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bustedbernie · 3 years ago

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You can't actually think that the average person is as much to blame for climate change as billionaires who erase years of progress with their own personal space race. Right? Tell me how me using paper straws or freezing in the winter/roasting in the summer is going to counter a CEO ordering a forest cut down a day.

Think you're being obtuse lol. That post isn't about the damage the rich do alone. It's about how leftists are using that harm to refuse their own accountability and their own ability to make small changes and in doing so, they are giving up their collective power to make larger changes. Experts have made it clear that it's not just about "billionaires," so you can shut up with that.

The crisis is going to demand LARGE changes from all of us - and yes, some of those changes are going to be uncomfortable. Set your thermostat at 80 in the summer and at 60 in the winter. Bodies adjust and those temperatures are safe for most everyone. In many climates, AC isn't necessary for more than 3 weeks of the year. Including where i live in the Southwest.

Stop using straws altogether and get rid of disposable items at restaurants - it's not hard. And if you're not the few who may need a plastic straw, then stop hiding behind them to avoid your own ability to change. Take the bus, and plan where you live so that you can. Live in a smaller space. Get a bike. Eat less meat and keep red-meat to an absolute minimum. And yes, vote and advocate for people who can make real change and regulations at the top to make changes for US easier to do in our daily lives while also multiplying the impact.

but don't forget that these corporations function toward demand - and they do listen - and they do know change is coming and preparing for it. If you can afford to, start using the power you do have, and you DO HAVE it, and stop hiding behind some convenient wall so that you can think you're exempt from making any changes in your own life - assuming you actually care about the climate crisis at all and aren't just using it to channel pure anger at an "other" (this case the rich or the billionaire class).

Anger is a secondary emotion and I think the way it is discharged, including in your ask, is not helpful to you or the crisis. You're just discharging blame. Accountability is a two-way street, and if you actually do make changes, you will be living YOUR values, which is valuable and it does matter. If the paper straw makes you feel more aligned with your values (and it does make a difference, no matter how small), then that is a good thing.

What you've done with this post is what they love to see. They don't actually care that you or I think they're evil, shortsighted, or whatever. Because you hiding behind that is just allowing yourself to remove yourself from the system (which can't be done btw) and enables you to keep buying the products made by the evil billionaires. It's funny how that works, isn't it? Saying it's all the fault of the billionaires while changing nothing you are doing is what they love to see.

why is it that you all talk about how each individual can create a massive collective action leading to a revolution or whatever, but you don't see how that is true, if not even MORE true, on this subject? Critical Mass bike rides have politically made it possible for cities to invest in more bike infra. Using reusable jars and containers on bulk items at your local coop reduces plastic individually, and also demonstrates a market for less plastic packaging. You might still need to buy certain things in plastic, but the more you buy available in other packaging helps enable even more. Even Target is now selling deodorant tubes made of paper and toothpast sold in aluminium tubes. I get bulk shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, soap, and cleaning products at my Coop (I in fact now have a plastic free bathroom and nearly plastic free kitchen!).

And like i said, i know my impact is marginal, but it is still an impact. On a personal level, the impacts benefit my mental health, they align with my values, and I find my life more enjoyable. I have a small apartment, but can take the bus or bike everywhere, and I have become more and more a part of a community that shares those values and lifestyles which is enriching. So yes, billionaires are doing a lot of damage, but we live in a society and all play a part. We can work toward holding them accountable and making those changes at the same time we make changes at home. But i have very little respect for people who think they can't make any change or who discharge all their responsibilities on others.

In my 15+ years advocating this way, we have accomplished a rapid transit project in my city that has massively improved public transport in the core, made plastic free options possible at several local Coops and shops, increased commuter bus service from the suburbs, created a commuter rail, grown our bike lane and cycle track network by many, many miles(more than doubling our number of bike commuters),invested in community bike maintenance classes and FREE bikes for low-income or unemployed folks and folks experiencing homelessness, banned plastic one-use bags, have gotten our city and state to use more water capture and permeable concrete in construction, and are helping support a large wind and solar industry (things our region should be especially good at). So idk, If we can make these changes in a sprawling, desert city in the middle of nowhere, then I'm sure there are changes you can start taking part in and advocating for in your city, too. You do have power, and when you put that power to work with other like-minded people, it can be game changing.

But i was recently in Philadelphia talking to someone who had a similar view. They lived 3 blocks from the subway and worked next to a stop, but said "the subway isn't a good option for me" and insinuated they thought it was gross (it's old but perfectly fine and I thought wonderful). They drove to the shop despite living walking distance from a super market. They channeled a lot of the same attitude that I see in your ask. Obviously this person is unique, but I have found a lot of folks with this attitude have similar low-hanging fruit that they are just refusing to take because it would require a modicum of effort. Hate to tell ya, but you've been lied to if you think we can solve this crisis without you evaluating making some changes.

#long and ranty

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nevermindirah · 4 years ago

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Non-Jewish friends, y’all might be wondering right now: Israel is doing clearly unacceptable shit to Palestinians. So, why are some Jews ardent Zionists, and why do some Jews seem to feel personally attacked by criticism of Israel?

A lot of (non-Palestinian) non-Jews have asked me where I stand on Israel/Palestine over the years, apropos of nothing, just because I’m Jewish. For the longest time I felt so stuck because I just didn’t know much about Israel/Palestine and what little I did know turned out to be largely misinformation and I felt so much pressure to say The Correct Thing That All Jews Should Say About This Issue. Obviously the violence Israel is committing against Palestinians is horrific and the interpersonal weirdness individual Jews might experience as people discuss Israel’s horrific violence doesn’t compare. I’m making this post as a small supplement to the important conversations going on about what Israel is doing to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian refugees and their descendants living outside land Israel controls. I’m making this post because non-Jews might be feeling confused by conflicting messages about Zionism as either settler colonialism or Jewish self-determination. It sucks feeling like you have to choose only one oppressed group or another. It’s possible to support Palestinian liberation and Jewish liberation at the same time! Here’s some context that might help.

Palestinian friends will probably want to ignore this post, y’all shouldn’t have to deal with your oppressors’ feelings, and especially not right now.

