#the structures and the institutions that enable violence

[heroes-fading]

thinking a lot about how the last of us and andor almost serve as foils to one another, and andor overall just has so much better execution to me. the last of us presents problems as individual and interpersonal. it's a long string of feuds / revenge / back and forth. whereas in andor that element of infighting isn't nonexistent, but it's able to acknowledge that these problems are NOT just individual, but structural!

tlou presents a pretty fascist, authoritarian government that they COULD do a lot of interesting things with. instead, they're more a backdrop that's accepted and shrugged off rather than reconciled with. characters can find happiness in silos, walled off from the rest of the world (bill and frank, jackson) or accept that community living that is open at all has to be authoritarian and brutal in some nature (FEDRA, KC, the Fireflies).

i've been trying to figure out why tlou 2 just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth beyond the tragedy inherent in it. i loved andor, and andor is inherently incredibly tragic! but it's tragic and earned. there are interpersonal fights and struggles, but there is also an understanding of the systems that oppress us that are worth dying to stop.

whereas in TLOU death is mostly either random or vengeful! bites or accidents or revenge quests. they sort of lampshade what COULD be interesting (FEDRA literally rounds people up and kills them, canonically! people call them fascist but do nothing with it!) but they leave it there as if it's the least interesting thing there! but we're meant to believe that suffering is either interpersonal or random!

the fireflies are meant to be our rebels but they're rendered completely uninteresting and without nuance or competence. you don't believe they could make a cure (even if TBTB say they can) and you don't believe they can accomplish much at all because you're not SHOWN any degree of competence from them! you aren't rooting for them! who cares!

whereas in andor what TLOU tries to refer to vaguely and implicitly is made explicit and front and center. the enemy is a fascist, authoritarian government. people love and lose and do everything they can to stop it. it is tragic and worth it and earned. there are individual evil people but also a very evil system that molds them in its shape.

TLOU -- for as much as it claims to be anti-fascist and "oh get it the one functioning society is kinda communist haha" -- has no teeth when it comes to any of this. you shrug at the system. you kill each other. it's all so incredibly pointless. why dream of better? keep your head down and look out for yourself and your own. nothing else matters.

whereas with andor, it actually asks you to dream bigger, to want more, that sacrifices can mean something even if not immediately and it all feels so incredibly earned. there is something bigger, and it's worth it.

[girlactionfigure]

🇸🇪

When we speak about Muslim Brotherhood influence in Europe, attention goes to France, Germany, or the UK. But quietly and more deeply, it’s Sweden where the ideological roots run deeper than most realize. Here’s why…

🧵A thread. 

Since the early 1990s, Sweden became a strategic node for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. Its openness, public funding system, and political correctness allowed Islamist networks to grow unchecked. They entered not with violence, but bureaucracy. 

The 2017 report by the Swedish Defence University, led by Magnus Norell, Aje Carlbom, and Pierre Durrani, explicitly detailed how Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups created parallel structures under the guise of civil society. This included education, religious spaces, and lobbying platforms.

The Islamic Association in Sweden (Islamiska Förbundet i Sverige, IFiS) was identified as the main Muslim Brotherhood actor. IFiS is part of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, which the 2015 UK report linked directly to the Muslim Brotherhood’s international network. 

IFiS and its umbrella groups received millions of kronor in state and municipal support. These funds supported schools, youth groups, and cultural centers. Yet many promoted conservative religious norms, male dominance in leadership, and discouraged integration with Swedish society. 

Individuals linked to IFiS, such as Omar Mustafa, former board member of the Social Democrats and head of Sweden’s Islamic Association, have been criticized for inviting clerics associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, some of whom have promoted extremist views, including support for violence and regressive punishments. 

Critics of Muslim Brotherhood-linked influence, including secular Muslims and academics, were often discredited as Islamophobic. The political left in Sweden frequently partnered with these groups, giving them legitimacy and shielding them from scrutiny. 

The result was a fragmented civil society. Instead of one inclusive Muslim community, parallel ecosystems developed, one loyal to Swedish liberal values, the other shaped by Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Youth were often pressured into identity-based isolation. 

In recent years, Swedish intelligence services (Säpo) have flagged Muslim Brotherhood networks as a long-term threat to national cohesion. Some state funding has been pulled, and government inquiries are more open. But the influence remains embedded. 

The Muslim Brotherhood does not need to control Sweden. It only needs to shape key institutions, claim moral authority, and silence dissent. And in Sweden, for years, it did, with official funding, media cover, and political protection.

