#Rise of American Fascism

[theology101]

Something that I like to keep in the back of my head is that America is gonna have a HUGE population drop. And like, soon.

My mentor worked a lot in public health law and his wife worked for the CDC, so they both keep their fingers on the pulse of world health news. And right now, a new strain of Avian Flu had been making jumps cross species and across statelines - found in pigs and cows in Ohio, Michigan and New York.

If Avian flu becomes Humanized, and even a SMALL outbreak starts, millions of Americans will die.

COVID was 1-2% fatalities

Avian Flus average around 50.

COVID was directly transmissible, Avian Flu can survive after secondary and tertiary contact.

[freedom-in-truth]

News: US police attack peaceful Jewish and allied vigil for Gaza

US police throw Jews down stairs, interrupting their peaceful candlelight vigil

Have you called your reps yet?

[guavagyal]

it's annoying to talk to Americans about politics bc they reference pop culture/mainstream media too much in replacement for actual political theory. like they always reference Handmaid's Tale, 1984, Idiocracy, Muggles from Harry Potter, superhero movies when some authoritarian shit goes down.

I think it's a cope from learning about how genocidal American history & American foreign policy is. or it could be that leftist theory was hard to obtain in the US bc of capitalist propaganda & it's crazy expensive at times.

[cigarette-room]

Liberators - bravest, most beautiful. Their smiles are shining like the sun. Happy birthday to the defeat of European fascism and may we see it lose again, and again, and again ❤️

[vintageseawitch]

at this point if you're against Project 2025 while also being republican or libertarian, you're more than welcome to join all of us, liberals, centrists, communists, socialists, & anyone else. our country has an awful system but Project 2025 will rip it shreds in a way that will benefit no one but the ruling class. i know it feels like it's this way now - & in many ways it is - but the kind of state that will be created is not going to be good not just for US citizens, but for people across the world & the environment. Project 2025 is a real threat & needs to be taken seriously. please talk about this with everyone. i won't gatekeep you if you also don't want Project 2025 put in place. literally the only thing stopping is is making sure they don't get the presidency. i hate biden & what our government is doing but i hate trump more. how can anyone be proud of a vile rapist felon being able to run for president is brain rot i will never understand & frankly it's fucking embarrassing. please vote like not just your rights but your life no matter who you are. LEARN, BE ANGRY, & VOTE!!!

[amaiguri]

I did the 24hr Novel Challenge last year...

Last year, I did the 24 hr novel challenge over the course of 48 hours (so the novel was written in 24 hours but I did in 48 hours) and it went about as well as you'd expect:

Fine. I did fine.

I didn't exactly FINISH finish but I did complete a solid 0th draft and I wrote like 26 thousand words (16k the first day, 10k the second day). I learned two really big things from doing this:

The first thing I learned was I really method act when I'm writing -- like, in order to describe emotions, I really simulate them in my body. So simulating a whole rollercoaster ride of stress and love and sadness and terror and desire and despair was A LOT and I would get numb to things as the scenes went on.

The thing that restored me was watching snippets of things that inspired me -- the starts of shows, trailers, music, images, etc. These ended up being a sort of palette cleanser in-between scenes for me.

But when I'm not pushing myself, I learned I really need to just. Write when I'm feeling it. Because my writing is higher quality like that.

Secondly, I learned how fragile my hands were: I really destroyed my hands doing it -- something I didn't anticipate was how much I was going to need to stretch my hands and TO THIS DAY, my hands still get more sore than they ever did when I was younger. I'm getting old >_<

The Characters & Story

Heirs to the Tilted City was (to no one's surprise) a fantasy polticial drama about a city in the wake of a disaster that broke apart and almost fell into the Abyss. The Goddess who ruled the city sacrificed herself to protect it, leaving it behind to her baby Heiress, Shiel.

But while the Goddess made the celestial inhabitants of the gorgeous astral whimsigoth city, Shiel's descended from a line of Demons who migrated to the city after a disaster of with their own Goddess. Furthermore, she's so young. Many residents have mixed feelings about her taking control back from the City Chamber -- despite her being born, raised, and educated in the city...

Meanwhile, the former Chamberlain of the Goddess -- removed from power after trying to take power from Shiel when she was a baby -- has a son, Isegael. And in the dregs beneath the city, Isegael, too, has risen to power as his rivals mysteriously vanish. From the head of a crime syndicate to a legitimate local leader, Isegael now has his eyes set on the Chamber too.

And so begins a collision of ambitious young people trying to wrestle power from those who'd maintain a crumbling status quo. Will they overcome their past traumas to become the people the city needs? Or will the Old Guard let the city slide the rest of the way into the Abyss?

