#we don't live in a fascist nation

[courtleymanor]

System Of A Down - B.Y.O.B.

Blast off, it's party time And we don't live in a fascist nation Blast off, it's party time And where the fuck are you?

[kelsonius]

"Blast off, it's party time

And we don't live in a fascist nation

Blast off, it's party time

And where the fuck are you?"

- B.Y.O.B. by System Of A Down

[germiyahu]

There's such an intricate interplay between antisemitism and islamophobia from the slacktivist left. For every reason they can think of to delegitimize the Jewish People's connection to Eretz Yisrael, it's propped up by some Noble Savage presumptions about Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims.

Since Jews in America are seen as a model minority, seen as having accessed whiteness and privilege, and "antisemitism" is at worst having to explain what Hanukah is to clueless Christians, the Left is confused as to exactly why Jews care about Jerusalem and the Land of Israel so much. Shouldn't they be above such petty and barbaric and outdated concerns such as a dusty old book from 2,000 years ago?

They should be more enlightened than that. They're all rich suburban secular Democrats. They're the leftist religion, according to bloggers on this very platform. There is no room for Judaism to be a religion, there's no acknowledgment of ancient customs, rituals, and the deep mysticism that's still alive and well in the Jewish community. There's no attempt to understand Jewish history and culture and why a group of people you think shares your vaguely atheistic vaguely liberal (and not in the Tankie sense) vaguely smug detached Western worldview... is more complex and unique than that.

Jews should be happy living in Diaspora because clearly the problem of antisemitism is fixed now, and never really was a problem in America. There must be something sinister behind a desire to reestablish a country by and for Jews. There must be something colonial, oppressive, European and White about it. Because why else would they do it? They have it good here. And no we won't acknowledge where Israelis primarily descend from because that requires us to do research and have a shred of nuance and integrity when it comes to Jews. No thanks!

A lot of the modern left is nonconsensually dragging Jews kicking and screaming from their own unique demographic toward the banal Norm. To themselves. But not totally. See they think they relate to Jews and vice versa, but not enough that when they think Jews should "know better," or haven't "learned their lesson," from the Holocaust, it engenders a deep seeded disgust and mistrust and rage that's not felt for actually privileged mainstream dominant society.

Conversely, the slacktivist Left sees Arabs as savages. Silly desert people who eat sand and worship a big black cube and cover every inch of their bodies for some reason. How quaint! When the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim cause explains that Jerusalem is important to them, the White Western Leftist nods sagely and says "Your culture is so valid queen," because they don't care. They just accept that Muslim society would be willing to fight over an ancient city proscribed as holy in dusty old tomes. Because that fits the narrative already surrounding Muslims.

They're seen as backwards, but the Left, reacting to their conservative parents and the Bush era, see "Muslims are backwards," and says not "No actually they're modern groups of people with practical geopolitical goals," but instead "Yeah and that makes them better than us!" Especially with this new crop of baby Leftists who think Islamo-Fascist "Feudalism" or whatever the best term would be, is aspirational or at least harmless... because it's not capitalism :)

So Muslims are infantilized and condescended to because the Western Leftist is still just as racist as their parents, but they feel guilty about their parents without considering their contribution to White Supremacy and the Post Bush surveillance state. And all the while Jews are reprimanded and held to an impossible standard because the Western Leftist, again, rejects their conservative parents' philosemitism, and decides that Jews Must be Punished when they step off the pedestal that Suffering the Shoah placed them on.

Jews should be above nationalism, Jews should know that demurely suffering pogroms and ethnic cleansing and genocide and general inequity and humiliation will earn them their divine reward in the end. Muslims should not be above nationalism, because they're not capable of being above it, and can't we throw them a bone, after all Obama was the worst president in history because of the Drone War and let's not mention George W Bush at all :0

Hot take, but I believe this is an essential underpinning of where the average disaffected White millennial/zoomer Leftist's head is at with regard to Israel and Palestine. They won't acknowledge it of course, but I can generally see through things like this.

[log6]

I think it's weird how people on here seem determined to argue about how american black people are better off somehow for living in the imperial core because you are fundamentally making an argument on "privilege" whether you use those words or not and at this point we can acknowledge that is an awful system for analysing anything. Not only that but you're using it to make an insane moralistic judgement on people living in America which is especially insane when it's about black people and on top of THAT is a deeply stupid and genuinely fascistic manner of "third worldism". Yes black americans earn comparatively higher wages and larger assets than most places in the world but literally no one would argue about that, what's weird is the people who insist on bringing that up neglect the other essential part of this discussion which is that even in African nations where the wages are vastly lower, those people still exist as full citizens of their nation-states, where black people in america are forced (FORCED) to live in the midst of anglo white supremacy that both fundamentally requires and deeply despises their very existence. I'm sorry but I don't even understand what you gain from nearly weaponizing the basic facts of economic imperialism against the most systematically exploited people of the imperial core especially if you claim to be a leftist. Black americans have always had and continue to have the most revolutionary potential within the american empire and instead of even pretending to care about international proletarianism you people will degenerate into radlibs just to make pointless and vaguely racist arguments at black people online.

[quasi-normalcy]

I know that this is the "Turning social problems into matters of individual virtue" website, but here's one change that you can make to yourself as an individual that I honestly think will have beneficial collective effects:

Stop Thinking You're Better Than Other People.

Do I mean that you should go through life thinking that you're the lowliest and most wretched scum who's ever lived? No. I mean that there exists no meaningful criterion by which one human being can be said to be absolutely 'better' than another. And even if there was, you don't know enough about other people's circumstances and interior thoughts to meaningfully judge them in these absolute terms. So don't even try! It's a futile endeavour.

"But what about fascists? Surely I'm better than them!"

Okay, so let me preface this by saying that fascists are dangerous, they're misguided, their acts and intentions are evil, and they need to be stopped, including through physical violence. But you're not better than them. I know that this is a difficult pill to swallow; I myself used to pat myself used to pat myself on the back because, well, at least I wouldn't have been a Nazi. But you know what? If the circumstances were right, I could have been. We all could have been, just as we all could have joined a cult at some point.

Looking at myself, for example: there was never any serious possibility that I could have been swept up into the alt-right movement. Why? Because I'm transgender, and I was raised to be a socialist. How easy it is to *not* become a fascist when you're one of their scapegoats! How much harder it would be to avoid if you're one of the people they flatter and groom, if you're raised by people who are sympathetic to fascist ideals, if you grow up in a community where such ideals are common! The fact that fascist movements can seemingly emerge amongst every nation and people--including those who have historically been victims of fascism--confirms this. What if I had lived a hundred years later, at a time when transgenderism was a complete non-issue, and they'd moved on to some new scapegoat? What if they had approached me on my absolute worst day and told me that all of my problems were caused by moochers and parasites, and that I could fight back and claim my birth right by joining them? Can I really say that I wouldn't? Can anyone?

But even beyond that, what is a fascist but the ultimate example of someone who needs to feel superior to others? What is scapegoating but the act of selecting an entire group of people and declaring them to be inferior to you? And if you just refuse to believe these things; if you refuse to accept the premise that some people are better than others, and call it out whenever it comes up; then you're cutting these movements off at knees! The ideological force of fascism comes from imagining humanity as a strict hierarchy, with the master race on top and the degenerates on the bottom. Simply refuse to believe in such a hierarchy! Refuse to even entertain it!

