#eradicate DEI

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: Dec 11, 2023

Harvard University president Claudine Gay plagiarized numerous academics over the course of her academic career, at times airlifting entire paragraphs and claiming them as her own work, according to reviews by several scholars.

In four papers published between 1993 and 2017, including her doctoral dissertation, Gay, a political scientist, paraphrased or quoted nearly 20 authors—including two of her colleagues in Harvard University’s department of government—without proper attribution, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis. Other examples of possible plagiarism, all from Gay’s dissertation, were publicized Sunday by the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo and Karlstack’s Chris Brunet.

The Free Beacon worked with nearly a dozen scholars to analyze 29 potential cases of plagiarism. Most of them said that Gay had violated a core principle of academic integrity as well as Harvard’s own anti-plagiarism policies, which state that "it's not enough to change a few words here and there."

Rather, scholars are expected to cite the sources of their work, including when paraphrasing, and to use quotation marks when quoting directly from others. But in at least 10 instances, Gay lifted full sentences—even entire paragraphs—with just a word or two tweaked.

In her 1997 thesis, for example, she borrowed a full paragraph from a paper by the scholars Bradley Palmquist, then a political science professor at Harvard, and Stephen Voss, one of Gay’s classmates in her Ph.D. program at Harvard, while making only a couple alterations, including changing their "decrease" to "increase" because she was studying a different set of data.

The four papers that include plagiarized material comprise a sizable portion of Gay’s academic work. Gay, who is Harvard's 30th president, has authored just 11 peer-reviewed articles.

"If this were a stand-alone instance, it would be reprehensible but perhaps excused as the blunder of someone working hastily," said Peter Wood, a former associate provost of Boston University, where he helped investigate several cases of suspected plagiarism. "But that excuse vanishes as the examples multiply," said Wood, who now serves as the director of the National Association of Scholars.

Some of the most clear-cut cases come in Gay’s 1997 dissertation, "Taking Charge: Black Electoral Success and the Redefinition of American Politics," which copied two paragraphs almost verbatim from Palmquist and Voss.

The paragraphs—from a paper Palmquist and Voss had presented a year earlier, in 1996—do not appear in quotation marks. One is unmodified but for a handful of words, and Gay does not cite Palmquist or Voss anywhere in her dissertation.

"This is definitely plagiarism," said Lee Jussim, a social psychologist at Rutgers University, who reviewed 10 side-by-side comparisons provided by the Free Beacon, including the paragraphs from Gay’s dissertation, which received a prize from Harvard for "exceptional merit."

"The longer passages are the most egregious," he added.

Academics say the pattern raises serious questions about Gay’s scholarly integrity and her fitness to lead the nation’s oldest university, which has been at the center of a political firestorm under her watch, particularly since Oct. 7. Student activists have blamed Israel for the Hamas terrorist attack and Gay herself offered equivocal testimony before Congress about whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s code of conduct.

Donors, alumni, and over 70 congressmen have called on Gay to resign. University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, who testified alongside Gay, tendered her resignation on Saturday.

"The question here is whether the president of an elite institution such as Harvard can feasibly have an academic record this marred by obvious plagiarism," said Alexander Riley, a sociologist at Bucknell University. "I do not see how Harvard could possibly justify keeping her in that position in light of this evidence."

Neither Gay nor Harvard responded to a request for comment.

Other cases of near-verbatim quotation occur in two peer-reviewed journal articles from 2017 and 2012, when Gay was a tenured professor at Harvard, as well as in an essay she published one year out of college, in 1993. Along with her dissertation, the decades-long pattern paints a picture of sloppiness, at best, and willful dishonesty at worst.

"It seems clear that Gay had a habit of using others' words in ways that violated Harvard's policies," a professor at a top research university, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard’s government department, told the Free Beacon. "And several examples would land any student in serious trouble."

Gay’s 1993 essay, "Between Black and White: The Complexity of Brazilian Race Relations," lifts sentences and historical details from two scholars, David Covin and George Reid Andrews, with just a few words dropped or modified. Covin is not cited anywhere in the essay.

In a section called "Suggestions for Further Reading," Gay does include Andrews’s 1991 book, Blacks & Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988, but not his 1992 paper, "Black Political Protest in São Paulo, 1888-1988," from which the offending text was drawn.

The 1993 essay "concerns me less," Riley said, given how early it was in Gay’s career. "However, it shows a quantity of plagiarism so egregious that minimally Dr. Gay should stop putting it on her CV."

The two peer-reviewed papers, by contrast, are "much more serious," Riley said.

In "Moving To Opportunity: the Political Effects of a Housing Mobility Experiment," Gay borrowed language from a 2003 report by eight researchers—three of them Harvard economists—prepared for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And in "A Room for One’s Own? The Partisan Allocation of Affordable Housing," Gay borrowed language from a 2010 book by Alex Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, and from a 2011 paper by Matthew Freedman and Emily Owens, "Low-Income Housing Development and Urban Crime."

Freedman and Owens are never cited, though Gay thanks them for letting her use their data. Gay does cite Schwartz and the eight researchers elsewhere in "Moving to Opportunity" but not in the sentences where their quotes appear. None of the passages have quotation marks, creating the impression that they are Gay’s own language and ideas.

Some examples are more borderline than others, scholars who reviewed them said, but clearly violate Harvard’s guide on sourcing, which requires citations even when using "ideas that you did not think up yourself," regardless of how much the language has changed. Plagiarism, the guide adds, is "unacceptable in all academic situations, whether you do it intentionally or by accident."

Even crediting a source in the wrong sentence, as Gay did repeatedly, is a serious offense under Harvard’s policies. The school’s sourcing guide includes multiple examples of "mosaic plagiarism," in which placing a citation too late or too early in a passage causes "confusion over where your source's ideas end and your own ideas begin."

Gabriel Rossman, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that several portions of Gay’s work met the definition of "mosaic plagiarism" outlined in Harvard’s guide. So did Steve McGuire, a member of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and a former professor of political theory at Villanova University, who said the examples "violate the expectations Harvard has for its own students."

"As a professor, I would not have accepted this kind of work from a first semester freshman," McGuire told the Free Beacon. "It’s appalling to see it in the work of Harvard’s president."

Rossman, who specializes in quantitative research, noted that some of the examples involve technical descriptions of statistical methods, which "can require very precise wording" and are often repeated between authors, a potentially mitigating factor. But an editor at one of the five most-cited academic journals in the world pushed back on that notion, arguing that even that sort of duplication in academic prose is difficult to defend.

"The text duplication points to carelessness, sloppiness, and short-cut taking," said the editor, who has edited journals in both the natural and social sciences.

Some of the victims of Gay’s plagiarism were more sanguine. Jeffrey Liebman, one of the Harvard economists who prepared the Department of Housing report, said he and four of his coauthors did "not see any signs of plagiarism." Like Rossman, he argued that it was defensible for scholars to crib technical descriptions from each other.

Gay "had the right to use and adapt this common language," he said.

Voss, who coauthored the 1996 paper with Palmquist, said that although the paragraphs Gay quoted were "technically plagiarism," they were "not terribly important" to her argument.

"If I caught a student doing that, I would tell them it was inappropriate," Voss said. "But I would never consider taking action against the student."

But Wood, the former Boston University associate provost, said the feelings of the plagiarized are irrelevant.

The "willingness of the actual author to go along with the copying (whether before the fact or afterwards) doesn't change the deceptive nature of the act of plagiarism," he said. "The plagiarist is breaking the trust of the community of readers. In the case of scholarship, the whole university community is the victim."

It is common for plagiarized authors to come to the defense of their plagiarizer, Wood said. When Princeton historian Kevin Kruse was accused of plagiarizing Ronald Bayor, a historian at Georgia Tech, for example, Bayor dismissed the accusations as "politically motivated."

Other cases of possible plagiarism—all from Gay’s dissertation—were uncovered Sunday by the Manhattan Institute’s Rufo and Karlstack’s Brunet. Though the revelations are new, rumors of Gay’s plagiarism have been circulating on econjobrumors.com, a popular message board for social scientists, since at least January 2023.

"Most plagiarists turn out to be serial thieves," Wood said. "If the offense is discovered in one publication, typically it will be found in others."

In a statement to the Boston Globe, Gay said she stood by the integrity of her scholarship.

The Harvard Corporation, which held an emergency meeting over the weekend after Gay’s disastrous testimony on Capitol Hill last week, did not respond to a request for comment.

Update 10:10 p.m.: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Gay had not cited Alex Schwartz in the paragraph where his quote appears. She did cite him in that paragraph, but not in the sentence where she quoted him.

==

This is what happens when you hire for DEI, not merit.

In spite of all of this, Claudine Gay should not be fired for plagiarism, any more than Kendi should be rejected for his financial mismanagement. Because this misses the point.

Harvard's own paper, The Harvard Crimson, reports that over 700 staff and faculty are in support of her remaining on. They cite "university independence." Which should reasonably be taken as an agreement to no longer accept public funding, even though that level of integrity is not what they meant.

What the 700 supporters does indicate is how far and how extensively the ideological corruption has set in. That's the reason she should be dismissed. She should be let go because Harvard has decided to abandon intersectional DEI garbage as its primary telos, and to reclaim its academic integrity and rebuild its - perhaps irreparably - damaged reputation.

The problem is that, unsurprisingly, its council have officially chosen the intersectional DEI garbage over any pretence to integrity.

[memories-of-ancients]

For the last 14 years, when it rains in Lowndes County, Alabama, contaminated standing water builds up around Annye Burke’s home. When the septic tank breaks down, raw sewage backs up into her toilet, she said. 

Although “frustrated” by the unhealthy and inconvenient conditions, Burke said she doesn’t let it get her down. Human wastewater contaminating homes and yards in these rural parts of central Alabama “has become a way of life,” she said. The problem has existed so long and was so pervasive that a 2017 study determined 1 in every 3 adults in the county had the intestinal parasite hookworm.  

The Biden administration investigated and allocated nearly $26 million to rebuild Lowndes County’s water infrastructure, with the Department of Justice declaring the majority-Black area was suffering from “environmental racism.”   

But earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to kill the deal, calling it “illegal DEI.” 

The DOJ’s Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights under Trump, said the agency “will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

A 2023 investigation sparked by environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers and conducted by the DOJ found that low-income residents of the county, most of whom are Black, have lacked basic sanitation services for generations. Given the area’s especially hard, impermeable soil and the high cost of installing private wastewater systems, many residents have resorted to straight piping to deal with human wastewater. This method involves guiding human wastewater away from the home into a series of ditches and crude piping systems, according to the DOJ report. That water collects in nearby yards, open areas and woods. 

In more recent years, heavier rainfall related to climate change has meant that contaminated water floods into the home, spills across open areas, and contaminates local vegetation and water, exposing residents to illness.   

And so, Burke and more than 300 other families in Lowndes County — located about 40 miles southwest of Montgomery — are forced to live with a failing water infrastructure that has led to serious health concerns, including hookworm, which at one point had been thought to be eradicated from the United States, according to a 2021 study by the Baylor College of Medicine and the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise. 

Hookworms are mainly contracted by walking barefoot on soil contaminated with infected feces. It can cause abdominal pain, skin rashes, diarrhea, fever and other ailments. 

