#policy thinkers.

[coopsday]

Celebrating UNCTAD’s achievements of the past 60 years - Charting a New Development Course in a Changing World.

Marking its 60th Anniversary, UNCTAD Rebrands to “UN Trade and Development” and Convenes a Global Leaders Forum

UNCTAD’s 60th anniversary Rebrands as "UN Trade and Development" and convenes Global Leaders Forum with the UN Secretary-General, Heads of State, leading economists and Nobel Laureates in June 2024.

UN Trade and Development’s Secretary-General, Rebeca Grynspan, emphasized the organization’s transformative approach and commitment to supporting developing countries in an increasingly polarized world.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) announced today its landmark rebranding as "UN Trade and Development," commemorating its 60th anniversary this year. This strategic move underscores the organization's commitment to greater impact with a new, clearer visual identity aiming to better reflect its work and values aiming to amplify its global voice on behalf of developing countries.

Charting a New Course

Under the leadership of Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan, the organization has been adapting to a rapidly changing global trade landscape impacted by the COVD19 pandemic, geopolitical tensions and climate change, with initiatives that enhance the organization's capacity to rapidly analyze new challenges and support efforts in developing nations.

The rebranding marks a pivotal moment- the first ever comprehensive review of UNCTAD’s global communication footprint and a bold forward-looking strategy to communicate its work and values.

At the presentation of the organization’s new brand as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations, Secretary-General Grynspan underlined "Visible, transformational change is our objective. We are celebrating UNCTAD’s achievements of the past 60 years as a forward-looking, renewed organization, building on our legacy but ready to respond to the new complexities of the global economy. We will continue to work to ensure development is at the core of global economic decisions, and the voice of developing countries is heard."

The organization will adopt its new name and logo across all official channels, in the six UN languages, marking its first rebranding in sixty years.

60th anniversary celebration:  Global Leaders Forum

The rebranding marks the start of the 60th anniversary of the organization. UN Trade and Development will convene a Global Leaders Forum from 12-14 June at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, inaugurated by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres and UN Trade and Development Secretary-General, Rebeca Grynspan, alongside Heads of State and Government, and the participation of civil society organizations, private sector representatives and some of the world’s leading economists. Under the theme "Charting a New Development Course in a Changing World", the Forum will emphasize the organization’s integrated approach to trade and development, addressing finance, technology, investment, and sustainable development, with a specific focus on the needs of developing countries, and UNCTAD’s work in Africa, the least developed countries, small island developing states (SIDs), and landlocked developing countries.

It will also be an important occasion to explore innovative approaches and pioneering solutions with the world’s top policy makers and thinkers.

For more information about UN Trade and Development and its 60th-anniversary events, click here.

Download the video here.

**About UN Trade and Development: **

UN Trade and Development (formerly known as UNCTAD) is dedicated to promoting inclusive and sustainable development through trade and investment. With a diverse membership, it empowers countries to harness trade for prosperity.

[empirearchives]

“What is fatality to us of today? Policy is Destiny for us.”

— Napoleon to Goethe

Source: Emil Ludwig, Goethe: The History of a Man

[theidealistphilosophy]

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thomas Sowell, Source Unlisted.

[varunamatya]

The question we should ask our children is not, “what do you want to do?”

It should be, “what do you want to do to earn money?”

[konigstigerr]

socialism has never been a working class movement. it's an aristocratic and intellectual movement to push out the entrepreneurial class that time and again leaves the former in the dust because it knows how to adapt.

as the aristocrat and intellectual become less relevant, they resent the entrepreneur for their loss of status, balking at the thought of having to work for their livings and so they whip up a frenzy to force slow but steady policy change or violent regime change.

extremely few socialist thinkers came from working classes, the few that did are not popular. champagne socialism is not the exception, it's the norm.

[liberalsarecool]

Not all educated people are liberal, but most conservative rhetoric and failed economic/tax policies depend on highly unserious thinkers.

