#radical feminism to fascism pipeline

[crazycatsiren]

J. K. Rowling is 2 shots of rum away from "only white people can be women" and I don't think I'm joking.

[hero-israel]

The "Left" has been braying about fascism for years and yet, and YET, I know none of them have even skimmed a single sentence of Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco. If you've read it, you'll immediately start saying "Oh that's Hamas!" at basically every point he made.

Hamas has used some of the most conservative and harsh readings of Islamic theology to create a cult of tradition, they fundamentally reject modernity as an evil plague of the West, they call on Palestinians to "resist" and "struggle" and plan grandiose attacks like 10/7 with no real concrete long term tenable goals that can be gleaned- action for action's sake.

Disagreement is treason, that much is obvious. Children in preschool are taught to fear and hate Jews (fear of difference), and at the same time teach the "middle" classes that Jews are responsible for their economic hardship as if they aren't embezzling tens of millions of dollars from a global charity scam, that Jews are ever seeking to take more land and resources.

Hamas is obsessed with a Plot, that plot being every antisemitic conspiracy theory under the sun. They and their supporters believe all of them, or prime their own brains to stumble down those pipelines at a later date. My personal favorites include the Ben Gurion Canal Project, but they're all sub-plots of the Main Plot; Jews are seeking to supplant us.

Hamas frames themselves and Palestinian society as a whole as both too strong to consider humble negotiated peace, and to justify endless warfare, but also too weak to be responsible for their crimes, too pathetic for Israel to ever be justified in taking military action. It's a constant cycle of hyping themselves up as a group of badass radical warriors and then squealing "no fair" when Israel uses modern weaponry to swat them away.

I'm sure there's also contempt for the weak in Gazan society, but it doesn't immediately jump out at me from Hamas' propaganda machine (this is usually shunted onto Jews anyway, who are seen as effeminate and metropolitan, feeding into that simultaneous strength and weakness thing- Israel is weak and unworthy of life, but too powerful they're the bullies actually).

Hamas literally educates everyone to become a hero, they literally groom young boys into becoming radicalized child soldiers who do not have the frontal cortex development to resist such blatant brainwashing. It's literal child abuse. Palestinian women are pretty obviously seen as chattel who must breed the future army that will finally overwhelm Al-Yahood. There is no aspect of Gazan society that can exist for itself, it must all be part of the Struggle against Israel. And everyone, down to the tiniest baby, must play their part.

The Machismo is so blatant it should be comical. But you don't gang rape Jewish women and humiliate and torture kids if you're secure in your masculinity. I mean, there is something emasculating about being constantly beaten and seeming to have no hope for your political goals... while also constantly telling yourself that you're a proud virile warrior and you and the People have the strength of will to accomplish anything... but then these people you see as subhuman and like kind of queer if you think about it... well they utterly crush you every time. And that is all to say nothing about how Hamas relates to feminism and gay rights. And also how Eco describes the Macho Fascist as using weapons as an ersatz phallic symbol and we see so many teenage boys in Gaza being handed guns and it's like oh... this one section of the essay could take years to unpack when it comes to Hamas.

And Hamas definitely treats the people of Gaza (if not all of Palestine) as having one will and one voice, individuality is not considered. We've seen them and their spineless NGO simps refuse to acknowledge that many many Gazans criticize them, protest against them, hold them equally responsible for their current suffering as Israel. There is no One Singular Leader who claims to represent Gazans/Palestinians but that could change at any moment honestly.

And I don't see any evidence of Newspeak, but I don't know Arabic so I don't know. I do see the Western Leftist allies of Hamas engage in Newspeak like behaviors though. But that brings me to my ultimate point of this long ass ask. The Western Hamas girlies are literally, not only legitimizing a fascist organization even though they purport to hate fascism more than anything. They're starting to reproduce fascist talking points, fascist ways of thinking, in their own activism and their own lives! They're starting to think, talk, and act like fascists when it comes to Israel and Palestine, and to Jews more broadly. They're entirely unaware of this because to recognize Hamas as fascists would be to add a LOT of gray into their black and white worldview. When they appropriate the Palestinian national struggle for their own narcissistic delusions of popular revolution in the West, they're taking actual fascist propaganda produced by a fascist organization and applying it to their own lives.

tl;dr, by every metric laid out by Eco, Hamas are fascists, the people who support them and make apologetics for them are (maybe unknowingly) becoming more like fascists themselves, the next few years and decades are going to thoroughly suck but Am Yisrael Chai.

.

[gendiebrainrotreceipts]

https://www.tumblr.com/universal-lala/723736116842414080/oh-god-i-broke-the-npc-holy-shit-welp-me

TERFS aren’t beating those Fascism and Racism allegations any time soon neither scumbag ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bro there are literally radfems fighting against these people’s racism who I don’t even think are radfems? At most they seem gender critical but I could be wrong. And I never suggested there weren’t any racist radfems….but I’ve never come across *any* nazi ones, nor is there is somewhat notable pipeline of alt right to radical feminism or vice versa, like there seems to be for white trans women for some reason

[discworldwitches]

i was looking for an old mutual who became a vet tech and was looking at the vet tech tag and some terf blog came up looking for radfem vet tech. i clicked through the notes and at the op to block them all but ofc i saw glimpses of their bullshit. one of the posts was about trans women wanting to go on “wombyn’s land” (which i guess is what people were talking about with the whole terfs are talking about starting freebleeding colonies of women)

it got me thinking about what i was thinking earlier before i even saw that which was radical feminism + cottagecore-brand eco-fascism and how much they overlap and how it’s worked so effectively as a pipeline to fascism for women esp on sites like tumblr, twitter, and tiktok.

all these women honestly think that they are for women’s liberation even as they work with christofascists. and they go into mommy groups or environmentalist groups and spread grand conspiracies without a second thought. and because they can claim to be environmentalists or feminists, which typically liberals will not associate with fascism, all these centrists and neolibs get radicalised and they don’t see the issue. and then they rationalise genocidal beliefs like setting up separatist colonies of “woman’s land” and “female supremacy” or joking about humans dying off at mass levels.

despite being steeped in fascism, which must have a culture of machismo at its center, these monsters really think that their hate will liberate women (they even call it pinkpilling and think it’s an antidote to being redpilled while terfs collaborate with those same incels). it’s so insidious and democrats and liberals (as in the lpc and their supporters) and all the other centrists don’t realize that the fascist contingency in america and canada has strong roots across the “party line” and their bullshit electoral politics and pigs won’t do shit to stop the fascist violence

[psycheterminal]

Why radfems aid the patriarchy and do not challenge it

The title will be gotten to, fear not.

Let's start off with people who do not understand asexuals and shame sex in general, because they tend to be either traditionalists or radfems in general.

This might sound weird to some but a no duh to others, but acephobia and sex-shaming intersect heavily.

There's a reason for this.