“We have to be extra sanitary because people getting sick can be a problem,” Burke, 58, said. “The health concerns are real. In 2025 we shouldn’t have to deal with this, but it is what it is.”  

She said she uses various disinfectants multiple times a day to clean her home and protect her family, which includes her children and grandchildren who come to visit. 

This environmental quagmire has persisted for more than 20 years in this rural part of the state, where 72.4% of the population is Black and the median household income is $35,160, according to the latest census; one-third of residents live below the poverty line. Flowers said that much of the problem started back in 1866 with the passage of the Southern Homestead Act, when Black people were first allowed to purchase land there and were offered mostly places that were environmentally unsafe. 

In recent decades, it’s not uncommon for untreated sewage to flow from some residents’ toilets into their yards or back up into their homes through sinks or bathtubs. Drinking water from the tap is out of the question. Some residents have dug ditches in an attempt to drain rainwater away from their homes. 

Flowers, who grew up in Lowndes, has been fighting for 23 years to fix the water infrastructure in the county. Her efforts led to the Biden administration’s $26 million commitment. She said Trump’s cancelation of the agreement did not surprise her. 

“There are some people who are not going to make it a priority to get this work done,” Flowers said. “That’s the way it’s always been.” 

Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat who represents the area, said in a statement that the DOJ’s reason for abandoning the deal was weak.  

“This agreement had nothing to do with DEI,” Sewell said. “It was about addressing a public health crisis that has forced generations of children and families to endure the health hazards of living in proximity to raw sewage, as the DOJ itself documented. By terminating it, the Trump Administration has put its blatant disregard for the health of my constituents on full display.” 

When announcing the results of the 2023 investigation, former Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said the Justice Department found evidence that suggested Alabama’s Department of Public Health showed “a consistent pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with exposure to raw sewage.” 

Sewell added that the burden to “remedy this injustice” fell to the Alabama Department of Public Health. But the ADH said in a statement to NBC News that “the installation of sanitation systems and related infrastructure is outside the authority or responsibilities.” 

A second statement from ADH said the department had received $1.5 million of the funds from the Biden agreement and used it in part to pay for three septic tank installations. With the remainder of that money, ADH will pay a contractor to complete more work by May 2026, according to the statement. Trump killed the agreement before any additional funds could be distributed toward fixing the water infrastructure. 

Annye Burke said her daughter, who lives next door, is in a dilemma because she was hoping to receive a new septic tank when hers recently collapsed. She’s lived the last four years with her water issues. 

“Being raised in the country and at one point of having to use outside facilities, I know how to make do,” Burke said. “I just take one day at a time and pray about it and keep moving on. I don’t let it get me down. But my daughter grew up differently, so I worry about how she deals with this stuff.” 

Flowers, the activist, said that while she hopes the agreement will be reinstituted, she has seen communities come together to make change. Last week, she pointed out, she was in Mount Vernon, New York, where sewage issues were resolved with the combined work of the city, county and state government. 

“They fixed it because they should have,” Flowers said. The problem was discovered in 2021  “and it’s fixed five years later. I’ve been working on this in Lowndes County since 2002.” 

Some families have been able to afford to move away, but many cannot. Then the connection to the land is also a factor, said Flowers, who spent her childhood there and whose father was raised in Lowndes County. 

“My family has been in Lowndes County since slavery,” Flowers said. “It’s home for people. Why would we want to move? That’s where our people are buried.” 

Changing homes is not just about occupying another house.  

“We’re talking about giving up a culture,” she said. “So, we will continue this fight.” 

[mariacallous]

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Boston explicitly called out the Trump administration for its “palpably clear” discrimination against racial minorities and LGBTQ+ Americans in a case involving canceled grants from the National Institutes of Health.

“Have we no shame?” Judge William Young asked, in an unmistakeable echo of attorney Jack Welch, who famously punctured Joe McCarthy’s popularity with his simple plea for decency.

Seventy-five years ago, McCarthy and his sidekick Roy Cohn hunted Communists. Now, Donald Trump, who was mentored by Cohn, hunts a different kind of subversive. In executive orders signed during his first weeks in office, he targeted “Illegal DEI and DEIA policies,” claiming that they violate civil rights laws. He declared that “it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” and branded “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex” as discriminatory against women and girls.

This is a radical misstatement of the law. No court in the land has ever held that DEI — whatever that means — constitutes racial discrimination, or that allowing trans people to participate in society amounts to gender discrimination. It also defies the medical and scientific consensus about sex, gender, and biology. But no matter! The president redefined reality by executive fiat, and then instructed his minions to carry out a purge consistent with his edict.

And purge, they did! The administration immediately moved to kick trans service members out of the military, reorient the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to focus on “DEI-related discrimination at work,” and pulled down websites on everything from baseball icon Jackie Robinson to transgender health care.

But while the government was busy deleting pronouns from civil servants’ signature lines, it also slashed thousands of federal grants because some DOGE bro (or possibly an AI) decided that the recipient was vaguely “woke” — whatever that means. At NIH, more than a $1 billion of funding was cut because of its supposed association with “woke” ideologies.

[my-midlife-crisis]

You said:

and this is my reply:

You said in a cocky meme that no one voted for

Anthony Fauci

Hunter Biden

George Soros

Bill Gates

Kamala Harris

Anthony Fauci is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, and the chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci served under President Donald Trump as one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. So in truth, you should thank Trump for allowing Fauci to be head of the task force. You may have not voted for Fauci but you also didn’t vote for that doctor in the ER that saved so many lives across town.

Hunter Biden is not and has never been a part of the government. Robert Hunter Biden was targeted by the Republicans and MAGA. Of course no one voted for him but it was the Republicans and MAGA that made his name a household name... even though you keep calling him by his middle name. It just shows how very little you know about the case… you don’t even know his real name.

Soros is a supporter of progressive and liberal political causes. The man dispenses donations through the Open Society Foundations. Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion. However, did you know that Trump donated $175,860 to Democrats from 1989 to 2010. Why aren’t you complaining about Trump. You and your MAGA double standards. Why aren’t you complaining about Harlen Crowe to all the gifts gave to Clarence Thomas? You didn’t vote for Crow or Thomas. Nobody did. But you are quiet when it comes to that subject aren’t you.

Bill Gates is an American businessman and philanthropist best known for co-founding the software company Microsoft with a partner named Paul Allen. The man was chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president, and chief software architect of the company. Gates was a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s and has donated to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs. Through a foundation, he led a vaccination campaign that contributed to the eradication of a poliovirus in Africa. In 2010, Gates and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, whereby they and other billionaires pledge to give at least half of their wealth towards philanthropy. Gates, like Robert Biden, never worked or was a part of the American government. All he did was lead that vaccination campaign in Africa and get blamed by Republicans ,who claimed he hid things in the vaccinations. Of course you didn’t vote for him… he’s never worked for the government and hasn’t snuck his way into our social security records. Welcome to the real world.

And now for the final person:

Kamala Harris.

Of course you didn’t vote for her. I didn’t vote for Trump, Pence, or Vance and yet here we are. Now, I did vote for Harris. I ignored all the splatter campaign republicans did against her. It was literally the beginning of the DEI campaign, where people like you got upset and ignored everything she has done in the past and acted like she did nothing for this country. You got so upset that you ignored that not only has she been Vice President of this country for 4 years (which is something that you didn’t do), She served from 2017 to 2021 as a United States senator representing California, she served as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 (which you or Trump never did). She has done more for this country in four years than you ever did in your whole life.

And yet, like a lemming, when you heard someone utter the phrase “I didn’t vote for her” you threw yourself off the cliff and repeated it like it meant something. It’s hilarious how you think you have some point while you didn’t vote for Elon Musk at all. Elon Musk has never been on a ballot. He’s not even an American. Elon Musk is everybody you complained about. A millionaire who donated to political parties, who hacked into government computers, is acting like some type of governor who has never been a governor, and thinks he can ignore that fact that NOBODY VOTED FOR HIM.

Thanks for playing.

[spiralsketchbook]

It's transgender day of visibility and I live in Florida. Several sources have issued travel advisories against this state for transgender people, but I live here. The Republican party is leading the way in trans discrimination and eradication, using this state as experimentation grounds to see how best to go about it and I live here. I haven't been on hormones for near a year now because they're inaccessible and unmanageable, since I live here. They don't want me to live here, or at all, really.

However, earlier this month, 21 of 22 anti-transgender bills died in session. HB1639, which banned gender marker changes and barred insurance coverage of gender affirming care in favor of conversation therapy? HB1663, that protected abusive parents of transgender children? HB599, which banned the mere sharing of pronouns in government buildings and businesses? All of them, dead on the house floor. The only one to survive was HB 1291, which banned educating teachers in DEI topics. They can still seek out their own education. And new bills are being introduced all the time.

It's hard for people outside of here to fathom, and I have trans friends from the north asking me to leave every time a new headline hits. I don't think anyone should have to leave their home, ever. I believe in the right to protect yourself and your homeland. There are hundreds of thousands of transgender people who call Florida their home. The death of those bills is a beacon of hope for each and every one of us that we will not be leaving our home. We are here. You can see us today and we'll still be here tomorrow.

As for what you can do, check where you live. Call your representation and make sure they aren't supporting anti-trans bills. If they are, vote for people who don't. (Please vote in November, at least. For every position open. It's not about morals, it's about policy and who gets to stack the supreme court.) Donate to your local queer support groups. They exist and need help. You can do something, even if it's just being respectful. Or sending me 5 dollar. (https://ko-fi.com/spiralsketchbook). #tdov #tdov2024

Also. It's Easter. Happy Easter for those who celebrate.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

That's great, but how does this work when federal contractors and universities with massive federal grant dollars are still following a racialist and, in some cases, racist agenda? Trump's executive order, as it turns out, is much more than an attack on DEI in government; it is a declaration of war against DEI anywhere. Federal contractors must certify they do not adhere to DEI as a condition of holding contracts. (iv)   The head of each agency shall include in every contract or grant award: (A)  A term requiring the contractual counterparty or grant recipient to agree that its compliance in all respects with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws is material to the government’s payment decisions for purposes of section 3729(b)(4) of title 31, United States Code; and (B)  A term requiring such counterparty or recipient to certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws. Further into the executive order, you find this assignment given to the federal bureaucracy. (b) To further inform and advise me so that my Administration may formulate appropriate and effective civil-rights policy, the Attorney General, within 120 days of this order, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies and in coordination with the Director of OMB, shall submit a report to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy containing recommendations for enforcing Federal civil-rights laws and taking other appropriate measures to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI. The report shall contain a proposed strategic enforcement plan identifying:

(i)    Key sectors of concern within each agency’s jurisdiction; (ii)   The most egregious and discriminatory DEI practitioners in each sector of concern; (iii)  A plan of specific steps or measures to deter DEI programs or principles (whether specifically denominated “DEI” or otherwise) that constitute illegal discrimination or preferences.  As a part of this plan, each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars; (iv)   Other strategies to encourage the private sector to end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences and comply with all Federal civil-rights laws; (v)    Litigation that would be potentially appropriate for Federal lawsuits, intervention, or statements of interest; and (vi)   Potential regulatory action and sub-regulatory guidance.

