#italian fearmongering

[liesmyth]

that one post I rb'd earlier about France and laicité and Macron celebrating Chanukah is still making me made just thinking about it. That came in the same week as Masha Gessen being almost stripped of the Hannah Arendt prize because they wrote an essay about Gaza (incidentally, Gessen is Jewish). I'm just really, massively tired of the current climate in Western Europe where political and civil authorities pay lip service to diversity and pluralism but actually actively suppress diverse voices. Case in point, lots of framing Judaism = Israel while actively making life harder for their Jewish communities.

I'm not eloquent enough to word this properly, but it's infuriating to witness. It's not a new attitude by any means, but it's rooted in racism and xenophobia and I hate that it's getting so much fresh mileage lately. I wish more people (& local press) called it out for what it is.

[evillesbianvillain]

It's always funny seeing the non US right trying to copy the US right talking points like explain to me why we need a law in Italy to forbid Drag Queens from entering class rooms. Have you every been to an italian school? Translating republican fearmongering tactics in a completely different context and still trying to make it makes sense.

[readingsquotes]

"The problem is — and I will keep banging this drum as long as I have to — Biden’s incoherence on Israel and Palestine is both morally unforgivable and bad political strategy. He is bleeding support not only from young people, Arab-Americans, and others incensed with his continued support for a genocidal war machine, but also from pro-Israel moderates and Never Trump conservatives who are enraged at his furtive and contradictory efforts to ever-so-slightly rein that war machine in. I’ll give more details about that incoherence below. For now, I’ll just say that by trying to make everyone a little happy, he is making no one happy, as the pile of Palestinian corpses grows at his feet.

But that’s the narrow part of the question in the context of American politics. The bigger issue for me is why Biden’s management of the human catastrophe in Gaza is so salient. My answer is that it points to the larger and even more consequential failures of liberal politics over the last four to eight years.

....the heart of Biden’s failure to both recognize and confront the actual danger facing democracy. In a recent In These Times essay titled “Antifacism after Gaza,” the Italian philosopher Alberto Toscano subtly tweaked leftist Democratic politicians for whom “the threat of Trumpian despotism blunted opposition” to Biden’s Israel policy: “There is a bitter irony in granting primacy to the national fight against fascism over the campaign to stop a U.S.-funded genocide when the current Israeli government — in its exterminationist rhetoric, patronage of racist militias, colonizing drive and ultranationalism — fits textbook definitions of fascism far more neatly than any other contemporary regime.”

The campus protests would have been another opportunity for Biden to show his commitment to democratic and pro-social ideals. I’m not saying he had to support the protesters or their aims — they are, after all, in large part protesting him. But no one made Biden take the further step of employing reactionary talking points about the protests being fonts of antisemitism and supposedly genocidal rhetoric, or repeating memeified claims about “Jewish students” being “blocked, harrassed, attacked, while walking to class” — questionable claims that have been weaponized to justify state and vigilante violence against demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights.2 Biden repeated those claims on May 7, Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet he said nothing about the weeks of wanton anti-demonstrator violence by both police and unhinged pro-Israel counterprotesters. In fact, instead of condemning the episodic police state, he is pushing a new plan to funnel $37 billion more to police departments and hire 100,000 more cops.

The political problem here should be obvious. How do you explain to a student who just watched, say, the NYPD throw their friends down a flight of stairs for participating in a nonviolent protest — acts committed without so a peep of condemnation from the president — that a vote for him is a vote against fascism?

Nor is Gaza the only place Biden and the Democrats keep undermining their claim to being the antifascist party. The president has repeatedly pleaded with Trump to work with him in passing a MAGA-like immigration bill: one that prioritized enforcement, detention, and “shutdown” measures over, for instance, pathways to citizenship for undocumented migrants or those who came as children. When Trump didn’t take Biden’s obvious political bait, the president tried running even further to his right. Biden can insist, as he did at the State of the Union, that he “will not demonize immigrants” or endorse Trump’s Hitlerian cant about “poisoning the blood of our country.” But by adopting reactionary fearmongering about the need to “secure the border” above all else, all that remains of a message to voters is that even squishy libs think the fascists have a point about immigration — it’s just that they aren’t willing to do more to stop it.