"But then how can I feel self-esteem? How can I feel that I matter and have value?"

You have value just by existing as a person! But if that's not enough for you, then try this: instead of trying to increase your sense of self-worth by finding people to feel superior to, increase it by being of value to others. Help them! Make their lives better! Contribute to society! Not even in a way that you can (necessarily) put a dollar value on, but in any way you can! Create art! Plant a pollinator garden! Tell a joke! Make someone happy! If nothing else, you can at least give someone love, and I guarantee you that that will be of value to them. The universe is so vast and we're all so small that any value we can ever have will only ever be to each other. And surely it beats spending your life trying to be king of the microbes.

[decolonize-the-everything]

what do you realistically believe will happen if those on the left wing do not vote for democrats? do you believe that will single handedly reform the system? or do you believe trump will win and ruin the lives of millions of americans who would have been okay under the democrats?

Y'all tried to threaten us in 2016 and how did that turn out for you?

I'm native. I'm not voting for a genocidal Democrat. For a genocidal anyone for that matter. Y'all are lucky I vote at all, I have no fucking business participating in the genocidal colonial-settler project that killed my family and decimated my people and hundreds of other tribes.

"how are you gonna reform the system if you dont-"

Shut up. You literally won't refuse to even entertain the idea of voting for someone who's clearly stated goals are to reform the system just because they're a 3rd party.

Again, y'all are lucky I'm willing to vote at all. The person I vote for sure as hell won't be someone who's actively taken steps to repeat America's first mistake.

"how will we ever reform"

It's been 500 years and youre STILL justifying a genocide and convinced you're the fucking good guys. You won't. This country will never reform because even it's fucking liberals dont think a genocide is worth a threat to the status quo.

Die mad with Trump as your president and know it's people like YOU who literally fight progressives and activists that let it happen.

You are settling for fascism not me

"how will we reform"

Give me a fucking break and ask the white people that have had power from day 1 and to this day continue to vote in their own interest.

You want reform? Take it up with the people who Don't want reform at all instead of me. I'm giving you my vote, you don't get to tell who to vote for.

That'd be fascism. And if your country falls apart without fascism to make it function, good. Fascist countries don't deserve to exist.

"what do you think will happen to the people-"

Idk maybe Biden should've actually codified something instead of just promising to do it after his presidential elections or after Dems won mid terms like he said he would or trying to maybe even back when he was a vp or-

You don't get to hold me accountable for the way your party has chosen to actively fail everyone alive right now.

I'm not a politician. Natives couldn't even vote everywhere until the 70's!!! You can't be serious with this victim blaming nonsense and blame shifting.

If you message me then get rid of that cognitive dissonance you have.

"ruin the lives of millions of americans-"

Which lives aren't already ruined? If you are marginalized or someone who experiences intersecting marginalizations then you must've already been making donation posts on Tumblr and Twitter. And that's those of us who can post.

So who's life are you thinking of?

Your party is a party upholding white supremacists values and that's why they're so okay with xenophobia and genocide overseas but want to increase racist police budgets despite the war crimes being committed by police against Black people and protesters on the daily. And if you think American lives are more important than anyone else's in general (you're the one that told me to consider the lives of Americans while several genocides are happening), that's nationalism! The first step to straight up white nationalism and white supremacy. And you're acting like its rational in my asks on behalf of your party!!!

Don't be shy. Let's think critically here. What does that mean about who's lives you consider valuable and worth saving? Who is it? Who. Tell me. Go on.

Hope this helps ;3

[anarchotahdigism]

do y'all remember in 2020 how people would see crowds of unmasked people at protests and deride them for being dangerous, for not listening to the disabled, for endangering others, for being insincere in their commitment to their espoused beliefs, if not outright suspected of being fascists? Remember how we fought anti-maskers? The ethics of masking never changed Y'all just dropped your own masks and chose the side of eugenics I'm so disgusted at all these unmasked crowds claiming to care about other lives when they're actually disabling and killing people right now to feel better about themselves In the US alone, COVID kills 1,000 to 3,000 people a week-- mostly poor disabled people of color. The CDC director and other prominent US figures have repeatedly praised the fact that COVID, which disables people with sufficient infections or severity and damages you with every infection, is killing the disabled. The rich demanded COVID spread because it profited them and outright Nazis praised this, then those fascist capitalist positions were adopted by "mainstream society," a titanic fascist victory. The people you claim to support, like Palestinians, Sudanese, West Papuans, Ethiopians--for them, masking is a luxury because genocidal extractive nations have made it difficult if not impossible to get a hold of masks & other COVID-mitigating supplies as COVID has been avowedly used as a weapon of eugenics. They desperately want medical supplies, including masks, because they know COVID is killing them but there's little they can do when they don't have materials to spare to churn out locally produced options and certainly nothing generally affordable. You have that choice and you choose instead to continue to spread COVID, ensuring more suffering and death, while telling yourself that because you're against bombs, bullets, and famines, you're still a good person. You're killing your own friends, family, neighbors, communities for personal pleasure yet believe you're to be trusted and to be considered good.

If your idea of supporting liberation requires leaving behind others and refusing to admit culpability when your actions harm others, you're just another oppressor! Wear a mask the entire time and every time you're in public if you actually believe genocide must be opposed.

[qqueenofhades]

Hoping you can explain this because you’re smart but why in the world are the same people who scream about a labor shortage worried about the border and immigration? Isn’t more people coming to our country a good thing if we train them properly to fill vacant positions (a lot of which are service jobs anyway)?

Alas, you are forgetting what is quite possibly the chief shibboleth of Western white supremacy/far-right nationalism: that all people from other countries, especially *gasp* the brown ones, are invaders, murderers, job-stealers, polluters of the (white) body politic, etc, and that under no circumstances should they be invited or allowed to stay. This isn't just an American thing; witness the Tories in the UK salivating over the idea of torturing migrants, trying to shut down any legal migration routes even with the employment black hole caused by Brexit, steadfastly denying that their workforce problems have anything to do with Brexit, steadfastly denying that they need to loosen immigration rules, etc. This is also the case with the European right/far right, the Australian far right, and anywhere else in the world that has historically been built on systems of white colonization, white supremacy, and other racial and legal scaffolds of privilege and exclusion. The white people who come to a country and settle it are bringing "civilization" and therefore should be welcomed and encouraged, but the non-white people who already lived there are "savages" and need to be exterminated for the good of the "master race." If they try to come back to the (white) nation state after their homelands were colonized, moreover, they are "invaders" who just want to "soak up the money of hard-working citizens" and etc etc.

