#the authoritarian personality

[communistkenobi]

one thing that’s been very clarifying for me in the course of reading Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism is the way he lays out how fascists appropriate left-wing rhetoric for their own pro-nationalist and pro-capitalist ends. The age old talking point “did you know the Nazis were actually socialists” is a direct result of this - fascist power is in part built by obscuring the reality of class division in order to appear “working class” and to claim they have popular support (which is a lie). they do this by appropriating left-wing talking points to speak to the middle class, blaming foreigners and foreign competition for their economic precarity, blaming marxists for trying to destroy democracy, etc. this tactic seems to still work fantastically given how so many liberals and middle class progressives still insist that bigotry is the domain of the working class. Adorno also describes how fascists use antisemitism in particular to appear anti-capitalist, by casting Jews as the misfit bourgeoisie, framing the problem of capitalism as something that can be solved by a changing of the guard, replacing the weak rulers with the strong. fascists are not anti-capitalist, they dislike when capitalism degrades conservative social norms, such as requiring middle class white women to work outside the home, or allowing beer companies sell alcohol with pride flags on it, or make visible the non-white working class. They don’t want an end to capitalism, they want their women in the home and their servants invisible and the image of themselves reflected back at them in their consumption habits at all times.

this is, also, how terfs continue to cast themselves as left-wing - they appropriate the language of feminism for their own right wing goals, which is a society in which gender division is comprehensively enforced by the state. Their biggest issue right now is that the enforcement of this division has waned - trans people are “allowed” into bathrooms now, into change rooms now, into sports now, and most of all, we are now visible in public life. They want to build the power of the state up, not so that they may seize it to liberate women or abolish patriarchy, but to reinforce the traditional gender norms they see as withering away. This is why terfs align themselves with the right wing - this is not an uneasy alliance, there is no contradiction here. They want right wing power for themselves, and they use their feminism as a spectacle to obscure this goal. once you understand this, it’s incredibly easy to tell the difference between a terf and a left wing feminist. these people are as left wing as the nazis, which is to say, not at all

[lastoneout]

I really do miss back when it was considered fucking weird to ask trans people(or anyone who is even a little gnc/has a label you don't understand/is giving you queer vibes)* what their assigned sex at birth is. Like we literally used to roast cis people for this shit, that's legit why the "what's in your pants" meme exists, but somehow we've reached a point where a very vocal portion of the online trans community genuinely thinks you owe people this information so they can make insane generalizations about you and your life and if you refuse that's cause for suspicion and I really shouldn't have to explain how fucked that is.

Interrogating people about what's in their pants is transphobe/terf/transmed shit. "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" is fed shit. Tbh "you owe me personal information about your body and medical history" is ableist and intersexist shit. Sex and/or gender tells you literally nothing concrete about a person and there is no world where you are owed this information. Can we cut this shit out and go back to judging people by their words and actions instead of what some random doctor decided their body looks like when they were a squishy baby, you know, like normal people? Please??

*It's also wildly intersexist but unfortunately I don't think we've ever reached a point of collectively accepting that it's horrid to ask intersex people unprompted questions about their bodies and medical histories. You are absolutely not owed any of that information for any reason, especially given that medical history typically goes hand in hand with profound trauma due to how normalized medical abuse against intersex people is, and everyone needs to get that through their heads yesterday. If they want to share they can and will, aside from that it's none-ya.

[slattenpat]

Intelligence is using the mind to reach certain practical goals. A chimpanzee demonstrates intelligence when he sees a banana in front of his cage but cannot reach it with either one of the two sticks in his cage, then he joins both sticks and gets the banana. This is the intelligence of the animal, which is the same manipulating intelligence that we usually call understanding when talking of people. Reason is something else. Reason is the activity of the mind which attempts to get through the surface to reach the core of things, to grasp what really lies behind these things, what the forces and drives are that — themselves invisible — operate and determine the manifestations. - Erich Fromm - The Authoritarian Personality