Zionism is the ideology behind the devastating violence Israel is committing against Palestinians right now and has been committing against Palestinians since 1947-48. It’s heartbreaking and messy to talk about this reality, because Zionism originated as a strategy to protect Jews from antisemitism.

Any oppressed group can turn into oppressors under enough pressure, because humans are flawed. Jews fleeing antisemitism turning into Israelis ethnically cleansing Palestinians happened because Zionism is profoundly influenced by its time and place of origin: 19th century Europe.

Europe invented antisemitism, and basically every European country has done at least one very very bad structural antisemitism, like expelling all the country's Jews (the monarch and/or the church then stole all the wealth the expelled people had to leave behind), looking the other way when peasants murdered a bunch of Jews as an outlet for their frustration with the actual (non-Jewish) ruling class, banning Jews from owning property or holding certain jobs or being members of guilds etc, and of course the big horrific state-sponsored mass-murder operations the Inquisition and the Holocaust. From the 1790s through the 19th century different European governments emancipated their Jews, ie removed legal barriers to full citizenship and economic participation. But this didn't end antisemitism. Just like the legal improvements of the 19th and 20th centuries didn't end antiblackness in the United States.

Also happening in this time: nationalism swept Europe. From the French Revolution through the end of World War I, Europe’s predominant form of government transformed from multiethnic empires to nation-states, countries led by and for a particular ethnic group.

So this Austro-Hungarian dude Theodor Herzl came up with this idea for Jewish nationalism. Every other European ethnic group is getting their own country, so why not Jews? Maybe this is the solution to antisemitism! Maybe we’ll finally be safe if we just all move en masse out of Europe to a place that will take all of us and never expel us!

But also also happening in Europe and around the world in this time: European imperialism and white supremacist settler colonialism. Chattel slavery saw its height and then its end (legally, at least) during this era, but white supremacy entrenched itself across the planet in post-slavery economic practices and cultural imperialism as well as national and international laws.

I believe countries have a moral obligation to take in as many refugees as they can squeeze in. International law protecting refugees has evolved a lot over the past century, but we’re still devastatingly far from every refugee getting a safe place to call home, and the main reason for that is white supremacy. The Biden administration didn’t undo the Trump administration’s horrifically low cap on refugees until like last week and it’s because Democratic party leaders treat centrist white people as more valuable voters than the huge and growing numbers of people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, unmarried women, and working class people who want to vote for elected leaders who get that nobody’s free until we’re all free. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, the US and many other countries turned away untold numbers of refugees fleeing the fucking Holocaust, so odds are slim they’d be more welcoming in less desperate times. Moving from places where Jews are an unwanted minority to places where Jews are still a minority and either still unwanted or little understood and unlikely to win revolutionary levels of support from a largely non-Jewish public seems like a bad plan.

In the mid to late 19th century, lots of Jews took the kernel of Zionism and ran with it in different directions. Maybe this ideology could mean Jewish cultural flourishing alongside stronger political/economic integration into the societies where we’re already living! Maybe it could mean a particular kind of socialism that advocates for the liberation of Jews both as Jews and as workers! Maybe it could mean a revitalization of Jewish religious practice both in Jerusalem where we have important heritage sites and everywhere we live across the world!

Eventually Herzl’s vision of Zionism won out over the others: Jewish nationalism in the sense of a Jewish nation-state, a country that has a Jewish demographic majority and/or that legally privileges Jews over non-Jews.

Problem is, if you want to do that, you have to find a piece of land on which to do it, and Earth was already a pretty crowded place a hundred years ago. Many locations were considered, and the one that ended up winning that debate was Palestine. Where a shit ton of people, mostly non-Jews, were already living. They were forming their own nationalist movement at the time: in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire they began to organize for local self-determination in Palestine.

The Herzl types who developed Zionism as an ideology and built institutions to advocate for and create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine were a small subset of European Jews, mostly men, mostly with significant economic privilege within what Jews were able to achieve in their particular societies at the time. They were just as Orientalist as the non-Jews around them, just as antiblack, just as racist generally for all that Jews were (and sometimes still are) considered non-white in much of Europe. They had a cool idea (put a lot of effort into something that could protect Jews from antisemitism) floating in a bathtub full of shit, and they did practically nothing to protect the cool idea from absorbing that shit. Results of this include thinking about the millions of people already living in Palestine as if they were either like the rocks and the trees that will go with the flow and accept a new ruling class, or indistinct Arabs who would just leave for other Arab countries because what could be the difference — in the staggeringly small amount of time they considered the existing residents of Palestine at all.

This racist hand-waving extended to Zionist leaders’ attitudes about Jews outside Europe as well. White Jews in settler colonies like the US were largely anti-Zionist at the time (not wanting their own countries to accuse them of dual loyalty was a common reason) but European Zionist leaders took what help they could get from Jews in the US, South Africa, Australia, etc. Jews across the Middle East and North Africa, however, barely heard from Zionist leaders about any of this until Zionist militias had removed enough Palestinians from the land and it was time to repopulate it with whichever Jewish bodies were convenient. You might have heard "all the Arab countries expelled their Jews in 1948" but lots of first-person accounts tell a different story of Israel coercing Jews who’d lived securely for a long time in places like Morocco to immigrate to Israel and then confiscating their passports and forcing them to live on less-fertile land with fewer resources while serving as a buffer between Palestinians and European Jewish immigrants. Ella Shohat is the best-known writer on Israeli racism against non-European Jews and I strongly recommend Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Perspective of Its Jewish Victims as a starting point to learn more about this.

Which brings us to today. We still haven’t eradicated antisemitism, several European governments that did a lot of structural antisemitism they still haven’t made meaningful reparations for get to feel good about themselves for “giving the Jews a state” as if carving up the former Ottoman Empire was up to them and not the people who lived there, and millions of people across the world who previously either lived peacefully enough alongside Jews or hadn’t really thought about us much at all now have very valid reasons to be pissed at this country that claims it represents all of us.

Zionism was supposed to protect Jews from antisemitism. And Israel has saved Jewish lives! But if we hadn’t sunk the past 70+ years into an ethnostate we could’ve been putting that energy into other political and economic activity to create adequate international support for refugees while we work on ending root causes of refugee crises, like antisemitism, racism, climate change, and capitalism. Meanwhile Zionism has killed, maimed, incarcerated, stolen from, traumatized, and erased the history of millions of Palestinians just because they happened to be living on land that some dudes who had a lot more in common with Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump than with you or me decided needed to be cleansed for a Jewish ethnostate.

