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#the root of fascism is the denial of love!
rhube · 12 days
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Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hated
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Someone recommended the documentary film, Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hated, from Netflix, in the notes to that post about JKR's holocaust denialism. It is so, so worth watching.
It's about the culture and people of the lgbtq+ communities in pre-WWII Germany - especially those who frequented the Eldorado club and/or were involved in the Institute for Sexology before the rise of Hitler - and what happened to them once the Nazis came to power.
It starts off as a really wonderful celebration of the sanctuary and sense of changing times and possibilities created by these wonderful, vibrant people. It includes footage of the first trans women to undergo gender-affirming surgery - three smiling trans women, in colour, from nearly 100 years ago. In some cases, there are even interviews with people who survived from that time.
Obviously, sadly, unforgiveably, it does not last. And the documentary tells you far more than I have ever heard before about what exactly happened to LGBTQ+ people over that period of time.
This includes not just gay men and trans women, but lesbians, poly, non-binary, and bisexual folk. And how this related to the Nazis' general philosophies.
It is crucial to understand that the reason terfism and fascism are such close buddies is that their gender ideology (hah! They actually have one) centres around a woman's role being to breed a pure, Aryan race. So they must only sleep with their husbands, they must not remove themselves from the breeding pool by sleeping with each other, and similarly men have a duty to sire children (if they are of good breeding stock), so sleeping with other men, spreading their 'seed' indescriminately, or taking on the characteristics associated with women - all that threatens the central Nazi thesis that they must create and protect the 'superior' race.
This is why transphobia is and always will be gender essentialism, sexism, and racism bundled up in a trench coat, waiting to spill out. Because of the Nazi roots.
But don't listen to me. If you have the spoons and it would not be too triggering for you, I really recommend watching it.
One of the interviewees, who was a teenager who was falling in love with another boy as the Nazis came to power, tells the story of how they became separated, and how he eventually learned his first love died of starvation in a concentration camp. I wanted to get the exact quote down, but Netflix started playing up when I paused it, so I will just say that he said the reason he wanted to be interviewed was for his lost love, Lumpi. So that Lumpi would be remembered.
For those of us who are able, I think we have a duty to learn about and remember those wonderful, lively people who went before us, and who were cruelly taken away.
The Nazis wanted to erase lgbtq+ people from history. And we can resist that. We can remember.
Obviously content warnings for Nazis, the holocaust, genocide, death, homophobia, transphobia, and footage from concentration camps. It is handled, in my opinion, very well, but may still be difficult to watch. And many of the interviews are in German, so disabled people like me who struggle with subtitles may find it quite draining. But you can pause and watch in chunks.
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americanredragger · 3 years
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A Letter to My Mother (That I am too scared to send)
Okay. We’re having this talk now. I have been putting it off because there’s never been a way for me to keep my cool long enough to say it straight. I’ve been nice, I’ve been polite. I’ve walked away from conversations rather than address this directly because I don’t want to lose my mom.
Yesterday was unlike anything in American history. There is no both-sides-ism to be taken here. There is no even vaguely similar violence unleashed by the Left. This isn’t to say that NO violence has ever been unleashed by the left, it can and does happen. But nothing like this. This is unprecedented in both it's scope and audacity.
Unless you can point to an instance in which a Democrat president (or Senator, or Governor) whipped up a riot and unleashed those rioters on the Seat of Government of the United States of America, causing it to be breached and overrun by a hostile force for the first time in 207 years, the things don’t equate at all.
Unless you can point to a riot held by alt-right wingers in which the police cracked down on them HARD to the level of being condemned by the International Criminal Court as bordering on war crimes, the things don’t equate at all.
This was a direct assault on our government by a crowd whipped up by a sitting president. This has never happened before.
The Capitol Police removed the barricades and guided the insurrectionists in.
They chatted and took selfies with them. Exchanged fist bumps with them.
The seditionists were allowed to leave with few arrests, just… gently guided out once the barbarian hordes had their fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPTjQZBLhQ
And yes, Trump (eventually) told them to go home, but refused to condemn what they'd done and finished his speech with "We love you. You're very special." and continued to refer to his political opponents as "evil".
This is quite literally unprecedented in American history. As in, nothing comes close. That's what "unprecedented" means.
If this had been BLM, the response would have been entirely different. DC would be on lockdown. The police would be bringing WAR to the streets. There would be helicopters, APCs, and beat cops dressed like the US Army rolling into Baghdad in 2003. The DC area hospitals would be overwhelmed with rioters suffering from horrific head and spine injuries from trigger-happy use of rubber bullets and night-sticks. Hell, Trump tear-gassed ACTUAL peaceful protesters last summer just so he could stage an awkward photo op in front of a church, which even the Clergy called him out on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhYhu7NYI
Don't you DARE equate the two.
I'm tired of the whataboutisms. I'm tired of ignoring the evidence right in front of you. Donald Trump is the single most corrupt, evil man America has ever elected to the presidency. He has worked hard to transform the Republican party into something that actual Holocaust survivors and experts have called "Neofascist" and even less flattering terms.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2020/10/25/holocaust-survivor-fears-rising-tide-ugliness-blames-trump-opinion/3740781001/
https://forward.com/scribe/455507/100-year-old-holocaust-survivor-compares-trump-to-hitler/
https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article223718330.html
Historians and victims of fascism the world over point to what Trump and his transformed Republican party have been doing as president when asked how the Weimar Republic fell and the Nazi regime rose.
The overwhelming amount of terrorist attacks in the last five years have been Trump supporters (Well over half stemming from that singular cause, with the rest divvied among a MASSIVE swathe of motives), but none more so overwhelmingly so than yesterday's.
There is no left wing equivalent for this in America until you go all the way back to the Weather Underground bombings, and even they were not goaded on by the incumbent politicians of a party.