[decolonize-the-everything]

The presidential debate summary (I didn't watch it)

Trump accused Kamala of making up Project 2025 & of being racist

Upon being asked about specific policy goals Kamala said her highest priority was American values like family, like funding the police and building a border wall

Mods almost asked what separates Kamala's foreign policy from Trump's but she nodded toward snipers on the rafters and instead they said, "tell us more about your plan to raise wages"

After calling him a weirdo Trump got real mad and Kamala went "What, you think I'm a brat? I am! #GotTheGenZVote" confetti was everywhere

Kamala said Trump was "a baby, look at his little baby hands! My hands are normal. Vote blue, chat"

Trump started crying out of frustration because he didn't have the vocabulary to describe how Kamala had further right policies than him and STILL he looked worse somehow. imagine a very upset 2 year old.

In a last ditch effort to win back voters Trump straight up admits to Project 2025 and says he planned it all up in a night in fact, with the best thinkers on earth

Kamala pretends she's offended and says, "But I wasn't invited" the crowd goes crazy and the debate ends. Mods finish off by saying "and that's our time, see you in November, you weaboo shits"

Trump is in shambles. Kamala is very confident. everyone else is confused, horrified, and little less clear on who to vote for

[psychotrenny]

Fun how the people who hue and cry the loudest about China's "Reform and Opening Up", condemning it as some sort great betrayal of socialism, so often consider themselves aligned with Lenin. Like some sort of defender of true socialism from the golden era against all those later revisionists. As though like the NEP wasn't something that Lenin himself very much supported and implemented. Our wise and tactical introduction of capitalist elements VS their revisionist selling out to the bourgeoisie, something like that

There's probably a couple of things at play here. One contributing factor likely the fetishism of defeat you see all too often among Western socialists, treating the dead and failed experiments of the past as somehow being more pure and truly communist than any still living socialist regime. Another is the excessive attachment to specific individuals you see among those who accept communist ideas without truly embracing dialectical materialist thinking; treating certain thinkers and leaders (i.e. Lenin, Trotsky, Mao) as though they were divine prophets while others (i.e. Deng) are devils sent to lead us astray. Policies are not evaluated in terms of their material effects, the prevailing conditions they were taken in or even their theoretical basis. Rather the focus is on who proposed them; similar policies are good when a good guy supports them and bad when backed by a villain. Finally there's likely an element of underlying racism to all this; these people have faith in the ability of Europeans make the right decisions and build a better society, while no such trust is extended to those "less enlightened" peoples of the world. Surely the end of Socialism in Europe meant the end of any Socialism that matters? Like any nation still calling itself Socialist must be lying or deluded; there's no way those barbarians could have anything to teach us...

[kaelio]

To be honest, a lot of the politics you see online--on Tumblr and Twitter--are predicated on the biggest posters with the biggest followings being people who had a lot of potential they squandered, and their spite drives them to encourage other people to engage in self-destructive behaviors. That's also why you see a lot of "gifted kid" discourse from them, while sprinkling in the occasional "lol why even go in to work, fuck your boss." They're mad other people succeeded. They're more angry that other people succeeded than they care if they succeed. They want things to suck as much as possible so other people are on their level, even if it means, for the most part, people being dragged down and certainly not lifted up. Black unemployment is the lowest it's ever been and they secretly want to throw that away so that immigrants get shot at the border, because behind 99% of these snappy, cynical accounts is someone secretly seething that immigrants who come to America tend to benefit from that and apply it towards the welfare of their families, as productive members of a community. They pretend to be "left-wing" but look at what they're actually doing. Look at the implications their preferences actually have. They need that because if you actually evaluated their stances and the implications of the behavior they promote, it's a pound of flesh at everyone else's expense. The lowest quintile of incomes is doing better under Biden than in the last 40 years (very much taking into account inflation, because it's been driven by low-income workers finally being paid more and this being reflected in the cost of goods and services). If they cared about uplifting the poor, they'd tell you things like that. And on matters of foreign policy, since that's what they're using as cover right now, they'd be upfront about the foreign policy differences between the two parties (e.g. Trump got his Muslim ban and wants a stronger one, and it is constitutional, and he will do it--including his literally announced plan to deport anyone on a visa who protests, which is also actually constitutional).

