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duchess-of-mandalore · 5 months ago

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Star Wars, friends. I know this is not why you follow me, but please make this my most shared post.

You are here.

We're living the lead-up to Revenge of the Sith, and it scares me so much a) it feels like there is so little we can do, and b) young people are acting as if there is nothing we can do.

If you don't know what's going on, I need you to wake up and get engaged.

I have two history degrees. My whole life I've always been the person saying, "When people say, 'This is the most important election ever," it just shows how little they know about history.'"

So please believe me when I tell you that THIS is the most important election (cycle, not just presidential race) that you will likely ever be a part of.

Trump is not Hitler. He's too stupid to be Hitler.

But our democracy only held together in 2020 because of a few people like Mike Pence who were willing to stand up against Trump when it was truly the last line of defense. I know that's hard for some of you to hear, but whatever you think of his beliefs, Pence showed he has integrity and stands by the Constitution.

There will be no Mike Pences this time around. Trump will not make the mistake of surrounding himself with those who are not fully committed to him.

Trump is a convicted felon. He is running to avoid his convictions and likely jail time more than anything else. If he wins, he will be able to pardon himself of his federal crimes, but he's going to keep acting like Donald Trump. If he's still alive in 2028, do you think he will leave the White House peacefully and just submit to further cases against him?

Please watch John Oliver's recent expose on Project 2025 and Trump's Second Term. It is linked in a comment below.

Trump and his administration are already putting in place plans for sweeping reforms that truly will make America look like The Handmaid's Tale. Presidents usually will push for more when they're in their second term because they don't have to worry about another election campaign, but this is different. This is about dismantling the democratic system so that it only benefits the most radical conservatives and Christians.

Christians, I am one of you. I was raised Evangelical (capital E meaning politically motivated culture warrior), and I am still evangelical (lower-case e, referring to theological beliefs). This is not the posture of Christ-followers. There is no good that comes from state-mandated religion, which both coerces people to claim that they are believers for social and cultural clout AND waters down the true religious fervor of the church because most people are only nominal believers.

There is NOTHING about Christian Nationalism that is in the best interest of Christians or in the best interest of the neighbors Christians are called to sacrificially love. If you need a reminder of who your neighbor is, read Luke 10:25-37.

Please start talking with your friends. Young people, please register to vote and bring your friends to do the same.

I know so many of you are disillusioned. I am too. Things that are going on in Palestine and Ukraine and so many other places make it very hard to vote for people with "D"s behind their names (especially after the recent presidential debate).

But punishing Joe Biden is not the revenge you want to pursue here. Are you unhappy with him giving Israel $12.5 billion? I am too, but do you think that number won't be repeated multiple times under Trump? Again, I was raised Evangelical. A staple of (politically-focused) Evangelicalism is that Christians (and thus America) must support (the modern state of) Israel no matter what because they have a hyper-literal understanding of the verse where God tells Abraham that he will bless those who bless him (including his descendants who became Israel).

Do not underestimate the importance of that view in their ideology. Nearly every member of my biological family has shunned me for suggesting that this is not a blanket endorsement of every action the modern state of Israel takes.

Trump is a criminal running for president to save his skin. He supports Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel who is now himself wanted for war crimes. Trump has aligned himself with the authoritarian leaders/dictators of Hungary, China, North Korea, and Russia. He is open about his love for Russian president Vladimir Putin's authoritarian regime and stands against Ukraine's democracy and national sovereignty.

This is what happened before World War I and World War II.

I know this isn't what you follow me for.

But George Lucas was showing the dangers of authoritarianism. He shows that democracy is hard. It's frustrating trying to negotiate with people you disagree with vehemently. It may seem like nothing gets done.

Go and watch the Naboo picnic scene. Go and do it. And after chuckling at all the funny memes it's given us, let me tell you why it scares me so much.

Because Padme laughs.

Anakin tells her who he is, and she laughs.

She passes it off as a joke, or as flirting, or maybe even as just the ignorant views of a boy who views life as far more black and white than she knows it to be.

But the alternative to all of that frustrating democracy, all that gridlock in the Senate, all those choices and compromises you have to make in order to benefit the people at all ... the alternative is a dictator who says, "I will make all the decisions for us."

That's why there are people who applaud Palpatine. That's why we as viewers see Bail and Padme as the reasonable ones and think it's crazy that anyone would applaud, but they do.

The applaud because Palpatine says, "You don't have to be frustrated anymore. You don't have to be worried about those who disagree with you anymore." Safety and security and ease are powerful temptations when you live in a polarized society, and Palpatine offers them all of those things.

That's why many people applaud Trump, too.

There were also people who applauded Palpatine who did see the danger of what he was doing. But they applauded because it was easier to do so. He had already amassed power because they didn't stand up to him before. They applaud him now because standing against him now would have dire consequences they wouldn't have faced if they had stood against him before.

So vote. And get your friends to vote.

If there is any part of you that believes Star Wars has important things to tell us about real life, then I need you to fan that flame into a fire.

Otherwise, you won't be living in the prequels anymore. You will be living in the time of the Empire.

Vote.

#Star Wars #The Clone Wars #Star Wars Rebels #The Mandalorian #The Acolyte #Padme Amidala #Satine Kryze #Anakin Skywalker #Obi-Wan Kenobi #Obitine #American Politics #Politics #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #Vote #2024 Elections #John Oliver #Christianity #evangelicalism

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bloodbenderz · 4 years ago

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humaniterations (dot) net/2014/10/13/an-anarchist-perspective-on-the-red-lotus/ this article from oct 2014 is very dense — truly, a lot to unpack here, but I feel like you would find this piece interesting. I would love it if you shared your thoughts on the points that stood out to you, whether you agree or disagree. you obv don’t have to respond to it tho, but I’m sending it as an ask jic you feel like penning (and sharing) a magnificent essay, as is your wont 💕

article

i know this took me forever 2 answer SORRY but i just checked off all the things on my to do list for the first time in days today so. Essay incoming ladies!

ok im SO glad u sent me this bc it’s so so good. it’s a genuinely thoughtful criticism of the politics in legend of korra (altho i think its sometimes a little mean to korra unnecessarily like there’s no reason to call her a “petulant brat” or say that she throws tantrums but i do understand their point about her being an immature and reactionary hero, which i’ll get back to) and i think the author has a good balance between acknowledging like Yeah the lok writers were american liberals and wrote their show accordingly and Also writing a thorough analysis of lok’s politics that felt relevant and interesting without throwing their hands up and saying this is all useless liberal bullshit (which i will admit that i tend to do).

this article essentially argues that the red lotus antagonists of s3 were right. And that’s not an uncommon opinion i think but this gives it serious weight. Like, everything that zaheer’s gang did was, in context, fully understandable. of course the red lotus would be invested in making sure that the physically and spiritually and politically most powerful person in the world ISNT raised by world leaders and a secret society of elites that’s completely unaccountable to the people! of course the red lotus wants to bring down tyrannical governments and allow communities to form and self govern organically! and the writers dismiss all of that out of hand by 1. consistently framing the red lotus as insane and murderous (korra never actually gives zaheer’s ideas a chance or truly considers integrating them into her own approach) 2. representing the death of the earth queen as not just something that’s not necessarily popular (what was with mako’s bootlicker grandma, i’d love to know) but as something that causes unbelievable violence and chaos in ba sing se (which, like, a lot of history and research will tell you that people in disasters tend towards prosocial behaviors). so the way the story frames each of these characters and ideologies is fascinating because like. if you wanted to write season 3 of legend of korra with zaheer as the protagonist and korra as the antagonist, you wouldn’t actually have to change the sequence of events at all, really. these writers in particular and liberal writers in general LOVE writing morally-gray-but-ultimately-sympathetic characters (like, almost EVERY SINGLE fire nation character in the first series, who were full on violent colonizers but all to a degree were rehabilitated in the eyes of the viewer) but instead of framing the red lotus as good people who are devoted to justice and freedom and sometimes behave cruelly to get where theyre trying to go, they frame them as psychopaths and murderers who have good intentions don’t really understand how to make the world a better place.

and the interesting thing about all this, about the fact that the red lotus acted in most cases exactly as it should have in context and the only reason its relegated to villain status is bc the show is written by liberals, is that the red lotus actually points out really glaring sociopolitical issues in universe! like, watching the show, u think well why the fuck HASN’T korra done anything about the earth queen oppressing her subjects? why DOESN’T korra do anything about the worse than useless republic president? why the hell are so many people living in poverty while our mains live cushy well fed lives? how come earth kingdom land only seems to belong to various monarchs and settler colonists, instead of the people who are actually indigenous to it? the show does not want to answer these questions, because american liberal capitalism literally survives on the reality of oppressive governments and worse than useless presidents and people living in poverty while the middle/upper class eats and indigenous land being stolen. if the show were to answer these questions honestly, the answer would be that the status quo in real life (and the one on the show that mirrors real life) Has To Change.

So they avoid answering these questions honestly in order for the thesis statement to be that the status quo is good. and the only way for the show to escape answering these questions is for them to individualize all these broad social problems down into Good people and Bad people. so while we have obvious bad ones like the earth queen we also have all these capitalists and monarchs and politicians who are actually very nice and lovely people who would never hurt anyone! which is just such an absurd take and it’s liberal propaganda at its best. holding a position of incredible political/economic power in an unjust society is inherently unethical and maintaining that position of power requires violence against the people you have power over. which is literally social justice 101. but there’s literally no normal, average, not-politically-powerful person on the show. so when leftist anarchism is presented and says that destroying systems that enforce extreme power differentials is the only way to bring peace and freedom to all, the show has already set us up to think, hey, fuck you, top cop lin beifong and ford motor ceo asami sato are good people and good people like them exist! and all we have to do to move forward and progress as a society is to make sure we have enough good individuals in enough powerful positions (like zuko as the fire lord ending the war, or wu as the earth king ending the monarchy)! which is of course complete fiction. liberal reform doesn’t work. but by pretending that it could work by saying that the SYSTEM isnt rotten it’s just that the people running it suck and we just need to replace those people, it automatically delegitimizes any radical movements that actually seek to change things.

and that’s the most interesting thing about this article to me is that it posits that the avatar...might actually be a negative presence in the world. the avatar is the exact same thing: it’s a position of immense political and physical power bestowed completely randomly, and depending on the moral character and various actions of who fills that position at any given time, millions of people will or won’t suffer. like kyoshi, who created the fascist dai li, like roku, who refused to remove a genocidal dictator from power, like aang, who facilitated the establishment of a settler colonial state on earth kingdom land. like korra! she’s an incredibly immature avatar and a generally reactionary lead. i’ve talked about this at length before but she never actually gets in touch with the needs of the people. she’s constantly running in elite circles, exposed only to the needs and squabbles of the upper class! how the hell is she supposed to understand the complexities of oppression and privilege when she was raised by a chess club with inordinate amounts of power and associates almost exclusively with politicians and billionaires?? from day 1 we see that she tends to see things in very black and white ways which is FINE if you’re a privileged 17 yr old girl seeing the world for the first time but NOT FINE if you’re the single most powerful person in the world! Yeah, korra thinks the world is probably mostly fine and just needs a little whipping into shape every couple years, because all she has ever known is a mostly fine world! in s1 when mako mentions that he as a homeless impoverished teenager worked for a gang (which is. Not weird. Impoverished people of every background are ALWAYS more likely to resort to socially unacceptable ways of making money) korra is like “you guys are criminals?????!!!!!” she was raised in perfect luxury by a conservative institution and just never developed beyond that. So sure, if the red lotus raised her anarchist, probably a lot would’ve been different/better, but....they didn’t. and korra ended up being a reactionary and conservative avatar who protected monarchs and colonialist politicians. The avatar as a position is completely subject to the whims of whoever is currently the avatar. and not only does that suck for everyone who is not the avatar, not only is it totally unfair to whatever kid who grows up knowing the fate of the world is squarely on their shoulders, but it as a concept is a highly individualist product of the authors’ own western liberal ideas of progress! the idea that one good leader can fix the world (or should even try) based on their own inherent superiority to everyone else is unbelievably flawed and ignores the fact that all real progress is brought about as a result of COMMUNITY work, as a result of normal people working for themselves and their neighbors!

the broader analysis of bending was really interesting to me too, but im honestly not sure i Totally agree with it. the article pretty much accepts the show’s assertion that bending is a privilege (and frankly backs it up much better than the original show did, but whatever), and i don’t think that’s NECESSARILY untrue since it is, like, a physical advantage (the author compares it to, for example, the fact that some people are born athletically gifted and others are born with extreme physical limitations), but i DO think that it discounts the in universe racialization of bending. in any sequel to atla that made sense, bending as a race making fact would have been explored ALONGSIDE the physical advantages it bestows on people. colonialism and its aftermath is generally ignored in this article which is its major weakness i think, especially in conjunction with bending. you can bring up the ideas the author did about individual vs community oriented progress in the avatar universe while safely ignoring the colonialism, but you can’t not bring up race and colonialism when you discuss bending. especially once you get to thinking about how water/earth/airbenders were imprisoned and killed specifically because bending was a physical advantage, and that physical advantage was something that would have given colonized populations a means of resistance and that the fire nation wanted to keep to itself.

i think that’s the best lens thru which to analyze bending tbh! like in the avatar universe bending is a tool that different ethnic groups tend to use in different ways. at its best, bending actually doesn’t represent social power differences (despite representing a physical power difference) because it’s used to represent/maintain community solidarity. like, take the water tribe. katara being the last waterbender, in some way, makes her the last of a part of swt CULTURE. the implication is that when there were a lot of waterbenders in the south, they dedicated their talents to building community and helping their neighbors, because this was something incredibly culturally important and important to the water tribe as a community. the swt as a COLLECTIVE values bending for what it can do for the entire tribe, which counts for basically every other talent a person can have (strength, creativity, etc). the fire nation, by contrast, distorts the community value of bending by racializing it: anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is inherently NOT fire nation (and therefore inherently inferior) and, because of the physical power that bending confers, anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is a threat to fire nation hegemony. and in THAT framework of bending, it’s something that intrinsically assigns worth and reifies race in a way that’s conveniently beneficial to the oppressor.

it IS worth talking about how using Element as a way to categorize people reifies nations, borders, and race in a way that is VERY characteristic of white american liberals. i tried to be conscious of that (and the way that elements/bending can act in DIFFERENT ways, depending on cultural context) but i think it’s pretty clear that the writers did intend for element to unequivocally signify nation (and, by extension, race), which is part of why they screwed up mixed families so bad in lok. when they’ve locked themselves into this idea that element=nation=race, they end up with sets of siblings like mako and bolin or kya tenzin and bumi, who all “take” after only one parent based on the element that they bend. which is just completely stupid but very indicative of how the writers actually INTENDED element/bending to be a race making process. and its both fucked up and interesting that the writers display the same framework of race analysis that the canonical antagonists of atla do.

anyway that’s a few thoughts! thank u again for sending the article i really loved it and i had a lot of fun writing this <3

#this is 2.1k words LMFAOO #asks #analysis #do i have an analysis tag?#crit #lok crit

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ishkah · 3 years ago

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On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence

Introduction to what it means to be on the far-left

So first off, as socialists & anarchists, we know we are far outside the Overton window. We know even if left-wing policy positions are more popular than right-wing, most people are still going to be biased to what they’ve grown up with and what’s familiar to them.

But, we also know we can shift the Overton window from the radical fringe: [1]

The most important thing about the Overton window, however, is that it can be shifted to the left or the right, with the once merely “acceptable” becoming “popular” or even imminent policy, and formerly “unthinkable” positions becoming the open position of a partisan base. The challenge for activists and advocates is to move the window in the direction of their preferred outcomes, so their desired outcome moves closer and closer to “common sense.”

