#splc

[shipperwolf1]

Trashing Their Rights: Alabama town uses ‘debtors’ prison’ for people in arrears on garbage bills

The SPLC and EJI collaborate to take on Alabama's debtor prison system

[zeroar]

An Open Letter to the People Who Support Autism Speaks

Autism Speaks is eighteen years old. The age they should start dismissing themselves as being an authority on autism like they do with autistic adults if they cared about consistency at all.

They were founded in 2005 by a couple of Hollywood executives who grieved the diagnosis of their grandchild. This was a full dozen years after the seminal "Don't Mourn For Us" by Jim Sinclair was penned and presented.

From the beginning, Autism Speaks was anti-autism. They sought a "cure" they could use to erase our existence from the planet, they fomented anti-vax conspiracies which are still plaguing our society today, and they fostered and continue to foster an environment supportive and understanding of child-murder.

But. They were connected to celebrity. And they had the endowment and reach to become the largest anti-autism group in the nation and world.

The primary method of advertising which Autism Speaks used from the beginning is known as "fear appeal".

Typically, they frame autistic children as changeling-like creatures which replace the allistic or neurotypical child you had with one which will never love you and will tear apart your family.

Autism Speaks spotlights the worst of having an autistic family member and pulls the drapes on any mitigating circumstances or assistance. They emphasize the burden we are and the harm caused to our families by our existence.

Autism Speaks then goes on to frame themselves as being the solution and the experts on everything autism. They say, don't listen to autistic people, listen to their parents and other people who have been negatively affected by their existence. Listen to these cherry-picked examples.

They talk vaguely about support for autistic children and families while they campaign ceaselessly to find the genes which contributed to making us... so they can unmake us.

As you might expect for people who frame themselves as being the victim of their children's existences, they have been easily taken in by snake-oil salesmen and conspiracy theorists.

To this day, Autism Speaks continues to emphasize the "environmental causes of autism" even while fully knowing (from the millions of dollars of research they put in pursuing a debunked study) that autism appears to be primarily genetic and our environment really only affects our presentations as autistic, not our realities as autistic.

"Environmental causes" is a dog whistle for vaccines because they no longer feel it is profitable for them to explicitly encourage widespread death and alternative disabilities of children, so they have started only alluding to it and finally, years after the study was debunked and retracted, agree that vaccines do not cause autism.

"Environmental causes" is also a dog whistle for things like heavy metal poisoning causing autism and various other external things that can be "taken care of" via chelation therapy and bleaching our insides. Yes, Autism Speaks is at least partially responsible for spreading bleach "cures".

I believe they've taken it down since I first started advocating for SPLC to recognize Autism Speaks as a hate group—something autistic persons have recognized for years—but as recently as a year ago they were still directing people to seek out these "cures".

They worded it in such a way that it was, "These 'cures' do not work and can cause harm, but you should talk to people who tried them for their children and see for yourself."

It's cruelty for cruelty's sake. Or it's believing scientifically disproven things in a way that promotes the torture of children.

Which brings us to arguably their biggest crime against humanity and against autistic people specifically thus far: the advancement of behaviorism or behavioral conditioning as the "treatment" for autism.

Behaviorism, that is, conversion therapy torture. When done on autistic people, it is commonly called ABA or PBS.

This is another reason why they cling to "environmental causes", because behaviorism is entirely consumed with external presentation.

Autism is a pervasive neurological state which colors every aspect of our lives. Their "solution" is to deny our reality, break us to their will, and have us pretend to be "normal".

Through their efforts, they have ensured conversion therapy is not just used, but frequently the only choice for covered treatment of autistic children.

I say "choice", but the torture is sometimes court-mandated (and this is more common when the parents are marginalized-by-society in some way themselves).

Autism Speaks is so very proud of their government influence. Shortly before I started the petition, I watched in horror as their testimony scuttled a bill at the state level intended to help autistic children which had the support of their parents because not enough torture was included in the "help".