Read that carefully. Trump anticipates targeting DEI for civil rights violations. He also requires "each agency shall identify up to nine potential civil compliance investigations of publicly traded corporations, large non-profit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of 500 million dollars or more, State and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over 1 billion dollars." When you consider the number of federal agencies, this is nothing less than an all-out effort to eradicate DEI. Couple this with a changed legal environment (Affirmative Action Has a Very Rough, No Good Day at the Supreme Court – RedState), and there is a real possibility that businesses, universities, and non-profits will have to choose between DEI and federal funds.

About damn time.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ani O'Brien

Published: Apr 18, 2025

Never wrestle with pigs. You’ll both end up covered in shit and the pig will enjoy it.

Around a decade ago the burgeoning Woke Left really hit its straps and was observably and overtly dominating cultural spaces (it still does). Language policing, cancel culture, moral purity, and complete obsession with identity cannibalised leftist politics and bled out into progressive strongholds like academia, public service, the media, and eventually the corporate world. Attempting to argue principles or nuance with the Woke Left would (and still does) result in a struggle session complete with a suite of DARVO tactics.

The fight against the Woke Left has been maddening and destructive, but we appear to be moving into a new phase of the movement. The re-election of Donald Trump has been hailed by some as the end of woke, but that is not quite right. Yes, some of the most overt and outrageous aspects of leftist wokeness have been seriously weakened. Trump has signed Executive Orders banning men from competing in women’s sport, for example, and his administration has made it clear DEI is to be eradicated as far as they are concerned. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of ‘woman’ is based on biological sex.

But, wokeness is a formidable opponent. Wokeness is a parasite. It burrows under the skin of society causing havoc and driving the host to insanity.

Burrowing is exactly what the Woke Left are doing now. They have retreated to their (substantial) strongholds and are digging in. They are rebranding DEI, dressing it up as something more subtle that will slip under the radar and preparing for four years of lawfare against the Trump administration.

In New Zealand, the public service has dug its collective heels in so determinedly that the Coalition Government is having to battle their own ministries and advisors on every minute detail of policy and legislation. Just this week, Minister Casey Costello had to instruct Health NZ to cease using “gender neutral” or so-called “inclusive” language like “pregnant people,” “birthing parent,” or “people with uteruses” to describe women in maternity care. There has been an outcry of protest at this including from the Leader of the Opposition who famously doesn’t know what a woman is.

That isn’t to say there is nothing to celebrate. The Woke Left have taken significant hits and that they have to retreat and make their insanity more palatable is a win in itself. But I always imagined getting to the point of seeing the Woke Left in retreat would be a moment of delirium and relief. Finally! It’s nearly over! These woke tyrants will no longer hold an anvil over our heads…

Enter, the Woke Right.

I was sceptical when I first heard the term ‘Woke Right’. How can the right be woke? I initially thought that this must refer to centre-right social liberals who are into identity politics like LGBT+, BLM, or feminism. It seemed like a strange concept and of little value to broader political analysis. And from what I am observing in the discussion following Joe Rogan’s podcast (JRE) episode with Douglas Murray and Dave Smith, I am not the only one who made these assumptions.

The online right has turned into a living version of the Spiderman meme. Everyone is pointing at each other and shouting “Woke Right!” in accusing tones. Some of it is blatant shitposting1 from trolls who seek to simply confuse everyone who isn’t already confused. But part of it is a power struggle that could well come to define the right.

This power struggle has been on my mind since I listened to that JRE episode. Or rather since I listened to the ep and then saw X split in half over who “won” the debate between Murray and Smith. You would think there were two versions of the conversation circulating. Accusations of “Woke Right” from one side of the debate to the other continue to be flung like the left fling around new genders and it has become abundantly clear that a rift in the right is brewing.

Because my mentions are so full of both genuine and disingenuous demands for a defintion of “Woke Right,” and I am apparently a sucker for punishment, I am going to do the unwise thing and attempt to provide one.

I will lean heavily on the work of James Lindsay (New Discourses) who is probably the reason “Woke Right” has entered the lexicon.

So, who is the “Woke Right”?

On the surface, “Woke Right” is a deliberate paradox, since “woke” has typically been associated with progressive or leftist politics — especially around issues like race, sex/gender, identity, and social justice. However, it is not an affinity to these topics that makes this section of the right “woke”. It is rather the behaviours and tactics that they utilise in pursuit of right wing goals.

This is a segment of the right that tends to be hyper-online, very meme-savvy, and culture war–obsessed. They are deeply ideological - much like their left wing equivalents - and this usually plays out in nationalism, religiosity, and/or anti-globalism. They are populists with a tendency towards the authoritarian. Anti-elite and anti-institution, they cannot stand “normie” conservatives. They will not hesitate to turn on their own side for what they perceive as weakness or disloyalty. In fact, this seems to be what they spend most of their time on.

These people are prevalent in Christian nationalist communities [example], but also include figures from the MAGA world, right-wing influencers, conspiracy-adjacent commentators, and online bros with Pepe profile pics who think Ben Shapiro is a sellout.

James Lindsay characterises the members of the Woke Right as being rarely over the age of thirty-five and predominantly male. Most, he contends, are between the ages of 15 and 25 and have zero interest in listening to anyone over the ripe old age of 40.

Lindsay actually sees the Woke Right as another stream of the Left, but I won’t get into this too deeply as we could be here all day. Basically, he contends that the most invested activists actively claim to use postmodernism and critical theory, but to different means. They are pro-redistribution and socialism, but the nationalist kind. He sees the fight against woke as a two front war or rather two hands of the same beast.

Ultimately, and of most concern, the Woke Right embody everything the left has accused the wider right-wing of being. They take the position that anything the left does is bad, so everything the left hate must be good. They have embraced white supremacy, homophobia, racism, and general offensiveness. The left have dreamt up a bogeyman and the Woke Right have brought it to life.

Caveat: there are degrees of Woke Right like there are degrees of Woke Left. Some people are sticklers for pronouns and proponents of Drag Queen Storytime, but oppose the use of puberty blockers and juvenile transition. Likewise, some on the Woke Right are vehemently anti-globalism, but reject the white nationalist aspects. Some ideas from the Woke Right and Left are founded in utterly reasonable concepts too. It is reasonable and common to be opposed to mass immigration and expect one’s government to put its own citizens first, for example, but when this extrapolated to the idea that there should be zero immigration and that white people are the superior race it becomes a serious issue. Likewise, most people abhor racism, but when the left extrapolates that and sees racism everywhere, blaming white people for everything, it is problematic.

Culture Warriors of the Right

These Woke Right-Wingers use many of the same tactics or language as progressive activists. They emphasise identity, grievance, and victimhood, but from a right-wing perspective.

In this sense, it is “woke” in form but not in content — the same kind of intense cultural engagement, but flipped ideologically.

The Woke Right adopts identity-based frameworks like the left does too. These tend to champion white identity politics and emphasise oppression or suppression of Christianity (although this is not as common in less religious countries like New Zealand). In a real reversal of politics, the right now tends to be the one focusing on rural or working class oppression and rights.

This flips the idea of social justice on its head. They use the left’s tactics to highlight what they see as neglect or discrimination against conservative, right-wing, or majority groups. Same playbook, different players.

This right-wing version of the playbook includes cancelling people for being too liberal, creating right wing echo chambers, conservative or based virtue signalling, creating division within political allies, gatekeeping, purity tests, and loyalty demands.

The Woke Right aggressively police ideological loyalty. If someone on the right doesn’t go far enough, fast enough, or speak in approved terms, they’re labeled terms like “RINO” (Republican in Name Only), “controlled opposition”, “Neocon”, “Cuckservative”, “Normie”, “grifter” or “fence-sitter”.

These are functions of gatekeeping and ‘othering’. They create tight in-groups and out-groups based on binary purity tests. For example, if you support Ukraine, you’re “deep state”, if you support Israel, you’re “Zionist-controlled”, and if you won’t go all-in on adoration of Trump (e.g. never critique him), you’re “a traitor”.

While they mock the left’s cancel culture, the Woke Right has wasted no time at all engaging in their own campaigns to boycott, bully, and excommunicate. However, broader conservative boycotts are usually about where one spends their money, like the Bud Light boycott, rather than the more violent and aggressive version we are seeing from the Woke Left regarding Tesla currently. The Woke Right boycotting and cancelling techniques against the Daily Wire are an example of in-group attempts to excommunicate.

Just as the Woke Left will flood comment sections with name-calling and moral accusations when they smell blood - in the form of a woke transgression - in the water, so too do the Woke Right. We are all familiar with the left’s style of moralistic name-calling e.g. “terf”, “bigot”, and “racist”, but the right have a far superior and more creative suite of slurs, in my opinion.

The Woke Right employ several different kinds of insults used interchangeably and dependent on context. Many of these have foundations in concepts or behaviours that are widely criticised, and are quite fairly viewed negatively, but these are hyperbolised and weaponised.

First of all, they seek to effeminise their opponent to signal that they are weak, emotional, or “not masculine enough.” Some examples of this are: Soyboy, Cuck, Beta male, and Simp. They also use conspiratorial or anti-globalist terms to paint opponents as tools of global elites, or enemies of the nation/state; Globohomo, Commie / Marxist / Cultural Marxist, NPC (Non-Playable Character), Shill, and Deep State Stooge, for example. While the concept of DEI hiring is widely disliked, the Woke Right have taken to using racialised and DEI-related insults such as Diversity hire or race hustler and using “white guilt” in pejorative terms. They openly mock feminists in very unoriginal ways. For example, they’ve brought back the good ol’ “feminazi”. They also use mocking terms that I myself am guilty of using to describe the madness of gender ideology e.g. Alphabet Mafia, Gender Goblin, and Pronoun Police. Fond of pushing boundaries and saying things they are ‘not meant to say’, they have brought the word “retard” back into circulation and also regularly employ the portmanteaus Libtard and Woketard. And of course, we can’t forget “Snowflake”.

Call out culture is flourishing in the woke world of the right just as it does on the left. The Woke Right can be found making YouTube and TikTok videos “exposing” the political impurity of others on the right. X spaces and threads have also played host to such call outs. These often aim to deplatform or humiliate right-wing figures who aren’t ‘pure enough’.

They may not be tearing down statues just yet, but the Woke Right are just as determined to destroy the heroes of Western civilisation as the left. Winston Churchill is a popular target for them - poor fellow has copped from both sides. Ronald Reagan has also been in the firing line. The inverse is the more than troubling sanitisation of dictators like Adolf Hitler.

Unquestioning support is expected for certain figureheads of the MAGA movement - though remember that the Woke Right is not synonymous with MAGA, but they are a subsection who seek to take it over. Obviously these figureheads include Trump, but also people like RFK Jr. and Tucker Carlson. Support for certain ideas and causes are also unofficially compulsory. These include being vehemently anti-Israel, anti-vax, anti-immigration, and anti-globalism. Criticising the movement or a figurehead, idea, or cause from within, is likely to result in being seen as a traitor, weak, bought and paid for, or “working for Soros or the deep state”.

