#only you can prevent fascism

[tomorrowusa]

This is not a time to become complacent and assume that everything will turn out fine without our individual involvement. We all have something to offer based on our abilities.

More than anything, grassroots political work is needed. For a dozen or so years we believed the internet was a substitute for doing person to person precinct work; the results of that mindset were Donald Trump, a GOP Congress, and a far right Supreme Court.

Find out what the neighbors are thinking about things – listen rather than preach. We can then tailor our message to strike the right chord. People don't have to agree with you 100% on everything to vote your way.

[spacebeyonce]

getting the urge to remind folks that there are absolutely other options - BETTER options - this presidential election and that like. change is possible. if enough of us band together change is absolutely possible.

[toytulini]

Thank you for your tags on the baeddalism post. As someone who is aroace (formerly biace) and a nb transmasc I've literally watched every identity I have be dragged into discourse time and time again and it's always the exact same rhetoric to a nauseating degree. People are so terminally online that they constantly invent new nonexistent stereotypes of other queer identities to get mad at or just pick a queer identity to be the monster of the week, and it's excruciating to see it repeat the same way everytime.

I wanted to try to respond to this more eloquently after i had some caffeine, but if we wait for eloquence itll go unanswered for years. but lmao yea of course. Im also aroace and enby. I was here since like 2014, I suffered through reading all these same stupid arguments about a-specs and my tolerance for it is so fried. The queer infighting and gatekeeping bullshit is so rotting. I hope we learn one of these days. My disillusion that this keeps fucking happening is at least tempered by the fact that all the blogs who I followed for good takes on inclusionism and queer solidarity during the acecourse are also not tolerating this shit, and they are recognizing it as the same old bullshit its been the whole time.

[bearfoottruck]

In random election news, as if we didn't already have enough reasons to hate Trump, he recently admitted at one of his rallies that he doesn't care about his supporters and just wants their votes:

[thesaltyace]

Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think it's really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.

This creator's video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor -- actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. She's pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.

"Kamala's a cop" is a catchy dismissive response usually used to shut down conversation rather than add nuance. But this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.

I fell for it in 2020 and have thought "Kamala's a cop" without further inspection since - and I'm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) I'm not immune to propaganda.

A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.

Harris isn't perfect. But she's a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.

We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesn't absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.

I'll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.

[qqueenofhades]

There is no law that prevents a convicted felon from running for and becoming president, nor a law that bans someone from being president in prison. Also, if Trump gets incapacitated in someway, many ultra right republicans who equally despise trans people and immigrants and Muslims would happily take his place

And I ask, with all due respect, what is your point?

Do you think I don't know that?

Do you think I am somehow convinced that everything is hunky dory now and we don't have any work left to do?

Are you just determined to be the first of the gloom-and-doomers who show up like clockwork in my inbox, every time some consequence happens to Trump, to morosely insist that no consequences will happen to him? First it was "he'll win re-election." Then it was "the coup will succeed." Then it was "he will never be indicted." Then it was "2022 will be a red wave!" Then it was "he will never be tried." Then it was "he will never be convicted." Now we've moved on, within less than 2 hours of the first US President ever to be convicted of ONE felony, let alone THIRTY-FOUR, "he'll never be sentenced or face a real consequence or lose the election." The goalposts keep moving RIGHT along without even a single pause to acknowledge the difficulty and the value of the progress we have made thus far, and it makes me CRAZY.

Do you people realize how fucking rare it is, both in the world today and historically, for a former (and would-be future) head of state to be held to criminal account by a jury of 12 anonymous ordinary citizens? When that one person, Trump, is the center of the malignant fascist cancer that has spread through this country ever since 2016, and plenty of his cultists are still insisting that it's Trump or nobody for them? When we've actually reached the stage of holding him legally accountable for (some of) his crimes for the first time in his miserable misbegotten life? I suspect that most of you are so deep in the "America is totally broken and the system is useless and we can only Revolute!!!1" rabbit hole that you're bound and determined to argue away every step we take, however slow, as Meaning Nothing TM. Voting? Fake. Fighting to make real progress? Also fake. Everything is fake except our belief that everything is broken and we need the Keyboard Warrior Glorious Revolution!!! As long as you can keep inventing ever more contorted twists of logic to ignore everything else that's happened so far, this makes sense... or something. I guess?