There are two ways to do this: the long, hard way and the short, easy way. The long, hard way is to continue making your actual case persistently and persuasively until your position becomes more politically mainstream, whether it be due to the strength of your rhetoric or a long-term shift in societal values. By contrast, the short, easy way is to amplify and echo the voices of those who take a position a few notches more radical than what you really want.

For example, if what you actually want is a public health care option in the United States, coordinate with and promote those pushing for single-payer, universal health care. If the single-payer approach constitutes the “acceptable left” flank of the discourse, then the public option looks, by comparison, like the conservative option it was once considered back when it was first proposed by Orrin Hatch in 1994.

This is Negotiating 101.

So our hope is that our ideals and passion can be admired by some, like risking prison to sabotage the draft for Vietnam, so some peoples sons aren't conscripted into fighting an evil war. [2] Then any moderate left policies might look reasonable in comparison which makes them the tried and tested policies of the future.

We should also openly acknowledge that the ideal future we would like to see is empirically extremely unlikely to come about in our own lifetimes in the west, as there are still so many hills to climb first in pressuring workplaces over to a more co-operative flattened hierarchy of workplace democracy.

To quickly summarise, the direction the far-left would like to head in, is going from; a two party system, to... a multi-party coalition through preferential voting, to... some local government positions being elected by sortition, to… the majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

Now I might be the minority in the far-left on this, but I would want people to have the option of going back a step if people aren't ready for that level of direct democracy, where the choice is disorganization and suffering or slightly less suffering under a repressive system of governance again. You could relate this to the position Rosa Luxemburg was in in lending support and hoping some good would come of the Spartacist uprising, whilst also wishing they could have been convinced to hold off until they were more prepared.

This is why it’s so important to build the governance model slowly enough to match expertise, so as not to falter with people pushing for ideals before having adequately put them to the test. So as not to cause a whiplash effect, where people desire a reactionary politics of conformity, under more rigid hierarchy of just the few.

As anarchists & socialists who desire a more directly democratic society, what tactics should we use if we want to be effective at moving society in that direction?

Electoral politics - We need to get really well educated on how even the baby step policies toward the left would be an improvement on where we are now, we need to learn the internal politicking of government and get good at having friendly arguments with comedy to appeal to friends and acquaintances basic intuitions.

The goal being that we can talk the latest news and (1) Win over conservatives to obvious empirically better policies on the left, and (2) Win over liberals when centre-left parties are in power to feel dismayed at the slow pace of change, and so acknowlege how much better it would be if there was a market socialist in the position willing to rally people to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

Mutual aid – We should put the time into helping our neighbours and volunteering, for example on a food not bombs stall, to get people to see the positive benefits of a communalist caring society.

Theory – We should be educating ourselves and helping others know what work and rent union to join, what to keep a record of at work, how to defend yourself from rapists and fascists, how to crack a squat and how to write a press release, etc.

Campaigning – We should look for the easiest squeeze points to rack up small wins, like the picketing of a cafe to reclaim lost wages, so that word spreads and it creates a domino effect.

What tactics should we or shouldn’t we generally avoid in our political campaigns?

Civility as an end in itself

They’re not lies, they’re “falsehoods”; it’s not racism, it’s “racially charged comments”; it’s not torture, it’s “enhanced interrogation.” For years, U.S. media has prioritized, above all else, norms and civility.

Mean words or questioning motives are signs of declining civility and the subject of much lament from our media class. However, op-eds explicitly advocating war, invasion, sanctions, sabotage, bombing and occupation or cutting vital programs and lifelines for the poor are just the cost of doing business. What’s rhetorically out of bounds - and what isn’t - is far more a product of power than any objective sense of "civility" or “decency.”

Where did these so-called norms come from, who do they benefit, and why is their maintenance–-even in the face of overt white nationalism––still the highest priority for many liberals and centrists in U.S. media? [3]

This is so important to challenge, and yet incredibly nuanced. So, it is obviously a great success that the rate at which people would go around hurling racist insults looks to have dropped in favour of more political correctness.

It is also true that in pursuit of political correctness and an ethic of care, we can look for simplistic niceness, to the detriment of being able to identify systems of oppression. We need to be able to refuse the emotional labor of treating our bosses as friends when we have no desire to be friends with them. [4]

Similarly in our everyday interactions, we need to encourage our friends to accept us for who we are or not to accept us at all, so as to create deeper connections which builds stronger communities: [5]

It can be annoying or hurtful when others presume they know everything about you. But rather than assert their wrongness and make them defensive, you can acknowledge it as a common human failing and find creative ways to hold a mirror up to what life experiences they’ve had that lead them to jump to those conclusions.

One way is a kind of playful authenticity, telling a lie about a lie, to get back closer to the truth. So don’t outright challenge the idea, but don’t live up to it either, in fact live down to it. Playfully undermine the idea by failing to live up to the glamour of what it would mean to be that person, then find a way of revealing that it was a misunderstanding all along, so they needn’t worry about it applying to you.

Media Chasing – We shouldn’t chose our actions for the primary purpose of provoking conversations because it is insincere to ones own desires to materially affect change and it’s recognised as such by those who hear about it.

Transparency – We should be transparent with our supporters in all we hope to achieve and how successful we are being at achieving that task, so as not to attract funds for labor we haven’t and aren’t likely to be able to do.

Civil Disobedience – Whether it be breaking the law without causing any damage or economic sabotage and political violence which we’ll talk about later, anarchists hope to chose the right actions to provoke conversations and materially challenge unethical industries and actors, so as to push electoral politics towards direct democracy and eventually consolidate our gains in a revolution.

Fascists will also use tactics from civil disobedience to political violence, and tend toward violence against people for people holding ideas as the things they hate, rather than the lefts systemic critique of material conditions. All in the hopes of pushing society towards a more authoritarian constitutional republic, before seizing power in a palace coup and attempting to rule as a sequence of dictators for life.

It is up to the left to try and counter this violence by doxxing, making their rallies miserable, etc. And it is up to everyone to decide which government to vote in, to enact what degree of punishment to bring down on people breaking the law on either side.

Any direction the society goes in for either not controlling or bowing to which protesters demands is still the moral culpability of the government and those who participated in the party political process.

There simply is an obvious legal and moral difference between for example victimless civil disobedience on the left aimed at all people being treated equally in society like collecting salt from the sea or staying seated on the bus, to the type of violence you see on the right, like Israeli settlers throwing people off their land with arson attacks, stealing another country’s resources against international law.

But again, it is true that to whatever degree anarchists chose bad targets optically, we do to some degree bring the slow pace of change on ourselves by handing the right an advocacy win.

Graffiti & Culture Jamming – Whether it be an artistic masterpiece that no one asked for or altering a billboard to say something funny and political, instead of the advert that was there before pressuring you to consume more and more, most people can be won over by this as a good form of advocacy. Just don’t practice tagging your name a million times over every building in town.

Hacking – Obviously most people agree whistle-blowing war crimes is a yay. Selectively releasing documents to help conservatives win elections however, is a nay.

Sabotage – We should chose targets which have caused people the most amount of misery, for which people can sympathise most, like the sabotaging of draft cards I wrote about at the beginning. So causing economic damage to affect material conditions and make a statement.

We also need to carefully consider the difference between property which is personal, luxury, private, government owned and co-operatively worker owned.

So, it could be seen as ethical to chose material targets of evil actors in order to cause economic damage and make a statement, so long as in the case of personal property, the item has no sentimental value and can be replaced because the person is wealthy. Or is a luxury item that was paid for through the exploitation of others labor. Or is private property, meaning the means of production which should be owned collectively anyway.

It’s an expression of wanting to find an outlet for legitimate anger against that which causes us suffering. For example, if taking the risk to slash slaughterhouse trucks’ tires in the dead of night is how you develop stronger bonds with a group of people and gain the confidence to do amazing things like travel the world and learn from other liberation struggles.

Fighting – First off, I think propaganda by the deed, physically hurting people for the purpose of making a political statement is evil, as it runs counter to our philosophy on the left that material conditions create the person and so we should make every peaceful effort to rehabilitate people.

However, to the extent that some current institutions fail to rehabilitate people and the process of seeking justice through these institutions can cause more trauma, then personal violence to get to resolve feelings of helplessness in the face of evil acts can be an ethical act.

For example survivor-led vigilantism: [4]

“I wanted revenge. I wanted to make him feel as out of control, scared and vulnerable as he had made me feel. There is no safety really after a sexual assault, but there can be consequences.” -Angustia Celeste, “Safety is an Illusion: Reflections on Accountability”

Two situations in which prominent anarchist men were confronted and attacked by groups of women in New York and Santa Cruz made waves in anarchist circles in 2010. The debates that unfolded across our scenes in response to the actions revealed a widespread sense of frustration with existing methods of addressing sexual assault in anarchist scenes. Physical confrontation isn’t a new strategy; it was one of the ways survivors responded to their abusers before community accountability discourse became widespread in anarchist circles. As accountability strategies developed, many rejected physical confrontation because it hadn’t worked to stop rape or keep people safe. The trend of survivor-led vigilantism accompanied by communiqués critiquing accountability process models reflects the powerlessness and desperation felt by survivors, who are searching for alternatives in the face of the futility of the other available options.

However, survivor-led vigilantism can be a valid response to sexual assault regardless of the existence of alternatives. One doesn’t need to feel powerless or sense the futility of other options to take decisive physical action against one’s abuser. This approach offers several advantages. For one, in stark contrast to many accountability processes, it sets realistic goals and succeeds at them. It can feel more empowering and fulfilling than a long, frequently triggering, overly abstract process. Women can use confrontations to build collective power towards other concerted anti-patriarchal action. Physical confrontation sends an unambiguous message that sexual assault is unacceptable. If sexual violence imprints patriarchy on the bodies of women, taking revenge embodies female resistance.

Other examples we can think of are personally desiring to fight fascists in the street to block them from marching through immigrant communities. To pushing your way through huntsman to save a fox from getting mauled to death by dogs.

Political killing

I’ll work through hypotheticals from circumstances relevant to the past, present and future, then talk through the ethics of each.

Past possibilities

Most people agree anyone who took it upon themselves to assassinate Hitler a day before the break out of WW2 would be seen as committing an ethical act, no matter who follows, because throwing a wrench into the cult of personality spell built around Hitler would be a significant set back for the fascist state’s grip over the people. And given all the evidence pointing to the inevitability of war, such an act could easily be seen as a necessary pre-emptive act.

Present possibilities

Most can sympathise with quick revolutions against dictatorships where the result is a freer society, like the Kurdish uprising in Northern Syria which took power from a regime who had rolled tanks on demonstrators and outlawed teaching of their native language.

But, even there, there are key foundations you need to work from, like the probability you won’t just give an excuse for the oppressor committing even worse horrors as was the case with the Rohingya militants who ambushed a police checkpoint, resulting in army & citizen campaign to burn down many villages, plus murder and rape those that couldn’t get away.

As well as a responsibility to put down arms after winning political freedoms and a majority are in favour of diplomacy through electoral politics, like in Northern Ireland today.

Under representative parliamentary systems, the sentiment of most is that even if it could be argued that a war of terror against the ruling class was the easiest route to produce a better society, that it would still be ethically wrong to be the person who takes another’s life just because it’s the easiest way. Since regardless of manufactured consent or anything else you still could have worked to build a coalition to overcome those obstacles and change the system slowly from within.

And I agree, it would be an act of self-harm to treat life with such disregard when you could have been that same deluded person shrouded in the justificatory trappings of society treating your behaviour normally. I don’t think the way we win today is treating a cold bureaucratic system with equally cold disregard in whose life we had the resources to be able to intimidate this week. Time on earth is the greatest gift people have, to make mistakes and learn from them.

So then, an easy statement to make on life under representative parliamentary systems is; outside of absurdly unrealistic hypotheticals, I could never condone purposefully killing others when campaigning against such monoliths as state and corporate repression today.

Breaking that down though; what do I mean by an unrealistic hypothetical? For example the philosophical thought experiment called the trolley problem, where you have a runaway trolley hurtling towards 5 people tied to a track, and you can pull a leaver so the train changes tracks and only kills 1 person tied to a track. Or you can change it to 7 billion to 1 even. Or 7 billion of your average citizens vs. 1 million unethical politicians, police and bosses, to make it political.

Now what do I mean by purposeful, well we can think of for example the most extreme cases of post-partum psychosis which has mothers killing their babies. But more nuanced than that, the rape victim who gets worn down by their abuser for years until they have a psychological break and kill.

That does still leave a lot of lee way for people knowingly taking risks with others lives, not intending to kill, but who are reckless in their actions, such as with some forms of economic sabotage. And I agree such a reckless act would bring up feelings of revulsion for all kinds of reasons like questioning whether the person was really doing it to help people or for their own ego-aggrandizement. All that can be hoped is a person makes a careful accounting of their ability for human error and weighs it against the outcomes of doing nothing.

Future possibilities

We can hypothesise the unrealistic case of 99% of society desiring a referendum on a shift from parliamentary representative system to a federated spokes council system and the MPs dragging their feet, the same way both parties gerrymander the boundaries to make it easier to win despite it being the one issue most everyone agrees is bad, and people needing to storm the halls of power to force a vote to happen.

More likely though, an opportunity for revolution might arise from such a confluence of events as climate refugees and worker gains forcing the state and corporations into trying to crack down on freedoms in order to preserve their power and enough people resisting that move, who are then able take power and usher in radical policy change, with either the army deciding to stand down or splitting into factions.

References

1. Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution - Use your radical fringe to shift the Overton window P. 215.

2. The Camden 28 - The Camden 28 were a group of Catholic left anti-Vietnam War activists who in 1971 planned and executed a raid on a Camden, New Jersey draft board. The raid resulted in a high-profile criminal trial of the activists that was seen by many as a referendum on the Vietnam War and as an example of jury nullification.

3. Citations Needed Podcast - Civility Politics

4. Slavoj Žižek: Political Correctness is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism | Big Think

5. A Love Letter To Failing Upward

6. Accounting for Ourselves - Breaking the Impasse Around Assault and Abuse in Anarchist Scenes.

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anonymousanomieness · 4 years ago

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Cheat the Church of Integrity — Strip the Sanctuary of Truth — Compromise the Cult of Society — Life is YOUR Game

The Political Game at a “Twenty-Twenty” Glance — Mavericks Want a Chance, Not a Stance

“Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” – Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

“Truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!” — Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance)

(Emerson and Thoreau were essentially family — and while I have been inspired by both, here you will find a handful of quotes from Emerson, as his masterpiece, “Self-Reliance,” could not be more beneficial to the individual than it is now, in the 2020s.)

My most recent disappointment with political ideology falls within the realm of vocabulary. Perhaps what is most disturbing is the reality that the term “liberal” has been so recklessly thrown about without any regard for its etymology. It is derived from the Latin word liber, which literally means “free, unrestricted, unimpeded; unbridled, unchecked, licentious.” Yet, we witness today’s so-called liberals regularly begging for State intervention and regulation with regard to personal liberty. A proper example of a liberal should be a growing adolescent seeking to free himself from the grasp of authority…but logic is defied once we realize the actual example is that of a desperate child, seeking to be coddled. Theorists have attempted to justify this by qualifying the term (i.e., classical vs. modern liberalism) – and new terms have arisen, such as “New Left,” in an attempt to settle confusion. However, this is all hogwash. I don’t need an advanced degree in Political Science to understand what “liberal” truly means. My well-informed, logical intuition is not subservient to the convoluted academia surrounding the righteous experts.

“When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.”

