#depending on how useful you are to american leftists

[jewishbarbies]

this women's day i'm thinking about all the women and girls who were tortured and killed for the crime of being jewish within reach of hamas, those that survived but were taken hostage to continue being tortured, every single woman who will never get true justice for what was done to them. the infants that will never see adulthood.

and i'm thinking about all the western women who cheered.

[qqueenofhades]

hi I hope you don't mind but I would love to hear your long tired historian rant you mentioned in your tags on that one post, if you feel in the mood to share? (no pressure!)

(also thank you for existing, you do wonderful work and the world is a better place for you being in it)

Aha. Well. For context, the mention of said rant was in relation to this post:

Basically, this post struck a nerve because of how it exactly encapsulates the anti-intellectual, anti-academia, anti-historical, anti-reality thinking that is absolutely rampant in social media spaces, even and especially spaces that identify as leftist, liberal, or otherwise "superior" to the right wing when it comes to identifying fake news or misinformation. (Example A: anything ever written by a self-proclaimed leftist on Twitter.) We all know that there are huge problems with the American public school system (and the people writing this are almost always American) and the American practice of education in general, and that yes, there are many things that happened in the past (or y'know, the present!) that are not taught very well, or at all. But because the American public school system is so decentralized and largely autonomous, incredibly dependent on the temperament of local superintendents and/or school boards, taxation and funding, availability of teachers, requirement of useless standardized tests, etc., it is very difficult (if not outright impossible) to claim that this is the result of a Unified Grand Conspiracy To Not Teach Real History To The Youth In Order To Make Them Mindlessly Support Capitalism. That is the exact sort of deranged conspiratorial thinking that the right wing does and fits everything into a sinister narrative about how "They" are planning to keep you ignorant and therefore nothing harmful that you ever think or do is really your fault. It's not good.

(Whoosh. That was very calm and reasonable of me. For the rest of this post, please just picture Captain Holt "apparently that's a trigger for me" dot gif.)

Also: even in public school, and despite the Republicans' best efforts, there are plenty of opportunities to study complex or "controversial" subjects. For example, I spend a week every June grading AP Euro History exams with a lot of other educators in a giant windowless steel box (woo-hoo, fun times!) Every year, there are questions on the exam about women's rights, imperialism and exploitation, slavery/race relations, the development of capitalism and the current economic model, religion and science, the history of labor, and other topics that would be considered "controversial" if you're an idiot. This is an exam taken by high school students in all grades from across the country, and there are also AP World History and APUSH (US history) exams every year which are doubtless making an effort to address similar themes. This is an advanced program, yes, but it's widely available to many schools and is not a result of a sinister plot to keep the youth from discovering the truth. Also: you live in an era of absolutely unprecedented access to information. Put down the ChatGPT bullshit generator and visit a goddamn public library. Or even open Wikipedia. The tools are there for you to start educating yourself and they are so easy to find!!!!!

The "Historians Are Hiding The Truth!!!" narrative becomes even more ridiculous in university-level or professional academic historical-study spaces, especially when historical educators and associations (such as the American Historical Association) have been at the forefront of pushing back against right-wing efforts to censor history, punish teachers, and remove culture-war subjects from classrooms. Also as someone who has advanced degrees in history, has taught/worked in several universities in different countries, writes and publishes historical research, and otherwise participates professionally in the field: trust me, we aren't "hiding" shit. There are vigorous debates and disagreements on various bogglingly obscure subjects and points of clarification and so forth, but that doesn't mean we're not talking about them (trust me, we're often talking about them too much). If you're issuing confident blanket statements about how "historians are conspiring to hide x," you're an idiot.

This also has dangerous repercussions in the field of, say, politics and civics, where a lot of absolutely braindead Online Leftists have spent the last four years posting deranged nonsense on social media and then, whenever they're called out on it for that not actually being how anything works at all, whining that "I was never taught this!!!" (And yet, it somehow never actually changes their perspective or their theories....) They whine about how "they didn't know this" and it was someone else's fault, they make up total fantasy about what the Biden administration did or should have done and now are still happy about Trump coming back because "It will teach the Democrats a lesson!!!" and otherwise accelerating us oh-so-quickly down that slippery slippery fascism slope. Their weaponized ignorance and their magical fantasies about what "should" have happened often come back to this same learned helplessness, where it's everyone else's fault (especially Capitalism's) that they're total wankers. Look: I'm not a goddamn fan of capitalism either. But we all grew up in this same system, and some of us aren't raving idiots, so at some point, you have to take the tiniest modicum of personal responsibility for the information you seek out, the content you consume, the opinions you propagate, and the people you surround yourself with. Shocking.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Online Leftists are actively and unrepentantly enabling American fascism and should be treated in the same way as we treat MAGA when it comes to deciding what is good or worthwhile information. This is because their entire political philosophy (insofar as their beliefs can be dignified with the term) is based on the "make shit up and remove it from any basic empirical references, grounding in reality, or 'should I run the most basic Google search and see if I'm completely talking out of my ass in a distorted social media echo chamber? Nah I'm good' " technique. This is, as the original tweet above references, trying to retcon sheer malicious laziness and stupidity into grand ideological theories about how it's actually "better" that they don't know a damn thing and won't shut up. It's your evil history teacher's fault, or "academics are all rich and elitist" (ask any academic-precariat person like me and we will laugh hollowly and then throw monkey poop at you), or "They" wouldn't let you learn this, or on and on. Even in our terrible, awful, no-good very-bad timeline, there are still ample tools to educate yourself, to learn how to filter out bad information and junk news, and otherwise gird yourself even a little for the even-more-massive assault on empirical reality that we are about to experience in the next four years (ugh). I suggest you take advantage of them.

[necronomeconomicism]

Voting in the United States is unintuitive, often undemocratic, and painful. The natural emotional reaction with being asked to support vile people at the ballot box is disgust and avoidance. For leftists it doesn't help either when dominant narratives about voting put it on a pedestal as something patriotic system-serving citizens do.

But voting doesn't have to mean declaring personal support or belief in anyone, and there is a lot more to vote on than the presidency. Still, there's no bubble to fill in that says "Gay luxury space communism immediately!" so what do we do with the ballot?

There are two kinds of things you might get to vote on. Representatives and Propositions(or Measures). Representatives are those politicians the news is always abuzz about. Propositions are US America's cute attempt at direct democracy and can be a breath of fresh air to vote on when they're not trying to con you. Most are "citizen-initiated" so this is where you'll find most non centrist political actions. As I understand it 24 states do not have citizen-initiated propositions and of them some don't seem to have propositions at all. If you live in one of those I'm sorry.

Your mental energy should be prioritized in this order.

Propositions -> Local Representatives -> State Representatives -> Federal Representatives -> Presidency

UNLESS you live in a swing state, the list of which can vary depending on the election. In that case you'll have to think about the presidency first. I'm sorry. The electoral college is stupid.

