"Where one burns books, one will soon burn people." - Heinrich Heine
PS: if you're still wondering "how did Nazi Germany even happen" let me assure you, it went a lot like this.
"Where one burns books, one will soon burn people." - Heinrich Heine
PS: if you're still wondering "how did Nazi Germany even happen" let me assure you, it went a lot like this.
So fucking typical.
"That man is not the shooter, not a suspect, nor an undocumented immigrant"
Like, I really don't think people understand what I'm saying here. The term "trans pogrom" is not a rhetorical device, and it's not a hypothetical either. The fascist Republican Party is telling you loud and clear, in their own words what they mean to do about trans and queer people just "existing" and I'm tired of being told I'm overreacting just because comfortable bougie assholes don't *want* to believe it's true. "They can't *do* that" doesn't work either; they have a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court that has already demonstrated that the laws don't mean f*ck all to them, and thus they can do *anything* they bloody well want to.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/08/14/the-gop-has-a-master-plan-to-criminalize-being-trans/amp/
I realize that most of our society doesn't give a crap, but at least read the goddamn headline: "The GOP Has a Master Plan to Criminalize Being Trans."
This is not "red meat" for the base, these nazis are dead f*cking serious. And it's not QAnon nation pushing this alone either; it's powerful fascist Republican think tanks, elected officials, judges, lawyers, major media and propaganda organizations. Do you understand what it means when someone criminalizes your existence? If "being trans" is illegal, how exactly does a person in "violation" of the law avoid breaking the law? A pogrom is just like a genocide, in fact one usually leads to the other; it's a process. First you isolate your targets, then you criminalize their existence, then you round them up, and eventually you start doing murders. That's the history, that's how this process works. When someone criminalizes your existence, it means they intend to f*cking KILL you.
The GOP is not making anti-trans legislation a primary plank in their political program for no reason. They're not trying to ban LGBTQ content in the public sphere for sh*ts and giggles. They are not trying to make it illegal to help, or support trans people because it'll look good on a campaign flier. They are not trying to give the Department of Justice a mandate to prosecute officials in other states for failing to police LGBTQ people and prosecute an anti-trans pogrom because it'll be a spicy talking point for Fox News monologues. And they certainly aren't trying to do all this on the federal level, through Project 2025, because they're undecided about how to proceed here.
This is a pogrom in process. This is what a pogrom looks like. This is how you make it "legal" to start murdering people you don't like in a "liberal democracy." This is no different at all than what the Nazi Party did to set up the Holocaust. They are serious, they are politically empowered, they mean to f*cking "end" trans and queer people, and they are prepared to throw *your* ass in jail if you try to stop them.
Over the weekend, Donald Trump suggested creating a police force that metes out punishments with impunity—a model used by Hitler and Mussolini. That story is the most important development over the weekend. It deserves to be headline news in every major media outlet
#hitler #nazi #fascism #authoritarianism #trump #biden #voteblue #police #policebrutality
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/keep-calm-and-carry-on-955
A lot of savvy people insisted that only unhinged partisans could think the right would come after birth control because that’s a long-settled issue and it’d be wildly unpopular.
There will be no introspection from them. No mea culpas. And they’ll continue to normalize the GOP’s growing extremism.
#dobbs #media #birthcontrol #gop #fascism
Latest comic: Using the First Amendment to end the First Amendment
#fascism #authoritarianism #media #journalism #tech #socialmedia #firstamendment
The fascists have declared the trans community public enemy number one and made erasing us their top political issue.
Republicans Issue New Government Shutdown Threat Over Trans People
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/republicans-issue-new-government
There were two coup attempts:
(1) a Presidential coup that has not (yet) succeeded, but had a flashpoint with the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
(2) a Judicial coup in which Mitch McConnell denied President Obama a Supreme Court appointment. then rushed Justice Barrett onto the bench. That coup succeeded.
Don't give up. We need to show the same courage the abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists had then, to save our democracy now.
Grace Linn’s husband was killed while fighting nazis in WWII. She’s a centenarian who has witnessed the rise of fascism first hand.
Recently she took on a school board in Florida against their book bans. She made a quilt in protest and reminded people where book bans lead:
“Banning books and burning books are the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge.”
Going to keep this one short because as is noted in the article, I strongly suspect this bill will "die in committee" but I still think it's instructional to examine what the more extreme members of the American fascist coalition, particularly those in office, are seeking to codify in law. After all, as the Overton window keeps shifting right, plenty of ideas most of us assumed would never pass a vote have become law, and fascism itself is not a "chud rush" as imagined in popular culture, but rather a top-down, legalist political formulation - so knowing their intentions as they do seize more and more power, is quite useful.
So, let's head over to Missouri, the most Confederate midwestern state:
"A Missouri Republican has introduced a bill that would make it a felony for teachers to support trans and gender-nonconforming students’ transitioning socially and force those found guilty to register as sex offenders.
First-term state Rep. Jamie Ray Gragg (R) introduced H.B. 2885 this week. The proposed law would make it a Class E felony to “contribute” to the social transition of transgender youth."