Your party has been STOLEN from you. The Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is no more. And now it’s stealing you from your children as we have watched you and dad drift further and further into the Hannity-Limbaugh-Carlson echo chamber.
88 years ago next month, right wing extremists set fire to the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. Over the next few days, they seeded reports that it was actually the communists, maybe socialists, no, it was definitely anarchists… or was it trade unionists? Either way, it HAD to have been The Left who burned down the Reichstag.
This was used to expand and hold onto the power of the Chancellor, a man who need not be named. The next few years proved to be sorrowful for everyone.
That same blame-shifting is already happening again, but it's not in some far away country, it's happening here, where we all thought it couldn't.
This sort of event is unprecedented in the United States, or it was until yesterday. It is not so unprecedented elsewhere.
The only difference is that this attempt failed.
The attempt was made because Trump’s own administration found that this was the most secure election in American history, and Trump’s lawsuits to the contrary were laughed out of court by Trump-appointed judges, including his Supreme Court justices, and his exceedingly incompetent and well-documented attempts to get state officials to overturn a legitimate election all failed.
I still believe you and dad are good, honest people. Patriots who want America to do well in the world.
You can not-like Nancy Pelosi, or Obama, or Biden, or Hilary Clinton. That’s your prerogative, and we’ll agree on plenty in that regard. You’re well within your rights to believe that my preferred economics don’t work. We’ll disagree heartily, but that’s normal for families, especially between parents and their kids.
But your party has been hijacked by neofascists, malignant narcissists, and white supremacists.
I am on my knees BEGGING you to see what so many experts and victims have been warning you about for years.
The Left did not do this.
Trump did.
You have been led astray by an vain, selfish, greedy demagogue, a well documented honorless grifter who embodies everything Christ opposed, and uses people until they have nothing more to give him and discards them. He has cloaked this latest grift in the American flag and set a cross upon it, the only way Fascism ever COULD take root in America, as we saw with Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare.
It’s changing you. You can’t see it because it’s happening to you, but those around you can, and it’s scaring us.
Please, finally, truly see this. I want my parents back. You’re going down a path I can’t follow and it’s breaking my heart.
In 2016, I broke from the Republican Party because I saw calamity coming in the nomination of Donald Trump. Only 4 years later, and history has soberingly showed me that I was more right than I could have ever guessed, and my world view has never been the same since. I have looked back at the political opinions I wrote and posted then, and they were so selfish and hateful that it was physically painful for me to put myself through that review. I was a puppet. I couldn’t have seen it at the time because I was at the center of it, and I still live in dread of the monster I would have become if I’d kept to that path. I see that same kind of speech coming from you now - the jingoism, the recycled talking points, the Orwellian denials, and the near-unquestioning loyalty to the stars of the Republican Party and their mouthpieces at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and the AM Radio circuit. I see the most selfish parts of who I used to be, and I know that deep down, you are not that person because I still see you constantly striving to be a good mother, a good Christian, and a model human being.
I’m imploring you to finally look at the evidence, the boundless clear and present evidence, and see what men like Gingrich, McConnell, and Trump have turned your party into. What they are turning you into, the same as they tried with me.
I know you wouldn’t be happy as a Democrat - I myself am only begrudgingly a Democrat because the system doesn’t allow for a viable alternative (and that’s a whole different issue that deserves it’s own library of articles). I’m not trying to convert you. I just need to know that you can look at the evidence with your own eyes like I did and see that you’ve been played for a sucker by men who cry wolf and distract you by having you chase shadows while they line their pockets with money and power. Please stop listening to these monsters, stop swallowing their poison. I know how easy it is to be in that world because I myself have lived in it for most of my life. I fully understand the appeal: there are easy answers for everything, you always know who the enemy is and who your supposed allies and benefactors are. But I also left that behind, and yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot, and frequently. But despite the pain, I know I am better off for having done it.
Yes, I have to question the people who claim to represent me more. I have to question EVERYTHING more because I now know that nothing is as clear cut as I thought it was - once removed from Plato’s Cave, I no longer had the luxury of a simple world. And yet I am still happier because I am so much more my own person now. Yes I falter, and worse still, some days I fall back into the old ways of thinking, but now I recognize that for what it is and it is easier to deal with.
You’ll always be a Conservative, Mom, but I see you on the path that I was on, a path that nearly robbed me of my critical thinking and objectivity, and one which would have weaponized my sense of patriotism to benefit people who are not me. You have kept that course far longer than I. Please put aside the whataboutisms, the both-sides-isms, and finally see the evil, ravenous monster that killed your party from the inside and now wears its skin to deceive you into feeding it further.
I don’t ask that you agree with my politics or economics. I AM begging you though to split from this political machine which is changing you into something I no longer recognize. I want the parents I used to have, the ones who could look at things objectively and form their own opinions instead of repeating talk show buzz lines.
Please, recognize the shadows on the wall of the cave that wicked men are showing you are NOT reality. Please, join me in the truth of the world outside.
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mrssarablack · 4 years
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I’ve been quiet.
I realize this. I’ve become painfully aware of my lack of voice in regards to activism or hot takes on the news. For the duration of June I stuck to activists posts and news, which has never been a thing I’m super vocal about on this page. I just happened to move my content over at either the exact right time to facilitate the shift of content, or the exact wrong time to keep to my regular scheduled programming running. Either way, I’m not sorry. Nor do I expect I’ll be able to keep my mouth (or rather my keyboard) shut long when things feel overwhelmingly outrageous in the real world. 
My intent going into the month was to back off a little on the political posts and take back the “safe space” I have here for cultivated fun in what is usually a very chaotic day to day life. I would continue the activism but perhaps less so on here. That’s not to say I wouldn’t actively be doing other things. I’m not yielding my support by any means.  I had intended to take this month to mostly focus my support of the BLM community through prioritizing putting my money where my mouth was failing to find words. Shifting from broad political posts about the injustices to instead turning it towards better educating myself, actually getting through the large stack of books I intend to get through, prioritizing purchasing items from black owned businesses where it makes sense to, donating to the charities and organizations that I can. This is the quiet work that is also necessary for good allyship. But then I found myself wrestling with the growing feeling that quiet can lead to appearance that whatever I was presenting in June was instead a performative allyship.