People say they've "changed", yet it's not like their institution is so hallowed and sacrosanct that it is necessary to keep around even as it is continues to encourage harm and death to autistic children and autistic adults.

Autism Speaks is the multi-headed hydra of anti-autism rhetoric and hate in the world today. They have so many branches and have infiltrated so deeply that many of their supporters ( I hope ) are not even aware of the hateful rhetoric and active harm they spread.

People tend not to even question the premise that autistic humans are better off dead than alive, people have for ages not even thought of us as human. Autism Speaks recommends starting behavioral conditioning as early as possible in children as young as two. The least intensive programs they recommend are for dozens of hours a week.

This is what they recommend, push, and lobby for with *all* autistic children.

If they become able to accurately recognize autism in a fetus, then their genocide and eugenics will only accelerate. I am pro-abortion, but no one should be coerced into an abortion with lies and one-sided propaganda.

Showing hateful rhetoric and catastrophizing about our existence to a newly pregnant person is similarly abominable as the sort of thing anti-choice people do.

Autism Speaks has not changed, though they have gotten better at pretending normality. Maybe they put themselves through conversion therapy torture to learn how to pretend to be a force of good while being sympathetic of child murderers?

Or, you know, they've hired publicists and PR people.

If you were duped by them, I'm sorry that their hate is not more well-known. Can you imagine if the first place you felt supported you and understood your struggles was the bad guy? Who would think that by default?

But they are the bad guy. And they're using you. Preying on your isolation and desire for community and support.

They start early. Constant public outreach. Working with cops. University chapters. There may even be entire branches under their umbrella that are actively dedicated to good. But they support the hate and harm by supporting Autism Speaks.

If you support Autism Speaks, then you support the elimination of autism.

If you believe their fear-driven propaganda designed to earn more money for themselves, that may sound like a good thing to you.

But you cannot eliminate autism without eliminating the autistic person, too.

We cannot turn off our autism, some of us can pretend normality—frequently to our great misfortune—but others can't do that either. It's similar to what happens when you force queer people through conversion therapy torture / behaviorism regimes.

There is not some hidden switch in our brains to "fix" us. Even if there was, we would not be ourselves, we would be different people. You cannot separate autism from the autistic.

If this letter spoke to you, I hope you will consider signing my petition to get the Southern Poverty Law Center to track anti-disability hate and to recognize Autism Speaks as an anti-autism group.

You can find the petition here:

Thank you for reading, Zero Richardson

[borderlined-up-for-the-slaughter]

A blank shell of a human who’s only purpose is to serve those who control them? Sounds exactly like me.

[pennsyltuckyheathen]

(via Moms for Liberty Chapter Defends Quoting Hitler in Newsletter | The New Republic)

Moms for Liberty - who claims their mission is to “protect children’ from government - is yet another right wing extremist group that’s funded by “dark money” aka elitist fascist billionaires who are pushing our nation into authoritarianism.   

Southern Poverty Law Center designated them an extremist group.  

[sophieinwonderland]

as far as some reading can tell me, anti endos wouldnt be considered a hate group officially because theres a *list* of hate groups documented by the SPLC, and they have specific criteria to be considered from and what i can see, online hate isnt considered. so anti endos arent a hate group in a technical sense, but they are a group defined by hate.

I don't know if I agree that an organization being excluded for being online makes it not a hate group.

Here's the SPLC's definition of a hate group:

A hate group is an organization that—based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities—has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

And here's their reasoning for not including online groups:

This list of 940 active hate groups is based on information gathered by the SPLC’s Intelligence Project from hate group publications, citizen reports, law enforcement agencies, field sources, web postings and news reports. Only organizations known to be active in 2019, whether that activity included marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, flyering, publishing literature or criminal acts, among other activities, were counted in this list. Entities that appear to exist only in cyberspace are not included because they are likely to be web publishers falsely portraying themselves as powerful, organized groups. This list also does not document activism that takes place only online by individuals or groups, whether on Facebook, VK or similar online forums. Major online web forums have in recent years seen their comment sections and registered users grow, but such activity does not occur in real life and thus is not reflected in this count.