This isn’t just Sweden’s story, it’s a warning. Islamist networks don’t storm the gates; they walk through open doors. When democracies confuse tolerance with appeasement, they don’t just lose control, they invite subversion. The lesson is clear: protect openness, but don’t enable those who reject it.

End of thread… 

[boundwithpurple]

Are Craster and his daughters supposed to be the inevitable endpoint of the noble families in Westeros?

statements like these always grind my gears. although patriarchal family structures do produce and enable father-daughter incest, it is both insulting to the specific experience of incestuous abuse and just factually nonsense to say father-daughter marriage is the “inevitable endpoint” - well, clearly it isn’t inevitable, because it does not happen in the great majority of aristocratic westerosi families! it also just doesn’t seem to understand how westeros’ aristocratic class works - exogamous marriage is actually key, and also a site of patriarchal violence that is misunderstood if you imagine father-daughter incest as some ur-violence in this way. universal father-daughter marriage as “inevitable endpoint” would lead to the collapse of the political system as it currently exists and it does not illuminate the suffering of characters like cersei or lysa. craster and his family are not like exactly westerosi families; it’s an important detail that craster has to move beyond the wall and all the dictates of westerosi law and custom to enact his extreme endogamy. of course at the same time that doesn’t mean it’s truly antithetical, as shown by the fact the night’s watch - an institution that theoretically enforces the seven kingdoms’ laws - looks the other way to craster marrying and raping his daughters and making human sacrifices of his sons because craster is useful to them. you might say his family is a dark shadow image of westerosi families (which rape daughters for patriarch satisfaction and consume sons for power), but it isn’t tidily equivalent on a factual basis and its thematic place in the story is more complicated than some didactic lesson about “inevitable endpoints.”

[papasmoke]

What do you think is the best direct action to take instead of voting? Like what can we do that will change the structure, since other way, the structure of how the country works says Someone's Gotta Get Elected?

Directly interfere with the non-democratic mechanisms and institutions through which the US provides aid and maintains its partnership with Israel's Apartheid regime. Shut down weapons plants, last week some very brave young people in St. Charles did just that and halted work at the massive Boeing plant there.

Participate in BDS. Relentlessly. Uncompromisingly. Those anti-BDS laws most states have in place can suck my nuts and if you put any value in America as an institution you should appreciate that they're blatantly unconstitutional.

Participate in the protest wave happening right now. Show up outside your representative's (who is probably voicing their full support for Israel's terrorist bombing campaign right now) home with a big crowd and keep them up all night. Do everything you can to make the life of every public official rubberstamping this genocide a living hell. Harass them, don't let them spend a day, an hour, a second without being reminded of their unforgivable complicity in war crimes.

The US maintains its relationship with Israel because it is in our geostrategic and financial interest to do so. As Biden once said, if an Israel did not exist the US would have to invent an equivalent. It relies on Israel as a military hard point for the US empire. But exerting pressure on the framework that allows this relationship to be profitable and beneficial for the US can force our government's hand. The US is already isolating itself from the rest of the world by enabling Israel's barbaric violence, and the tipping point at which the US will be forced to abandon its unwavering support for the genocide, displacement, and subjugation of the Palestinian people can be reached quicker if widespread internal pressure is also applied by the American public.

[readingsquotes]

"I’ll never be able to forget my own experience pushing my college to divest......I’ll never forget the look I got from one administrator as I entered their building. We had been camped outside for two weeks at that point, and even though the woman who saw me had no idea who I was, she knew exactly who I was. She knew my presence, our presence, meant disruption. And few things are more sacred to the neoliberal institution than avoiding disruption, even when the status quo is harmful investment in fossil fuel corporations, or genocide. And so my presence scared this administrator, and the cops were there within minutes. The feeling of being a student and having the university resort to violence rather than speak with you is immensely hard to forget.

But so too are the broader lessons I learned in student organizing. The feelings are indelible, and yet the bigger picture, the structural knowledge you receive when you go up against a large and powerful institution, stuck with me too. .... I had learned that universities didn’t quite work the way I had imagined. Growing up they had seemed to me, from a distance, to be centers of knowledge and places where life looks a little more like it’s supposed to; people pursue learning and community and aren’t as constrained by work and stress. And there’s a significant kernel of truth to that, but behind the facade is a power structure that cares infinitely more about investments and real estate than the student body. That truth has become more and more real over time, and has been violently laid bare by the boards and administrations themselves in recent weeks. ...