That’s hardly the case at all.
At the end of June I made a joke about trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever July 2020 had in store for us. I was not prepared. 
I met the reality of July 2020 four days later, like so many of us, and I was not even close to prepared for what was coming and I froze in the wake of it. I was not prepared to watch snippets of the Orange Man’s speech at Rushmore. The speech, that without even dicing his words was a hate speech. It was a proclamation, of sorts, against the citizens who were, and are still are, actively protesting for the BLM movement throughout the country. It was a formal declaration of “us vs them” in a way he has not actually done before. The intent is always there, his supporters will forever deny it, but it is. His own history shows he has always been a racist. That this man cares more for tributes, than the people he is meant to govern. Meanwhile, Native protesters were yelled at, by Trump supporters, to “go back to where they came from.” In the wake of this speech and the juxtaposition of it being given on stolen lands while the people who see them as sacred were accosted... I found very little to be proud of on July 4th. 
By the time I processed that moment, we had sped straight into ICE declaring that they would not extend the rule allowing foreign students to continue their education here because of the mandate against online learning. This rule makes sense, if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic. But we are. 
Everything about this decision was cruel and xenophobic. It didn’t make sense economically, considering how much money Universities get in tuition from their foreign students. It didn’t make sense logistically, when so many students wouldn’t be able to get back home. Our immigration centers are already a fucking mess, but that’s a deep dive for another time. All it was, was an attempt to strong arm schools into accepting the administration's stance that Covid-19 is fully under control and that everything should go back to normal. It is the same reason they are threatening to cut funding for public educational institutions if they do not open completely in the fall. Yeah, kids at school is a far more ideal scenario than online classes, but not at the risk of their or their teachers' lives. The schools see that. The administration doesn’t. They don’t care. They simply want to force their narrative in whatever way they can. 
Upon a lawsuit, they walked back their proclamation of denying foreign students their education but, from what I have seen, there are still a lot of things up in the air. From accounts I’ve read on reddit the administration may choose to apply the former ruling to  first year students who may have invested in a future they now won’t get. They may deny foreigners the right to apply to after graduation work programs that formerly they were allowed to be in provided they had the right visas. If they did this they will claim it is to provide american’s the best chance at new work first. America first is ringing through this whole thing, and millions are left wondering how this is all going to actually pan out. 
Let me reiterate now the fact that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. This is a fact. A fact that the administration wants to deny till every last one of us has encountered this illness personally. The Orange Man is actively swatting Fauci away like he is nothing more than an annoying fly. He doesn’t like the “doom and gloom” truth of this virus so he denies it. He is actively pushing to block new money for further testing and tracing for the CDC because he doesn’t “like the numbers”. The CDC no longer has control of collecting patient data to help track covid-19. Something that has been used so that people in authoritative positions can make adequate decisions in regards to the virus. Less information will lead to more spread. Florida is now the new epicenter and the sunbelt, as a whole, looks bad. Things are not good and we’re still fighting with fellow citizens who don’t want to wear a mask. A simple act to help protect others is a political stance. I don’t understand it, and I’m not going to pretend or even try to. It’s not a hoax. The virus is real and it is deadly. Even those that recover from it have had lasting damage to their lungs among other side effects. 
But I digress, instead I will now get to the reason that brought me to this very long political monologue: in Portland, Federal agents fired tear gas on protesters after declaring it a riot. This is not the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last. Allegedly, these federal agents are part of the customs and border protection agency, and they also took protesters up into unmarked vans and detained them. Citizens who are executing their right to protest were kidnapped by federal agents. Think about that. This is why the declaration of ANTIFA being a terrorist group was a bad omen. They are not a membership based organization, they don’t have meetings, they just kind of are... and that fact alone can be exploited. Anyone can potentially be dubbed ANTIFA if a federal agent deems them acting radically in the eyes of this administration. 
This is the roots of fascism in America. It is masquerading as nationalism and to some degree that's legitimate but the effects of those beliefs are becoming a thin facade for the other.
It’s almost undeniable at this point. This is the reason I started with the beginning of this month because between the hate speech, the stances that support racism, the xenophobic decisions, the active statement that there is no problem with the virus, and now kidnapping citizens are all part of a fascist playbook. Speaking out against a dictatorship is a death sentence. But a dictatorship is anti-American. If you believe in the idyllic America we were taught exists. I am not sure that America has ever fully existed.... but maybe somewhere she does, but, oh, is she flawed… but that’s okay because admitting to those flaws can lead to growth. Owning all of our past will lead to growth. But denial, denial leads us down a path to losing ourselves. 
My boyfriend is right, I’m a fighter. I will get up and I will fight even if there are tears in my eyes. But that doesn’t mean I am not tired. I find myself so heartbroken over the events of the last two months that I fail to have words to express the effect of keeping my eyes open to the world actually has on me. One thing I have figured out is despite what the president says, I don’t hate my country. I am part of the left, yes, but I love it. I can say that because I wouldn’t be so upset about all that is going on if I didn’t. I realize there are fellow citizens who wholeheartedly disagree with me, and they would also claim they love the country, but to me their fear of change says more about them than they realize. They don’t want to accept ugly truths and grow. It’s an oversimplification but here we are.  Everything is so polarized. We are divided. I’ve said this before but I’m not sure something isn’t going to break spectacularly before November, during, or shortly after. Regardless, a new normal is being forged and I do not accept it. I will not accept it. I will fight it, and I hope whoever takes the time to read this ridiculously long post will too. 