This doesn't actually say that groups not on the list for these reasons aren't hate groups. It merely says they aren't included on the list or that they don't "document" them.

I think there's an implication that online groups could still be technically considered hate groups even if they don't make the SPLC's list due to being based on the net.

I do think that anti-endos as a whole might still avoid this on the grounds of not being organized enough to be a "group."

A “group” is an entity that has a process through which followers identify themselves as being part of the group, such as donating, paying membership dues or participating in activities like meetings and rallies. Individual chapters of a larger organization are each counted separately, because the number indicates reach and organizing activity.

But then, I think individual anti-endo communities would meet this definition, such as anti-endo servers.

Really though, if someone's only counter argument to being called a hate group is "technically, we can't be a hate group because we're not organized enough to be a group," they've already the plot.

[protoslacker]

A day after the 16th Street bombing – not the last one in the city – a lawyer named Charles Morgan famously called out the silent and the complicit, the people who stood by and accepted the status quo, the overtly racist and those too timid or distracted or speak. “Every person in this community who has in any way contributed during the past several years to the popularity of hatred, is at least as guilty, or more so, than the demented fool who threw that bomb,” he said.

John Archibald quoting Charles Morgan in an article at Alabama.com. What Alabama textbooks won’t teach about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

The link Archibald shares is to a worthwhile video by the SPLC"s Learning for Justice.

[commiepinkofag]

'3 Days'

Five members of a white supremacist hate group [Patriot Front] convicted of plotting to riot at a gay pride event will spend three days in jail, a court has ruled.

US white supremacists found guilty of gay pride riot plot

On Friday, a judge ordered all five men to spend three days in jail, on top of the two they have already served. They were also given one year of unsupervised probation, in which they are allowed to leave the state, and were banned from coming within two miles (3.2km) of city parks. The judge ordered their judgement to be withheld, meaning that they can ask the court to retroactively dismiss the case after they complete their punishment.

… Patriot Front was formed in 2017 after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group's manifesto calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups. "Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country," the SPLC said of the group. The anti-racism organisation ADL says Patriot Front belongs to the alt-right segment of white supremacists, but claims to be "patriotic". It has called for "American Fascism", describing it as a "return to the traditions and virtues of our forefathers", ADL says. The group's manifesto claims that non-whites are not "Americans" and its symbols include the fasces - a Roman bundle of sticks representing authority and used last century by Mussolini's Italian Fascists, ADL says.

Mattea Bubalo / BBC

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: The Quillette Editorial Board

Published: Dec 23, 2023

The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was founded in 1971 with a mission to fight poverty and racial discrimination. Its early litigation campaigns, which targeted the Ku Klux Klan and other overtly racist organizations, met with success, and the group soon came to be seen as an authoritative source in regard to right-wing extremism more generally. 

Another form of expertise the organization developed was in the area of marketing—especially when the market in question consisted of deep-pocketed urban liberals. As former SPLC staffer Bob Moser reported in a 2019 New Yorker article, the group has consistently taken on attention-grabbing urgent-seeming causes that its leaders knew could be leveraged as a means to gain publicity and—more importantly—donations. It’s no coincidence that the SPLC’s co-founder and long-time fundraising guru, Morris Dees, had previously operated a direct-mail business that sold cookbooks and tchotchkes. “Whether you’re selling cakes or causes, it’s all the same,” Dees told a journalist in 1988.

Dees’ big fundraising break at the SPLC came when he got access to the direct-mail list from the 1972 presidential campaign of Democrat George McGovern. The SPLC co-founder went on to maximize the SPLC’s revenues through what would now be known as targeted methods. According to one former legal colleague, for instance, Dees rarely used his middle name—Seligman—in SPLC mailings, except when it came to “Jewish zip codes.”