It's the same reason sexism seems to intersect so heavily with authoritarianism.

Now, this isn't to say that only one is the other, but it sure is a pattern that they tend to be! They want a simple, binary world of "us and them." If it's not "us," it's excluded. This is why anything else than what's in power is "deviant." This can be a lot of things, it depends on the era and place.

This is authoritarianism in a nutshell. It is patriarchy in a nutshell.

It is also radical feminism in a nutshell.

We have to remember that feminism is a means to egalitarianism. It is to promote equality, by acknowledging that women have a lot of roadblocks in having the same opportunities as men in society, in social, educational and economical ways. There's more to it, but that's the basic idea: that feminism focuses on the breaking down of barriers for the disadvantaged to create equity between sexes for a more free society. There's a lot of scholarship on what feminism is and disagreement, but I will be using that definition moving forward.

This definition is why third wave feminists call out earlier ones for using racist language for getting the women's vote ratified. For pushing out black women who campaigned for the vote, same as them. This is why many modern feminists look on radfems, transphobes and bigots with distaste and outright hate.

By excluding trans people, asexuals, sex workers, gender-diverse people and people of color, you create distinctions that shouldn't exist. And yes, while black radfems do exist, radfems are majority white women.

So, why, some may say, is this a problem?

Egalitarianism means that everyone deserves equal playing ground. That there should be considerations for those whose circumstances create a disadvantage to create equity between them and others who lack those circumstances. You wouldn't take someone's glasses away, would you? You wouldn't take someone's cane and tell them to walk just like everyone else, would you?

Yet there's disgusting people who would do exactly that. When you are calling yourself a radfem, you are saying "this is for 20/20 vision only, four-eyes not welcome." "Sorry, no wheelchairs permitted. Guess you shouldn't have been born with that gene!" "Only REAL humans, no people with fake limbs!"

It sounds ridiculous-yet this is exactly what you are doing when you exclude trans and other gender-diverse people from your "feminism."

And it is exactly what the patriarchy does. It is exactly what authoritarians do.

As we've seen with the Olympics, the people who get targeted when transphobic rhetoric wins the day are regularly not just trans women, but butch lesbians and women of color who don't conform to western beauty standards.

You are the company you keep-and radfems regularly find themselves in the company of racists and fascists.

They think they're rebellious while they find themselves surrounded and becoming a gateway to straight up fascism.

And yes! There's many big name radfems that are straight up Nazi and fascist movement affiliates!

If you didn't know about this already, consider yourself warned now.

Radfems are not our friends. They are not proper feminists. They aid and abet the patriarchy, they are often fascists or lead to the alt-right pipeline.

Once you know their ties with white supremacists, you can understand better the origin of the sex shaming and acephobia.

They don't want sexually liberated women. They want white babies for their "race." If you're sexually liberated or asexual, you're less likely to have children or more likely to have "mixed" children.

Even for those radfems who identify as lesbian, they aid this cause, even if it's unknowingly.

In conclusion: radical feminism fucking sucks.

[seacollectsrivers]

putting this under a readmore bc i don't want potential shit from these people, but lol t.erf.s trying to denounce conservative transphobes

i haven't looked into radical feminism - considering the acronym iirc stems from a radfem wanting to distance herself from transphobes, i'm gonna take a wild guess and assume radical feminism isn't inherently transphobic.

but holy shit these people with their heads so far up their asses, i gotta fucking laugh. as if t//erf rhetoric isn't a direct pipeline to fascism

[favoritefightingfrenchgoth]

 huge masterlist of leftist (mainy, some lib) videos, some docs, some articles, divided by topic: that i will edit and add more to later:

Far Right/Alt Right/Fascists:

Charlottesville: The True Alt Right (Goes over the entire Charlottesville rally while using footage/images from the rally and march, including footage from the Nazis that they had livestreamed, how the Nazis began assaulting antifascist protestors, responses to the incident, and how ALL of them are Nazis)

The Cult of Tradition (Goes over the myths and truths of the Founding Fathers/ colonizers, slave owners, American Revolution. Argues against the defenders of statues and monuments)

Philosophy of anti-fascists

Decrypting the Alt Right, how to recognize a fascist + Debating the Alt Right + How to Never Lose a Debate with a Fascist + The Alt Right Playbook series

Handmaids Tale: Spotting Fascism (shows clips from the show including gore),

How to lose an argument

Fox News keeps breaking its own rules

Why the Alt Right is Wrong + What the Alt Right fears + The Lies of Red Ice TV (don’t go into comments, full of Nazis) and part 2

Pewdiepie and the rebranding of white nationalism + The PewDiePipeline: how edgy humor leads to violence    Part 2 + Pewdiepie is a Nazi + Pewdiepie and the problem with (fake) racism + Pewdiepie mask off + Pewdiepie doesn’t understand hate symbols

How Cultural Marxism became the Far Right’s scapegoat + Hbomberguy’s Cultural Marxism 

Debunking the Alt RIght: Pool parties +  + The Golden One: A measured response

How PragerU is lying to you    Part 2    Part 3 + Brexit: PragerU vs Reality + PragerU - Big Joel + Dennis Prager is a dick to Holocaust victims + PragerU is conservative junk food + PragerU and Poverty: Misinformation Amateur Hour + PragerU and Justice: a conservative nightmare + PragerU and Marriage: a conservative fever dream

Guns in the Third Reich: A response to Shapiro + others  + Ben Shapiro and the politics of Imagination + Leftist’s response to Ben’s 10 tips 

The Easy Answers of Youtube Conservatism

Who’s at fault for the refugee crisis? + Stochastic Terrorism and Christchurch

Is Black Panther Alt Right? (No)

Fox News: How to whitewash an atrocity

Getting Sweaty about globalism

The West + Does the West hate itself? + Why do They hate The West?

How societies turn cruel

Were the Crusades defensive? (No) 

Stefan Molyneux’s Fall of Rome + Stefan Molyneux, Star Wars The Force Awakens + Stefan Molyneux, The truth about the truth about Wonder Woman + We don’t talk about Elliot Roger - response to Stefan Molyneux + Stefan Molyneux, Aboriginal Australian History and ‘White Guilt’

Racists only have one solution

Trump

Jordan Peterson and The Story of Jordan Peterson + Peterson doesn’t understand Nazism + PhilosophyTube’s Jordan Peterson & The Meaning of Life  + Peterson is not profound + Peterson is everything he criticizes and can’t read + The wasteland of Jordan Peterson

Taking feminists out of context + Power fantasy, male objectification, & lady fanservice + Anita Sarkeesian and the people who hate her + InnuendoStudios Why are you so angry? series

Do women destroy civilizations? (No)  + She-Ra broke the brains of Anti-SJWs + Does Intersectionality destroy Individuality?