...I suck at writing copy. Don't make do it lol

Feel free to take a gander at the writing vlog too -- it's definitely one of my better ones!

[thebookworm0001]

everyone is wildly primed to have their anger and fear used against them right now, so while you are advocating and protesting, make sure you’re not falling into shit that is going to cause more harm

The genocide in Gaza is horrific. And it is a genocide. The words coming directly from the mouths of those in charge of Israel’s government are those that demonstrate an intent to utterly erase any Palestinian from Gaza, whether through displacement or death.

Do not let people convince you that this is the fault of Jews. Do not let yourself be swayed into conspiracies that Jews control Hollywood, or the government, or are otherwise collectively conspiring to do harm. It’s bullshit. It causes real, measurable harm and fear. It continues to make rising antisemitism worse. And not only does that antisemitism lead to death, it rightfully increases the fear of more horrors happening.

The attack on Oct 7 was also horrific. As is the rising antisemitism around the world. And the fact that there has been almost no space to honor those dead is a tragedy.

Do not be convinced that the only way to protect the Jewish people is to build a State where only one religious or ethnic group is allowed to live freely. Do not be convinced that safety is dependent upon protecting that State at all costs. When one State is allowed to defend itself by any means necessary, any means will be used and any action will be excused. And do not be convinced that all Arabs or Muslims are responsible for those atrocities. Islamophobia is also on the rise and is also causing real, measurable harm and fear.

Your anger and fear will be used to excuse horrors if you let it.

Don’t let it.

[penguinsomething]

I find it kinda funny that over the last 3 years I have barely seen negative posts about Biden, but now that it’s an election year, every other post on my dash is one criticizing Biden.

[abysmal-apathy]

Saw a post which read: "Nobody shames people for not voting"

And, like, were you guys not here when Trump won his presidency? When liberals and leftists were claiming that so-called "Bernie-bros" had either withheld their votes or voted for Trump in protest and that's what cost Hilary the election?

The election where she did win the popular vote and it was down to the electoral college?

... And the numbers showed that people who voted Bernie in the primaries primarily voted Hilary?

[ceilidhtransing]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

[probablyasocialecologist]

And so it makes sense that these are now the places where fascism grows; that’s what these places were designed for. The suburbs were invented as a reactionary tool against the women’s liberation and civil rights movements. The US government, in concert with banks, landowners, and home builders, created a way to try and stop all that, by separating people into single homes, removing public spaces, and ensuring that every neighborhood was segregated via redlining. The suburbs would keep white women at home, and would keep white men at work to afford that home. These were explicit goals of the designers: “No man who owns his house and lot can be a Communist,” said the creator of Levittown, the model suburb. “He has too much to do.” The reason Target has become the locus of today’s particular right-wing backlash is the same reason countless viral TikToks attempt to convince women that they’re at risk of being kidnapped every time they’re in a parking lot. It’s the reason why true crime is one of the most popular podcast genres in America, and why many refuse to travel without a gun by their side and shoot people if they set foot on their driveway.

[...]

It is of course true that these mass hysterias are part of an organized right-wing movement that is attacking human rights across the country—through legislation banning abortion, gender-affirming care, and books, and making it illegal for educators to teach American history accurately. But the shape this movement has taken is not coincidental; it is in fact the product of the unique shape of public life in America, or lack thereof. Suburbanites do not have town squares in which to protest. They do not have streets to march down. Target has become the closest thing many have to a public forum. We often hear that urban areas are more liberal and suburban ones more conservative, and we’re often told that this is because of race. That may be partly true, though cities are whiter than ever and suburbs more diverse than ever. Instead, it may be that suburbanism itself, as an ideology, breeds reactionary thinking and turns Americans into people constantly scared of a Big Bad Other. The suburban doctrine dictates that public space be limited, and conflict-free where it exists; that private space serve only as a place of commodity exchange; that surveillance, hyper-individualism, and constant vigilance are good and normal and keep people safe. It is an ideology that extends beyond the suburbs; it infects everything. Even cities, as Sarah Schulman writes in The Gentrification of the Mind, have become places where people expect convenience and calmness over culture and community. What is a life of living in a surveilled and amenity-filled high-rise and ordering all your food and objects from the Internet to your door if not a suburban life? To make matters worse, the people who have adopted this mindset do not see it as an ideology, but as the normal and right state of the world; they, as Schulman writes, “look in the mirror and think it’s a window.” So when anything, even a gay T-shirt, disrupts their view, they become scared.