While I could potentially dismantle many faulty terms at length, I will remain disciplined to focus on one additional term that particularly troubles me: reactionary. On the widely familiar models of the traditional political spectrum, we find this adjective to be located on the far-right. The common understanding is that people said to fall within this category have a tendency to drastically react to changes proposed by the Left. This implies that the Left actively brings about social change – however, the truth is, the vast majority of leftists do not bring about anything; rather, they merely advocate and petition. It is actually the State that is acting as the Shepherd and providing direction, whether it be at the democratic request of The People, or at the whim of the mighty staff He wields. The sociopolitical stance of the State may waver at any time as it makes its own revisions, and meanwhile, both sides of the spectrum react in some way. If the changes imposed by the State favor the Left, then the Left will react favorably and vocally support the changes, while the Right reacts unfavorably and denounces them. The reverse can occur just as easily, where the Left will react unfavorably and criticize changes made by the State of which they do not approve, while the Right cheers on.

“…Most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars.”

All of this behavior, on both sides, is reactionary, if we are – once again – to pay respect to etymology and logic, rather than outmoded definitions. If anything, “reactionary” is meant to be a replacement for both “liberal” and “conservative,” or “Democrat” and “Republican.” These latter labels, much like a magnetic field, can suddenly and drastically flip, depending on societal circumstances and the motivations of the State. In this instance, to introduce additional terms such as “Modern Democrat” or “New Republicans” to the mix would be ridiculous. It would be better to simply call them all what they truly are: mindlessly reactive sheep. Additionally, we have radical extremists on the far-left and far-right, exhibiting more potent behavior in an effort to lead in tandem with the State. They are the rabid sheepdogs — not heroes for the sheep as many would claim, but instead, the most devout servants to the Shepherd.

Allow me to clarify my use of the word “mindless” in this context. Mindlessness is the opposite of mindfulness, which is the ongoing practice of pure self-awareness. Since we have spawned, we have been crafting stories about ourselves within our own minds. These stories are fiction…but more crucially invigorating is the fact that we, the egos, are the perpetual authors of this creative fiction. You are not merely a profile of predetermined, prepackaged personality traits and qualities; you are the architect of your ongoing life experience. This means, whether you believe it or not, you are always in control of your story.

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

The mindless sheep do not trust themselves enough to fearlessly lead their own lives, so they follow a sheepdog of their choice. Additionally, the rabid sheepdogs on both sides of the spectrum have immersed themselves in the Political Game so deeply, that they have all but lost the pages of their unique, individual stories; they have been trained effectively. Their insistence, deliberateness, and passionate leadership seem to resemble mindful self-authenticity, especially when compared to the robotic behavior of the sheep; nevertheless, their passion is a mental addiction beyond their control. They are but mindless slaves to their own deeply-rooted convictions, mostly due to the Shepherd’s Pavlovian tactics.

Continuing with the political spectrum…Centrists, on the one hand, are mindlessly moderate — moderate because they support a balance of social equality and hierarchy while trying to avoid drastic change, and mindless in the event that they still have faith in collectivist politics at all, while lacking faith in themselves. They are merely undecided, and usually do not possess the wherewithal to take the plunge into pure individualism. They would rather be provided with a narrative than write their own. They are sheep trotting in circles.

Now, let us examine the mindful radical, who is synonymous with the anarchists and insurrectionists. He is very much in touch with his individualism, very much desiring to denounce the contrived narratives being spewed out by the Shepherd and His dogs, and very much in opposition to the collective hive mind. He is the antithesis of the mindlessly radical sheepdog, who is consumed by authoritarianism.

However, deep within the grottos of his soul — as much as he despises it — even the mindful radical knows he has something in common with his arch enemy.

In the spirit of the yin-yang, the mindless radical — on one side — is overwhelmingly dependent on authority and virtue…but he still carries with him a faint memory of a time when his unyielding passion once served himself — a time he wishes to forget. He is able to suppress this memory somewhat easily, because his efforts are positively reinforced by so many who share his position. The mindful radical, on the other side, is overwhelmingly independent…but he still carries with him a faint memory of a time when his unyielding passion once served the collective — a time when he believed the system could work in favor of all, and thus in favor of him. It is this weakness that the other side thrives on, as they ever-so-steadily try to turn him around, and ever-so-gently guide him back to pasture. He must be so careful not to succumb, for this would reveal to him that he is not in fact the fierce and mighty wolf he fantasizes about and so helplessly wishes to be — but only a black sheep; unique from the others, perhaps, but still a sheep.

This leaves us with the mindful moderate — perhaps the most ideal position to take, if one only has the audacity. The mindful moderate is the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and ultimately the biggest threat to the State. The Shepherd may contend with the radical wolves at first, as they are more readily disruptive. However, the Shepherd does not remain idle once the hunt ceases, for He is always peering into the distance — on the lookout for a wolf in disguise — which He will later detain and retrain…or destroy. The State’s Orwellian methods of mass surveillance are living proof of this. Much to the advantage of the mindful moderate, the general public is still grappling with him, mostly because he is hard to spot…and even when he is discovered, his Machiavellian methods allow him to escape consequences. His peers grow increasingly suspicious of him, but he knows all too well that they’ve got nothing on him, for he has been refining his craft for years. While all of the mindlessly reactive sheep were trotting about, trying to keep up with the crowd, and wrestling with superficial matters, the wolf in sheep’s clothing has been imitating them, keeping tabs, and machinating all along.

Why does the mindful moderate keep to himself? Why does he ride the fence, while reaping benefits from both sides? Is he mentally ill? Is he a sociopath? Is he evil?

“Perhaps he’s emotionally injured. Yes, that’s it! He’s just depressed! If we cure him of his depression — if we shoot him up with drugs — he will be all better, and we can nurture him back to order!”

The mindful moderate has been hurt, for sure…but the same holds true for all the others. The mindless reactionaries on both sides entertain themselves with the notion that they are “normal,” while the radicals are simply angry, and the mavericks are hopelessly lonely and depressed. This is because sheep and dogs rule by day, when the sun is there to comfort them. However, when the full moon rises, it is the wolves that rule the night, for the darkness does not deter them. The herd huddles together to calm nerves as it beholds these outsiders howling from afar. When the bright and sunny illusion peters out, the sheep are faced with the horrid truth that these howls are not cries of despair; rather, these are pompous battle cries. The mindfully radical wolf is outspoken, while the mindfully moderate wolf in sheep’s clothing is quietly confident and sly. The mindless are ultimately jealous of this self-confidence, self-prioritization, and self-reliance, no matter how much they pretend to pity it.

“Your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say,--'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.”

The wolf pups once frolicked with the curious lambs, respecting them, until they were all segregated at the hands of the Shepherd and His dogs. The lambs were not at fault for this. The wolf pities the predicaments of the sheep — for he knows the nature of the sheepdog better than they. However, the hatred and fear emanating from the adult herd is far too strong to diffuse. It has been attempted time and time again. This hatred and fear fuels the determination of the mindful radical, who not only seeks to protect himself, but also to glorify the unbridled freedom and autonomy for which he stands. He climbs the highest mountains to maintain his stance.

In contrast, the mindfully moderate, Machiavellian maverick does not bother to fight for a stance; he simply wants a chance — the best chance — for personal success, happiness, and pleasure…or simply contentment. He knows his best chance will not come from fighting the current of a raging river, for even the mighty wolf cannot manage that. No, his best chance will come from waiting patiently, and riding with the current when it suits him. He will fight to defend his interests when necessary, but he knows that his best chance comes not from confrontation, but contemplation. His best weapon is not passion, nor brute strength, but intelligence. His inconsistency — his wavering is not to be mistaken for ignorance or confusion; it is his most effective self-serving strategy.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.--'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'--Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

The maverick is not troubled — only misunderstood. Let us not underrate him, but understand him.

#egoist #egoism #egoist anarchism #anarcho-egoism #individualist #individualism #individualist anarchism #anarcho-pessimism #autonomy #autonomist #autonomism #anticiv #society #anarchy

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ataswegianabroad · 4 years ago

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Alone Amongst the Gum Trees Part 3 - It Was Murdoch All Along

NOTE - this article has been migrated to Medium. As of 2021, A Taswegian Abroad will be closed down, and all of my writing will be published on my Medium profile.

“For some time, Australia’s democracy has been slowly sliding into disrepair. The nation’s major policy challenges go unaddressed, our economic future is uncertain and political corruption is becoming normalised. We can’t understand the current predicament of our democracy without recognising the central role of Murdoch’s national media monopoly.

There is no longer a level playing field in Australian politics. We won’t see another progressive government in Canberra until we deal with this cancer in our democracy.”

- Kevin Rudd - THE CASE FOR COURAGE

Foreword

I started this as a brain dump on July 25th, 2016 just before I flew back to Australia for 4 weeks. I decided to wait to finish it as an “Alone Amongst the Gum Trees” piece after the 2016 US election as it would have directly impacted the outcome.

That was the plan, anyway. I forgot entirely that I had written this draft for almost 5 years. The next thing you know: it’s early 2021, I’m married, have a dog, a car, and my first child is due in August.

My last political opinion piece was from April 11, 2016: a piece on how Bernie Sanders was being treated in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.

So what happened from mid-2016 to early 2021? I didn’t jump back down the political commentary rabbit hole. No more rants on Tumblr blogs. No angry posts on Facebook. The odd spicy tweet about the current election happening between my old home (Australia), my new home (Canada) and the messed up cousin next door (United States). I instead chose to divert my love of writing to sports (see https://thefiftyfooty.com/), technology, and music.

From a political standpoint I chose to mostly stop talking, and to listen. Now don’t become misconstrued: I did not ignore it. I was very active over the Provincial and Federal Canadian elections of 2015 and 2019, I followed the unprecedented US political climate very closely given our proximity to the United States (and learned a lot in the process), and I voted in the most recent 2019 Australian election (my third from Toronto since leaving in 2012).

If I take a step back - I still need to be self-critical: I was defeated and I surrendered to the tidal-wave of the far-right. I was watching the US tear itself in two over race, alternative facts, and radical ideology. I was watching the UK go down a similar path with Brexit and Boris Johnson. I was watching my beloved homeland of Australia continue to confusingly elect damaging conservative governments despite the polls, trends, movements and more indicating it was time for a change.

As I matured into my late 20′s and now early 30′s (*gulp*) I was asking myself: was this how it was going to be? Did the western world just decide “we’re done with progressive views, let stick it in reverse for a bit and see how we go”? If that was true, then why did Canada buck this trend with Trudeau in 2015 & 2019? Why was New Zealand thriving under Arden after 2017 and 2020?

I went to a dark place on this.

But then something amazing happened. Enter former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd talking about wanting a royal commission into Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp empire who control 70% of print media in Australia.

Did he say 70% of all print media in Australia?

I STRONGLY recommend taking 15 minutes to watch this video. It will do a much better job of painting the scene than I ever could. If not, you can still read on through.

youtube

After doing some looking into this: all I can say is that I didn’t have to dig very far to have my fire reignited. All I can think about now is this #MurdochRoyalCommission

My world view has changed, and what I am about to write next will explain a few things that I hope will change yours too.

This is not a left vs right piece. This is not a blame, shame, or complain piece either. I won’t curse or abuse, because this is a self reflection, a cry of encouragement, and a call to action to all who live in and want to protect the political integrity of democracy around the world.

I am here to explain my thought patterns with the goal of having at least one more person under the thumb of Murdoch’s “beast” realise just what’s going on, and to encourage that person to make more informed decisions knowing the facts.

The Path to En-frightened-ment

February 2014 was the last time I updated the long-form political arm of my blog. Back then as a young man exposed to his first bout of political and social disappointment after the 2013 Australian election - I felt the need to get it all out and I did in a little more linguistically brash Part 2 of “Alone Amongst the Gum Trees”.

I was in an interesting position then. I was a 23 year old finding his place in the world - personally, politically, spiritually, environmentally. I was mostly deciding whether or not I was done with Toronto and it if was time to stay home permanently after spending 3 months back in Australia.

I chose no. I left. I came back to Toronto and the rest is history.

Then one day a couple of years later I got us flights back to Australia for a visit. After nearly 3 years avoiding it (mostly because of my post-election distaste for Australian ignorance), it was time to bite the bullet and go home for a bit.

In 2014 I mentioned:

...let’s talk about Australia, how things changed, how it looked from outside the huge wall that the government apparently has built around the country now, and how it looks from a bloke who literally can not wait to leave again.

I had been anxious about that trip for a while. Not because I hadn’t seen everyone for so long or because it was my wife’s (then girlfriend who became my fiance on that trip) first time visiting, it was because Australia had a chance to move away from the “ignorance, inequality, narrow-minded idiocy, and over-conservatism” I mentioned in 2014.

But we didn’t. Turnbull won the 2016 election. I was so angry at the Australian people. I was so scared of that ignorant, greedy, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, narrow minded, privileged, climate denying creature that seems to be slowly devouring the planet.

From that point in time, all I could think about was some sort of big right-wing populist shift happening across the globe. Outside of the obvious ones: Trump in the USA, Johnson in the UK and Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison in Australia, there were a few more extreme cases: Putin in Russia, Marine Le Pen in France, Viktor Orban in Hungary. Then there’s Cambodia, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt etc who saw this as a huge advantage as well. It may not be the end of a progressive vision of the world but it definitely seemed like the beginning of a big switch.

One thing I learned during my political writing hiatus while serving my self-induced “exile” to Canada is that this country was one of the few blips in this trend. Why did Canada choose to elect Justin Trudeau in 2015, a left wing liberal, after 9 years of Harper’s conservative government? Was it simply because Canadians were good and fair people? Did they just fundamentally understand that you need both conservative and progressive governments to advance society? Perhaps they do, and Canadians are most definitely good and fair people regardless of election results. I am even set to become a Canadian citizen myself (and a dual-citizen overall) in 2021.

So where is this all coming from? Why are the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom on a continued path to segregation, protectionism, populism and division while Canada and New Zealand show basically zero of these tendencies?

The News Corp cancer that is Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is the deciding factor.

So What Does Kevin Rudd Have To Do With It?

Mr. Rudd has been living in the USA for the last 5 years and is firmly spearheading the charge in that Rupert Murdoch’s media behemoth “News Corp” has been unlawfully influencing Australian opinion and undermining elections in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States for close to 3 decades (more predominantly in the last 8 years).

Before you read any further I have to be transparent about my opinions of Kevin Rudd. I accredit his “Kevin 07″ campaign as the catalyst for my interest in politics, my decision to study economics at university, and my ongoing support for progressive policies in every federal and state election since 2007. His work has played a big part in shaping me into the person I am today.

Despite my positive position on Mr. Rudd, I am also disappointed he did not action this during his time as prime minister. However, I am “all in” when it comes to what he is standing for, and that is:

Eradicating monopolies in all forms (be it political, business, journalism, etc)

Improving media literacy to encourage fair and unbiased journalism

Avoiding the pitfalls of Murdoch's divisive influence on the USA happening to Australia

There’s a few key factoids to his claims of mass-media bias:

70% of print media in Australia is owned by ONE MAN: Rupert Murdoch (100% owned in Queensland)

Print media influences the national conversation on a daily basis

Rupert Murdoch owns the biggest YouTube channel in Australia (news.com.au)

The line between fact-based and opinion-based reporting continues to blur, resembling that of CNN (Democrats) and Fox (Republican) extreme partisanship in the USA

All of Murdoch’s papers have backed the Liberal/National party in all 19 out of the last 19 federal and state elections

The ABC is breaching the Australian Broadcasting Act of 1983 by not standing up to Murdoch media purely out of fear

Politicians are not standing up out of fear of character assassination

Whether or not Murdoch is backing left or right, Labor or Liberal, the question still remains:

Do you think it is healthy for a FOREIGN PRIVATE ENTITY to own a monopoly level of influence on a sovereign country’s political system for that private entity to use for their own personal gain through targeted media attacks and character assassinations?