Anti feminism (Ableism abound) + Anti feminism (Warning: Lauren Southern) + Anti feminism (guy uses ableist slurs) + Anti feminism vs facts  + Red Pill: Strange Art of Men’s Rights Activism and part two + Women in video game history - The Serfs + Lauren Southern is wrong about tradition

Why Paul Joseph Watson is wrong about everything

The Serfs Steven Chowder

Outrage News + Soyboys: A measured response

How to fall down the Anti SJW rabbit hole

Stonetoss and how hate speech spreads

Sargon of Akkad can’t read (Anti feminism, racism) + Sargon’s petition: a measured response + #FreeSargon: a measured response + Big Joel’s Sargon of Akkad + On Sargon

Joe Rogan Gateway into the Alt Right  and part 2  + Pakman gobbles Joe Rogan

FarradaySpeaks - My descent into the alt right pipeline

Dave Rubin gets Orbed + Dave Rubin: Lazy Propagandist

Can women chess? (Yes)

What is virtue signalling?

Bolsonaro & Brazil’s struggle for truth & memory + Bolsonaro & Latin American Fascism + Why Pinochet Apologists Are Wrong (RIP Allende) + Venezuela: The True Face of the Opposition and this + Bolivia is descending into Dictatorship, here’s why and part 2 + Joanna Hausmann is lying about Venezuela (also, German name, south american heritage... 👀👀👀)

Snowflakes-- The Right's War on the Individual

Sports

Hats off to Tim Pool + Tim Pool completely unraveled and backfires bad (self own)

Debunking Steven Crowder on Universal Healthcare

Cuphead: The Fake Outrage

The Boy Who Cried Racist

Denial as a tool of the radical right

The Limits of Logic - Examining Right Wing Logic Through Star Trek and Wittgenstein

Refugees and Human Rights and Part 2 (ties into far right) + Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Laws

Was Hitler a Socialist? (No) + Were the Nazis Socialist? (No) 

I can go a bit over Nazis not being socialists also bc I have gotten into arguments about this topic.

 Nazis cuddled up with monopolists/big business, protected private businesses, the English word “privatization” was invented to describe their economic policy by the magazine The Economist. They were always anti socialist and anti communist and combined it with antisemitism often using the phrases “Jewish Bolshevism” and “Jewish Marxism”. 

Quotes from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, (there’s much more than these, he got very angry over Marx and other Jewish leftists, equating Judaism and communism/Marxism) warning: some antisemitism:

“In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in various circles which today in part faithfully support the National Socialist movement, expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.”

“While the Jews in their Marxist and democratic press proclaimed to the whole world the lie about 'German militarism' and sought to incriminate Germany by all means, the Marxist and democratic parties were obstructing any comprehensive training of the German national man-power.”

“Marxism represents the most striking phase of the Jewish endeavour to eliminate the dominant significance of personality in every sphere of human life and replace it by the numerical power of the masses.” 

Hitler on coopting leftist language and symbolism to get the workers on their side:  “The fact that we had chosen red as the colour for our posters sufficed to attract them to our meetings. The ordinary bourgeoisie were very shocked to see that, we had also chosen the symbolic red of Bolshevism and they regarded this as something ambiguously significant. The suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists. The actual difference between (National) Socialism and Marxism still remains a mystery to these people up to this day. The charge of Marxism was conclusively proved when it was discovered that at our meetings we deliberately substituted the words 'Fellow-countrymen and Women' for 'Ladies and Gentlemen' and addressed each other as 'Party Comrade'. We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims. We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation, our intention being to irritate the Left, so as to arouse their attention and tempt them to come to our meetings – if only in order to break them up – so that in this way we got a chance of talking to the people.

“First of all they appealed to their followers to ignore us and keep away from our meetings. Generally speaking this appeal was heeded. But, as time went on, more and more of their followers gradually found their way to us and accepted our teaching. Then the leaders became nervous and uneasy. They clung to their belief that such a development should not be ignored for ever, and that terror must be applied in order to put an end to it.”

Here’s a 1923 interview transcript with Hitler saying the “Socialist” in National Socialist isn’t about socialism  and how he tried to redefine socialist in a nationalist and a “by Aryan people, for Aryan people, while everyone still has private property and stuff” way.  Here he also kinda goes over this in Mein Kampf.

Nazis who were left economically only are Strasserists, Strasserists in the Nazi Party were killed in 1934′s Night of the Long Knives with George Strasser being killed while Otto Strasser had been in exile from 1930. In 1933, Nazis came up with Reichstag Fire Decree + political prisoners (mainly communists and socialists) were rounded up and were put in the first concentration camps)

Canada’s 10,000 person Antia Riot - Battle of Christie Pits

Manufactured Milkshake hysteria + Revenge of the milkshakes + The Ballad of Andy Ngo

Free Speech:

Freeze Peach + The fatal effects of Hate Speech + Ur-Fascism, Free Speech, and those who forgot

The Snowflake Generation? A Response

It’s Just a Joke + Just be nice you nerds

The Marketplace of Ideas: Germany vs USA + Why Political Correctness kinda rules + Steven Crowder and the silencing of dissident media + The Serfs on Deplatforming

Race:

America is racist + Is the 2nd Amendment racist? (Yes in its implementation)

Systematic/normalized racism + Race, Law, & Politics - PhilosophyTube and Part 2

Implicit bias + Group Bias & Black Pigeon Speaks

The danger of white moderates + Friending and forgiving racists - Kat Blaque + Be honest, you don’t care if they’re racist + Jeffree Starr and performative activism

What is race?  + What is white supremacy? + White identity + History of whiteness  Also this +  'Humans Are Not Equal': The Dishonest History of Race  Genetic Betrayal: The Truth About Race  Behind The Misconceptions of Race

Why we have a black history month

Book Chat: "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race"  + Robin DeAngelo’s wonderful paper on white fragility

What is Blackface? + Blackace: A cultural history of a racist art form + Montage from the ending of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled + The New Jim Crow Museum 

Racial comparisons

Quebec Mosque Shooting: Manufacturing a conspiracy

The fate of the frog men (Pepe) + White supremacist propaganda vs truth + Do racists “just love their country”? (No)

Moderate Muslims and terror attacks

Abusing statistics (immigration) + The Bell Curve (isn’t real) + The Great Replacement isn’t real +  Germany’s demographic demise: a response

Immigration and the fall of Rome + Stefan Molyneux’s Native American Genocide

The Many Lies of Lauren Southern’s Borderless

The killing of Trayvon Martin

on alllivesmatter + on privilege

Shaun’s response to “People of color: You are not oppressed”

European histroy is not white history + Does the Left want to destroy history? + Is Philosophy Just White Guys J3rk!ng Off? + A white man’s war? A response to NoBullshit (People of color and women fighting in MY WW2? More likely than you think)

LGBT (mainly T) stuff: 

What is gender? + There are more than two human sexes + Bill Nye vs Pseudoscience and part 2 (Bill said trans rights!!!)