White nationalists in the US love Israel because they want American Jews to go away. Fascist leaders across Europe love Israel for the same reason, so much so that Israel’s prime minister is buddy-buddy with Trump and the equivalent shitstains of several European far-right parties. And I don’t know what it’s like in other white supremacist countries that are close allies of Israel, but the overwhelming majority of Zionist lobbying that pushes the US to give so much aid to Israel comes from Evangelical Christians, because they believe all the Jews have to be in the Holy Land for Jesus to come back. No thanks.

This whole thing fucking sucks. Jews and Palestinians, like all human beings, deserve to be free. Many Jews are understandably afraid of what might happen next if Israel decided to give up on ethnonationalism, allow Palestinian refugees to return, make reparations, and establish a pluralistic democracy that represents and protects all its residents — will some Palestinians murder Jews in revenge? That’s genuinely fucking scary. And it’s genuinely fucking scary to be a Palestinian in Israel/Palestine, and has been for over 70 years. We’ve gotta do something different. I say that as a white person sitting on land stolen from Piscataway people who has thought in detail about what portion of my income would be reasonable for my government to tax in order to fund reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

Ok. One final piece of context before I wrap this up.

Most Jewish institutions in the US are explicitly Zionist, teach children that Zionism is THE way to ensure Jewish safety, and increasingly tell non-Zionist Jews that we're unwelcome or even that we’re not “real” Jews. This comes in a context where it’s only been 76 years since the latest and most gruesome of several attempts to wipe our entire people off the face of the planet. If you grew up in that environment, you, too, might be jumpy about even hearing the words Zionism or Israel, let alone considering the devastation this ideology and country have caused Palestinians.

Jews have a right to exist. Jews have a millennia-old connection to this scrap of land in the Levant, and we have a right to access religiously and culturally important geographic landmarks. What we don't have a right to is murdering or expelling other people in order to make an ethnostate, on that land or any other. Zionism is settler colonialism, but it’s settler colonialism by and for people who have a valid need for protection from structural antisemitism, which means that it’s going to take a lot of messy empathy to undo. The members of my extended family who voted for Trump (non-Jews in my case, though Jared Kushner isn’t the only Jewish Trumpite) are afraid that ending white supremacy will demote them from a privileged class to equal footing with everyone else — that’s the kind of fear individuals work on in therapy, not the kind that’s reasonable for a whole society to prevent from happening. I and millions of Jews do deserve for whole societies to work hard to end antisemitism.

I would never and will never ask a Palestinian to gently request their liberation. But if you’re not Palestinian, and you’ve got a little extra empathy to spare this week, I ask you to remember what I’ve shared here when interacting with Jews about Israel/Palestine.

If you’re a fellow Jew reading this and you feel like Israel is the only way to guarantee our safety, all I ask of you is to sit with the idea that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is too high a cost for safety that’s still not guaranteed, and start to imagine real-world ways we can protect our people from antisemitism without an ethnostate.

I made this post for people who know me (or know of me I guess?) in Old Guard and Cap fandom, despite my better judgment, because talking about Jewish Booker and Jewish Bucky and Jewish Natasha makes me so happy and I think some of the people I love on these characters with might appreciate this perspective. I didn’t provide any links in this post on purpose (to decrease its usefulness, so fewer people will reblog it) because the risk of anon hate when talking about Zionism outside my immediate fandom circles is so high. You’re welcome to reblog this post if you find it helpful! Unless you’re not within a few concentric circles of me, in which case, maybe don’t? If seeing this post makes you want to send me anon hate, no need: many people who share your perspective have already done so on Twitter.

Reliable sources on all this info are a few googles away, and I apologize for the things I know I oversimplified as well as any things I might have misremembered. I’m an American who’s never lived in Israel/Palestine who is posting this on my fandom blog.

TL;DR: This is a short ‘n pithy post about the same idea.

TL;DR, fandom edition: The shortest distillation of this anti-Zionist Jew’s feelings on the matter can be found in segment 4 of Five Times Booker Got Wasted on Purim and One Time He Didn’t.

#palestinian liberation #hi i'm an antizionist jew no i don't really want to talk about it #and yet #here we are #long post #mine #antisemitism #settler colonialism #racism #european imperialism #genocide cw

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dhaaruni · 3 years ago

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Do you think voter turnout amongst Dems in an off-election year is still an issue? I ask because I live in Westchester (I know, I’m sorry lol), and our Dem county executive was openly campaigning door to door. When I went to vote, the poll workers were saying how pleasantly surprised they were about the level of voter turnout in this off-cycle election. And voila! Our Dem county exec re-election. I obviously thought he would, but I wonder if campaigning and appealing to each person helped.

Haha omg, how long have you been following me?? I didn't think I'd mentioned my disdain for Westchester in forever!

But as to your question, I think that increased turnout doesn't automatically help Democrats since like, the 2020 general election happened lol. Obviously, we should make it easy for everybody to vote and fight voter suppression and gerrymandering etc. but that doesn't mean Democrats are automatically going to win every single race and we need to stop propagating that narrative since it's both false and doesn't help build support for voting rights reform.

For instance, Beto O'Rourke registered hundreds of thousands ofnew Democrats in Texas since 2018 but Trump got over 1 million new voters in 2020 than in 2016 and Biden ended up losing the state by ~600,000, even though he ran ahead of pretty much every single down-ballot Democrat to the extent Ken Paxton was caught admitting he thought Biden would have won the state if he'd not blocked mail-in ballots from being sent out.

And, even in Virginia this year, turnout was higher than 2017 but Ralph Northam won in 2017 (and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden on the presidential level in 2016 and 2020) because he didn't get clobbered with non-college white women the way McAuliffe did. I'm just still in mild shock that non-college white women swung a full 20% more Republican in just a year like say what you will about historical precedent but that should be a huge alarm bell for Dems, not that most of them will pay attention to it.

