#right-wing nationalism

[raffaellopalandri]

Book of the Day – Border and Rule

Today’s Book of the Day is Border and Rule, written by Harsha Walia in 2021 and published by Haymarket Books. Harsha Walia is a Canadian activist and writer based in Vancouver. She is active in immigration politics, Indigenous rights, feminist, anti-racist, anti-statist, and anti-capitalist movements. Border & Rule, by Harsha Walia I have chosen this book because I often cite it in discussions…

[badolmen]

They don’t even attempt to assassinate US politicians anymore. You notice that? Not since the anthrax scare back for… who was it, Barack? And even that… pathetic. This new generation has no respect for an honest hitman. I’m not sure this new generation has any honest hitman - you see that shit with Boeing? Sloppy, fucking disgraceful - you kill the whistleblowers before they get halfway to a lawsuit. What kind of fucking amateur is doing faked suicides the night before testimony? Goddamn greenhorns. Back in my day someone tried to shoot Ronald Reagan in broad daylight. There used to be bomb threats to Congress. I took out a few union leaders in the utilities sector myself. Today’s generation? Won’t even threaten to throw a punch - not even over on that - what’s it now, ‘X’? They got no guts. None! And they don’t even have poor impulse control to boot! Too much of that - that panopticon anxiety bullshit. “Oh what if I get a called out post???” People used to send the president letters full of bioweapons. In the mail! Today’s generation? Not a chance. All because of woke.

[commiepinkofag]

The 'Kids Online Safety Act' [KOSA] continues to move forward

Microsoft now endorses this legislation, which will likely help garner political support. Help counter this bill!

HELP STOP KOSA

Contact your representatives

KOSA is a bipartisan bill introduced to censor content on the internet deemed 'inappropriate' for minors. This bill is intended to target the LGBTQIA+ community and otherwise cause harm to minors.

Access to any supportive resources like queer-youth support groups, suicide hotlines, and important health information can be targeted.

[hussyknee]

International news outlets are predictably parroting whatever they see the government-run news media propagandizing, so the foreign commentators who have never met a Sri Lankan even by accident are announcing that we have elected a Marxist leader. We have not. It's a coalition of mild social democrats lmao. Even the main JVP entity hasn't really been Marxist in decades. It's all neoliberal hysteria.

Here's some necessary context for what's going on, and by far the best summation of the situation as it stands. I've highlighted the parts that the leftists of other countries will probably find salient and deeply relatable lmao.

It was always going to come to this. The first Sri Lankan election in generations where even a remotely leftist party stood a chance of winning was always going to end with an almighty Red Scare. So it is that the presidential campaign of National People’s Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is inspiring lurid visions of an impending violent, dystopian regime, splayed across news and social media. This is the prophecy of the Sri Lankan elite establishment, a select cross section of the country’s businesspeople, policymakers, professionals, journalists and academics who have been proximate to state power, especially in the last two years. Scrutiny of them and their crescendoing hysteria reveals much about how power and privilege work in Sri Lanka, and what happens when their wielders are threatened. Mythmaking

The pre-election Red Scare is the culmination of a two-year-long project by the elite establishment to sustain the regime of Ranil Wickremesinghe. This project is founded on a number of myths which rewrite recent history, chief among them the idea that the Aragalaya suddenly turned violent due to its ‘infiltration’ by the NPP’s lynchpin party the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and other leftists. This myth, just like the one that Wickremesinghe stepped in to become Prime Minister then President “when no one else would”, only serves the elite establishment’s attempts to justify and sanitise Wickremesinghe’s power-hungry scheming.

Wickremesinghe was the only person shameless enough to accept Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s offer to become Prime Minister without any conditions. Likewise, the question of violence only became a problem after Wickremesinghe used the Aragalaya to manoeuvre himself to the Presidency. As always for elites, the spectre of left-wing violence is more serious than actual right-wing violence. Thus, NPP politicians standing on the banks of the Diyawanna is apparently far more alarming than the security forces ruthlessly dismantling GotaGoGama and brutalising its inhabitants on the very same day Wickremesinghe was selected as President by Parliament.

In the mythologisation of Wickremesinghe, we are further meant to forget that he has presided over a striking series of rights violations and undemocratic measures. Recounted partially and briefly: arbitrarily detaining multiple Aragalaya activists; violently repressing numerous protests by student and trade unions; passing the Bureau of Rehabilitation Act and Online Safety Act; deliberately preventing scheduled local authorities elections; continuing to obstruct memorialisation events by Tamils; and the ongoing Sinhala colonisation of the north and east.