I live in California, so we'll be going through part of the 2024 California ballot. Before we get into this know there is nothing wrong with using a voting guide that just tells you what to vote for. That is, only if the guide is good, which is uncommon. Most guides are either horrible or don't cover everything on the ballot. Before using a voting guide check who is funding it. If it has any holes consider researching those propositions or elected positions yourself.

California has 11 propositions on the ballot. I'm only going to go over one in detail, but I do want to bring up some more straightforward ones to illustrate a point

Prop 3 enshrines gay marriage in the California constitution Prop 6 bans forced prison labor in the state Prop 32 raises the minimum wage to $18 Prop 33 allows local governments to enact stronger rent control

Propositions like these, if they are available, leave decent leftists no excuse not to vote. No matter how much you detest the presidential candidates, no matter how revolutionary you aspire to be, no matter how much you hate American "democracy" propositions like these can have immense positive impacts on people's lives when they pass. You cannot allow yourself to be thoroughly terrified of the ballot box when these exist. And on the other hand

Prop 36 makes drug possession a felony and makes theft under $950 a felony after multiple violations

You cannot just do nothing and let something that monstrous pass. And it fucking might! And all that good stuff might not! There are more than twice as many millions of dollars in advertisements pushing prop 36 than against it right now. Forget the presidency for a moment, if you live in California, you get to decide if literal slavery is allowed in prisons or not.

As for representatives I'm not going to say exactly what city I live in, but I can say there are multiple elected positions that aren't even divided along party lines. There are also multiple state, district, and county representatives that aren't just horrible people. Many of them backed by unions rather than corporate money.

There's also sneaky shit on the ballot. I mentioned earlier propositions made to con you. This season's example is Prop 34 which, "requires certain healthcare providers to spend 98% of the revenues from the federal discount prescription drug program on direct patient care." Sounds maybe like a neat healthcare bill, but it says "certain" and that's a tricky word on the ballot. In this case Prop 34 specifies it only applies to healthcare providers that own housing. Only one healthcare provider in California does that, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. A non profit that has put its weight behind affordable housing including support for Prop 33.

Without people doing the research on things like Prop 34, bills like this can easily pass and enable all sorts of chicanery.

So go vote! Do some research and make some changes to the world! Don't let it be the only thing you do either. Voting only happens every two years. Contact your local political groups and volunteer your time or even just listen. Talk to your friends about what you're doing. Exercise your political muscles! Exercise your organizational muscles! Solidarity can be hard, but we have to be up for it. Your leftism has to affect the world around you or it will rot in the prison that is your skull.

[3liza]

re: last reblog - saw a TikTok ad the other day of a zoomer lifestyle peddler visually coded as a Nonbinary Dirtbag Leftist (dyed ratty hair, conspicuous piercings, cheap punk clothing) attempting to sell me an ebook about how to elevate my class position by buying a turnkey business like a laundromat.

so, exploiting the poor. and I mean they aren't wrong, that's how you get class mobile. I don't think it's actually possible to run a business like that ethically and still make a profit. maybe I'm wrong. but it seems like every bit of the profit is extracted from a dependence upon the poverty of the clientele, eg, lack of access to home laundry, charging greater than cost for time, water, soap and cleanliness which are all human rights, hiring employees at minimum wage, etc. the entire basis of charging money for such an amenity is a process of creating waste also, it creates waste in travel from home to the Laundromat, it creates waste in putting a laundromat in a storefront where housing could be, it creates waste in handling money and bills for a business that isnt essential etc etc. and it's an economic coercion because clean clothes aren't something you can budget or cut down on, you basically have your clientele by the balls.

on the other hand I'm rapidly approaching a grinding surface in terms of either entering into one of these exploitative processes as a means-of-production owner, which would be accomplished purely through debt on my part, or having to withdraw to permanent poverty, and the third option is winning the lottery either literally or figuratively through an unforeseen inheritance, sudden recovery from illness, or getting popular on social media in a way that produces profit

I think the anarcho syndicalists are broadly correct in that small organization is the correct move, eg, I'm about to lead test my apartment water supply and do some other moves that I expect to use to lower my rent, but the bigger project would be to contact the other tenants and see if they'd be interested in essential a "hostile" acquisition of the building based on having it fail a bunch of inspections, which I absolutely think is possible.

I could see using a small syndicate of partners/friends to collectively purchase the laundromat as a co-op. but would the profit splitting make it not worthwhile? maybe we would recoup from not having to hire any employees and just taking the shifts ourselves. this is the classic American immigrant model and it's a classic for a reason. I would really hate trying to do all that horizontal organizing though (huge cost for me personally)

idk how any of those stuff works. my parents are from the managerial-intellegentsia officer class and are stupid about money from a weird combination of having too much of it and too little. the overeducated poor. food insecure people who get all the jokes on Frasier. extraordinarily weird class position, it's sort of like being in the circus or being a pickpocket. you can fool people into thinking you're wealthy when you aren't, which is why I'm so insane on here about grammar and spelling, because you don't know until you're actually on the other side of it how much your level of education affects your material existence, even if the education is DIY. I have been literally homeless for periods of time and have almost always been poor, and the amount of "skating by" you can do on good grammar and nice table manners is like a big secret no one tells you anymore because the boomers pretended they got rid of all that jive during the summer of love. people have gotten REALLY mad at me on here about this topic I think because they think I'm enforcing these cultural standards every time I try to teach people about them. I'm trying to warn you!!

think of it this way: how long is someone willing to let you stay in their coffee shop or diner or house if you're "acting poor", vs how long if you're charming and helpful and conscientious? if you're loud and using "low class" dialect vs if someone has at some point taught you to act fancy? this is extremely racialized obviously. I can't speak on that.

the communist coin op laundry could have a shuttle service and group wash nights where people can combine laundry to use the big washers and dryers for larger loads at lower total cost if they were willing to sort out their clothes at the end 😔

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Listen to me right now, genuinely.

You should vote in November. You really should, but I don't really want this post to be about that. I have a pretty profound distrust of the average liberal "blue no matter who" crowd on here. I am not of the belief that you should willingly suspend your capacity of criticism and accountability of people in charge. If that can be extracted out of you, they will not give it back. Democrats are not a party full of people who love you and want to do everything you ask of them: they are a party who support the capitalist system first and foremost, and their interests are more beholden to the system than they are to us.

BUT, speaking as a trans woman right now, I'd personally really not rather see Trump get elected, obviously. If you're the type of person who sits and goes "I don't believe in politics", I want you to really listen to me. I get it. I truly do. American politics suck. Our politicians are chronic liars, they make promises they don't even try to keep. But there is almost one thing they never lie on, and that's the people they intend to oppress and stomp down. Trump wants to legislate and use his executive powers to push trans people out of existence. He can't be allowed to do that.

BUT

BUT. Voting cannot be the only thing you do. A bunch of the blue no matter who posters on here are going to do one of those things come November

Trump will win, and despite any evidence to the contrary, they will blame the like 50 communist bloggers on this website for ruining the election chances of the entire country. It was Russia yet again, somehow.