You might assume that these figureheads and issues are American-specific, but the Woke Right (again, like the Woke Left) is so culturally ‘American’ that even those beyond the United States’ shores demonstrate allegiance as if they were citizens.

People on the Woke Right engage in trying to ‘out-extreme’ each other in feats of performative outflanking to prove their credentials or loyalty to the cause. They use “that’s cute” rhetoric steeped in condescension and hyperbole. It becomes a competition of who’s most based, most redpilled, or most willing to say the unsayable.

“You still think democracy works? Lmao.” “You still believe in voting? Fed behaviour.” “You’re not calling for a Christian monarchy? Weak.”

Just like the left as they built the dominance of the Woke Left cultural tsunami, the Woke Right seek to build identity and define what it truly means to be “right wing” in 2025. They are asserting dominance over the rest of the right and are engaged in a power struggle over who controls the narrative. Purity always wins over pragmatism and this drives extreme rhetoric in much the same way that the transgender movement on the left push the increasingly more ridiculous (e.g. men can get pregnant). They’d often rather burn bridges than compromise.

Conservatives are generally advocates for smaller government. The Woke Right bucks this trend. They want the state to intervene to force compliance with their own belief systems. They rail against “big government”, “globalism”, and the “deep state”, but when it serves their moral, cultural, or ideological goals, they are happy for Daddy Trump to lay down the law. The Woke Right doesn’t reject state power outright; they want to reclaim and weaponise it to enforce traditional values, suppress leftist “wokeness,” and reshape society in their image.

Old-school conservatism says the Government should be small and stay out of our lives. Woke right conservatism says the Government should be big enough to crush the people we hate.

It’s a shift from libertarianism to reactionary statism — all justified in the name of moral survival. It is the belief that the government should enforce traditional values and crush progressive threats.

Not only have some opponents of the Woke Right pointed out the fascistic flavour of these beliefs, but some of the Woke Right itself has begun to reclaim the term “fascist”. In a mix of irony, rebellion, and sincerity, they aim to own the label their enemies use for them and signal ideological defiance. And sometimes they do this because they actually like elements of fascism. Many on the dissident or Woke Right feel that the left calls everything fascist, from moderate conservatives to Trump voters. So instead of denying it, they lean in. “If everything’s fascism, then fine — I’m a fascist.” As with much of what they say and do online, it should never be forgotten that shock-value is always an objective. It is also worth noting that it certainly isn’t universal of Woke Right figures to embrace the label of “fascist”.

Despite enjoying weaponising language as a tool to shock and push the boundaries, the Woke Right engage in plenty of language policing themselves. At its core, language policing is about controlling what people can say, how they can say it, and which words are socially or politically acceptable. It's about enforcing a moral or ideological framework through language.

Even while they mock the left for being “snowflakes” or “too PC,” the Woke Right pushes its own rules around what language is acceptable and this is often presented in a binary: patriotic vs. unpatriotic, moral vs. immoral, traditional vs. radical, and based vs. woke. They ridicule and condemn the use of terms associated with their counterparts on the Woke Left. These include: “systemic racism”, “white privilege”, “DEI”, “critical race theory”. Whereas the left claims “inclusive” language, the right owns “traditionalist” or “nationalist” framing.

The language wars are polarising and both sides brand and rebrand cultural terms in a war of meaning and construction. For example, the Woke Left uses “undocumented immigrant” whereas the Woke Right takes it to the opposite extreme with “illegal alien”. Likewise, the tug-of-war over abortion phrasing; the right say they are “pro-life” instead of “anti-abortion” like the left say “pro-choice” instead of “pro-abortion”.

They recast language to shape public perception and claim moral ground.

In New Zealand, the Woke Right tend not to be so religious, even so they still identify with Christianity for political reasons and engage in the linguistic front of the religious culture war. For example, they criticise people who say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas”. They see it as a war on Christianity. Recently, there has been criticism of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon for being explicit in his support and celebration of Muslim holidays while overlooking Christian ones. The Woke Right are vocal in their condemnation of this.

A linguistic loyalty test is created based on what you say and how you say it: are you “with us” or “against us”.

High profile right wingers can be caught in a spiral of proving they are “with” the in-group and as a result become increasingly more ‘woke’ in the content they create. This is often due to audience capture. Their base rewards extremism and pushing the boundaries, but punishes them when they demonstrate moderation. James Lindsay points to public figures like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson as examples of this.

A less mainstream example of a Woke Right influencer - as pointed to by both Douglas Murray and James Lindsay - is a guy called Ian Carroll. He is primarily a content creator who appears on various right wing podcasts and Murray and Lindsay assert that he promotes conspiracy theories and revisionist historical narratives. His interest in Israel and the history of the Second World War are typical of the Woke Right and his audience lap up content that challenges dominant narratives of history which they contend have been written by Jews.

In the recent Joe Rogan episode, both Rogan and Smith deny that Ian Carroll and another content creator, Darryl Cooper, are as bad as Murray claims. They are particular defensive of Cooper and reject Murray’s characterisation of him as expressing far-right ideologies and rewriting history. His re-casting of Winston Churchill as the villain of the Second World War particularly offends Murray, but on the podcast Rogan and Smith deny that he does this. Screenshots of his tweets doing just that have subsequently circulated X.

DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a central feature of ‘woke’ behaviour. It’s a psychological defence mechanism that was initially identified in relation to abusers or manipulators, especially at times when they're being held accountable for their actions. They deny the wrongdoing, attack their accuser’s credibility or character, and reverse the roles so the abuser looks like they’re the real victim.

The Woke Right has adopted some of the emotional and rhetorical postures of DARVO — particularly around victimhood, identity, and moral righteousness — and simply flipped them ideologically.

To break this down, here are some examples from both the Woke Left and Woke Right to demonstrate DARVO in action:

1. Deny

In this first stage, the person usually refuses to engage with the substance of a critique. ‘Deny’ often comes from a place of moral certainty; the confidence that one’s side is “on the right side of history” or the “real good guys”.

Woke Left examples:

“They just want to pee!” [Regarding males who claim to be women using women’s bathrooms.] “Bussy isn’t an inappropriate word — context matters.” “I never said ‘Defund the Police’. I just said…”

Woke Right examples:

“I’m just asking questions.” “I’m not antisemitic — I’m just anti-Zionist.” “I never said Churchill was worse than Hitler, I just said...”

2. Attack

Instead of responding to the critique directly, they attack the motives or identity of the critic — often using social justice language as a weapon.

It usually involves casting the intentions of the critic as coming from a place of hate, bigotry, or evil. It often descends into a moral purity test and can include overt intimidation. It is moral outrage that appeals to emotion, fear, or belief systems.

Woke Left examples:

“You’re a racist/sexist/transphobe.” “You would say that; you’re a white man.” “You don’t care about future generations. You’re happy to watch the world burn.” “Why are you so obsessed with people’s genitals?”

Woke Right examples:

“You’re a cuck / groomer / globalist shill.” “You hate America / New Zealand.” “You’re complicit in demographic replacement.” “You’re paid for.”

3. Reverse Victim and Offender

This is when the person who is called out turns the tables and claims they’re the one being harmed. The left like to claim victimhood when their views are so much as questioned. They frame this oppression and use therapeutic or trauma-informed language (like “harm,” “safety,” or “violence”) in a way that shuts down debate.

They do this to shift the focus away from the issue and onto how they are being victimised by criticism. The recent case of Green MP Benjamin Doyle being found to have an alternate Instagram account featuring inappropriate content is an excellent example of this. Immediately his party and its proxies sought to frame him up as the victim of bad actors, threatening behaviour, and homophobia. They guy isn’t even gay, he just uses they/them pronouns and paints his nails.

In Woke Right spaces, the cultural narrative is different but the behaviour is the same. They apply grievance discourse to conservatives, Christians, white people, or men as victims of a new liberal or “woke” oppression. They mimic the language of civil rights, anti-racism, or trauma-informed justice just as the left do, but use it to justify reactionary beliefs.

Woke Left examples:

“Misgendering trans people is literal violence.” “Do your own research. I’m not doing your emotional labour.” “This isn’t a debate — this is about our right to exist.” [Calling everything genocide]

Woke Right examples:

“I’m being silenced for speaking the truth / asking questions.” “White men are the real oppressed group now.” “You’re not allowed to criticise Israel without being labeled antisemitic.” “They control the media, and we get banned for pointing it out.”

Case study: The "Woke Right" & Israel

The Joe Rogan Experience episode with Murray and Smith focused a lot on Israel as both men are outspoken about the conflict. It is a good case study for how traditional conservative perspectives are at odds with those held by the Woke Right. While traditional conservatives in the United States and elsewhere have historically supported Israel due to religious, strategic, or ideological reasons, the Woke Right — especially online — do the opposite. Far-right influencers, nationalist populists, and “edgy” online subcultures have adopted strident anti-Israel and even antisemitic positions, but framed in a way that mirrors activist language.

Generally, they criticise "Zionist control" or “globalist elites” and use this to defend themselves against accusations of overt antisemitism. They see Israel as a “colonial apartheid state” and claim support for Palestinians. However, their motives are regularly questioned as they spend a lot of time flirting with outright hatred of Jews and the oldest of conspiracy theories.

I find the Woke Right’s stance on Israel an interesting contradiction of some of their anti-immigration narratives. They are aggressive supporters of Palestinians who are Arabic and Muslim, while also opposing mass migration of Muslims to Western countries on the grounds that they bring violence and inferior cultural practices with them.

Let’s look at how Woke Right DARVO plays out regarding Israel.

1. Deny

They deny that their views are bigoted or conspiratorial, even when they use classic antisemitic tropes (like accusing Jews or Israel of secretly controlling media, finance, or politics). They also mask far-right ideology under progressive-sounding slogans like “decolonisation” or “liberation.”

“I’m not antisemitic — I’m anti-Zionist.” “I’m just criticising Israel’s government.” “I support free speech and human rights. That’s all.”

2. Attack

They go after journalists, activists, or anyone who challenges anti-Israel narratives. They use inflammatory or coded language to delegitimise pro-Israel voices and often accuse Jewish critics of being manipulative or dishonest. Sometimes it crosses the line into full-on antisemitic conspiracy theories, but is framed as “just asking questions.”

“You’re a Zionist shill.” “She’s always standing up for Jews. Who’s paying her?” “So you support bombs being dropped on schools and babies being murdered?” “Jews always play the victim card.”

Reverse Victim Offender

They cast themselves as victims of censorship, persecution, and political correctness — claiming they’re being punished for telling “an uncomfortable truth.”

“I was just telling the truth and got cancelled for it.” “They can bomb civilians, but I get banned for posting memes?” “Jewish power is so strong, you can’t even talk about it without getting attacked.” “They’re trying to erase national borders and replace us.”

What next?

James Lindsay is pretty pessimistic. He sees the Woke Right as an existential threat to the success of the Trump administration. He views them as kind of cuckoo birds in the right wing nest and it is only a matter of time before they go insane and attack their host.

After the Murray vs. Smith debacle, the Woke Right firmly piled in behind Smith. They aggressively shitposted and swarmed Murray using homophobic and antisemitic slurs. Then, the next day, Donald Trump posted about his “friend” Douglas Murray and his new book.