Watch This Space...

There are utter mountains of evidence to accompany these claims, and to make sure you can digest what I am trying to say, I recommend that you sink your teeth into the following videos to validate and truly comprehend the size of the tumour we are dealing with:

Feb 20, 2020 - 1h - Friendlyjordies informal interview with Kevin Rudd

This is right before the Covid outbreak in March, which delayed Mr. Rudd’s ability to move for a formal commission into media bias

Provides excellent insight into the ABC’s lack of action, the opportunism of the Green party, and the complete absence of unbiased reporting in Australia

Feb 18, 2021 - 1h 30m - Kevin Rudd Officially Requesting Royal Commission to Australian Senate

The first 20-30 minutes provide Mr. Rudd’s summary of the situation

The remainder of the video consists of questions from both Labor and Liberal senators about Mr. Rudd’s claims

Mar 1, 2021 - 2m - Kevin Rudd speaks to Sunrise about the Murdoch monopoly

Mr. Rudd went on a national flagship morning show to discuss his concerns regarding News Corp

LISTEN to the questions being asked of him: completely disregarding his valid points and dismissing him as “sour grapes”

Channel 7 is not News Corp, so why try to discredit Mr. Rudd? Fear of being targeted by News Corp

Mar 9, 2021 - 1h - National Press Club: The Case for Courage

Mr. Rudd stands up in front of The National Press Club of Australia to promote the four big challenges facing Australia in his upcoming book “The Case for Courage”

He takes questions from journalists from both Murdoch and non-Murdoch media outlets

As I start to conclude this piece, for action to happen, an independent royal commission is required to get to the facts. Mr. Rudd already gathered over 500,000 signatures that were recently sent to Prime Minister Scott Morrison asking for the royal commission to take place, but this is not enough.

Even former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a friend of Rupert Murdoch and political opposite to Mr. Rudd, signed the petition and said the following:

Mr Turnbull, a former Liberal prime minister, said the Murdoch media used to be a group of traditional right-leaning outlets but has now become "a vehicle of propaganda."

He told ABC television's Insiders program on Sunday that Australian democracy was suffering for allowing the "crazy, bitter partisanship" of social media to creep into the mainstream.

"We have to work out what price we're paying, as a society, for the hyper-partisanship of the media," Mr Turnbull said.

"Look at the United States and the terrible, divided state of affairs that they're in, exacerbated, as Kevin was saying, by Fox News and other right-wing media."

I recently sent a (somewhat long) letter to Mr. Rudd expressing my concern for the state of Australia’s media landscape, with it culminating in the following questions:

I am deeply moved and inspired by your bravery to take on "the beast" as you so aptly name it, and I want to boldly ask: how can I help? How can I get involved?

I am yet to hear back from Mr. Rudd himself - but I think if you’ve gotten this far, you know what I am about to say next.

I want to help, learn more, or get involved.

That’s amazing. We’re not asking for money, just action. Here’s some ways you can help is stop the rot:

SUBSCRIBE TO and FOLLOW direct updates from Kevin Rudd:

Website / Newsletters

https://newsroyalcommission.com/

https://kevinrudd.com/

Social media alongside the #MurdochRoyalCommission hashtag on all platforms:

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

Boycott News Corp media sites, publications, and channels

I’ve linked a list of all assets by News Corp above

This includes steering clear of ALL mediums of news owned by these publications and outlets including the respective:

Social media channels and pages

Television and radio news channels

Print and online newspapers and articles

SHARE and spread the word of this cancer affecting our democracy

Talk TO your friends and family (not AT them) and LISTEN to their views - people are not dumb: this will make sense if given time to digest

WATCH the videos posted above as a start, alongside a few more recommendations:

This interview between Friendly Jordies and former Labor Leader Bill Shorten from earlier in March 2021

I learned more about Bill Shorten in the last 20 minutes of this interview than I did in his entire run as opposition leader.

This just goes to show you how utterly mistreated he was by Murdoch media

For a laugh - every episode of Kevin Rudd: PM from Rove McManus’ late night show

I want Australia to remain a safe, secure, and lucky country to raise my family in someday. I care about this very much and plan to ramp up my content around this until we are free from the Murdoch beast and its lies.

Thank you so much for reading, as always, I am happy to discuss.

List of Murdoch (News Corp) Owned Outlets [Expanded Below]

Television

Foxtel (65%)

Australian News Channel

Fox Sports Australia

Streamotion

Fox Sports News

Fox Cricket

Fox Footy

Fox League

Kayo Sports

Binge

Sky News Australia

Sky News Weather

Sky News Extra

Sky After Dark

Australia Channel (News Streaming channel)

Sky News New Zealand

Sky News on WIN

Internet

Punters.com.au — Australian horse racing and bookmaker affiliate.

SuperCoach

Australia Best Recipes

hipages

odds.com.au

Mogo

One Big Switch

Knewz, a news aggregator

Realestate.com.au

Advertising, Branding & Tech

Global

Storyful

News UK

bridge studio

wireless Group

wireless studios

urban media

First Radio

Switchdigital

TIBUS

ZESTY

News Corp Australia

SUDDENLY - Content Agency

Medium Rare Content Agency

HT&E (Here, There & Everywhere)

News Xtend

Radio

News UK & Ireland

wireless Group

talkSPORT

talkSPORT 2

talkRADIO

Virgin Radio

FM104

Q102

96FM

c103

Live 95FM

LMFM

U105

Scottish Sun 80s

Scottish Sun Hits

Scottish Sun Greatest Hits

Times Radio

Magazines and Inserts (digital and print)

News Corp Australia

Big League

body+soul

Broncos

Business Daily

delicious

Escape

Foxtel

GQ Australia

Hit

Kidspot

Mansion Australia

Motoring

Sportsman

Super Food Ideas

taste.com.au

The Deal

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Vogue Australia

Vogue Living

Whimn

Wish

News & Magazines (digital and print)

News UK

The Sun

The Times

The Sunday Times

Press Association (part owned, News UK is one of 26 shareholders)

The TLS (Times Literary Supplement)

News Corp Australia

The Australian including weekly insert magazine The Deal and monthly insert magazine (wish)

The Weekend Australian

Australian Associated Press

news.com.au

New South Wales

The Daily Telegraph

The Sunday Telegraph including insert magazine sundaymagazine

Victoria

Herald Sun

Sunday Herald Sun including insert magazine sundaymagazine

Lions Raw

Samizdat

Queensland

The Courier-Mail including weekly insert magazine QWeekend

The Sunday Mail

Brisbane News

South Australia

The Advertiser including the monthly insert The Adelaide magazine

Sunday Mail

Tasmania

The Mercury

The Sunday Tasmanian

Northern Territory

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trans-advice · 5 years ago

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Actor Michael D. Cohen Has Something to Share: ‘I Transitioned’

Actor Michael D. Cohen in Burbank, Calif. on April 16, 2019.

“We need more sweat!”

On that command, a production assistant takes a spray bottle filled with glycerin and scurries over to actor Michael D. Cohen, making his bald head glisten as a crew stands by at a studio in Burbank, Calif. They’re filming the fifth season of Henry Danger, a farcical superhero saga that is Nickelodeon’s longest running live-action sitcom. In it, Cohen plays a character named Schwoz, a quirky genius who aids the show’s good guys much as Q aids James Bond. In this scene, as a goof, Schwoz is leading some of the show’s younger actors through an aerobic workout. Cameras roll as Cohen, clad in spandex and now suitably sweaty, breaks into action. “Your life begins where your comfort zone ends!” he barks while huffing through the routine.

It’s just a line that Cohen is delivering in his character’s silly accent. But it also expresses an idea that the actor has come to understand intimately, one he is ready to embrace again, whatever it might mean for his future. Spurred in part by the political climate — which in recent years has seen fraught public reckonings around issues related to gender — Cohen wants to publicly disclose a private fact that he has been sharing with colleagues on the set of Henry Danger: Nearly twenty years ago, he transitioned from female to male.

“I was misgendered at birth,” Cohen says. “I identify as male, and I am proud that I have had a transgender experience — a transgender journey.”

Today, there are more actors than ever who are open about having had, as Cohen puts it, a transgender journey. This is in part because there is a proliferation of shows, including Pose and Transparent, that are portraying nuanced transgender characters. But Cohen is rare in that he worked in the entertainment industry for more than two decades before he chose to make this disclosure.

In many ways, the environment is far more welcoming than it was when Cohen first transitioned, back when issues of gender identity were largely relegated to spectacles like The Jerry Springer Show. In Hollywood, figures like Laverne Cox and Asia Kate Dillon have nabbed major roles, helping to shift mindsets among producers and audiences alike. More broadly, there is unprecedented awareness about LGBTQ issues, in courts and legislatures as well as the cultural zeitgeist. Yet that visibility has also spurred backlash from conservatives who cast transgender and gender nonconforming people as a threat to societal norms.

Cohen does not use the word transgender to describe himself, but he does view himself as part of a community that typically embraces that label, and he didn’t feel he could be an outspoken advocate until he made his history known. The actor has grown restless while watching the Trump administration roll back protections for transgender people in schools and the military, as Republicans have fought bills that would protect them from discrimination in public spaces.

“This crazy backlash and oppression of rights is happening right in front of me. I can’t stay silent,” Cohen says. “The level of — let’s be polite — misunderstanding around trans issues is so profound and so destructive. When you disempower one population, you disempower everybody.”

It’s a chilly April evening in L.A., and I’m sitting with Cohen on the otherwise empty patio of a sleek restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. One of the first things you notice about him is the same thing casting directors do: he’s short, just over five feet tall. Tonight, his big eyes are framed under a flat cap and he’s sporting salt-and-pepper stubble that will be shaved before filming starts the next day. As we talk, Cohen has a tendency to fiddle with the cuff of his blue blazer. The Canadian-born actor also has a tendency to crack jokes, displaying the comedic talents that have propelled his career. When asked about how it’s been having the name Michael Cohen lately, for instance, he says that he’s had it: “I’m thinking of changing my name to Paul Manafort.”

Today, a central struggle for openly transgender actors is combatting the expectation that they should play transgender characters. If Cohen has been hemmed in, it’s only by the perception that he’s a character actor — a type of thespian he defines as “not good looking enough to sleep with a leading woman.”

He recalls watching The Carol Burnett Show as a kid in Winnipeg, marveling at the way that television can be unifying for people laughing together on a couch “regardless of whatever else is happening in that family unit.” Though Cohen always wanted to be an actor, there was a time early in his career when he focused on behind-the-scenes work and voice acting instead. “I think I loved acting so much,” he says, “that I didn’t want to do it as a woman.” Eventually, his love of acting won out. Cohen played female roles until he transitioned in 2000, a process that, in his case, involved medical treatment as well as changes in how he presented himself socially.

Some years later, Cohen left the studios of Toronto for Hollywood and started landing roles at a greater clip. In 2014, he began appearing on Henry Danger. Today, more than 750,000 kids tune in to watch the sitcom each week. According to Nickelodeon — which, along with parent company Viacom, shares wholehearted support for Cohen and “diversity in all its forms” — it’s the number one live-action kids’ show on basic cable. Adults may have seen Cohen elsewhere, on sitcoms like Powerless, in films or commercials like a Wendy’s “Biggie Bag” spot that has been airing recently.

Actor Michael D. Cohen on the set of Henry Danger in Burbank, Calif. on April 16, 2019.

Ryan Pfluger for TIME

Another reason Cohen wants to publicly talk about his history now is that he is preparing to put on a new production, a play about his life that has been in the making for the past fifteen years. In the one-man show that he wrote and stars in — called “4 Cubits Make a Man,” a reference to Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian specimen — he chronicles how he came to grips with his identity, as well as how he navigated family, romantic relationships and widespread ideas about what makes someone a man.

“It is not random, it is not arbitrary, it is not chosen,” he says of gender identity. “It’s like trying to negotiate with gravity.”

The play, funny enough to get the audience through the raw pain of many scenes, centers on this tension. “In my experience, I was born male. What my body said about it was irrelevant,” Cohen says. “No matter how hard I tried, it was not up for negotiation. Believe me, it would have been so convenient if I was actually a woman.”

People like him are not, as some social conservatives have suggested in fiery debates about LGBTQ rights, the product of “radical ideology” spreading around the Internet or a figment of anyone’s imagination, he says. “My chromosomes do not dictate my gender. I’m a man,” Cohen says. “It’s not that hard.”

In the play, Cohen also explains why he does not describe himself as transgender.

He understands that this word is commonly used by people who identify with a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth. Many people “feel that does reflect their identity and they’re very comfortable with that, and that’s completely valid,” he says. But, for him, the term feels off, and he does not want to make compromises about how he describes himself at this point in his life. “I have worked so hard to get to the truth and I’ve taken on labels in the past that didn’t feel true for the sake of convenience at that moment,” he says. While the word transgender may describe his past or his transition, he says, he has always felt his “core being” was male, and so that is the language he uses.

Cohen knows that may seem complicated. But that comes with the territory. He believes that animus toward people like him — however they identify — comes in part from the fact that their existence complicates simple maxims about gender. That is part of what has made transgender people a target in political battles over issues like the sports, religious freedom and civil rights. And Cohen wants to stand with them. “These are my people. I belong to this group,” he says of Americans who have been affected by policies like the Trump Administration’s guidance on Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

Though Nickelodeon has been supportive, Cohen knows this is a complicated time to be making this disclosure in Hollywood, too. The entertainment industry continues to grapple with what it means to be inclusive, and while LGBTQ issues are intermingling with kids’ programming more than in the past, sensitivities remain. Cohen is hopeful about the message that his continued presence on the show — which has filmed more than 100 episodes and was recently picked up for 10 more — will send to young viewers who are attuned to issues of gender identity. Yet he is also prepared for backlash from parents.

“People don’t understand. They think this has to do with sexuality and it doesn’t. They think this has to do with pushing an agenda on kids and it doesn’t,” he says. “What it does is send a message to kids that whoever they are, however they identify, that’s celebrated and valued and okay.”

There’s something about Cohen that kids respond to, the producers of Henry Danger say. Maybe it’s his small stature. Maybe it’s his talent for physical comedy. Maybe it’s the feeling that Schwoz is a fantastical bridge between the grownup and kid worlds.

Chris Nowak, the showrunner for Henry Danger, says that colleagues respect what Cohen has told them but continue to see him as they always have: “Just a guy who’s real good at his job.” Jace Norman, a teen heartthrob who plays the show’s protagonist, Henry Hart, says in an email that the news “didn’t change anything about the high level of respect and admiration I have for the guy,” and thinks “it’s in the best interest of the entire world to have every type of person represented on TV.”

On set, Cohen’s news seems to have been processed with little hubbub. Of far more concern is the timing for delivering jokes as he flees, still in his spandex getup, from a frazzled woman who has traveled back from the future to warn everyone that humanity will be enslaved by robots. As she pursues him, Schwoz zips frantically around the show’s secret superhero lair like he’s in a Benny Hill chase scene. In between takes, he jokes that, for this particular episode, he has been drawing inspiration from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

However frivolous it is, when the episode airs, it will reflect a serious reality back to the actor: that the world sees him as he sees himself, a guy who plays another guy on TV. And he hopes that sharing the fuller picture might make the idea of disclosure less uncomfortable for others. “If I tell my truth,” Cohen says, “that gives other people permission to tell theirs too.”

Write to Katy Steinmetz at [email protected].