Biden will win, they will pat themselves on the back for a job well done, and proceed to sit on their hands until they find another reason to blame leftists for the actions of conservatives.

Trans history is full of examples of us being left behind. Your political plan for the future CANNOT just be to show up at a polling booth. You need to do more than that. What you will need to do will change somewhat depending on who is in charge, but I'm begging those among you to start taking action both now and after the elections.

Make sure your trans friends are safe. Check to see if they still have access to their medications. Check to see if they need money to get out of the country. Work to protest regressive and transphobic policies. If you're a lawyer, it's time to get ready to defend the cases of trans people against libelous suits. Plenty of you can do this pro bono.

Build mutual aid groups among your neighors and peers. Show up to a local LGBT organization and see what they need. Volunteer your time and money and often time spare clothes for other people. Educate yourself on our history, educate yourself on political theory, support organizations that help out the homeless directly.

Learn how to defend yourself and others during a protest when it faces police brutality and state sanctioned violence. Learn how to effectively neutralize tear gas, learn how to cover your self up so that you cannot be tracked by the pigs. Learn how to break kettle formations, learn your rights.

Never stop protesting against the people who feel it is their God given right to turn America into a theocratic dictatorship (which is not in the Bible by the way. I feel I should mention this. This is not a Biblical belief, the conservative Christians who tell you otherwise are lying out their ass.) Never stop protesting to stop the exploitation of the Global South by tech companies. Never stop protesting to end the genocide in Palestine. Never stop fighting so that the people of Sudan can be heard.

Just voting does not make you a politically active citizen, or really, a politically active person. It takes work, work that is very easy to burn out on. But if we can't rely on the American government and the Democratic party to do the things we need in order to avert the twenty crises looming over the horizon, then yes, we need to do more as a united people than fucking vote.

[communistkenobi]

what are some of your favorite nonfiction podcasts?

the big one I recommend is just king things - two marxist academics go through the books of Stephen King in publication order. extremely funny and insightful podcast, very accessible (like this is not a theory podcast or anything, it’s very laid back and casual), and I really appreciate their approach to literary criticism.

game studies study buddies is by the same hosts as just king things but this is a theory podcast. Each episode they go over and discuss a book from the field of game studies (ie the academic study of games). I very much recommend you listen to this if you want to like passively absorb critical/leftist theory. The hosts are academics, one of which teaches about games regularly as a professor, so it kind of feels like someone is teaching you about a text. I find it fairly accessible, I learn a lot about games, and as I said they very frequently structure their discussions with left wing theory. I find them very insightful!

blowback is very good, it’s about the imperial history of the United States. a history/journalist type podcast. this can get extremely heavy and difficult to listen to given the subject matter so I would not binge this (I usually listen to it when I’m doing a physical activity) but it’s a really good source of historical information and has helped me develop my political understanding of modern western imperial history. each season covers a different event: S1 is the invasion of Iraq, S2 is the Cuban Revolution, S3 is the Korean War, S4 is the invasion of Afghanistan

ALAB (all lawyers are bad) is good with some caveats. It’s a podcast by a bunch of lawyers who spend a lot of time on twitter discussing how horrible lawyers are, usually either focusing on specific high-profile lawyers (Kavanaugh, Dershowitz), specific american legal regimes (anti-BDS legislation, sanction law, etc), or specific trends in the legal system that causes structural problems (eg lifetime judgeship appointments with no mandatory retirement age). They also sometimes do random funny lawsuits or cover legal responses to events like Jan 6th. A mixed bag in terms of focus but mostly it’s hating on American law and the legal system. This is a critical recommendation because it’s a bunch of lawyers dudes riffing and some of their analysis can be stupid/bad, they say stupid shit that comes off as “anti identity politics” at times, etc. I’m pulling from memory because it’s been a while since I listened to them so I’m sorry if this is overly vague/general. The best way to describe it is chapo-adjacent if that means anything to you lol

and finally the podcast knowledge fight. this is a podcast dedicated to covering and debunking Alex Jones. in all honesty I don’t find this podcast super valuable in terms of analysis, like they are only really focused on debunking the claims Jones makes and explaining why they’re factually wrong. Which like that’s a good thing to do, I’m not saying its bad, but I don’t really need to be convinced Jones is lying about everything lol so I don’t personally find it super useful/insightful. If you have to interact with Alex Jones fans regularly (like family members) then maybe that will be more valuable for you! Totally depends. however the reason I bring them up is because I DO recommend the series of episodes they have titled formulaic objections - in this series they go through all the deposition material from the sandy hook lawsuit against Alex Jones (the one that cost him a billion dollars in damages and court sanctions lol). They play clips of the depositions throughout these episodes, which are so fucking insane to listen to. Like listening to a bunch of employees of an insane fringe right wing media organisation being questioned by lawyers for hours on end is so entertaining lmao. This lawsuit is about the sandy hook school shooting so a warning about the subject matter, it can get dark at times, but on the whole it’s extremely fucking funny to listen to. And the hosts provide a lot of context for what’s going on in the lawsuit, talk about it, and also they debunk the shit Jones lies about in court that you may not know about, so I find that part of it really good.

[qweerhet]

uncomfy with a post i am seeing by a nonamerican passed around uncritically by nonamericans that is criticizing us military apologism in the usamerican left (a fair and righteous critique)... by denying a form of child abuse exists???

so uh. just so everyone who has not attended an american public school (or has only been to public schools lucky enough to not have JROTC programs) knows. yes the ROTC grooms and abuses children, on a systemic and national level. the JROTC is usually present at elementary, middle, and high schools under an average income level, rural and urban both. yes the pipeline starts in elementary school.

ROTC officers target poor children and generally any children who are bullied or otherwise appear to be outsiders. they identify those children and follow them around school, even sometimes pulling them out of class for conversations, and intentionally try to form trusting individual relationships with the kids by buying them meals, giving them rides, buying them gifts like toys and clothes, etc. they'll act like school counselors to a large degree, encouraging kids to come to them with their emotional problems, and generally hyping up how if the kids just listen to them and join their program, all their problems will be solved and they'll find somewhere they belong. obviously this is all with the intention of getting them to join the JROTC, but they continue to have those relationships with program members ongoing.

ROTC officers that lead JROTC are known, socially at least, to be child abusers in the same way priests and boy scout leaders are--everyone has some idea of the power this infrastructurally-supported conservative-approved private relationship with vulnerable kids gives to the adults involved, and everyone knows there's a kind of conservative who goes into that field intentionally. if there's actual sex abuse scandals, the structure does a lot to cover them up (handshake with the vatican!), so i can't point to a lot of well-reported cases, but. It's there. Unspoken.

i am unclear on the status of whether or not they physically discipline children as a standard practice nationally, but i know it's happened in individual cases locally and been treated as normal. i wouldn't be surprised if that one was just dependent on whether or not "hitting kids" is popular among military conservatives in your locale or not.

anyway, obviously military training is abusive to put children through regardless of if you're hitting them or molesting them or not, so the baseline is still emotionally and physically abusing 8 year olds as an afterschool program. the JROTC also gives you a free ride to college if you go to one with an ROTC program so you really can get swept up in Literal Intentional Grooming for like a decade. i respect anyone who wants to explode every us soldier with bombs, as is their right as someone harmed by us imperialism, and i will not add this onto their post for that reason, but separately i would appreciate it if tumblr leftists did not assist the american military in normalizing and covering up massive systemic child abuse.