Now we're onto "removing Trump won't matter :(" when a whole lot of people have been fighting day and fucking night to get all the privileged-princess Online Leftists to get off their Che Guevara cosplaying asses and cast a single fucking vote to keep us from full-on-sliding into fascism. A slide into fascism that, again, has been spearheaded and centered around Trump's toxic cult of personality and which is still tied to him in almost every way. Apparently holding him to account (again, which has never happened to him in his life) already doesn't matter because wah wah he won't suffer any consequences. If he loses this election he's probably going to jail for the rest of his life! We would have electorally defeated the greatest threat to the American democratic experiment in 250 years, and frankly a huge part of the fascist far-right hydra that is currently attempting a comeback around the world! This is, yet again:

THE FIRST TIME ANY AMERICAN PRESIDENT, EVER, HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF MULTIPLE FELONY CHARGES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JURY OF HIS PEERS

and yet we're still hearing that nothing matters and no work has been done and removing him will have no effect???

Come on. Come on. I know it's tiring and it's slow and it doesn't go as fast as we want. But every single damn time the process goes another step, here you people are in my inbox insisting that we're still at zero progress and it means nothing, and lemme tell you, I am Tired of it. Come on. You don't have to jump up and down (my own feeling is glee and vindication but still not relaxation, I will not relax until he loses the fucking election and goes to jail), but you also don't need to keep myopically pretending that all the effort thus far by so many people means nothing. Come on.

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?) Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.

Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don't even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn't really have the time for stuff that wasn't travel-related. In any case, let's dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)

So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.

First there's the issue of what AO3 hosts -- RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.

Second, there's the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.

The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It's not only that freedom of expression "protects you from the government, not the Justin" as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It's an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.

Should the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?

I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of "harm prevention" and "censorship", which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I'm comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I'm not sure a lot of people critical of AO3's content truly are. Perhaps some can't be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It's just fiction. Or is fiction "just fiction"? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.

The idea that prose can incite violence or cause harm is both valid to examine (witness the rise of fascism on the radio in the 20s, on Facebook and Twitter in the past ten years; they're very similar processes) and a very slippery slope. Because again: who decides what harm is, and what causes it, and what we do about it? Our values align us with certain beliefs, but those are only our values, not universal truths. So AO3 is part of the ongoing question of harm and benefit both to society and individuals.

AO3 itself, however, has a fairly defined policy that it is not meant to police content; it is an archive, not a bookstore or a school board. AO3 refines its TOS and policies as necessary, but the goal is always open access and as much freedom of expression as possible, and if that's uncomfortable for some people then that's a discussion we have to have; ignoring it won't make it go away. But it has to be a discussion, it can't be a unilateral change to the archive's TOS or a series of snaps and clapbacks, and I don't see a lot of people ready to move beyond flinging insults. Perhaps because they were taught a much more binary view of freedom of expression than I was.

So, self-evidently, I support AO3 and I don't have a problem with RPF. Whether other people do is something we're going to have to get to grips with, and that's likely to be a process that is still going on when most of us are dust. I'd rather have a century of ambiguity than a wrong answer tomorrow, anyway.

But whether AO3 hosts RPF is truly a separate issue from its donation drives, because it's a criticism some people level at the site which exists whether it's fundraising or not. So people can criticize AO3's open policy and they can give it as a reason not to support the site, but it's just one aspect of the archive and the fundraising as a whole should be examined separately.

I think AO3's fundraisers are deeply misunderstood (sometimes on purpose) because even people who are anticapitalist get a little crazy when money gets involved, and this is, to fandom, a lot of money -- a few hundred thousand, reliably, every fundraiser. To me, a fundraiser that pulls in three hundred grand is almost quaint; my current nonprofit pulls in better than ten million a year and my previous employer had an endowment of several billion dollars. At my old job I didn't even bother researching people who couldn't give us a hundred grand.

On the other hand, AO3 is an extreme and astounding outlier in the nonprofit world, because basically it's the only one of its kind to work the way it does. It is entirely volunteer-run on the operational side (ie: tag wranglers, coders, lawyers, etc) and has no fundraising staff (gift officers, researchers, outreach officers) as far as I'm aware. To pull in three hundred grand from individual one-time donations, without any paid staff and without even a volunteer fundraising officer? That's insane. That doesn't happen. Except at AO3.

What people misunderstand, however, is the basic status of a nonprofit, which is a legal status, not simply a social one. (I'm adding in some corrections here since it gets complicated and the terminology can be important!) The Organization for Transformative Works, the parent of AO3, is a nonprofit, which indicates how it was incorporated as an organization; additionally it is registered federally as tax-exempt, which carries certain perks, like not paying sales tax, and certain duties, like making their financials transparent to a certain extent. (Religious nonprofits are exempt from the transparency requirement.) If you're interested in more about nonprofits and tax-exempt status a reader dropped a great article here.