The core fascist hatred of immigrants is also why Trump is directly echoing Hitler's anti-immigrant rhetoric with his "poisoning the blood of America" screeds, his promise to round up and deport migrants en masse, and otherwise be as massive of a dick as possible. The fact that there's no economic benefit and indeed a lot of economic pain is entirely beside the point. Trump and his deranged followers like the cruelty and the idea of torturing brown people for daring to come to "their" (white) America, and think that if they can be outrageously monstrous enough, this will finally deter all the other ones from coming. It won't, and no globalized economy will run without immigrants, but again, this isn't the point. Reality or pragmatic calculations have nothing to do with it. It's only about what can cause the maximum amount of cruelty and chaos to everyone who doesn't wholeheartedly worship and fit the (white) fascist model. That's why the Republicans yelled about wanting a border bill before they'd fund Ukraine; the Democrats obligingly gave them one with some of the toughest restrictions in years, and the Republicans yelled and threw it away because Dear Leader Trump told them to trash it. In some sense this is a good thing, because it meant that Ukraine got funded without being beholden to performative partisan cruelty at the border, but it also shows that they don't actually care about any of this. They have bluntly stated in so many words that they want a manufactured crisis at the border so Trump will have it as a campaign issue. Then he can take office and implement all his terrible concentration camps and all the other genocidal fascist bullshit of Project 2025 (bUt bIdEn iZ thE wOrsE oPtiOn!!!!!)

So: yeah. There's no point looking for any actual consistency or logic in the modern far right, because that is so far from the actual aim. No matter if migrants are essential, no matter if Americans literally won't take many of the jobs they do, etc. I live in a big city that has had a ton of migrants coming here and have read many, many news articles about how all they want to do is get a work permit, make their own money, learn English, and integrate into American culture; they are often far more positive about the prospects of America than actual Americans. But because the entire project of a (white) fascist ethnostate as advocated by Trump and co. in America, the Tories/Reform in the UK, and the far-right European parties, Russia, and other places (this is all connected worldwide -- again, it's not limited to one country or region), rests on demonizing (brown) immigrants as subhuman scroungers who come to rape, murder, steal jobs, and otherwise threaten (white) law-abiding citizens, that will always win out above every single other consideration.

[picaroroboto]

For the past couple days, I've been unfortunately cursed with thinking about Zenos yae Galvus. I don't even particularly like him - not that I dislike him either, Zenosfuckers you can put your scythes down - but it seems to me like a lot of the fandom either greatly misunderstands him, or doesn't even care to try to understand him, which from an objective standpoint as someone who cares deeply about writing in video games kind of pisses me off. But I'm more pissed about the fact that I'm apparently going to keep thinking about this issue until I actually write a character analysis of him.

Q: "But, what even is there to analyze with him? Isn't he all about wanting to fight the WoL and nothing else?"

Well, you wouldn't be wrong with saying that. That motivation is at the forefront of his character, and even if you look closer, everything about him comes back to either "violence" or "lack of understanding of others". But there are more meaningful sides to his deceptively simple character. That question of meaning is what I really want to look into - what does his character mean, what symbolic or thematic role does he play in this story?

Q: "Better question: why are you posting this on your art blog/Fate meta sideblog?"

Good question, with a stupid answer: I have all of 6 followers on my FF14 sideblog, and around 150 here. Let's go under the cut so they don't have to read a wall of text, unless they want to.

When you look at and compare FF14's villains, you can see a very clear change, no doubts thanks to the change in main writers. ARR Gaius and Thordan are more or less two-bit villains - Gaius's memeable iconic Praetorium speech gives us insight into how fascists try to justify themselves but little into Gaius's actual personality, while all Thordan gets as far as depth of character is an NPC in a sidequest remarking that he wasn't always a bad person and was probably doing what he thought best for his nation. Nidhogg is a little more understandable, since revenge is a relatable motivation to anyone who's been hurt by others. In Stormblood, Zenos and Yotsuyu are both presented as deserving of pity even as they do terrible things. Come Shadowbringers and Endwalker though, the story takes a greater interest on why villains like Emet-Selch and Elidibus do the things they do, and the player is allowed more options to try to understand them and see how similar they are to the WoL. Hell, Hermes and the Endsinger are barely "villains" at all, with the level of sympathy the story shows them.

What I'm getting to here is that Zenos, with half his arc in Stormblood and the rest in Endwalker, is sort of caught in the middle of this shift. He played the role of the rival character in Stormblood really well, but come Endwalker, he's standing on a stage full of heroes and villains with grand causes and deep motivations, as the guy whose sole motivation is fighting for pleasure.

It seems he's not unaware of this contrast himself - when Jullus confronts him for ruining Garlemald for no good reason, he retorts with "Would you be happier had I a good reason?" Zenos makes no attempt to justify his own actions and doesn't care that his reason seems incomprehensible and unforgivable to others. Yet in that same cutscene Alisaie hits him with the fact that if he keeps living solely for pleasure, he'll die alone. When next we see Zenos, he's alone at the Royal Menagerie waxing philosophical about what he really sought in the battle with the WoL.

See, what really motivates Zenos isn't just the thrill of battle - this guy has gotten Battle High and the joy of human connection confused. Really.

Even before he gets so perturbed by the idea of dying alone, there's other suggestions, like his proposal of friendship to the WoL when they fought in Stormblood, and then later his dying words in which he explains that he never understood others - at his core, he's just lonely. I know there's an official side story that tells it, but you don't need to know the exact details to glean that he had some sort of tragic backstory. Sad, but not a surprise, considering he's the prince of the Garlean Empire, raised to take the throne and continue the Empire's legacy of violence.

At his core, he's a very lonely person, but also a thing of violence, raised using violent methods for the purpose of causing more violence. Violence is how he lives and breathes - the only way he gets any sort of connection with others in a world of hurting and being hurt is the brief connection warriors dueling as equals can sometimes find. Don't deny that this sort of connection exists - FF14 is great at making fights that are both fun and tell a story. Hence, why he goes crazy for the WoL, but also refers to them as "friend". In their fights, he senses (or thinks he senses) similarity between him and them. Beneath all the madness is a pure, genuine joy in seeing the self reflected in the other...but he also instantly gets on the train to projection-town, population Zenos, and assumes the WoL is exactly like him, ignoring or failing to notice that they also fight for deeper meanings. The worst part is, he doesn't even notice that what he's actually seeking in fighting them is connection until Alisaie's aforementioned callout.

So he goes and angsts for a while, then turns into a dragon again and flies across the universe to help us kick the Endsinger's tail feathers, then issues his challenge for that duel he'd been longing for. But what's changed is that he starts with a question - "Such pleasures you sought for their own sake, and for no other reason, is that not so?". Dying after the duel, he's full of questions too: "Was your life a gift or a burden? Did you find fulfillment?" Alisaie's suggestion that he'd die alone actually spurred him to realize what he actually sought in the WoL, and now he's asking all these questions in an attempt to, for the first time in his life, genuinely connect with another human being.

The questions aren't important just because they're a sign of how Zenos has changed in Endwalker - they're actually the thematic heart of Endwalker! ARR may have had "Answers" as it's theme, but EW is the expac of questions. Namely the biggest question of all: What is the meaning of life? Different characters have different answers to that, leading to the grand-scale symbolic conflict being the Endsinger's despair - her belief that there is no meaning in life - versus whatever reasons the WoL chooses to live for, left, as always, up to player interpretation.

When you look deeper, Zenos isn't actually as out-of-place in the symbolic conflict as he first seems. His depressed worldview - that metaphor about drowning in a swamp again - seems to align with the Endsinger's view about life being meaningless. But he aids the WoL in defeating her. In that way he serves as part of the answer to her question about the meaning of life. He may have resented life at times, but he still found meaning in chasing pleasure. Not the strongest or most beautiful reason to deny oblivion, perhaps, but it did enable him to help the WoL triumph. I think of Zenos's philosophy as being connected to the concept of "Amor Fati"...largely because this quote explaining it sounds like something he'd say, or at least agree with on some level:

"and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed."