This did not impress the Woke Right and the sensitive wee petals launched into full conspiracy mode. They speculated why Trump would say pro-Israel things and if the Israeli government has something on him. Their nihilism has sent them into a spin and they have begun to turn on Trump.

The Woke Right is very nihilistic. They want to tear down liberalism, democracy, modernity, feminism, and secularism. But they frequently don’t propose coherent, positive replacements — or treat the idea of rebuilding as a joke or afterthought.

“Let it all collapse.” “We’ll build something better from the ashes.” “Modernity is a failed experiment.” “We want Caesar — or chaos.”

There is only so much that they can defend with the excuse of irony. They bat back accountability and criticism with retorts like “it’s just a meme,” “I’m just joking,” and “we’re being post-ironic”. This makes it hard to tell whether they believe in anything at all. That playful ambiguity is a hallmark of postmodern nihilism — meaninglessness masked as provocation. It is seen in their flirtations with breaking taboos, attention seeking, and gratuitously subverting moral norms. Religious traditionalism is a feature of their culture, but often it is a shallow aesthetic based on identity politics rather than a sincere spiritual belief. On some level they are yearning for order and meaning in their lives.

The power the Woke Right wield on X is considerable. They have weaponised the platform and operate in swarms or packs to push conversations where they want them to go. They engage in a great deal of agitprop. They reply en masse in ways designed to enrage or agitate. The best thing to do is not feed this beast. The saying that I began this post with applies here: Never wrestle with pigs. You’ll both end up covered in shit and the pig will enjoy it.

I was on the left when the Woke Left imploded the progressive movement and I now find myself somewhat on the right as the Woke Right threaten to do the same thing. The right must do what the left did not and excise the wokeness from the wider conservative or right wing cause. James Lindsay is doing overtime trying to bring this situation to the attention of influential people on the right. Douglas Murray’s appearance on JRE can be viewed as one big appeal to Rogan to be wary of the Woke Right.

James Lindsay - who is not religious - uses the biblical story of Cain and Abel to demonstrate the futility of the Woke Right and the value in sticking to principles. He offers it as a hopeful alternative narrative, but maintains a depressing pessimistic doubt that it will be received well.

In his analogy, the Woke Right is Cain. Cain is consumed by resentment and thinks the world is unfair. He is jealous of his hardworking and productive brother, but instead of improving himself, he becomes destructive and kills him. The “normie” conservative movement is Abel; disciplined, sincere, a picture of true positive masculinity, humble, and focused on service. He does not posture or perform, he is reliable and delivers on promises.

The Cains feel like the system is rigged and the world doesn’t reward their effort. They feel invisible, disrespected, and pushed aside. Cains mistake online rage for a show of strength. They mistake the bogeymen of the Woke Right - feminists, elites, Jews etc - for the villains causing their pain, just as Cain blamed Abel for his problems. Resentment is a false energy. It depletes rather than propels.

Abels show that even when life is hard you can live with integrity. You might not always win, but the goal isn’t dominance. The goal must be meaning, personal strength, and rising above victimhood.

The message to the young men captured by the Woke Right has to be that burning it all down isn’t victory. The problem is they’re already playing with the matches.

Note: I am aware that this post will upset those who think the Woke Right means something completely different. It will likely upset those who know that it applies to them, but they don’t like the association with the Woke Left. I have no problem with disagreement and invite people to try to change my mind. However, aggression and shitposting will be ignored.

-

1 URBAN DICTIONARY: “A post of little to no sincere insightful substance. Especially a "shit"(low)-effort/quality-post with the sole purpose to confuse, provoke, entertain or otherwise evoke an unproductive reaction. Often exemplified in surreal out-of-context posts.”

==

Woke Right is not a solution to the Woke Left.

[urfavgirlieee]

RANT (TW: Transphobia, homophobia, conservatives being conservatives)

So I just found out about something called "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," otherwise known as "Project 2025."

Essentially conservatives want every queer person completely eradicated from society. Gone. They want to completely get rid of us. Direct quote from their little book:

"This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used 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 LITERALLY WANT TO ERASE US FROM SOCIETY.

They want any pornography gone from the internet too. To protect the children, of course. IT'S NOT FOR KIDS, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. No more porn or explicit writing will exist. If a librarian has a book with a sex scene in their library, they will be considered a sex offender. Stupid, right? Oh, but it gets worse. If a librarian has a book in their library with a queer character in it, they're also a sex offender. Because they consider it pornography. That's a literal death penalty in Florida. Queer parents could be considered sex offenders and be imprisoned just for being gay around their kids. And they want to make the only sort of treatment available to queer people conversion therapy.

Oh, and they WILL make this happen. Even if this plan is challenged, it'll go to the Supreme Court. Which is mostly conservative.

Basically, the conservatives want us all fucking gone. They could actually do this. They could literally destroy the entire queer community. Also, any sort of sexual expression you might have (I am a very sexual person at heart, I've genuinely considered doing sex work in the future just because I want to so I'm really mad about that) will be a criminal offense.

Share this. Reblog it and share it with your friends. This is real, look it up. And it's important.

[darkmaga-returns]

January 21, 2025

Trump Abolishes Democrats' DEI And Trans-Craze Policies

Trump's second presidency has a strong start. On his first day in office he has issued some 200 executive actions including some 42 executive orders (EO) undoing many of Biden's attempts of socially engineering a new society.

(Unfortunately I have yet to find a complete list of those EOs. Why haven't even the agencies, AP, AFP or Reuters, compiled one?)

I do dislike many of the EOs Trump issued. Leaving the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreements, and thereby de-legitimizing them, is not good for mankind. Further supporting the Zionst entity is a disgrace.

Others I do like. Trump pardoned participants of the Jan 6 (2021) 'riots' which had never amounted to much more than a hustle.

He rescinded many of EOs the Biden administration had issued around its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Attempts of social engineering against merit deserve to fail.

I am also very happy that Trump has ended the official Trans craze. The wording herein is remarkable:

DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers. This is wrong. Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. ... This unhealthy road is paved by an ongoing and purposeful attack against the ordinary and longstanding use and understanding of biological and scientific terms, replacing the immutable biological reality of sex with an internal, fluid, and subjective sense of self unmoored from biological facts. Invalidating the true and biological category of “woman” improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.

There are and will be many more Trump policies which (will) deserve to be condemned and criticized.

That should not hinder us to admit that he got some things right.

[mariacallous]

One of the leading U.S. experts on fascism is so unsettled by the political climate under President Donald Trump that he’s packing up and leaving the country. Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale University and the author of books including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy that will begin in the fall.

Stanley is not the only prominent Yale professor leaving the Ivy League university amid Trump 2.0. He’ll be joined at Munk by two colleagues, historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, in one of many signs that the United States is in the midst of a Trump-induced brain drain as the new administration threatens university funding, among many other unfriendly steps toward the world of academia.

In a wide-ranging interview with Foreign Policy, Stanley, who has raised alarm bells about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies for years and unequivocally calls the president a fascist, discussed his reasons for leaving the United States and Trump’s controversial Monday meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele—who styles himself the “world’s coolest dictator”—among other topics.

During the Bukele meeting, which Stanley described as a “horrifying moment,” Trump again floated sending U.S. citizens to be imprisoned in the Central American country—which legal experts warn would likely be unconstitutional. This came as the Trump administration continues to defy a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.

Though Stanley has faced some criticism over his impending exodus from the United States, he’s making no apologies as he continues to warn people against assuming they’re not at risk of being targeted in Trump’s America.

“We need to call out the naivete of people who think that this will stop at noncitizens,” Stanley said.

“I am unwillingly going because I don’t want to leave the United States. It’s my home and always will be my home,” Stanley said.

Stanley said the well-being of his children is the primary reason for his decision. “I have two Black sons,” Stanley said. “I’m scared for the safety of my sons. And the explicit anti-Blackness of the moment is more frightening to me than it would be for someone without two Black sons.”

Trump has a long history of espousing white nationalist viewpoints and conspiracy theories, and his administration’s recent aggressive effort to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from virtually every aspect of American life has been widely decried as racist.

Stanley, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, said his family history also contributed to his choice to leave the United States. There are “obvious parallels” between the climate in 1930s Nazi Germany and what we’re seeing in the United States today, Stanley said.

“Plenty of intellectuals left Germany in ’32 to ’34, when it was unclear what was going to happen,” he said, adding, “The United States might be fine. But in the case where it’s not fine, you want to leave early for better positions.”

But the Trump administration’s assault on academia also played a big role in this. Stanley said he “impulsively” accepted the job at the University of Toronto after Columbia University caved to demands from the Trump administration in order to receive $400 million in federal funding. The university agreed to major changes, including overhauling its rules for protests and new supervision over the Middle Eastern studies department.

After Columbia capitulated, Stanley said he knew that the Trump administration’s demands for academic institutions would “get excessively more crazy” and that “it would have been foolish to decline the opportunity.” Stanley pointed to Trump’s recent demands of Harvard University, which include scrapping DEI programs and establishing “viewpoint diversity” in admissions and hiring. Harvard has rejected Trump’s demands, and the administration froze roughly $2.3 billion in federal funding in response.

“Imagine if newspapers were told: ‘We’re going to monitor your journalism to make sure that you hire Trump-friendly journalists and opinion writers.’ You would know you’re not living in a democracy anymore,” Stanley said. “It’s no different with universities.”

Stanley underscored that the Trump administration’s war on universities is straight out of an authoritarian playbook. Throughout history, the rise of authoritarian regimes has coincided with attacks on intellectuals—and efforts to discredit the institutions they’re associated with—in concert with the scapegoating of marginalized groups.

Authoritarians view universities—vital centers of critical thought and free expression—as an innate threat to their desire for complete subservience, Stanley explained. In 1931, for example, Italy’s Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, forced university professors to take loyalty oaths. In a more recent example, Central European University in 2018 was forced out of Budapest by the increasingly authoritarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, ultimately relocating to Vienna.

“Looking worldwide, authoritarians attacked the universities first,” said Stanley, who discusses this trend at length in his book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Authoritarians look to erase “critical history” and “replace it with patriotic education,” Stanley said.

Stanley said authoritarian regimes often malign and deliberately misrepresent student protest movements while moving to delegitimize universities—and major media outlets have a habit of aiding in the process.

“India is a central case. In 2019, the Citizenship Amendment Act passed, which made Muslims into second-class citizens. And there were protests at elite universities in India,” Stanley said. “The media misrepresented these protests as violent anti-national protests on behalf of Muslims. And they were crushed violently.”

Stanley said the U.S. media’s coverage of protests over the war in Gaza on college campuses last year followed a similar trajectory. “The media misrepresented the anti-war protests. It took the media months to acknowledge that there was substantial Jewish participation,” Stanley said.

“The media still doesn’t understand. They’re like: ‘Why is the Trump administration so focused on universities?’” Stanley said. “The universities, not because of ideological indoctrination but because they contain a lot of young smart people called students, have always been the source of resistance against authoritarianism and unjust war.”

Stanley also criticized Trump for invoking antisemitism amid his crackdown on academic institutions and effort to deport foreign-born students in relation to pro-Palestinian protests on campuses. He warned that by framing this around the issue of antisemitism, Trump is perpetuating a dangerous stereotype that Jews control powerful institutions.