Nonprofits, unlike for-profit companies, cannot pay a share of their income to stakeholders. Nonprofits don't have financial stakeholders, only donors. They can have employees and pay them a salary -- that's me, for example -- but if a nonprofit pulls in $10M in donations, my salary is paid from that, I don't get a percentage and nobody else does either. That's what it means to be a nonprofit -- the money above operational costs goes back into the organization. The donations we (and AO3) receive must be plowed under and used for outreach, server maintenance, further fundraising, services expansion, et cetera. You can see this in the 990 forms on Guidestar or ProPublica, or in their more accessible breakdowns on Charity Navigator. Nonprofits that do not put the majority of their income towards service provision tend to get audited and lose their nonprofit status. So nobody's getting paid from all that money, and the overage that isn't spent goes into what is basically a savings account in the name of the nonprofit. (I'm vastly simplifying but that's the gist.) Using that money for personal purposes is illegal. It's called "private inurement" and there's a good article here about it. The money belongs to the OTW as a concept, not to anyone in or of the OTW.

So the biggest misunderstanding that I see in people who are mad at AO3 fundraisers is that "they" are getting all this money (who "they" are is never clearly stated but I'm pretty sure people think @astolat has a special wifi router that runs on burning hundred dollar bills) while "we" can't monetize our fanfic. But "they" get nothing -- nobody even earns a salary from AO3 -- and you can easily prove that by looking at the 990 forms they file with the government, which are required to be made public. You can see the most recently available 990, from 2020, here at Guidestar. Page seven will show you the "highest compensated" employees, all of whom are earning zero dollars or nonmonetary perks (that's the three columns on the right).

Either AO3 is entirely volunteer-run or someone's Doing A Real Fraud. The money the OTW spends is documented (that's page 10 and 11 primarily) and while they may pay for, say, the travel and lodging expenses of a lawyer going to DC to defend a freedom-of-expression case, they don't pay the lawyer for their time, or give them a cut of the income.

Despite what you've read, the reason "we" can't monetize our fanfics on AO3 has nothing to do with the site being the product of volunteer handiwork or AO3 having it in their terms of service or it being considered gauche by some to do so; it's because

IT'S ILLEGAL.

I cannot say this loudly enough: It is against the law for a nonprofit to be used by its staff, volunteers, or beneficiaries to earn direct profit from the services provided by the nonprofit.

You can be paid to work at one, but you cannot side-hustle by selling your handmade friendship bracelets for personal gain on the nonprofit's website. If the nonprofit knowingly allows monetization of its services, it can lose nonprofit status, be fined, be hit with back taxes, and a lot of other unpleasant bullshit can go down, including prosecution of those involved for fraud. If you put a ko-fi link on your fanfic, you are breaking the law, and if AO3 allows it, they are too.

Okay, that was a sidebar, but in some ways not, because it gets to the heart of the real complaints about AO3 fundraising, which is that people in fandom are sick or unhoused or in some form of need and other people in fandom are giving to AO3, a fan site that is financially stable, instead of giving to peoples' gofundmes or dropping money in their Ko-Fi or Paypal. And while it is a legitimate grievance that there are people who are in such desperate need while we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, that's not AO3's fault. AO3 doesn't solicit actively, there's no unasked-for mailings or calls from a gift officer. They just put a banner up on their website, and people give. (Again, this is incredibly outlier behavior in the nonprofit world, I'd do a case study on it but the conclusion would just be "shit's real, yo.") You might as well be mad that people give to their local food bank instead of someone's ko-fi.

You cannot lay at AO3's feet the fact that people want to give to AO3 instead of to your fundraiser. That's a choice individuals have made, and while you can engage with them in terms of why they made the philanthropic choices they did, to blame an organization they supported rather than the person who made the choice to give is not only incorrect but futile, and unlikely to win anyone over to supporting you. We know from research that guilt is not a tremendous motivator of philanthropy.

It is also not necessarily a binary choice; just because AO3 gets a hundred grand in $5 donations doesn't mean most of the people giving don't also give $5 elsewhere. I support the OTW on occasion, and I also fundraise for UNICEF and the Chicago Parks Foundation and BAGLY and others, in addition to giving monthly to several nonprofits that I have longterm relationships with -- my alma mater, the animal rescue where I got the Cryptids, my shul. And I give, occasionally and anonymously, to fundraisers that pass through Radio Free Monday, which are mainly individuals in need, because I was once in need and now I pay it forward. These are the choices I have made. Nobody twisted my arm. I respond poorly to someone making the attempt to do so by attacking places I've given.

I think the upshot is, after all of this that I've written, that we cannot begin to come to grips with questions of institutional inequality in philanthropy, or freedom of expression and censorship, until people actually understand what's going on, and too few do. So all I can do is try and explain, and hopefully create a forum for people to learn and grow when it comes to charitable giving.