The connection between state violence at home and genocide abroad isn’t lost on the students. Popular chants connect the dispossession and killing in Palestine to U.S. policy in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Latin America, as well as immigration policy here: “From Palestine to Mexico / border walls have got to go.” As Toscano notes, protesters at the University of Texas chanted at the Austin police: “APD! KKK! / IDF! They’re all the same!” — connecting domestic policing and racism to the Israeli military. And indeed, that connection isn’t purely theoretical: thousands of U.S. police officers have received direct training from the Israeli military on crowd control, use of force, and surveillance in recent decades, including the NYPD, and yes, the Austin police as well.

[romanceyourdemons]

the pre-code anti-drug propaganda exploitation film marihuana (1936) does pretty much all the things you would expect it to. it rails against youth culture, fearmongers about the criminalizing and violence-inducing properties of marijuana, draws on the horror of drug use (low-class) infecting the upper class, and ends with the up-and-coming drug dealer becoming a hopeless addict who meets her deserved fate at the hands of the cops and her treacherous gang members. in many ways, this lurid, melodramatic, moralistic film is everything i expected. but it also surprised me. for one thing, it seems that in the 1930s marijuana was not racialized as black the way it overwhelmingly has been for generations now. it was hardly racialized at all—all the characters were white—but the gang leaders were italian in fitting with stereotypes about organized crime, and the title scrawl equated marijuana use among the youth of the 1930s with the opium crisis china faced through and beyond the nineteenth century, and furthermore called marijuana “hashish of the orient,” further framing it as exotic and unamerican. this cultural rhetoric surprised me. but something about the film specifically that surprised me is that, rather than relying on lengthy scenes of violence and sexuality (supposedly induced by marijuana) the way reefer madness (1936) does, this film builds up a pathos-based narrative of a young woman neglected by her nouveau riche family and a young man with no prospects, who are taken in by a gangster who claims to be their friend, but who really just wants to exploit them. the violence and sexuality, though present, are by and large extremely implicit. family dynamics and the importance of marriage and matrimony are the engines that drive the story, not just the endless cycle of crime and violence the exploitation genre is given to. and, although i never would have expected it, the cinematography and editing are gorgeous for much of the film. although the purpose of marihuana (1936) is not subtle and neither are most of the devices it uses, i was surprised by the artistry and even sensitivity with which this exploitation film was made. and i’m a little mad about it

[madonnamadeofasphalt]

What “fascism” means

My controversial belief is that it is actually really fucking important to educate yourself on the basics of, from lack of a better word, “philosophical” foundations of fascism. The fact that most people’s knowledge of it is limited to the aesthetics and crimes of the past fascist regimes is what allows modern fascists to strive and make themselves uncritically tolerated by just changing their name and denying their historical connections. It’s how dudes who are practically quoting Mussolini verbatim can go “you just call anyone you disagree with a fascist”. It’s how a fascist propagandist can be like “how can I be a fascist when I’m Jewish/gay/non-white/whatever?” and be treated seriously. It’s how more moderate right-wingers, conservatives and liberals alike, can genuinely claim that all the talk of a fascist renaissance is just conspiracy theories and fearmongering - after all, fascists are obviously fringe, because where did you last see a bunch of dudes goose-stepping with a swastika banner?

So, here’s a very basic explanation of fascism. It’s based on my own readings of fascist texts, as well as some compromising between the definitions and their boundaries proposed by various experts on the subject (one of which, I cannot emphasize it enough, I am not). I’m not gonna do a full bibliography on a Tumblr post, so I propose treating it as a simplified introduction to doing some of your own reading and developing your own opinions. The usual recommended starting point is Ur-Fascism by Umberto Eco, and even though in my personal opinion it focuses on some aspects of the ideology that are more common propaganda tactics than its actual core, it is a pretty good one. Anyway, point is, take me with a grain of salt, just like you should take anything written in some post on Tumblr (and, frankly, anything written anywhere else as well). That said, I’ll do my best to explain the basics, from one amateur to another, as uncontroversially as I can when talking about such a controversial subject.

Fascism is, above all else, about the cult of power. It’s about punishing and despising weakness, it’s about radical individualism, about survival of the fittest, about social darwinism. A man’s success is proof that he deserves his success. A man’s power is proof that he deserves his power. That is, according to fascists, the natural hierarchy that shapes the society to be healthy and pure.