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me-mindfulexistence · 4 years
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Hellish Conditions- By Professor Doug Morris
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Take the opportunity to open your heart and then open your mind to reading something that might cause mental discomfort.  Why? Because it paints an “ugliness” about our tethered history, the dismantled current state of affairs and the harsh questions pondered of what it would take to improve things.  Professor Doug Morris of West Chester University is the sole author, and I’m privileged that he is allowing me to share this.  He is a former instructor to my son, and Zack stays in regular contact with him.  They have many conversations about world affairs and discuss what can be done to facilitate mass transformation in this country.  Professor Doug has a very unique resume as he has traveled all over the world and has experienced many cultures.  He started his life serving in our United States military before attending college and has shared many of his experiences with thousands of people.  He continues to not only educate others but also seek knowledge among anyone he comes in contact with (and truly appreciates a good political banter....no matter how different someone else’s views may be).  He really defines what a “teacher” should be.  
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Hellish Conditions – doug morris
 George Floyd was publicly murdered. We know who killed him, but there are also questions as to what killed him and why he was killed.  The latter two questions are too seldom reflected upon and interrogated. We must work to understand the social, historical and cultural conditions and forces that made it possible for George Floyd to be murdered by a white policeman? And, what can we do to stop the flood of killings and the looting of black lives?  
 It appears that institutionalized racist terrorism has become normalized and even glorified in too much of the U.S.  A dominant white-nationalist authoritarian culture has inculcated the idea that black lives are disposable as witnessed in the mass incarceration, condemnation to poverty, denial of voting rights, a long and ongoing string of murders by the police, poisoned air and water, and the crushing and disposability of, and disrespect for, black dignity.
 The hyper-militarized racist state-apparatus is a punishing, predatory, and pilfering state, tending now toward neo-fascism with white supremacists in high office, an apparatus that legitimates multiple forms of assault on and pillaging of black lives and black communities.  In a white supremacist culture, the monstrous terror imposed on black lives and communities becomes a source of satisfaction for some, and a source of despair, protest, outrage, and death for too many others.
 This sickening and detestable stench of dehumanization seeps out of the White House on a regular basis as witnessed in the phrase: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a clearly racist and ominous call for the killing of black lives and the suppression of our right to protest against injustice, inequality and indignity.
 Trump cannot figure out how to live a life that is free of the oppression and abuse of black lives and communities, so he perpetuates the absurd fantasy that black lives are expendable, not equal to, and worth less than white lives.  Of course, the racist oppression, plundering, violence and fantasy pre-exist Trump.
 The current regime, however, is grounded in various forms of interpenetrating fundamentalisms that shut down reason and morality: neoliberal capitalism; anti-intellectualism; global militarism and imperialism; anti-science; white supremacy; hatred of blackness; eco-system destruction to maximize profits, wealth and power, etc.  
 Reason, morality and accountability do not work in the world of fundamentalism, because the fundamentalists believe they have found the truth – they are above the rest of us…they believe. Reason, morality, responsibility to and for one another, and struggles for dignity, democracy, and freedom, are disparagingly called “political correctness” by the morally and rationally incorrect fundamentalists.
 What will it take to overcome the punishing, militarized racist state? How many murders of black men and women can we watch until all of us shout: “No more! Transformation is required!”?  When 12 year old Tamir Rice was murdered, some thought that would finally cause enough people to say “No more!”  When Eric Garner was choked to death, some thought it would mean: “No more!”  When LaQuan McDonald was shot sixteen times by Chicago police, it was thought that now all would say “No more!”  But the killing continued.  Now it is George Floyd publicly lynched, and sadly, disgustingly, it seems we can say “It will happen again,” even as more of us say “No more!”  
 So again, people are in the streets, outraged, frustrated, agonized, protesting -- this time will it finally be enough to at least stop the killing?  How much protesting and outrage will it take; how much vandalism, burning and looting will it take?  
 Yes, we’ve seen some devilish behavior in the street rebellions, but devilish behavior is produced by hellish conditions.  Why the hellish conditions?  What and who produced them?  The root causes of those hellish conditions too must be interrogated, understood and overcome.  
 “Looting” is a peculiar word.  Looting refers to ravaging, plundering, devastating, pillaging.  Must we be reminded again that all too many black lives and black communities in the U.S. have been devastated, ravaged, plundered and pillaged over the centuries, and right up to the present.  Too many people forced to confront hellish conditions daily, and robbed of dignity, options and life.
 Any talk of “looting” should focus on that and use that focus to overcome the long-term terror imposed on black communities and black lives.  For example: imposed poverty; absence of health care; mass incarceration; high unemployment rooted in outsourced and downsized jobs; poor housing; under-resourced and collapsing schools and terrible education; grim forms of malnutrition; workplace exploitation; social, political and economic inequality; police-state repression, humiliation, and murder; voter suppression;  poisoning people with toxic chemicals, etc., are all forms of devastating, plundering, ravaging, and pillaging black lives and communities. The hellish conditions continue to tyrannize and inflame.  We know it is happening, but too many of us look the other way.  
 Jogging, driving, walking, sleeping, thinking, playing, breathing while black, sitting on the couch while black are now punishable by a death sentence. How can this be? Why this hell?  What about the ten times higher death rate from asthma for black kids, and the three times higher death rate from the COVID-19 pandemic for black folk?
 Can we expect the police to be in the streets or hallways of power assaulting and arresting those responsible for all of this looting of black lives; will they be harassing and arresting the hedge fund managers, the big bankers, the corporate CEOs, the executives of Big Pharma, and the political system’s sycophants who together have imposed so much structural suffering and systemic agony onto black lives and communities?  
 Why are the police not now in the streets with the people (some are) rather than against the people? Working with the people to overcome the hellish conditions.
 It is the privilege of the privileged to condemn those who violently lash out in the face of oppression, subjugation, trauma and murder.  But such condemnation is sanctimonious. The moral and rational role of the privileged must be to struggle to overcome a society based in privilege, and it must be a collective struggle in solidarity with those who experience the terrors and horrors of institutional racism, economic exploitation, and social oppression.