So he does have a meaningful role in Endwalker, as the "Amor Fati" against the Endsinger's "Memento Mori". I think that in this the story shows that his reason for living, while somewhat shallow, is not necessarily a morally wrong thing in and of itself (setting aside for a second all the people he hurt in his pursuit of that). It's just that, since it is a lonely pursuit that denies everything except for his target, it still feels empty. The core of the counterargument against the Endsinger's despair is that both pleasure and fulfillment are necessary to live a meaningful life in a meaningless universe, and that's why Zenos is here in Endwalker. Why he even exists in the story in the first place.

Even if you're one of the people who deeply hates Zenos...well, you probably wouldn't have read this whole thing if you did, but I still think it's important to read into characters you dislike, because every character in a story is written for a reason. Plus, trying to understand even their worst enemies is one of the WoL's key traits as of ShB and EW. With his last breaths, Zenos was trying to understand the WoL too - carrying this understanding of him with you as we move into our next adventures is the least you can do for your "friend".

[mesetacadre]

Half-doubting if this anon was even a good idea to begin with but, am I a bad communist for being actively hostile against any form of authoritarian concentration of power?

I just don't think any single person could embody the revolution much less serve it on a system built entirely on personalism where we worship the leader instead of the workers themselves. The only role individual people should have on communism is that of thinkers and philosophers, not of absolute rulers.

This may be drawn from a personal bias though, my country was destroyed by a dictatorship that would have gladly shot me and hid my body for being a lesbian and I have developed animosity towards authoritarians that is perhaps unhealthy.

Where do we draw the line to avoid becoming a red painted tyranny? Or am I just not a good communist for my intransigence?

Thank you for your time

I'll break this down into two parts, authority and idolatry

Authority is a value-neutral, metaphysical concept. It is the use of some kind of force to impose a will on others. If you consider yourself a communist, then how do you intend to overthrow capitalism without exerting authority? Engels said it best: «A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all». We must come to terms with this, as revolutionary marxists. If we refuse the concept of authority all-together, then all that can happen is that authority is applied against our entire class, for the rest of time. I also live in a first-world country that used to have a fascist dictatorship, and the ~150,000 thousand killed for political reasons, 30,000 disappeared, 500,000 interned in concentration camps, more than 100,000 summary trials, tens of thousands of slaves and the thousands tortured up to the very end can speak to its destructiveness. But it wasn't as simple as "they used authority, therefore all authority (abstractly) is bad". Franco's dictatorship responded to a series of needs that the Spanish and European bourgeoisie had, by the time of their sponsored coup d'etat in 1936, Spain was at the forefront of organization of the working class in Europe, the communist party had hundreds of thousand members if you include their youth wing, and the biggest unions reached the millions, in a country of just under 25 million. Italy, Germany, Austria and Portugal found themselves in a similar resurgence when their fascists took power, in every case financed by their biggest capitalists, national and foreign.

The point I'm getting at is that, if you want to understand class society, you have to go beyond the black-and-white, metaphysical liberal philosophy. Violence can be exerted by multiple classes through their own class organizations, and the character, context and sense of that violence changes accordingly. I'm not saying that all violence committed by workers without exception is wholly good. I'm saying that the relationship each class has with class society modifies the very reasoning and effect of that violence. And no example of violence in history can be really described as senseless. My country's dictatorship did not kill, torture and repress that many people for no reason, the holocaust did not happen because Hitler was an evil entity, and the various proletarian states, past and present, have not exerted their authority senselessly.

In marxist theory there are two very important concepts: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (DotB), and the dictatorship of the proletariat (DotP). The DotB is a catch-all term for any state of any form that serves capitalist interests. This is useful because, whether it's a liberal democracy with a strong welfare system, or Pinochet's Chile, they both ultimately serve to protect and expand the interest of the capitalist class. Put another way, the capitalist economy sustains the state and other entities like the media, the military, the government (what we call the suprastructure), while the capitalist economy underneath it all (what we call the infrastructure) maintains its existence. It is a dictatorship because it is one class enacting their own will in their own interests. The DotP is the same concept, but turned on its head. After our class has taken power and has began to build socialism-communism, it is actively enacting their sole will in their own interests. Why would the formerly exploited listen to what their former exploiters want? The proletariat must be able to repress the extant capitalist elements within and the permanently hostile capitalist class without. Dwell on this for a moment. While a DotP fosters democratic mechanisms for its class, the social majority (as all DotP in history have done), it simultaneously exerts its authority on those extraneous to the working class. If you live in a capitalist state, the very same thing is happening, just reversed. The managers of capitalism, i.e. the representatives in liberal democracy, govern for the capitalist class, even representing various sections of that class, while simultaneously repressing or preventing any organization of the working class.

I did not mention Chile as an example for no reason beforehand. When the working class of Chile attempted to build socialism through non-violent means, after the election of Allende (there were many tendencies within Allende's party and among his entire support base but that's beyond this post), they were met with an intervention that did not have any qualms about using violence, kickstarting Pinochet's 17 year long dictatorship, backed by Chilean and USAmerican capitalists, atop the corpses of at least 40,000 executed and/or tortured. Look up the massacre of Estadio Nacional if you're interested, it's where Victor Jara was murdered.

"Authority" in DotP is never as widespread nor as violent, firstly because it doesn't aim to repress the social majority, but rather the small but resourceful capitalist class, and secondly because its "repression" more often than not manifests in our actual goals, which is to build a socialist economy, which would necessarily eliminate the social basis for a capitalist class to exist in the first place. In the USSR, for example, the rich landowner peasants disappeared first an foremost because the structure of land ownership was completely changed, eliminating the source of their power. Any instances of actual violence were mostly against saboteurs during collectivization or during the grain seizures to curb the mass starvation that happened in the cities during the civil war, since no grain made it there. Capitalist authority is meant to keep the mass of working people subservient and exploited, proletarian authority is meant to protect the project of socialism-communism against attacks. It has never been about killing all the rich people, it has been about abolishing the capitalist mode of production and building a new one, one which does not need the oppression of any kind of people to keep functioning.

I recommend the following books if you're interested in sources about "authority" and democracy in DotPs:

The Soviets Expected It, Anna Louise Strong (1941). It is focused on the USSR's lead-up to the fascist invasion, but it contains a few examples from ALS' own, unsupervised, experience with soviet democracy and the general attitude of working people

In North Korea: First Eyewitness Reports, Anna Louise Strong (1949). Same as the previous one, it has a few examples of ALS' unsupervised travels through North Korea before the Korean War that talk about how democracy was set up.

The Triumph of Evil, Austin Murphy (2002). I've said a lot how this author is very annoying about keeping to this useless good vs evil dichotomy when talking about socialism and capitalism, but apart from those sporadic remarks, it's incredibly well researched. It focuses on economic aspects, but chapters 1, 2, especially 3, and 7 all contain analyses on the actual mechanisms of authority that DotP use, taking East Germany as an example. Again though, the author is very annoying as soon as he begins to give his personal opinions on morality.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It, Bruni de la Motte and John Green (2015). Pretty self explanatory title, this one goes into more detail about the security apparatus of East Germany. I haven't read this one in full, but it has a dedicated chapter on democracy and the state security service.