Among other things, their professed position tends to rely on the idea that the USA is uniquely despicable but the US government should also be bigger and do more things for people. Any actual political thinker who is thinking politics-first will have a coherent answer to that, because it's on-its-face contradictory. But again: it's not driven by actual political principles, they're working through personal resentments and using politics to make you think you should listen to them and validate them.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

One thing I hate about modern politics is how compulsive factional flag-planting by the right in an attempt to make everything into a wedge issue for their base leads to the near universal politicization of what are just... Straightforwardly, obviously good ideas. Politics in the US (and tbh a lot of other places) is like:

Scientists: hey so we've discovered a new type of cereal that prevents the disease that makes babies explode. if we started selling it in stores it would save the economy 2 trillion dollars in explosion damage and also it would stop babies from exploding

Liberal politician: huh, sounds neat. you guys interested in the like, uh, anti explosion cereal?

Public: yeah, sure, we like babies

Liberal politician: cool, well in that case-

Conservative thinker (dude with a YouTube podcast that at least five senators secretly watch): -WAIT! STOP! THIS IS A PROPOSAL BY THE EVIL LIBERALS! IT'S A LEFTIST PLOT TO DEPRIVE YOUR CHILDREN OF THE RIGHT TO EXPLODE!

Half the fucking public for some reason: by tarnation, he has the same prejudices as my pops so he must have a point! Can't let those fucking libs get their agenda through!

News anchor, six months later: ...and in other news, the controversial "stop babies exploding" bill, currently polling nationally at 56 points in favour, was blocked in the liberal-lead senate by the conservatives and a liberal minority leading a revolt against their own party's policy. In response, the liberal party president is said to be drafting a modified version of the bill that promises means-tested access to the cereal that stops babies exploding to a randomized subset of 1% of baby and non-baby residents in five test constituencies. The new bill is expected to fail to pass the house some time in the next five years.

[coochiequeens]

‘100% feminist’: how Eleanor Rathbone invented child benefit – and changed women’s lives for ever

She was an MP and author with a formidable reputation, fighting for the rights of women and refugees, and opposing the appeasement of Hitler. Why isn’t she better known today?

Ladies please reblog to give her the recognition she deserves

By Susanna Rustin Thu 4 Jul 2024

My used copy of the first edition of The Disinherited Family arrives in the post from a secondhand bookseller in Lancashire. A dark blue hardback inscribed with the name of its first owner, Miss M Marshall, and the year of publication, 1924, it cost just £12.99. I am not a collector of old tomes but am thrilled to have this one. It has a case to be considered among the most important feminist economics books ever written.

Its centenary has so far received little, if any, attention. Yet the arguments it sets out are the reason nearly all mothers in the UK receive child benefit from the government. Its author, Eleanor Rathbone, was one of the most influential women in politics in the first half of the 20th century. She led the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (Nusec, the main suffragist organisation, also formerly known as the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) from 1919, when Millicent Fawcett stood down, until the roughly five million women who were not enfranchised in 1918 gained the vote 10 years later. In 1929, aged 57, she became an MP, and remained in parliament until her death in 1946. While there, she built up a formidable reputation based on her advocacy for women’s rights, welfare reform and the rights of refugees, and her opposition to the appeasement of Hitler.

It would not be true to say that Eleanor Rathbone has been forgotten. Her portrait by James Gunn hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Twenty years ago she was the subject of a fine biography and she is remembered at Somerville college, Oxford – where she studied in the 1890s and ran a society called the Associated Prigs. (While the name was a joke, Rathbone did have a priggish side – as well as being an original thinker, tremendous campaigner, and stubborn, sensitive personality.) She also features in Rachel Reeves’s book The Women Who Made Modern Economics, although Reeves – who hopes shortly to become the UK’s first female chancellor – pays more attention to her contemporary, Beatrice Webb.

A thrilling tome … The Disinherited Family by Eleanor Rathbone. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

But Rathbone, who came from a wealthy dynasty of nonconformist merchants, does not have anything like the name-recognition of the Pankhursts or Millicent Fawcett, or of pioneering politicians including Nancy Astor and Ellen Wilkinson. Nor does she enjoy the cachet of writers such as Virginia Woolf, whose polemic about women’s opportunities, A Room of One’s Own, was published five years after Rathbone’s magnum opus.