[luckyladylily]

I saw a post yesterday claiming that Donald Trump campaigned as a liberal democrat and in office acted like a moderate republican and just.

Can we fucking not? Both of these are flat out false. The person who wrote this either has their head so far up their ass about some narrowly defined set of political rules that only an out of touch moron would use, or they were a terminally online leftists trying to make ~~a point about liberals~~ or some bullshit. Either way both takes are idiotic and deserve to be mocked.

I don't have the time to pull up pages of receipts from 8 years ago, but during his original campaign Donald trump did not act like a liberal democrat, he did not hold the positions of a liberal democrat, the rhetoric he used was not similar to the rhetoric of a liberal democrat, and his effect on the political landscape was not that of a liberal democrat. His political campaign acted as a rallying cry for the violent far right, leaned heavily on extremist republican endorsements and had a significant impact on how the Republican party approached politics. It was a campaign that openly reveled in xenophobia and racism.

Now you may hate liberals but that in no way resembles a liberal democrat campaign, and the claim that Donald Trump in practice was a "Moderate Republican" is similar levels of stupid bullshit.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in the online left that actually fucking cares. Politics matter. The perception of political figures and movements matter. People suffer and die over this shit every fucking day. This is literally the only purpose of any movement worth a damn, getting this shit right so we can make it better.

If we are ever going to make anything better we have to actually approach the problems with at least a shred of intellectual honesty so we can identify the correct approach to alleviate or solve the problem. Real god damn lives are riding on this. People will die when we get this wrong.

From a strictly USA perspective, right now there are millions of young Americans getting politically active who were not around for the Trump campaign and they are depending on their seniors in their respective political movements to give them good information so they can make good choices. And we give them this bullshit.

From a wider perspective this is why so many people don't trust the political left. The towering level of intellectual dishonesty in this movement may not be exceptional compared to other high involvement political movements, but our goals are different and we don't have the convenience of major institutional strength behind us. We are not going to win the propaganda war against the people who have all the tools and machinery designed to win the propaganda war! The truth is all we have. Not to mention, if you actually think we can build a better world on the back of ignorance and misinformation then I genuinely don't know what to say.

Why don't you fucking care? Getting this right is literally the most important thing in the world. But who cares about that, hur dur, gotta lie to stick it to the libs!

Christ alive what is wrong with you people.

This shit is why I have such an abysmally low opinion of the online left.

[womenfrommars]

Hi I'm from France and I stumbled upon one of your posts about Islam. I'm genuinely sort of terrified of the future here. We finally achieved an atheist majority and fully separated religion from the state but Islam is quickly growing unquestioned. Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

And I don't think I can lie to myself anymore - muslim men are raised into an incredibly misogynistic environment and are strongly encouraged to never question it and benefit from it. I have had first hand interaction with those muslim men who sexually harassed me and pejoratively talked about my rights as a woman. On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

And what is truly terrifying is that I'm told to endure it all. That it is just bad apples. Our leftists parties are in full support of it and gain voters from the muslim community, online and irl leftists constantly repeat "islamophobia" to every criticism brandished at Islam. Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there. I'm so tired. There is no analysis of religion anymore. There is just choice feminism - choice to hide your body and be a property for men. And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism". I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Somehow being antireligion in progressive circles has been fully turned into something bad.

Oh no you got that totally wrong. You can shit on Christianity all day long because it's seen as ''the white man's religion'', irrespective of all the non-white Christians who face persecution and subjugation in various parts of the world. And since October 7 it has become extremely normalised in progressive circles to demonise Zionism and by extension the Jewish religion, with false quotes from the Torah going around that all of us non-Jews are subhumans. It's only Islam that is being protected by the progressive left. They harp on about Islamophobia but Christophobia and anti-Semitism are not part of their vocabulary at all

On the French internet there is a massive mob of those same men being incredibly misogynistic everyday on how women dress and act.

Welcome in Europe in 2024! Muslims are not asking to be included, they are asking to be centered and catered to. They're not just asking for halal meat in supermarkets, they want to change European culture significantly. They want to get rid of secularism, sexual liberty, and the improved position of women in European societies. In the UK they're even handing out flyers asking people not to walk their dogs in muslim neighbourhoods because they consider dogs to be spiritually unclean animals. Muslim apologists are openly discussing child marriage online and the right for a muslim man to beat his wife. But leftists would rather talk about Christian misogyny (read: Christian women online sharing tips on how to dress modestly).

Our discussions are getting americanized when their muslim minority is like 10 times smaller than ours and actually progressive over there.

The USA has different immigration laws and mostly accept highly educated, liberalised muslims from Asia and the Middle-East. Almost all of their illegal migrants are from South America where Islam barely exists. The American muslim population is quite wealthy and highly educated as a result of the immigration laws whereas the European muslim population is lower educated and more dependent on social security, overrepresented in crime statistics, and not fully integrated into the culture as a result of the immigration policies from the 70s and the refugee crisis from 2015 and onwards. So to an American if you voice concerns about Islam specifically they see no reason to do so other than racism. I would like to see their reaction if their Christmas markets, concerts, and synagogues are blown up by Islamic terrorists. You'd think 9/11 would have been a wake-up call

And questioning the ever growing presence of men who desire to own us is somehow "white feminism".

Even when ex-muslims come out in favour of Western culture and against Islamic culture the left sees them as puppets because they think minorities cannot think for themselves. Unironically racist. Not to mention ex-muslims face extremely violent threats and social rejection from the Islamic community

I'm lost and scared that eventually they'll become a big enough population that our laws will change to accommodate their regressive religion and take away my rights as a woman.

Honestly I have had such thoughts myself, especially with mass migration coupled with the extremely high birth rate of muslim women. I think the best course of action is restricted immigration combined with intense integration efforts. And we must be willing to defend our Western values publicly even if it means we will be accused of right-wing nationalism or racism. Islam is fundamentally incompatible with secularism and equality between men and women

[qqueenofhades]

Think what strikes me about something like "we can't vote because the system is rigged! Ban the electoral college!" is the big underlying implication of it.

That there is no multiple solutions or paths, only the one correct path and everything else is worthless.

And that's incredibly frustrating because there are two levels of problems with it:

is the utter dismissiveness of anything other than their specific solution, which ignores how any degree of positive change cannot occur with only just ONE idea, it's usually the result of many ideas that lead to change.