Archive Of Our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works are products of our community and as that community changes, we will necessarily continue to re-evaluate what aspects of it mean and how AO3/OTW express the community sentiment. I hope that the ongoing discussion of support for AO3 also leads to people learning more about their philanthropic options. But criticizing AO3 for fundraising by attacking it for fulfilling one of its stated purposes is silly, and attempting to guilt people into giving in the ways one thinks they should give rather than how they do give is just going to make one extremely unlikable.

As members of this community, we have to be a part of the push and pull, but it's difficult to do that competently in ignorance. So, I do my best to be knowledgeable and to educate my readers, and I hope others will do the same.

[nonbinarypirat]

education vs. fascism in iruma-kun

someone mentioned this in another post but iruma-kun does a wonderful job of showing that education is key to fighting fascist and harmful radical ideas. As soon as it became clear that things were going to change in the netherworld what was Sullivan's response? It wasn't "oh we need to send spies" or "we need to find the people" (though im sure people are working hard to find those answers) it was "we need to focus on educating our students." Because only knowledge and diversity in thoughts can combat fascist ideas. The issue only becomes worse with a lack of understanding and an echo chamber. And by doubling down with education, we can make sure our students are prepared for what lies ahead. Thats how we truly fight the power.

The teachers themselves can tell that things are changing. They stay informed and guess what? its obvious things are about to throw down soon. And so they work tirelessly not just because it's their jobs, but because they need to. this is their protest. this is how we can prevent the spread of gross rhetoric. And after Heartbreaker what they do? they double down on their education too. Because there is always something new to learn, always a way to grow/sharpen your strength. They too know that they can't stay stagnant, they must continue pushing to provide their students with the best chance of survival.

When you have villians that believe in these ideas in media, there's a big issue of them leaving out education as a weapon. But it's crucial if we want anything to truly change. Iruma himself wants to no longer be naive about the netherworld which was growing to be an issue the longer he stays. because yeah, you can't stay uninformed anymore iruma. its time to learn about the history of you new home and the leaders. taking being the king out of it, ignorance about these topics is a breeding ground for becoming complacent. iruma wants to be a hero? or at least, do the right thing when he can? that requires knowledge to make sure you aren't inadvertently hurting someone along the way.

Iruma loves the netherworld, the place he proudly calls home. but it's frought with danger and cruel people. And yet, Iruma is still proud of his new home and friends and wants to do anything he can to stay here. This reflects real life, where there is goodness and pride in the place you live and yet a faction of people who taint it with othering ideas. However, it's always worth fighting for the good overall and bettering yourself so you can see another tomorrow through. Iruma knows he can only protect himself and his loved ones is through learning. And I love Nishi for truly understanding this too. You can't fight fascism through pure will, it has to be beaten by education and the williness to better one's knowledge. That is how we will take back the Netherworld.

but yeah, this is just my little spiel as someone who loves educational activism and is going to school to become a teacher :). If i can find the original post I'll make sure to credit the op!

[rochenn]

The year is 2034. Disney announces the production of the show "Resistance: Dooku of Serenno", set during the early days of the Empire, starring CG Christopher Lee.

We begin with a flashback to Revenge of the Sith. After Dooku is beheaded, we learn that he used the Force to supply his brain with blood and oxygen. The movie is visibly retconned - as Obi-Wan, Anakin and Palpatine flee the Invisible Hand, four human parts can be spotted stealthily floating after them.

Dooku, being Dooku, survives the crash and manages to steal away. His head is surgically reattached. Don't ask why nobody else ever stitched their lightsaber-chopped limbs back on. He ends up getting prosthetic hands, anyway. David Filoni said in a behind-the-scenes interview that he thought they were cool.

Previously established canon prevents Dooku from doing anything in-character until Order 66. He lets loose in Coruscant's undercity and becomes the local kooky old man who couldn't possibly be public enemy number one until Mace Windu, freshly fried and unhanded, crashes down in front of him. What a coincidence.

Mace is still played by Sam L. Jackson. He is So Old. He is only there for the paycheck. Disney didn't know how to recast him. He is acting alongside the shell of a man who has been dead for two decades.

After a joke about missing hands that is very funny, the two get along swimmingly. They don't really talk about Dooku's various war crimes. "My droid army would never traumatize a young child," Dooku says with a wink into the camera. Remember to buy your Mandalorian merch.

Mace and Dooku organize an underground resistance on Coruscant in the spirit of the Confederacy. Mace is okay with this. Choice aspects of this arc are compelling, like the fight against fascism under the yoke of cruel state suppression, but tone-deaf allusions to the work of Sophie Scholl cause controversy abroad. Andor did it better. Critics on YouTube who thus far lauded the return of fan favorites and 'faithful casting' tear into the show for pushing the woke agenda.