 The other side of morality and reason is immorality and insanity; that is dangerous, deplorable and destructive, and that is what we are facing from the dominant institutions of the society, personified in the president.  It is time to say and act: “No more! Transformation is required!” before it is too late (and time is running out for all of us, as it has run out for George Floyd).  
 The rebellion in the streets must be connected to and nourished by transformative modes of education and organizing geared toward addressing and overcoming the root causes of the systemic forms of racist oppression, economic exploitation, and the looting of life and nature by the “profits at all costs” system of capital, while also imagining and constructing commendable, sustainable and viable institutional alternatives. That is the harder, but possible and necessary, step in a country often lacking in knowledge and memories of our long history of popular struggles and victories for the people.  
 Do we feel too hopeless and powerless, have we been made too cynical and pessimistic, or can we find hope in the collective power of the people to mobilize our collective intelligence and imagination, energy and enthusiasm, anger and outrage, courage and commitment, solidarity and support to stay in the struggle for the long-haul to not only abolish the destructive racist, classist, sexist, ecology-destroying, money-loving dominant systems, ideologies and institutions, but also to construct a meaningfully free, equitable and democratic society organized for the good of each and all?  We cannot afford to lose this struggle.  
 Doug Morris, Ph.D
https://youtu.be/uGyFQ4I6evg
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ampillion · 5 years
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If it works one way, it works both ways.
So, here’s a thing I thought I’d start writing up to express just how frustrating it is listening to conservatives talk or post about socialism in the US that are either so factually incorrect as to be incoherent, or so out of the loop that they sound like I expect my grandparents would if they were trying to talk about modern electronic music. Of course, I could totally make the argument that most of these people don’t actually care about being factually correct about socialism, or about discussing any sort of leftist ideology. Especially on places like Facebook, where you’re able to cultivate your group of friends and family to the point where you can push out any sort of dissenting opinions by simply not hearing them in the first place. Most of these posts are, to steal the conservative buzzword they love to apply to only people on the left, just virtue signalling. They’re not actually interested in discovering a truth, they’re not actually interested in having a conversation, they just want to shit on a thing they don’t understand and have a bunch of friends send them Likes, or Hearts, or Yeahs!, or whatever other self-validating thing makes them feel better. They want to tell their in-group that ‘Hey that thing we all hate? I hate it too man! Yeah, we’re great!’ To remind them they’re part of the Us, and not the Them. In the end though, that isn’t all that productive. Me pointing out all the ‘triggered’ conservative ‘snowflakes’ crying about Nikes or Keurig coffeemakers or NFL players kneeling. All the ‘identity politics’ based around conservative Christians, or gun-owners, or just being white. All the ‘media bias’ that particular outlets have in sharing just as much bullshit as others, just fellating one side instead of the other. All it proves is that a lot of things are universal among human beings with opinions.  The problem here is that politics is a complicated beast. One could argue that the majority of your positions in life, should you have ever had any sort of opinion on them, is simply politics. Being that we are social creatures and we interact in so many places, at so many different levels, and we all have a lot of different opinions on a lot of things, there’s always going to be difference of politics. The goal then, as humans, should always be to sit down and discuss these things. To be open to discussion on these things. To figure out why we all have our ideology, and what got us there. Of course, in the modern US, bereft of the socialism that these folks so hate, the large majority of people in this country do not have the time to engage with others on these topics, let alone even inform themselves of a position all that well. They could certainly find the time, everyone could, but then you’re actually asking someone to read dry history books, or listen to discussions. Or,  just to engage with something with a larger portion of time than they might normally do. That’s probably a big ask from people that are juggling jobs, financial stress, family, social groups, hobbies, housekeeping and homemaking already. Which is why I say I understand why people who are ignorant of a thing, a concept, an idea, can spend plenty of time gnashing teeth and spreading nonsense about it, but little time actually engaging in anything more in-depth with that concept. Why sit down and try to use my time to sit down and unpack something particularly complicated that I’m wrong about? Why add to my list of responsibilities something along the lines of self-betterment, that won’t directly help me outside of having a broader understanding of something, but will cut into my already current routine called life? I get it. The thing is: This idea works both ways. The reason why conservatives don’t understand that, is that conservatism relies on tradition. It relies on things being as they are now, or as they were. It is rooted in an essence of not changing, or resisting change. Conservatism works fine as a concept for things like managing natural resources, in trying to protect environments, protecting natural habitats for wildlife. It works as a means of helping things outside our society that cannot discuss issues. Now, I could be very wrong on this, and I could be just taking what I see from conservative posters and extrapolating something that isn’t there, but from the outside looking in: US Conservatism and reality are in constant opposition, for one specific reason. The passing of time and the constant change that brings.  Society, human beings are not a monolith. Unless we just stopped asking questions about the entirety of our existence tomorrow, somebody’s always going to ask ‘Why? How?’ If somebody’s always asking why, somebody’s always going to try to find out the Whys and the Hows. What if those Whys and Hows try to figure out why conservatives revere tradition? What if those Whys and Hows try to figure out Gods and Religions? What if people question the conservative ideology? How much change can conservatives handle, or in what ways? After all, for those of us that’ve grown up seeing Reaganism conservatives being the mainstream, and then see that conservatives are backing Trump, we have to have assumed that something has massively changed, as Reagan and Trump are vastly different Presidents, vastly different individuals, and yet Evangelical white conservative voters heavily favored both. Again, more Whys. Again, more Hows. Because even from the outside looking in, this shouldn’t make sense even to conservatives. So, my perception has to be, that conservatism in the US is about denying the reality of the world. How can someone be for small government, but for a Border Wall that will require the government to use eminent domain to take property away from people to put it on? How can someone claim that the US is a Christian country, but also be racist, or against immigration reforms that would allow more