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star-anise · 7 years ago

Text

Physician, know thy own queer history

I've come to suspect that a lot of LGBTQ+ discourse these days is conservative Protestantism with a gay hat because it's pushed by people who literally are conservative gay Protestants whose worldview hasn't been broadened beyond "now you can have 2.5 kids in a house in the suburbs... with a spouse of the same gender."

My girlfriend Marna has been a queer activist since the late 80s. She’s told me about the incredible deliberation and debates LGBTQ+ activists had, in the late 90s and early 00s as the community began to see past the AIDS crisis and immediate goals of “surviving a plague” and “burying our dead.” There were a lot of things we wanted to achieve, but we had to decide how to allocate our scarce reserves of money, labour, publicity, and public goodwiil. Those were the discussions that decided the next big goals we’d pursue were same-sex marriage equality and legal recognition of medical gender transition.

From hearing her tell it, it seems like it was actually a wrenching decision, because it absolutely left a lot of people in the dust. A lot of people, her included, had broad agendas based on sexual freedom and the rights of people to do whatever they wanted with their bodies and consenting partners—and they agreed to put their broader concerns aside and drill down, very specifically, onto the rights of cis gays and lesbians to marry, and the ability to legally change your sex and gender.

As a political tactic it was terrifically effective. In less than two decades, public opinion in many countries has totally reversed on gay marriage, and we’ve won some truly enormous legal landmarks. Gender transition has entered public consciousness and the first landmark battles allowing people to define their own gender have been won. Marriage equality means that husbands and wives are protected from being banned from their dying spouse's bedside, being forcibly separated from their children, or not being recognized as an important part of their spouse's life.

The LGBTQ+ community knew they were taking a gamble, focusing so exclusively on marriage equality, and trans activists knew that they wouldn’t be able to achieve anything else until they’d gotten basic medical transition recognized. By and large, prioritizing things this way paid off. But they knew going in that there would be costs—and we're reaping them.

Activists of 20 years ago chose to sideline and diminish efforts to blur and abolish the gender binary. Efforts to promote alternative family structures, including polyamorous families and non-sexual bonds between non-related adults. Efforts to fight the Christian cultural message that sex is dirty, sinful, bad, and in need of containment. Efforts to promote sexual pleasure as a positive good.

Those efforts have been going on for the last 20 years, but they're marginalized—activists who had to decide where their finite time, money, publicity, and social capital went literally sat in committee meetings and said, "Marriage equality is our top priority. Legal gender transition is our top priority. Everything else will have to wait."

This happened especially because sex education, sex positivity, and youth outreach were incredibly dangerous areas. Our enemies have been saying for years that all LGBTQ+ people are pedophiles, perverts, seeking to corrupt and recruit children to our cause; anyone trying to teach children basic facts about how to avoid disease, what’s happening to their own bodies, or what possibilities they have for identity and orientation, risks having their name, career, and life ruined. As a sex educator in the 90s, Marna had to tell teenagers, “I can’t answer your questions about safe sex now. Come back when you turn 18.”

So kids who grew up being told that girls and boys are different and ought to lead different lives, and sex is dangerous and sinful and gross, and you definitely shouldn't want sex UNTIL you get married to your One True Love, only had that message tweaked a little bit. Now you can cross the floor from the Girl Side to the Boy Side or vice-versa. Now your One True Love doesn't have to be a different gender from you. But those kids could survive with the rest of their worldview relatively intact. And I think that's what we're seeing in fandom, with an emphasis on "pure" OTP ships, on only including LGBT+ identities that use crisp, clear gender binaries and result in nuclear family life. The rest of those cultural messages about sex and love remain: men’s and women’s worlds are and should be different, "impure" sex degrades and defiles you, sexual urges that do not contribute to your One True Love and family life should be repressed, shamed, or destroyed, and sexual thoughts are every bit as bad as acting on them.

This isn't because kids today are bad or stupid. It's because as a community, we had to decide where our effort was going, and now we need to pay down the debt we've racked up over years of prioritizing marriage equality and legal trans recognition over sex positivity, sex education, and deconstructing gender.

TERFs, SWERFs, exclusionists, and transmedicalists have stolen a march over liberal queers because they're doing the work to educate youth. While liberal queers have been staging protests and lobbying politicians, half a dozen of my undergraduate professors were radical feminists. Communities of exclusionists and anti-sex activists have honed their expertise at engaging teenagers with their ideas and theories. They're the ones writing the FAQs, answering the asks, and doing the groundwork of saying, "Here is a basic framework of sexual ethics for you to follow."

If we want to win back the culture wars, we have to step up our own efforts. Go back to the sex educators and gender activists whose good work has been ignored or underfunded for all this time and support them. Let major LGBTQ+ activist organizations know that their work so far is very nice, but it's time to renew our focus on youth outreach and mentoring young activists. Brainstorm a way to help angry, isolated, disenfranchised young people form communities based around positive action and a sense of belonging. Get into mentorship or education yourself. Help us pivot as a community, to reach out to the kids who have obviously been underserved.

People doing the good work who need our support: San Francisco Sex Information Sex & U Scarleteen Sexplanations Making Queer History

We won a few battles. That's nice. But now it doesn't serve us to whine that they're not all won. We've still got work to do.

(@star-anise: Patreon | Paypal)

#staranise original #lgbt #queer #we have always been here #tumblr purity culture #lgbt discourse tw #queer discourse

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ageofkings · 6 years ago

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Brazil 2018 elections: context and what to learn from it

I'm going to write a long post as a brazilian person who would like people to understand what happened in these elections. The rise of far-right is, obviously, linked to economic and moral crisis, and I believe the given context should help show exactly how this happened in Brazil.

First of all, we lived a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. It was bipartidary as a way to say there was any opposition at all but it made no difference, considering that elections were indirect(that is, not chosen by the actual population, holding power within military hand). It started with a coup d'état lead by the military supported by the USA against the president João Goulart, who while not being a communist at all, was left-wing. However, communist accusations already existed when Juscelino Kubitschek, who actively made it easier for international companies to enter Brazil, was the president. Even if the politician is open to capitalism, they can be painted as a communist for not following exactly USA's plan for them. Remember we're talking about Cold War, and tons of João Goulart's actions affected the USA directly.

While there was strong resistence to the military takeover, some may argue that there was popular support. That's because of the heavily spoken of(at least here) "Marcha da Família com Deus pela Liberdade", translating to March of the Family with God for Liberty: it was headed by people afraid of the "communist danger" in the name of democracy, of all things, and the Catholic Church, then an absolute majority among brazilians. Communism was associated with atheism, and the name of the march might show how big of an influence the Church was in this process.

Fast foward to already existing military dictatorship. While not as many people have died as in, for example, Chile under Pinochet, there was still torture, murder, people dissapearing and exile. And then they might say or you might think: "the only ones who would be murdered or tortured would be those opposing the dictatorship, so if you were not a terrorist, you should be fine!" I know how surreal this sounds but this is an actual thing that has been said on the topic of our military dictatorship more than once. Except one, it isn't ok to murder or torture someone because they oppose a government being overthrown. The direct opposition, like the ones actively fighting militaries, were not the only victims: it is highly suspected that Juscelino Kubitschek(the guy I mentioned earlier that is definitely not a communist) was murdered in 1976, in what was made to look like a car accident. Kubitschek was popular among brazilians and I argue he still is remembered in a good light, which might explain to you why dictators would want to murder such a personality. Now two, there are more reasons to complain considering the dictators sucked at governing?

To counterargument the "bad government" point someone might point out the "Milagre Econômico" or Economic Miracle, a boom in brazilian economy that wasn't real. How so? While our Produto Interno Bruto(PIB, in english known as Gross Domestic Product or GDP) did grow, it was in the hands of the already rich, such as great farmers who increased their production for exportation. You can't even claim it was an attempt to make private companies grow since anything that wasn't already big was forgotten, so neither is private business growing nor are state companies benefitting the population. Just making your GDP grow won't make your economy work! Anyway, inflation grew afterward and even people in the military were complaining(namely poor people who felt it). No matter how much you censor media, when most of the country hates your guts for making them miserable you can't hold on that long, so dictators started to transition to democracy. End. Understand that the elected president Bolsonaro supoorts this dictatorship.

Now let's take a look in 2002. That's when Lula was elected president for the first time, after running a ton of previous times. This man created PT, "Partido dos Trabalhadores" or Worker's Party, came from the working class(and organized strikes!) and is considered the first left-wing candidate after the dictatorship. Say what you will, the guy made some real changes to the country. He ended hunger in Brazil, invested heavily in social programs to remove people from misery, there was an increase in employed people, among other things. Of course, it wasn't perfect; in fact, to be elected, Lula had to align himself with more conservative parties and make himself less radical, otherwise the rich and middle class would not vote for him. Many actions helped the rich, especially great farmers(since economy became, and still is, dependent on commodities).

Conservative parties would not accept so easily to share power with parties so aligned to the left as PT. Internal conflict began and it has been since revealed that there was major bribery involved to make the goverment's social projects be accepted, in what was called the "Mensalão". Either way, Lula got reelected and later elected and reelected Dilma Rousseff as his successor, even if Dilma did not have the same popularity as Lula(and hers only decreased, actually). It is clear to all that Dilma was elected because of PT and especially Lula's legacy.

Dilma faced economic problems, besides protests in 2013 against the raise in bus passes(which isn't responsability of the president but it escalated GREATLY through the whole country and became a generalized protest against the government and corruption) and the disaster that was World Cup in 2014(honestly I don't even remember if it was corruption claims or the fact that people thought it was irresponsible to build stadiums while the country was dying or something). Things slowly turned into "this is PT's fault" and some even asked for military intervention like in the dictatorship, a request carried over to 2018 elections. Dilma just wasn't that popular and the fact she got reelected is, again, mostly because she was Lula's chosen successor. Nowadays, she is treated like a ghost even by the party.

Although she wasn't awful like you'd think, the media painted her as such: a major television station, "Globo", had a big role in this. In fact, the television station is only one of the medias through which it works, and the Globo group actually supported the very dictatorship I've spoken of at the beggining of this text before even having a television station. They have only admited and apologized for this in 2013. They also supported the candidate Fernando Collor de Mello in 1989 by editing the recording of the final debate between him and Lula; Collor won and was impeached later at the discovery of a corruption scandal benefiting himself and others close to him, besides implementing neoliberalism in a disastrous way. As if not enough, Globo viciously spoke of "Operação Lava Jato" or Operation Car Wash, a great corruption investigation that involved inumerous parties. The problem is, PT was clearly a target: everything was done to incriminate its party members, including affirmations that Lula and Dilma knew of all corruption happening and agreed with it. Many of the politicians spoken to were given deals, so that if they gave away someone else's name they might walk out free or have reduced penitences. One particular scandal from this operation, that is still ongoing, regards corruption in Petrobrás, one of the biggest companies of the country(although it has been progressively sold away).

During her second run, Dilma was impeached in 2016 under the claim of "pedaladas fiscais", translated as fiscal pedaling. Not exactly some war crime or corruption scandal, just tactics, and it has been pointed out that it was done in previous governments. Ironically, her vice president Michel Temer(from one of the conservative parties PT had aligned itself for support) wasted no time in making fiscal pedaling legal as soon as he became president. I must also add that Lula was arrested under corruption claims, with one of the fastest trials and investigations we've ever seen, proving that even if the claims are true, the arrest was always of political interest. Funny how corruption always existed in this country but if you may have done it(and in a much smaller scale) and you're left-wing, it's jail time; and for some reason when it is someone from PT being arrested it's big news, but most other arrests from other larties are irrelevant. That's how you throw a coup!

Now, who is Bolsonaro, the now elected president? Jair Bolsonaro has been a federal deputy for Rio de Janeiro(a state heavily associated with factions, gangs and criminality) and part of the city council. He has been thkurgh numerous parties, but spent most of the time in the 21st century in PP, "Partido Progressista" or Progressist Party(fun fact, don't take most of the party names literally because most of them don't align with the party's politics) until switching to PSL, "Partido Social Liberal" or Social Liberal Party for 2018 elections, since PP was involved in corruption scandals that Bolsonaro never addressed. He comes from a military career, having been considered mad by some military members, although others voted for him for his military benefit projects. Essentialy, he was a nobody.

Bolsonaro is a defensor of the torture from the dictatorship, homophobic, racist, misogynistic man, among other things. He has declared such things out loud and his electors either agree with it or believe he "won't really do that". For those who innocently believe in the best of Bolsonaro, why vote for a man who spent 27 years having near to no relevance as a deputy and passing no interesting projects? Simple: even though he has been in politics for so long, he selled himself as renovation by surfing in "antipetismo", the hatred for PT.

Bolsonaro grew through his hate, simply because he was in media. This is a very important part of his whole campaign: he only grew because he was given a platform. Even if most of the people who shared his content did so to say it was hideous, it was spreading him no less. In fact, Bolsonaro went to few debates during elections; while at first it would seem to be because of the stab he was a victim of during elections(yes, he got stabbed by a random guy who used to be linked to left parties so this information was used to turn it into a murder attempt by the left), at one point his doctors said he was allowed to go to debates, but he choose not to. In fact, at one point while there was a debate, Bolsonaro simultaneously gave an interview to another television station, which is illegal(because you're giving more TV time to that candidate when they should be debating with other candidates). Bolsonaro strategically ignored all debates from the middle to the end of the elections because not only his speeches are awful, he has no real knowledge of his own political plans. He claimed that he didn't have to know economy because he won't be an economist, so if anyone wanted to know about it, they should talk to his appointed economist Paulo Guedes(who wants to go for neoliberalism, a fact that attracted many self-proclaimed liberals).

Truly, the only great difference between candidates from PSDB, "Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira" or Brazilian Social Democracy Party and Bolsonaro is outright hate speech and the lack of political knowledge, since PSDB has been running as the main opposition for PT for years with the promise of neoliberalism. So why Bolsonaro instead of PSDB if at least PSDB's candidates have the decency of ignoring the poor without saying it out loud? Things were so bad that even Geraldo Alckmin, a great figure in PSDB and 2018's candidate, said he feared Bolsonaro in power. The television station Globo, even after playing a major role in PT's demonization, was considered a liar; not because of their speech against the left, but for including very shallow talk of LGBTphobia and racism. Even though it still has some influence, it managed to be hated both by conservative right-wingers and the left.

Bolsonaro's image was worshipped as that of a legend. Even if he did barely anything as a deputy, his speeches were seen as fantastic and proof of how he wasn't afraid to say what he thought was best. However, all of Bolsonaro's supporters did not come from here; while it was a high amount(people suspected he could manage 20% of votes), it was not the amount he managed by the end. But after such a growth, and with his name in every media, anyone who wanted to get rid of the big, bad PT could do so by voting in him. Bolsonaro might have been elected, but with much less votes or not elected at all if PT wasn't running, since the great majority who did vote for him just hated PT. I will not really debate if that would be the case as it is still quite the topic among some of the left, but PT has been criticized for trying to go for its 5th mandate in a row; even if it were not a dictatorship, it was easy for the media to sell it as such and demonize PT further. People who tipically voted for center candidates or used to declare vote for no one at all found themselves voting for Bolsonaro.

I find important to notice that in the Northeast region, formed by 9 states, not a single one had Bolsonaro leading. in fact, Haddad won there with values varying from 60% to over 70%, a reality quite different in states more to the south of the country. That's because PT's greatest weakness and strenght is being PT: the party's legacy in Northeast is massive, considering the region was historically ignored by the government. Its countryside is very hit and dry, and lack of water and misery was the rule; the urban cities were not in a much better state, with no investment whatsoever. It doesn't hurt to say that it also concentrates a great amount of black and poor population, due to the great strenght of slavery in this region back in colonial times. PT did a massive job there, so they would easily vote for PT again. Even with all the propaganda against PT, which did influence voters in urban locations, the party is still strong and Northeast in general seems to have a strong conscience regarding candidates of Bolsonaro's type.