As Wickremesinghe completed his transformation from supposed champion of liberal democracy to illiberal autocrat, establishment elites, especially the self-styled liberals among them, found themselves tongue tied about these issues for more than two years. If Ranil Wickremesinghe violates a human right, does a Sri Lankan liberal make a sound? ‘Stability’ and ‘Recovery’

It is not that these establishment elites merely promote Wickremesinghe’s government; it’s that they have been deeply and intimately involved in crafting and enforcing its policies, whilst often passing themselves off as impartial commentators. This particularly pertains to the Government’s economic agenda, and the idea that it has created ‘stability’ and rescued the country from the abyss to lead it to ‘recovery’. From the start, ‘stability’ and ‘recovery’ have been built on the backs of working class and poor Sri Lankans, who have literally paid for it with increased taxes, deteriorating public services and severely slashed welfare under the extravaganza of austerity mandated by the IMF.

The elite establishment’s espousal of this ‘stability’ and ‘recovery’ turns on a rabid, evangelical belief in neoliberal economic ideology. This tethers the unconditional acceptance of the IMF and its dictates, with any deviation from them held as ruinous. Similarly, neoliberalism manifests as identity through a strict belief that all wealth and success within a capitalist economy is gained through personal virtue (discounting inheritance, aid or luck), and inversely, anyone who is unsuccessful must be lazy and stupid. Such thinking is an apt glaze for the naturally patrician worldview of most establishment elites’ social class.

As a result, establishment elites are indignant that working and poor Sri Lankans are not grateful enough for the ‘recovery’. In truth, the only real inconveniences they suffered were the fuel shortages and power cuts of 2022. So, they cannot and do not genuinely contend with suffering of many over the past two years—including the still unbearable cost of living, rising child malnutrition, falling school attendance and millions still disconnected from electricity to name but a few ongoing calamities. Consequently, working and poor Sri Lankans must be too stupid to understand the ‘recovery’, the necessity of the IMF’s ‘bitter medicine’ forced upon them and to even vote. In the same breath, of course, these elites ignore and obscure the fact that corporates and the wealthy—which is often to say they themselves—are spared any similar medicine, and get to freely evade taxes, enjoy generous state subsidies and concessions and hoard their wealth offshore.

Contours of a Scare

All this exposes such deep contempt by establishment elites for working and poor people. This is what fuels their wholesale disgust at anyone voting against Wickremesinghe, or not even settling for the Samagi Jana Balawegaya’s Sajith Premadasa (to the great dismay of many elites, the two could not set aside their blood feud and combine forces). Buried within this is a deep fear of a political reality they do not know and cannot control. Thus, the maniacal scaremongering about how democracy would be subverted by an AKD regime due to the internal intricacies of communist parties—as if the JVP and particularly the NPP qualified as such. (And as if Premadasa and the SJB, and especially the unelected, election-cancelling Wickremesinghe, were paragons of democracy.)

The Red Scare is also founded on bringing up the JVP’s violence during the two insurrections it led, particularly the second. Certainly, there needs to be a complete accounting for the horrendous violence the JVP instigated, which the JVP has failed to do itself. But it cannot be done in any honest sense by the elites who ignore or deny that the UNP government and its death squads (under Premadasa’s father) killed and disappeared far greater numbers of people than the JVP (by estimates of three to up to ten times as many), or that Wickremesinghe oversaw an actual torture camp.

In addition to these many hypocrisies, the Red Scare is also founded on the elite establishment’s striking political illiteracy. Words like ‘Marxism’, ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ are thrown about with wild abandon without any serious evaluation of them against the NPP. Elites regularly conflate the JVP and Frontline Socialist Party, despite them actually being mortal enemies; and believe all trade unions are controlled in hivemind-fashion by the JVP, despite the wide range of trade union political allegiances. Acknowledging spiralling social deprivation in the country is “cosplaying poverty” and any critique of the government’s economic agenda and neoliberal dogma in general inspires a virulent derision for “commies”, in dizzying, barely-coherent invective and memes imported straight from the US and the gutters of far right social media. These ignorant, imbecilic displays would be amusing if they weren’t being bandied about by actual adult journalists, lecturers and professionals, speaking to the country’s depressing level of intellectual discourse. The Endgame

The real irony here is that the NPP does not warrant any of the elite establishment’s hysteria. Certainly, it stakes out an actual difference with the existing political hegemony by physically embodying change. AKD, just like his government in waiting, promise a halt to the endless game of musical chairs that characterises government-making in Sri Lanka. This contrasts with Premadasa and Wickremesinghe’s politics which evince more of the same, in the latter’s case even more nakedly and shamelessly with the most corrupt and criminal figures on offer. (This, too, is another inconvenient fact shrugged off by establishment elites as necessary realpolitik.)