The fact that it feels like they're skipping every step in between the current situation to this end result, or actively fixating on themselves having the correct solution, but only by literally getting everything in between completely wrong in the process.

Like, the latter point in particular is like a complex math equation: Just because you got the right answer doesn't mean you can just ignore every difficult step in between, or just assume that all of the WRONG processes become validated retroactively because you stumbled into the correct answer. You'd literally get failed and be forced to redo the problem if you tried that shit in math.

I saw a poll the other day claiming that support for abolishing the Electoral College had now reached 65% of all Americans. Now, I take all polls, whether good or bad, with a grain of salt, but this does reflect a growing awareness that the EC is a horrible racist anti-democratic dinosaur only applied to the presidential election and only used for electing Republicans who don't win the nationwide popular vote, and that there's a genuine groundswell of support to abolish it. See the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which could possibly collect enough state-by-state ratifications to go into effect into 2028 (in the best-case scenario). So even all the bitching about how "the system is rigged" (which. WE KNOW! WE KNOW! There's not a single Democratic voter going to vote like WOW I LOVE THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE CAN'T WAIT FOR MY VOTE TO DEPEND ON HOW MUCH IT COUNTS THANKS TO THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WHEE OLD DEAD WHITE GUYS!) blatantly ignores that a possible seismic change IS possibly in the offing, because people put in the work to make it happen!!! The fact that the EC might soon be superseded or disempowered is FUCKING MONUMENTALLY HUGE!!! It has existed literally since the beginning of America and arbitrated every single presidential election!!! And let me tell you, the people working to make that change and fundamentally reshape American democracy are absolutely not the Online Leftists, whose grasp of civic and political theory starts and ends at "wah the system is rigged I do not vote I am very smart!"

This also reminds me of the recent idiots in my notes complaining that Biden was a) not "genuine" in supporting the striking auto workers, that b) Don't You Know He Broke The Rail Strike (the follow-up where he gave the railworkers what they most wanted with that strike was conveniently never mentioned), or c) that he wasn't "doing it for the right reasons" (whatever the fuck that means). Which accurately reflects their belief that the way you do politics, or praxis, or anything at all, is just by having the Really Goodest Mostest Purest Intentions really hard, and that's it. Like. Aside from the fact that it's impossible to prove why Biden is privately motivated to do anything, we have a long track record demonstrating that he is a person of genuine Catholic faith who has been moving more and more to the left overall, and has been the most pro-union, pro-labor president in American history. So first of all, complaining that "he's not GENUINE!!!!" in supporting the strikers is impossible to prove, and contradicted by actual evidence. But the Online Leftists gotta feel More Gooder Than Him somehow, so.

Likewise: as I said in one of my previous posts about Hillary Clinton: I do not give a fuck if she was privately the most Neoliberal Corporate Centrist Shill Ever To Shill (and as I also said, none of those words means what the Online Leftists think they do). I do not care about the American monarch president's personal feelings, unless they reflect directly on the policy that they make and the real-world effects that it has. I don't care if Clinton killed puppies (or dreamed about killing puppies, which for the thoughtcrime police is equally bad), as long as she appointed 3 new liberal justices to SCOTUS and throughout the courts, instead of the hacks that Trump forced onto the bench and literally everything else he did. In the same vein, Biden could secretly be like "hahahaha fuck all workers BIG CORPORATIONS FOR LYFE but I gotta support the workers and get them their rights so they'll vote 4 meeee" (not that I actually think he is, but still) and hold onto your hankies, children: I DO NOT CARE! Because the tangible real-world effects of that policy that he is working hard on making results in a better economy for those workers and substantial redistribution of capital away from the oligarchs for the first time in a generation! Not to mention, I kind of like the idea that a president decides to make himself most appealing to workers instead of bosses! But for the Online Leftists, if this action isn't done with the Sufficiently Pure Motives, it is Wrong and Bad and Not Good Enough and Blah Blah Biden Sekrit Republican.

Anyway. Yes. That. The end.

[jewishbarbies]

Seeing that many people on the either side of the political spectrum seem to be showing their true colors, which makes me wonder, how can Jewish people navigate politics on this day and age in the sense of, can you ever feel welcome at any of the sides? (Just curious, is okay if you prefer not to answer)

im going to start by saying I’m one single jew and I don’t claim to speak for any other jews with my opinions on this because you’re going to get a different one depending on who you ask.

to me, there’s no way to feel safe anywhere on the american political spectrum. my views can align with one and I can participate in elections just fine, but I’ll never feel safe in a room with just conservatives OR just leftists/liberals/dems. either way, you’re faced with a different antisemitic monster, and people who identity as leftists/liberals/dems/etc are now committing hate crimes as well. people who identify as progressive are hatecriming jews all over the world. my mom is incredibly conservative and everything that comes with that, including internalized antisemitism, and even SHE sat me and my little sister down yesterday and warned us against wearing our magen davids so we don’t ‘identify ourselves’ as jews in public. we’re not safe politically or spiritually no matter how we align or how we identify ourselves socially. it’s been hostile for a very long time - this is nothing new in concept - but now even the left side of the political spectrum is physically unsafe. I’m not sure what the solution is, but it’s getting absolutely terrifying.

[bimdraws]

About the word Travesti

I've seen some folk use this word as a third ender category in Latin American Spanish but I think it should be mentioned that it has other uses, among which there are:

A direct translation of the word Tranvestite or Drag Queen.

A third gender category of people who don't feel like men or women, or who are both women and men at the same time.

Trans women who also identify as travestis (something like transfeminine people aren't always women or not just women)

Trans women who call themselves travestis as a joke, not really identifying with the term.

Context will help you understand what people mean when they use this word in Spanish. If it's a drag bar, they probably mean a drag queen, if your homophobic grandma says it they probably mean transvestite/cross-dresser, if it's used in leftist circles and trans advocacy groups they'll understand it as a gender identity adjacent to trans womanhood but not exactly the same. The usage may also depend on the country but I'm only Chilean so I can't speak on other countries.

It kind of occupies this space that "tranvestite" used to occupy in English, where transfemininity and cross-dressing hadn't fully separated in people's heads and it was used interchangeably for those identities before trans discourse became available. This doesn't mean it's a bad identity, some people are travestis and that's that. I just find it interesting how different languages manifest these ideas.

[beardedmrbean]

[Huey Zoomer Anon]

“Why you don’t live in the city?” If you mean the big populated one, that would be Chicago and there a reason why it called Chiraq by the black locals

Also don’t get this idea that living in the city= expose to a cultural exchange you would never get in a small town…but at the end day leftists wokies non whites friends, most of who are 2nd gen and beyond who are culturally Americans, aren’t the end all for all sources for different cultural

My Bengali friend gave me more insight on India history, cultures, societies, and Hinduism than what the disporia fucks pushes these days

Also being a urbanite still means you can be out of touch

https://youtube.com/shorts/potiWpXoYYQ?si=VKgMSbHwBIGNRfYr

This short is at the dnc in Chicago this past summer

Chicago and Chicagoland have a decent Arab population

Including Free Palestine ones

Source: Me who see them as coworkers and when I go shopping

Soo they could get one Arab/Muslim group for consultant?