Thanks to Dees’ slick marketing expertise, the SPLC was eventually taking in more money than it paid out in operational expenses. (As of October 2022, its endowment fund was valued at almost US$640 million.) But over time, his hard-sell tactics began to alienate co-workers, as there was an obvious disconnect between the real class-based problems they observed in society and the fixations of the naïve northern donors whose wallets Dees was seeking to pry open.

“I felt that [Dees] was on the Klan kick because it was such an easy target—easy to beat in court, easy to raise big money on,” former SPLC attorney Deborah Ellis told Progressive writer John Egerton. “The Klan is no longer one of the South’s biggest problems—not because racism has gone away, but because the racists simply can’t get away with terrorism any more.”

On March 14, 2019, Dees—by now 82 years old, but still listed as the SPLC’s chief trial lawyer—was fired amid widespread rumors that he’d been the subject of internal sexual-harassment accusations. His affiliation was scrubbed from the group’s web site; and the organization’s president, Richard Cohen, cryptically (but damningly) declared that, “when one of our own fails to meet [SPLC] standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.” (Less than two weeks later, Cohen himself left the organization, casting his resignation as part of a transition “to a new generation of leaders.”)

In describing his tenure at the SPLC during the early 2000s, Moser argued that the very structure of the organization betrayed its hypocrisy: Here was an entity dedicated to social justice (as we would now call it), yet which was run by an extremely well-paid, almost exclusively white, corps of lawyers, administrators, and fund-raisers who ruled over a mixed-race corps of junior staff. As far back as the 1980s, Dees was openly admitting that he saw the fight against poverty as passé, and admitted that the “P” in SPLC was an anachronism. Jaded staff began ruefully referring to their own flashy headquarters as the “Poverty Palace.”

Dees and Cohen may have left the Poverty Palace, but the SPLC’s tendency to betray its founding principles clearly remains a problem, as illustrated by a new SPLC report released under the auspices of what the group dubs “Combating Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Through Accessible Informative Narratives.” (This verbal clunker seems to have been reverse-engineered in order to yield the acronym, “CAPTAIN.”)

The report purports to demonstrate “the perils of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” and “anti-trans narratives and extremism.” Much like the dramatically worded hard-sell direct-mail campaigns that the SPLC started up under Dees, it’s marketed as a matter of life and death: According to the deputy director of research for the SPLC’s “Intelligence Project,” the “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience” uncovered by the SPLC has “real-life, often life-threatening consequences for trans and non-binary people.”

At this point, it should be stressed that there is certainly nothing wrong with the SPLC—or anyone else—campaigning for the legitimate rights of people who are transgender. Such a campaign would be entirely in keeping with the SPLC’s original liberal ethos. Just as no one should be denied, say, an apartment, a marriage license, or the right to vote based on his or her race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation, no trans person should be denied these rights and amenities simply because he or she experiences gender dysphoria.

But the SPLC’s report hardly confines itself to such unassailable liberal principles. The real point of the project, it seems, was to catalogue and denounce public figures who’ve expressed dissent from the most extreme demands of trans-rights activists—specifically, (1) the demand that children and adolescents who present as transgender must instantly be “affirmed” in their dysphoric beliefs, even if such affirmation leads to a life of sterility, surgical disfigurement, drug dependence, and medical complications; and (2) the demand that biological men who self-identify as women must be permitted unfettered access to protected women’s spaces and sports leagues.

The SPLC’s authors seek to cast their ideological enemies as hate-addled reactionaries whose nefarious activities must “be understood as part of the historical legacy of white supremacy and the political aims of the religious right.” And it is absolutely true that some of the organizations they name-check are hard-right, socially conservative outfits that endorse truly transphobic (and homophobic) beliefs.

But many of the supposed transphobes targeted by the report aren’t even conservative—let alone members of the religious right. In a multitude of cases, they’re simply parents, therapists, and activists who argue the obvious fact that human sexual biology doesn’t evanesce into rainbow dust the moment that a child—or middle-aged man—asserts that he or she was “born in the wrong body.”