Nothing Mace and Dooku accomplish has any impact on the Original Trilogy. What were you expecting? The end of the show teases a second season with the arrival of a mysterious woman. Dooku's secret wife. You never knew of her because she was never relevant before. As the final credit music slowly creeps in, she says: "Don't you want to see your son?"

The music swells and we cut to Serenno. The planet has never been mentioned throughout all 15 episodes of the show. Standing in the ruins of Dooku's castle is Dooku's son: back turned to the viewer, gazing into the sunset. Dooku II of Serenno, proud heir, turns his head. He is played by Harry Styles.

Roll credits.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I'm not trying to be a doomer here, but it actually really aggravates me when people say there's no way that America can be turned into a fascist regime, that it's impossible for the Republicans to install a dictator, etc etc.

I think it's really easy and reassuring to look at fascism as something easy to prevent through voting or checks and balances or even just logistics. You can reassure yourself that nothing like that will ever happen to your country because things are different here. . . but that is what literally everyone thinks.

Nobody ever believes that their country can become a fascist dictatorship. Politicians openly talk about plans to put people into work camps and get rid of term limits and we say that that's not possible. A presidential candidate endorses an attempt to violently overthrow the government and we say it wasn't that bad actually because it didn't succeed and then we put him back into office. The presidential elect talks about his intentions to use the military for mass deportations, something only possible if immigrants are declared as hostile foreign invaders in a war, and we laugh at the absurdity because who would ever vote in favor of that?

And I'm not saying that we're going to turn into a dictatorship but I AM saying that it's ridiculous and ignorant to pretend like it's impossible, to ignore all the warning signs in favor of making ourselves feel better. And I say we because I fall into this mindset too but this is what everyone has done when faced with rising fascism and many people will never have the chance to regret acting like the signs weren't there.

[tamamita]

No one's asking to trust our government. We don't even trust our government. Or pigsty of a democracy is barely a fucking democracy. But at the end of the day, Harris is better for this country, and how this country interacts with other countries, than Trump ever will be. With the shit Trump wants to do, your country would probably be destroyed a third time just so his friends can get richer. Frankly, even your odds are better with Harris. And yes, it may be a false dichotomy, but the worst possible candidate has already assembled a mob to go vote for him and explained how he's going to try to make himself an actual dictator. Breaking up the rest of the efforts to stop him is fruitless right now, I'd argue even actively making it worse.

Do you see where my annoyance lies within? This sort of arrogance in Yanks. You're a bunch of reformist who are only concerned about domestic issues. You're afraid that your government is gonna fall into a fascist dictatorship, even though Biden has at multiple occasions sent his militia of cops to crack down on protestors and spread misinformation about them, while allowing genocide to take place and ignoring the settler state from breaking international law. ALL of this is characteristics of fascism. Trump is not an exception to the rule, because of your homonationalism.

75+ years of US intervention and imperialism in our countries, and you never once objected or took any dissenting voice against the imperial machine, because brown and black people's lives do no matter. Why are you in fear now? Why were you all this blissfully ignorant when the US kept ousting democractically-elected governments? Why did you not show this kind of concern with the Bushes, Clinton, Obama, and Biden when millions of lives were taken? We've been saying this for years: you're all living in the dictatorship of the bourgeoise, you're all reformists who refuse to take any revolutionary stance against this fascist state, you will all repeat the same cycle every four years to prevent some made-up dictator from ruling the country. It's almost as if you all want a One-party state government.

[tomorrowusa]

It’s easier to outvote cult members than it is to get them to embrace rationality.

Register to vote. Never miss an election; there’s no such thing as an unimportant election. 

I Will Vote

Voter registration is by location. Whenever you move you need to register at your new address. If you’ve moved since the last election, even if it’s just across the street, it’s necessary to register at your new place.

Don’t let some vote suppressing MAGA politician deny you the right to vote because of a technicality. Remain informed about voting procedures and eligibility requirements.

[steveyockey]

Summing up Reich’s 1933 book Character Analysis, Timofei Gerber writes that the repressed person begins to build an armor around themselves that prevents any danger from crossing their psychic threshold, but in doing so also prevents any pleasure from getting in and prevents any pleasure from being released:

“The movement is thereby successfully blocked, but with that, all feelings are essentially killed and result in an inner deadness. This feeling of emptiness, of a loss of a contact with the world...is that which causes nihilism, the urge towards self-destruction, the feeling of meaninglessness.”

In this fortress-like psychic condition, anything that could heal you (therapy, sex, connection to your fellow human being) is seen as a threat. Pleasure becomes danger.

We can see this in Nazi Germany’s vilification of the seemingly-hedonistic Weimar era. And we can see it today in politicians blaming of everything negative on society on, say, trans people (what is transitioning if not chasing one’s pleasure despite the dangers). And we can see it in ordinary people’s ever-increasing fear of any and everything that makes being human great, which are things that inherently involve danger: leaving your house, socializing, having friends, letting your kid possibly break their arm by falling off a bike.