But, that doesn't mean that candidates shouldn't talk about kitchen table, bread-and-butter issues a la Bill Clinton! Change happens on the local level, county executives and DA's and sheriffs (who you can elect in some states!!) can have a huge impact on your community in addition to statewide and federal offices, so voting always is imperative just on a civic duty perspective.

#answered #anonymous #politics

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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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whiteliesuk · 4 years ago

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White Lie: Churchill is a wholly good war hero; we should continue to endlessly make the same WWII movies about him as the grumpy, difficult, irate, but oh-so-loved Prime Minister

The reality:

Anyone who’s followed me on any social media platform for any period of time will know how much I despise Churchill. In fact, I sit here restraining myself from launching into a massive tirade… In the interest of keeping some level of decorum and in the hope that readers will take me with some level of seriousness, I’ll refrain from calling him a shithead.

It instils a sense of rage knowing that Churchill was posthumously voted by Brits as the greatest Briton when you know his true colours. The removal of his bust from the White House was enough to create a political scandal on both sides of the pond. Dear god spare us from yet ANOTHER movie/TV series about the man saving Britain in the Second World War. Last week I watched the Darkest Hour to get over a sudden and frustrating break up. Did the movie add anything new? Absolutely not. But note to all womenkind: watching movies about reprehensible men will help you get over reprehensible men.

Politicians have scrambled to be equated to Churchill as though it’s a mark of pride and honour: Blair was compared to Churchill after dragging us into the 2003 Iraq war; Johnson has identified as Churchillian. To be fair, in both these instances, the comparison to Churchill is not entirely misplaced: the former was warmongering and terrorised innocent civilians in an illegal war while the other is a racist reprobate.

You can’t learn about the true nature of British colonialism and not be disturbed by the British obsession with Churchill. An obsession that’s driven by an insistence to see him as a one-dimensional war hero who saved Britain from fascism. This is not to say that Churchill didn’t play a part in saving Britain from fascism (I plan to dispel the myth that Britain alone won the war, without a MASSIVE helping hand from its Empire), but that there is so much more about Churchill that makes him deplorable.

Churchill’s well-documented white supremacism & bigotry

It takes a simple Google search to clue oneself up on Churchill’s racism. There was no two ways about it, Churchill was a white supremacist. Born in 1874, educated at Sandhurst and a Harrovian (always be wary of this lot), he was brought up believing the simple story that superior white men conquered people of colour and brought them the benefits of civilisation.

An explicit example of his beliefs in white superiority was recorded in US Vice President Henry Wallace’s diary: in 1942, Wallace challenged Churchill’s beliefs on Anglo-Saxon superiority during a meeting. Wallace wrote in his diary that Churchill had drank ‘quite a bit of whiskey’ and said in retort: ‘why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority, that we were superior, that we had the common heritage which had been worked out over the centuries in England and had been perfected by our constitution.’ And neither was this merely a drunken slip. Churchill was never shy to utter some of the most racist and vile things: he hated people with ‘slit eyes and pig tails’; people from India were ‘the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans’; he admitted that he did ‘not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people’; and that ‘Aryan stock was bound to triumph’.

But he only said racist things, right? Even Johnson admitted that Churchill sometimes expressed opinion that would be ‘unacceptable to us today’, but it’s what he did, namely his defeat of the Nazis, that matters. To many, Churchill is the equivalent of the racist, old, white boss/manager/CEO who belonged to an older generation, who of course believed and therefore said those things. As long as he didn’t act upon them, then it’s all fine. This prevailing belief explains why the country voted for our currently unashamedly racist prime minister (lest we forget Johnson once referred to ‘cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies’; to African people as having ‘watermelon smiles’; and saying that Muslim women in burqas looked like ‘letter boxes.’)

I would challenge the notion that it’s fine for your boss/manager/CEO, let alone Prime Minister, to be racist in what they say. In fact, Paul Weston, Chairman of the Liberty GB party (a far-right anti-immigration, Islamophobic political party), was arrested in 2014 on suspicion of racial harassment after reading aloud from Churchill’s own book The River War: ‘How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is dangerous in as many as hydrophobia [rabies] in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exists wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.’ Clearly, simply saying what Churchill did could be considered a hate crime.

But I’ll humour those that take the ‘actions speak louder than words’ line and set Churchill’s diatribes against his context and actions:

Churchill was not merely an armchair aristocrat who waited to achieve his political ambitions, but a soldier who set off as soon as he could to take his part in ‘a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples.’ And kill Churchill did: Churchill raided and laid waste to the Swat Valley (now part of Pakistan), destroying houses and burning crops; in Sudan, he bragged of personally shooting at least three ‘savages’. In South Africa, where ‘it was great fun galloping about’, Churchill defended British built concentration camps for white Boers, saying they produced ‘the minimum suffering.’ The death toll was almost 28,000, and while at least 115,000 were swept into British concentration camps, Churchill wrote only of his ‘irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men.’ (Shock, horror, the British were guilty of using concentration camps too. A blog post on this to come.)

On that note, we return to Churchill’s bust in the White House: George W Bush had left the bust near his desk in an attempt to associate himself with Churchill’s heroic stand against fascism (Bush joins the ranks of politicians who deserves an association to Churchill, but not in the sense he intended). Barack Obama had it returned to Britain because his own paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was one of the 150,000 rebellions Kikuyus forced into detention camps during Churchill’s post-war premiership: when the British government began its campaign to suppress the alleged 1952-60 Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, all to protect the privileges of the white settler population. Approximately 11,000 Kenyans were killed and 81,000 detained. In that light, we’ll allow it, Obama.

In 1920, as Secretary of State for War and Air, Churchill advocated for the use of chemical weapons on the ‘uncooperative Arabs’ involved in the Iraqi revolution against British rule: in an official memo he stated that he ‘[did] not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas… I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes. It would spread a lively terror.’ Historians have bent over backwards to excuse this particular comment: Warren Dockter, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and the author of Winston Churchill and the Islamic World, said that Churchill was only ‘proposing to use in Mesopotamia… lachrymatory gas, which is essentially tear gas, not mustard gas.’ Don’t worry all, he wasn’t actually intending to kill people, just to commit a terrorist act. Oh, and Churchill was in favour of using mustard gas against Ottoman troops in WII, Dockter admits, but that was at the time when other nations were doing it too, so it was obviously alright for him to actually intend to kill the masses then.