It’s also interesting to note who gets left out of the SPLC’s analysis. The most influential figures leading the backlash against (what some call) “gender ideology” are women such as author J.K. Rowling and tennis legend Martina Navratilova, both of whom come at the issue from explicitly feminist perspectives. Being successful public figures, neither woman needs a cent from the conservative think tanks that the SPLC presents as being back-office puppet-masters of the alleged anti-trans conspiracy outlined in the CAPTAIN report.

In keeping with the conspiracist motif that runs through the document, the authors have provided spider-web diagrams that set out the connections binding this (apparently) shadowy cabal. In this regard, it seems that Quillette itself served as one of the SPLC’s sources: In a section titled, “Group Dynamics and Division of Labor within the Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network,” the authors footnote “an August 23, 2023 podcast for Quillette,” wherein

it was revealed that [Colin] Wright is in a relationsihp [sic] with journalist Christina Buttons, who is an advisoary [sic] board member of [the Gender Dysphoria Alliance] with Drs. Lisa Littman and Ray Blanchard, an editoral [sic] board member of Springer’s Archives of Sexual Research [a mistaken reference to the Archives of Sexual Behavior] with J. Michael Bailey. Notably, Buttons and Wright are interviewed by host Jonathan Kay. In addition to hosting Quillette’s podcast, Kay serves on FAIR’s board of advisors.

We’ve chosen to highlight this particular (typo-riddled) text from the report not just because of the absurd suggestion that our publication has enlisted in an imaginary “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience network,” but also because the above-quoted roll call of supposed gender villains illustrates the intellectual dishonesty that suffuses the whole report.

Let’s go through the references one by one, in the order in which they are presented. The Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) is a group led by people who are themselves transgender, and who are “concerned about the direction that gender medicine and activism has taken.” Are we to imagine that its members are directing transphobia—against themselves? Lisa Littman, formerly of Brown University, is a respected academic who’s published a peer-reviewed analysis of Rapid Onset Gender Disorder. Ray Blanchard is a well-known University of Toronto psychiatrist. The Archives of Sexual Behavior is a peer-reviewed academic journal in sexology. Michael Bailey is a specialist in sexual orientation and gender nonconformity at Northwestern University. Colin Wright is a widely published writer (including at Quillette) with a PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara. (The SPLC’s claim that he is in a relationship with journalist Christina Buttons, who also writes about gender issues, is completely true. But the fact that the group saw fit to report this fact as if it were evidence of sinister machinations says far more about the report’s authors than it does about either Wright or Buttons.) FAIR, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism, is a classically liberal group led by a Harvard Law School graduate named Monica Harris. Do any of these people or groups sound like extremists?

The fact that the SPLC is attempting to market its report as a blow against the “anti-LGBTQ+” movement, writ large, is itself quite laughable, since many of the activists who’ve been arguing for a more balanced approach to gender rights are themselves either gay (as with Navratilova and Julie Bindel) or (as with the founders of the GDA) transgender.

Others on the SPLC gender-enemies list are author Abigail Shrier, and therapists Sasha Ayad, and Stella O’Malley. These women openly broadcast their views in best-selling books, as well as mainstream magazines and newspapers. The idea that the SPLC has successfully “exposed” these women through some kind of investigation, as suggested by the title that’s been slapped on the CAPTAIN report, would be ludicrous even if they’d said anything scandalous (which they haven’t).

And what course of future action does the SPLC endorse? For one, it concludes that educators should stigmatize gender-critical views as analogous to “racism, sexism, and heteronormativity.” The report's authors also want academic journals to sniff out groups that “espouse an anti-LGBTQ+ ideology” (as that latter term is speciously defined by the SPLC). And in a final flourish, the group urges reporters to “be aware of the narrative manipulation strategies and the cooptation of scientific credentials and language by anti-trans researchers when sourcing stories about trans experiences.”