That brings us a key problem when we're talking about other regions: historical education. People who allow themselves to ignore Bolsonaro's speech, while majoritarily richer, also include poor people who fell for his neoliberal promises of a better future(it is important to remember that the economic problems Dilma faced included crisis, with people losing jobs and everything) and talk of "good dictatorship times"(which people now won't even bother saying was a dictatorship because "there were elections" and "only terrorists died"). Suddenly, the fact a dictatorship existed was being doubted by growing smaller medias(reforcing the idea that Bolsonaro is an antisystem candidate as well as his speech), and the historic of racism(black people are more likely to be among the poor thanks to slavery and how its end was dealt with, which was by ignoring ex-slaves completely) was laughed at by years of claiming that a diverse country like Brazil couldn't be racist. Racism and homophobia were dismissed because "any more rights would be privilege" when murders are still very real.

I cannot stress enough how much of a role fake news played in these elections: Bolsonaro spread for years that the left and PT were trying to implement "gay kits" including books that taught children as young as 5 or 6 about sex(ironically, the book he appointed barely spoke of gay relations at all). It was repeated over and over and was a strong argument among families against PT, even though PT proved it was a lie many times. Bolsonaro was only forbid to spread the lie at the very end of the elections, when the damage had already been done, and still he spoke of it again and another time after being elected. The electoral justice did nothing about him(and many other problems during this election), proving that the system wanted him elected more than the people did.

Again: Bolsonaro was elected because the media did a really good job in demonizing the left, and especially associating it with communism, the "totalitarian regime that killed millions". It has become common to associate fascism and nazism to the left, because the political spectrum is seen as less state equating right and more state(the great evil!) equating left. If you make a bad government or were associated with corruption scandals, you're left. They made it seem as if the left purposefully gave the poor only enough so that they would be dependent on them. There were also heavy nationalist tones, with people screaming their country's flag would not be red(communism!) and they only want what's best for Brazil. Bolsonaro also brought religious tones along with his moralist ones; in fact, his campaign slogan even mentions Christian God. Catholic Church this time was more left-leaning, but Brazil has Evangelicalism as a strong religion, as well as Bolsonaro's own faith, leading to him grabbing many votes from this population.

The great takeaway from this is: people in Brazil have not learned what is left and right, and it made it easy for the right to exploit it. Even with a dictatorship and corruption scandals so recent, brazilians had their history distorted and were led to Bolsonaro in the most convenient moment. Many of the strategies used are similar to those of Cold War and mirror our dictatorship strongly, which should probably explain to you why Bolsonaro has used the USA as a role model for years and has always been eager to have Brazil linked to Donald Trump. People don't necessarily hate minorities(although some do), they were driven by the narrative of left corruption and excess of minority rights in a still moralist country.

Hopefully this has been enlightening. Give people political education!

#brazil #politics #bolsonaro

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evilelitest2 · 5 years ago

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Defining Politics: What is Liberalism

Ok so this is the big one, because Liberalism as an ideology has kinda...been the largest political force in Western Europe since at least 1776 and we really can just call 200 plus years battles over what exactly Liberalism means. It is not the oldest ideology here, but it is the oldest which was explicitly founded (we will get to Conservatism and Burke later) and so it goes through a LOT of permutations. I am classifying Liberalism and Neoliberalism as separate ideologies here, much to the annoyance of some Marxist readers i’m sure. Also Liberalism is not actually the same thing as “The Enlightenment” but they do overlap.

So important thing to understand about Liberalism, it emerged as an ideology in direct opposition to Monarchy, and so its political ideas are a rejection of Monarchist notions which I will cover later, but just remember all of this liberal rhetoric is being designed as a rejection of the aristocracy, priests, and kings. And there is a LOT of variance Liberals believe that their values will eventually lead to the improvement of all peoples life in the long term, but a rejection of Utopian in the short term. Steady progress is the name of the game to Liberalism

Another note is that I am using liberal mostly in the European sense of the term, in the US liberal just means “left of conservative” but I think that is really telling about how Conservatism is not actually that interest in the Free Market, more on that later.

OK so what makes a Liberal a Liberal? Here are the basic tenants. Remember you can belief these and also beliefs the ideologies of some other world views, like say Socialism or Social Democracy.

See how many apply to you

1) Belief that Capitalism/Free Market (which aren’t quite the same thing but what ever) is to some extend good. This varies from LIberal to Liberal in how much they like Capitalism, but on a basic level, Liberals think that capitalism can ultimately be a good force for good as long as it is managed properly, though how much management that is can vary from an FDR style strict regulation to a more Early America “just the basics”> In contrast to Neoliberalism though, Liberals do believe the market needs to be steered to some extent, but only when “necessary” though that term can mean a lot depending on the Liberal in question

(fun fact, Adam Smith is a lot more pro wellfare than his stans would have you believe)

2) Belief in Democracy. Liberalism basically invented modern democracy and they are very proud of it, participatory government. Again this emerged as a rejection of monarchy, though Liberals aren’t always the best of insuring everybody gets included in said democracy.

Furthermore, Liberals believe that this democracy should be based on the notion of separation of powers, that no single branch of goverment should have absolute control, and tend to design systems with built in checks and balances.

3) Belief in private property. Liberals take this really seriously and property rights are often valued over like...human beings.

(Pictured, my biggest issue with liberalism)

4) Big believers in Civil Liberties, aka Freedom From , like Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Speech, right to a fair trial, legal equality before the law, habeas corpus, protection from search and seizure basically rights that prevent the goverment from infringing on your personal rights. This is in contrast to Social Rights, aka Freedom Too, like right to food, housing, education, etc that Socialists are such great advocates off. Some liberals believe in both, but to be a liberal you only have to believe in Civil Liberates.

5) A secular World View. Liberalism is fairly anti religion and likes to imagine its values detached from spiritual or religious justifications, and tends to promote separation between church and state. Its hard to imagine this now, but in the 19th century liberals were seen as the most radical anti clerical advocates in the world.

6) Love of Enlightenment ideals, specifically Empiricism, Science, and Rationalism. Liberals are really into the notion of rational self interest and get really upset when that doesn’t pan out. They again are not interested in the spiritual.

7) Belief in a Private and Public Sphere, the former being the market and the latter being goverment, ideally working in tandem and balancing each other.

8) Hyper Individualism: LIberals are really into this one, they are far more into the notions of an individuals choices and actions than that of larger society and imagine society made up of individuals making their own choices.

9) Internationalism/Globalism: Liberalism doesn’t feel the need to constrain itself by borders and historically tended to look down on the Nation State as a crude necessity rather than a goal to be reached. Pluralism is a defining element of liberalism

10) Belief in legal equality before the law. One of the main reasons why Liberalism came into existence was a rejection of notions like noble privileges and different legal systems for different types of people. While liberals are often ok with inequality based on wealth, opportunity, or talent, but they don’t like explicit legal inequality based on birth

11) Rule of law. Liberals are really into the notion of the legal system being designed to have the final say over all other concerns, and get really upset when legal systems don’t work as intended

12) Values freedom of information, knowledge, and open to new ideas from every corner, which can sometimes leave them rather blindsided when other ideologies don’t want to play by the rules.

It is also important to remember that since its inception, Liberalism has a bad habit of not including everybody in their body of rights, from the start they have always made exceptions, such as slaves, colonized peoples, the poor, foreigners ect. Many modern day Liberals would argue that this was people in the past not living up to the standards of Liberalism and that we need to actually fulfill the lofty goals set out by liberal thinkers, while others would argue that this hypocrisy is inherent in the system.

(Pictured Hypocrisy)

So finally, where does that put me? Well I basically am a set “yes” for all of these values, though I am only a half way supporter of private property, but I basically agree with all of the tenants of liberalism.

Next up, Socialism

(actually this is a communist painting rather than a socialist one, its just a really cool painting)

#Defining Politics #What is Liberalism #enlightment #Freedom From #Negative Freedom #Positive Freedom #Freedom Too #Socialism #French Revolution #Rule of Law #Capitalism #Free Market #Liberalism #Liberal

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ishkah · 3 years ago

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A Love Letter To Failing Upward

Failing upward is simply the concept of failing by mainstream standards and yet achieving more fulfilling outcomes in the long run. Often this is connected to a feeling of unlocking opportunities you didn’t even know existed.

Power – Failing to take every opportunity to lead from the front

Due to the unfair distribution of power in society in the hands of very few, the good any one person can strive to achieve is immense, because one can imagine wielding the kind of power those at the top currently have to do good. But this power is unnatainable to many.

So, like how a figure like Bernie Sanders could have harnessed the position of presidency to do lots of good, how he did educate the masses on the positives of socialised government institutions and, if he’d gotten into power, mobilise a grassroots movement to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

But, most importantly power can be a mirage. It’s the carrot dangled in front just beyond our reach. We need to create opportunities for ourselves, to achieve great acts of good on our own, like the personal heroism of people flying to Syria to fight Islamic Fascism or organising edible gardens in low-income neighbourhoods.

As well, even though we may cherish those opportunites to do great deeds today, counter-intuitively, the goal should be to move to a world where grand feats of good deeds aren’t necessary or possible. So that more people get a chance to strive to do good.

So a move to devolve government power to a multi-party system through preferential voting, to… Some local government positions being elected by sortition, to… The majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

We all know the experience of living under a conservative culture that accepts bigoted assumptions. And we all know of certain unproductive actions which some counter-cultures have dogmatically valorized as the best form of resistance. Both cultures incuclate their members with a ‘willing epistemology of ignorance.’ That is, a conspiracy to fail to view the world as it is, in exchange for the benefits being a member of that cultural group.

In response, we can simply work hard to fail to be swayed by the fear of what embracing radical compassion will turn you into. Therefore, we must avoid the pitfalls of an illusory politics of resistance which wears its activists out faster than it inspires lasting change.

Time – Failing to rush to achieve a bunch of outcomes without fully considering the value.

With the ever expanding knowledge each new generation is able to harness, the hard material outcomes of our goals in life will always be out performed better or faster than before.

So, while some people fret about failing against others, which makes them feel their life is not worth living, you, by failing to set strict goals for yourself and instead giving a leg up to those around you, can just observe everyone acting around you, contemplate your time and place in history and experience a peace of mind knowing you’re part of the fabric of everything.

We were nothing before we were born and we’ll be nothing again after we’re dead. The zoomed out size of the universe and length of time we aren’t around for overwhelms the blip of time we are here. This not-self follows us like a shadow throughout our life, like a chalk outline on the pavement, with every less able iteration of ourselves in between, refracted along a scale and merging back into the universe with other people’s similar layers.

A philosophical denial is just a view, a theory… it does not get one actually to examine all/ the things that one really does identify with… as ‘self’ or ‘I’, / This examination, in a calm meditative context, is what the not-self teaching aims at. It is not so much a thing to be thought about as to be done.

Finally allow ideas to percolate to the surface, don’t rush to nail down what an experience meant to you for time in perpetuity.

Authenticity – Failing to modify your behaviour to be more comprehensible

It can be annoying or hurtful for others to presume they know everything about you, but rather than assert their wrongness and make them defensive, you can acknowledge it as a common human failing and find nice creative ways to hold a mirror up to what life experiences they’ve had that lead them to jump to that conclusion.

The Middle Way – Failing to achieve short term gratification

Take satisfaction in starting a project with the tools at your disposal in which you have no idea whether it’ll ever be valuable to others, just that you learnt something new and that you really enjoyed the process.

There’s a quote I really like from the Tao Te Ching which explains how we can harness our higher inner character through acting with a conscious awareness about the way the universe works:

The way of heaven is like the bending of a bow. The high is lowered, and the low is raised. If the string is too long, it is shortened; If there is not enough, it is made longer.

The way of heaven is to take from those who have too much and give to those who do not have enough. Man’s way is different. He takes from those who do not have enough to give to those who already have too much.

Knowledge – Failing to keep track of every piece of information

It’s great to live with people who are observant of clues as to your mindset and can offer suggestions to help you or give you the room to learn from your own mistakes where the consequences aren’t dramatic.

It’s less useful to try and acquire every piece of gossip about a person and come into interactions with funny presumptions about who they are and why they act the way they do.

Meaning – Failing to live up to expectations

Through having an accurate accounting of some of the worst possible outcomes at any moment and having a healthy way of coming to terms with that, we can truly decide if the road we want to be on us is as much ‘our choice’ as anything can be.

Compassionate comedy for the wholesomeness of peoples mistakes is one really great way of feeling comfortable in your own skin. In being able to laugh at ourselves, we can feel freer to experiment and enjoy a culture with more complex forms of expression being understood.

Vulnerability – Failing to avoid pain

Love is the feeling that you almost had no other choice than pursuing the road you’re on. It’s both a scary feeling for opening yourself up to pain and a wonderful feeling for realising a passionate interest you may not have even been aware you had. Embrace it.

#personal philosophy #philosophical prose #direct democracy #anarchist #anarchism #anarchist philosophy #virtue ethics #charachter virtue #stoicism #daoism #taoism #buddhism #not self #egoism #anthropology

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velveetacrackncheese · 6 years ago

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Some thoughts.

I think it's very important that we recognize that the shooter's manifesto as something that's part of a trend that exists within the realm of political discourse, and we ought to be careful when singling out a single person. We can simplify it and say that this man was a troll, but at the end of the day, he was what everyone knows he was and was not simply "a troll" and if said individual could only be labeled as a troll, then maybe we should ask ourselves if the little cute personification of "the troll" has contributed to undermining the effects bullying has on people.

It's also important to not fulfill what this man wanted by unintentionally doing what he wanted everyone to do. The idea that certain people have normalized radically conservative ideas isn't something that's hard to acknowledge because it's obviously true, and you don't need him to make that obvious, especially when you realize this incident wasn't even isolated. The issues arise when we point out singular points and state "Oh, this person's named was mentioned! Told you he was shit." And then things become blurry.

That's not to say said individual can't be problematic, but it's a lot better to let this serve as a lesson that the "harmless jokes" were never harmless. The man's actions and what served to inspire those actions are a trend that need to be stopped, and I feel like people who go on the deep end and tell anyone who acknowledges the trends as "giving him what he wants" is counter-intuitive since it fails to solve anything. Only way to get a solution is to acknowledge how society through internet meme culture and it's association with white supremacy creates murderers, and honestly, I wouldn't even say it's specific to meme culture. Simply putting the ideas out there and not taking it seriously whilst letting it fester through the various means it has is what let events like these come into fruition, or at least part of what made it come into fruition. The people who were complacent and being told now that because they refused to listen to what the "SJWS" had to say, are now being really defensive because now their stance is "don't acknowledge anything" despite that not being a viable option. Refusing to look at how white supremacists thrive from lack of criticism and normalizing their ideas through "satire" is why there's so many now. It's not affordable to just say "Oh you're giving him what he wants by acknowledging anything related to the event." And simply saying "pay attention to the victims" doesn't do all it should because... There's people who are sympathetic towards the killer and have anti-immigrant sentiments that reinforces that.