Yeah, you read that right, this freak wants to make it illegal to support trans kids, "whether the support is material, information, or other resources to a child regarding social transition." Furthermore, he'd like to permanently brand teachers or councilors who do so, as registered sex offenders; I couldn't make that up if I tried. Curiously enough, the bill explicitly acknowledges the difference between a person's "gender identity" and the "the gender *assumed* by the individual’s sex at birth" - emphasis mine. So it's not that this little nazi doesn't UNDERSTAND the issues surrounding trans identities, it's that he wants to make recognizing trans identities in a school setting a class E felony anyway, and through the force of law conflate supporting trans kids with sexual assault of a minor unapologetically, DESPITE knowing that this is all monstrous bullcrap.
I hate to keep quoting Maya Angelou every seven minutes, but when she's right, she's right.
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
#Fascist #Texas #AttorneyGeneral #KenPaxton #Demands #PFLAG Provide #Names, #Addresses Of #Trans #Members.
On Thursday, a legal filing by #PFLAG National alleges #retaliation.
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Texas #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #RepublicanParty #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #Genocide #Discrimination #Transphobia #ThePartyOfHate
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/retaliation-texas-ag-paxton-demands
Throughout the recent fascist/GOP quest to "protect" children they don't care about, and women's sports they don't watch, trans people have warned that the war on gender affirming care applied to everyone and represented an attempt to literally eliminate trans people from public life, perhaps even existence itself. In response, Very Serious PeopleTM who are also covert transphobes, have insisted that this position is alarmist and we couldn't possibly know cryptofascist lawmaker's ultimate intentions. Well maybe, they should simply ask Republicans? In a late January story that wasn't widely reported in mainstream media, it turns out that GOP lawmakers from Michigan and Ohio met on Twitter spaces and more or less gave the game away entirely:
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ohio-michigan-republicans-in-released
"After this exchange, Representative Shriver continued by arguing adults consenting to gender-affirming care should not be allowed, going as far as to compare it to consent for "self-mutilation" and "euthanasia." He then repeated, "we have to be looking at the endgame simultaneously, maybe even using that to move the window to say that this isn't just wrong 0-18, it's wrong for everyone and we shouldn't be allowing that to happen."
Representative Click confirmed the plan, stating, “ We have to take one bite at a time, do it incrementally.”
The conversation did not stop there. Prisha Mosley, an anti-trans detransitioner and right-wing political figure, lauded the discussion, "I did want to say that I've kind of been waiting for a state or a representative or anyone to be brave enough to address that... you cannot consent to a lie. Most of these doctors are straight up lying about the effects and saying it'll magically cure every bad feeling you've ever had and that you can magically change sex."
At the end of the conversation, Representative Schriver states that they should "ban this for all people," to which Representative Paquette responds, "We’ll chat offline about all this good stuff."
Folks, I dunno how many times we have to go over this but the plain truth is that whenever fascists who support child labor and want to make poor kids go hungry tell you they're doing something "to protect children" you need to immediately recognize that this is a lie, and start looking for the bigger picture being concealed behind that rhetoric. The reactionary Pig Empire Right could not make it any clearer that what they're after here is the persecution and ultimate elimination of trans people - and denying gender affirming care recognized as necessary and even life-saving by virtually every qualified medical body in the so-called Western world is absolutely part of that strategy. These nazis mean to end us; trans folks know it, and if cis people were being honest, they'd admit they know it too.
never EVER let anybody tell you protest doesn't work.
#NBC SACKS MAGADANIELS
Rachel Maddow & the NBCNews guild won this round. now i hope they really organize to never trust their higher ups... ever.
This is terrifying. These “Constitutional sheriffs” are fascistic petty tyrants who believe they’re accountable to nobody. And their wingnut “posses,” hopped up on conspiracy theories, are gonna harass and intimidate voters. Or worse.
#fascism #Election2024 #maga
https://www.wired.com/story/constitutional-sheriffs-election-deniers-immigrants-voting/
Alito turned the whole idea of deterrence on its head, arguing that giving a #POTUS immunity for attempting a coup will make future coups less likely.
Hard to overstate how utterly bonkers this is.
“I have been reporting on political dissent and violent policing for 15 years, particularly in New York City. Compared to Tuesday night, I have never witnessed, at the scene of a protest, the use of police power so disproportionate to the type of demonstration taking place.”
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/01/nyc-gaza-college-protests-police-outside-agitators/
«This week, the Senate may pass a bill granting the executive branch extraordinary power to investigate and strip nonprofits of tax-exempt status based on a unilateral accusation of wrongdoing.»
Democrats have a narrow majority in the US Senate. tell me again how exactly are Democrats proving they are antifascist?
"A disturbing national security bill could silence nonprofits and college protests"
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4651053-a-disturbing-national-security-bill-could-silence-nonprofits-and-college-protests/
This is a well reported piece but the framing is bizarre.
When a mob attacks a group of protesters under cover of darkness, they are not counter-protesting.
And as the reporting makes clear, they didn’t “provoke” violence, they *perpetrated* it as the cops and campus security stood by. #media #fascism #gazaprotests
Uniparty? Hardly.
Biden and Trump offer worlds-apart contrasts on issues
Here's how the candidates stand on 10 key issues: abortion, climate / energy, democracy, federal government, immigration, Israel / Gaza, LGBTQ issues, NATO / Ukraine, trade, taxes
https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-rematch-policies-abortion-immigration-gaza-1a904cd70f14581f264b851a5cb2f9e4?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share #USpolitics #Politics #USnews #JoeBiden #Democrats #BidenHarris #Elections #WomensRights #WomensHealth
#GOP #Republicans #DonaldTrump #trumpism #fascism #fascist #SCOTUS