fascism
Everyone lucid in the world is freaking out about the rise of #fascist thinking, well, everywhere.
Why? Didn't we defeat this obscenity 80 years ago after much suffering? Why is it resurging?
The problem is not that people don't learn from history (they don't but that's another issue), the problem is that #fascism is always with us. Since the dawn of time and forever more.
All fascism requires is:
1. ignorance
2. indecency
3. a demagogue to yoke the walnut brains and ride them to power
1/x
if people think this is NOT related to #Paramount killing off #MTV & #VH1 and deleting decades of archives from the internet, Americans need to think long and hard about what they have given up as a society by treating art, history and culture as either luxury goods to be owned by a plutocratic kakistocracy, or as charities to be nickled and dimed by a fascist kleptocracy.
“Bullets designed for an INNER CITY or COURTHOUSE. A perfectly chilling encapsulation of the general theme emerging from the National Rifle Association’s ‘14 acres of guns & gear.’”
The ammosexuals who are frothing at the mouth in anticipation of a Trump are preparing for literal war.
What @AmeshiaCross says here is along the lines of what I have also said. I’ve said that @JoeBiden must not only run against a convicted felon—he must run against the ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PARTY. I’ve said this over and over. The @DNC must WAKE UP and GET SERIOUS. End the PASSIVITY.
"BrewDog has a history of treating their workers with contempt, but to sack a worker of colour for objecting to members of a fascist organisation meeting in their workplace is a new low for this company"
Bryan Simpson, Lead Organiser at Unite Hospitality.
#BoycottBrewdog #Racism #Fascism #EDL
Asian BrewDog Worker Sacked After Raising Concerns About EDL Presence
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/06/asian-brewdog-worker-sacked-after-raising-concerns-about-edl-presence
There's only so much you can "learn" from a movie, particularly one about dancing, but when I was young one of my formative experiences involved watching a flick called "Swing Kids." In many ways the film was typical Hollywood fare; a group of teens who love swing music and are alienated from the society around them are determined to dance the nights away even though adults don't understand and regard swing music as a dangerous moral perversion. The catch however, is that the teens are German, and the society they're alienated from is a country falling step by step into Nazism during the 1930's.
Like many movies loosely based on historical events, the film took a few liberties with the source material, but the part about it that stuck out to me is the way it depicted a fascist effort to target young people by simultaneously stamping out forms of expression that threatened Nazi cultural hegemony, and actively educating (and re-educating through coercion) German youth with fascist ideology, sometimes against the will of wiser adults around them. Unlike many films about Hitler's "Third Reich," Swing Kids didn't pretend fascism was something that "just happened" but instead actively explored the idea that racialized hatred, extreme nationalism, and fascist ideas were something you had to indoctrinate people into, and that the Nazis knew it would work better if they got to their targets while they were young.
Of course, it was just a movie; yet even then it instilled in me a desire to spend a significant portion of my life studying the question of "how fascism could happen." Astonishingly, when I later found myself studying the rise of Nazism in Germany, I discovered that this silly movie had in fact gotten that bit right; the Nazis succeeded in part by targeting German youth and teaching them to be the kind of monsters that could support Nazism without question and would even turn on their own parents.
I bring this up because I'm concerned that adults in the Pig Empire haven't been watching what fascists (of all stripes) have been doing to our education system and the young people we're sending off to be shaped by it:
https://truthout.org/articles/the-rights-push-to-whitewash-history-is-a-precursor-to-fascism/
The Right’s Push to Whitewash History Is a Precursor to Fascism
"Beneath this sweeping repression aimed at silencing dissent, free speech and critical inquiry lies a series of right-wing policies that threaten to undermine education’s role as a democratic public sphere and its commitment to fostering critical thinking. In this environment, we can expect a sustained assault on critical pedagogy, historical understanding, informed judgment, faculty job security, critical literacy, civic awareness, and any effort to connect learning with civic engagement and democratic values.
For instance, far right legislators in states like Florida, Tennessee and Idaho are banning books and prohibiting the teaching of concepts related to race, LGBTQ+ issues and social justice. Public and higher education institutions are being defunded, particularly if they address diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Many public school libraries are being stripped of resources, with some being transformed into detention centers. Students are bankrupting their future because of high tuition costs and staggering student debt."
While the quote I featured here naturally focuses on the fascist American right's attempt to erase history and thereby legitimize white supremacy, extreme nationalism, and the demonization of LGBTQ identities, it's important to understand that this transformation of education centers into a functional arm of a reactionary police state is by no means restricted to the Republican Party and its adherents. The transformation of American students and educators speaking out about and opposing extractivism, imperialism, and an unfolding US-backed genocide by Israel in Gaza, into criminals, terrorists, and "violent antisemites" is widely supported by so-called "liberal" administrators and lawmakers in the "brave new world" of our modern Pig Empire. Teaching and enforcing fascism via coercion remains the same, serves the same purpose, and produces the same results no matter who is doing it or what justifications they offer for doing so.