Finally, as Colonial Secretary, Churchill offered the Jews Israel, although he thought they should not ‘take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience.’ Simultaneously, he dismissed the Palestinians already living in the country as ‘barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung.’ In an address to justify why Britain should decide the fate of Palestine to the Peel Commission in 1937, Churchill was again outspoken about his white supremacist ideology. Specifically, he sought to justify the British displacement of peoples throughout history: ‘I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that was, has come in and taken their place.’

In thoughts, words, and actions Churchill was racist, and his position as a politician meant that his white supremacism had real, tangible effects. Many of which still has relevance today. Despite this, Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s most revered biographer, said that in writing Churchill’s story: ‘I never felt that [Churchill] was going to spring an unpleasant surprise on me. I might find that he was adopting views with which I disagreed. But I always knew that there would be nothing to cause me to think: ‘How shocking, how appalling.’ History is not only written by the victors, but also by historians who are willing to excuse those victors’ vile and abhorrent behaviour.

And I’ve not yet mentioned how Churchill’s so-called heroic actions during WWII killed an estimated 1.5 to 3 million people. Part 2 to follow.

#blm #blacklivesmatter #churchill #britishhistory #worldwarII #racism

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winebrightruby · 4 years ago

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US Senate campaign magic 2020, part 2

(The first post in this series is here.)

(Lists of Republicans and Democrats running for reelection. Open seats are on the Dems post because it was shorter.)

(Campaign Magic part 1)

Campaigns, especially in competitive states/districts, take a lot of resources. They employ staffers and needs tons of volunteers. They need their shipments to arrive on time (campaign merch but also office supplies etc), their vehicles to function, the roads to be clear, the polls to be accurate (the pollsters to be available and skilled), the venues to be available for events, the ads to be persuasive, the technology to work, the phone numbers to be correct, the donors to be generous. And of course, absolute tons of money - tens of millions of dollars. There are bazillions of moving parts. If you aren’t convinced that it’s possible to curse (or bless) a candidate, aim at the campaign infrastructure. (You can make up your own mind about whether you want to target individual megadonors, campaign managers, and campaign surrogates; I’ll just note that it’s an easily adaptable option.)

In previous years, I’d say you can easily go to a campaign office or an incumbent Senator’s local office. During the plague, though, most of those offices are probably closed or minimally staffed. It’s still easy to get campaign taglocks, though. You can print out the campaign’s logo (easily google-able) or, if you’re working to help the campaign and don’t mind giving them money, order a bumper sticker, button, or magnet. You can include street addresses for campaign headquarters or offices, or email addresses/phone numbers.

Obviously, magic paired with mundane action will be more effective than either on their own: Donate money if you can. You can create workings or rituals around that donation, transforming your money into a seed that will grow bountiful rewards or making it into a magnet that will draw in even more money.

Donate time/effort if you can. Campaigns always need people to phonebank, and you can do it from home (in many if not all cases, even if you don’t live in that state). They’ll give you scripts and everything. You can layer glamours into your voice to make yourself more persuasive, or work memory charms on the voter reminder postcards to really sear it into people’s minds.

Talk to your real-life social circle. Research has shown that one-on-one conversations are the single most effective way to change people’s minds and keep them changed. I’m not saying you need to harangue everyone you know about why they should vote for your candidate. I am saying that, if it’s possible for you, asking people you know “Who are you voting for?” can open a lot of doors.

Volunteer as a poll worker. I’m not gonna advise you on any ethically-questionable, devious polling place magic. Rather, working at the polling place gives you an opportunity to work protection spells, charms to clear away fear or anger so that people can vote their true ideals, etc etc. Also it’s a nice, civically-minded thing to do, especially this year -- most poll workers are elderly, and they shouldn’t have to put their health at risk. We of the younger generation(s) need to step up whenever possible.

Register to vote. Vote early if possible. Vote by mail if possible. Vote on Election Day if you haven’t already. Make all your friends and family do it too. This one isn’t magical (unless you really want it to be, but I’m gonna leave that up to y’all to figure out). It’s just really fuckin important. You can google every part of this process, and in most states it’s not complicated. “How do I register to vote in [state]”? Type it into google. If you really need a step-by-step breakdown, message me what state you live in.

This is it from me for now. My goal with these posts was to draw attention to a more nitty-gritty level of the 2020 election, one that I think will be easier to affect than the presidential election. I hope it’s sparked some ideas and given some well-meaning people a place to start focusing their skills.

#Americana #US politics #campaign magic #witchblr

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slightlyburnedpopcorn · 4 years ago

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This is going to be a little bit of a different post than I usually do because usually on my blog I just reblog shit but. I don’t care. This is gonna be a long one boys so buckle up.

Disclaimer: George Orwell was homophobic as fuck and my intention is in no way to glorify him. 1984 is a work I care a lot about, but I am not ignoring the problematic aspects of the author and his work. I still think the book has a lot of valid points around using language to manipulate people and censorship, and this is just a really long rant I wrote at one in the morning after one too many arguments with someone about the book.

Thanks,

Your local angry bisexual who keeps burning her popcorn

If I see someone throw 1984 to cry censorship because they don’t want some racist statue removed from public areas, or because history textbooks are recontextualizing how terrible imperialism is, or some shit like that, I will eat the entire novel. Because maybe then I can somehow find a way to communicate the use of censorship in the book that will get through people’s skulls.

1984 is not just about censorship. Yes, there is the concept of constant surveillance, but that is its own beast to tackle. And it’s not necessary to discuss in this essay-turned-rant (but I encourage you to read about it and draw your own conclusions). It is about the manipulation of language and media to effectively brainwash the population into a constant state of cognitive dissonance (aka doublethink, or holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously), especially when said population is in a particularly vulnerable place.