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Background: During adolescence, bullying often has a sexual content. Involvement in bullying as a bully, victim or both has been associated with a range of negative health outcomes. Transgender youth appear to face elevated rates of bullying in comparison to their mainstream peers. However, the involvement of transgender youth as perpetrators of bullying remains unclear in the recent literature. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare involvement in bullying between transgender and mainstream youth and among middle and late adolescents in a general population sample. Methods: Our study included 139,829 students in total, divided between a comprehensive school and an upper secondary education sample. Associations between gender identity and involvement in bullying were first studied using cross-tabulations with chi-square statistics. Logistic regression was used to study multivariate associations. Gender identity was used as the independent variable, with cisgender as the reference category. Subjection to and perpetration of bullying were entered each in turn as the dependent variable. Demographic factors, family characteristics, internalizing symptoms, externalizing behaviors, and involvement in bullying in the other role were added as confounding factors. Odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) are given. The limit for statistical significance was set at p < 0.001. Results: Both experiences of being bullied and perpetrating bullying were more commonly reported by transgender youth than by cisgender youth. Among transgender youth, all involvement in bullying was more commonly reported by non-binary youth than those identifying with the opposite sex. Logistic regression revealed that non-binary identity was most strongly associated with involvement in bullying, followed by opposite sex identity and cisgender identity. Transgender identities were also more strongly associated with perpetration of bullying than subjection to bullying.

--

Secondly, we found that transgender identity was generally associated with perpetrating bullying and that the association was stronger than that of transgender identity and being bullied. To the best of our knowledge, past research has not examined perpetration of bullying among gender minority youth, thus rendering comparisons to prior research impossible. In a study by Dank et al. (2014), however, it was reported that the few transgender young people in their study were the ones most likely to perpetrate dating violence among their sample.

--

Thirdly, non-binary identity was more strongly associated with involvement in bullying than opposite sex identity. Past research has found elevated rates of being subjected to bullying among youth (Lowry et al., 2020; van Beusekom et al., 2020) and transgender youth (Gower et al., 2018) who perceive themselves as more gender non-conforming (i.e., masculine females or feminine males) than youth with no such perception. Non-binary identifying youth particularly may display gender expression that does not conform to either masculine or feminine roles, and this may make them vulnerable to being bullied either due to simply being different from the mainstream, or as a result of heterosexist control. We found, however, that not only being bullied but also engaging in bullying was even more common among non-binary (perception of gender conforms to both or neither sex or it varies) than among opposite sex identifying youth.

==

"Non-binary" is just a new way to bully other people.

Trying to make people refer to you in stupid, language defying ways, like "schglie/schglem," at the threat of being called a bigot, when you're a completely average man or woman, is the modern day equivalent of making the kids in the playground bow and call you "the god of the jungle gym" at the threat of being beaten up, when you can't actually do that flip from hanging by your knees into a standing position.

When, unlike the playground, society has given you the power to actually carry out that threat, you're not "marginalized," you're the ruling class. (What's that "power plus" arithmetic again?)

Whenever you enter the room, people tense up. And you love it. It's the whole point. Gay and transsexual people just want to blend in, but "nonbinary" is about the opposite. Everybody pays attention to you and you steal the oxygen out of the room. You say it's about "being kind," but you and everyone else knows what you are, which means it's really about being in control, but from a false position of vulnerability.

So it's no wonder it attracts narcissists and bullies. Especially when it's an effort-free way of being celebrated for a month - and on and off the rest of the year for an endless parade of "awareness" days - for being completely unremarkable and average.

Not being a tired stereotype is not an achievement, least of all one that needs to be celebrated.

[tilbageidanmark]

[withercrown]

[korrasera]

Dehumanizing terrible people doesn't make the world a better place, it just teaches you how to be a terrible person yourself.

It's authoritarianism practice.

[1pcii]

honestly it's amazing how sabo is like. everything I've ever wanted out of a character.

revolutionary/freedom fighter trope but is NOT demonized by the narrative for his radical beliefs/actions that are necessary to further his goal of peace because of the nature of the world he exists in. his past dosnt just exist as a half-assed attempt at adding 'nuance' (pity) to his character but directly shows where his ideals and beliefs come from and shape him as a person and it's never something that's ridiculed or downplayed. being a revolutionary is rightfully framed as the sacrifice it is for the greater good and doesnt defult-ly exist in a binary of 'good' or 'bad', but rather shows the difficult but necessary path of societal reform.

[communistkenobi]

re: several recent discussions I’ve seen on here about the dangers of bio-essentialism, in the authoritarian personality the authors find over and over again that highly prejudiced individuals (ie those most likely to be fascists) believe very strongly in A) innate human differences that cannot be altered or negotiated, and B) their own personal ability to categorise people based on these differences with a high degree of precision. the highly prejudiced individual can “always tell” when they meet someone who belongs to an outgroup. This discussion is usually framed in the context of antisemitism, with prejudiced people insisting they can always tell when someone is Jewish, that it is impossible to hide.