This fear of pleasure and humanity and the creation of a psychic armor to “protect” oneself from this fear, is not a tenable situation. Humans need some form of release. And this is how people become sadistic. Gerber writes:

“If the armor gets too thick, it causes itself unpleasure; and if that unpleasure is not to lead to self-destruction (depression), the inner pressure needs nonetheless be released somehow. So as to at least feel something, the individual must force itself to release some energy after all, through the cracks in the shell. But as this energy has to fight itself through a very thick shell, and is also accompanied by anxiety, it does not produce pleasure either. The violence of this ‘piercing through’ expresses itself as destructive urges, as sadism.”

Extrapolate this to a societal level and you see how DoorDash is basically Hitler. Just kidding…kind of…But you can maybe see how the blockage and fear of pleasure is a necessary precursor to outright fascism!

Reich’s work jives with the work of Adorno, who believed (in the summation of historian Peter E. Gordon) that, “the authoritarian personality does not always turn explicitly fascist; its politics may remain dormant, only to emerge under certain social-historical conditions.” And jives with the work of analyst Erich Fromm, who believed that, “the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed.” And jives with the work of Hannah Arendt, who wrote of how, “isolation may be the beginning of terror; it is certainly its most fertile ground.”

The more isolated and fearful we become of each other, of our own freedom, the more susceptible we become to the sadistic processes that provide some form of pressure release. Which is to say: people not only become Nazis out of fear or hatred, but because it is cathartic for repressed people to become fascists.

Though, of course, it is not possible to individually reverse the conditions of our society—the isolation, the fearmongering, the actual increased dangers many of us do face out in the real world (police repression, for example)—we are still responsible partners in this interplay.

That interplay can either be something like a death spiral towards our ultimate destruction—society making us afraid, us becoming more cut-off and thus prone to dehumanization, that making society more isolated, and on and on and on. Or it can be a…life spiral…like a helix of DNA—ourselves and the outside world (which is to say: each other; everyone who is not us) wrapped up together, mutually necessary to build something much greater than each of us are capable of on our own.

We may not feel like we have much power these days. But that is also what the fascists us want us to think. They want us to sense the real dangers of the world, and allow ourselves to become scared of them, to build up impenetrable psychic armors to protect ourselves from them until we become inhuman, and thus are able to invalidate the humanity of any and everyone else.

So, go, do the things that make you scared. Do not fear trauma. Go have sex. And do drugs. And dance. And eat outside your own damn house. I’m gonna go pet a cat. If I don’t, I will, in many, very real ways, die.

[eugenedebs1920]

The situation we find ourselves in is on account of 2 things! Democrats kind hearted, trusting nature, and Republicans lust for relevancy, power and their spinelessness.

Trump should be either, in prison/Guantanamo bay, or on trial heading towards one of those locations.

The corruption is infuriating! I’m no law scholar or a constitutional lawyer, just some dumb plumber, but the fourteenth amendment section 3 CLEARLY states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President or Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military under the United States or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature,or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemy thereof.

It’s not hard to comprehend what they were articulating. It’s not hard to understand their meaning in some textualism nonsense! Simple! If you, as an American holding federal office, rebelled against or staged a coup, albeit failed or otherwise, violated the oath you took, to protect and defend, the Constitution of the United States, you are disqualified from holding any federal position again! Simple!

To say this Supreme Court isn’t partisan. To say they aren’t corrupt, can only be attested to being deaf blind and dumb, or pure partisan hackery! Shame on them! Shame on Mitch McConnell, and frankly shame on garbage MAGA! It is clear the simple minded loyalty far outweighs the Constitution to them. It is easy to see the sycophancy holds more reverence to them than their nation. The lack of foresightedness to the consequences of their allegiance to one man, one party, one view of the United States has potential to result in its downfall. For when the structures of government are burdened to the ground, in their ashes lie the remnants of democracy, with our republic wafting away like smoke from the rubble.

What will be built upon the heap of a once free and prosperous nation, will be the unqualified craftsmanship of the terrorist responsible for its demise. Raised on the flimsy ground of oligarchs and plutocrats, a foundation reinforce with the same seditionists who oversaw the demolition. With its structure made, not for the people, but for those who seek its exploitation. A decor of fascism and oppression hanging on the walls of tyranny, portraits resembling an illusion of what once was. Above head the autocratic shingles drip the rewards to its inhabitants poured down from the servitude of the constituency. This flimsy construct of a building erected for the benefit of the few, by the many, will find its supports fail time and time again, only worsening the conditions upon those whose labor constructed it.