Why, then, are fascists so keen on overthrowing governments? Because they believe degeneracy, a celebration and acceptance of weakness, has corrupted this natural order and allowed the weak to govern the strong. This degeneracy is usually (though not universally) associated with the industrial revolution, intellectualism, social welfare and the accomplishments of various (especially racial and sexual) civil rights movements, as well as the nebulous, antisemitic construct of a devious international Jewry - and you probably know from your history classes how they intend to combat that.

Since fascism is a cult of power, it emphasizes acting over thinking - as acting is a “stronger” activity. It glorifies violence and decisiveness, ruthlessness and unanimity. This is why a core idea of fascism is totalitarianism. This term was originally created to criticize the first, Italian fascism, but very quickly started to be used by the fascists themselves. In most systems, the state’s functions are supposed to be limited to some areas of social life, while what is known as private life should be untouchable by its power. The fascists do away with those limitations, and believe that the state, personified by a singular Leader (or, less often, collectively by the inner circle of a fascist party), has a right to interfere with whatever it wants to, and pass whatever laws it has the power to enforce, especially if their purpose is combating degeneracy. An important thing to note is that while historically the creation of this fascistic “total state” was often attempted by military dictatorships, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case - fascists have no problems with using democratic or republican means to push their agenda. A cult of power is a cult of pragmatism, after all. Some fascists (like the Polish “endecja” or certain parts of the American “alt-right”) even genuinely believe in a form of totalitarian republicanism - those types, however, turn out to be really picky when it comes to who gets to vote.

Finally, there is the idea of a perpetual war. Humanity, according to fascists, is inherently divided into some kind of groups, which nature depends on the particular brand of fascism - most common types include races, nations, ethnicities, states, religions, any combination of the above. Sometimes these groups are equal at the starting point and you should be loyal to yours just because its yours, sometimes some of them are naturally superior to others. The important part is, the fascists claim that the primary function and the historical destiny of each of those groups is to destroy or subjugate all the other groups (either globally or in a given territory). Equal and peaceful coexistence is impossible, and any group that genuinely attempts it, will inevitably be backstabbed by the opponents they naively tried to tolerate. That is why militarism and expansionism are often (though not always) an important part of particular fascisms - the state’s purpose is to ensure the ultimate victory of the group it represents in the perpetual war. The people’s purpose is the same - that’s why it is necessary to subjugate them all under totalitarianism, so their private lives don’t distract them from their role in the perpetual war. And regardless of wether one of the groups was superior to all others from the start or not, one of them will prove its superiority when it proves its power and finally emerges victorious from the perpetual war.

As an ending note, I’d like to make clear that not all fascists use the exact words I have used above - in fact, very few of them do. “Totalitarianism” in particular became a dirty word due to the memory of horrific crimes comitted by the 20th century totalitarian regimes; it’s more likely to be implied by the lack of consideration for individual or social rights in fascist demands. You won’t see a lot of fascists talk about a “cult of power” or a “perpetual war”, either, and only the most blatant ones will utter the words like “social degeneracy” or “international Jewry”. They will instead talk about a “strong state”, “protecting our traditions”, “decadent youth”, “overpopulation”, and so on, and so forth. They will approppriate conservative, liberal and even leftist language in order to obfuscate their actual view of the world. And then there’s the fact that “fascist” and “non-fascist” isn’t really a neat binary - few things are when you actually look at them closely. There will be politicians, ideologues and activists, especially (but not exclusively) on the right, who will dip their fingers in fascism, but won’t go all the way down. It especially applies to the ones who do have some basic education on the topic and therefore are aware of how close they are to fascism - you may be a bigoted piece of trash and share most of fascist viewpoints, but still feel uncomfortable to admit to yourself that you’re on the same side as the fuckers who did the Holocaust. Yes, that last sentence is about Jordan Peterson (but not only about him).