The uncomfortable truth here is that as our society becomes increasingly authoritarian across a bipartisan spectrum and as dictated by capital, this repression, indoctrination and assault on critical thinking is both a logical outcome, and a perquisite condition. After all, if you're going to kill billions of people as neocolonial capitalism boils the planet like soup for the benefit of ruling class billionaires, you can't rightly teach the next generation of leaders and drones that this is morally unacceptable and must be fought. How do you expect folks to make the trains run on time while that slaughter continues if you don't teach them to be fascists while they're young?
The push back against the corporate media narrative is us, slapping back against their toadying up to #Trump and #Republican fascism.
No pessimistic rhetoric.
No whining.
Get organized, get out the vote and leave everything on the road.
💯 percent voter turnout for #Democrats must be the goal.
If you can, #volunteer.
If you can, #donate.
Just as #Ukraine is struggling against #Russia, #America is now in an #existential struggle against #fascism
Still in love with the Divine Miss M.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArHkWrez7EI
#SCOTUS #BetteMidler #RobertsCourt #Misogyny #Bribery #Fascism #Corruption #SamuelAlito #ClarenceThomas #JohnRoberts #GinniThomas
Nine years ago, Hillary said around half of Trump's supporters were bigots of various stripes and despite that being a generous estimate, the right hasn't stopped whining about it since--and they convinced the press that it was a consequential slur.
This will be forgotten in 2 days...
Latest comic: Lowering the temperature
#uspol #cartoon #2024election #authoritarianism #fascism #media #politics
‘Mind your own damn business!’ is the perfect response to all the right’s blather about trans people and abortion and having cats but not children and everything else.
The fact that Republicans only have to win an election while Dems have to first win and then successfully fend off the right’s relentless efforts to overturn their victory, under the constant threat of violence, is just an intolerable asymmetry. #fascism #Election2024 #maga #trump
This is the way...
"Planned far-right rallies did not materialise over the weekend, amid a large turnout of anti-racist protesters...
"Reform UK['s] offices were targeted by [5k] anti-racism protesters in a peaceful march... and in Belfast 15k people turned up to one of the city’s biggest ever anti-racism gatherings."
#PeteButtigieg, #OprahWinfrey & #TimWalz destroy #DonaldTrump & #ShadyVance (#JDVance) during #DNC’s third night.
#LGBTQ+ #speakers graced the stage, with one of them telling the #SupremeCourt, "You can pry this #weddingband from my #cold, #dead, #gay hand!"
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Politics #DemocraticParty #Allies #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #Religion #RepublicanParty #Hate #Bigotry #Violence #ThePartyOfHate #EmptyThePews #Megathread
#ElonMusk, 10/18:
"I think teaching kids critical thinking is very important. It's a mental firewall. Teach them the types of fallacies and forms of trickery they're likely to encounter. Immunize kids against propaganda. Basically, teach kids to be skeptical about what they're told."
Elon Musk, 10/23:
“The altercation came moments after #Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage”
Then, as the cops hailed him out Trump said, “is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-rally-arrest-taser-media-68fe78b79ae65556c4efc850e142998c
#fascism #Election2024
[thread] Trump, MAGA
Trump’s Wildly Unhinged Ramblings Reveal True MAGA
Speaks directly to MAGA’s increasingly radicalized obsessions
* flatly declaring his right to interfere in last presidential election
* mused God chose him to fix sick country
* seethed about enemy within
* Trump feeding MAGA audience’s pathologies getting darker/uglier
#Trump2 #MAGA #Trumpism #GOP #HeritageFoundation #Project2025 #fascism #disinformation #FOXnews #authoritarianism #extremism #ElonMusk #billionaires
An excellent takedown of the ongoing media coverage of Trump, Vance, fascism, and blood libel, by @jeffjarvis
"You hide behind your impotent fact-checking, never seeing — though frequently warned — that in the ways you debunk their lies, you spread them, and by pedantically nitpicking the other side in your misguided search for balance you create false equivalence. This is how they exploit you."
Cruelty & #fascism know no bounds in TX:
"A razor wire fence on the TX border w/NM isn’t about border sec., it’s about monitoring/reg. travel of TX women seeking abortion care."
G Hinojosa
Gov Abbott announced on 9/14 that his state would be “TRIPLING our razor wire border barriers to deny illegal entry into our state & country.
Rather than installing the razor wire along the Rio Grande river bank that faces MX, TX NG troops installed it along a bank that faces NM.
The DIY guillotine is the official DIY project of the coming decade.
The oligarchs say "let them eat cake". Fine. We know how that ends. #oligarchy #fascism
Every. Single. Time.