Transphobia in the UK + Transphobia: an analysis by PhilosophyTube + Ben Shapiro’s weapons grade bad takes + Joe Rogan is an idiot and a transphobe  + Debunking Trump on LGBT rights

Debunking trans athletes myths (8 video playlist) + Is Trans Inclusion a Threat to Cis People in Gendered Spaces? (No)

Why Trans Roles for Trans Actors?  + Trans male visibility

Kat Blaque’s monologue on cis nonsense: “Cis people please stop doing this” + Kat Blaque’s take on JK Rowling

What is a TERF? (Don’t go into the comments!!!) + The Transphobe’s Paradox + Why is the trans suicide rate so high?

Red Scare:

Red Scare and xenophobia + racism + Why they still need their big lies about socialism

“Socialism no food”  CIA even said Soviets eat abt the same as Americans , short video going over food shortages

Animal Farm is commonly used in schools to teach about the evils of socialism/communism like mine did:

George Orwell was a socialist anti Stalinist writing about the dangers of authoritarianism. The pig named Snowball (Trotsky) was depicted as good: he wrote the original commandments, was at odds with Napoleon, and he was forced to flee after being attacked by Napoleon’s orders. But Orwell was also a snitch that happily gave out a list of suspected communists to the govt while dying of TB so

McCarthyism

Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders, domino theory and containment, Eisenhower doctrine, Kennedy doctrine, Johnson doctrine, Reagan doctrine.

CIA funded anti-leftist propaganda campaigns like this

The American Govt often supported coups, wars, and other interference against countries that tried to implement socialism, had strong leftist movements, otherwise just elected leaders that were leftist, many from Operation Condor: Chile, Argentina, Vietnam, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia (1971 and 2019), etc

COINTELPRO targeted American leftist, Civil Rights/Black Power, antiwar, Native American rights, and environmental protection movements among others. The FBI targeted and threatened MLK. Spied on and kept files of Einstein and Helen Keller. The FBI drugged and then murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton. Etc

Socialism/Communism:

Before their revolutions, Russia and China were pre-industrial, agricultural, largely illiterate societies whose masses were peasants spread out over truly vast expanses of land. From their revolutions, they rapidly industrialized, became largely literate, and became world powers. With the Soviet Union even flourishing and doing great from their planned economy (5 year plans) while the rest of the world was suffering from the Great Depression. 

Important to note so I don’t get accused of being a Tankie: Soviet Union + China also did terrible things, for example there was the persecution/oppression of minorities under Stalin (like Cossacks, Jewish people, his govt was kinda antisemitic), Stalin would also have his political opponents killed (mostly anti Stalinist comrades), they weren’t good on LGBT rights: Lenin decriminalized gay sex in 1917, Stalin recriminalized it in 1936, Stalin reversed a lot of Lenin’s gender equality policies, Mao getting citizens to smelt their own steel and iron wasn’t smart or efficient,  etc. Critical support.

Modern day China is state capitalist. China has the second highest number of billionaires in the world just behind the USA. And Former Soviet countries are now also capitalist with Russia #4 on the list of most billionaires.

Cuba

Cuba has a literacy rate of 99.7%, one of the highest in the world thanks to the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 right after the Cuban revolution. Universal, famously high quality healthcare (doctors are their biggest export, plus they have medical internationalism) and education. Almost half of parliament members are women, Cuba has made great strides in gender equality. Cuba is a direct democracy, while the US is more of an oligarchy, with people mainly winning elections based on their wealth or the wealth of their supporters.

Cuba’s biotech industry is considered the best in the world among developing countries, and has generated important innovations in cancer research, HIV/AIDS research. Cuba created the world’s first vaccine against meningitis B.

Discrimination against LGBT people is illegal in Cuba. It is legal in 30 US states. Cuba has healthcare for all, including trans people, and allows trans people to legally change their gender without surgery. From my understanding, the rights and treatment of LGBT people aren’t perfect but better than US.

Assata Shakur:  “Revolution is a process, so I was not that shocked to find sexism had not totally disappeared in Cuba, nor had racism, but that although they had not totally disappeared, the revolution was totally committed to struggling against racism and sexism in all their forms. That was and continues to be very important to me. It would be pure fantasy to think that all the ills, such as racism, classism or sexism, could be dealt with in 30 years. But what is realistic is that it is much easier and much more possible to struggle against those ills in a country which is dedicated to social justice and to eliminating injustice.”

Book  Another Book The Cuba Libre Story 

Who Did Che Guevara Murder? + Che Guevara: Homophobic racist?

Majority of East Germans miss socialism warning: article is biased red scare stuff. Krupp und Krause, a nice pro East song from West Germany that also explains surplus value. Ich suche die DDR, a nice pro East rock song from Feeling B, which was a band of former East Germans, saying they are looking for the GDR and it had been stolen. Two members are now in the famous rock band Rammstein, the whole band is leftist.

People who actually lived through the Soviet Union miss it, while young people who haven’t say the Soviet Union collapse was good. Far majority of Soviet citizens voted to keep the Union in 1991.

Human nature & socialism + Why the web is communist

In defense of socialism + “X Socialist Country has failed!” is a stupid argument

Authoritarianism in socialist countries

Soviet Union through the eyes of an American + Socialism gives a better quality of life + Soviets had a better record of training women in STEM than modern USA + Space race meme

But how come revolution? + How to defeat your boss + A Beginner’s Guide to Overthrowing Capitalism + The Socialist case against billionaires

Intro to Anarchy + PhilosophyTube’s series on Marx +  What 'To each according to their need' Means + Private vs Personal Property + V For Vendetta - What is Anarchism? + Was the CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) a living heck?

How would anarchism work irl part 2 part 3 part 4

Witchcraft, Gender, & Marxism + Black Rad Leftism vs Black Liberalism

Internet archive with Marxist texts + Easy direct action + Speech Synthesis: Bernie Sanders reading Communist Manifesto, Alex Jones reading Communist Manifesto + Communist Maniesto Summary video with quotes

Black Panthers

The good man himself, President Thomas Sankara

Sankara declared the objectives of the “democratic and popular revolution” to be primarily concerned with the tasks of eradicating corruption, fighting environmental degradation, empowering women, and increasing access to education and health care, with the larger goal of liquidating imperial domination. During the course of his presidency, Sankara successfully implemented programs that vastly reduced infant mortality, increased literacy rates and school attendance, and boosted the number of women holding governmental posts. On the environmental front, in the first year of his presidency alone 10 million trees were planted in an effort to combat desertification. 

Socialism in America doc

Albert Einstein? Socialist.  “Why Socialism?” Video Summary and Quotes

“Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before..

...I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”

Stephen Hawking? Socialist. “If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”

Martin Luther King Jr? christian socialist. an interview with him about a year before his murder, he goes over wealth equality, slave reparations. mainly 16:30 to the end

he supported labor strikes, unions, workers. 