Onto idolatry. I promise this part will be shorter.

I've written more in detail about this, but while personality worship is a problem, I don't agree that it leads to the problems you outline. It's undeniable that there have been elements of individual idolatry, but that's neither a reflection of actual power concentration or ever a substitution for the elevation of workers. Leadership in any communist party is always collective, and if it follows Leninist principles of organization even partially, then internal democracy is always guaranteed save for the most extreme of situations. Stalin might have been a popular figure, but the Central Committee he was a part of was not below him, and the periodical Congresses had more authority than the CC or any individual person. ALS mentions how, for example, the 1936 constitution was made. It was a wholly democratic process, more than a hundred thousand suggestions were all recieved and considered by the organs in charge. It was the most progressive constitution in its time, it guaranteed rights many of us still do not have. And that process supposedly happened while the "worship" of Stalin was in full force. Every position in DotPs has some mechanism of recall and accountability, everything is elected and ratified. Can you start a process of recall for any specific member of the state administration in your DotB? In one instance, as ALS says, in the region of Crimea up to half of the elected officials were all recalled in one year.

I keep using the USSR as an example because it's the system I'm most familiar with, but any other DotP you can think of has similar mechanisms and limitations to power. Once again, was there a certain amount of idolatry towards a few individuals? Yes. Was this a harmful vice which created unchecked concentration of power and undue oppression? Most certainly not. Besides this, we're materialists, and we understand that human psychology is largely molded by the underlying material conditions. Focusing on individuals when it comes to these sorts of things is almost inevitable for large groups of people because of how the exploitative economic conditions modify psychological tendencies. It is a remain of liberal ideology for the most part, and it should be fought against. But you can't expect millions of people to change how they view certain processes, changes like those take a lot of time, generations, and education.

I've spent essentially all of my political life within a party structure not very dissimilar from that of Cuba's, the USSR's, China's, the DPRK's, etc, and I can say with full confidence that it is the most democratic and simultaneously productive set of principles you can have in political activity. Compared to liberal democracy, and compared to horizontalist/non-centralized structures, even those employed by anarchists, which I have also experienced, it is still far more democratic and effective at taking into account all input without devolving into a glorified debate club.

I don't think you're a bad communist, having these doubts and talking to other people about it is a very good habit to have. If you still have doubts or want to keep talking about this, feel free to shoot me another ask or a private message :)

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

I think western media has relied on non-human races as shorthand for oppressed groups so much that audiences have been primed to look for that instead of actual imperialist ideology.

One of the criticisms I've repeated about the Dragon Prince is how the writers take the Aesthetics of fantasy imperialism/indigenous people and just switch them without bothering to change anything about their ideology or historical context.

Kenna on TikTok was right when she said that a franchise where the oppressor and oppressed were all the same species makes a better racism allegory.

The fact that the Four Nations were all human added to the themes of imperialism and genocide in ATLA. While on the opposite side of the coin, the Xadians all being different species undermines it.

You can say Fire Nation people were a bunch of imperialists without going into bioessentialism. You CAN'T say humans are a bunch of warmongering monsters without sounding like an eco fascist.

The Sunfire elves textually being the most fantasy racist group is fine because they're elves, therefore oppressed, and the white writers made them superficially based on African-French speakers.

Meanwhile Katolis is "obviously" a Fantasy European Imperialist nation and therefore the oppressor. Never mind that it's had a black, now mixed, ruling family for a thousand years. Or that it's citizens aren't just white.

I remember seeing a post comparing the taboo against Black Magic to Xtian fundamentalism. At first I thought that was a bit much but no. Season six revealed that TDP has a canonical Hierarchy of Beings so that guy was absolutely right.

In Xtian fundamentalism doing something good the "wrong" way is the same as doing something bad.

Save a kingdom from starving? Well you had to kill a rock monster so obviously the right thing to do was let hundreds of thousands of people starve to death. (I've had weirdos go onto my posts and literally say this.)

Break the chains preventing you from saving the people you love? Well it hurt you so the right thing to do was let your friends and loved ones drown I guess.

Your son is dying? Better protect some old man's sense of moral purity than save a child.

All of these actions are not considered bad because they had a negative effect. They're considered bad because they go against the dominant power's desired order.

They're inherently bad because "humans" are inherently bad. Because human ways are not as pure as a direct connection to an Arcanum.

Note: this^ is imperialist ideology.

The idea that a group of people fighting for their survival justifies ethnic cleansing and mass murder is imperialist ideology.

The idea that the scary, blasphemous practices of a people you don't understand makes them dangerous, and therefore justifies you "defending yourself", is imperialist ideology.

The Liberal focus on "cycles of violence" and "both sides are at fault". Instead of on reparations for the people they killed and the homes they destroyed is imperialist ideology.

But Katolis has a pseudo-medieval aesthetic and the elves do not.

I was so angry at the scene where Sol Regem burns Katolis because THIS is the poor helpless dragons the humans "colonized"!? This living air bomber is the "victim" of the big, bad humans? One Archdragon can destroy an entire city single handedly and you expect me to believe the elves and dragons ethnic cleansing of humanity was REASONABLE!?

No. We are past any doubt or rationalization. What Sol Regem did to Katolis was just a small glimpse of what the elves and dragons did during the Human Exile. Just a small glimpse into how imperialist powers treat those that they cannot exploit.

And then demonize them for daring to oppose/question/subvert the imperialist's god(s) given superiority.

[llyfrenfys]

"Fascism and Welsh Nationalism", or "Stop Fawning over the FWA you cont"

This is inspired by things I've been noticing around Aberystwyth lately while out and about.

Some mfer is putting up Free Welsh Army (FWA) stickers and I have to keep on pulling them down. Why? You ask.

Fascism.

Because of the not so subtle links between the FWA and fascist movements (of which those links are quite frankly underdiscussed) this post is necessary.

So, starting with the stickers:

This is just one of three identical stickers I've pulled down this last week in Aberystwyth. They appear more to be car stickers than anything else and must have cost a pretty penny to print and/or purchase. They appear to have been bought directly from a website using FWA imagery and slogans - yet does not claim to be the FWA (that I can see, at least). I'm not going to link to it because they don't need any more web traffic. But we will get onto why this is significant in a bit.

Anyway, returning to the stickers - I pulled down the first one off of an electric box on North Road, opposite Vaynor St in late November. I pulled down the second (pictured) also in late November on Penglais Road off the bus stop near the hospital. And in early December I pulled down the third one off of a wall near the Spar at the end of Vaynor Street. Right off the bat we can assume the guy who wasted a lot of money on these stickers lives local to where the stickers I've found so far were. So they're lazy, for one - not venturing much further than their own front door by the looks of it.

Iconography:

I've written about the iconography of the FWA before here but it bears repeating that if fascists approve of your iconography, then that's a sign your movement is already overrun with fascists.

This is the sticker design which I've been noticing about town. Top to bottom we have "Cymru Rydd/Free Wales" which on its own is fine. No qualms with that. But between the Welsh and English text is a symbol. This one:

Now, this was the symbol of the Free Wales Army. Note that I say *was* because the FWA doesn't exist any more. Yet various actors have tried to resurrect its very unsuccessful corpse over the years. These stickers seem to belong to a new organisation which is the latest to try and capitalise on the ghost of the FWA. Now, if you're like me, you'll have already noticed this design is, for lack of a better word, a bit dogwhistley. The angled, blocky, swastika-like stylisation of what is supposedly an eagle, the black and white void of any other features and the very fact it *is* an eagle depicted all seem a bit *too* similar to the iconography of the Third Reich, don't you think?