There is also a section in the discussion chapters of the book about low-scoring individuals - people who are strongly anti-prejudice (or anti-antisemites, as the authors sometimes call them). These people are not just non-bigoted, but take a conscious stance against bigotry and respond with anger when asked leading questions by the interviewers about minorities. like, “what do you think about the Jewish problem in America?” is almost always answered with some version of “there is no Jewish problem,” or “it’s a Christian problem, not a Jewish problem,” which is not an answer to the question so much as it is a rejection of the question’s premise. This is contrasted with the responses from highly prejudiced people, who treat this question as if it’s completely reasonable and outline what they think “the problem” is, though they often attach qualifiers to it (“the Jews aren’t all bad”) to temper their bigotry. Which is to say, there is an understanding on the part of the low-scoring participants of the role rhetoric plays on prejudice - that “just asking questions” is not an innocent, apolitical act, but one that comes preloaded with assumptions on what you think the answers to these questions should be, or the types of answers you think should be produced.

And to place this in another context - the trans panic that is currently dominating right wing discourse - we can observe extremely similar behaviour. This is best exemplified by the common twitter joke of posting a picture of a cis woman and claiming she’s trans, just to watch transphobes reply with all the ways they can “clock” this woman and tell that she is “secretly” a man. and, it’s worth discussing, that bigots frequently and especially define “male” traits as those commonly found in black and brown cis women, that they are especially fixated on white femininity as the measuring stick by which to judge all other women. but we can see the way that this idea of essential difference in humans undergirds all reactionary thought - without essential ontological categories, you cannot advocate for a worldview that argues for the “good” groups to have dominance over the “bad” ones. But they never prove this base assumption! They point to the very fact of variation within human beings - whether that be skin colour, facial features, ability, sexual organs - and claim that these are indicative of some deeper worth (or lack thereof), but proof of that hierarchical view of variation is never provided.

Which is why when bigots claim they’re “just pointing out the facts,” or say shit like “oh so we can’t even say women and men are different now? We have to ignore biology?” this is an inherently bad faith question. They rhetorically marry “variation” with “measure of value,” and force you to now pivot to talking about the fact that like, human beings are different from one another, rhetorically ceding ground to the premise that human variation inherently determines the value of a human being.

And following this logic, the only way for us to achieve a perfectly equal society would be for us to live in a world where every human being looked and behaved the exact same. And like, uh, how exactly would we achieve this? Which set of parameters for appearance and behaviour would we be following? Who gets to decide what those parameters are? The ONLY logical conclusion to this essentialistic thinking is state sanctioned mass death and subjugation programmes, because there is no other way to get rid of ontologically “bad” people. These hierarchies only have value when they are socially and politically enforced. This is why you should be wary of anyone “just pointing out” that human beings have different physical characteristics. They are not pointing out a neutral biological fact about human genetic diversity, or sexual dimorphism.

edit: altered the spelling of anti-Semitism to antisemitism. Apologies for the improper spelling!

[piermanwalter]

Big props to Fromsoft for realising that if the most authoritarian character in Elden Ring was an epic badass who fights for their beliefs, there would be legions of the most annoying people possible crowing about how based they are, so instead they made Goldmask an ascetic pacifist with no combat abilities who died from doing too much math and upon resurrection as a candidate for the next shaper of reality, does nothing except stand naked and silent, then did so much math he died again.

[schnaf]

26 days until gunil's 26nd birthday

day 26 aka THE COUNTDOWN IS OVER - gunil's past birthday brrrr ppoppos

[agnesandhilda]

how to tell my mom that while I love her I am skeptical of the systemic and societal forces that give her near-unchecked authority over me

[chronicsymptomsyndrome]

I love earnestly and unironically calling conservative men bitches. I’m obsessed. Looking a wealthy white cishet christian man probably named John or Dave right in the face and saying “you’re being kinda bitchy, are your hormones acting up maybe?” really fucking makes my day

[mindshelter]

i've really had xina and miguel's dynamic under a microscope lately; right now my object of scrutiny is xina's use of "kevorkian" in issue #26. it's a quick, tongue-in-cheek comment about miguel's suicidality; kevorkian, at the time of publication, was routinely making headlines for his stance taken and assistance in physician-assisted suicides.