The whole purpose of the tripartite system, the whole reasoning behind checks and balances, the entire point of the three branches of government was to prevent consolidation of power, not to enhance it! With a minority rule this has been achieved.

In their gullibility Democrats, liberals stood by assuming the structures of our Constitution would hold. Actively watching this demolition take place. Hardly putting forth a struggle against it. Their morality prohibiting the defense of democracy in some self righteous weakness against tactics of corruption not on the same grounds of that in which this code of conduct would give good grace. When one comes to dismantle the very structure of your republic you do not stand as a nail but as an iron beam. Not all can be trusted, not all have a standard of ethical conduct upon which they stand. You cannot win a boxing match when your opponent shows up with a machete.

It is the trust from the left that allowed these attacks on our Constitution to occur as much as it was demonsterous betrayal of it from the right.

[hxhhasmysoul]

I read somewhere that said Yuji is parallel with Getou (because in an interview Gege said that both were too kind and sincere in a cruel JJK world). Do you agree?

I've spent over an hour trying to find an interview where Gege said something like that and came up with nothing, so I'd love to know at least which interview this is from, like date or publication's name, if not a link to a transcript.

I don't read Getou as particularly kind personally. His disagreement with Gojou, before they switch positions further down the line, feels quite detached and "academic".

People who follow this blog will be shocked, but I think Gojou is spot on calling out that Getou is trying to be righteous. He's wrong in his disdain for the weak, obviously, but he's not wrong about Getou.

Getou is very clearly repeating something he heard at school or from the jujutsu establishment. He has very clearly bought into their framing of that separates the sorcerers from the general population and also looks down on the normies, considers them weak.

Because this is internalised propaganda and and duty but not some deep personal conviction about the value of life or whatever, faced with reality it crumbles.

He very clearly sees himself as separate from the normies. And here it seems that his choice to protect them as a sorcerer was made after the events with Riko. It's unclear if it was the first time he'd made that choice, for example when he became a student, but it seems that he made it at that point (again?).

The jujutsu world doesn't care for the weak at all, sorcerer and normie alike, it will exploit its own weak like it did with the Star Plasma Vessels, or it will abandon them like it did with Mimiko and Nanako. And because Getou has fully embraced the otherising of non-sorcerers he turns to full blown fascism in which he wants to create a good world just for his own.

___________________

Yuuji's convictions come from within himself. They are deeply rooted in his compassion for others, in his discomfort with the suffering of others.

And he justifies his involvement in jujutsu through there being a thing only he can do to prevent some curse related deaths.

Yaga really strongly challanges Yuuji's convictions in the scene above, he wants to drag something real out of him, something he can trust. And maybe it'll be a leap, but maybe it's because of the regrets he voices.

Regrets concerning Getou.

And it's not only about someone dying fro Yuuji. He show's this concern to the mother of the convict from the detention centre, he shows so much compassion and understanding to Junpei. He understands the gravity of killing Eso and Kechizu, he sympathises with Chousou's pain in their fight. And so on.

He even values the lives of the American soldiers that Kenjaku invited and he gets upset with Angel who acts like their lives don't matter.

Shibuya and the Culling Games haven't beaten out of him the ability to value human life. Because for him it's a true conviction, it's not a duty, not internalised propaganda.

Yuuji's convictions are so strong and true that he even affects Megumi who starts to question the propaganda he'd internalised.

He actually takes the time to consider why he saved Yuuji. He visits the mother of the guy killed in the detention centre. He asks Maki why she saves people.

He doesn't go super far with all of that, his life philosophy is very deeply ingrained in him. But he is affected because his convictions are as weak as Getou's in the beginning.

But there isn't some switch between Yuuji and Megumi in the way they approach others. As there is between Gojou and Getou.

Megumi partially infects Yuuji with the cog mentality, but Yuuji doesn't completely succumb to it and recently he's been showing more and more initiative in how he handles things.

___________

But the lack of similarity goes beyond just their mindsets.

They are approached completely differently by the Jujutsu Society.

Getou was valued among his peers, recognised as a special grade. Even when he defected and started committing violence against the normies he never became a priority for the jujutsu world. There was a death sentence on his head but he seemed to be perfectly capable of operating semi publicly in JJK 0. The sorcerers only take active interest in him once he comes to challenge them. Because in reality he's no threat to them, just to the normies.

Yuuji is considered a normie who consumed a dangerous cursed object. The elders don't see him as human and the sell that view to the Kyoto kids.

Which only Miwa has a problem with, the rest of them are really well indoctrinated.

Sukuna is a threat to normie and sorcerer alike so he cannot be ignored like Getou. He and his vessel need to be eliminated.

So obviously they don't share story and character arcs.

______

So in conclusion, no, I don't see parallels.