Literally one of the main concepts of the book is newspeak, a language devised specifically to be as “efficient” as possible by simplifying grammar and restricting vocabulary down to the bare minimum needed to communicate. This is a direct way to control the thoughts of the people. If you are feeling “rebellious” or “oppressed”, how on earth are you able to communicate those feelings without the words to do so? Yeah, you can say it exists because you are obviously experience it, but how do you tell other people? And if you can’t tell other people, does it exist? It’s basically linguistic gaslighting! While newspeak is a very extreme form of mass mind control, more insidious versions of this concept can be seen in modern media. What sounds worse: civilian casualties or collateral damage? What is the goal of the news outlets who use those phrases?

I’m gonna use two headlines as an example: First is from Fox News, second is from NY Times.

I am not going to get into the content of the article, I am going to focus on the language used in the headline alone. IMMEDIATELY, Fox News is purposely using inflammatory language in order to incite outrage in the reader. By saying that leadership is needed after a fatal shooting, it creates a picture in the reader already that CHOP zone is a dangerous and unregulated area that needs tighter restrictions. Just using CHOP alone without explaining what it creates the feeling of violence thanks to the subtext of the actual word “chop”. Meanwhile, the NYTimes article uses more neutral-sounding language, describing what happened in Seattle’s autonomous zone like how a high schooler would write an academic paper. The headline is sterile but still effectively communicates what is describing.

Why am I explaining these differences? Because these headlines are describing the same story.

Changing the language in a piece changes the emotional reaction to it. Who are you more likely to be enraged at when you finish reading that article? What is the motivation of the new source when they write it like that?

Look I picked Fox News and NYTimes because it is the easiest and most obvious way to show this concept. Why did I bother to do that? Because these tactics don’t need to be on such an extreme scale to be an issue (even if I think that they currently are on an extreme enough scale). Strategies like these can be used to trick the public in a turbulent state into believing the most extreme beliefs that otherwise would have been considered nonsense.

On a related note, you wanna know something about Ingsoc, the totalitarian regime in 1984?

The people fucking voted it in. The population of England in the novel willingly gave up their rights because they fell for these specific tactics in a time of instability because they felt like it was a better option. They thought they would end up in a better place. They were tricked into a dictatorship by having their information manipulated by those in power who controlled it. The entire point of this is to show how any country could fall into a trap like this (If you want an example of the US Government manipulating information to trick the public besides Cold War propaganda, look into COINTELPRO).

Now after explaining the central concept in the novel, you can see why using this book as a defense against the removing statues of Confederate soldiers, as if it will lead to the removal of all monuments, is fucking stupid. Do you want to know why people use this book as a defense? Because Winston’s (the main character’s) job is to rewrite history to suit the needs of the government. They are taking the literal surface-level analysis and applying it to a situation that it does not at all apply to. Why doesn’t it apply? Winston’s job is not only to rewrite history but to literally wipe any evidence of any events ever happening that contradicts Ingsoc’s belief.

Without having to explain the actual in-universe plot, that’s like if in the middle of the Cold War the United States suddenly decided to tell the entire population that they are not fighting against Communism and the Soviet Union, but against the United Kingdom and capitalism. Meanwhile, they are also telling the population that the United States has been communist the whole time, and that their enemies have always been the United Kingdom and capitalism. And then Winston has to remove any evidence that contradicts the now-communist US’s war with the UK and capitalism.

Rewriting history and recontextualizing people and events is not censorship. In fact, it should be done whenever possible as more information and differing perspectives are made more accessible.

What is censorship? Preventing this information to be brought to light. What is the easiest way to control people? To keep them uninformed.

Removing monuments, renaming locations, any form of recontextualization is not the same thing as destroying any evidence of an alternative narrative.

And if you were taught to believe otherwise, then you need to question the motivation of the people in power who decided that it should be interpreted this way.

Because they are the real-world big brother.

And if you are focusing on the surface-level narrative of censoring historical information and not the greater context of what is being actually being censored and how, then you are falling in the exact same trap that 1984 describes.

TLDR: Stop using 1984 as a defense for censorship without understanding 1.) what is actually censorship and 2.) the specific and insidious form of censorship used in the novel and how people in power in our own country use this in current times. Throwing the novel around as if something like removing Confederate soldier statues from public parks is at all akin to censorship but ignoring how news media and politicians manipulate language to control public thought is exactly what big brother wants.

This is probably nothing new! This is probably repetitive! I don’t care, because this is an actual argument I constantly have with people!

Further info below the cut because this is long enough as is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe64p-QzhNE Ted Ed on the term “Orwellian”

https://www.wired.com/story/gone-with-the-wind-hbo-max/ Why HBO Max removing Gone With The Wind temporarily in order to add content warnings for its racist depictions is not censorship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship Wikipedia article on censorship

http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/censorship American Library Association Explanation and Resource Guide on the First Amendment

https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1347&context=senproj_s2018 A long but informative paper on monuments, their role, and a comparison between the US and South Africa’s debates on their removal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO Wikipedia article on COINTELPRO that is a really good example of the government manipulating public thought

#censorship #history #recontextualization #politics #usa #united states #long post #confederacy #monuments #manipulation #language #1984 #news #news media #get rid of all of those fucking confederate monuments #stop glorifying this shit

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fantastic-nonsense · 5 years ago

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Winners and Losers of the 6th Democratic Debate

Winners:

Biden: Surprised the hell out of me and actually sounded competent and actually put together tonight. Still had some really weird and skeevy af answers, but overall came out sounding pretty good. Points deducted for unnecessary shouting, being dragged by Bernie a couple of times on his foreign policy, his inability to articulate his record on military policy, and the really odd and awkward segue into the story about the kid with the stutter.

Warren: Liz desperately needed a comeback night after her drop in the polls and god did she deliver. She sounded coherent and put together, was on message, was far more aggressive than she had been in previous debates (but effectively so and not needlessly so), and played as a very effective first round to take out Buttigieg so that Bernie and Yang could take the slam dunk shot and victory laps respectively. She was also able to effectively articulate pretty much everything, including a very well done answer on how she would exercise executive power in a divided Congress.

Bonus points for her responses on corruption/how corruption keeps progressive policies from getting passed and her response to the “are you too old to be president” question with “Well I would be the youngest female president ever elected.” Points deducted for not being able to answer Buttigieg's ‘are you corrupted Senator’ question, the slightly odd repetition of the “selfie line” line, and the slight zone out during the closing statements.