‘You are reminding, not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.

...“Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation.

...”If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she, too, will go to hell.”

“This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.”  AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961

In a story published a week before his assassination, King told Jose Yglesias in the New York Times magazine, “In a sense you could say we are engaged in the class struggle.” The civil rights movement had not cost a dime, he said, but the movement to uproot poverty and inequality throughout the country would “be a long and difficult struggle, for our program calls for a redistribution of economic power.”

Paul Robeson was a socialist and supported the Soviet Union, saying (since the Union had Article 123, banning racial discrimination)  "In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel in this committee."

When asked why he didn't move to Russia, he replied: "Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people." Here he is singing the USSR anthem and Warszawianka

Muhammad Ali on the Soviet Union: Ali had just returned from a twelve-day visit to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Soviet Ambassador to the United States to promote the upcoming Moscow Olympics. Ali prayed in Uzbekistan with Soviet Muslims. He sparred with Soviet heavyweights in training for the Olympics. He met with Brezhnev at the Kremlin. 

When he returned to the United States he reported back that “they give a man free medical and hospital care, low rent and a job . . . I never felt so free of being robbed.” He expressed disbelief that so many Americans were afraid of war with the Soviet Union. “It’s hard to believe that such a peaceful country wants war.”

Helen Keller? very into socialism.  (also unfortunately she was into eugenics)

also js bc I was taught differently as a kid: how she’s portrayed is super ableist. for example: she could always communicate, she and the household had home signs and anne sullivan was just there so she could get an education. 

Famous leftists/ leftists in history:

Rory McCann, Liam Cunningham, Danny Devito, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Kwame Ture, W.E.B. Du Bois, civil rights activist James Farmer, Frederick Vanderbilt Field was disowned by the Vanderbilt tycoon family for being a communist, King Camp Gillette creator of the Gillette company/razor, Leslie Feinberg,

Victor Gruen architect who first designed American shopping malls (hated the modern ones), Woody Guthrie, activist and co-creator of the NAACP Florence Kelley, pioneer of the birth control movement Antoinette F. Buchholz Konikow, Rage Against the Machine, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Albert Schatz who discovered a treatment for tuberculosis,  suffragette and founding member of the ACLU Rose Schneiderman, feminist activist Mary Heaton Vorse, editor who compiled slave testimonies George Rawick, 

feminist activist that helped change NY labor laws Theresa Malkiel, writer and abolitionist Lysander Spooner (published pamphlets with legal defenses for escaped slaves, would offer legal services for free, supported John Brown),

Capitalism+Liberalism:

What’s wrong with capitalism part one  Part two + Noncompete’s why capitalism sucks and part 3 + Why do you work 8 hours per day? + How rich countries rob the poor + Your democracy is a sham

1960 Harvest of Shame documentary, covering plight of migrant farm workers living with atrocious conditions and no living wage. As one worker says at 41:32, "Sure you can get a job, but if you can’t live on what you make, what good is the job?”

Abolish the Monarchy! +  Why does Britain Still have a Queen?

How Privatization Fails: Railways + Influencing an election + You are expendable + Misinformation for fun and profit + Manufacturing Consent: How the Media Distorts Reality: Summary of Michael Parenti and Noam Chomsky + Manufacturing Consent Full Noam Chomsky Documentary

Venezuela: myths and Argument ad Venezuelum + The Myth of Capitalism - Dr. Michael Parenti

UN investigating the US for extreme poverty UN report on horrific US inequality and poverty UN condemns Trump admin for exacerbating poverty levels + The American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion says UN expert + Doc Priced Out: LA’s hidden homeless

Stranger Things has some bad politics in it + What if they threw a purge and noone came? + Marvel sucks, Disney sucks (their workers lives)  + HBO’s Watchmen and Liberalism + Forrest Gump - What are American values? + TV Show ‘Cops’ Copaganda + Bob’s Burgers and Class Conflict

White Working Class? Part 1: Class, Culture, Capital +  White Working Class? Part 2: Race, Class, Migration + Landlords are Bad + Utopia + “Good” Billionaires 

Fake Materialism for Real Transphobes on leftist transphobes. “You want to unite the working class? You have to stand up for the whole working class. All of them! All of their struggles! Otherwise, you’re the one being divisive. You’re the one excluding people. Identity can only divide us if we choose not to care about the struggles of others. If we decide that the problems of others can wait, while we sort out the ones that we share: how can we expect people to extend class solidarity to us while we withold our solidarity from them?

Capitalism is built on white supremacy, it’s built on patriarchy, it’s built on cisheteronormativity, on ableism, on settler colonialism, on imperialism, it’s an interlocking and mutually reinforcing system. We don’t get to pick and choose! You either fight the whole thing or you’re fighting none of it! You’re giving quarter to it. And if you want to hold up the fight until everyone agrees to exclude one vector of oppression or another, until we dismiss the concerns of trans people or indigenous people or women or disabled people or whomever, then you’re no different than any other reactionary.”

50 ways capitalism is hurting you part one   Part two + PhilosophyTube on How to fix the housing crisis + Is Capitalism Voluntary? (No.) + Should the Rich help the Poor? (Yes and neither should exist) + Healthcare, Ethics, & Postmodernism + How to Succeed in Capitalism

Capitalist Entitlement + Woke Brands + Case study of Capitalism: Ukraine + Capitalism is great (not really) + Is Capitalism destroying healthcare? (Yes) + Overpopulation is a capitalist lie + Mental health under late stage capitalism

Pete Buttigieg + Trump and the problem with Politics + America never stood or freedom + How Unions died in America (Reagan) + Evo Morales on Trump and Obama + Whistleblowers in America

My First Job/Lazybones Manifesto + Second Job + Third Job

Destiny and the Liberal Mind Prison + Civility +  Kat Blaque’s Why Liberals annoy me + ThoughtSlime’s Are liberals our enemies? + Why Conservatives can’t stop lying

“Law & Order” And Civil Disobedience + What was Liberalism? Part one  Part two  Part three  Part four + The Dark Side of Liberalism (5 part series) + You can’t beat Trump: Frost/Nixon and the Liberal Lie

Sex Work + Sex Workers and Police, Prison Abolition 

Documentary “The Story of American Slavery” from the settlement of Jamestown on + Doc “Slavery and the Making of America” + Doc “Slave Catchers, Slave Resisters” + Doc “The Heritage of Slavery” 1968 w  Fannie Lou Hamer & Lerone Bennett, Jr.

Doc “Life of the Rez” goes over horrible conditions on Indigenous American reservations due to colonization, capitalism

Problems with American Police, Examples, Solutions, and BLM 1 hr, 43 minutes long Hasan Piker coverage. Contains videos and imagery of police violence and corruption, including murders. 