There are many reasons for Rathbone’s relative obscurity. One is that she was the first woman elected to parliament as an independent (and one of a handful of men at the time). Thus there is no political party with an interest in turning her into an icon. Having spent the past three years writing a book about the British women’s movement, I am embarrassed to admit that when I started, I didn’t know who she was.

Rathbone was not the first person to propose state benefits paid to mothers. The endowment of motherhood or family allowances, as the policy was known, was written about by the Swedish feminist Ellen Key, and tried out as a project of the Fabian Women’s Group, who published their findings in a pamphlet in 1912. But Rathbone pushed the idea to the forefront. A first attempt to get Nusec to adopt it was knocked back in 1921, and she then spent three years conducting research. The title she gave the book she produced, The Disinherited Family, reflected her view that women and children were being deprived of their rightful share of the country’s wealth.

The problem, as she saw it, was one of distribution. While the wage system in industrialised countries treated all workers on a given pay grade the same, some households needed more money than others. While unions argued for higher wages across the board, Rathbone believed the state should supplement the incomes of larger families. She opened the book with an archly phrased rhetorical question: “Whether there is any subject in the world of equal importance that has received so little consideration as the economic status of the family?” She went on to accuse economists of behaving as if they were “self-propagating bachelors” – so little did the lives of mothers appear to interest them.

Rathbone’s twin aims were to end wives’ dependence on husbands and reward their domestic labour. Family allowances paid directly to them could either be spent on housekeeping or childcare, enabling them to go out to work. Ellen Wilkinson, the radical Labour MP for Middlesbrough (and future minister for education), was among early supporters. William Beveridge read the book when he was director of the London School of Economics, declared himself a convert and introduced one of the first schemes of family-linked payments for his staff.

But others were strongly opposed. Conservative objections to such a radical expansion of the state were predictable. But they were echoed by liberal feminists including Millicent Fawcett, who called the plan “a step in the direction of practical socialism”. Trade unions preferred to push for a living wage, while some male MPs thought the policy undermined the role of men as breadwinners. Labour and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) finally swung behind family allowances in 1942. As the war drew to a close, Rathbone led a backbench rebellion against ministers who wanted to pay the benefit to fathers instead.

Rathbone celebrates the Silver Jubilee of the Women’s Vote in London, 20 February 1943. Photograph: Picture Post/Getty Images

It is for this signature policy that she is most often remembered today. At a time when hundreds of thousands of children have been pushed into poverty by the two-child limit on benefit payments, Rathbone’s advocacy on behalf of larger families could hardly be more relevant. The limit, devised by George Osborne, applies to universal and child tax credits – and not child benefit itself. But Rishi Sunak’s government announced changes to the latter in this year’s budget. From 2026, eligibility will be assessed on a household rather than individual basis. This is intended to limit payments to better-off, dual-income families. But the UK Women’s Budget Group and others have objected on grounds that child benefit should retain its original purpose of directly remunerating primary carers (the vast majority of them mothers) for the work of rearing children. It remains to be seen whether this plan will be carried through by the next government.

Rathbone once told the House of Commons she was “100% feminist”, and few MPs have been as single-minded in their commitment to women’s causes. As president of Nusec (the law-abiding wing of the suffrage campaign), she played a vital role in finishing the job of winning votes for women.

The last few years have seen a resurgence of interest in women’s suffrage, partly due to the centenary of the first women’s suffrage act. Thanks to a brilliant campaign by Caroline Criado Perez, a statue of Millicent Fawcett, the nonmilitant suffragist leader, now stands in Westminster, a few minutes walk from the bronze memorial of Emmeline Pankhurst erected in 1930. Suffragette direct action has long been a source of fascination. What is less well known is that militants played little part in the movement after 1918. It was law-abiding constitutionalists – suffragists rather than suffragettes – who pushed through the 1920s to win votes for the younger and poorer women who did not yet have them. Rathbone helped lead this final phase of the campaign, along with Conservative MP Nancy Astor and others.

Rathbone was highly critical of the militants, and once claimed that they “came within an inch of wrecking the suffrage movement, perhaps for a generation”. Today, with climate groups including Just Stop Oil copying the suffragette tactic of vandalising paintings, it is worth remembering that many women’s suffrage campaigners opposed such methods.