people to become legalized citizens? How can someone be anti-Government, but be pro-Military and pro-Police, groups directly associated with enforcing penalties for the Government? Where is this going? What does this have to do with the socialism stuff from earlier? If we use the same logic that conservatives do, in that I get to pick any specific part of a thing, and claim that thing to be Conservatism, regardless of how well versed I am on the subject, aren’t I entirely justified in doing the exact same thing? Because I, like some conservatives that understand little about, say, Nazi Germany and think that ‘because it says socialist in the title, it’s socialist’, can do the same thing with conservative views and conservative movements. Funny though, how conservative movements in Europe and the US, are trying to prop up Nationalism, the other word in that suuuuper bad National Socialist phrase. Funny though, how conservative media outlets and pundits have tried to pretend that Hitler was a Liberal. Or that fascism, an ideology that’s perfectly pro-capitalism, is somehow leftist in origin. Again, a lot of denial about the reality of the world, of history. After all, Reagan sold weapons to conservative radicals in Iran, to fund conservative militias in Nicaragua. So I could easily say, “Ah, conservatism is all about enabling conservatives to keep a grip on government power, even if we’re literally selling weapons to people that shout for the death of our country.”  After all, George W invaded Iraq and Afghanistan with the goal of finding WMDs and Bin Laden, found neither, and ended up destabilizing both countries further and bolstering ISIS. So I could easily say, “Ah, conservatism is all about US imperialism, sticking our noses in places it doesn’t belong, while shitting all over the concept of individual or national sovereignty.” After all, Nixon, Trump, and Reagan’s administrations did and have done illegal things in the sake of keeping power in the hands of the Republican party, and supporting other conservative governments. So, I could easily say, “Ah, conservatives are all about lying and breaking the law, so long as it’s them and nobody else doing it. Conservatism is entirely based on hypocrisy.” After all, Republican members of Congress like Steve King or Roy Moore, or Donald Trump even have made statements to defend things such as white supremacy, pedophilia, and sexual harassment. So, I could easily say, “Ah, conservatives are all about morality and family, but are fine with immoral behavior from those they support.” After all, slave owners used to use the Bible to justify owning slaves, because of the Bible containing passages that condone slave ownership, but zero passages stating not to own slaves. And since socialists or any other leftist doesn’t base their political ideology on the Bible, I can only assume those people were also conservative. So, I could easily say, “Ah, conservatives are fine hiding behind their religious beliefs to justify terrible things, even when they proclaim the US as a bastion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, or Liberty and Justice for all. They really don’t actually mean all. They mean ‘Us’. The conservatives.” You get the gist. If all I do is look at the actions of conservative movements, conservative people online, conservative politicians, I get a really bad picture of conservatives. That doesn’t mean I have a strong grasp on what conservatives themselves are trying to do now, what those positions are, and what informs them of their positions. All it means is this: If you want to try and tell me that Socialism is bad, because of stuff you don’t understand from the 40′s and 60′s, and I tell you that you’re wrong because you don’t understand them. Then you decide you don’t want to be bothered to learn why, then am I entirely justified to have all kinds of misconceptions about all the immoral, illogically consistent things that conservatives have done since the 80′s? Or, since, ever? Because if I’m not, you’ve really only confirmed my misconceptions, in that conservatism is only about ‘rules for thee, not for me.’ It is only about protecting the Us, and vilifying whatever ‘Them’ conservatives have picked out this month. The difference is, I’m here willing to listen. Willing to talk and engage. To explain those misconceptions and where they came from. To actually explain leftist positions, leftist policies. To actually explain, yes, things like socialism.  Are you willing to explain conservatism?
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thecvltnation · 7 years
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Lucifer the Liberator: Racism, Fascism and The Left-Hand Path
We can still disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist – Son of Baldwin, a/k/a Robert Jones Jr. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop,...
http://www.cvltnation.com/lucifer-liberator-racism-fascism-left-hand-path/
#Cvlture, #History, #SocialJustice
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caremobile · 6 years
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5/18.2018
It was bazaar, those conversations about  arguments we had long ago,
that when you retorded, “Do you remember that time, when we broke it off?”
In my mind, I thought it was silent treatment. Intermittant silence -- that between our accounts, you dissolved my name, but for a short time, to clear your head...
I recall, sometimes, how much less of a man now I was, than I am today
What I sought then, solely, was for my own, self want...but, didn’t know I was in denial.
Even now, it’s “cosplay"  look  at how foolish we both are, at how I was
Look at what happened to us, during the war,
as they say, “The War of the Universe”
In the Communist Revolution people were afraid of who they were, rather than expounding on their beliefs, disclosing what they love, who they lean towards, their principles, fascists took away their dignity their pride and their life
And, it was no different in the McArthy era --an era of witch hunt, and no different, in times when, fascism and nazism reared its head again,  and once again, an era of death and suspicion grew clouds of witch hunts ..
And all we had, was each other...I never knew, or thought for once, you left my side, amid, what went on in my War. 
In my world, you were my world --One of the very few, rays of light, that, gave me the energy, energizing me to live. Even when, I was ill, living in poverty, alone with mother, cut short education for a moment in time, and, the winds from every corner of world, disfigured minds, melted human beings if you didn’t have the means of sufficient shelter, enough wealth, connections family love, roots,
I never believed, that even despite, I, was, during at some point amid lunacy
--in darkness without you
In my eyes, you were always in my heart, even amid darkness, my heart, knocked, even when you didn’t answer, days and days til you did.
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therightnewsnetwork · 7 years
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Saith The Man-God: ‘Everything Is Permitted’
Glenn Tinder, on the political meaning of Christianity:
If the denial of the God-man has destructive logical implications, it also has dangerous emotional consequences. Dostoevsky wrote that a person “cannot live without worshipping something.” Anyone who denies God must worship an idol—which is not necessarily a wooden or metal figure. In our time we have seen ideologies, groups, and leaders receive divine honors. People proud of their critical and discerning spirit have rejected Christ and bowed down before Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or some other secular savior.