Parts of his coverage are not good: In at least 2 points in this almost 2 hr coverage, he refers to killer cops as mentally ill/”having personality disorders” and “sociopathic”. At one point refers to an AR-15 as an assault rifle, which is incorrect. + Why Police Brutality is hard to prosecute

Havin Fun + Keeping Hope Alive

Yakko's world but countries that were bombed by the USA after the fall of Germany are bombed

Yakko's World but each time the US invaded or coup'd the country (since the Cold War) it gets louder & more distorted / Yakko’s World but every country the US overthrew since 1945 makes it louder

[ordinarytalk]

This article perfectly sums up what I've been feeling for years regarding the whole "pro/anti-shipping" discourse, but haven't quite been able to put into words.

It's a pipeline to direct young women, lgbtq+ folks, and other marginalized groups in fandom spaces into alt-right/TERF beliefs, the same way that engineered discourse around "ethics in video game journalism" was a pipeline that directed young men to the alt-right. WHICH, I should emphasize, directly led to the rise of fascism globally, and the election of Trump and the January 6th riots in the U.S.

The shift from “this ship is gross because of the age difference” to “anybody who likes it is gross because of the age difference” to “people who like this must be sexual predators” is notable, and chilling, especially since it’s exactly what serves to justify the harassment going to the lengths it does. After all, what wouldn’t you do to stop a child predator? [...]modern anti-shipping pulls a lot from radical feminism and Evangelical thought.

Honestly, I want to copy-paste so many excerpts from this that I'd basically be copy-pasting the entire thing.

This is not "just fandom drama." This is a genuine, very real threat, with very real consequences. It has a body count.

You are not immune to propaganda.

Tonight, I went looking for more articles to add to my collection of anti essays, and I found one from Elliott Dunstan called Behind the Curtain: Anti-Shipping is a Bad Faith Position.

He managed to put into words what bothers me about the line, "it's just fandom drama and I'm above it", which many people use to dismiss the anti movement. He does this by positing that the anti movement is an entry point for radical feminism, and for mobilizing people against PornHub, OnlyFans, etc. One quote I particularly liked was:

"Much like how Gamergate and the alt-right used videogames and 4chan to get to young men, TERFs and radfems have happily used Tumblr and Twitter to disguise their talking points in 'low-stakes' affairs like ships. This serves several purposes. One, nobody’s really going to think about it too hard. It’s fandom. It’s not that serious. Two, nobody outside of fandom will take you seriously. If you’re harassed or lose your job because of dumb fandom drama, it’s at least partially your own fault for engaging in 'silly fandom stuff for children' – at least in many people’s eyes. And three, it gives them direct access to a receptive audience; marginalized people in fandom who feel shut out for other reasons."

I felt it was pretty well written and makes some very good points.

--

[crazycatsiren]

Radfems fuck off my blog challenge.

[mothytism]

introduction

greetings, fellow freaks n geeks! you may be wondering, "what the hell is she doing?" and i am wondering back, "telopathey lol"

in the spirit of improving my own self-esteem and confidence as i have been working to do for the past few years, i've decided that what i have to say is not garbage and that it's likely folks can and will care what exactly that is, so i'm starting a blog proper, with like. posts and stuff on it that i actually wrote and brought into existence! i have a lot of privileges and a lot of not-privileges in life and have come across a few especially useful methods of balancing them.

i'm partly deciding now to write this because i'm recently out of a job and have the time and energy along with the savings to sustain me for a little while. i think everyone's capable of finding really great paths to happiness, but the survival necessity of being a cog in the capitalist machine and the inevitable exhaustion it entails makes it hard to do much else than, well, survive. if i can do some of the legwork in the area for the rest of you, i want to.

so! in no particular order, here are some of the things I want to write about. shoot me an ask about something and i'll probably get to it a lot sooner. i love asks.

being an afab person who went undiagnosed with ADHD/autism until adulthood (#brainproblems)

living successfully within ADHD/autism rather than despite them (#brainsolutions)

helping well-intentioned neurotypicals understand neurodiversity (#fornormies)

healthy friendships and/or romantic relationships when one or both have brain problems of some kind (#comm)

learning self-advocacy and turning self-hatred into self-acceptance (#spiritmeat)

constructively dealing with doctors (#drpiss)

why being openly cringe is wonderful (#uwu)

the radical feminism -> fascism/tradnationalism/bigotry pipeline and the real reasons TERFs are so dangerous (#rftf)

gifted kid burnout and why it is not, in fact, complete horseshit (#gkb)

long-distance relationship strategies for success (#ldr)

life strategizing: when to be yourself without caring and when to go undercover and "play the game" (#larptism)

how to be poor and still get and enjoy really nice things (#thrift)

buying a house when you're 23 and don't know shit (#home)

DIY renovating a house when you're 23 and don't know shit (#handy)

making big strides in life with advice and support from trusted adults, but without their money (#gxrlboss)

i'm going to stop myself there, but will probably add to/edit this list here and there. i plan to also tag short informal posts i write #blurb, longer posts i write #essay, and stuff i write on someone else’s post #commentary, and I’ll try to tag reblogs #rbtism unless i forget.

anyway, hmu homies, be good, i love you, here is some soup, pats you gently on your head.

[hazardous-waste-containment]

I do think certain strains of TERFism have very fascistic traits (that essay on transmisogyny and antisemitism in Nazism is very good) but on the whole there is no special relationship between radical feminism and fascism, the only reason I include radfems on this blog is for the same reason I'm talking about ancaps/right-libertarians and run-of-the-mill reactionary conservatives: there is an overlap and partnership with certain fascisms that's worth discussing, even if they aren't inherently ideologically compatible.

the harm that radical feminism does to gender-variant people and sex workers is loathsome enough on its own to be worth opposing, without pretending that all radfems ever are in bed with fascists.

for every criticism you could make of radical feminism that dodges its core belief system and takes a cheap shot at some radfems' bedfellows, there will be a radical feminist out there to whom that peripheral criticism does not apply.

there is, again, a concerning convergence between certain radical feminisms and certain fascisms but the key word there is certain. fascists can do entryism in any ideology and any ideology can feel the fascistic pull as material conditions shift and fascism bubbles up everywhere.

it's of course notable that fascist entryists have found footing within some radical feminist movements in particular, in the same way the "libertarian to fash" pipeline is notable, and other sites of fascist collaboration and recruitment are notable, without pretending that, for instance, all right-wing libertarians are fascists or are collaborating with fash.

the presence of yellow-brown alliances and the presence of radfem-brown alliances don't say anything more than "this ideology or community had something fascists were able to latch onto and build on, let's investigate that". but other than that, all they have in common with fascism is the counterrevolution, which is a cause taken up by many many ideologies.