“You want to be careful dependent!” I love the environment too, but given how social dynamics is getting worse and due to my autism.

A expression of mine get misinterpreted by a sjw on a train= my entire life is ruined

Also the infantilism of criminals on the left thus lax crime laws makes more and more people avoid moving to be urban areas now

“Why you don’t live in the city?” If you mean the big populated one, that would be Chicago and there a reason why it called Chiraq by the black locals

Easier answer is that the city sucks,

Also don’t get this idea that living in the city= expose to a cultural exchange you would never get in a small town…but at the end day leftists wokies non whites friends, most of who are 2nd gen and beyond who are culturally Americans, aren’t the end all for all sources for different cultural

it's a thing similar to classism, there's significant arrogance on both sides of this one seeing our choice as the better one and such.

My Bengali friend gave me more insight on India history, cultures, societies, and Hinduism than what the disporia fucks pushes these days

Makes sense they'll have different experiences than each other, also with India we always need to remember that it's 862 countries in a raincoat so cultures are going to be wildly different from place to place, even if they're in the same state.

Also being a urbanite still means you can be out of touch

What's fun to do is call "bodegas" either mini marts or convenience stores or something else similar and watch them have a meltdown trying to explain the difference.

This short is at the dnc in Chicago this past summer Chicago and Chicagoland have a decent Arab population Including Free Palestine ones Source: Me who see them as coworkers and when I go shopping Soo they could get one Arab/Muslim group for consultant?

I'm all for encouraging reform in Islam, but I don't see them hitting this point for a while, most of them at least. Given the one city council that all Muslim is backing Trump I'm wondering what % of that particular community is thinking maybe they shouldn't have shifted to the left after 9/11.

Soo they could get one Arab/Muslim group for consultant?

It's likely they did, just not one that would think there was anything weird about this.

A expression of mine get misinterpreted by a sjw on a train= my entire life is ruined Also the infantilism of criminals on the left thus lax crime laws makes more and more people avoid moving to be urban areas now

There's a lot of infantilization out there and most of it could be described using one word that has a "ism" "phobia" or "ist" at the end of it.

[hussyknee]

Def a good idea to delete theculturedmarxist’s stuff, he’s also a big-time propagandist/genocide denier type. It sucks that some tankies have gotten bigger platforms recently by strike blogging.

But yeah the banana thing is insane, I *think* the original poster was using it as an example of the fact that a more just society in the US is necessarily going to be a less convenient one because convenience often comes at the expense of (domestic and international) labor exploitation, and “non-domestic crops being available year-round” is an example of a luxury that came out of said exploitation, which is A Point (though I might’ve picked something like Amazon same-day delivery to argue it…)

But then people ran with it and made it about either How Do We Stop Big Banana Through Socialism or Here’s How Bananas Can Still Win. Both at the dehumanizing expense of now-theoretical Latin American laborers of course 🙃

Oh shit that's what's happening? Tankies coasting in on strike blogging?? Gdi.

Yeah I think that was the original point too. The thing is, that US leftists keep centering US consumer demand in everything, like the entire system of global labour and resource exploitation by multinational conglomerates, aided and abetted by the IMF and World Bank and the entire colonial power matrix, can be solved by yelling at enough people about their consumption. For people who are so obsessed with class, it seems to consistently escape them that Global North consumers are also exploited and disempowered by the same oligopolies and monopolies that pay producers pennies on the dollar and sell for prices that smaller and entry-level companies can't compete with. Even as an example, bananas in the US are priced way lower than what's profitable, just to keep a monopoly of consumers. And because so many companies in the West don't pay working class people a fair wage, they have to consume the cheapest, most convenient food stuffs. So when you talk about people reducing consumption of bananas, you're asking people dependent on the cheapest nutrient sources to bear the biggest loss.

This is exactly what we mean by "no ethical consumption under capitalism". It doesn't mean we give up on the entire issue, it means that the systems of production cannot be manipulated by consumer boycotts and individual ethics. Even if one product was taken off the shelves, whatever supplanted it would be just as unethical for some group of people. It means that the solutions need to be implemented top-down, not bottom up. Global North governments need to better regulate corporate behaviour, prioritise the well-being of workers and ecological chains involving production and transport, prevent monopolies by regulating prices, and encourage and incentivize local food supply networks. And also, as some from Colombia said in a reblog about the cocaine industry, economic stress must be taken off developing nations by forgiving their IMF and World Bank loans so that they can invest the profits from their export industries in reforming agriculture and social welfare systems.

I literally do not understand why, when people directly impacted by these conditions have clear and cohesive demands and action plans, Western liberals and leftists need to come up with these completely abstract, impractical, ego-centric bullshit to create endless discourse over. They don't actually care about engaging with activists, grassroots organizations and unions in the Global South, because that involves interrogating their own paternalism, privilege and bias, and narrows the scope for the clout-chasing dunk economy.

[misfitwashere]

The Crusade against America

Handmaid Fails 3/3

TIMOTHY SNYDER

NOV 22

How does America end?  

Novels can expand the imagination to fit the things that are happening around you.  In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a few men who wish to oppress women are able to organize a Christian Reconstructionist coup and establish a new regime under what they present as God's law.  In the story, they are able to destroy the United States of America and supplant it with Gilead, which battles against former Americans, never fully controls all former territories, and ultimately falls.

Thanks to Donald Trump, we now must contemplate the possibility of a misogynist Christian Reconstructionist secretary of defense.  Pete Hegseth lacks the normal qualifications for such a post.  He has never run a large organization and has no view of national security.  In none of his books does he have anything much to say about the world.  Reading him, one would have no way to understand why the United States has a military at all.  Hegseth has two ideas about what the armed forces are for: a site to express Christian Reconstructionism and gender ideology; and a means defeat other Americans inside America.

For Hegseth, gender ideology more important to him than the world itself, let alone the security interests of the United States.  He wants us to believe that the two are the same thing: that women in uniform prove the existence of a Leftist plot to destroy America.  This case is not really made.  Hegseth is right that the purpose of the armed forces is to make war, and that politics can distract from this.  But what he is offering is precisely politics.

Hegseth is no doubt correct in many of his critiques of the armed services.  But he himself has no proposals about how the armed forces should be deployed, or in the service of what goals and interests.  He does not believe in the alliance with Europe and Canada that has kept the peace: in his view, “NATO is a great example of dumb globalism.” But he is absolutely sure that our existence depends upon everyone agreeing with his views about women in uniformed service.  But why is this so important?  His arguments for his gender ideology are self-referential and circular: he thinks so, other men think so, nature.  