The impact of protest right now matters immensely. It’s impossible to quantify how important it would be if the movement for a Free Palestine in the West built enough power to force our countries to stop funding ethnic cleansing, to stop arming genocide, to stop supporting apartheid. The lives that have been lost are irreplaceable, and the lives that could be saved are invaluable. And, at the same time, we’re seeing millions of people, young and old and everything in between, change in profound ways. In that fact lies the reality that Gaza and Palestinians and this movement we’re seeing all around us are altering the future just as they work to alter the present.

One of the many driving forces changing how people across the globe think, not only about Zionism but about imperialism and society at large, is the simple fact that we cannot unsee what we have seen. ...Decades of propaganda began to fracture in recent years, and shattered in recent months. But it’s more than that ��� for millions of people across the world there’s also no unseeing U.S. complicity. There’s no unseeing how Israel and the U.S. are virtually alone at the UN, on the world stage, working to protect a genocidal state and enable a genocide again and again. Even as Israel kills yet another UN worker, bringing the total to 190 slain employees of the United Nations, the enabling and participation in Israel’s genocide continues. 

People cannot simply forget these actions, these choices that the U.S. and Israel make day after day. I say that as a hope more than as a fact. ...And while students are not facing repression that can be compared to what the Black Panthers and others have faced, they are repeatedly facing mass violence from the state as well as vigilantes. They have also seen how little their schools care about them, how little their government cares about them, and how deeply invested our entire system is in war and imperialism.

..Students who have been attacked, and people everywhere who have seen horrors in Gaza beyond our comprehension, cannot simply forget. We’ve seen how violence abroad is connected to fascism at home. We’ve seen how Israel’s genocide in Gaza is connected to the war machine here in the United States. We’ve seen how it all comes together in a society structured to deprive the many so the few can hoard wealth and resources. Whatever comes next, there’s no turning back. We will struggle towards a better system, both because we want to see it come into existence and because we don’t have the option to return to a healthy status quo. We can’t turn back to the society we might be nostalgic for. That world doesn’t exist anymore; a new one must be built."

[bardic-tales]

Day 14 | Diana Ravenscroft | Day 16

31 days of FF 7 Headcanons: Day 15: Shinra Indoctrination or Rebellion

Today’s prompt digs into the question of loyalty: was your OC molded by Shinra’s iron grip, or did they resist the system entirely? For Diana Ravenscroft, the truth is far more chilling/ She didn’t need indoctrination. She joined Shinra with full awareness and an ambition sharp enough to cut through any notion of conscience.

In this entry, we examine how Diana’s rise through the ranks wasn’t born of blind faith or rebellion, but cold calculation. Her loyalty was never to the company. It was to progress itself, no matter how many lives it cost. Read on for a deep dive into her origin as one of Shinra’s most methodical monsters.

Trigger Warnings: body horror, coercion, cruelty, dehumanization, dissection, ethical abuse, medical experimentation, mentions of torture, psychological manipulation, scientific misconduct, surgical procedures, systemic abuse, violence.

Diana Ravenscroft was never indoctrinated by Shinra in the traditional sense. There was no need. She did not require brainwashing, coercion, or ideological grooming. She walked into Shinra’s ranks with eyes wide open, her loyalty forged not from patriotism or fear, but from a calculated recognition of power and potential. Raised in Junon, Diana grew up steeped in the influence of Shinra’s militaristic culture, where technological superiority was law and human life was a resource. To her, Shinra was not a corrupt monolith to be feared or resisted. It was a logical extension of humanity’s drive to control and evolve. The moment they extended her an invitation, Diana accepted not as a recruit, but as a willing architect of the future.

Within Shinra, Diana found the perfect crucible for her ambitions. Her scientific prowess and moral detachment made her indispensable, particularly to Professor Hojo, whose own depravity mirrored hers in methodology if not motive. Unlike the Turks or SOLDIERs, whose loyalty was often bought through indoctrination or survival instinct, Diana’s allegiance was intellectual. She believed in Shinra’s mission not as propaganda, but as an efficient means to achieve what she saw as inevitable: the forced evolution of the human race. Her faith in the institution was pragmatic. Shinra gave her access to test subjects, resources, and a framework of authority that enabled her to bypass the limitations of conventional science. Rebellion was never a consideration. Why rebel against the hand that grants you full license to remake the world?

This alliance came at a steep cost: not to Diana, but to those who crossed her operating table. She never questioned Shinra’s ethics because she never believed in them to begin with. Morality, to Diana, was a vestigial organ: useless and often in the way. After her brother's death, her time in Shinra didn’t corrupt her. It simply gave her the scaffolding to ascend. The atrocities she committed were not outliers. They were proof of concept. And yet, she never considered herself cruel.