That being said, the media doesn't make it easier by highlighting parts of the situation without giving any real nuance. Their nuance comes down to "Christchurch killer displays white nationalist calling symbol" and of course you as the reader are supposed to go "See! Look at the signs! I told you so." but it's not enough really. A lot of these are really just symptoms of a major illness, and it can't be cured unless we look at the entire picture as a whole. You don't pick out the trends overall and how it contributes to people feeling justified by killing people in Mosques and Synagogues, then you inevitably miss what conditions people to believe certain things, and fail to acknowledge how the media and what you consume in your daily lives plays a big role. How your socioeconomic status plays a role, and how you were brought up. What ideas become normalize and spread to you, and what rhetoric is used to dehumanize someone. Acknowledging the manifesto and what is being stated in it only works efficiently seemingly if you look at it all together, rather than looking at one thing and pointing that out alone. The manifesto itself seemingly is an amalgamation of things that people have pointed out for a while and how certain things being said in media leads to action and ideologically driven crimes because of how extremist thought no longer remains extremist. I mean, fascism for the longest time was considered a taboo subject. Now, it's just viewed as another opinion.

If there's anything to really learn from this though, is that inviting your nazi friend for mimosas really doesn't solve anything in the scheme of the more grand idea of fascism being an attractive ideology to some. These people are self-aware, and none of them had to become what they are now. Better to use your time and energy to deradicalize people who can be deradicalized rather than trying to work with people who thrive on 4chan and praise murderers.

There's a point to be made about acknowledging the victims though because it's obviously important to show the loss of life for those who certainly can sympathize with those individuals. Giving all the attention to the person who committed the crime doesn't look good and works in opposition to what needs to be said in the end, but we still need to acknowledge what inspired the incident in the first place because like I said earlier, we won't be able to prevent this again if we don't. Thoughts and prayers only go so far.

At the end of the day, it's important to acknowledge that these things exist. It's also important to not share them either. Acknowledge these things but don't give the man what he wants. Best way to not give this terrorist what he wants is for people to collectively acknowledge that the conversation we’ve been having about white supremacy has not been constructive. Too many people undermine just how much of an influence media distribution has and how people who are already off the crazy end use the irony and exposure as a recruitment tool. We also have to collectively acknowledge that maybe the way actual fascists operate in a covert yet seemingly obvious manner is having an effect. These things really can’t be ignored, and unfortunately, it seems like only one side of the conversation have been looking at this critically, whilst the other side is either is still on the side of “It’s just a meme bruv. Nobody actually uses memes and shit satire to try and normalize fascist ideology!” despite this being proven time and time again that this is exactly how they operate, or just.. points the finger are people criticizing the lack of genuine conversation surrounding this issue.

#christchurch

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gehayi · 7 years ago

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By SASCHA COHEN June 26, 2015

There is no shortage of feel-good inspirational quotes attributed to Helen Keller. “Never bend your head, hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye,” one of them goes. “Keep your face in the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow,” instructs another. Or, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement.”

Perhaps less catchy and sentimental, and certainly less well known, are the numerous observations on inequality, poverty and class that Keller made during her lifetime as a socialist activist. “Yours for the revolution!” she declared, in a 1919 letter to Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founder Eugene Debs. “May it come swiftly,” she continued, “like a shaft sundering the dark!”

The popular narrative of Helen Keller—born 135 years ago this weekend, on June 27, 1880—is a classic American story about triumphing in the face of adversity, which emphasizes individual determination over political action. But Keller’s true legacy also includes a commitment to socioeconomic justice, which she saw as instrumental to improving the lives of people with disabilities.

In 1933, TIME described Keller as a “blind-deaf mute who has become a highly educated and intelligent young woman.” Born in Tuscumbia, Ala., Keller became ill with a fever at 19 months old, resulting in vision and hearing loss. She was a “spoiled, sturdy little animal,” wrote TIME, “hopelessly limited, and given to wild tantrums when cross.” This changed after Keller’s parents hired Anne Sullivan, a gifted young teacher, to show their daughter how to communicate. Thanks to Sullivan’s care and her student’s own persistence, Keller thrived, going on to graduate from Radcliffe College at age 24. Sullivan “first disciplined [Keller] into docility, then won her affection,” as TIME put it, a process dramatized in the Oscar-nominated 1962 film The Miracle Worker.

Because of the film’s focus, many people know more about Keller’s early years than they do about the remainder of her life. She is most often remembered for proving that people with disabilities can achieve success and live independently. But to frame her life as an up-by-the-bootstraps tale, in which sheer optimism and perseverance solve the personal challenge of disability, is to miss a large portion of what Keller fought for.

After college, Keller read Braille translations of works by Karl Marx, H.G. Wells and William Morris. She joined the Socialist party in 1909, and became an IWW [International Workers of the World] member shortly thereafter, supporting strikes, walking picket lines, giving lecture tours and writing articles for publications like The Liberator. She noticed the close relationship between disability and poverty, and blamed capitalism and poor industrial conditions for both. As Keller told the New York Tribune in 1916, blindness was “often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers.”

In her writings and speeches, Keller called for revolution rather than reform. She had no patience for compromise, and argued that charitable aid did more to assuage the guilt of the prosperous than to improve the conditions of vulnerable people’s lives. Instead, Keller called for the dismantling of an economic order in which “the working class lives in want while the master class lives in luxury.”

Like many radicals of the 1910s and 1920s, Keller was concerned with multiple social-justice causes–she was a pacifist, a suffragist, a birth-control advocate, a supporter of the NAACP and a co-founder of the ACLU. But it was Keller’s socialist values that informed her position on other issues; she opposed World War I, for instance, on the grounds that it served capitalist interests, and helped create the ACLU as a way to protect striking workers from jail and deportation.

Despite these activities, Keller is more commonly remembered for the fundraising and advocacy work she did on behalf of the American Federation for the Blind, a largely apolitical organization. In fact, Keller’s leftist sympathies occasionally ruffled feathers with the conservative members of the American Federation. Her radical views also made her a target of FBI surveillance for most of her life. Still, Keller continued to support socialist and communist leaders, even in the midst of Cold War McCarthyism.

Keller has been given the Martin Luther King Jr. treatment: the more difficult and controversial aspects of her life have been neutralized in educational curricula, as well as in the public imagination. But during a time in which one in four disabled adults live in poverty in the United States, her perspectives on economic injustice remain significant. Inspirational messages on refrigerator magnets and postcards can temporarily lift someone’s mood, but throughout her life Keller wanted more than that. Rather than asking for hope, she demanded equality.

#helen keller #socialism

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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How To Get Rid Of Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-to-get-rid-of-republicans/

How To Get Rid Of Republicans

Opinion: Almost Half Of Republicans Admit Theyre Ready To Ditch Democracy

Getting Rid of the GOP RINOs

Almost half of Republicans are now saying the quiet part out loud: Theyd prefer to ditch this whole democracy thing.

So finds CBS News-YouGov polling conducted in mid-May. The survey asked Republicans a series of questions about the required level of fealty to former president Donald Trump, their views of the 2020 election and priorities for the party going forward.

The results were bleak.

Two-thirds said it was important for Republicans to be loyal to Donald Trump now. The same share said they did not believe President Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election. recent assertion that I dont think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.)

But the most troubling results came from a question about the partys best strategy for winning in 2022 and 2024. If you were consulting for the party, respondents were asked, would you focus on developing a message and popular policies and ideas to win over more voters? Or would you prioritize changes to the voting rules in states and districts?

A whopping 47 percent chose the latter option. In other words, nearly half of those who still identify as Republicans appear to have given up on a key premise of democracy: that you earn the right to govern by proposing ideas that appeal to a majority of the public. Theyd prefer to short-circuit that process and,instead, make it harder for their opponents to vote.

So much for party of ideas, as the GOP once called itself.

Trump Tells Republicans To Get Rid Of Rinos

Former President Donald Trump delivered a fiery speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday. The speech will be seen by many as the first step towards a 2024 comeback, especially given his bold call to action.

Trump called on GOP voters to remove renegade legislators who threaten to split the party.

President Trump vows vengeance on those who betrayed him.

David J Harris Jr

President Trump might have lost the election, but he still enjoys record levels of support among Republican voters and more people turned out to back him than any other GOP candidate in history. On Sunday, he warned the party that RINO lawmakers are threatening to spread division in a party that, at the grassroots level, is united.

The only division is between a handful of Washington, DC, establishment political hacks, Trump said, after naming 17 turncoats who opposed his presidency or voted with the Democrats to impeach him.

Trump ended on an upbeat note, promising to support strong, tough, and smart Republican candidates who can create an effective and united political machine to take on the Democrats.

Thousands Of Voting Rights Advocates Are Rallying Across The Country Saturday To Call For Sweeping Protections Against A Further Erosion Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965

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Thousands of voting rights advocates rallied across the country Saturday to call for sweeping federal laws that would wipe out voting restrictions advancing in some Republican-controlled states that could make it harder to cast a ballot.

Many activists view the fight over voting rules as the civil rights issue of the era. But frustrations have mounted for months because two expansive election bills have stalled in the U.S. Senate, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans and the measures lack the votes to overcome a GOP blockade.

The rallies, which were held in dozens of cities, were intended to increase pressure on Democrats to rewrite procedural rules that would allow Democrats to muscle the legislation through without Republican votes. But they were also aimed at coaxing President Joe Biden to become a more forceful advocate on the issue.

You said the night you won that Black America had your back, and that you were going to have Black Americans backs, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who helped organize the national demonstrations, said at a rally in Washington Well, Mr. President, theyre stabbing us in the back.

More than a thousand people turned out in sweltering heat on the National Mall on Saturday, the 58th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have Dream speech.

Recommended Reading: Did Trump Call Republicans Stupid In 1998

Homosexuals Do Not Deserve Equal Rights

This comes from their religious beliefs, which form the basis for a lot of policy. Republicans believe that homosexuality is a choice and, as such, gay people should not be acknowledged in the same way as other groups. Therefore, according to a Republican, homosexuals should not be allowed to marry, nor should they be allowed to adopt children.

House Gop Leader Says He Backs Ousting Cheney From No 3 Job

WASHINGTON Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy on Sunday publicly endorsed Rep. Elise Stefanik for the post of No. 3 leader, cementing party support of the Donald Trump loyalist over Rep. Liz Cheney, an outspoken critic of the former president for promoting discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

House Republicans could vote as early as Wednesday to remove Cheney, the highest-ranking woman in the Republican leadership and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and replace her with Stefanik, whose ascension has received Trumps backing.

Asked in an interview on Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures whether he supported Stefanik, R-N.Y., for the job of Republican Conference chair, McCarthy responded: Yes, I do.

We want to be united in moving forward, and I think that is what will take place, he said in response to a question about whether he had the votes to oust Cheney, R-Wyo.

McCarthy said the leadership post must focus on a message day in and day out on what he said were the problems of the Biden administration.

You May Like: Why Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

American Democracy Is At Risk From Trump And The Republicans What Can Be Done

The Capitol attack was a warning: US democracy is at risk. To fix the system before the 2022 midterms, two steps have to be enacted

Academics rarely agree about the big issues, and generally hesitate to enter the political fray by signing collective public statements. Yet a few days ago, more than 100 leading scholars of democracy endorsed a remarkable Statement of Concern, which I also signed, warning about grave threats to American democracy and the deterioration of US elections.

We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary including suspending the filibuster in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.

Why the alarm? Is this warranted?

On 14 December 2020, after courts litigated challenges and all 50 states certified the count, the electoral college formally declared the defeat of Donald Trump. Most assumed that the peaceful and orderly transition in power would follow, following historical traditions for over 200 years. Instead, the world was shocked to witness the violent Capitol insurrection on 6 January, triggering five deaths, 140 people injured and more than 400 arrests.

What is to be done?

The Ridiculous Reasons Some Republicans Want To Get Rid Of Liz Cheney

No one is in a hotter seat in today’s Republican Party than Liz Cheney.

The Wyoming Republican, who is the third-ranking member of House Republican leadership, was not-so-subtly called out by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy earlier this week at a GOP retreat in Orlando, Florida.

“There’s a responsibility, if you’re gonna be in leadership, leaders eat last,” McCarthy said. “And when leaders try to go out, and not work as one team, it creates difficulties.” When asked whether Cheney was still a “good fit” for the leadership team, McCarthy responded, “That’s a question for the conference,” Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman reported Tuesday.

Hours later, former President Donald Trump sounded off on Cheney. Here’s some of what the 45th president had to say:

“Liz Cheney is polling sooo low in Wyoming, and has sooo little support, even from the Wyoming Republican Party, that she is looking for a way out of her Congressional race. Based on all polling, there is no way she can win. She’ll either be yet another lobbyist or maybe embarrass her family by running for President, in order to save face.”

What, you might ask, has Cheney done to deserve such opprobrium? Well, let’s take a closer look.

Video: What Liz Cheney has figured out about Donald Trump

1. She condemned Trump for inciting a riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Whoa boy! Pretty radical! And not at all conservative!

Except, wait.

Read Also: How Many Seats Do Republicans Have In The Senate

These Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Trump

The Republican fault lines go in every direction: between the grassroots and the establishment, between big donors and aspiring presidential candidates, between House leaders and Senate leaders.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz says he has seen intraparty battles before, “but this one is so deep and so polarizing and people are so passionate about it I don’t know how you heal it. I don’t know how you bring these people together.”

The biggest internal division right now, says Luntz, is between Republicans who voted for impeachment and voters who opposed it. He found in research this week that 43% of Trump voters say they would definitely vote against any lawmaker who supports impeachment.

“That makes it impossible for Republicans to put together a majority by 2022, and in fact, that’s a direct threat to the existence of the Republican Party overall,” Luntz said.

Republicans Wonder How And If They Can Pull The Party Back Together

How Republicans Will Get Rid of Robert Mueller

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President Trump speaks to supporters on Jan. 6 before pro-Trump extremists launched a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s role in encouraging the siege over false claims of election fraud has hardened divisions in the Republican Party.hide caption

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In a matter of hours on Jan. 6, the Republican Party went from shrugging off its loss of the White House to a party in crisis.

It was becoming clear just before the violent insurrection at the Capitol that the party had lost two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, making President Trump the first president since Herbert Hoover whose party lost the White House, the House and the Senate in one term. And plenty of Republicans blamed Trump for the Democrats’ success in Georgia.

Trump’s own defeat means the GOP has failed to get a majority of votes in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Now, Trump leaves office as the only president to be impeached twice, and the House vote against Trump over the Capitol insurrection marked the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history.

Don’t Miss: How Did Republicans Gain Control Of Southern Governments

Republicans Need To Get Rid Of Mike Lindell

Clueless Mike Lindell caused President Donald John Trump to LOSE Minnesota in a landslide, not win.For the future of the Republican Party, he needs to be ditched. Plus, his own character is quite poor…

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Really Want To Repeal Obamacare

Biden Is An Elusive Target

Republicans have had little success demonizing Biden with independent voters because so many people feel they know him, analysts said.

The president has been a fixture in American politics for more than a half-century. A senator from Delaware for more than three decades, Biden participated in many high-profile hearings and congressional debates. He served eight years as vice president to President Barack Obama.

After winning the Democratic nomination for president last year, Biden;racked up more than 80 million votes to unseat Trump despite Trump and his Republican allies lobbing constant allegations of malfeasance against Biden and his son;Hunter, as well as attacks on Biden’s fitness to hold office.;

Some of those attacks have continued into the Biden presidency;but;to little avail.

An average of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics gives Biden an average job approval rating of 54.2%.

The underlying data in those polls shows a common theme: Republicans tend not to like Biden, and Democrats support him strongly, including those who backed more liberal candidates such as Bernie Sanders in last year’s primaries.;

Americans have a generally positive view of the president who casts himself as the product of a working-class environment in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a practical politician willing to work with Republicans on legislation to help Americans.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Also Check: What Year Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch

‘he’s On His Own’: Some Republicans Begin To Flee From Trump

NEW YORK President Donald Trump’s steadfast grip on Republicans in Washington is beginning to crumble, leaving him more politically isolated than at any other point in his turbulent administration.