The Trump administration has repeatedly portrayed campus protests over the war in Gaza as pro-Hamas and antisemitic and has moved to revoke student visas across the country while strong-arming universities into enacting reforms in exchange for continued funding. Stanley is concerned that by claiming to take these actions on behalf of the Jewish community, Trump will actually worsen antisemitism by fueling toxic tropes.

Referring to the Trump administration as “Christian nationalists,” Stanley said Jews and antisemitism are being exploited by the White House for the sake of controlling universities. He’s worried that Jews, in turn, will ultimately be blamed for Trump’s fascism.

Stanley added that any discussion on this “must start and end with the fact that it’s masking the suffering of Palestinians facing a genocide.”

“The true victims in all of this are the people of Gaza, whose extraordinary plight is being covered up by this fake pretense of protecting American Jews. And Jewish people stand against tyranny, that’s our historical role. We stand for liberalism. And they’re entirely trying to change what we stand for,” Stanley said.

[zestylemonsz]

I am not very political. And I don't make political posts. However.

(I made the text smaller, however I am using caps)

Tag mutuals that can vote and are in the USA!!

-------------------------------------------------------

GUYS PLEASSSSEEEEE VOTE

NOT VOTING DOESN'T HELP. NOT LIKING THE SYSTEM AND NOT VOTING DOESN'T HELP.

IT SERIOUSLY DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU DON'T LIKE EITHER PRESIDENT. CHOOSE THE BETTER ONE. CHOOSE THE ONE THAT ACTUALLY HELPS THE LGBTQIA+ COMMUNITY. CHOOSE THE ONE THAT IS FIGHTING AGAINST RACISM, AND FIGHTING AGAINST INCREASING HOUSING PRICES.

DON'T CHOOSE THE ONE THAT HAS COMMITTED SEVERAL CRIMES.

PROJECT 2025 WILL INCREASE FUNDING FOR THE US-MEXICO BORDER. IT WILL ALSO INCREASE FEES ON IMMIGRANTS.

PROJECT 2025 WILL TRY TO "STOP THE WAR ON OIL AND NATURAL GAS". THIS WILL ELIMINATE ALL MEASURES DONE FOR CLIMATE CRISIS.

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON WITHDRAWING ABORTION PILLS.

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON GETTING RID OF THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION. IT DOESN'T WANT TO BE CONTROLLED BY EXPERTS. PROJECT 2025 WANTS TO BE CONTROLLED BY THE PRESIDENT.

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON BANNING WHATEVER THEY WANT BY DOING THIS. SUCH AS: LGBTQIA+ BOOKS, USAGE OF THE WORD "TRANS" OR "GENDER" OR "LGBTQIA+".

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON ELIMINATING A LIST OF TERMS FROM ALL LAWS AND FEDERAL REGULATIONS. THIS INCLUDES: SEXUAL ORIENTATION, DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION, GENDER EQUALITY, ABORTION, AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.

^ THIS WOULD NOT PROTECT LGBTQIA+ PEOPLE. THIS WOULD ALSO NOT PROTECT PEOPLE FROM ABORTION AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.

^ THIS MEANS PEOPLE WILL BE ABLE TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST THIS.

TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, TWO JUSTICES IN THE SUPREME COURT ARE RUMORED ON RETIRING IF TRUMP WINS.

THIS WILL MAKE TRUMP APPOINT TWO MORE JUSTICES.

THAT MAKES TRUMP RUN THE WHOLE SUPREME COURT.

DO NOT LET PROJECT 2025 WIN.

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON DISMANTLING NOAA. NOAA TRACKS HURRICANES AND PROTECTS MARINE LIFE.

^ PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON DOING THIS BECAUSE IT'S "one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry"

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON INSTALLING A "pro-life task force" TO REPLACE BIDEN'S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE.

PROJECT 2025 PLANS ON DEFUNDING THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DISMANTLING THE FBI, AND ELIMINATING THE DEPARTMENTS OF EDUCATION AND COMMERCE.

THIS HAS BEEN LAID OUT IN PLAIN VIEW. PLEASE VOTE.

MORE POLICES INCLUDE:

ERADICATING FEDERAL FUNDING FOR DEI PROGRAMS.

PURGING THE GOVERNMENT OF APOLITICAL CIVIL SERVANTS.

ELIMINATING THE CHECKS AND BALANCES BUILT INTO THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT IN FAVOR OF EXPANDED CONTROL BY THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH.

ENDING REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM AND REPLACING THE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES.

REPLACING THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WITH A 100,000 WORKER IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT.

MILITARIZATION OF THE BORDER.

ENDING REFUGEE PROGRAMS.

REMOVING TRANSGENDER MEDICINES AND SURGERIES.

REMOVING LGBTQIA+ AS A WHOLE.

REMOVING ABORTION SERVICES.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Steven Beschloss at America, America:

I talk a lot about the need to speak out. This emanates from my belief that it’s critical that in confronting this hostile, anti-democratic regime we don’t lose sight of what’s true and false, what’s right and wrong. I worry that as the propaganda intensifies and the public is denied the truth, our capacity to grasp reality will get harder and harder. It’s alarming to see how quickly and energetically Donald Trump and his enablers are attacking free speech and working to silence dissent. Sometimes their intent is obvious, but other times they are using hot-button issues as subterfuge to misdirect the public. Let’s look at a handful of their actions to see how they are part of the same hateful plot against free speech. Press Corps Manipulation: The renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America at first appeared mostly laughable. But apart from Trump’s obvious imperialist ambitions, it soon became clear that he would target journalists and media organizations that refuse to consent to his desire. Sadly, Google quickly assented to the name change on its Google Maps, but the Associated Press was among the media companies that has stood by the Gulf of Mexico. Trump responded by banning AP reporters from White House press briefings, leading the AP to file suit against the administration. In its 18-page complaint, the AP said it was suing “to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the executive branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government-approved language.” But note that this preceded Trump’s plan to remake the White House press pool with a thicket of toadies—stripping away the traditional commitment to the major news outlets there to represent a democratic public’s concerns—to make room for media people chosen by Trump’s press operatives and serve his interests. (“We reserve the right to decide who gets to go into the Oval Office,” Trump’s sycophantic press secretary and propagandist Karoline Leavitt said.)

[...]

Eliminating Words: But these attacks on the press only begin to illustrate the assault on free speech and the First Amendment. Of course, Trump’s gaslighting in a day-one executive order said the opposite: “Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.” In fact, a series of Trump executive orders made clear that his regime would be ending programs and policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), as well as changing and deleting words on government websites that demonstrated the federal government’s commitment to DEI. While it’s the prerogative of any administration to make changes to highlight its priorities, the scale and speed of the effort to eradicate both the programs and the words that address DEI is chilling. A new report by The New York Times identified hundreds of words that had been deleted or amended on hundreds of federal government websites, as well as others flagged for review in order to target grants, contracts and other government projects. As you might expect, that includes words related to diversity (such as diverse, diversify, diverse communities, diverse groups, bias, cultural identity), equity (equality, equal opportunity, equitable) and inclusion (inclusivity, inclusive leadership, belong, sense of belonging, marginalized), it also includes almost anything you can think of related to race (racial justice, racism, racial inequality, antiracist, Black, Latinx, hispanic minority, Native American, indigenous community, segregation, systemic) and sexual or gender identity (biologically female, sexual preferences, transgender, trans, LGBTQ, they/them, feminism, gender, orientation, even pregnant person). And anything that even hints at prejudice, bigotry or their impact? Not in Trump’s America. Out goes all references to bias, hate speech, marginalized, stereotype, underrepresented, underprivileged, underserved, vulnerable populations, even victims and trauma. In other words, out goes understanding and knowledge, in comes ignorance and hate. Canceling Town Halls: Republican leaders have also grasped that they can advance their agenda by refusing to engage with their constituents, a growing number of whom reject their policies. Trump activated the efforts to suppress growing criticism by lying in a Truth Social post last week that the town hall protests are the work of “paid troublemakers.” The chair of the GOP’s campaign arm, North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson, then privately urged House Republicans to stop holding in-person town halls. House Speaker Mike Johnson continued the evidence-free lie after the GOP meeting, telling reporters, “There are people who do this as a profession, they're professional protesters.” And, he added, it’s best not to “play into that.”

[...]

Slashing University Funding: On Friday, the Trump regime announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University, claiming the school failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitism and other harassment. This came on the heels of Trump posting last week that they would “STOP” federal funding to any school that “allows illegal protests.” There is a legitimate conversation to be had about whether Columbia and other colleges found the right balance between protecting students from harassment and ensuring the free-speech rights of pro-Palestine protestors. But note how Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., got in on the act by saying in a press release that “censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virulent pestilence.” Do you really believe that Trump and RFK are so concerned about the real issue of rising antisemitism? Or is this simply part of the strategy to target higher education, chill speech and silence dissent? This comes on top of the aggressive pressure for colleges and universities to end programs and research projects addressing DEI.

Steven Beschloss wrote an excellent column detailing the various attacks on the freedom of speech under the Trump regime, even as 47 delusionally claims to stand for "protecting free speech.”

[tortoisebore]

diverting from usual content to give you all an un-fun update & PSA about the state of the US atm

a lot of you know that i work in undergrad admission/recruitment communications at my state’s largest university. today in our weekly staff meeting we were told to immediately halt all emails/texts/print pieces related to Black History Month, and everything we send out promoting our annual leadership summit for prospective Black students is now on indefinite pause. the university received a letter from the federal government this week stating that anything “DEI-related” must be eradicated or funding for the school, a top tier-research institution, will be pulled. we’ve been operating under an anti-DEI executive order from our fuckass governor for the last year and fortunately last spring university leadership found loopholes to keep operating as usual—we kept the gender & equality center and the women’s health clinic & the office of diversity & inclusion running under different names & still serving students the same way, but as of today all of that is now under investigation. i can’t even publish the word “diversity” when referring to geography. student organizations and outreach programs to underserved communities in the state are under fire & i’m furious and scared for what this means for young people in my state.

i don’t like to fall into the cycle of fear mongering & i know that blind panic doesn’t do anything to help but oh my god we need to all quickly come to the understanding that nowhere is safe from these power-frenzied nutjobs in office. their policies are in our workplaces and our schools. now is the time to brainstorm ways to combat restrictive, oppressive, & racist legislation in your daily life.

example—i can’t use the word diversity in a postcard to small-town rural students about all the ways they can find belonging at the university i work at, but i can make sure that the photos i use on the card reflect students of all backgrounds—all gender expressions, all ages, all abilities, all ethnicities. i can’t be overt with my resistance without putting my job and my team at risk, but i’m in enough of a position of power where being smart about the ways i use photos and quotes can emphasize a diverse student population & a place of belonging for everyone without directly saying it. and outside of work, i will continue to donate and attend protests and run my mouth about how vehemently i disagree with these pieces of legislation & how the enemy is not my neighbor, it’s the governor and the fuckass state superintendent and the attorney general and congress and the fucking president and all his friends.

with the direction this administration is headed in, i implore you to find small ways to resist in every single facet of your daily life. i implore you to embrace your neighbor and become close with your community and protect them loudly when they need it. i’m begging us all to keep our sights set on who’s really to blame in this moment & over the next four years ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ and please for the love of god fact check everything you read & think critically about what you see online before you speak about it !!!