Where Hojo was gleeful in his sadism, Diana was cold, methodical, and disturbingly rational. Her history with Shinra solidified her belief that suffering was not only unavoidable but necessary. Weakness and human frailty, in her mind, deserved extinction. Through Shinra’s structure, she had the power to make that happen.

However, Diana’s unwavering alignment with Shinra did not make her a mindless servant. She viewed even the organization itself as a transient tool. Her loyalty was not to Shinra, but to the idea of progress, of humanity's transcendence.

When she began her experiments on Bianca Moore, Diana stopped seeing Shinra as a guiding force and started seeing it as a vessel to be outgrown. She wasn’t serving Hojo or Shinra anymore. She was using it. The difference may seem subtle, but it marked a turning point. Diana’s loyalty shifted from the institution to her own vision. Should Shinra ever become an obstacle to that vision, she wouldn’t hesitate to sever ties. After all, evolution doesn’t apologize for leaving its progenitors behind.

In the end, Diana Ravenscroft was never indoctrinated nor rebellious. She was something far more dangerous: aligned by convenience, indifferent to consequence, and utterly convinced of her own righteousness. Her history with Shinra didn’t distort her morals. It confirmed her lack of them. She is what happens when grief, ideology, and ambition intersect without the burden of empathy. Where others were broken or brainwashed by Shinra’s machinery,

Diana became part of it: voluntarily, eagerly, and without illusion. And that, perhaps, makes her the most monstrous of all.

@themaradwrites @shepardstales @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap

@inkandimpressions @arrthurpendragon @projecthypocrisy @serenofroses

[transmutationisms]

i guess reading the antipsych perspective just leaves me feeling confused and lost and hopeless. at the end of the day i am really suffering in a way that affects my ability to enjoy myself and my life and so where can i go and what can i do to feel better if not the field designated for that ya know

i get messages like this from time to time. first of all, i have always maintained that what will make us "feel better" is ultimately a political matter and not a personal one. i don't want an individual intervention for just me, i want a better world, ie communism and the actual care structures it will enable us to create. second, i understand where these types of messages are coming from and i'm sympathetic to anyone who may have lost a sense of security or safety that was previously resting on their confidence in psychiatric practices. i think it's important to note, however, that the psychiatric apparatus actively perpetuates violence and harm, and i would argue that becoming aware of these facts is not so much a loss of resources or support as it is a gaining of accurate information about an actively dangerous system we are already being harmed by. i also think that one of the demographics most helped by having such information is in fact people who are forced to interact with psychiatric institutions and practitioners, or who may be deciding whether to do so. going into any such situations with open eyes about what harms could occur, as well as what you hope to gain from it, is in my opinion much more useful to patients and potential patients than simply being lied to and told to defer to medical authorities because they're really niceys. any value i can wring from the psychiatric apparatus is precisely because i go into it knowing i need to protect myself, and use doctors according to my actual needs and not the coercive capitalist aims of the discipline of psychiatry.

finally, all of that said, you are sincerely not required to read my blog or to care about anything i'm posting about. if you asked my opinion i would say that the root of the problem is not that you now know bad things about psychiatry, but that those things are true. but i'm not you, i don't know you, and you are certainly well within your rights to disengage if that's what you want to do.

[alittlegayhistoria]

Zoe Leonard - 'I Want a President' (1992)

“I want a dyke for president…” form the opening lines for the battalion of critical incisiveness and queer radical spirit that is Zoe Leonard’s 1992 piece ‘I Want a President’. Surging forth into the American public realm following the fatal negligence of Reagan’s administration during the AIDS epidemic and the next presidential election run-up, ‘I Want A President’ dared to interrogate the fundamental denial of marginalised bodies, minds and experiences in the political arena. Constituting a poignant position in the broader visual languages of AIDS activism and queer resistance, ‘I Want A President’ broke ground in inspiring and furthering a critical modality of hope. Its impassioned sentences at once demand empathy and humanity from authoritative figures. Leonard’s statements queer the metrics of power that vehemently deny those outside of cis-heteropatriarchal society by providing currency in promoting otherwise silenced voices, and reestablishing their lived experiences as ethically fundamental in the articulation and implementation of policies that account for real citizens.