With this last point, we get to the real nub: The apparent goal is for this report to be read as a catalogue of people, ideas, and groups that must be shunned. Indeed, the authors explicitly cite the work of one Andrea James, a once-respected arts producer who, as Jesse Singal has documented, now runs a creepy (“stalker” is the word Singal uses) web site called Transgender Map, which lists personal details of anyone whom James deems a gender heretic. When it comes to one-on-one communication, James’ manner of dealing with critics is exemplified by an email sent to bioethicist Alice Dreger, in which James referred to Dreger’s then-five-year-old son as a “womb turd.”

One way to describe the CAPTAIN report is as an SPLC-branded rehash of the information contained on Transgender Map. And one can understand why the authors thought that such a gambit might work. The SPLC already publishes other curated lists of hatemongers—e.g., its “Hatewatch” service, “Hate Map,” and “Intelligence Report.” It wasn’t such a long shot to imagine that this new report might convince readers to treat the listed “Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network” acolytes as equally disreputable.

But if that was the authors’ goal, it doesn’t seem to have been achieved. The SPLC report landed with something of a thud—and has attracted little attention on social media except insofar as it was mocked by its intended targets.

This may have something to do with the report’s timing. For several years now, a backlash against this kind of gender agitprop has been building within many of the same liberal and progressive circles that the SPLC has traditionally targeted for donations. The trend is reflected by the rise of such groups as the LGB Alliance, a coalition of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who are fed up with the ideological takeover of LGBT groups by a militant subset of trans activists.

The same trend is playing out internationally. While the SPLC does its best to heap blame on America’s conservative Christians, many of western Europe’s governments (none of which are in thrall to the Heritage Foundation or the Charles Koch Foundation) have been following a more gender-critical path for years.

Just a week after the SPLC put out its report, in fact, the UK government published new guidelines advising teachers that they have no duty to automatically “affirm” a child’s assertion that he or she is transgender; and that, in considering such situations, teachers should speak with a child’s parents and consider whether the child is under undue influence from social media or peers. Sweden, Finland, and Norway—hardly bastions of Christian conservatism—have also rolled back policies that rush children into transition. In Canada, several provinces have recently enacted rules that require parents to be notified when a child seeks to transition, even in the face of a sustained media campaign that repeats lurid claims to the effect that such policies will cause an epidemic of trans suicides. Are all of these foreign governments also complicit in the vast “junk-science and disinformation campaign” against trans people that the SPLC claims to have “exposed”?

The SPLC would hardly be the first progressive organization whose reputation has suffered by going all-in on the gender issue. The American Civil Liberties Union, which also was rooted in traditional liberal values before succumbing to more faddish progressive tendencies, has attracted ridicule due to its parroting of slogans such as “men who get their periods are men,” and the claim that males have no “unfair advantage” over females in sports.

These organizations have never been shy about angering conservatives and reactionaries; indeed, they wear such anger as a badge of pride. But their cultish refusal to engage with the reality of biological sex also antagonizes progressive feminists seeking to protect female spaces from biological men, and LGB activists who see the attempted erasure of sex-based attraction as a species of progressive homophobia.

Which is to say that the SPLC’s report seems not only intellectually dishonest, but also self-destructive. While the SPLC leaders who green-lit this project once may have been able to bank on the popularity of pronoun checks and esoteric gender identities among the wealthy white coastal progressives who comprise the bulk of their donors, this is an ideological movement that’s decidedly past its peak. It’s a marketing error that the savvy Dees likely never would have made.

The SPLC obviously does a lot more than lend its name to sloppily edited gender propaganda: A review of its press feed shows that it still has staff working traditional legal beats such as voters’ rights, police accountability, and humane treatment for prisoners. But when an organization publishes misleading materials in regard to one issue, the natural effect is to raise serious questions about the group’s values and credibility more generally—questions that SPLC supporters will want to think about the next time one of the group’s fundraisers hits them up for a donation.

==

This is what institutional capture looks like.