[enthusedbambi-jjba-au]

Monster AU - Monster Hunters [P1]

[The Guild, silver weaponry and can we please talk about how these bullets break the fucking Geneva Conventions]

Monster Hunting!

I am sure that the term is self explanatory. You probably know already.

But if you don’t, here’s a quick rundown:

Monster hunting, also known as “Field Exorcism”, “Damnation”, “Befliction”, and fucking “murder”, among other things, is the practice of tracking and killing non-humans - that is, “monsters” (or pretty much anyone they believe to be non-human), usually with the overall goal of completely eradicating all “dangerous” cryptian species. It’d be a hate crime if only cryptians were a protected class. In case you haven’t guessed, they’re not (though some of them look human enough that murdering them is still generally frowned upon in most jurisdictions, like most vampires and lycanthropes that shift back upon death).

”Cacciatori”, in Italian, means hunters, and is the word used for monster hunters here as well. Not to be confused with a dish prepared alla Cacciatora, or the surname Cacciatore (we are not here for nominative determinism!!!). They’re majority ‘Catholic’ by which I mean most hunters in Italy seem to be semi-religiously-motivated “Italian Catholics” (they’re Christian at least, I don’t know; the religion scene here is wild). I assume this is primarily due to proximity to the Vatican and general historical contexts. I thought they were all Catholics but apparently most of them just self-describe themselves as Catholics, and I don’t know much about Christianity in the first place. (I had a Bible when I was younger and naturally I drew all over it because I was a child. I do not know what they expected. I also went to a Christian summer camp but I only retained the fun parts of that.)

Okay, back to monster hunters before I get off topic any more.

Most of them hunt:

to ‘protect’ their communities

for religious reasons, usually also an extension of the above

for money, obviously

for money but the other kind

It's hard to say which motivation is the majority, like, I can't exactly do a survey or anything; in Italy, as far as I've seen (I haven't really seen that far, admittedly, mostly just near Naples), it seems to be a somewhat even split, between the general public's subconscious fear of being out at night (as well as the influence of religious institutions) and the financial prospects of mark-hitting and marketing. To be clear, monster bounty hunting (as a casual term. monster-mercenarism might be a closer fit, but... much harder to say) isn't quite the same as regular bounty hunting; monster-mercs actually rarely go after an individual who has a bounty on them���though some do take shady jobs to 'find out' if someone is a monster—they mostly just hunt monsters and then get paid based on their kills.

You probably assume all hunters are human, of course, right? Yeah. I fucking wish. I fucking wish there weren't monsters out there willing to off other cryptians for money. There are even werewolves out there hunting werewolves. Etc. I think sometimes it's like internalised hatred, but sometimes monsters are also out of their fucking minds just like human beings.

I always wondered if they fully grasp just how fucking quickly their fellow hunters would take a gun to their head the second they found out.

But yeah, most of them are human.

Anyways, you might be wondering who the fuck is paying them. Monster hunting isn’t exactly legal since normal non-believers and the government generally will see a dead humanoid cryptian and go “ah, murder”, so I have to assume most of the payment for the mercs (as opposed to the shadowmarket suppliers and shadowmarketers who obviously get paid for merchandise) is funded by the Guild.

now on the subject of the guild: I’m sure a lot of you are curious what in the fuck that is, which is fair, since you probably hadn’t heard of it before i started saying words.

La Gilda dei Cacciatori Mostri

La Gilda dei Cacciatori Mostri d'Italia (GCM), the Italian Monster Hunter's Guild, is precisely what it sounds like: a guild of monster hunters. In Italy. Surprise. I just call them the Guild, mostly. Hunting seems to be sort of culturally hereditary, and Guild membership is somewhat exclusive; for "safety reasons" allegedly (though I personally think at least half the time they're just a bunch of fucking self-righteous elitist bitches), as they need to 'make sure they can trust their members' or something like that. They signal membership of the Guild with these little silver pins with insignias that they wear. They're silver because you have to be able to wear the pin to be in the Guild, I think. I guess they assume that anyone who can touch silver must be a human. I'll get to silver's importance later. I think the bottom of the pin is a tiny out-the-front knife for, like, the most dire of emergencies or something? I've seen some where the bottom comes out more or less, so there's probably a switch on the back that extends the blade, but I can't really say for sure because I just can't seem to get my hands on one. Whatever.

Bunch of smug bastards; they have one of those fancy Latin mottos. Translates to 'Sanctity and Safety; Keeping The Faith'. Or something. No fucking idea what that means, but sure. Anyways, the Guild spans across all of Italy (I don't know if San Marino or the Vatican or Sicily or Sardinia are included; I'm assuming Sicily and Sardinia are, but I can't say for sure). They keep in contact with each other through this Guild… meetings, and stuff. I know there's a Northern Division and a Southern Division, and then a bunch of local chapters in each division. It's sort of hard to find out the specifics since they have to be careful with what they talk about, but it seems like the whole Guild isn't super closely knit because it's just not practical to have everyone at every meeting and such. The divisions are closer amongst themselves than one another, but they all support each other, at least for the most part. I understand them as having a representative system where reps from each chapter are assigned to meet up instead of having everyone meet together to stay connected. They probably keep in touch with everyone so they can alibi each other if police come poking around.

I dunno what the deal with Sicily and Sardinia is, but the distribution seems to split right above Lazio; anything above Lazio is Northern Division, and Lazio plus Abruzzi and anything south of those two regions is Southern. They have Guild ‘capitals’: the Southern one is definitely Rome, though Naples apparently has one of the most ‘powerful’ hunter families in the country (and just a lot of families in the area? From what I’ve seen?); I’m not sure what the Northern capital is but based on population I’d have to guess probably Milan? I don’t really know if the chapters are region- or city-based; I think it might depend on size and population. I’m just gonna call them based on the most notable nearby town/city.

The Guild actually isn’t all that big; most of the smaller chapters are actually just a single family, if that—like I said, hunting seems to be culturally hereditary, so people seem to be passing it on to their kids, which actually means their numbers are starting to dwindle slightly as kids are denouncing or declining the occupation, or people die before their kids get old enough to carry the tradition on or something such. Many known monster hunter families have actually retired semi-recently due to various circumstances. In areas where the primary family or group of hunters have stopped hunting and whatnot, it seems that leaves room for foreigners to step in or hunters already patrolling another location nearby to absorb the unsupervised region into their territory. It’s also when the shadowmarketers swoop in and start ‘poaching’. Shadowmarket suppliers and Guildists seem to have issues with each other, too, even though they’re hunting the same thing. I assume it’s primarily due to greed. Or desperation. Or both.

Here are some notable hunter names and families I’ve heard about (for some reason, there seems to be a lot of them in or around Naples? Or, you know, I’ve only noticed more of those because I’m here):

Mista - Napoli Chapter - wolfhunters, long-standing lineage, Campania representatives (presumably)

So, the Mista family is arguably the most well-known and respected hunter family in the Southern Division. Maybe even in the whole Guild. They specialise in hunting lycanthropes and other zooanthropic creatures (mostly the lycans, though). They’re incredibly successful at killing monsters, and they—as a family—are known for this… ‘faith override’ ability they have. See, faith and belief are super powerful, so religious implements are ineffective against a creature whose theological alignment doesn’t jive with it. A Christian cross isn’t going to do much to an individual of a different religion, because the symbol doesn’t mean anything to them. But the Mista family’s ‘override’ is something about their belief outweighing a general lack of belief, thus making their religious iconography effective against enemies whether they should be affected by it or not. I guess magic is fine if YOU get to use it, huh? Bit self-righteous if you ask me.

The Mista family has been in the Guild for a good while now, allegedly from the beginning, and the youngest member—Guido—seems keen to keep up the family tradition even though he’s not living with his family anymore.

So I think it’s safe to assume he has no clue what’s going on in the group he’s currently part of.

James - bayside Napoli - not actually in the guild

A foreign family, and by family, I mean a guy named Damien James came to Naples from London and was seen for a while with a woman he claimed was his wife, encroached on the Mista family’s territory, and then went missing. He was known but not well-liked and wasn’t allowed in the Guild due to a refusal to respect regulations, adhere to territory rules and cooperate with the Mistas. Nobody knows where the fuck he is. His supposed “wife” is still spotted around the bay occasionally, though. She’s really scary, and apparently, when she got approached by someone asking about Damien, she seemed to get super mad about it. Stupid games, stupid prizes. Don’t fuck with widows. Especially not strange widows who spend a lot of time by the water. That’s how you become sea-food. Dumbass.

Fugo - Napoli Chapter - vampire hunters, long-reaching lineage, seemingly recently retired

I’m not sure how true the stories I’ve heard about are, but I’m under the impression that the Fugo family, a bunch of high-class wealthy rich people, came from a lineage of vampire hunters. But they apparently retired a generation or so ago because they were satisfied with being a bunch of rich assholes. Feel bad for their son but that’s none of MY business!!! Hahaaaaaaa that might also just be a load of bullshit. I don’t really know. I’m telling you what I’ve heard alright. Like I don’t want to hear people bitching because my specialty is researching cryptians not humans!

Verga/Ventura - Roman Chapter - variety hunt

Presumably, they are the descendants of the Guild founders, but half of them—the Venturas—have stepped away from hunting, while the other half—the Vergas—continue to hunt whatever they come across. Despite the surname difference, all currently surviving members of the Verga and Ventura families are actually siblings. I think. The little one in the Ventura family might be one of their kids but I dunno I’m pretty sure one of ‘em called her their sister. I think the Venturas changed their surname to distance themselves from the family history, but I’m not really sure. They also seem to have some connection to Passione, but I can’t elaborate on that for reasons.

There’s, uh…. Nine—NINE?! NINE OF THESE LITTLE BITCHES that is so many. Um, even though they’re all attached to the Roman chapter, only three of them are actually, like, Roman. Or even southern, for that matter. The other six are from, uhh… if I can remember… Venice or Verona (though four of them are twins (or quadruplets?) two claim to be from Verona, and the other two claim they’re from Venice, so I don’t know who to believe). The two eldest and the youngest (the kid) are the Roman ones. Fuck I regret meeting these bitches because now I have to explain shit!

To clarify, while the Verga family seems to have been the founders of the Guild ages ago, the current Verga family don’t seem to be leading it (I don’t know who is) but are just carrying on the tradition. I hear that a lot of them have political or governmental positions which might also have some relation to their connections with Passione. Dunno. They were in Naples a while ago, which was when I met them, but they didn’t stay super long, so most of what I know is also from rumours and poking around.

Cacciatore - Venice Chapter - therianoid hunt - retired

Yeah I know I said with the nominative determinism and whatnot. It's not nominative determinism. Just think about it logically. They're not hunters because they're Cacciatores; they're called the Cacciatores because they were hunters. It's called an occupational surname! (It's pretty much the same as the English surname Hunter; same principle as Baker or Cooper or Smith or Miller).