Functioning as a key catalyst for ‘I Want A President’, Leonard was inspired by the dynamism of fellow lesbian poet and artist Eileen Myles’ presidential bid in the 1991-1992 presidential election, alongside Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Ross Perot. Myles herself charged up by Bush’s lamentations of “the politically correct” (which implied an intended diminution of the voices of women, people of colour and LGBTQ+ critiquing hegemonic political assertions) in his commencement address galvanised an intellectual juncture that scrutinised the supposed impossibility of an openly female, openly queer president in the mainstream American consciousness. Acting in symbiosis to Myles’ work and presidential candidacy, Leonard was (and remains) a prominent and active member of queer activist collectives like Fierce Pussy, and her political praxis and astute artistic sensibilities informed the dissemination and distribution of ‘I Want A President’. Formerly intended to be a statement for an underground LGBTQ+ publication, the piece was printed as a Xerox document and circulated amongst Leonard’s friends, wider queer social circles and activist cohorts. It rapidly rumbled outwards into the wider public space, levying a challenge to the unfeeling political elite through progressive prose that illuminated the standpoints of those most denigrated in American ideology and dogma.

Spanning experiences of targeted violence, poverty, and disenfranchisement, the rhythmic structure of ‘I Want A President’ is arresting in its unflinching engagement with state-enabled trauma interwoven with empathic sentences expressing solidarity with those who continue to survive despite the odds. Grappling with legacies of lethal indifference in institutional engagement with the AIDS crisis, environmental damage bolstered by social inequalities, and sustained acts of gender-motivated attacks, Leonard’s calls and aspirations for a feeling, loving and reflexive leader remain tantamount in the contemporary era. The concluding lines “Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught” is deeply evocative as a searing indictment against acts of blatant corruption and incitement of destructive community tensions by political elites able to evade culpability through immense social privileges. ‘I Want A President’ and its power lies in its calibration of empathy as a lightning rod for action, to make the yearning for difference not a mawkish instinct, but a place of generative resistance against political systems that seek to elicit apathy from sustained deprecation of those who fall outside of the power lines on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability and beyond.

‘I Want A President’ continues to have vibrant reverberations in contemporary political and queer counterculture. In 2016, it was erected under Manhattan’s High Line, a New York park built upon a disused elevated railway, proclaiming its moving and robust prose to a new public audience in the run-up to the 2016 election which devastatingly saw in the presidency of Donald Trump, reminding us all too much of what ‘I Want A President’ advocates against. Leonard’s powerful work continues to garner creative inspiration amongst queer artists, notably being read by queer rapper and artist Mykki Blanco, directed as part of a film by Adinah Dancyger in 2016, providing a reading that was passionate, imbued with immense political frustration that made its words all the more visceral in the face of Trump’s eventual inauguration. In 2018, the piece was reprinted with 100 copies and distributed in aid of the Treatment Action Group, a community-based think tank producing bold, advancing research into AIDS/HIV and other conditions in the pursuit of LGBTQ+, gender and racial liberation. The timelessness and transience of ‘I Want A President’ is made clear in its sustained relevance in the fluctuations in the national political milieu, demonstrating its significance as a queer cultural artefact that inspires fights for justice across multiple social intersections.

Leonard continues to enjoy a lustrous artistic career, and is now represented by the Hauser & Wirth gallery, where ‘I Want A President’ was celebrated and honoured for its cultural impact and staying power. Translating the piece’s deep insights and challenges against discriminatory political dominance in the British context, one can foster ‘I Want A President’ in expressing their disavowal of political acts devoid of empathy and basic human respect. Namely the state hatred of trans and genderqueer people in the name of political point-scoring, the loathsome class stigmatisation of current prime minister Rishi Sunak in his boasting of defunding what he deemed ‘deprived’ urban areas and the skyrocketing levels of financial precarity and homelessness under a fractious economic system. Leonard’s ruminations and desires in ‘I Want A President’ remain emblematic of the potency of queer activism and eternally vital, in demanding better representation, for politicians that care, that feel, that emote, that dare to think holistically beyond the sinister motivator of unbridled capitalistic power.

[stewiemartins]

I cannot understand the function of the living body except by enacting it myself, and except in so far as I am a body which rises towards the world.

Thus exteroceptivity demands that stimuli be given a shape; the consciousness of the body invades the body, the soul spreads over all its parts, and the behaviour over-spills its central sector. But one might reply that this 'bodily-experience' is itself a 'representation', a 'psychic fact', and that as such it is at the end of the chain of physical and physiological events which alone can be ascribed to the 'real body'. Is not my body, exactly as the external bodies, an object which acts on receptors and finally gives rise to the consciousness of my body? Is there not an 'interoceptivity' just as there is an 'exteroceptivity'. Cannot I find in the body message-wires sent by the internal organs to the brain, which are installed by nature to provide the soul with the opportunity of feeling its body? Consciousness of the body, and the soul, are thus repressed. The body becomes the highly polished machine which the ambiguous notion of behaviour nearly made us forget. For example, if, in the case of a man who has lost a leg, a stimulus is applied, instead of to the leg, to the path from the stump to the brain, the subject will feel a phantom leg, because the soul is immediately linked to the brain and to it alone.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of perception. Pp 87-88 In RoutledgeeBooks.https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203994610