Should be a huge story but with some exceptions, they tend to be treated as isolated incidents.
https://apnews.com/article/tina-peters-election-clerk-sentenced-threats-d565bd42bc566d4d178491a258238765
As a trans woman, I often find myself struggling to properly articulate the real purpose of modern Pig Empire fascism's eliminationist campaign against trans people and anyone else who doesn't fit into the heteronormative binary on which their fragile, but wholly malevolent and dominance based conception of masculinity rests.
On one hand it would be a gross misrepresentation to say that fascists, the political actors driving their movements, and the rich people paying for modern nazism don't really hate trans people and wish to eradicate the public existence of trans identities, because they absolutely do. On the other hand however it would also be a grave mistake to forget that these people foundationally "use the whole cow" and their pogrom against the existence of trans people is also intentionally acting as a type of skeleton key to justify and facilitate a larger eliminationist agenda that revolves around purging their political enemies, removing civil rights and buttressing support for important ideological planks in the fascist platform - like violent nationalism, colonial extraction, white supremacy, eugenicist ableism, patriarchal dominance and so forth.
Indeed, while the fascists certainly do hate trans people and any sort of gender nonconformity, their decision to make anti-trans hate the tip of the fascist spear in a war for control pretty much comes down to the fact that trans people aren't particular numerous, visible, or empowered in our society, which itself has been mainlining normalized transphobic ideology for decades. It's much easier to convince people to hate folks they don't know in everyday life, and the pre-existing marginalization of trans people ensures that these pogroms can be abstract and ideological in a way that greases the path for violent eliminationism more effectively. We are, to put it succinctly, an easy gateway target for fascist repression that in turn can be used to expand the sphere of fascist influence and allow for the elimination of much larger portions of the population down the line by repurposing the justifications for repressions of trans people in a very "first they came for" sort of way.
While all of this is difficult to explain to folks not directly in the fascist crosshairs at any given moment, it's not all that hard to see this principle in action when empowered fascists are able to exercise control over our laws and state structures. Which is why I was utterly unsurprised to learn that American fascists in governments all over the United States are now using their actualized anti-trans pogrom to push a eugenicist agenda designed to target the rights, protections, and threadbare support programs for disabled Americans pretty much anywhere they control the government.
Suit Over Gender Dysphoria Could Dismantle New Disability Rules
"But gender dysphoria is just part of the 130-page federal rule. It also protects disabled parents’ rights in child welfare cases and prevents hospitals from using disability as a factor in determining who gets care in crisis situations, such as equipment shortages during a pandemic. It adds Long Covid to the list of conditions that may constitute a disability and strengthens protections against unnecessary institutionalization, requiring that care be offered in the least restrictive setting and, ideally, in a patient’s community.
Striking down the entire rule would have wide-reaching implications for all disabled Americans and other marginalized groups who rely on federal agencies’ interpretations of decades-old laws to enforce their rights, says Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Center for American Progress’ Disability Justice Initiative. “They’re utilizing LGBTQ issues as a wedge,” Ives-Rublee says. “The attack is really about the regulatory process of the federal government, and this will impact almost every interaction that a disabled person has with the services and supports that they receive.”
As I've written many times in the past, fascism isn't ultimately a violent chud rush similar to what we say during the January 6th 2021 coup (or autogolpe if you prefer) attempt by Trump supporters, so much as a legalist doctrine enforced by empowered nazis and the state at their disposal; a sort of violent game of "Simon Says" with prison camps and pogroms. The use of politically activated anti-trans sentiment to eliminate protections for disabled people isn't a bug in the fascist program but rather an intended feature; and it certainly won't be the last legalist application of fascist ideology if this movement continues to accumulate power in our society. Cis people should of course oppose the fascist anti-trans pogrom in action because it's the right thing to do, but also because you can bet your bottom dollar that it won't, and isn't stopping after they drive trans people out of public life - you and yours may well be next.
#TransRights #Fascism #Ableism #Pogrom #USPol #GOP #Eugenics
"January 30th 1933 dawned cold and clear in Berlin as Adolph Hitler took his oath of office and promised Germans he would uphold the constitution. It would ultimately take him less than 30 days to dismantle it. ...
All you need to end a democracy is a leader willing to suspend or end the Constitution and a supporting cast large enough to allow him to do it.
Republicans have both."
~ Rachel Bitecofer
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism
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https://thecycle.substack.com/p/what-really-happens-if-trump-wins
#LGBTQ+ #voters in these 4 #states could swing the 2024 #presidential #election.
LGBTQ+ voters strongly #vote for #democrats
#Women #Transgender #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA #Politics #Election #Representation #Culture #DemocraticParty #Allies #Conservatives #Extremism #Fascism #RepublicanParty #ThePartyOfHate #Megathread