When disrespect for individuals is combined with political idolatry, the results can be atrocious. Both the logical and the emotional foundations of political decency are destroyed. Equality becomes nonsensical and breaks down under attack from one or another human god. Consider Lenin: as a Marxist, and like Marx an exponent of equality, under the pressures of revolution he denied equality in principle—except as an ultimate goal- and so systematically nullified it in practice as to become the founder of modern totalitarianism. When equality falls, universality is likely also to fall. Nationalism or some other form of collective pride becomes virulent, and war unrestrained. Liberty, too, is likely to vanish; it becomes a heavy personal and social burden when no God justifies and sanctifies the individual in spite of all personal deficiencies and failures.
The idealism of the man-god does not, of course, bring as an immediate and obvious consequence a collapse into unrestrained nihilism. We all know many people who do not believe in God and yet are decent and admirable. Western societies, as highly secularized as they are, retain many humane features. Not even tacitly has our sole governing maxim become the one Dostoevsky thought was bound to follow the denial of the God-man: “Everything is permitted.”
This may be, however, because customs and habits formed during Christian ages keep people from professing and acting on such a maxim even though it would be logical for them to do so. If that is the case, our position is precarious, for good customs and habits need spiritual grounds, and if those are lacking, they will gradually, or perhaps suddenly in some crisis, crumble.
To what extent are we now living on moral savings accumulated over many centuries but no longer being replenished? To what extent are those savings already severely depleted? Again and again we are told by advertisers, counselors, and other purveyors of popular wisdom that we have a right to buy the things we want and to live as we please. We should be prudent and farsighted, perhaps (although even those modest virtues are not greatly emphasized), but we are subject ultimately to no standard but self-interest. If nihilism is most obvious in the lives of wanton destroyers like Hitler, it is nevertheless present also in the lives of people who live purely as pleasure and convenience dictate.
And aside from intentions, there is a question concerning consequences. Even idealists whose good intentions for the human race are pure and strong are still vulnerable to fate because of the pride that causes them to act ambitiously and recklessly in history. Initiating chains of unforeseen and destructive consequences, they are often overwhelmed by results drastically at variance with their humane intentions. Modern revolutionaries have willed liberty and equality for everyone, not the terror and despotism they have actually created. Social reformers in the United States were never aiming at the great federal bureaucracy or at the pervasive dedication to entertainment and pleasure that characterizes the welfare state they brought into existence. There must always be a gap between intentions and results, but for those who forget that they are finite and morally flawed the gap may become a chasm. Not only Christians but almost everyone today feels the fear that we live under the sway of forces that we have set in motion—perhaps in the very process of industrialization, perhaps only at certain stages of that process, as in the creation of nuclear power—and that threaten our lives and are beyond our control.
There is much room for argument about these matters. But there is no greater error in the modern mind than the assumption that the God-man can be repudiated with impunity. The man-god may take his place and become the author of deeds wholly unintended and the victim of terrors starkly in contrast with the benign intentions lying at their source. The irony of sin is in this way reproduced in the irony of idealism: exalting human beings in their supposed virtues and powers, idealism undermines them. Exciting fervent expectations, it leads toward despair.
Read the whole thing. I thought of that Tinder essay — though it’s from 1989, it’s still fresh — after reading this essay about the roots of the Alt-Right not in Nazism, but in Italian fascism. Excerpts:
The character traits applauded by today’s libertarians – ambition, superbia, speed, drive, spin, success and spikiness – are the qualities the Futurists valued. There is fire here but never warmth; appetite but never food. If conviviality has an opposite, it is this: anti-vivial, anti-genial and, in its treatment of the future, anti-generative.
More:
Like contemporary libertarians, the Italian Futurists saw themselves as anti-establishment – opposing political and artistic tradition – and driven, as the name suggests, forward to the future. As Marinetti wrote in the Futurist manifesto: ‘Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute.’ Libertarians, like the Futurists, loathe the past, which they associate with the natural world: the future is artificial, and they want to own it. Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Donald Trump backer, describes himself as ‘way libertarian’, and is heavily involved in the Singularity, a vision of transhumanism that promotes artificial super-intelligence to create the end of natural history.
And:
Central to the Futurist manifesto was an adoration of the machine, to the point where the ultimate aim was the technological triumph of humanity over nature. Marinetti foresaw – and was intoxicated by – the idea of a war between organic nature and mechanised humanity. Futurists fetishised cars, planes and technology in general, loving steel and loathing wood, which came gentle from the natural earth. They wanted to force the Danube to run in a straight line at 300km an hour, hating the river in its natural state (‘The opaque Danube under its muddy tunic, its attention turned on its inner life full of fat libidinous fecund fish.’)
Do read the whole thing, but if you’re like me, you will be gobsmacked by the author Jay Griffiths’ blindness to how contemporary progressive ideologies are also all about “the technological triumph of humanity over nature.” They are also anti-teleological, anti-Christian, and all about will to power. They just draw the lines in different places, and take different routes to get there. Whether it’s making the Danube flow in a straight line or using hormones and surgery and philosophical-legal legerdemain to make men into pseudo-women, it’s all the same thing. If there is no logos in nature, all is chaos.
Ross Douthat is correct: if you don’t like the Christian Right, wait till you see the Post-Christian Right. To that I would add: look at the Post-Christian Left. You cannot deny the God-Man and replace him with the Man-God with impunity.