And so, for every 3rd party, the imperative which defines his power returns to him as the will of an Other, which he obeys because of his pledge. It is a new structure (the individualisation in a sovereign Other of the common imperative) which constitutes the command as such. In obeying the Other as Other in the same of common process, everyone becomes other in so far as he is the same: it is realised in the milieu of ‘Fraternity-Terror’ and against a background of violence: in everyone , inert pledged being is an untranscendable negation of the possibility of not carrying out the imposed action; refusal would effectively mean the dissolution of the group (both as an organised group and as a pledged group); but, in so far as action is, in this case, an interiorisation of an other will (violent autre), it introduces an induced passivity into it, and comes to be occasioned by an untranscendable sovereignty with no reciprocity; and the refusal to dissolve the group as oneself, that is no reciprocity; and the refusal to dissolve the group in oneself, that is to say, the legitimation of common violence (as repressive terror) by readopting the pledge becomes no more than submitting to the individual decision of the untranscendable 3rd party and to his quasi-sovereignty as violence without reciprocity.

‘The Institution: Institutionalisation and Sovereignty’ Critique of Dialectical Reasoning Vol. 1 Book ii 4.4 pp 615 Jean-Paul Sartre Translated by Alan Sheridan-Smith Verso, London 2004 First Published Gallimard

The whole significance of our life – from which theoretical significance is merely extracted - would be different if we were sightless. There is a general function of substitution and replacement which enables us to gain access to the abstract significance of experiences we have not actually had, for example, to speak of what we have not seen. But just as in the organism the renewed functions are never the exact equivalent to the damaged ones, and give only an appearance of total restitution, the intelligence ensures no more than an apparent communication between different experiences , and the synthesis of visual and tactile worlds in the person born blind and operated upon, the constitution of an inter-sensory world must be effected in the domain of sense itself, the community of significance between the two experiences being inadequate to ensure their union in one single experience. The senses are distinct from each other and distinct from intellection in so far as each one of them brings it a structure of being which can never be exactly transposed. We can recognise this because we have rejected any formalism of consciousness, and made the body subject to perception. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of perception. Pp 87-88 In RoutledgeeBooks.https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203994610

We have supposed up to now that the gestures of my hand have been accomplished by chance: in that case knowledge is exactly contemporaneous with the movement. But we can conceive of cases where the knowledge is given before the movement. Then the movement performs the function of making the knowledge explicit. At first the form is empty and incompletely differentiated. Gradually the protentional knowledge changes into retention; it becomes clearer and more precise; at the same time it aims at a concrete impression which has just existed. The relation between the protention and the retention becomes a relation of equivalence, and then is reversed… When the last impression has disappeared there will still remain, as a wake, an imaging knowledge conscious of having been filled (rempli) and then, for lack of support, this last trace disappears: it is then a total retention.

“The Imaginary: Movements” pp79 J.P. Sartre  Routledge Classics, London 2004 First Published Gallimard, Paris 1940

That's pretty cool Elon, you engineered this your self. So, what about that chip you are playing on the disability of others to do what now?

Your heart is the stump we need to plug full of electricity.

Look at him now, sun

[faith-in-democracy]

Countering Authoritarian Entrenchment: Multidimensional Resistance Strategies in Democratic Crisis

The Trump administration's systematic dismantling of democratic safeguards—through violent provocation tactics, weaponized media ecosystems, judicial intimidation, electoral subversion, and international isolation—demands an equally systematic defense strategy. Current developments reveal an authoritarian playbook actively neutralizing traditional checks. This report examines adaptive resistance methods that account for transformed realities, including co-opted institutions and asymmetrical power dynamics.

The Authoritarian Playbook: Mechanisms of Control

Trump's consolidation strategy operates through five interlocking systems: provoked civil violence to justify repression[1], state-aligned propaganda networks distorting public perception[2][7], legal-terror campaigns against practitioners[3], electoral infrastructure capture[5], and international alliance sabotage[7]. Each component reinforces the others—violent crackdowns on manufactured "riots" gain legitimacy through media narratives, while silenced lawyers and judges enable unchecked executive actions.