[lastoneout]

Hey so uh y'all know this is straight up radfem rhetoric that will do fuck all to actually combat the rise of fascism in this country while putting young people further at risk of being indoctrinated into conservatisim, right? Like this is 100% the basis of political lesbianism and is a direct pipeline to becoming a fucking TERF which is a direct pipeline to holding hands with Nazis, we should NOT be supporting or promoting the idea that the only way for women to be safe is to completely isolate themselves from men, especially in the coming years where unity with our allies, a group which includes men, will be the key to survival for so many people. The state of the world right now is based in part on the rampant spread of individualism and exclusion and distrust, why the hell would perpetuating that help??

Also this alienates women who cannot or will not abandon their connections to men(wanting to marry and love and have sex and children with men is morally neutral) and strips us of our ability to find allyship with marginalized men who are on our side and also will face extreme violence under this new administration. This will cut us off from black men and disabled men and intersex men and queer men and will absolutely be used as justification to completely fucking abandon trans men, who have already been completely abandoned by current mainstream feminism to the point that I cannot go five seconds without someone saying reproductive rights are an issue that only affects women when that is in NO way the case. Basically no one has been including trans mascs/men, nonbinary people, and intersex people in the abortion and birth control discussion this election cycle despite those groups needing just as much help and support on this front and that is a PROBLEM. Like trans men and intersex people who can get pregnant are going to be at a hellish level of risk going forward, infinitely more so than the average cishet perisex woman. We cannot abandon them further.

Plus for some of us marriage will potentially keep us safer or help us escape this country should we need to, I'm disabled and can't work I cannot just move to another country, but if I get married and my fiancé goes first and finds a job that can support us both that will help me. And like you can also get married to a man and still refuse to have kids in protest? Most of the people in our generation aren't having kids anyway? And tbh those of us who want to are not bad people nor should we have to put our entire lives on hold for god knows how long to stick it to the men. We live in hell right now, why the fuck should we be asking people to completely abandon things that could make them happy in a weird form of protest that won't work and is a gateway to being a raging Nazi transphobe??

And on top of all of that this also lets the hundreds of thousands of women who voted for Trump on purpose because they too have bought in to his rhetoric off the hook, which again, is where radical feminism leads because it is fundamentally based on the idea that men are always dangerous and harmful no matter what but women are always innocent brainwashed victims who can do no harm. And writing off men as a lost cause who are evil by nature and thus cannot be saved is also not only radical feminist bullshit, it's legit just conservative "boys will be boys" bullshit with a progressive hat. I am not giving shitty men a free pass to suck forever by pretending they are incapable of change, they can, should, and MUST be held to a higher standard. That is what I mean when I say radical feminisim is a conservative ideology, it doesn't believe a better world is possible because it assumes men will always be evil and should be avoided at all costs which upholds the status quo, it does nothing to actually challenge it.

(And hell, if all that wasn't enough, this is also flawed because the kinds of women who are left leaning enough to consider doing something like this likely already only associate with progressive men, so who are we even punishing here? No woman riding the tradwife MAGA waterslide is going to do this, so the only men who get punished are the good ones who are on our side, which helps who, exactly?? Like christ y'all this falls the fuck apart so fast the second you actually think about it.)

There are men who will be my allies in the coming years and women who will be my enemy. Women are just as capable of being bigoted fascist pieces of shit as men are, this election proved that. We waited for women to save us and most of them fucking didn't. How the hell am I supposed to believe women are inherently safer or better while looking at the breakdown of what demographics voted for Trump. Some of the most vile, traumatizing misogyny and biphobia I have faced in my life was at the hands of other women and some of the most outspoken feminists who work tirelessly to tear apart the patriarchy I know are men. My fiancé, a cis man, legit checked MY toxic masculinity yesterday, I recently came out as butch and have been trying to live up to that by staying as strong as possible right now, and HE had to tell me to knock it off and let myself cry. Gender and sex are not indicators of morality and acting like they are is pure, unadulterated radical feminist bullshit.

We can and should absolutely talk about the rise of alt-right beliefs amongst men in this country, especially young men, but we cannot ignore that young women are buying into that shit too and a lot of it is COMING FROM RADICAL FEMINISTS, I cannot fucking stress enough radical feminism is a direct pipeline to becoming a conservative, the TERF to tadwife waterslide is real and likely WHY so many young women are voting conservatively. The more we concede to this rancid bullshit the more women wander directly into the alt-right's open arms.

The problem isn't men, it's systemic misogyny perpetuated by both men AND women, and also fascism. Don't lose sight of the true enemy.

[genderkiller]

Maybe do some research on radical feminism before you condemn as some sort of fascism jfc 🙃 you sound like some sort of mra

why would i....do feminism on an ideology that doesnt make any fucking sense and also is like. definitely some sort of pipeline.

[radicalsocialworkgroup]

Reflections from Inauguration Protests and Women’s March

RSWG organized to get members down to Washington DC to protest the new administration. Read some members reflections from the day!

Brian Romero, Steering Committee

On the day of inauguration, RSWG joined in solidarity with the It Takes Roots delegation, a group of different alliances, the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ), the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), the Right to the City Alliance (RTC), and the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) in direct actions. At the United States Department of Energy we joined in proclaiming that #WaterIsLife and acted in solidarity with Standing Rock against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and all efforts that harm our Indigenous siblings. At the Department of Housing we proclaimed that housing is a human right and protested the ongoing systemic racism that continues to plague communities of color by pushing us out of our homes.

What has been unable to leave my mind is the fact that while in route to the Women’s and Allies march that Saturday, I observed an eager white woman getting her transit card with her husband as he aggressively spoke to her. He asked her to hurry, to calm down, and to “stop trying to be young”. I won’t say that I intervened because I didn’t. I have my own internal reasons for why that is. However, it has stayed with me since and has reminded me of the work that men must do in acknowledging our privilege and power and working intentionally to undermine, disrupt and help dismantle patriarchy. If we are not able to do this while organizing to undo racism and classism we risk another Chump assuming power down the line.

Women of color have nurtured me my whole life and it is my duty to continue to be in solidarity with them, and put my body in between them and the forces that seek to harm them now more than ever. I look forward to more efforts that are organized by those most affected by systemic racism and oppression. I also look forward to intersectional feminism which centers race in dialogue and strategizing. Despite what is ahead I am confident that together we will RESIST.

Lara Tobin, Active Base

The first thing I remember from my experience in the Women’s March is the palpability of the crowds, the pure volume of bodies, the soggy sky and the physical experience of the space that we were all taking up with our bodies. I am grateful to have my experience enriched by the power of those who did not physically take up space, whose bodies weren't in D.C.

I drove down Saturday morning with my partner (in life and protests), my mom (who hasn’t protested since 1963), and my colleague and friend (an extraordinary social worker attending  her first protest). Once we got to the March, we were joined by a complete stranger, D, who participated from her  home in Virginia. D was unable to attend the march due to chronic illness, and was matched with me to carry her sign and connect her to the March through texts, videos, and photos in  real-time (when the frustratingly slow cell service would allow!). As my family and I held her sign in the crowds of people, blocks away from the stage, D shared her feelings of pride in being counted in the Women’s March, and in being able to be seen by others there.