Schismatic though it was, the suffrage movement at least had a shared goal. An even greater challenge for feminists in the 1920s was agreeing on future priorities. Equal pay, parental rights and an end to the sexual double standard were among demands that had broad support. After the arrival in the House of Commons of the first female MPs, legislative successes included the removal of the bar on women’s entry to the professions, new rights for mothers and widows’ pensions. But there were also fierce disagreements.

Tensions between class and sexual politics were longstanding, with some on the left regarding feminism as a distraction. The Labour MP Marion Phillips, for example, thought membership of single-sex groups placed women “in danger of getting their political opinions muddled”. There was also renewed conflict over protective legislation – the name given to employment laws that differentiated between men and women. While such measures included maternity leave and safety rules for pregnant women, many feminists believed their true purpose was to keep jobs for men – and prevent female workers from competing.

Underlying such arguments was the question of whether women, once enfranchised, should strive for equal treatment, or push for measures designed to address their specific needs. As the debate grew more heated, partisans on either side gave themselves the labels of “old” and “new” feminists. While the former, also called equalitarians, wanted to focus on the obstacles that prevented women from participating in public life on the same terms as men, the new feminists led by Rathbone sought to pioneer an innovative, woman-centred politics. Since this brought to the fore issues such as reproductive health and mothers’ poverty, it is known as “maternalist feminism”.

Rathbone and other Liverpool suffragettes campaigning in 1910. Photograph: Shawshots/Alamy

The faultline extended beyond Britain. But Rathbone and her foes had some of the angriest clashes. At one international convention, Lady Rhondda, a wealthy former suffragette, used a speech to deride rivals who chose to “putter away” at welfare work, instead of the issues she considered important.

The specific policy points at issue have, of course, changed over the past century. But arguments about how much emphasis feminists should place on biological differences between men and women carry on.

Eleanor Rathbone did not live long enough to see the welfare state, including child benefit paid to mothers, take root in postwar Britain. Her election to parliament coincided with the Depression, and the lengthening shadows of fascism and nazism meant that she, like her colleagues, became preoccupied with foreign affairs. In the general election of 1935, the number of female MPs fell from 15 to nine, meaning Rathbone’s was one of just a handful of women’s voices. She used hers to oppose the policy of appeasement, and support the rights of refugees, including those escaping Franco’s Spain. During the war she helped run an extra-parliamentary “woman-power committee”, which advocated for female workers.

She also became a supporter of Indian women’s rights, though her liberal imperialism led to tensions with Indian feminists. During the war she angered India’s most eminent writer, Rabindranath Tagore, and its future prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, when she attacked the Congress party’s policy of noncooperation with Britain’s war effort. Tagore criticised what he called the “sheer insolent self-complacency” of her demand that the anti-colonial struggle should be set aside while Britain fought Germany.

Rathbone turned down a damehood. After their first shared house in Westminster was bombed, she and her life partner, the Scottish social worker Elizabeth Macadam, moved around the corner to a flat on Tufton Street (Macadam destroyed their letters, meaning that Rathbone’s intimate life remains obscure, but historians believe the relationship was platonic). From there they moved to a larger, quieter house in Highgate. On 2 January 1946, Rathbone suddenly died.

Rathbone’s blue plaque at Tufton Court. Photograph: PjrPlaques/Alamy

A blue plaque on Tufton Street commemorates her as the “pioneer of family allowances” – providing an alternative claim on posterity for an address more commonly associated with the Brexit campaign, since a house a few doors down became its headquarters. She is remembered, too, in Liverpool, where her experience of dispersing welfare to desperately poor soldiers’ wives in the first world war changed the course of her life, and where one of her former homes is being restored by the university.

I don’t believe in ghosts. But walking in Westminster recently, I imagined her hastening across St James’s Park to one of her meetings at Nancy Astor’s house near the London Library. Today, suffragettes are celebrated for their innovative direct action. But Rathbone blazed a trail, too, with her dedication as a campaigner, writer, lobbyist and “100% feminist” parliamentarian.