And finally, remember that you can make an effort to understand an idea without sympathizing with it or empathizing with its followers. No matter how they justify and rationalize, and decorate their beliefs, if you decide to do some deeper research on the topic (which I, again, really do recommend), for the love of God, remember that this shit always leads in the same direction. It leads to the death camps, to the mustard gas bombings, to the pogroms and invasions, and forced euthanasia, and wholesale slaughter of human beings. It’s inherent to its core ideas. A cult of power means destroying the weak. Totalitarianism means tyranny and enslavement. Perpetual war means perpetual carnage. Death to all fascists. Take care.

[c0venants]

🌷 took a little break from the internet. it was so nice! touching grass...breathing fresh air....i finally felt like i wasn’t going crazy (and not constantly angry because of the news and other social media stuff) i’m trying to break the habit of visiting websites and forums that make me feel upset or angry because i found myself kind of addicted to it, oddly enough?? i’m just trying to live a comfy life and i can’t do it if constantly seek out things that will make me upset ╯︿╰

🌻 i feel bad because i left some of my friends/servers hanging....i promise i will message you guys back soon-ish...i’m just trying to get out of my girl-rotting era (┬┬﹏┬┬)

🌺 i made the decision to take out my septum piercing for good. it feels a little weird, i’ve had it for so long but i feel like i’ve outgrown it. i haven’t worn it down in a really long time...and i don’t know, it just didn’t feel like me anymore? i don’t know if that makes any sense. i still want to get my industrial done, and my tragus & conch re-pierced but i have the hardest time healing cartilage.

🌹 i did lots of stuff on my break. cleaning and organizing, went out to dinner at a fancy italian place, took my mama to a beachside brunch place, lots of walks downtown, saw some live music, went to a wedding...wrote 9k words of OC smooshing 😋💞 i might write in more detail on my personal website diary when i get around to it.  though honestly, my motivation for working on it kind of died because of 2 things:

Imgur planning to remove ALL uploads not associated with an account (I think they have already done it? Idk.) I hate having 1000 accounts for different websites, so the appeal of Imgur for me was having stable uploads without needing to sign in BUT they sold the company or w/e and the policies are changing. Which means...most, if not all the images/links on my website will be BROKEN!!!!! it makes me so sad because i have so much stuff on there. i downloaded my site so i can have a reference to work on when i attempt to swap out the image links and uploads but it’s very daunting and it makes me kind of sad HAHA

Moving to my own host. While I didn’t like a lot of the social aspects of Neocities, it was nice seeing an update feed of my friends / moots / etc. I guess it was also more motivating to know that people actively checked out my stuff. Will I do the Walk of Shame back to NC? Probably not. I really dislike the fearmongering and drama-starting side of that place. I’m too old for all that.

Buuuuut, I am the kind of person who gets really obsessed with a hobby for a while only to drop it completely for something else. Rinse and repeat. Right now I’m really into collecting stickers and beadwork but I’m sure it’ll change in a couple months LOL. I’ve been thinking on and off about just...deleting or abandoning the whole thing but I think I’ll wait so I don’t do anything I regret.

my sister is coming to town at the end of this week! i can’t wait. next week we will be taking a family trip to the condo 💞 i’ll be off work and will probably take another internet break!! i’m going to try and take some photos and just enjoy myself 🌷

[rosallora]

S3E3 A Day In The Strife

Oh boy... Sheridan getting DIRECTLY called out for controlling the weaponry on the station. Holy. What is his PLAN with this whole weapon switcheroo thing. And yeah, the guy ended up standing down. But he’s RIGHT about weapon control on the station. It’s obvious that this is a fearmongering leftover from what’s been happening - I still hate that we have a real 9/11 on our hands and that the show was able to say “oh this’ll happen” YEARS before it happened.

I wonder just how scared this new Narn (Na’far) is of the Centauri. I don’t think he wants to lick the boot but he’s being forced to do so. How terrible, to be used as a tool for a regime that hates you.

“Right now we need a good soldier” I don’t know if that’s CORRECT, Ivanova.

FRANKLIN IS DOING SO MANY STIMS. HE IS ON SPACE COCAINE!!!

I’m going to jam a hot iron down Londo’s throat.

I want a Vir Cotto rebellion arc!!!! Londo is trying to GET RID OF HIM! I love Delenn’s constant verbal “bodyslamming” of him. Delenn is like “you need him” and Londo insists that he’s a nuisance. Because Vir is a good man. Too good for Londo.

