and Naledi Pandor, my country's Minister of International Relations, announced that the charge had been lodged with the UN was that "Palestine is already free." and i realized while listening to his speech that Palestinians are the bravest souls. Your children are braver than I could ever be and your faith is stronger than steel.

Regardless of the results of this case, we in South Africa will not give up on Palestine, we even have this new found tradition of fasting on Thursdays for Palestinians, and altho the Zionist movement is strong here and people are even being kicked out of public places for wearing the colours of the Palestinian flag, us supporters will take it in our stride.

May Allah bless you and free Palestine In Sha Allah Ameen ❤️

for the most part, what i hear and believe from my community is that the icj isn't actually gonna do anything or dismantle israel. but it WILL show the world the atrocities they've committed, and more and more people will be exposed to what has been happening, and therefore the intifada will become stronger. even if the icj doesn't do much (inshallah it will), it will still expose israel for what it is and will help change peoples minds over what is happening. that is the biggest thing we believe we will get out of from this whole situation.

islamophobia through christian zionism isn't new, nor is it something we don't know how to deal with. i don't really think you personally should be worrying about that, though we do appreciate the concern. people are waking up and more and more people are joining the intifada and not just protesting and supporting us but they're actually learning about palestine and it's history and culture and people and it's allowing people to learn about how palestine is the holy land and how we must protect it, etc etc. the world is turning to our side and taking apart christian zionism and proving it wrong, so while yes christian zionism is dangerous, it's easily dismissible and taken apart, and we are prepared to deal with that.

we are grateful for south africa helping us and inshallah palestine will be free soon. i hope the next generation of our children will never have to face hardship like this ever again. may allah accept all martyrs and send them to heaven ya rab. thank you for your kind message, it means a lot 🫶

[jewishbarbies]

Hi, I hope this isn't rude, but could you please breakdown your thoughts on the whole 'people saying celebrities are terrible because they are zionist, or similar things' thing? Because I've seen it a lot.

this is a little long just because I wanted to be thorough in explaining the reasoning and thought processes here so sorry if you weren’t up for that.

well, just based on historical fact, claiming jews are not indigenous to the levant is asinine and antisemitic. so when people are upset someone is a zionist, they’re upset they believe in jewish indigeneity. that, and they grossly misunderstand zionism and its many forms. they hear zionist and immediately jump to “this person hates palestinians, wants them all dead, and bootlicks for the Israeli government” and that’s where 99% of problems lie when discussing it. because that’s not what it means. the root belief of zionism is that jews have the right to self determination in the land they’re indigenous to, not that no one else can too. there’s no tenant of zionism that states you HAVE to wipe everyone else in the region out in order to self determine there.

now, there’s political and Christian zionism which are both corrupt and bigoted versions of zionism (most jews agree with this, from what I can tell). it’s christian and political zionism that’s used in the way leftists think ALL zionism is. christians use their zionism to be Islamophobic and continue voting for republicans because they fetishize jews and the modern state of Israel. politicians use their zionism to beguile american christian voters and further sow seeds of hate in their base. both these camps use jews as scapegoats for their hatred and lust for power, and progressives have fallen for it hook line and sinker because terrorist organizations like hamas know they can work both sides with this and some misinformation disguised as colorful infographics on social media.

just like the russian bots that have been spewing disinformation to rally support for putin and hate for ukraine, terrorists use leftists’ fundamental misunderstanding of zionism, judaism, and their internal bias toward jews to gain support for hamas, claiming hamas is simply fighting back against israel. but they use language leftists have become obsessed with to do it - like colonialism, for example. they know leftists give a strong response to that language and are prone to fall victim to propaganda, and they’ve used it to their advantage for decades. palestinians haven’t had an election since 2007. would freedom fighters do that? no. freedom fighters value - you guessed it - freedom.