Their design choice is no accident. It is a design which appeals to fascists while also has enough Welsh cultural reference for apologists to hide behind with a plausibly deniable reason for why their eagle Looks Like That. The white eagle is a reference to the 13th C. poem Mab Darogan, in which Myrddin prophesises that "a king shall come with heroism from among the Welsh people" and that "generous men shall be reborn of the lineage of the eagles of Snowdonia". The eagle could have literally been drawn in any way. But it rather specifically was drawn like this. That choice is not accidental.

Now this new organisation which is trying to reanimate the corpse of the FWA (we'll call them EW) has incorporated the FWA symbol into their sticker. An endorsement of the failed so-called 'paramilitary' organisation on their part, to be sure. EW also have included a different style of white eagle on their sticker as well - which is blatantly stolen from Wikipedia (the copyright is expired, but 0/10 artistic effort on their part even so). Also not to nitpick but the eagle on the sticker is grey not white so that's also a fail.

Artistic criticisms aside, the sticker is loaded with dogwhistley iconography all round. The Celtic knot border isn't necessarily problematic, however, fascists and/or neo-nazis love to slap Celtic knots onto things because they associate Celticity with whiteness. The colour scheme may also be a coincidence, but it does remind me of the fascist symbol which is the 'Flag of Kekistan" which uses the same colour scheme.

Why does this matter and who were the FWA?:

The FWA were a Welsh nationalist (supposedly 'paramilitary') outfit which formed in Lampeter in 1963 and disbanded in 1969 (just 6 years of activity). They took a lot of their cues from the IRA and were effectively fanboys of them. The group was never really considered a threat and mostly consisted of middle-aged men playing paramilitary dress-up. They did claim to be funded by the IRA and that they had dogs trained to carry explosives. Their claims remain unproven.

HOWEVER - and here's where things get sticky. A lot of the issues the FWA were publicly concerned with were and are actually valid issues (e.g. the drowning of Capel Celyn, the Aberfan Disaster etc.). The problem is that fascists or fanboys of fascists love to get their foot in the door by addressing genuine issues. But what happens is that invariably a minoritised group is blamed for the existence of said issue and naturally that leads to discrimination and violence.

The police started to get a bit antsy with the investiture of then-prince Charles as prince of Wales and the possibility of the FWA doing some terrorism. So some of the FWA's leaders were arrested just prior to this. The group officially ended in 1969.

The nationalism advocated for by the FWA was of the 'blood-and-soil' type. Not just your common or garden nationalism (which still has issues but given context is perfectly able to exist in a non-fashy way). And that's why the idolisation of the FWA in years since is sus. It appeals to romanticised nationalist notions of brave men in uniforms helping free Wales - when in reality they did little terrorism and little to actually further the Welsh nationalist cause. In fact, the leadership of the FWA fell apart after they started to disagree on whether their actions were damaging the cause rather than helping it.

Julian Cayo-Evans founded the FWA and ran it with Dennis Coslett and Gethin ap Gruffydd. Gruffydd went on to found other youth nationalist organisations after he left the FWA due to disagreements with its direction - e.g. he founded the Patriotic Front in 1964 which was later outlawed by Plaid Cymru in 1966. It goes without saying names like 'Patriotic Front' are deliberate nods to other, similarly named fascist organisations like National Front.

Legacy and The Present:

FWA's only legacy is the sycophantic fanclub which ressurects the corpse of the FWA every few years to parade it around and relive the 'glory days' of paramilitary cosplay. But aside from functionally being useless, their iconography and politics are still very much under the fash umbrella and that must be resisted at every opportunity (hence why I'm tearing down their stickers - I don't want fascists to feel welcome here). Part of why people may turn a blind eye to the FWA/sympathise is that they may not be aware of the history of the FWA or see the dogwhistles laden in their work and symbols. Some may even just assume without any other context that they're just another Welsh-language preservation group and may even support them without realising the deeper nature of the organisation beyond just preserving the Welsh language.

Which brings me back to EW. I'm going to put the rest of this under a cut, I do encourage reading the rest though and reblogging to get the word out that

It is always morally okay to tear down fascist propaganda

If you see some in your town, don't hesitate to let fash know they aren't welcome here.

EW:

So, onto the latest in a long line of paramilitary wannabes who idolise a long-dead organisation from the 60s.

The EW website seems... sketch. Lots of banners and sections asking to 'donate now' and 'take action' (with money). So right off the bat this looks like a cash-grab.

Secondly, from their own 'About' section they claim that the Welsh Independence movement has "become inundated with authoritarian Marxist entryists who regard Welsh independence as merely a vehicle for furthering their own political agendas". Which is pretty bold stuff coming from an organisation trying to do The Exact Same. There's also a LOT of emphasis on youth involvement and youth nationalism.

There's also a lot of ahistorical claims in the About section too. E.g. on the prophecy of Myrddin "From this legend derives the very name of Cymru’s greatest mountains, with ‘Eryri’ meaning the ‘Seat of the Eagles’ in Cymraeg." - this is contested as there is no one agreed upon etymology of Eryri. To claim that this is The Etymology suggests that they picked this one just because it conveniently fits the version of the mythology they're presenting. They also claim that "Owain ap Gruffydd, would adopt three such eagles as his royal coat of arms" - this is blatantly incorrect as Owain ap Gruffydd lived before the Age of Heraldry and the three eagles are actually later attributed arms.

In EW's FAQ there's a section on supporting their organisation - with one paragraph saying that you can buy stickers instead "If you aren’t eligible or willing to commit to becoming an activist". Lol at 'if you aren't willing to fully commit to our FWA fanboy club you can put up some stickers instead'. Also the button to buy stickers suggests you pay via paypal "We’ll accept quick payments using PayPal and will have them shipped to you First Class" - which *totally* sounds legit (what do you bet they ask people to pay via 'friends and family instead of through business means?).

And... that's it. There's very little else on their website. It *looks* like they're trying to be a movement, but appear to lack substance (and money, judging from how many different Donate Now buttons are plastered all over the site). A hollow organisation blatantly bending history and mythology to fit their narrative, proudly using symbols designed to appeal to fascists while asking people to trust them with the future of Wales?

Dim diolch.

For further reading on why we should guard against fascism in Welsh language revival and independence, see my other post here.

Reblogs welcome for an antifascist independent Wales.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Here's a clear example of what we mean when we speak of how Spain's occupation makes the lives of Catalan people worse in so many ways every day, including the lives of those who are against independence! It doesn't matter that anyone plays the role of the good exemplary Catalan, speaks only Spanish, cries against the independentists asking for too many things, say that voting is going too far, always defend that Spain is right and we don't have the ability to rule ourselves... It doesn't matter, because the Spanish system still always considers you a second-class citizen.

For decades, Catalonia and the Valencian Country have had a problem because Spain doesn't have a working railway system for transporting goods. Barcelona and València are two of the busiest ports in all the Mediterranean, and the goods have to be taken by trucks to their destinations or to France (to be taken to the rest of Europe). This means that there is a huge concentration of trucks on our highways, and they cause many accidents, traffic congestion, and damage the roads quicker.