From what I can gather, along with the Vergas and Mistas, and possibly a couple others, they are the oldest known hunter family, hunting mostly animal-like monsters like werewolves and animal demons; they split from the Guild and eventually from the profession as a whole, citing that the Guild’s recent modern innovations on their weaponry—the Crackling Silver in particular, I’m to believe—are fucked up and incredibly unethical even against monsters. I would have to fucking agree with them! Who in the fuck comes up with a thing like crackling silver?! Ugh. More on that later. It’s bad.

Zatta - Chapter and hunt unknown - allegedly silversmiths, or at least close with the Guild’s

I don’t know if they’re the ones making weapons or just coming up with ideas, but based on my ‘research’, I’m of the understanding that they have something to do with the production of the more advanced and fucked up weapons the Guild has taken to using, like the aforementioned Crackling Silver, as well as burst bolts and Stoppers. I don’t know what their main hunt is, if they have one, though I have heard that they’re kind of on thin ice for not getting along with other hunters. Something about how silver is for monsters and not humans. They’re close with another hunter family that also has ties with weapon production, but I don’t know what the other family is called.

Apparently, the youngest daughter severed ties and outright denounced monster hunters as a whole—something about hunters being way fucking worse than the monsters they go after, and she can’t take being around them anymore because they’ve done more than enough damage to her life. You go, girl! There is definitely a LOT of issues and trauma going on there that we are NOT going to unpack! I’ve heard rumours that her brother also split from the family but has been seen in various towns and cities, allegedly “appearing to be hunting”. No clue what that fucking means.

-

Okay. That’s about all I’ve picked up from trying to sneak around and infiltrate hunter circles.

Which means now it’s time to talk about the super fucked up part. The weaponry.

Silver

so I was going to wait till a future post to really delve into Silver and related topics, but it’s important for this topic to give you the groundwork:

Silver is the single most widely effective and secular monster deterrent and defence. ‘Course, a lot of the Christians think it’s a holy metal. That’s not why it works; it’s not religiously aligned, and that’s why it’s so widely effective. For a lot of monsters—or at least the most commonly known ones, like vampires, werewolves, demons and their ilk—silver will burn. And bad. It hurts and does physical damage. Humans are actually super lucky to be incredibly resistant to silver, but humans also love to push that envelope and give themselves argyria by excessive use of silver as an alternative medicine which by the way, totally do not recommend; please be fucking responsible and don’t turn your skin blue by fucking about with colloidal silver and the such. I can’t believe I have to go out of my way to say this. Anyways, yeah, humans can get silver poisoning too, but monsters are very magically-infused, which is why silver is so much more hazardous to them. I’ll explain that fully at a later date.

Just know—silver? Great against the common monsters. So of course, when hunters (who’d have their crosses and holy water sometimes fail) found that silver worked on nearly everything, they immediately turned to it as their weapon material of choice. Started out with swords, though silver isn’t exactly super cheap or super easy to get, so most silver swords were actually made chiefly from more affordable, more available materials, like steel, and then the blades were tempered with a thin layer of silver, which seemed to work alright.

Blades were traditional for hunters, they’re the oldest silver weapons used by the Guild. First swords, until swords turned out to be unwieldy as fuck. And impractical in the modern day. And expensive. And heavy. And just fucking ridiculous. Swords were replaced by silver hunting knives since they were more subtle, quieter and cheaper.

Are they good?

…no? absolutely not

Come ON! Does close-quarters combat with a transmissive werewolf sound like a great fucking idea to you?! Lycanthropy is transmitted through saliva-blood contact, LIKE GETTING FUCKING BITTEN. Traditional doesn’t mean fucking GOOD. I imagine shit would be fucking awkward if these guys were trying to kill monsters with KNIVES. Swords could be fine, at least at the time when it was all they had, since they had longer reach than knives, but they were superseded by ranged weapons pretty sharpish.

Still, every monster hunter (at least in the Guild) has a hunting knife, probably for emergencies. Only the blade is really silver, not the back of it, to my knowledge, and they’re made to be practical. If the dagger is super fancy, it’s probably fake silver, for religious purposes, or the owner is just a massive fucking bitch. A real hunting knife is simple. Practical against humans, too, kinda, but mostly good as a utility knife. You can throw them if you’re out of your fucking mind (or that one gayboy in La Squadra who is obviously already out of his fucking mind).

Anyway, swords were short-lived for monster hunters. The primary weapon for hunters was crossbows with silver bolts for a while, and then guns became a thing. A few hunters still use crossbows, but most carry guns now and silver bullets. Innovation is mainly made with long-distance hunting weapons since they’re safer to use. I’ve seen a hunter use a fucking slingshot. Didn’t stick around, obviously. I ain’t out here triflin with David. I’m under 4’, and I still want NO part of that

So anyways, yeah, maybe I'm a bleeding heart that doesn't agree with monster hunting, but it's normal-ass guns and silver bullets. Those aren't the worst shit; maybe you don't think it's that inhumane to kill with that (hunters don't see monsters as human anyway), so what's the big deal.

The big fucking deal is the fucking mods they started putting on the bullets and whatnot.

The primary purpose of ALL silver ammo innovations is to prevent the monsters—generally the zooanthropes, I think; surely they don't use this type of shit on vamps and stuff, at least I fucking hope, 'cus if they do, they're more fucked up empathetically than I thought—from being able to recover from their wounds, thus dooming or at least weakening them with unending afterpain.

Which is fucked up. AND AGAINST THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS BY THE WAY. JUST SO WE’RE CLEAR.

I am especially talking about what I’ve mentioned earlier:

Crackling Silver

The “crackling silver” bullet (named for the crackling noise they make as they exit the chamber) is designed with looser shards of silver that loosen with the heat of the gun upon firing, then break off and embed in the wound upon impact, which prevents the wound from healing itself as the silver shards never stop burning the flesh until removed. It’s not just designed to hurt like all fuck; it’s also designed to keep the wound open since the shards mostly embed into the front of the wound where they break off. By keeping the wound open, the monsters are not unlikely to slowly bleed out unless they’re able to find someone who can help them dig the shards out.

Stopper Bullets

The good news is that since silver burns most of these common monsters, the bullets—even crackling silver—will pass right through their body, so only the shards are left inside the wound, so the bleeding out is more of a concern that they can focus on, since the pain isn’t so bad! Apparently, that was a problem! So, someone came up with Stopper Bullets. Stoppers are silver bullets that (don’t ask me how they work, I don’t know) somehow jam themselves halfway through the monster’s body, never coming out the other side, meaning they just sit inside the body and BURN. Stopper bullets are more of an auxiliary weapon, I think; they’re more meant to slow down the monster because they focus on the pain.

there is a special place in hell for whoever the fuck thought to make the crackling stopper. You can infer what that does based on the above.

Silverdust

It’s silver dust. I’ve heard hunters with more silver to waste like to throw silverdust in lycanthropes’ faces to blind them. I feel that some of these hunters are only hunting to go on a power trip.

Burst Bolts

Kinda like the crossbow version of Crackling Silver, except I'm not super sure how they work because I know next to nothing about crossbows?

-

Like, just, do you get why this shit drives me up the fucking wall?? It’s not even that they just casually use this crazy shit; it’s the fact they don’t seem to care! Like, even giving them the leniency that they don’t think monsters are free-thinking creatures, did NOBODY but the Cacciatores see this and think it was fucking sadistic?? Even if monsters were like animals with no complex awareness or comprehension, even IN the case of frenzied lycanthropes, why go out of your way to make them suffer unless you enjoy the suffering of other living creatures? Would you go to the same lengths if you hunted deer, or rabbits, or birds?

It was never necessary! That’s why it’s so fucked up! A normal-ass silver bullet will kill with a shot to any mortal creature’s vitals, so these mods exclusively serve to inflict a painful and needlessly prolonged death upon a creature and would only be useful for people who can’t fucking aim and need to slow their target down, right?!

The worst part, the way I see it, is that a lot of them—take Guido Mista, for example, the youngest of the Mista family—have more-or-less noble intentions, like wanting to keep the streets safe, and they genuinely believe they are by hunting monsters. I’m sure that if a lot of these people knew that they were close to monsters, or even just that monsters aren’t necessarily evil, they probably would realise that the monsters aren’t always the aggressors.

I’m sure if a lot of them knew that some of their close friends weren’t human, those hunters wouldn’t have it in them to hold true to their convictions and turn on the people they love and trust.

I don’t think it’s impossible that some of the hunter families that have retired might have done so because this happened to them in some way. Monster hunters make me angry, but they also make me pretty sad sometimes, especially knowing that a lot of them just had the monster-hunting thing pushed on them by their families.

And hey, even if you're one of the people who actually hates monsters and support the Guild in eradicating them all, you do realise a lot of regular ass humans can and do get hurt by this shit, too, right? like, sure, silver doesn't burn humans, but that doesn't mean it's not going to fucking hurt to have silver shards jammed in your fucking body. Nobody is perfect, no matter how experienced, and mistakes are bound to happen while hunting every so often.

That's assuming it's a mistake, anyway. if you'll recall what I said about the Zatta family being on thin ice. I doubt they're the only ones.

oh well whatever

That’s all I got for now. Stay safe.

[intelligentchristianlady]

Ban Woke Animals

"...the MAGA obsession with eradicating “DEI” is downright ludicrous. In their zeal to Make America White Again, the Trump word police went after the Smithsonian and the National Zoo. 'The zoo boasts prominently on its website that it has ‘more than 2,200 animals representing almost 400 different species,’ Dana Milbank pointed out. 'Could there be a more brazen embrace of DEI?'” (x; the Dana Milbank quote is from the WaPo, behind a paywall)

DEI. I do not think that word means what you think it means...

[meret118]

Trump Kills “DEI” Program Stopping Human Waste From Flooding in Homes

In 2023, an independent investigation by the DOJ found that the county’s low-income residents, mostly Black, have not had basic sanitation for generations. Human wastewater is piped into ditches and poorly constructed systems instead of wastewater systems, leaving sewage to collect in yards, open areas, and woods.

Increased rainfall in recent years due to climate change has led to contaminated water flooding into homes, vegetation, and even drinking water. It’s not uncommon for untreated sewage to back up into residents’ backyards, or even sinks and bathtubs.

A 2017 study found that a third of the county’s adults suffered from ringworm, an intestinal parasite that was thought to have been eradicated in the U.S. More than 300 families in Lowndes County have to deal with this problem.

https://newrepublic.com/post/194749/trump-ends-program-stop-shit-human-waste-flooding-homes-dei

Mike Johnson Says Trump's Massive Agenda Bill Will Defund 'Big Abortion'

For the first time, a Republican leader in Congress has publicly pledged to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnson-says-trumps-agenda-bill-will-defund-big-abortion_n_6813b695e4b0964363620ffa

Trump defunds PBS and NPR in shocking late-night order behind closed doors

https://www.alternet.org/trump-defund-pbs/

Republicans Consider Shifting Cost Of Food Benefits To States, With Cuts Likely

The proposal would impose significant costs on state budgets — unless states kick people off benefits.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/snap-cuts-budget-reconciliation-beautiful_n_6813a6ffe4b0964363620874

Trump repeats that the government will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/us/white-house-harvard-tax-status