we know early on that xina is, as miguel describes, a "twencen freak," which manifests the most prominently via a love for old pop culture, but it doesn't stop there. she notably talks about alchemax's habit of erasing history, has a lifelike version of a old political figure in her home, and, in this case, brings up a name that's big in bioethics debates.

importantly, she says it very offhandedly, implying that she and miguel have had these discussions before—and i doubt the state is particularly eager to bring up any talk of ethics to their scientists-in-training.

my take on miguel sinking deeper into alchemax's agenda is that while he really doesn't care for the institution itself, he's mistakenly convinced himself that he's chosen the most politically neutral option possible. science is anything but apolitical; it is deeply, irretrievably steeped in concerns about morality. at the time miguel and xina were drifting apart, this wasn't something he wanted to mull over. (after all, once he realizes he's an accessory to state-sanctioned oppression, he wants nothing more than his life to end.)

xina is smart, yes—and i think, knowledgeable, specifically, in ways that directly challenged the delicate mental gymnasium that miguel had started to build for himself. it's not just that xina being more intelligent became a problem. she was also probably (and rightfully) challenging the value of his work, the completeness of his knowledge, and becoming a huge source of cognitive dissonance.

he's the geneticist, but xina, who specializes in an entirely different field, was engaging him in talks about the ethical implications of the work he was doing. trying to get him to think for himself, appealing to the good person she sincerely believes exists in this strange new version of her friend.

[legendcrab]

in light of the recent us election, can someone please tell white cis women that they too are directly causing the harm to minorities in america? i keep seeing them discussing being terrified for themselves and their fellow cis white women about how theyre going to be Treated and how theyre going to be Destoryed.

please know that the powers that be hate every single one of us, but that if they can get as many people as possible to Also notice the Weird Ones and point them out, no matter if they also fall into any categories they considef as Other, it will ALWAYS benefit them in the end.

yes, if you do not fully and 100% support ALL queer identities, even the weird ones, it will hurt you in the end and you are supporting sexism. yes, if you glance sideways at people of color and shuffle away, it WILL aide in you losing your rights. yes, gawking at visibly disabled people WILL further your ability to control your own body. yes, bullying fat people (not a bad word!) WILL cause the line of what defines a “good” and “moral” and “deserving” person to continue narrowing and narrowing until you no longer fit within it.

the oppressors WILL and DO ostracize as many groups as possible, and will accept aide from anybody in that ostracization. you not supporting and accepting and loving every single human being and understanding that they have worth and value JUST BY WAY OF EXISTING will, every single time, hurt you in the end.

[bonefall]

Oooh, can you talk about the meta reason you rewrote the blizzard holly relationship and blackstar's backstory?

HOKAY

But I'm gonna preface this one; I hate Blackfoot's Reckoning. I think it's one of the most "solid" written books in the series and I still fucking hate it. I talk about authoritarianism on this blog a lot, and I think BFR was the one time that the series actually tried to textually address what they'd put on the page.

So TW for fascism, including discussion of an incredibly unfortunate quote from the book that is either an accidental or purposeful invocation of the Nuremberg Defense.

Blackfoot's Reckoning is a book that's supposed to delve into Blackfoot's backstory, what made him the cat he was during TPB. Throughout the book they're questioning, "what made him act the way he did?" And trying to drive home that Blackfoot needs to learn from his mistakes so that he doesn't repeat them

But, at the same time, they cling to their slimy Good and Evil dichotomy. So the book decides that Blackstar wasn't an Evil cat, no, he was just a Good Mislead Boy Who Loved His Clan. He's constantly lied to, mislead, people are murdered and he's duped into believing whoever gets framed, suppressing critical thought about his actions. They're trying to both write a "reckoning," but also make his motivations more sympathetic.

So in between questions of, "Is Blackstar really a Bad Boy?" and happy rewards for Blackstar when he goes through a memory, they've decided to shove in replays of Blackstar's most gruesome moments but this time he frowns :( and feels Guilty when he does them. In the eyes of the writers, if you feel sad doing hate crimes, that means there's a goodness inside of you actually.

And just like Clear Sky, all Blackstar "needed" was divine intervention. You can simply retcon in a "reckoning," even if it was never in the main series for the 10+ years the character was alive and active.