Women have fought and killed men in combat throughout history, as customs and technology permitted.  It is a modern prejudice to deny this.  Hegseth tries to sweep the board of history clear by claiming that even the Spartans, whose society was organized around war, did not have women fighters.  But our source on Sparta, Herodotus, reminds us that the greatest warriors of the age, famously undefeated by Persia, were the Scythians.  And the Scythians did have female warriors, cavalry armed with recursive bows.  Custom and technology permitted them to fight, and they did.  Judging by the archeological finds in today's southern Ukraine, about one in five Scythian warriors was female.  It took a while for archeologists to realize this, because of the male-ego-preserving prejudice that all warriors are male.  It was only the DNA evidence -- nature, as it were -- that forced the conclusion that was in fact obvious from the female skeletal remains.

Hegseth writes that "to create a society of warrior women you must separate them first from men, and then from the natural purposes of their core instincts."  This is pure gender ideology.  He is just making this up.  Women who have seen combat have not been separated from men or their instincts.  They are sometimes traumatized.  As are men.  Armies fight with women when and because it works.  Women can kill men and then raise children and, historically speaking, have done so.  They are doing so right now.

Hegseth does not confront his broad claims about women in warfare with the evidence from the most important war of our time, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  He has little to say about Russia and its Chinese backer: how, for example, would dissolving NATO help, when that is exactly what Russia wants? The lesson he draws from the war in Ukraine is that women can assist in logistics, which is certainly true. But he dodges what for him should the central issue. In the Russo-Ukrainian war, an much smaller apolitical mixed-gender army, the Ukrainian one, has held back a much larger, politicized, patriarchal, anti-woke, anti-gay, and anti-transsexual army, the Russian one.  This would seem to be relevant; Hegseth ignores it. 

On the same lands once controlled by the ancient Scythians, the contemporary Ukrainian army includes women, and in roughly the same ratio, one in five or one in six soldiers.  Roughly five thousand Ukrainian women serve in combat roles.  This is not the result of some leftist ideology.  Indeed, Ukrainian women in the army have to deal with a great deal of sexism.  But they fight because they want to defend their country.  Their government wishes them to because there is a war to be won.  The other day a kindergarten teacher shot down a Russian cruise missile with an Igla manpad.  She is a woman, and she had to train and train to learn to use the Igla, just as Scythians had to train to use their recursive bows.  When custom and technology permit, women can fight.

On the other side, the Russian army is explicitly modeled on a gender ideology that resembles Hegseth's.  The Russian army is just what Hegseth believes the American army should be: male, patriarchal, deployed in what leaders explicitly describe as an anti-woke war for traditional values and Western civilization.  This Russian army carries out war crimes on the lands that it occupies, including the murder of civilians (a behavior that Hegseth defends when Americans do it) and the rape of women.  Hegseth might not care about any of this.  But we all should.  And we should note that this Russia army has vastly underperformed all expectations on the battlefield.  Nearly three years into a war that was expected to last for three days, Russia has called in ten thousand North Koreans to try to retake Russian territory in Kursk region that is occupied by Ukraine. 

Again, the point is not that Ukraine is woke; it is not, whatever woke might mean.  It is a country suffering a horrific war; Ukrainians do not need our culture wars superimposed on them.  There is a real world, a real history of war, a real war going on now in Ukraine:on a greater scale, with greater losses, with greater stakes than Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that Hegseth puts the evidence aside in the service of propagating his gender ideology.  Hegseth complains that Europeans do not defend themselves. But Ukraine’s defense budget almost three times greater than America’s as a percentage, and its people are engaged in war on a scale greater than anything Americans have experienced. Why do they get no credit from Hegseth?

Hegseth served in a combat role in Iraq, and usefully and colorfully shares details from his time in combat.  What he does not share is any evidence that women made things worse; nor does he show any appetite for such evidence.  He has not been to the front of the Russo-Ukrainian war; amidst writing multiple books, he has not found the time to see what large-scale modern combat looks like on the defining battlefield of our time.  Given that one side has women in combat and the other espouses something very much like his ideology, this is a serious omission. 

It suggests that Hegseth has an ideological commitment which is not in fact related to military reality.

Perhaps not incidentally, Russia's hope for victory rests in people like him: gender ideologists who side with Russian gender ideology.  Hegseth, although he condemned Russia at the beginning, seems to be taking steps in that direction. By early 2023, he was following a standard MAGA formula of changing the subject from Ukraine to the border with Mexico. By 2024, he presented the war in Ukraine as the fault of the Biden administration.  Never does he acknowledge the work Ukrainian resistance does for American interests: it holds back both Russia and China, the countries Hegseth presents as threats when he briefly changes the subject from his gender obsession. Ukrainian resistance defends an international order based upon law. It makes nuclear proliferation less likely. And it gives hope to people who support democracy. 

That might of course be the key: Hegseth is not one of those people. He does not believe that United States should be a democracy, and says so: we are “not a pure democracy, instead a constitutional republic predicated on the fact that our rights come from God.” Like Putin, Hegseth seems to know personally what God wants. During the war, Putin has militarized Russian schools, making them propaganda machines. Hegseth believes that American schools should be “boot camp” that prepare children for “spiritual battle.”

Russian propaganda again and again claims that invading Ukraine makes the world safe from gays and transsexuals. Hegseth is snide about the people he calls "trannies," claiming that anyone gender fluid or non-binary could be nothing more than a useless diversion: "Men who are pretending to be women, or vice versa, are a distraction. It might be your thing, but it’s weird and does not add substantive value to anyone."  These kinds of clear statements make certain kinds of men feel better about themselves, no doubt.  Like gender obsession generally, they tend to be cues about pro-authoritarian politics.

And then of course there is history and what actually happens, which tend to defy the cofortable simplifications of Hegseth’s identity politics. Hegseth's claim is belied by the history of the origin of the United States.  The Polish officer Casimir Pulaski is credited with reforming the American cavalry and with saving the life of George Washington at the Battle of Brandywine.  Pulaski was killed in action at Savannah.  It is hard to imagine an American victory in the Revolutionary War without Pulaski.  And so without Pulaski it is very possible that there would never have arisen an American republic.  That would seem to be something of “substantive value.”  And yet it seems that Pulaski was either intersex or a biological female who dressed as a man.

Hegseth does not need to know early American history, though, since he disavows the American republic.  He is a Christian Reconstructionist who believes that God's law should prevail.  The Constitution has to be understood, Hegseth claims, as subordinate to a broader unwritten Covenant with God, the meaning of which is of course known to him personally.  He thus opposes the constitutional structure of the United States as it figures in the actual text. 

Hegseth denies the rectitude of the First Amendment, which separates church and state: "without God, America is not America."  He says explicitly that "the diminished role of Christ’s Kingdom in America’s founding" is to blame for the malaise that followed.  Switching his metaphysics for a moment, he claims that the separation of church and state opened "the gates of Mordor."  Constitutional patriotism is not a good thing, since it can "untether us from the timeless truth, from the Bible."  Of course, as is always the case, God's law turns out to mean what Hegseth and his friends say that it means.