Of course, many of those prospectively voting for the NPP to “give them a chance” reveal the Sri Lankan predilection to go with the ‘rella’ or wave. But embedded in there, too, is the idea that this chance is being given in desperation, against a political system which has brought them nothing but economic ruin. That system could not be characterised more effectively than by Wickremesinghe himself, who makes little attempt to hide his disdain for ordinary people.

Yet it’s easy to overstate such change. In substance, even a cursory glance at the NPP’s manifesto reveals not a plan to usher in full-throated communism but a milquetoast, deliberately vague social democratic program. Most tellingly, it promises to maintain the country’s economic settings, including the current IMF program, as well as its deeply majoritarian state structure. The establishment should in fact be thrilled that the supposed biggest threat to its existence accepts the very core tenets of its modus operandi.

What this also means is that if and when any substantive change fails to materialise for many people—particularly in living conditions, as will certainly be the case under continued adherence to the IMF program—any NPP government risks spectacular collapse. That will leave ample space for any new, reactionary force to step in, including Wickremesinghe who will be waiting, cockroach-like, or another dispiriting shuffling of the current deck. In such a scenario, the elite establishment could find multiple avenues to attach their hooks to, for they are nothing if not the most talented grifters.

This election is unlikely to spell a definitive end to the political establishment or the deranged elites who uphold it. But for anyone sickened by the elite establishment’s hypocrisy and degeneracy, one night of them losing their collective minds over the Red Scare they have convinced themselves can only be a fleeting, pleasurable treat.

[willyhoos]

bro has been in the timeloop for so long he has begun to view his friends deaths as obstacles instead of tragedies😭😭😭💀

[fuckyeahreligionpigeon]

This is real.

[thiccanglosaxon]

Whites rule blacks drule

[agentfascinateur]

Courtesy @Haleema_moh98

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Click on the Source Watch link above and look at the mind numbing list of far right organizations that the Searle Freedom Trust has funded with hundreds of millions in dark money donations. This is just a fraction of the vast right-wing conspiracy that the right-wing Republicans once denied. Right-wing oligarchs have spent billions since the 1960’s to take away your vote, persecute marginalized people, let businesses operate without restrictions, and impose a white Christo-Fascist authoritarian government on us.

This is real. Look at those organizations and how they have worked to replace democracy with corporate/oligarch fascism.

Boycott oligarch companies, vote Democratic, become an activist, resist however you can before Trump can impose Project 2025 on us.

[sher-ee]

He fucking knows.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

When the National Association of Christian Lawmakers held its National Policy Conference at Liberty University earlier this month, participants on one panel discussed ways to take advantage of the far-right majority’s control of the Supreme Court to “unwind” the separation of church and state. During a separate session, participants, led by radical right-wing conspiracy theorist and anti-choice activist Janet Porter, discussed a plan to enact laws mirroring the one passed in Texas in 2021 that allows anyone to sue a clinic, doctor, or any person who facilitates an abortion for up to $10,000 and apply the same strategy to LGBTQ issues in public schools.

During her remarks, Porter bragged that she has been working with Jonathan Mitchell, the right-wing attorney behind the Texas abortion law, on her efforts to draft this model legislation and she practically cackled with delight as she unveiled her slogan for it: “If there is grooming, a lawsuit is looming.”

“What if, instead of us putting out all these fires in this library and in this school and in this county, what if we stopped it at the source?” Porter said. “What if we put together a bill that says, hey, guess what, if you’re involved in any kind of grooming … if you don’t tell mom and dad what Johnny and Susie are reading, then you’re liable to a lawsuit.”

“This addresses the transvestites, the Drag Queen Story Hour, the outside speaker that they bring in from GLAAD or from Planned Parenthood or from whatever the name they pick for the latest homosexual activist group,” Porter continued. “I had been praying for years, ‘How do we address the alphabet mafia?’ You know, the LGBTQRSTD. How do we go after that and get it out of our schools? … We can actually take out the grooming, we take out the pedophilia, the sodomy, it’s all listed in this bill. … Essentially, we’ve got a bill that says if Johnny or Susie comes home with any material that violates this long list of anything from pedophilia to grooming to the LGBT agenda, then guess what? They are opening themselves up to a lawsuit.”