But it's not enough that Blackstar himself was getting a stupid retcondemption. No, see, they have to remind you that he was following evil people. The dichotomy inherently crunches away the nuance-- Good and Evil are inherent qualities. Tigerstar and Brokenstar are Evil People. Blackstar asks, "If I was following Evil People, what does that make me?"

The narrative concludes, "A Good Person, but mislead."

And because they can't have nuance with their Good and Evil dichotomy (or couldn't at the time), they failed to address the authoritarianism spectacularly. Think I'm reaching?

They literally wrote the Nuremberg Defense into their book. I'm not doing hyperbole, Blackstar word-for-word thinks the Nuremberg Defense, "I Was Just Following Orders," but then they bury it in a barrage of scenes showing he's Actually A Nice Guy who is Sad to do Bad Things. Either they attempted and failed to do something more meaningful with this book, OR they are so fucking stupid they accidentally included the famous Nazi officer legal defense for a character who DOES A HATE CRIME for a racist dictator.

What was IN TPB was a Blackstar who supported a massacre and expulsion against another group, was complicit in the use of child soldiers, and rehearsed a public execution for a mixed-race character. Like it or not, this is a really heavy subject... and what they decided to do was downplay every one of his actions, because he was good deep down.

And I just find that disgusting. This was ABSOLUTELY the wrong conclusion. They can't show Blackstar ACTUALLY being bigoted. They can't delve into REAL hate, or the idea that maybe he LIKED the power he had over people. Those are Evil People Things. He has to "know," deep down, that what he's doing is wrong.

He cannot have a real change, in spite of the title of the shitty book being Blackfoot's "RECKONING," because he is not bad to begin with.

So, Hollyflower and Blizzardwing.

To recap for everyone who didn't read BFR; Hollyflower is raising her three kits alone because Blizzardwing cheated on Featherstorm with her. Black only learns that he is an accident because he stayed up late one night and overheard an argument. By day, he gets bullied by Clawpaw specifically that he might be mixed-Clan and has to seethe over the truth he knows.

it's dumb. I'm sorry. This is dumb and boring, which is even worse

The war criminal was bullied as a child and that's why he did bad things :( He was good all along he was just sad :( shut up shut up shut up

The "bad environment" he was raised into was... having a single mom and being suspected of maybe being half-clan, but then learning that he isn't half-clan, and being indignant that he can't just share the information he knows about because it would make things complicated or something idk

None of this particularly contributes to his mindset as an adult because he does not HAVE a unique mindset as an adult.

He was just nebulously Sad and followed whatever strongman leader came along, constantly being tricked and bamboozled by outright lies.

"Omg WindClan killed Raggedstar >:0 ??? Oughhhhh that butters my biscuits... was it wrong that Brokenstar sent my baby nephew to battle? No, nevermind that thought that makes me uncomfortable :("

He never has any particular bigotries that were exploited, he was just tricked and mislead the entire time, while also being sad, because God Forbid Blackstar ever have been an 'evil cat'

He gets THANKED by his dead parents for keeping the secret??????????????????? girl ok.....

as usual the bully itself never really gets addressed

It was cheap and easy to just make Blackfoot's backstory the same shitty 'bullying' they write for most villains. This bullying is how he ends up bonding with Brokenkit, a villainous 5-year-old who says, "other cats don't matter" because he's eeeeeevil.

They're supposed to have a commonality connection, Blackstar who is Good Deep Down and Brokenstar who is Evil Deep Down, and that is supposed to serve as the reason why Blackstar willingly blinds himself to the incredibly obviously evil things that his superiors do.

His flaw isn't that he had bad intentions, it's that he didn't think.

FUCK that. FUCK this book. FUCK the Erins for trying to say that there are fundamentally good and bad people. That with the death of Tigerstar, of Brokenstar, of whoever, the society gets to return to 'peace' because now there's no Evil Tyrant to lead everyone astray.

The Erin's depictions of hard childhoods are sauceless. Dry, unbuttered, burnt bread. You want to see a BAD home environment? I'll SHOW you a bad home environment, not just a single teenager being rude. You wanna see the sorts of conditions that prime young people to joining radical causes for a sense of belonging? I'll GIVE you those conditions. Let's TALK about what bounces around in the head of people who aid and abet tyrants.

It's not this dumb ass sadboy shit I'll tell you that much