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from http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/saith-the-man-god-everything-is-permitted/
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Saith The Man-God: ‘Everything Is Permitted’
New Post has been published on http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/saith-the-man-god-everything-is-permitted/
Saith The Man-God: ‘Everything Is Permitted’
Glenn Tinder, on the political meaning of Christianity:
If the denial of the God-man has destructive logical implications, it also has dangerous emotional consequences. Dostoevsky wrote that a person “cannot live without worshipping something.” Anyone who denies God must worship an idol—which is not necessarily a wooden or metal figure. In our time we have seen ideologies, groups, and leaders receive divine honors. People proud of their critical and discerning spirit have rejected Christ and bowed down before Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or some other secular savior.
When disrespect for individuals is combined with political idolatry, the results can be atrocious. Both the logical and the emotional foundations of political decency are destroyed. Equality becomes nonsensical and breaks down under attack from one or another human god. Consider Lenin: as a Marxist, and like Marx an exponent of equality, under the pressures of revolution he denied equality in principle—except as an ultimate goal- and so systematically nullified it in practice as to become the founder of modern totalitarianism. When equality falls, universality is likely also to fall. Nationalism or some other form of collective pride becomes virulent, and war unrestrained. Liberty, too, is likely to vanish; it becomes a heavy personal and social burden when no God justifies and sanctifies the individual in spite of all personal deficiencies and failures.
The idealism of the man-god does not, of course, bring as an immediate and obvious consequence a collapse into unrestrained nihilism. We all know many people who do not believe in God and yet are decent and admirable. Western societies, as highly secularized as they are, retain many humane features. Not even tacitly has our sole governing maxim become the one Dostoevsky thought was bound to follow the denial of the God-man: “Everything is permitted.”
This may be, however, because customs and habits formed during Christian ages keep people from professing and acting on such a maxim even though it would be logical for them to do so. If that is the case, our position is precarious, for good customs and habits need spiritual grounds, and if those are lacking, they will gradually, or perhaps suddenly in some crisis, crumble.
To what extent are we now living on moral savings accumulated over many centuries but no longer being replenished? To what extent are those savings already severely depleted? Again and again we are told by advertisers, counselors, and other purveyors of popular wisdom that we have a right to buy the things we want and to live as we please. We should be prudent and farsighted, perhaps (although even those modest virtues are not greatly emphasized), but we are subject ultimately to no standard but self-interest. If nihilism is most obvious in the lives of wanton destroyers like Hitler, it is nevertheless present also in the lives of people who live purely as pleasure and convenience dictate.
And aside from intentions, there is a question concerning consequences. Even idealists whose good intentions for the human race are pure and strong are still vulnerable to fate because of the pride that causes them to act ambitiously and recklessly in history. Initiating chains of unforeseen and destructive consequences, they are often overwhelmed by results drastically at variance with their humane intentions. Modern revolutionaries have willed liberty and equality for everyone, not the terror and despotism they have actually created. Social reformers in the United States were never aiming at the great federal bureaucracy or at the pervasive dedication to entertainment and pleasure that characterizes the welfare state they brought into existence. There must always be a gap between intentions and results, but for those who forget that they are finite and morally flawed the gap may become a chasm. Not only Christians but almost everyone today feels the fear that we live under the sway of forces that we have set in motion—perhaps in the very process of industrialization, perhaps only at certain stages of that process, as in the creation of nuclear power—and that threaten our lives and are beyond our control.
There is much room for argument about these matters. But there is no greater error in the modern mind than the assumption that the God-man can be repudiated with impunity. The man-god may take his place and become the author of deeds wholly unintended and the victim of terrors starkly in contrast with the benign intentions lying at their source. The irony of sin is in this way reproduced in the irony of idealism: exalting human beings in their supposed virtues and powers, idealism undermines them. Exciting fervent expectations, it leads toward despair.
Read the whole thing. I thought of that Tinder essay — though it’s from 1989, it’s still fresh — after reading this essay about the roots of the Alt-Right not in Nazism, but in Italian fascism. Excerpts:
The character traits applauded by today’s libertarians – ambition, superbia, speed, drive, spin, success and spikiness – are the qualities the Futurists valued. There is fire here but never warmth; appetite but never food. If conviviality has an opposite, it is this: anti-vivial, anti-genial and, in its treatment of the future, anti-generative.
More:
Like contemporary libertarians, the Italian Futurists saw themselves as anti-establishment – opposing political and artistic tradition – and driven, as the name suggests, forward to the future. As Marinetti wrote in the Futurist manifesto: ‘Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute.’ Libertarians, like the Futurists, loathe the past, which they associate with the natural world: the future is artificial, and they want to own it. Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Donald Trump backer, describes himself as ‘way libertarian’, and is heavily involved in the Singularity, a vision of transhumanism that promotes artificial super-intelligence to create the end of natural history.
And:
Central to the Futurist manifesto was an adoration of the machine, to the point where the ultimate aim was the technological triumph of humanity over nature. Marinetti foresaw – and was intoxicated by – the idea of a war between organic nature and mechanised humanity. Futurists fetishised cars, planes and technology in general, loving steel and loathing wood, which came gentle from the natural earth. They wanted to force the Danube to run in a straight line at 300km an hour, hating the river in its natural state (‘The opaque Danube under its muddy tunic, its attention turned on its inner life full of fat libidinous fecund fish.’)
Do read the whole thing, but if you’re like me, you will be gobsmacked by the author Jay Griffiths’ blindness to how contemporary progressive ideologies are also all about “the technological triumph of humanity over nature.” They are also anti-teleological, anti-Christian, and all about will to power. They just draw the lines in different places, and take different routes to get there. Whether it’s making the Danube flow in a straight line or using hormones and surgery and philosophical-legal legerdemain to make men into pseudo-women, it’s all the same thing. If there is no logos in nature, all is chaos.
Ross Douthat is correct: if you don’t like the Christian Right, wait till you see the Post-Christian Right. To that I would add: look at the Post-Christian Left. You cannot deny the God-Man and replace him with the Man-God with impunity.
  Powered by WPeMatico
http://www.therightnewsnetwork.com/saith-the-man-god-everything-is-permitted/ %cats%
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