[healingdives]

Syafakillah or Syafakallah Meaning

"Syafakillah" and "Syafakallah" are both expressions of care and concern for someone who is sick, and they are often used in Arabic-speaking communities as a way to show support and seek Allah's blessings for the person's recovery.

Syafakillah means "May Allah heal you" for a woman, while "Syafakallah" is intended for a sick man.

The use of "Syafakumullah" when addressing more than one man reflects the importance of showing respect and consideration for others in this context.

Additionally, these expressions demonstrate the belief in the power of Allah to heal and provide comfort, which can offer comfort and solace to the person who is sick, as well as to those who are offering their well wishes.

This is a commonly recited Dua (supplication) in Islam as a way of expressing gratitude and submission to Allah. It's also a reminder that health and all other blessings come from Allah and that we should turn to Him in times of need, including when someone is sick. The person reciting this Dua is seeking Allah's guidance, comfort, and healing for the person who is sick.

[shipperwolf1]

Alabama town uses ‘debtors’ prison’ for late garbage bills

More info on the abuse suffered by the citizens of Valley, Alabama

[geezerwench]

SPLC names Moms for Liberty an “extremist” group for their anti-LGBTQ+ activism

SPLC said the hate group is "at the forefront" of the "mobilization" of right-wing extremist groups claiming to fight for "parents' rights."

By Molly Sprayregen Wednesday, June 7, 2023

[ausetkmt]

Kanye West to Buy Parler Amid Backlash Over Antisemitic Rants | Vanity Fair

Just days after going on antisemitic rants that earned him plaudits from the far-right, Kanye West, who now goes simply by Ye, has agreed to buy Parler, the conservative-friendly social media platform that’s become a hotbed for antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. “In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” said the star rapper, producer, and fashion designer in a statement released by Parler. The decision comes roughly a week after West gave a widely scorned Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson, who allowed the rapper to go on a number of uninterrupted antisemitic diatribes, according to Vice, which obtained footage that had been edited out of the official broadcast.

Parlement Technologies, the parent company of Parler, described the pending sale as “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space” for West, who was recently locked out of Twitter and Instagram over accusations of antisemitism. “Once again, Ye proves that he is one step ahead of the legacy media narrative,” the company said in a Monday statement. “Parlement will be honored to help him achieve his goals,” the company wrote, adding that the deal “will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech.” While the terms of the agreement have yet to be announced, the deal is set to be finalized at some point in this year’s last fiscal quarter.

Parlement Technologies, which will continue supplying technical support and cloud service to Parler upon the deal’s completion, is currently headed up by George Farmer, the husband to conservative media personality Candace Owens. Owens has been a staunch defender of Ye throughout his latest controversy. At a recent Paris Fashion Week event, Owens and West posed in Yeezy-branded shirts with “White Lives Matter” emblazoned on them, a white supremacist phrase that arose out of racist grievances with the Black Lives Matter movement, per the SPLC. Owens has also disputed claims that Ye’s online remarks—in which he vowed to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”—were antisemitic. “If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic,” the commentator argued Monday. "You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This does not represent the beginning of the Holocaust.”

West, who has an estimated net worth of $2 billion, has built much of his wealth from his line of Yeezy sneakers, which are made in collaboration with Adidas, and the blockbuster deal he struck with Gap in 2020. However, West cut ties with Gap last month, and Adidas recently announced that its Yeezy partnership was “under review.” JPMorgan Chase has also severed its relationship with West—a schism the rapper has described as an apparent relief. “I feel happy to have crossed the line of that idea so we can speak openly about things, like getting canceled by a bank,” he told Page Six.

The most important thing right now is to get him help, before he self immolates

[pennsyltuckyheathen]

Gestapo Nerd Stephen Miller has been grinding the axe for white straight male grievance since he was in college.  He’s used his elitist privilege to perpetuate racism and bigotry, two “qualities” inherent to MAGA Republicans. 