my thoughts are that leftists fall victim to disinformation like “zionism = colonialism because jews are all white Europeans” because they refuse to vet their sources and responsibly engage with the things happening in the world. they would much rather scream at and boycott and ostracize a minority community than do the work because screaming is easier and more people hear it. being mad about zionism for these people has become a social competition to see who can seem the most progressive, and it’s only shown their bare asses. they’re refusing to listen to the 70% of palestinians who want a peaceful resolution with Israel, the people of gaza who marched during oppression chanting anti hamas chants, and refuse to acknowledge what happened on Oct 7th because all of it would make supporting hamas the wrong thing to do. they’re too deep in it now. they can’t admit they’ve been fucking up. they can’t admit that they wanted revolution in their own country so bad that they yelled over and trampled the people they claimed to be trying to help, and they can’t admit they’ve fallen for propaganda because they’ve convinced themselves they’re immune. they believe they’d punch nazis and hide jews and they’re soooo progressive there’s no way they’d fall for obvious lies. but they have. and they will continue to do so until it’s their lives being played with by privileged assholes in another country with racial biases.

unless someone who identifies as zionist is actually calling for the death and/or relocation of palestinians in the region, then no, they’re not terrible. it’s truly that simple.

[reallystellacadente]

I Really Don't Want to Die, and Why

I need to make something ENTIRELY clear: Donald Trump needs to be defeated BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.

ANY. FUCKING. MEANS. NECESSARY.

The rest is below the cut because it's long and personal. The tl;dr, though is if you cannot abide me posting that you have to vote for the Democrat in this election, you should probably unfollow me. I'm not all that popular, so blocking is unnecessary but you do you.

That also includes his supporters on Capitol Hill, the incompetents on SCOTUS, and any and all of the Nationalist Christians (Nat C) fascists who support the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 and any other manifestos they have excreted into the public domain.

For me, that means I have to vote for the Democratic nominee for president in 2024. To not vote, or to waste my vote on a useless third party candidate, is to hand a vote to Trump. Go back and check the facts of 2016: Jill Stein voters handed him Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, where I live. Nonvoters who usually voted Democrat who stayed home because of the Email Lady also would have made a difference.

Fine. We fucked around and found out. Hundreds of thousands died. An insurrection happened literally in front of our eyes. And the figurehead behind it all has, to date, gotten away with everything.

Now the Beast is even worse. If Donald Trump gets elected, his policies will LITERALLY COST ME MY LIFE and that of my family. He will take away my healthcare (I am a recent cancer survivor), my pending disability (I cannot walk or stand for more than a few seconds and had to quit my job; this predates and is unrelated to my cancer), my EBT (haven't been able to work more than part-time for a while now, and I do like to eat food) and the pitiful partial Social Security we're living on while my disability is getting approved -- thanks to the GOP, a process that takes a minimum of 6-8 months. I will lose my income and my housing and everything.

I FUCKING DON'T LIKE THAT.

None of this -- ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THIS -- means I support the genocide in Palestine. I have been fighting this fight since the mid-80s and I can get the receipts if you want. I questioned why it was OK to roll tanks onto people who threw stones at them, only to get called a terrorist.

But now, when I am doing the best I can to fight the literal war here where I live, I'm called a white supremacist? Fuck you. I mean, the person sending me messages has been blocked and won't see this, but I'm getting that out into the universe nevertheless.

If you're old enough to navigate this website, you're old enough to curate your own experience here. Unfollow me if me saying "you need to vote for the Democrat" is bothersome. I will accept that it might even be triggering and that's OK, I certainly don't want to actually trigger someone's pain. But sending me threatening messages is bullshit and you know it.

I don't stan politicians and in social media spaces where my real identity is known, and I have stated this many times. Cult of personality sucks no matter who it's about. But all things considered, the Democratic platform/policies/whatever have always been closer to what I want in the place where I live. The GOP? Never in my lifetime.

It's hard for me to reconcile these things, but I know that if Trump wins, it will be even worse for Palestine. And he'll let Putin run rampant through Ukraine, too.

I'm sorry this is what it's come down to. I hope to live long enough to see something change. But we absolutely must defeat Donald Trump.

I want to live.