Heatmap of the average daily amount of trucks in the highways in the state of Spain. You can see how Catalonia is 100% in red, and almost all the Valencian Country is too. The only other red areas are a part of Murcia (right under the Valencian Country), a part of the highways leading to Madrid, and a part going towards France via the Basque Country. This map is made with data published by the Spanish Government (source).

For this reason, the Governments of Catalonia and the Valencian Country have been asking for over a decade to build the Mediterranean Corridor, a train line for goods that would unite all the busiest harbours and main cities since Algeciras (tip of Southern Spain right in front of Morocco), with all Southern Spain, the Valencian Country, and Catalonia, to Southern France, where there are already railway lines connecting it to Northern Italy and Central Europe. The Gov of Catalonia has been begging for this for over a decade mainly to bring down the amount of accidents on the road, because the regional governments have very limited power and money and don't have the permission to do infrastructure works like this (it is only the Gov of Spain that has this power). The Spanish Gov's answer has always been the refusal to make any train lines through Catalonia and the Valencian Country, and that if they ever build a railway it would go through Madrid instead. They don't care that people die here on the roads because of their national pride and dismissal/hatred of Catalans.

Now they have decided to build the railway for goods. And, yep, it will go through Madrid. It will not affect the roads, because it still doesn't go near the busy harbours of València and Barcelona. So they will still need to drive trucks to take them to the train line. Spain's hatred reaches levels of stupidity.

Look again at the map of which roads need support, and now compare it to the map posted by Spain's railways official account of where the railway will go through:

(Source: Adif, July 10th 2024)

That's not useful. Also, notice how they have lied saying it stops in Barcelona but pointing at the map where Barcelona isn't. Barcelona is much further south and on the coast (that's why it's an important harbour! Most goods are transported internationally by ship!). The city that they have mislabelled as "Barcelona" is actually Girona. And the Spanish railways has also taken a very political choice of misspelling Figueres with the Spanish spelling that was imposed during the fascist dictatorship (since Catalan was forbidden, all Catalan names —towns/cities, areas, rivers, people's personal names, etc— had to be translated to Spanish, and when place names didn't mean anything and couldn't be translated they had to be spelled in the Spanish way), spelling it Figueras instead.

Direct instances of facing discrimination for being from our country, for speaking Catalan, or for having a Catalan name or accent aren't the only ways in which Spain makes our life worse. There are many things every day from waking up to going to sleep that are decided for us, against us. This is why people who live in a place should have the power to decide how their home is ruled, and not a government far away that doesn't know our problems and which in the best of cases doesn't care about us and in the worst cases actively wishes us the worst.

[hero-israel]

Here's the thing about this narrative that Palestinian resistance no matter what form is acceptable. Jewkilling cannot exist in a bubble. It cannot be politically neutral. 1000 years of European (and Arab) antisemitism culminating in genocide have ruined that. Sorry to Palestinian activists but that's just how it works. You can't murder a Jew without it being a tragedy, without it contributing to the continued global oppression of Jewish people.

And all that said, that's just if Hamas and others only targeted soldiers and police (or at least tried as best they could). The IRA didn't go out of its way to purposefully target noncombatants. Why? Probably because there isn't thousands of years of history of English people being seen as subhuman, there isn't thousands of years of anglophobic propaganda showing English people as twisted monsters preying on children and secretly undermining Irish society. The Irish national movement was not born because English refugees returned to their historical homeland and challenged the notion of Irish Supremacy. It was a pragmatic liberation movement. Resist military occupation, undermine military infrastructure designed to oppress the people. The descendants of English and Scottish settlers would even be allowed to stay if they had won. Imagine that.

These things are all tied up in each other. I'm against police brutality, I'm against the escalation and the militarization and the mistreatment of Arabs in Israel and in Judea & Samaria and Gaza and Golan and everywhere. But killing Jews can never be righteous. Sorry to anyone who feels that way but it can't. Antizionists NEED to understand that. Jews will always feel defensive and ready themselves for retaliation because of history, because of that context. Jews keep saying "prove to us a post zionist society where we all share the land won't be antisemitic" and their concerns are completely brushed off.

There's no empathy at all. A little girl can be stabbed to death and antizionists celebrate because she was a "settler," and that brave Palestinian man was defending his indigenous homeland, by targeting the weakest of his enemies. And since Israel has mandatory military service the antizionist can surmise that no Jews are Innocent. An Israeli Jew cannot be a noncombatant. They have to, otherwise the only other explanation for why Jewkilling is acceptable to them, or even feels good to them, is that they hate Jews. And as of right now, the optics are still against that. I have a sinking feeling the optics won't be against them much longer. I inherently don't trust a "liberation" movement that's all too eager to make murdering Jewish civilians praxis. I'm sick of the internet falling for this bullshit.

One of the best asks I have ever received. Thank you for sharing it and I agree with every word.

The entire progressive intersectional social-justice frame has failed Jews (or, alternately, has succeeded in excluding them), due to being intellectually colonized by a clearly fascist ideology of incessantly hating the Jew as a poisonous alien. Try to get an online activist to critically deconstruct the social assumptions they were raised with about Jews in their Muslim, Christian, or very slightly post-Christian society... it won't go well. Funny how Jews have lived in India and China for thousands of years yet you will look in vain for examples of bitter bloodthirsty kill-your-nextdoor-neighbor antisemitism in those societies. That's because the origin, the core, of Chinese and Indian societies was not "We're the people who are better than Jews."

From a review of Richard Landes' new book "Can the Whole World Be Wrong?":

[During the Second Intifada] Israelis were described at the time as the new Nazis. But the malice that was unleashed was even worse. As Landes writes, “It was mostly about being freed from a sense of obligation to the Jews, a chance to take up again the Jew-baiting so long denied Europeans by a politically correct post-Holocaust sobriety.” Landes quotes a poisonous comment made by a member of the House of Lords and reported in the Spectator, “Well, the Jews have been asking for it, and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.” During that time, I was told something horrifyingly similar to my [=the reviewer's] face.

Your example of Irish nationalists not going out of their way to murder British children is a good one. The oft-reached comparisons between Palestine and South Africa are frivolous for many reasons as I have explained here before, and the ANC advocating and normalizing a vision of enduring racial diversity and equality is high on the list of reasons (made possible because black African identity is not predicated on a thousand-year history of hating and oppressing whites). The case of Rhodesia is even more instructive. Robert Mugabe - ROBERT MUGABE! - pleaded with the whites to stay, to live as equals, as brothers, and work together in building a better society in Zimbabwe. Ian Smith, last white PM of Rhodesia, agreed with him and stayed in Zimbabwe. If a so-called "liberation" movement is more openly dedicated to straight-up exterminating their enemies than Robert Mugabe ever was, maybe, just maybe, it shouldn't be described as "liberation" at all.

[ursa-the-stranger]

Op had to restrict replies but I wanted to reblog so heres a copy paste of it sans op's name. I will take this down if they ask however.

I have been noodling over posting this for several days but I think it's important for some people to hear.