He and his America First Legal organization ‘are on a mission to address “reverse discrimination” and erase corporate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.  

Miller has been labeled an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his white nationalist and anti-immigrant activities.  

[sophieinwonderland]

So are you classifying endogenic systems as a race, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/nationality? Based on the definition you’re using.

To be honest, I think arguing the semantics of whether it's acceptable for a group to dedicate itself to hating people for having uncommon neurotypes because it's not technically considered a disability has major "Trump can't be racist against Mexicans because Mexican isn't a race" vibes. If you're only defense for bigotry is weird technicalities, you've already lost.

"We've decided it's okay to be hateful and bigoted towards this specific marginalized group of neurodivergents because it's technically not a disability" isn't the slam dunk argument you think it is.

Regardless, I'll refer back to the SPLC definition.

The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as an organization or collection of individuals that – based on its official statements or principles, the statements of its leaders, or its activities – has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. An organization does not need to have engaged in criminal conduct or have followed their speech with actual unlawful action to be labeled a hate group.

This definition doesn't use specific categories to be applicable.

There also is a point worth noting that anti-endos regularly malign spiritual plurality and associated religions. There is also a ton of hate and vitriol directed at religions and spiritualities that incorporate what might be described as hallucinatory or dissociative experiences as part of their spiritual practices.

[tomorrowusa]

The Proud Boys and similar groups have been shifting their attacks to the LGBTQ community and to those who favor reproductive freedom.

In the first six months of 2022, the Proud Boys counterprotested or harassed people on at least 28 separate occasions at LGBTQ and reproductive justice events around the country – together acting as a coordinated attack on gender equity and bodily autonomy. Their activity rose significantly in June as they targeted Pride activities. In that month alone, members of the Proud Boys gathered to protest or harass attendees at 14 different LGBTQ and reproductive justice-oriented events.

The Proud Boys currently face intense scrutiny for their role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. More than 40 members face charges related to their alleged activities on Jan. 6, including charges of seditious conspiracy brought against their former chairman and several other leaders. But that legal pressure has not slowed the group’s activities. To the contrary, the past 18 months since the insurrection has been the most active period in the group’s history. Last year, their ranks swelled to 72 chapters, up from 43 in 2020.

The Proud Boys and their allies are following the lead of extremist Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Republican Party has declared war on LGBTQ Americans and on the sanctity of reproductive freedom.

[O]ne needs only to look to the GOP. A growing radical wing of the party has in recent months embraced militant opposition to LGBTQ people and reproductive rights – a position reflected most clearly in in their legislative assault on trans people and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Proud Boys’ harassment and violence now help reinforce a multi-fronted attack against those fighting for bodily autonomy, racial equity and democracy, and their current activities are a sign of how tightly interwoven extremist activists such as the Proud Boys have become with the GOP.

We can combat hate groups by electing prosecutors (district attorneys, state’s attorneys, etc.) and state attorneys general who will go after domestic terrorists. The Trump administration had more or less banned the expression “domestic terrorists” so it wouldn’t offend its allies on the violent loony right.

These groups are active and organized. If they don’t get effective legal pushback then they will become even more brazen.

Far-right extremist groups, in general, are increasingly focused on anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activism. The same day the Proud Boys interrupted a story time in San Lorenzo, California, for example, police also arrested 31 members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front for conspiring to riot at a Pride event in Idaho. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, abortion-related events involving far-right groups such as militias and the Proud Boys have already increased by 90% compared to 2021. Their participation in anti-LGBTQ demonstrations is set to match or outpace last year, which was seven times higher than in 2020.

It is not a coincidence that the Proud Boys and other far-right groups are simultaneously ramping up their anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion activism. These groups target LGBTQ people and defenders of reproductive justice because, collectively, their existence and advocacy upset the strict gender hierarchy the Proud Boys and the broader far right seek to impose.

There is no such thing as an unimportant election. Register and vote and never miss an election. View voting as part of your lifestyle – rather than as an extracurricular activity.

I Will Vote