 Sexed: A History of British Feminism by Susanna Rustin is published by Polity Press (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

[bimboficationblues]

being a young liberal or socialist student of political philosophy trying to learn outside of your comfort zone, you decide to read some conservative writings because you want to read the best version of the thing you oppose, not just swipe at the low-hanging fruit of the numbnuts pundits of the world.

and then it is all insane troll logic. critically thinking about why and how our societies exist in the way they do, and if they could be different, is going to cause Literally 1984 (<- this is what Friedrich Hayek actually believed). real socialism would involve making absolutely zero changes to the structure or policies of the economy and is just about feeling good about your place in the abstract concept of the nation (Spengler, most fascist thinkers). rulers are kind of like your dad and political constitutions are divinely inspired (classic early modern reactionaries like Filmer and de Maistre - the OGs if you will.) socialism neglects “spiritual needs” - what those are is an exercise for the reader to figure out, but it probably includes business owners not having to pay taxes (Bozell, ghostwriting for Barry Goldwater).

[moon-pepper]

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that understanding history is necessary to prevent the worst parts of it from repeating, so I spend a lot of my free time trying to learn about things like colonialism, slavery, genocide -- and it worries me to no end to see how much the majority of people don't seem to understand even about events everyone is familiar with. I used to be baffled that anyone could genuinely believe slavery was "just how things were back then", but it makes sense when you realize that most history lessons only deal with what the people in power decided to do; public outrage about a particular action only matters in the historical context if that outrage led to actual mass revolution. Even before we get to the layers of whitewashing and propaganda constantly applied to history, there's an innate bias toward treating major political movements as though they just appear and disappear entirely at random. Which leads me to wonder...

Do fellow gentiles realize that the Nazis weren't new?

What I mean is that most coverage I see of the Nazi ascension to power in Germany presents them as this new, fringe group that came to power out of nowhere through solely violent means. Sometimes there will be explicit mention of the fact that antisemitism was extremely prevalent throughout Germany (occasionally even the rest of Europe!) prior to Hitler's political campaign, but oftentimes it seems implicit that mass antisemitism in Germany began when the NSDAP first formed. Even when the prior existence of antisemitism is brought up, the Nazis are portrayed as a new, unique evil; they did things that no democratic society would ever dream of doing, things that could only be achieved by either completely hiding them from the public or by threatening anyone who spoke against them. "Nazi" is simultaneously an easy epithet for any excessively cruel or restrictive person and a label that is far too severe to seriously apply to anyone because the Nazis were so evil in a way that nobody else was that nobody is truly deserving of comparison.

The thing is, though, that the policies put into place by the Nazi government in order to enable their genocidal end goal weren't original. Even setting aside the fact that they're often viewed as the inventors of genocide despite Hitler openly admitting that he got the idea from the treatment of Indigenous peoples by the U.S.A. (highly recommend watching this BadEmpanada video to learn about that), very few of the Nazis' beliefs or actions were original to the Nazis. The conspiratorial, racially-puristic ideas that the Nazis touted were derived from contemporary conservative thinkers all across the West, and many of the antisemitic legal policies they implemented as part of their Final Solution were practices that had been standard throughout Europe for centuries prior.

The infamous yellow-star badges used to identify Jewish citizens? Those were first devised and enforced the region (by both Christian and Muslim rulers) at least as early as the 800s; it was 1215 when Pope Innocent III declared that all Jewish and Muslim people living in Catholic lands should be required to wear identifying clothing with the explicit goal of segregating them from Christians. The Nazi ghettos to which Jewish citizens were forcibly relocated were inspired by ghettos which had existed to segregate and isolate Jewish populations for centuries; the only real difference is that these new ghettos were just preludes to concentration camps rather than being meant for long-term habitation. Just about every part of Western society had some form of restriction (mandated or voluntary) banning Jewish people from occupying certain jobs or limiting their presence in universities going back centuries before the Nazis existed. There were more than 350 years where Jewish people were not legally permitted to live in England.

The reason I bring all of this up is because, even among people who are conscious of Europe's widespread antisemitism prior to the rise of Nazism, there's a strong notion that the Nazis were so detestable because they came out of nowhere; that they completely defied the norms of the day and took their antisemitism to a level that even the deeply antisemitic societies of past Europe never would have.