At a March on Saturday, at a pro Palestine march, my group and I were targeted by by nazis. Not targeted for violence, but targeted for recruitment. They weren't wearing swastikas, they weren't spewing blatant antisemitic hate speech. They seemed like two normal dudes. They marched with us, talked about how awful everything in Palestine was, how we wished world leaders would grow a pair and hold Israel responsible for fucking war crimes, how existing in the world right now was hard. They were empathetic, they were kind, they seemed like genuine good dudes.

Until we passed a synagogue where people were handing our water to marchers. They had signs defending Palestine on their table. But the tone of the conversation changed. These two seemingly normal dudes started talking about how "performative" the gesture felt, that Jewish people should be doing more. That they needed to PROVE it. They started talking about "Zionist" propaganda in the US, about how it was deeply entrenched in capitalism. Things that, on the surface, seemed reasonable but it set off alarm bells in my head.

When I was a kid, I remember getting the speech of "don't repeat anything your uncle or cousin so and so says and don't argue with them. Try to avoid them but if you can't be polite." Because those uncles and cousins said a lot of hateful things about anyone who wasn't like them, but their favorite targets were black people and Jewish people. I would find out as an adult it was because many of those uncles and cousins were in the Klan. When I studied hate symbols for a class in college, I found my self looking at images I'd seen on arms and necks and hands my whole life, because I live in an area of the US where the KKK is still around. And standing in that crowd, listening to these guys talk, i had the most horrible realization I've had in a long time.

We were being fished by Nazis. We were a group of able body, white American leftists. At a march in support of stopping the murder and genocide of Palestinians, these motherfuckers were out here, trying to find people they could get to hate Jewish folks. I wasn't the only one in my group who clocked it, and when we called them on it, the masks came off. They called us a bunch of "Jew loving bitches" before they moved on.

But we're marched with these guys for a couple hours, talked with them, laughed with them, brought them into our circle. For a moment we forgot we also weren't immune to propaganda, we weren't immune to people who make hate sound reasonable and that people like that never start out saying the quiet part out loud, they lean on your anger and your sense of helplessness to move you where they want you. If the last eight years has taught us anything, it's that fascists know how to adjust to the times, to work with what they got, to recruit. They know how to radicalize people, how to weaponize anger and helplessness. And I'm sitting here, every day, seeing posts that sound exactly like these guys did and it worries me.

I know I'm talking to the No Reading Comprehension Website, but I'm begging you guys to develop some now.

You are not immune to propaganda. We are all angry, as we fucking should be. We are watching an entire culture, thousands of lives, whole bloodlines, being wiped out in real time, and for many of us our nations are at best, wringing their hands, and at worst, shipping them weapons, all to protect capitalist greed. It's monstrous, it's disgusting. But look, REALLY LOOK, at the things you are tweeting, sharing, look at the language and how it's used. Take the time to educate yourself about how hate groups use social justice causes and civil unrest to recruit, research the posts your spreading, check your sources. If you are out protesting, be situationally aware, and do not be afraid to clock and call out Nazis. Listen to Jewish people, listen to their concerns, educate yourself on what Zionism and antisemitism actually are and how they can be weaponized. It doesn't feel as good as rage, it doesn't feel as good as having a group you can functionally rail against in a way we can't against a nation a world away, but it's a skill that's going to help you and a lot of other people in the long run.

[therainbowwarrior4]

Project 2025 is a plan to, in the words of project Director Paul Dans, "...march into office and bring a new army of aligned, trained, and essentially weaponized conservatives ready to do battle against the Deep State".It is organized by the Heritage Foundation, to "muzzle woke propaganda at every level of government", "gut the administrative state" (HUD, FEMA, DOJ, DHS, the Federal Reserve, CDC, FDA, EPA, etc.) and concentrate power into the hands of the President (Leeja Miller, in a video that is linked below, goes into detail on how this would work).Their claim is that "Only through the implementation of specific action plans at each agency will the next conservative presidential Administration be successful".The plan includes a [180 Day Playbook](https://www.project2025.org/playbook/), described as "...a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency."

The plan is "the conservative movement's unified effort to be ready for the next conservative administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025".Project 2025 promises to "rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left" and to "unite the conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors".Project 2025 lists problems with America such as:* The breakdown of the family* Immigration* The "totalitarian cult known today as The Great Awokening"* The erosion of constitutional accountability in Washington* Children suffering the "toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries"* An "overseas, totalitarian Communist dictatorship" that is "not a strategic partner or fair competitor" and is "engaged in a strategic, cultural and economic Cold War against America's interests, values and people"* "Low-income communities" that are "drowning in addiction and government dependence"* "America's elites have betrayed the American People"* The left using climate change "to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty crushing regulations"They believe that "These are problems not of technocratic efficiency, but of national sovereignty and constitutional governance. We solve them not by trimming and reshaping the leaves, but by ripping out the trees -- root and branch."

Their broad goals are to:1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life, and protect our children2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people3. Defend our nation's sovereignty, borders and bounty against global threats4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely - what our constitution calls "the Blessings of Liberty"Dans states that "The long march of Cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before".Project 2025 is, in my words, a distinctly terrifying and highly detailed roadmap for:* Installing a Chriso-fascist oligarchy* Rolling back civil and human rights* Removing bodily autonomy from women and transgender individuals* The systematic eradication of minorities and other vulnerable groupsI don't use the words "systematic eradication" lightly or with hyperbole.

They obviously don't come right out and say it, but they state that:* Pornography should be outlawed* The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned* Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders* Telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shutteredThe real problem with the above, apart from the obvious, is that they label the existence of LGBTQIA+ people as "inherently pornographic". They say that pornography is “manifested today through the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology".They say that the fix "starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity ('SOGI'), diversity, equity and inclusion ('DEI'), gender, gender equality, gender awareness, gender sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists".They also state that "The president should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc."

They want to "maintain a biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family" which would remove protections for same-sex marriage.Leeja Miller helpfully points out that the above language does not simply include transgender individuals, it includes cis women as well. I'd argue that removing the DEI language also allows them to target anyone that isn't a white, cis, heterosexual, evangelical (or other approved flavor of Christianity) male.Some other points of note:* They want to eliminate the Department of Education* They want to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory* They want to bring back the practice of impounding funds

**References*** A direct link to a PDF copy of the project's Policy Agenda, aka their "Mandate for Leadership": [https://thf\_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025\_MandateForLeadership\_FULL.pdf](https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf), this can be found on the Policy page of the Project 2025 website.* A video from Leeja Miller: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3UvaC5m7o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3UvaC5m7o)* An NPR article focusing on the climate policy aspect: [https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192634090/if-republicans-win-the-white-house-in-2024-climate-policy-will-likely-change](https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192634090/if-republicans-win-the-white-house-in-2024-climate-policy-will-likely-change)* A UC Berkeley write up: [https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2023/11/17/project-2025-democratic-doomsday/](https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2023/11/17/project-2025-democratic-doomsday/)* An article from the NECC Observer: [http://observer.necc.mass.edu/blog/2023/11/20/the-danger-of-project-2025/](http://observer.necc.mass.edu/blog/2023/11/20/the-danger-of-project-2025/)* An article from PBS: [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/conservatives-aim-to-restructure-u-s-government-and-replace-it-with-trumps-vision](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/conservatives-aim-to-restructure-u-s-government-and-replace-it-with-trumps-vision)