I love Michael/Franklin Italian food night. And I’m really proud of Michael for confronting Franklin about the use of the stims. Michael is really trying to be there for his friend... and he’s getting burned for it. Franklin was a real ass for a moment, but he’s... scared. He’s doing the scared thing, because he’s been using stims WAY too much. Everyone on this station is spread way too thin. It really is a Day in the Strife, right now. Everyone is feeling it.

This intelligence probe is... interesting? I don’t really know what I’m supposed to get from this. I think this time would’ve been better spent watching Franklin in the medbay.

G’kar and Na’far talk! Or. Yell-talk. I love that G’kar’s presence and charisma is really a true force to me. And I don’t know about pride. How can the Narn ever get the right foot forward again? He can’t go back to Narn. He’s 100% going to get killed. I don’t want for G’kar to leave the station... or the show.

VIR DOESN’T WANT TO GO TO MINBAR :C Don’t send him away! He’s too good for this. Londo Weh Weh Weh I’ve always been alone YOU HAD VIR! YOU HAD GARIBALDI! You had the ambassadors that you could have been friends with, but like what Delenn said, you were never interested in talking to her!

I think G’kar’s “surrender” was its own kind of pride. I love him.

Garibaldi showing up... pleading with G’kar not to go because he’s going to die if he goes to Narn... no...

Nice to see Sheridan having a smart boy moment! Go go Sheridan!

G’kar... you are needed here... we lovea you... what a beautiful moment.

VIRRRRRRRRRRRRR... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

[louisevonsalome131629]

how is giorgia meloni challenging identity politics when all she does is fearmonger about identity. italian identity, christian identity, traditional family and gender identity. i wish people would realise that identity politics are far from exclusive to "the woke left". the identitarian right pretends the identitarian left wants to strip them of their identity and vice-versa. i simply think identity has no business being in politics period..

[darkmaga-retard]

Andrew Korybko

Sep 17, 2024

But it would also be a mistake to dismiss their impact.

CNN headlined an article last week about how “Pro-Russian posters appear on billboards across Italy” as part of their ongoing campaign fearmongering about alleged Russian influence in the West. The posters themselves are innocuous though and simply call for an end to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. Some municipalities like Rome ordered them taken down for using the city’s name and official symbol, but others let them stay up. Ukraine protested these posters and predictably demanded censorship.

It turns out that all this is organized by a local activist who’s connected to groups formed during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, thus meaning that they represent Italians with heterodox views. This analysis here from February shares more insight into evolving national sentiments towards this conflict, which are increasingly trending towards opposition to perpetuating it, while this one here from last weekend reminds everyone that folks can independently arrive at seemingly Russian-aligned views.

The insight from those two pieces discredits CNN’s innuendo that these posters are physical proof of a Russian influence campaign. Rather, they’re just manifestations of citizens’ constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech, which is being practiced within legal limits in this case. Regardless of one’s views on this issue, it’s important that they don’t exaggerate the impact of these posters, which are unlikely to change Rome’s official stance towards the conflict.

[feydrautha]

Watching that documentary about the Italian jogger who got mauled to death by a bear last year and i wonder if people who don't live in Europe are aware just how much fearmongering across right-wingers there is about the mere existence of predators bigger than foxes

[raccoonshinobi]

America is the only country that will censor another country's language for inclusivity. In other scenarios it's called 'culture erasure'

English is one of many gendered languages, mainly because the language isn't exclusively directed to humans or assigned titles.

Example: peacock/peahen, lion/lioness, tiger/tigress, bull/cow, buck/doe, tomcat/queen, sire/dam, rooster/hen, stud/mare, male/female, mister/miss-missus…

To chastise Spanish-speakers for their gendered language is hypocritical at best. And outright fucking dumb at its absolute worst.

However, English continues to be a gendered language not because of the proclaimed mannerisms of stereotyping and assigned genderism - but due to the ongoing application of pronouns and the war on such.

English will forever be gendered as long as 'he-she', 'him/his-her/hers' and such exists. So why the attack specifically on Spanish - when Portuguese, French, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Irish, Scottish, Romani, etc follow the same language 'contruct'? Why EXCLUSIVELY Spanish?? Is it because it's a common launguage in America??? Isn't that biased???? Isn't that… Racist?????