Porter then bragged that “just like” the Texas bill, her legislation is crafted so that “we can sue them and we can get the legal fees, [but] if they sue us, they can’t get legal fees.”

“I’m laughing,” Porter admitted. “I’m like, ‘Can can we even do this?’ Well, we can. That bill’s [been] upheld. The court did not strike it down and that same kind of language is in here so that we’re not opening up parents to legal fees.”

“So, it’s just a bill that says again, if you do this, then you will be held accountable, whether you are a teacher, whether you are a librarian, or whether you are an advisor to the gay club on school, whether you are someone who brings in an outside speaker, or the outside speaker,” Porter declared. “We’re going to be able to say, if there is grooming, a lawsuit is looming.”

Founded by zealously anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice former Arkansas state legislator Jason Rapert, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers regularly holds conferences at which Republican leaders, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, and religious-right activists plot strategy about how to enact their radical political agenda throughout the country, largely through model legislation that is specifically designed to be taken home by participating state legislators and turned into law. The ultimate goal of the NACL is to “take authority” over every level of government across the nation and one day put one of its members in the White House.

[commiepinkofag]

Self-described “gay furry hackers,” SiegedSec said it released the data in response to Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a set of proposals that aim to give Donald Trump a set of ready-made policies to implement if he wins this fall’s election. Its authors describe it as an initiative “to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right.”

More! More gay furry hacking!

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A British Columbia man affiliated with a group that believes the United Nations wants to enslave humanity and turn humans into a different species says a Conservative MP had a hand in drafting the text of his petition calling for Canada’s exit from the UN. Leslyn Lewis, Pierre Poilievre’s “Shadow Minister” for Infrastructure and Communities, is the sponsor of petition e-4623, an official House of Commons petition that calls for Canada’s “expeditious withdrawal from the UN.” “Canada’s membership in the United Nations (UN) and its subsidiary organizations, (e.g. World Health Organization (WHO), imposes negative consequences on the people of Canada,” the petition states, citing “Sustainable Development” and “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” as examples of the UN’s “negative impacts” on Canadians.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[norman-couple]

Hapa power

[melodiousoblivionao3]

Korbin Albert whyyyyyyy

[momo-de-avis]

Your video talk reminded me of an archeologist guy that saw so much mis/disinformation and conspiracy theories being peddled on tiktok, that he started to make videos debunking all that bullshit, and ended up kinda making a career out of it. Milo Rossi, Miniminuteman on YouTube, he's hilarious.

lmao know exactly who he is, he's so goddamn funny, he doesn't even debunk shit, he just clowns on conspiracy theorists now which honestly is the way to do it

my whole reaction yesterday came from a video I came across some little boy who was talking about a "great book he read" and its a book Ive seen, never felt inclined to even touch it, smelt of shit to me in the distance, it's "as razoes do atraso portugues" or something like that by some economist (economists always think they know history) and this little dude summarised the book and its apparently... bc of the MArquis of Pombal. And he did this in the Gen Z tone which made it even more obnoxious "yeah, the guy we were taught at school was so awesome! that guy!" what school? what school taught you that? "he ruined our economy because he made sure the gold found in brasil [which had been pouring in since before he was minister of jack shit] was misapropriated and then he kicked out the jesuits who were responsible for education" absolutely no nuance on matter, one of the most interesting, most controversial figures in our history that I always describe to my clients as "one step forward, two steps back" a guy who is described by Brazilian historian Laurentino Gomes, who dead describes XVIII portugal as the most backwards and delayed european nation (because it WAS), as the only moment of progress in our history because how hard can it be to grasp that a man who was raised on the Republic of Letters, who was taught among some of the brightest Liberal minds of Austria and England was responsible for some of the most incredible progress in Portugal AND YET was also responsible for some of the greatest set backs due to his paranoia and dictatorial ruling as Prime Minister? Where is nuance?

The dude in the video also said that, according to the book, the Marquis of Pombal was responsible for implementing Absolutism... is John V a joke to us? Do you think absolutism sprouted from Pombal's ass one day when he went to take a shit in Rua do Século after the earthquake? Do you think we call Manuel I proto-absolutist because it's just a fun little quirky thing historians dug out of their sphincter?

Why do yall think the medallion with his face in Commerce Square is there with the completely wrong that, something like 1838?

Did people lose their ability to think?

Stop reading history books written by economists. I am a fair believer than anyone can become a historian so long as they learn the methodology and digs into the sources (I'm not a historian myself, I'm an art historian) but economists are doomed to fail man, fuck them