[ahaura]

i saw someone point out the frequency with which liberals back social justice movements... how, for instance, when ferguson happened under obama it was not popular and there were many, many liberals who found the blm movement, in a sense, "in violation of [liberal] sensibilities" (when liberalism as a rule does not challenge the status quo, only maintains it and sees any call for revolution or real change as disruptive or 'bad for optics' and therefore not acceptable) but then when trump became president and he opposed blm a lot more liberals decided that the blm movement had merit because they viewed it from a team-sports perspective rather than a worldview based on morals and an understanding of the systems in place in the U.S. - that it was more comfortable for them to operate from a "trump bad" basis rather than "the american justice system and the police are inherently white supremacist, which are inherently, automatically, and always violent"

+ that, if trump was president while israel is carrying out its genocide, liberals would have NO problem denouncing israel and demanding for a ceasefire because they're comfortable operating from the 2-party system basis, NOT from a framework based on material conditions or factors or any acknowledgement or analysis of imperialism, colonialism, or capitalism. but because biden is a democrat, and democrats are supposed to be "the decent party" "the lesser evil" "more respectable" when, in functionality - in real practice, they don't want to disrupt the status quo. (internally, maintaining systems of white supremacy and capitalism; externally, furthering U.S. imperialism by maintaining hegemony and continuing the practice of exploitation and extraction of labor+capital+resources from the global south)

which is why we're here, a month into a genocide, and liberals are so cowardly and gutless that, in the face of our democrat president allowing and funding the genocide of palestinians in order for the U.S. to maintain its military base in the middle east, liberals IMMEDIATELY jump to "well, you HAVE to vote for him still, because trump will be worse!" and go "well im powerless there's nothing i can do", immediately folding like a wet paper bag in the face of the american empire rearing its ugly head in the most blatant, naked way in years, instead of thinking "this is unacceptable, i should pressure my elected officials and do everything i can - be it combating propaganda, contacting my congresspeople or senators, protesting, or engaging in direct action - to ensure this stops as quickly as possible".

there are liberals STILL IN MY NOTIFICATIONS who go "well you'll be electing a fascist if you vote for trump" not realizing that YOU CAN'T SIMPLY VOTE FASCISM AWAY. (which is not to say you should vote for republicans; that's not what i'm saying. none of us have said it.) we're pretty much already there. it's 2003 all over again, with the patriot act and all. the american war machine is pumping out racist, orientalist, pro-colonial, pro-genocide propaganda on behalf of the ethno-state america and its allies have backed since the so-called state's inception. people are being doxxed, fired, harassed, and attacked for visibly supporting palestine/opposing israel. islamophobic hate crimes are on the rise; a 6 year old boy was murdered not one month ago, an arab doctor in texas was stabbed to death. antisemitism is on the rise as well, thanks to the conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism (which nazis have and will attempt to co-op in order to 'justify' + then act on their antisemitism, racism, and genocidal worldviews). our government is silencing people, brutalizing protestors, and arming and funding an ethno-state committing genocide - everything that would have been called fascist if it was under trump. but because it's a *democrat* liberals place "vote blue no matter who" and "optics" over the extremely basic moral stance that "genocide is wrong and people have the right to self-determination, autonomy, and life". arabs and muslims are already so dehumanized in the west that liberals (whether they consider themselves liberals or not) consider it an inconvenience to talk about the ongoing genocide that is happening with the blessing of OUR government. in this they expose their selfishness, the shallowness of their morals, their chauvinism, and their racism/orientalism/islamophobia/et cetera.

for example, if you see israeli troops waving a gay pride flag and the israeli state touting its support of gay people while said iof soldiers are murdering men, women, and children en masse every single day and you somehow????? think that because gay people are the ones doing the killing or a state claims to support gay people is doing the killing is ok then 1) you have fallen for pinkwashing propaganda and 2) that you find the murder of palestinians, or any people, permissible by a colonial force that uses causes liberals may genuinely care about in order to disguise, whitewash, or "lessen" the severity of the injustices it does unto usually black and brown people outside of the U.S., then you are just as bloodthirsty and depraved as anyone you would personally assign those descriptors of.

once again, it goes back to resorting to a team-sport understanding of the world rather than approaching it from a material one.

[robertreich]

Why Trump Is Partnering With Christian Nationalists

Donald Trump is portraying himself as a religious savior. He says Election Day will be: …”the most important day in the history of our country, and it’s going to be Christian Visibility Day.”