And amazingly no one even thought about the animal kingdom because animals don't need genderless terms - but humans do??? With the irony that 'human' is a genderless term???

The so-called 'woke' worship with the 'latinx' ideology is a tragic fallacy but they're gravely proud of it. It was never about inclusivity. It's about control over others outside their own - to make everything artificial.

Mass-brainwashing and fearmongering are the best weapons to control the masses - weapons that tyrants use. But I guess trends and mainstream one-sidedness aren't the threats folks should be concerned about…

When intelligence and wisdom are a threatening challenge to good vibes based on lies, madness ensues.

[impliedscamp]

quick reminder that just because a post is in english it doesn’t mean it’s made by or for americans because maremma impestata sto per spezzare le ginocchia a qualcuno

[barrenwomb]

Hey how racist would you say Italy is for a black woman to visit? I've seen a lot of tiktoks about how terrible POC have been treated in Rome and Naples and I wanted your take since I'd like to visit one day

hi! it breaks my heart to say this, but italy is a deeply racist country. racism is a plague, especially anti black racism. italy is not as ethically and racially diverse as countries like the usa, so the racism here is a bit more blatant. take what i’m saying with a grain of salt because i’m a white italian living in italy, but for what i’ve been told people will stare. a lot. especially if you’re a black woman. i’m not trying to do fearmongering or anything like that - i don’t think people will assault you or openly harass you. the racism may be subtle but it’s still racism. i’m sure there are nice and lovely people who will welcome you with open arms, but i don’t feel like telling you italy is a perfectly safe place for a black woman. it’s infuriating and incredibly sad and we have a long way to go. i still hope you will give italy a chance, though. i’m from naples currently living in venice and i’d love to walk you around :) stay safe! <3

[fedtothenight]

to put into perspective, italy’s covid ‘phase two’ looks to me like uk lockdown itself, with the exception that from may 4th italians will be able to visit their loved ones (without organising parties or gatherings, of course), even outside of their own towns/cities, provided they have a self-certificate at all times; other than that, it doesn’t seem to differ much, which puts into perspective what ‘lockdown’ means across countries vs what it means in online spaces that predominantly usa-centric, or in which communication is carried out in english.

it really baffles me to hear people still talk about fearmongering or how lockdown is ‘what introverts have been doing their whole lives’, a ‘blessing for introverts’ because it puts, in startling black and white, the different perceptions of what lockdown means across countries.

 people in italy couldn’t go outside for two months straight; outdoor exercise was banned, grocery-buying allowed once a week, travel from one town to another banned, except for essential, proven, work-related reasons, with police checks left and right; people still can’t go outside without a self-certificate stating why they’re outside. all of this while government ads reiterating lockdown rules are still being aired day and night, just as frequently as before. (not even going into the job aspect of this... not even sure if food deliveries were allowed at all until now, which... i’ll let you guess what it means for a country that wasn’t in a good economic position before this pandemic happened.) 

(i’m sure the situation was similar in china and in spain.)

this is a horrific situation for everyone, but every time i read the word lockdown i wonder, what does this mean here, for you? what will this mean when all of this is said and done? how will the psychological impact differ across continents, across countries?

 this post doesn’t have really a point, not really. just... healing will not just be economic or even physical. healing is going to be invisible to the eye and it’s going to take a while -- and it’s going to look different for everyone. anyways. kudos to my fellow italians for pushing through, you know, singing from their balconies, and producing top-notch memes with unwavering stoicism.

[anghraine]

on COVID-19

I get tamping down on panic and fearmongering, but tbh most of the posts claiming to do it seem to come down to “lol old people and Italians can go fuck themselves #yolo”

[maramahan]

I just saw a commercial promoting the logic “if you can’t spell it then maybe you shouldn’t be eating it”

Y’know. Fearmongering about ~cHeMiCaLs~ and how synthetic meat is ~cOmPliCaTeD~ which equals scary

And I’m like... okay. I guess I’m no longer allowed to eat Italian food ‘cause I sure as heck can’t spell any of that stuff

And I guess anything containing deoxyribonucleic acid is also out. That spooky chemical has a TON of syllables which means it’s gotta be scary as HECK