After riling up a crowd that later staged a violent siege of the U.S. Capitol, Trump appears to have lost some of his strongest allies, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Two Cabinet members and at least a half dozen aides have resigned. A handful of congressional Republicans are openly considering whether to join a renewed push for impeachment.

One GOP senator who has split with Trump in the past called on him to resign and questioned whether she would stay in the party.

I want him out, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told The Anchorage Daily News. “He has caused enough damage.

The insurrection on the heels of a bruising election loss in Georgia accomplished what other low points in Trump’s presidency did not: force Republicans to fundamentally reassess their relationship with a leader who has long abandoned tradition and decorum. The result could reshape the party, threatening the influence that Trump craves while creating a divide between those in Washington and activists in swaths of the country where the president is especially popular.

President-elect Joe Biden isn’t putting his weight behind the effort yet, suggesting there’s not enough time between now and his Jan. 20 inauguration to pursue impeachment or any other constitutional remedy.

There Arent Real Forces Within The Gop Leading Change

There is some appetite for change within the GOP. In those 2024 polls, at least a third of Republicans either were supporting a GOP presidential candidate other than Trump or were undecided.;

In YouGov Blues polling, only about 40 percent of Republicans identified themselves as Trump Republicans. A recent survey from Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, a GOP-leaning firm that worked on Trumps presidential campaigns, found that about 40 percent of Republican voters didnt want Trump to continue to be a leader in the party. Those numbers dont necessarily mean that those voters want the GOP to change drastically. But there is a substantial number of Trump-skeptical/ready-to-move-on-from-Trump Republican voters. But that sentiment isnt really showing up in the Republican Partys actions during the last three months basically everything GOP officials in states and in Washington are doing lines up with the Trumpian approach. So what gives?;

related:Why The Recent Violence Against Asian Americans May Solidify Their Support Of Democrats Read more. »

It is hard to see Republicans changing course, even if a meaningful minority of voters in the party wants changes, without some elite institutions and powerful people in the party pushing a new vision. And its hard to see real anti-Trumpism forces emerging in the GOP right now.;

Also Check: How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans Are There

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statetalks · 3 years ago

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How To Get Rid Of Republicans

Opinion: Almost Half Of Republicans Admit Theyre Ready To Ditch Democracy

Getting Rid of the GOP RINOs

Almost half of Republicans are now saying the quiet part out loud: Theyd prefer to ditch this whole democracy thing.

The results were bleak.

So much for party of ideas, as the GOP once called itself.

Trump Tells Republicans To Get Rid Of Rinos

Trump called on GOP voters to remove renegade legislators who threaten to split the party.

President Trump vows vengeance on those who betrayed him.

David J Harris Jr

The only division is between a handful of Washington, DC, establishment political hacks, Trump said, after naming 17 turncoats who opposed his presidency or voted with the Democrats to impeach him.

Trump ended on an upbeat note, promising to support strong, tough, and smart Republican candidates who can create an effective and united political machine to take on the Democrats.

Thousands Of Voting Rights Advocates Are Rallying Across The Country Saturday To Call For Sweeping Protections Against A Further Erosion Of The Voting Rights Act Of 1965

Article bookmarked

Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile

More than a thousand people turned out in sweltering heat on the National Mall on Saturday, the 58th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have Dream speech.

Recommended Reading: Did Trump Call Republicans Stupid In 1998

Homosexuals Do Not Deserve Equal Rights

House Gop Leader Says He Backs Ousting Cheney From No 3 Job

Asked in an interview on Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures whether he supported Stefanik, R-N.Y., for the job of Republican Conference chair, McCarthy responded: Yes, I do.

We want to be united in moving forward, and I think that is what will take place, he said in response to a question about whether he had the votes to oust Cheney, R-Wyo.

McCarthy said the leadership post must focus on a message day in and day out on what he said were the problems of the Biden administration.

You May Like: Why Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

American Democracy Is At Risk From Trump And The Republicans What Can Be Done

The Capitol attack was a warning: US democracy is at risk. To fix the system before the 2022 midterms, two steps have to be enacted

Why the alarm? Is this warranted?

What is to be done?

The Ridiculous Reasons Some Republicans Want To Get Rid Of Liz Cheney

No one is in a hotter seat in today’s Republican Party than Liz Cheney.

Hours later, former President Donald Trump sounded off on Cheney. Here’s some of what the 45th president had to say:

What, you might ask, has Cheney done to deserve such opprobrium? Well, let’s take a closer look.

Video: What Liz Cheney has figured out about Donald Trump

1. She condemned Trump for inciting a riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Whoa boy! Pretty radical! And not at all conservative!

Except, wait.

Read Also: How Many Seats Do Republicans Have In The Senate

These Are The 10 Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Trump

The Republican fault lines go in every direction: between the grassroots and the establishment, between big donors and aspiring presidential candidates, between House leaders and Senate leaders.

“That makes it impossible for Republicans to put together a majority by 2022, and in fact, that’s a direct threat to the existence of the Republican Party overall,” Luntz said.

Republicans Wonder How And If They Can Pull The Party Back Together

How Republicans Will Get Rid of Robert Mueller

EmbedEmbed

toggle caption

In a matter of hours on Jan. 6, the Republican Party went from shrugging off its loss of the White House to a party in crisis.

Trump’s own defeat means the GOP has failed to get a majority of votes in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Now, Trump leaves office as the only president to be impeached twice, and the House vote against Trump over the Capitol insurrection marked the most bipartisan impeachment in U.S. history.

Don’t Miss: How Did Republicans Gain Control Of Southern Governments

Republicans Need To Get Rid Of Mike Lindell

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Really Want To Repeal Obamacare

Biden Is An Elusive Target

Republicans have had little success demonizing Biden with independent voters because so many people feel they know him, analysts said.

Some of those attacks have continued into the Biden presidency;but;to little avail.

An average of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics gives Biden an average job approval rating of 54.2%.

What Do Republicans Believe In

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Also Check: What Year Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch

‘he’s On His Own’: Some Republicans Begin To Flee From Trump

NEW YORK President Donald Trump’s steadfast grip on Republicans in Washington is beginning to crumble, leaving him more politically isolated than at any other point in his turbulent administration.

One GOP senator who has split with Trump in the past called on him to resign and questioned whether she would stay in the party.

I want him out, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told The Anchorage Daily News. “He has caused enough damage.

There Arent Real Forces Within The Gop Leading Change

There is some appetite for change within the GOP. In those 2024 polls, at least a third of Republicans either were supporting a GOP presidential candidate other than Trump or were undecided.;

related:Why The Recent Violence Against Asian Americans May Solidify Their Support Of Democrats Read more. »

Also Check: How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans Are There

source https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-to-get-rid-of-republicans/

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d33-alex · 6 years ago

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Jordan Peterson and Conservatism's Rebirth

The psychologist and YouTube star has brought the concepts of order and tradition back to our intellectual discourse.

Jordan Peterson doesn’t seem to think of himself as a conservative. Yet there he is, standing in the space once inhabited by conservative thinkers such as G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr. and Irving Kristol. Addressing a public that seems incapable of discussing anything but freedom, Mr. Peterson presents himself unmistakably as a philosophical advocate of order. His bestselling book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos,” makes sense of ideas like the “hierarchy of place, position and authority,” as well as people’s most basic attachments to “tribe, religion, hearth, home and country” and “the flag of the nation.” The startling success of his elevated arguments for the importance of order has made him the most significant conservative thinker to appear in the English-speaking world in a generation.

Mr. Peterson, 56, is a University of Toronto professor and a clinical psychologist. Over the past two years he has rocketed to fame, especially online and in contentious TV interviews. To his detractors, he might as well be Donald Trump. He has been criticized for the supposed banality of his theories, for his rambling and provocative rhetoric, and for his association with online self-help products. He has suffered, too, the familiar accusations of sexism and racism.

From what I have seen, these charges are baseless. But even if Mr. Peterson is imperfect, that shouldn’t distract from the important argument he has advanced—or from its implications for a possible revival in conservative thought. The place to begin, as his publishing house will no doubt be pleased to hear, is with “12 Rules for Life,” which is a worthy and worthwhile introduction to his philosophy.

Departing from the prevailing Marxist and liberal doctrines, Mr. Peterson relentlessly maintains that the hierarchical structure of society is hard-wired into human nature and therefore inevitable: “The dominance hierarchy, however social or cultural it might appear, has been around for some half a billion years. It’s permanent.” Moreover, young men and women (but especially men) tend to be healthy and productive only when they have found their place working their way up a hierarchy they respect. When they fail to do so, they become rudderless and sick, worthless to those around them, sometimes aimlessly violent.

In viewing political and social hierarchies as inevitable, Mr. Peterson may seem to be defending whoever happens to be powerful. But he’s doing nothing of the kind. He rejects the Marxist claim that traditional hierarchies are only about the self-interested pursuit of power. Human beings like having power, Mr. Peterson acknowledges. Yet the desire for it also drives them to develop the kinds of abilities their societies value. In a well-ordered society, high status often is a reward conferred for doing things that actually need to be done and done well: defending the state, producing things people need, enlarging the sphere of knowledge.

Mr. Peterson does not deny the Marxist charge that society oppresses individuals. “Culture is an oppressive structure,” he writes. “It’s always been that way. It’s a fundamental, universal existential reality.” But he breaks with prevailing political thought when he argues that the suffering involved in conforming to tradition may be worth it. When a father disciplines his son, he interferes with the boy’s freedom, painfully forcing him into accepted patterns of behavior and thought. “But if the father does not take such action,” Mr. Peterson says, “he merely lets his son remain Peter Pan, the eternal Boy, King of the Lost Boys, Ruler of the non-existent Neverland.”

Similarly, Mr. Peterson insists it is “necessary and desirable for religions to have a dogmatic element.” This provides a stable worldview that allows a young person to become “a properly disciplined person” and “a well-forged tool.”

Yet this is not, for Mr. Peterson, the highest human aspiration. It is merely the first necessary step along a path toward maturity, toward an ever more refined uniqueness and individuality. The individuality he describes emerges over decades from an original personality forged through painful discipline. The alternative, he writes, is to remain “an adult two-year old” who goes to pieces in the face of any adversity and for whom “softness and harmlessness become the only consciously acceptable virtues.”

Like other conservative thinkers before him, Mr. Peterson’s interest in tradition flows from an appreciation of the weakness of the individual’s capacity for reason. We all think we understand a great deal, he tells his readers, but this is an illusion. What we perceive instead is a “radical, functional, unconscious simplification of the world—and it’s almost impossible for us not to mistake it for the world itself.”

Given the unreliability of our own thinking, Mr. Peterson recommends beginning with tried and tested ideas: “It is reasonable to do what other people have always done, unless we have a very good reason not to.” Maturity demands that we set out to “rediscover the values of our culture—veiled from us by our ignorance, hidden in the dusty treasure-trove of the past—rescue them, and integrate them into our own lives.”

In Western countries, that effort at rediscovery leads to one place. “The Bible,” Mr. Peterson writes, “is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization.” It is the ultimate source of our understanding of good and evil. Its appearance uprooted the ancient view that the powerful had the right simply to take ownership of the weak, a change that was “nothing short of a miracle.” The Bible challenged, and eventually defeated, a world in which the murder of human beings for entertainment, infanticide, slavery and prostitution were simply the way things had to be.

As many readers have pointed out, Nietzsche’s critique of Enlightenment philosophy—he once called Kant “that catastrophic spider”—is everywhere in Mr. Peterson’s thought, even in his writing style. It is felt in his calls to “step forward to take your place in the dominance hierarchy,” and to “dare to be dangerous.” It is felt in risqué pronouncements such as this: “Men have to toughen up. Men demand it, and women want it.”

A famous passage from Nietzsche describes the destruction of the belief in God as the greatest cataclysm mankind has ever faced: “What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?”

Mr. Peterson chronicles the misery of individuals now drifting through this “infinite nothing.” But he rejects Nietzsche’s atheism, along with the conclusion that we can make our own values. In telling readers to return to the Bible, Mr. Peterson seeks to rechain the earth to its sun. That seems impossible. Yet a vast audience has demonstrated a willingness, at least, to try.

For Mr. Peterson, the death of God was followed inevitably by a quick descent into hell. During the “terrible twentieth century,” as he calls it, “we discovered something worse, much worse, than the aristocracy and corrupt religious beliefs that communism and fascism sought so rationally to supplant.” The Holocaust and the gulag, he argues, are sufficient to define evil for us, and “the good is whatever stops such things from happening.”

That is perfectly good Old Testament-style reasoning. Mr. Peterson adds Christian tropes such as the need for an “act of faith,” an “irrational commitment to the essential goodness” of things, a recognition that although “life is suffering,” sacrificing ourselves, as if on the cross, is pleasing to God.

Mr. Peterson’s intellectual framework has its weaknesses. He invokes recent social science (and its jargon) with a confidence that is at times naive. His often brilliant “12 Rules for Life” is littered with Heideggerian rubbish about “the betterment of Being,” in places where a thinker of Mr. Peterson’s abilities should have seen the need for a more disciplined effort to understand God. He lacks Nietzsche’s alertness to the ways in which the great religious traditions contradict one another, leading their adherents toward very different lives. Thus while Mr. Peterson is quite a good reader of the Bible, it is at times maddening to watch him import alien ideas into scripture—for instance, that the chaos preceding the creation was “female”—so as to fill out a supposed archetypal symmetry.

Nonetheless, what Mr. Peterson has achieved is impressive. In his writings and public appearances, he has made a formidable case that order—and not just freedom—is a fundamental human need, one now foolishly neglected. He is compelling in arguing that the order today’s deconstructed society so desperately lacks can be reintroduced, even now, through a renewed engagement with the Bible and inherited religious tradition.

Before Mr. Peterson, there was no solid evidence that a broad public would ever again be interested in an argument for political order. For more than a generation, Western political discourse has been roughly divided into two camps. Marxists are sharply aware of the status hierarchies that make up society, but they are ideologically committed to overthrowing them. Liberals (both the progressive and classical varieties) tend to be altogether oblivious to the hierarchical and tribal character of political life. They know they’re supposed to praise “civil society,” but the Enlightenment concepts they use to think about the individual and the state prevent them from recognizing the basic structures of the political order, what purposes they serve, and how they must be maintained.

In short, modern political discourse is noteworthy for the gaping hollow where there ought to be conservatives—institutions and public figures with something important to teach about political order and how to build it up for everyone’s benefit. Into this opening Mr. Peterson has ventured.

Perhaps without fully intending to do so, he has given the dynamic duo of Marxism and liberalism a hard shove, while shining a light on the devastation these utopian theories are wreaking in Western countries. He has demarcated a large area in which only conservative political and social thought can help. His efforts have provided reason to believe that a significant demand for conservative ideas still lives under the frozen wastes of our intellectual landscape.

If so, then Mr. Peterson’s appearance may be the harbinger of a broader rebirth. His book is a natural complement to important recent works such as Ryszard Legutko’s “The Demon in Democracy,” Patrick Deneen’s “Why Liberalism Failed” and Amy Chua’s “Political Tribes.” Representing divergent political perspectives, these works nevertheless share Mr. Peterson’s project of getting past the Marxist and liberal frameworks and confronting our trained incapacity to see human beings and human societies for what they really are. As the long-awaited revival of conservative political thought finally gets under way, there may be much more of this to come.

by Yoram Hazony, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2018 www.wsj.com/articles/jordan-peterson-and-conservatisms-rebirth-1529101961

Mr. Hazony is author of “The Virtue of Nationalism,” forthcoming Sept. 4.

#psychology #philosophy #conservatism

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