Trump has repeatedly compared his criminal trials to the crucifixion of Jesus, promoted videos calling his reelection “the most important moment in human history,” and that describe him as a divinely appointed ruler.

He claims to be a holy warrior against an imaginary attack on Christianity.

TRUMP: They want to tear down crosses//But no one will be touching the cross of Christ under the Trump administration. I swear to you.

He’s even selling his own version of the Bible.

Trump is playing to a rising white Christian Nationalist movement within the Republican Party.

Christian Nationalists believe that the law of the land is not the Constitution, but instead the law of God as they interpret it. Under this view, atheists and people of other faiths (including Christians of other denominations) are all second-class citizens.

Trump’s supporters are increasingly overt in their calls to replace democracy with a MAGA theocracy.

The idea that the will of voters is irrelevant because God has anointed Trump was a recurring message in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

In previous videos, I’ve highlighted how MAGA Republicans have embraced core elements of fascism. They reject democracy, stoke fear of immigrants and minorities, embrace a gender and ethnic hierarchy, and look to a strongman to lead and defend them.

The combination of fascism and Christian Nationalism is called Christofascism, a term first used half a century ago by the theologian Dorothee Sölle. Fascists rise to power by characterizing their opponents as subhuman. Christofascists take it a step further by casting opponents as not just subhuman, but actually demonic.

Framing opponents as enemies of God makes violence against them not only seem justifiable, but divinely sanctioned, and almost inevitable.

Christofascists want to strip away a wide range of rights Americans take for granted. Former Trump staffers involved in developing plans for a second Trump term have called for imposing “Biblical” tests on immigration, overturning marriage equality, and restricting contraception.  

And MAGA-aligned judges are already setting their dogma ahead of the Constitution. In his concurring opinion on the case that declared frozen embryos are people, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker cited God more than forty times and quoted the Book of Genesis and other religious texts.

Nothing could be more un-American than the Christian Nationalist vision. So many of America’s founders came here as refugees seeking religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution were adamant that religion had no role in our government. The words “God,” “Jesus,” and “Christ,” don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. And the very first words of the Bill of Rights are a promise that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Christofascism, or any religion-based form of government, is a rejection of everything America has aspired to be — a secular, multi-racial society whose inhabitants have come from everywhere, bound together by a faith in equal opportunity, democracy, and the rule of law.

Beware.

[brandyschillace]

THE BOOK IS A GO!

Transgender History out 2025

Good morning—GOOD NEWS! Going on 2 years ago, I published my article in Scientific American about #transgenger + #hormone history 🗃️🧪🏳️‍⚧️. I finished the book in Oct, and my editor just wrote to say she loves it and it will publish next winter!

This book almost didn’t happen. It was so hard to write. It *hurt* to write. Watching the news and reading history, it felt the same—rise of fascism and attacks on minorities and LGBTQ. But it’s done, it is written.

THE INTERMEDIARIES tells the story of that science—itself often strange and remarkable—as well as the man, his band of revolutionaries, and the Institute for Sexual Science, both center of the homosexual and trans community and base of operations for the first LGBTQ rights movement of the 20th century.

Sexual and gender nonconformists, what Hirschfeld called the intermediaries, had a right to live, a right to thrive. They also had a right to joy. Science would lead the way, but this history unfolds as an interwar thriller—patients and physicians risking their lives to be seen and heard even as Hitler began his rise to power. They faced abuse, blackmail, and political machinations; they responded with secret publishing campaigns, leaflet drops, pro-homosexual propaganda, and alignments with rebel factions of Berlin’s literati. It’s a story about pioneers. And about hope.

And it all started here:

[wilwheaton]

Reflecting on the rise of Mussolini fascism around him, Gramsci theorized a “crisis of hegemony” as a moment when, as Ganz quotes in his book, “the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies and no longer believe what they used to believe previously.” Following Gramsci, Ganz diagnoses that “the sudden loss of faith and credit in the American system was the acute onset of just such a crisis of hegemony.” The majority of the electorate had bought into Reaganism. But instead of wealth and triumph, it had brought societal and economic devastation – “it left the country battered productively and rudderless ideologically,” Ganz argues. When the Clock Broke certainly makes an excellent case that America in the early 1990s was, to use Gramsci’s term, stuck in such an “interregnum,” famously the time for monsters, when “a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” and dangerously charismatic “men of destiny” rise.

The Origins of Trumpism and the Birth of the Present

[vintageseawitch]

really not a big fan of the USA's version of "lügenpresse" & "kinder, küsche, kirche." it makes me want to throw up from the horror of it all because people are PROUD to be modern day nazis. this timeline fucking sucks