The enemy within, broadly defined as "the Left," is presented as already having a plan to annihilate everyone else.  This is, of course, what fascists always say: it is legitimate to destroy the other side, because however invisibly and conspiratorially and secretly, it is planning to kill you first.  Thus for Hegseth, the Left has the goal of "erasing America’s soul, culture, and institutions. We are the ones standing in their way—and have been targeted for annihilation."  Hegseth does not dwell, for some reason, on the actual countries that actually want the American system to break.

Only the “enemy within” captures his imagination. Hegseth enjoins his readers to "remember the plan the Left has for you—utter annihilation."  And again: "In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy."

Trump's nominee for the position of secretary of defense seems to believe that we need a cleansing civil war.  He instructs us that "we are not only fighting a battle against foreign enemies."  "Sometimes," he writes, "the fight must begin with a struggle against domestic enemies. Those who would violate the Covenant that binds us as a community of faith and that grants us blessing.”  

For this view he obscurely calls upon the Book of Judges and the story of Gideon, although how this biblical citation helps his case is unclear.  It is not obvious from the story which god was Gideon's, or who the internal enemies would have been, or what the point was, since Israel collapsed right afterwards anyway.  Gideon collected gold which his people then worshipped, and he had many wives and concubine.  It is that polygamous aspect of the Bible that seems to draw in people like Hegseth: the dream of patriarchy, the fantasy that controlling women somehow means a safer society or a safer country. 

Hegseth has a tattoo that reads "Deus vult," which means "God wills it" in Latin.  JD Vance has defended Hegseth's tattoo's as Christian; we are all supposed to feel guilty, Vance instructs us, because if we query the tattoo we are simply ignorant bigots who disrespect Christianity.  Specialists of course know that the tattoo is associated with far-right nationalism and terrorism. It was one of the slogans at the Nazi rally in Charlottesville. And of course the history of Christianity is rich and open to many interpretations: for example, Hegseth's idea that God's law, as interpreted by him and his friends, should apply here on Earth, superceding the Constitution, and justifying a holy war against Americans.  "Deus vult" is a direct and explicit invocation of the medieval Crusades, which Hegseth believes should continue inside the United States in the twenty-first century.  This is, interestingly, also an echo of Putin. His whole rationale of the invasion of Ukraine has to do with an invocation of the middle ages and the Putin’s claim that God wills that Russia and Ukraine be together.

In Hegseth’s view, "America cannot, and will not, survive otherwise.  This time in our history calls for an AMERICAN CRUSADE.  Yes, a holy war for the righteous cause of human freedom."  Although Hegseth ritually mocks "triggered" Leftists for understanding him literally, and drops the word "metaphorically" into his prose from time to time, it is quite clear what he means: "We cannot outsource or delegate our crusade. Arm yourself—metaphorically, intellectually, and physically. This is, by the way, why the Second Amendment exists."  

Historically speaking, of course, Hegseth is wrong about the Second Amendment: it was written to allow the United States to prepare for war against actual foreign enemies, not to enable Americans to massacre one another in a holy war.  But Hegseth's invocation of the Second Amendment and "physical" weapons makes his attitude unmistakable.  As with citizens, so with the army: the purpose of "America’s military might" is "the defeat of our enemies, internal and external."  The "internal" always comes first for Hegseth.  Trump, who regularly talks about “internal enemies,” is the occasion: "Let’s make the crusade great again.” And, in closing: "See you on the battlefield.  Together, with God’s help, we will save America.  Deus vult!"

It is not hard to see why Trump wants Hegseth as his secretary of defense. Trump plans to purge the armed forces of high officers who care about the United States and leave only loyalists. Trump wants to use the armed forces in operations inside the United States, including the oppression of “enemies within,” which is to say, his political opponents. Hegseth gives every sign of being a person who would embrace such actions as an American crusade. 

In fact, they would amount to a crusade against America. What would thus look like? Where would it lead?

In the novel The Handmaid's Tale, people very much like Hegseth come to power, oppress women, and turn the armed forces into domestic shock troops who fight a civil war.  It is important to see accusations of sexual assault and Hegseth's persistent polygamy in this light: the notion that women are just objects goes hand in hand with the idea that the real fight for American soldiers is against other Americans.  

Misogyny is not the elevation of masculinity but its collapse, both as morality and as politics. 

Although the richness of Atwood's story is in the exposition of a modern patriarchy, I find it important to note that Gilead, the Christian Reconstructionist state, does not endure for long.  The Christian Reconstructionist coup attempt of the story corresponds to the purge of the armed forces announced by Trump and the subsequent use in domestic actions suggested by all of Hegseth's writings.  Such a thing would wreck America rather than rescue it.  

There is a danger of oppression inherent in giving power to incompetent misogynists who claim to know God's will.  But the more immediate danger for our republic from such men is chaos and collapse. 

***************************************************************

All quotations are drawn from Hegseth's books The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free (2024); Battle for the American Mind: Uprooting a Century of Miseducation (2023, with David Goodwin); and American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free (2020) except for the rejection of constitutional patriotism, which is from "From Patriotism to Classical Christian Education w/ Pete Hegseth," Crosspolitic, September 21, 2023.  For his views on Ukraine and Russia see “What Donald Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Said About Russia, China.” Newsweek, November 13, 2024; “Fact Check: Did Pete Hegseth Call Putin a ‘War Criminal?’” Newsweek, November 13, 2024.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

image id for this post

it's the racism and antisemitism #inb4 'ummmmm it's not racism bc ashkenazim r white!!!!!!!' #bc that's the racism part #ashkenazim are a racially diverse group #and individual ashkenazim can absolutely be racialized differently depending on where they live or if they travel to a different country #you could be white in america and not white in poland #there are ashkenazim who do not pass as white in america — and no i'm not just talking about black ashkenazim #you cannot insist that 'jews are not a race!!!!!!' and then apply racial descriptors to us #also perhaps u would like to talk abt how fucked up it is that american jews were racialized and discriminated against to the point they had #to actively work for decades to convince the general public we were Just Like You (white; just a religion; etc) #not because we wanted the privilege like so many gentile progressives and leftists claim #but bc WE WANTED YALL TO STOP OPPRESSING US #bc it's not like jews hadn't had to appeal to authorities and populations before to try to avoid discrimination #jewish communities when they were expelled and settled somewhere new would frequently have to literally negotiate with the leadership of #wherever they settled for basic — and oftentimes less than basic — rights. often they even had to PAY for those less than basic rights #so let's think abt the optics of a minority group negotiating for basic rights… and then having those negotiations weaponize against them #bc a lot of ppl don't realize that the assimilation of american jews was a subtle form of violence #if the only way you're seen as fully human is to assimilate THAT IS OPPRESSION #that is erasure of a culture and that is violence #the insistence that american jews are 'just white ppl with a different religion' is an active attempt at assimilation #and again — assimilation is a form of oppression #incoherent rant over for now