In reality, the Nazis weren't much of an escalation -- they were a return. Legal segregation, expulsion, and even slaughter of Jewish people really only began to end when the Enlightenment came and public sentiment in the West began to favor secular government. The first country to abolish legal restrictions on Jewish people was Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Russia maintained its restrictions on Jewish citizens' rights up until it also saw revolution in 1917. The idea that Jewish people were responsible for all of society's ills and needed to be subjugated and exterminated was not a new idea that took hold of Germany due to its economic suffering after World War 1; it was a very old, very popular idea that most of Europe had only just begun to abandon and which was brought back in full force the moment it became politically convenient.

Consider how this compares to present-day politics. Jewish Germans were only granted equal rights in 1871 -- Adolf Hitler's father and mother were 34 and 11 years old, respectively -- and when the Nazi Party formed only 49 years later, the majority of adult Germans would have grown up in or been raised by parents who grew up in a world before religious desegregation. The Nazi Party's promise to the German public was not to introduce a newly bigoted society, but to bring back the bigotry they had grown up with and ensure that it would never leave again; they succeeded by using Germany's post-war suffering to "prove" their society was declining and blaming that decline on a recent major societal change, thereby convincing Christian Germans who were still deeply antisemitic that you see? we let the Jews have rights and not even fifty years later everything is awful. Many Germans did not need to be lied to or forced into supporting the Nazis because, to them, the Nazis were just fighting to revive the "Good Old Days" of their youths.

As a political party, the Nazis were functionally identical to all of the modern-day pundits eagerly proclaiming that racial equality and LGBT equality and religious diversity and welfare policies are destroying the country. Any period of significant economic downturn, any large cultural shift, any major catastrophe no matter the cause is automatically the decline of Western Society to them -- and the blame for that decline is always placed on the most relevant pro-equality social movements. What makes the Nazis unique is not their goals or the beliefs that fueled them; what makes the Nazis unique is that they're the latest and largest example of a group like them gaining power and then rapidly losing that power, which makes them simultaneously martyr idols for subsequent fascists and sacrificial vessels through which liberals can pretend the world's evils were expunged.

Any major shift in favor of granting rights to the oppressed inevitably stirs up a proportional conservative backlash with the effort of reversing course -- not just by revoking those new rights, but by making the previous inequality worse so that it becomes harder to undo again. If we care about ensuring an equitable future, it is vital to understand that the fight for that future does not end with a law being passed. It ends only when equality for all is so well-established as a social norm that there is no way to benefit from pushing for its destruction. Do not get complacent.

[crossdreamers]

New York Times Contributors Say The Newspaper’s Coverage of Transgender People is Unprofessional and Destructive

A group of more than 170 trans, nonbinary, and cisgender contributors to the New York Times published an open letter on Wednesday, condemning the paper’s coverage of trans issues, Buzzfeed reports.

The letter, which was written in conjunction with the Freelance Solidarity Project, a group of freelance writers in the National Writers Union, was signed by journalists — including current Times staffers — politicians, novelists, and other news media workers. Prominent signatories included Cynthia Nixon, Pennsylvania state Sen. Nikil Saval, and writers like Rebecca Solnit and Jia Tolentino.

The letter — addressed to the associate managing editor for standards, Philip Corbett — draws attention to the last year of coverage in the Times, during which time, the group writes, the paper of record published 15,000 words across its front pages “debating the propriety of medical care for trans children.”

In the letter they put the current policy of the New York Times into a wider context, reminding them that the paper has been on the wrong side of history before:

As thinkers, we are disappointed to see the New York Times follow the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation. Puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and gender⁠-⁠affirming surgeries have been standard forms of care for cis and trans people alike for decades. 

Legal challenges to gender⁠-⁠nonconformity date back even further, with 34 cities in 21 states passing laws against cross⁠-⁠dressing between 1848 and 1900, usually enforced alongside so-called prohibitions against public indecency that disproportionately targeted immigrants, people of color, sex workers, and other marginalized groups. Such punishments are documented as far back as 1394, when police in England detained Eleanor Rykener on suspicion of the crime of sodomy, exposing her after an interrogation as “John.” This is not a cultural emergency.

You no doubt recall a time in more recent history when it was ordinary to speak of homosexuality as a disease at the American family dinner table—a norm fostered in part by the New York Times’ track record of demonizing queers through the ostensible reporting of science.