Bernie: also sounded far better and more coherent than he has at the past few debates. Simultaneously played peacemaker/argument-finisher and agitator to great effect. Highlights: getting the slam dunk on Buttigieg after the Warren-Buttigieg fight, shutting the Biden-Klobuchar fight down, and his comments on Israel-Palestine. Multiple points deducted for giving the mods the complete runaround on healthcare and not saying what he would do if he couldn’t get his bills passed in the Senate.

Middle of the Pack/“Almost Winners”:

Yang: I will never be convinced to vote for him, but having fewer candidates on the stage definitely worked to Yang’s advantage. Generally speaking, he had fairly compelling points and was able to articulate his thoughts quite a bit more. However, I’m dinging him significantly for all of those times that he stopped and visibly waited for applause; it came off as very Jeb “please clap” Bush, and I’m not about that life. He also completely missed the point on multiple occasions and reminded me that he’s not a politician with no political experience, and thus no real practical understanding of how to wield political power. I’m glad he’s there for the issues he’s articulating, but I would never vote for him for a federal-level office before he has served at a local, county, or state level.

Amy Klobuchar: okay before I get into her performance can I just say how weird it is that she’s polling at like 2% nationally and has had the most/second most speaking time at 2 debates in a row now??? Anyway Klobuchar was basically…the same, which means that she was kind of obnoxious and inserted herself and her opinions into everything, as usual. Lots of focus on “I can get it done” and “we need a Midwesterner” and obviously forced jokes (like Amy, I get it, you’re the “hello fellow kids” candidate, but you really don’t need to go that hard by name-dropping the “Notorious RBG” on live national television), not a lot of focus on how to actually move us forward into the future. She got some good shots in and sounded forceful, but nothing particularly substantial was said. Highlight of her night was her absolutely ending Buttigieg over the question of his experience. So she did much better than she has in previous debates, but not enough to actually put her into the 'winners' category.

The Losers:

Buttigieg: tonight was Dunk on Buttigieg night and he was obviously not prepared for it. He was able to semi-effectively combat Warren, but he had no response to Bernie and Yang coming after him using the opening provided by her attacks and Klobuchar coming back around to solidly end him. Also the “wine cellar” moment is already meme-ing its way around Tumblr and Twitter, which is not going to help him a bit either. He gave his usual “sound good but incredibly vague with no concrete answers” spiels, and still doesn’t seem to understand why universal public services should be free to everyone and not just poor/middle-class people; I don’t care if I’m paying for a rich kid to go to college or get healthcare, because they in turn are paying for me to go to college and get healthcare. Public services are for everyone to enjoy and profit from, not just poor people. He had multiple good moments, but they were overshadowed by his bad ones.

Tom Steyer: the entire time I just kept thinking “why are you here and peddling your false ‘I am the only one who has done anything’ nonsense???” Steyer imo came off as passionate about the issues and willing to put his money where his mouth is but condescending, pretentious, and dismissive of the work that everyone else on stage has done to advance various issues. Not a good look, but also not terribly surprising.

General Thoughts:

This debate was so much better and far more substantive than previous debates. The moderators weren’t particularly great, but they asked really meaty and tough questions and did hold the candidates accountable when they were giving the runaround. I particularly loved how this debate focused more on foreign policy, the area over which the President traditionally holds the most direct influence. Still waiting on some substantive questions on women’s issues other than abortion and birth control.

I’m so tired of watching Bernie and Biden yell at each other. Someone please save me.

Booker, Castro, and Steyer need to drop now. I'm content to put up with Yang until Iowa (when he obviously needs to drop out), and obviously Buttigieg isn't going anywhere until the first four states (at least) have voted.

As predicted, Biden, Sanders, and Warren are and continue to be the three frontrunners and the race is very likely to end up as either a three-way race to a contested convention or a Biden vs. Sanders or Warren (depending on which progressive candidate can garner more votes). I don't see Buttigieg managing to overtake Biden as the leading moderate in the race after tonight, which dings my original prediction that the race was going to end up as Biden and Buttigieg vs. Sanders and Warren fighting between whether the moderates or progressives were going to win the primary.

What really depresses me about Warren asking for forgiveness for getting too heated over issues is that it's such a female thing to do, especially female politicians, who constantly have to apologize and explain their angry words and confrontational speech where everyone accepts it wholesale from men and male politicians. That wasn't interview-level cringiness, that was a genuine belief that she should apologize for sounding angry.

Also the fact that the two women on stage both asked for forgiveness (and both for “getting too emotional over the issues”) and all of the men shrugged and were like ‘gifts! Buy my book.’ That last question is going to get analyzed quite a bit in the coming days, and it’s hopefully going to spark some conversation about the different standards we hold male and female politicians to

PBS noting in their post-debate discussion that Biden, Sanders, and Warren all came from less money than Buttigieg and that they didn't earn their money until their 40s when discussing the Warren-Buttigieg "you're worth more than I am" moment like lmao go off

#democratic debate #2020 election #personal #politics liveblogging

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kontextmaschine · 5 years ago

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Roseburg

Okay, Roseburg. It’s the capital of the southern Oregon timber industry, which fell hard with the end of harvesting on federal lands in the early ‘90s.

It’s got a population of 20,000, in a town center at a bend in the river and several residential neighborhoods, with more modern retail north of the city center around I-5. Several thousand more live in outlying areas, and Roseburg is seat of Douglas County stretching to the coast counting 110,000 population in total.

The airport offers no scheduled passenger service. Flights to major mountain west cities are available 83 miles to the north or 90 to the south; equivalent service is available 15 miles from Bend.

The only college in the area is a community college.

The town center, oriented around a “couplet” (parallel one-way streets) for a Main Street in Oregon tradition, has government buildings and a roughly five square block downtown. The downtown is early-20th century in character, solid frontages of storefronts with 1-2 stories of residential above, with churches, banks, and apartment buildings on the periphery.

The downtown is not pedestrianized, but has been designed for cars to park on the periphery. One block of storefronts is block-through, with entrances on each of two opposing sides. Many storefronts are empty. Several bars and restaurants are active, with a few (plus a co-working space) that look to have opened recently. Other stores remain looking a little out-of-time, and several storefronts have been occupied by nonprofits, street-level offices, or enterprises that look to create low returns while occupying high spatial volume. A gym occupies one sizeable space, two large markets stand empty. Despite this emptiness, only the markets look truly dilapidated; others have intact windows and clean interiors and reasonably fresh paint and facades. Scattered throughout are several civic monuments and monumental-looking fraternal lodges.