While there are, and should be, many critiques of the march, I am left with a stronger connection to my family and friends because we crossed our  comfort zones together. I am inspired by the recent vision groups of RSWG. We are having conversations about undoing the hierarchy in the structure of social services, and how to actively work to make actions meaningfully inclusive. I am inspired by by the people I provide services for who have medical and mental health barriers to physical participation in marches, but are passionate advocates themselves. I am grateful to have experienced this march with D. and value her insights into the  work needed to connect with those who are homebound, and to make space and craft a conduit for their power as we all build our community.

Rachel Isreeli, Active Base

At 1am on J20, I took a bus down to DC with the Answer Coalition, joining thousands in protesting the inauguration. As we made our way through ominous red hats from the metro to the checkpoint, we were greeted by black and brown men of all ages, decked out in red Trump gear, selling hats, scarves and t-shirts: The violent and dismal systems of racism and capitalism manifested as a precarious human facade.

Once through the checkpoints, we gathered by the Navy Memorial at a site Answer secured through extensive legal struggle for the right to assemble and protest. We were a sea of militant socialists and radicals, building resistance through rage, joy, poignant stories and analysis - opposite from bleachers for Trump supporters that were empty for 75% of our time. Throughout our 8 hours of protesting, the organizers gave periodic reports: the secret service was opening express entry lanes for supporters while prohibiting protesters; there were thousands of people outside, waiting to come in; there were rolling closures of checkpoints; protestors just entering had waited up to five hours; media was covering “violent” arrests but not our protests visible along the parade route. We could taste fascism in our mouths.

We knew about the DisruptJ20/It Takes Roots demonstrations outside where RSWG colleagues were protesting. How did the coordinated blockading of checkpoints intersect with the reports we were getting of the secret service’s suppression of entry?

Saturday we marched alongside the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Grassroots Global Justice. There have been ample analyses elsewhere of the racist white and transphobic cis-centering of J21, the stark contrast in policing, the mobilization of activists vs. marchers, as well as the unanticipated intersectionality and opportunity created by having millions mobilized in the streets.

So, what are some implications for radical social workers based on these experiences? Here are a few questions for us:

What are the different tactics we may be using to mobilize our communities, our colleagues, and folks we serve? 

In what ways might we be replicating structures of oppression and internalized dominance through this work, e.g. suppressing voice, using paternalistic approaches, ignoring our role in social control, de-centering communities that should lead this work?

How do we welcome those who are new to activism, and connect to mass organizations?

How can we transform trauma and rage into healing and liberation through social action?

How can we create space to integrate political education through all aspects of our work, raising consciousness, building solidarity, shifting power and organizing?

How do we integrate multiple organizing tactics while simultaneously building unity and communication (e.g. Answer’s inauguration route protest and DisruptJ20’s blockades)?

Let's build.

[crazycatsiren]

Blocking radfems is self care in 2024.

[grison-in-space]

I mean, yeah: literally any dogs associated with rural jobs will have that corner of the community. Hunting dogs--gundogs, hounds, curs, feists, working terriers, all of em--can absolutely attract that sort of thing too. So can anything associated with bitesports. So can working herd dogs--border collies, English Shepherds, ACD, and Kelpies. It does not help that QAnon has fucked up so many people's minds and critical reasoning pathways.

Which isn't to say that ACDs are majority owned by Trump partisans or QAnon creeps: that hasn't been my experience at all! Neither do I mean to suggest that working dogs are full of racists etc because like... that's just not true. For example, the two women who are really pushing hardest right now to grow and develop a robust community for working ACDs are really emphatic about being beginner friendly and welcoming to anyone who wants to try to learn how to run dogs, no matter how shy or inexperienced they are. @wyrddogs and @adventuresofwaverly have been cheerfully explaining how they got into these sports just this week and how communities of working dogs have formed to help them learn and grow with their dogs.

It's more that I think it's important for all of us to be aware of how our hobbies and interests can also attract people who are not safe for everyone, so you have an ear out and can be aware. We often talk about people like QAnon loons and Nazi fucks like they're far away and rarely encountered. But, you know, they're people too--and more to the point, the pathways that lead people along the road to fascism are often rooted in our hobbies. If you are interested in any hobbies related to agriculture, hunting, fishing, self sufficiency, history, crafting, conservation, biology, animal fancy and breeding, and a raft of others I'm surely forgetting, there are going to be people in your hobby using it as a gateway to talking fascism because that's where a lot of these pipelines start. There are also going to be some real fuckknuckles in the hobby just by virtue of being, you know, human beings that do have additional interests. In every community, they tend to take certain forms depending on the culture of that community: because Trumpism is popular among dudes in "masculine"-tagged hobbies, that's the flavor I look out for in working cattle dogs.

If I was really into toy breeds focusing on conformation, which is a much more femme community, I would be calibrating my casual observations with an eye towards watching out for radical feminists and particularly TERFs: radical feminism is more common in that demographic and is an inherently fascist position besides. (I can dig into that in more detail if anyone wants, but broadly I'm talking here about radical feminism as defined by the idea that the two genders are engaged in an eternal struggle by definition to which there must be a winner and a loser, which is a very fascist response to conflict.) Basically, that's the shape of fuckery I tend to see in toy dog communities.

There are good people in all places and with all kinds of backgrounds. It's important to keep that in mind. But it's always good to know what the shape of nasty fuckers tends to be in your community so that, e.g., you're not totally surprised and horrified when a missing stair turns out to be a shithead to marginalized people on some axis or another.

Genuine curiosity: why would you expect to see Trump et al names with ACD's?

Oh, just thinking in terms of what kinds of shitty people wind up in which breed communities? Cattle dogs have a big old "rural, blue-collar, masculine, Western" association in the US, and one that tends to skew white at that: in some ways, they otherwise occupy a similar niche to pit bulls, but one that is pretty white-coded. This is a comforting kind of image for shitty right-wing people to pick up, especially if they want to be perceived as super masculine. Right-wingers often adopt the mythos of working-class rural people even if they're actually much more urban and affluent than that, partly to cloak how much they suck billionaire dick. They're the kind of dog I could see a Texas GOP politician on a campaign trail picking up if he wanted to engage in a particularly cynical kind of ploy.

It's not that this kind of stuff is everywhere in ACDs, but it's always worth keeping in mind what kinds of people are drawn to the "image" any given breed puts out, including the shittier kinds. (Honestly, implicit in that comment's context, talking to @doberbutts who has frequently discussed the tendency for Nazis to be drawn to Dobes, was the comparison to his breed communities' own brand of shitty people.)