In 1963, the New York Times published a front⁠-⁠page story with the title “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern,” which stated that homosexuals saw their own sexuality as “an inborn, incurable disease”—one that scientists, the Times announced, now thought could be “cured.” The word “gay” started making its way into the paper. 

Then, in 1975, the Times published an article by Clifford Jahr about a queer cruise (the kind on a boat) featuring a “sadomasochistic fashion show.” On the urging of his shocked mother, Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger sent down the order: Stop covering these people. The Times style guide was updated to include the following dictum, which stood until 1987: “Do not use gay as a synonym for homosexual unless it appears in the formal, capitalized name of an organization or in quoted matter.”

New York Times have some really good and open minded journalists. It is time the editors made them write about transgender issues, and not the ones trapped in a transphobic mindset.

[luminalunii97]

Some tankie bs detection

I saw this post on my dash. The user is blocked now. But just to educate people so that they won't fall for idiotic claims online, here are a couple of facts:

1. The Islamic Republic is not anti imperialist, they're anti USA. The regime is very much in love with Russian imperialism. At this point, Iran is an unofficial russian colony. And by the support of their imperialist father figure they have their small version of imperialism in middle east. Ask Iraq and Lebanon.

2. There's no "safety" when it comes to economy in Iran. The "national sovereignty" is called "those fvckin thieves in power" here. Iran's regime is one of the most corrupt regimes by international index. Rent, nepotism, embezzlement and money laundering are serious issues in Iran. Done only and only by the governors and people in power. Social class is not only a thing, there's a raging gap between rich people and those in poverty. And the gap is getting bigger and bigger by month. If you have connections in government or you are in the government, you'll get richer and richer. Other wise, soon enough you'll be in poverty too. Many families, including mine, who used to be considered middle class, have incomes lower than the poverty threshold now.

About 15% of Iran's economic failure including inflation is on the sanctions. The rest is on the corruption within the regime.

Iran's banking system is also a corrupted organ. The so called Islamic banking is anything but Islamic. The loan interest rate is one of the highest worldwide, 23%, so that often you have to pay back more than twice the money you've received. It's called Riba in Islam and it's Haram. According to the regime themselves, the banking system in European countries, even in the USA, is more Islamic than us. The fact that some of the biggest embezzlement in Iran has been done by bank managers should give you a picture of how they're drinking our blood.

None of this is on USA imperialism. It's all the Islamic Republic.

3. The Islamic Republic doesn't support Palestinians. The regime is extremely racist and anti Arab. I dare you talk about this with an actual Arab. IR don't give two shites about Palestinians lives. The regime is antisemitic. That's what they are. Palestine is just an excuse to attack Israel. In the past 20+ years of my life, living in Iran and dealing with these posers, not once we've been educated about Palestine and Palestinians lives. Everything I know, I've learned from online resources and documentaries make by Palestinians. The regime doesn't talk about Palestinians when they pose as supporters. I'm pretty sure they don't know or care to know anything noteworthy about Palestine, considering my knowledge of the human rights violations there is always more than basiji people of my country, and I don't even know that much. All the regime talks about is how Israel should be eliminated. IR supports a terrorist organization called Hamas, not Palestinians.

4. Let's forget about everything I said so far. I wonder if tankies like the op has any ounce of humanity in them! The regime has been oppressing women, violating every type of human rights and murdering lgbtq people and other-thinkers for the last 40 years. The spectacular environmental disaster in Iran is the direct result of regime's policies and neglect. This is a case of human rights violation since it's ruining people's lives, especially ethnic minorities, like Arab farmers in south.

No religious minority is safe in Iran, be it atheist, Baha'i, Jew, christian, or Sunni Muslim. They commit crime against children, through labor and through war. IRGC have little regards for human lives in general but it descent into no regards at all for ethnic minorities.

They have MASS EXECUTED 30,000 leftists (members of Marxist Communist parties and their supporters) within the first decade of their autocratic rule. It's unbelievably funny to me when foreign leftists support a regime that has executed many of their fellow thinkers and still arrest and torture any left activist in Iran.

To say the reason the 1979 revolution happened was to get rid of western influence and to establish a democratic free independent government is true. But the Islamic Republic is not that result. Don't be fooled.