Sloping away from this downtown, the town center contains more stores, warehouses, restaurants, and bars. On the I-5 corridor, several hotels and travel-oriented businesses serve the freeway, mostly north of the town center.

- - -

So, in some ways this is kind of what I’d been expecting to like - a resource extraction town for a collapsed industry, leaving a fully built-out but intact infrastructure ripe for use. With poor flight connections to finance centers and a local economy still tapering off as the legacy population drifts away, an obvious hope is to market the small-town experience to internet workers or others who generate resources in a way that doesn’t require an existing resource base in physical proximity, while in the interim, the courthouse, the remaining private-lands timber industry, and the highway services support a basic level of services.

The maintained facades, the nonprofit offices occupying storefronts, and the general effort to keep downtown looking active suggest a level of coordination by local elites in support of the city’s viability.

- - -

And it’s… Cascadia. It’s green but at the same time younger than the east coast or rust belt - the wilderness hasn’t been carved into as much, the people not guarded, exhibit the good down-home parts of “country” without much “narrow-minded bumpkin”.

Many stores and bars have signs at the doors saying to take hoodies off, no backpacks, no tweekers, this site recorded on camera. There are at many points one to three people who are obviously homeless or on drugs in view. A Greyhound bus stopped in front of one dilapidated market and disgorged 7 vagrant-looking people. Every day the city police log lists like 6 arrests. On sites where these mugshots are compiled and shared around you see these are usually about heroin, meth, thefts to buy heroin or meth, or parole violations by people with convictions about heroin or meth. Even among apparently functional people working behind counters and bars, there are more facial scabs than you expect.

There is, frankly, an absurd level of pro-military sentiment. Signs in all sorts of windows, military discounts everywhere, banners from some past event benefiting some charity for military families. A veteranarian’s office is painted with the American flag, silhouettes of dogs and soldiers saluting or wearing helmets. I wondered if there had been a military base closed nearby because even after a week traveling through much more “red”-than-Portland country I had seen more of that stuff but nothing near that level. I never saw any murdered-out trucks or Punisher skulls or Black Rifle Coffee or 5.11 or any other military-adjacent aesthetic, though. Wearing Chinese-replica BDU pants, I was sporting more of a tactical look than anyone I saw.

Douglas County gave 64% of its vote to Trump in 2016.

- - -

The clear signs of people coming together to keep downtown appealing, all the monuments, the particular aesthetic of the places catering to a downtown crowd (and of that crowd itself), the legacy of what you’d expect from timber barons and their clerks… I was like “oh I get this, there’s a strong country-club Republican strain.”

Knowing that the region’s forest workers were pretty radical (that’s an important thing about Oregon, its normative rural experience isn’t of yeoman farmers but forest workers) I was wondering when I was going to get a sign of that, eventually I realized the yay-military stuff was the expression of class solidarity I was looking for.

Knowing both of those I turned to the addicts and fuckups and was like “ohh, you’re the third player in this drama, the unvirtuous poor that the virtuous poor and white collar types can bond over identifying against”.

A good deal of the nonprofits taking up space downtown seem to be the prison-industrial-complex type, the therapy or treatment you get sentenced to, designed to employ the first group turning the third into the second.

- - -

Seeing Roseburg makes some things about Portland make sense. That, say, when timber collapsed some of the “worker” types or their kids moved to, or stayed in Portland and brought the ethic to food service.

Traditional Oregon is weirdly exclusive, had an anti-Californian sentiment in particular but I’ve heard stores from Washingtonians about getting their cars pelted with rocks in the 80s, the state’s most famous statement of boosterism included a direct request not to move here.

There’s very much a sense that Portland has become swollen with non-Oregonians who seek to impose themselves on traditional, rural, Oregon, I could see a distaste towards any idea of making Roseburg more Portlandish.

When I walked in to look at the co-working space (it’s really just a period office building with individual offices) I overheard a guy saying that he could accept if they just made up a list of the guns it was okay to buy…

And the thing about a strong local elite invested in the future of your town is the town is under the control of a strong local elite with an interest in its future, presumably wanting to keep or develop it as its own playground.

At the same time, whoever owns all those buildings would very much like to see them filled at competitive rates I’m sure, and property owners are the backbone of any local elite. (I do not know the in-town landholders’ relationship to the woodland barons.)

- - -

So. Promising. It’s a charming Portland-in-miniature, houses are still available in the $100s and apartments at $500/br/mo. Between empty and underused space there’s maybe 10 years of solid expansion before all the slack has been taken up, and by all appearances the local system would love to see it happen and has no better pitch than quality-of-life-experience, being what Portland was in the 90s.

(Even the class system isn’t terribly off, a lot of the “Portlandia” years were about importing a middle class to fit between the old money in the West Hills and the retreating border of “Felony Flats” across the river to the east.)

That said it’s not abandoned just waiting for my guiding hand, there are preexisting power structures and culture to accommodate or challenge. And if undermining the local culture is the last thing I want - it’s what appeals to me, and the loss of which I’m mourning in Portland – I’m already thinking “okay that’s honestly too Republican, but that’s the only way to end up with a tolerable culture after it floods with creatives so hey”.

This is assuming it does take off, which I honestly think is a good assumption, as the big west coast cities fill up and cascade down (in the interim, look at Olympia, Visalia, Sacramento, Eugene, and Fresno) but isn’t inevitable. Oregon environmental laws and declining influence of Republican state legislators could further undermine the rural economy. Things could just keep declining past the point of being able to keep up appearances - the VA hospital just closed its emergency room, and there are two more in the area but the reasoning was the difficulty of recruiting and maintaining specialized staff, and that’s a bad sign.

Maybe I’m just psyched to see an authentically Cascadian town again and I should check out some others before getting swept away, in Oregon alone I’m still virgin on Albany, McMinnville, Forest Grove, and Coos Bay.

Still, I dunno. Might be a site for a good life.

#no I have like a lot to tell you

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