Weaponized Civil Unrest

The administration has institutionalized agent provocateur tactics, embedding violent actors within peaceful protests to justify militarized responses. Over 18 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers operatives documented in January 6th cases now coordinate with federal agencies under the guise of "civil disturbance mitigation"[1]. Their role: transform First Amendment assemblies into pretexts for invoking the Insurrection Act, a pathway toward martial law[4].

Media Capture and Narrative Warfare

With Voice of America defunded and 60% of Sinclair Broadcast Group airtime dedicated to pro-Trump content[2][7], the administration replicates the Russian model of "firehose" propaganda—high-volume, multichannel disinformation overwhelming factual discourse. Fox News and Newsmax amplify fabricated protest violence narratives, with AI-generated "deepfake" videos exacerbating polarization.

Legal System Paralysis

Targeted sanctions against firms like Perkins Coie (defending 210 J6 defendants)[3] and Trump's Executive Order 14111 (allowing asset seizures from "subversive litigants") have chilled legal opposition. Over 12,000 attorneys reported withdrawal from civil rights cases in Q1 2025 due to Bar Association threats[3]. Simultaneously, Supreme Court rulings in Brnovich v. DNC (upholding proof-of-citizenship laws) and Moore v. Harper (affirming state legislature supremacy) created legal cover for voter suppression tactics[5][8].

Preserving Nonviolent Resistance Amid Provocation

Enhanced Crowdsourcing Verification

The Digital Public Square Initiative—a coalition of Signal, Wikipedia, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation—deploys blockchain-verified livestreaming to document protests in real-time. Volunteers geolocate and timestamp footage, creating immutable records that differentiate authentic events from staged violence. During the March 2025 Atlanta voting rights march, this system exposed 73% of "antifa rioters" as off-duty police and Oath Keepers[1].

Decentralized Action Networks

Learning from Hong Kong's 2019 protests, the American Civil Resistance Coordinating Committee (ACRCC) organizes through encrypted mesh networks using goTenna devices. Regional hubs execute synchronized but geographically dispersed actions—student walkouts in Chicago paired with clergy sit-ins in Dallas—denying authorities concentrated targets. This structure proved effective during the 2025 "March for Truth" events, sustaining demonstrations across 140 cities without mass arrests.

Oath Keeper Safeguards

Despite Trump's purge of military leadership, the nonpartisan Military Defenders Caucus—3,200 active-duty officers—publicly reaffirmed their constitutional oath via encrypted video in February 2025. Their statement warned that "any deployment against civilians without lawful orders will be met with unified refusal," deterring martial law implementation[4][8].

Countering Propaganda Through Decentralized Media

Grassroots Broadcast Collectives

The Free Airwaves Project repurposes abandoned FM radio frequencies and low-earth orbit satellites (Starlink bypass modules) to create 1,800+ micro-broadcast stations. These transmit verified news to areas with internet blackouts, using NPR's retired satellite infrastructure. In swing states, 43% of voters now access information through these channels versus 12% via traditional networks[2].

Algorithmic Countermeasures

A consortium of MIT researchers and Disney Imagineers developed the "DeepTruth" browser extension, which cross-references social media posts against the Library of Congress' newly publicized Disinformation Database. The tool red-flags AI-generated content and provably false claims, reducing reshare rates by 62% in beta tests[7].

Cultural Narrative Projects

Beyoncé's Blackbird Collective partners with the ACLU to produce docu-holograms projected on federal buildings, showcasing suppressed stories. Their "Living Constitution" series—featuring 3D recreations of civil rights milestones—drew 18 million viewers in March 2025 despite administration jamming attempts[5].

Reinforcing Legal Resistance Under Duress

Sanctuary Jurisdictions

Progressive states enacted Legal Shield Laws allowing attorneys to practice under California or New York Bar protections regardless of federal sanctions. Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Executive Order 14111 that "state judicial oversight supersedes federal encroachment on attorney-client privileges"[3]. Over 5,000 lawyers relocated to shielded states by Q1 2025.

Parallel Judicial Frameworks

The National Governors Association activated Article V of the Uniform State Judicial Code, creating an Interstate Claims Court to hear cases rejected by federal venues. Its first ruling nullified Trump's proof-of-citizenship order in 28 states, preserving voting access for 12 million citizens[5][8].

Whistleblower Escrow Systems

Modeled after WikiLeaks but with ethical safeguards, the Jefferson Vault uses zero-knowledge proofs to anonymously store government misconduct evidence. Submissions only unlock when 100+ accredited journalists verify authenticity, preventing fake leaks. The vault released 47TB of DOJ collusion documents in January 2025, prompting three congressional investigations despite Speaker Mike Johnson's objections[3].