If you tell me which interview that comparison supposedly comes from, I could maybe try to understand what that was about.

What Gege actually has said about Getou in one of the interviews is that they wanted it to be clear that Getou had a choice, that they didn't want it to seem like a duh that Getou hated people. That's why the conversation with Yuki is there, to show how he chooses to draw these conclusions, a conversation the fandom loves to misinterpret.

Yuuji has experienced so far a similar if not higher level of trauma than Getou at the point of his defection. Yuuji is constantly faced with such choices in the manga, choices to stop caring about the lives of others, and he never takes them.

I actually find it upsetting when people draw these parallels.

[therainbowwillow]

Resisting Project 2025's Attacks Queer and Trans Students

What is Project 2025? Project 2025 is a document produced by The Heritage Foundation, an American right-wing think tank, outlining a conservative political plan they hope to see implemented by the next Republican president (now President-Elect Donald Trump).

What does Project 2025 say about education broadly? Project 2025 suggests a wide variety of extreme measures to be taken against progressive values in public schools from promoting "school choice" (policies that, in reality, do not improve student outcomes and make education into a competitive market rather than a public good) to rolling back nondiscrimination regulations to dissolving the Department of Education entirely. Many of Project 2025's proposed policies would leave minoritized students more vulnerable to discrimination in schools and some policies support discrimination against them outright (see below).

What does Project 2025 say about queer and trans rights in school? Project 2025 makes a few proposals and claims regarding gender and sexuality:

Schools should "[reject] gender ideology" in the name of "safeguarding civil rights" (page 322)

Title IX protections (which are in place to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex in educational environments) should be rolled back (page 331)

The attempt to add a "non-binary" option when collecting school data should be rescinded (page 322)

"Sex" under Title IX should be defined to mean "only biological sex recognized at birth" (page 333)

There is "no scientific basis" for the idea that sex should be "redefin[ed]" as "sexual orientation and gender identity," a claim which they don't even attempt to cite a source for (page 333)

Being trans is a "social contagion" that causes young AFAB people to want to mutilate their bodies (pages 345-346)

Schools should forbid public education employees from using their students' preferred names and pronouns without parental consent (page 346)

We might expect to see some sources cited for these bold claims and proposals, but for all forty-five pages of the "Department of Education" section of this document, there are only 19 footnotes.

Project 2025 is an under-researched, ultra-conservative playbook that lays out the groundwork for how we can best discriminate against the most vulnerable members of our communities.

Now that Trump has been elected, what can we do to prepare for and resist Project 2025's proposals for education?

Understand what we're up against: Reading through the document itself is a disheartening process, but if you're in a place to do so, it's worth a try. The authors of Project 2025 tend to be pretty mask-off---they'll tell you all about the harm they intend to do. If you'd prefer not to waste hours of your life reading a document that periodically drops phrases so cringy they might make your soul leave your body (see: "woke diversicrats"), you can just read a summary. The ACLU has a good one that can be accessed here.

Teachers, get active in your union: Project 2025 is explicitly anti-union. It even accuses two of the US's biggest teachers' unions of "promot[ing] radical racial and gender ideologies in schools" (page 342). Working class solidarity is how we achieve the collective power we'll need to fight these policies in our schools. (Here is how the Chicago Teacher's Union is practicing resistance---a case study!)

Build community and support networks: This could mean making a point to talk to a few new people while you're attending a protest, attending school meetings with a group of fellow progressives, breaking up capitalist markets by planning/attending a mutual aid fair, or just chatting and laughing with some friends. The goal of fascism is to make us feel isolated. Don't let them succeed.

Take care of yourself: Project 2025's proposals are scary, especially for people whose very identities are being targeted. Don't let anyone tell you that you're "failing at activism" if you need to take a step back.

Teachers (and parents of minoritized students), assure your students and kids that you are on their side: If you're able, hang up a pride flag in your classroom/house, include an optional question about students' preferred pronouns on your introduction survey, and/or include minoritized authors and history in your classes. Have your students learn about Stonewall, read some short stories by James Baldwin, analyze Audre Lorde's poems, and/or introduce them to your favorite queer/BIPOC/disabled/immigrant authors and thinkers. Representation matters!

Sign the ACLU's petition to stop Project 2025: It's important to show lawmakers that Project 2025's radical and dangerous ideas do not represent what we want for our country.

Donate: The Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU, and lots of other civil rights organizations are fighting hard against Project 2025 and the Trump Administration's policy proposals. Consider sending a donation to an organization that aligns with your values.

No matter how hard Trump and his cronies fight, LGBTQ+ people will always exist in our schools. They will never get rid of us and they will never drown out our voices. We will always demand to be safe, accepted, and included and we will win.