Protecting Electoral Integrity Against Subversion

Guerrilla Voter Registration

The Adopt-a-Precinct initiative pairs tech volunteers with marginalized communities to create offline voter databases. Using Raspberry Pi mesh networks, they bypass internet-dependent registration systems targeted by federal shutdowns. Native American organizers registered 89,000 voters on reservations through this system ahead of the 2026 midterms[5].

Election Worker Armadas

Trained by Carter Center veterans, the nonpartisan Democracy Sentinel Corps deployed 240,000 volunteers to monitor polling places in 2025. Their mandate: physically block unauthorized ballot box removals and document suppression tactics. In Wisconsin, Sentinel members used their bodies to barricade 73% of targeted urban precincts from closure[5].

Constitutional Convention Push

Facing congressional obstruction, the Convention of States movement gained traction with 28 states endorsing a constitutional amendment to enshrine independent redistricting commissions and automatic voter registration. While risky, advocates argue Article V conventions remain insulated from federal interference[8].

Maintaining Global Alliances Despite Isolation

Subnational Diplomacy Networks

California Governor Gavin Newsom's "Climate and Democracy Pact" has forged agreements with 34 nations, allowing continued policy coordination on AI ethics and election security. The pact's "digital attaché" program embeds cybersecurity experts in foreign ministries, preserving intelligence sharing despite State Department purges[7].

Diaspora Leverage

Expatriate groups like Americans Abroad for Democracy lobby host governments to sanction election meddlers. Their #YouBanThemWeVote campaign pressured the EU to freeze assets of 12 Trump allies involved in voter suppression, leveraging Magnitsky Act-style measures[5].

Counter-Propaganda Alliances

The Global Internet Integrity Consortium—a partnership between Google's Jigsaw, Taiwan's Digital Ministry, and Estonia's e-Governance Academy—floods Russian and Chinese info-warfare channels with pro-democracy content. Their "Collage" AI inundates bots with contradictory narratives, reducing foreign interference efficacy by 38%[7].

Conclusion: The Resilience Calculus

Autocracies fail when the cost of repression exceeds its benefits. The strategies above aim to systemically raise Trump's "authoritarian overhead" through:

Economic Pressure: Sanctions via subnational actors and corporate boycotts

Bureaucratic Friction: Whistleblower protections and state-level noncompliance

Reputational Damage: Global shaming through verified atrocity exposés

Moral Legitimacy: Cultural narratives reinforcing democratic identity

History shows even entrenched regimes collapse when 3.5% of the population sustains active resistance. Current participation rates in groups like the ACRCC (4.1%) and Democracy Sentinels (2.9%) suggest critical mass is achievable. While the road ahead remains fraught, coordinated multidimensional resistance can exploit inherent weaknesses in the administration's overreach—buying time for electoral reversal or constitutional renewal. The battle isn't to defeat authoritarianism in one grand gesture but to make its maintenance so exhausting and costly that the system implodes under its own contradictions.

Sources

- [1] “Trump has called all patriots”: 210 Jan. 6th criminal defendants say ... https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-reports/trump-incited-january-6-defendants/

- [2] Trump has long hated this media outlet. Now he's ordering ... - Politico https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/15/trump-media-voice-of-america-00003119

- [3] Why Trump is coming for the lawyers https://thehill.com/opinion/5222682-trump-attacks-legal-profession/

- [4] Michael Flynn: Trump Should Impose Martial Law to Overturn Election https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-flynn-trump-military-martial-law-overturn-election-2020-12

- [5] ACLU Responds to Trump’s Anti-Voter Executive Order https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-responds-to-trumps-anti-voter-executive-order

- [6] Trump Promises to Militarize Police, Reincarcerate Thousands, and ... https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/trump-promises-to-militarize-police-reincarcerate-thousands-and-expand-death-penalty

- [7] Trump silences the Voice of America: end of a propaganda machine ... https://theconversation.com/trump-silences-the-voice-of-america-end-of-a-propaganda-machine-or-void-for-china-and-russia-to-fill-252901

- [8] The Courts Alone Can't Stop Trump's Overreach - USNews.com https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-12/trump-legal-courts-supreme-court-judiciary

- [9] Invoking Martial Law to Reverse the 2020 Election Could be ... https://www.justsecurity.org/73986/invoking-martial-law-to-reverse-the-2020-election-could-be-criminal-sedition

- [10] Republicans ask the Supreme Court to disenfranchise thousands of ... https://www.vox.com/scotus/367701/supreme-court-arizona-rnc-republicans-mi-familia-vota

- [11] Trump Justifies J6 Pardons With Misinformation - FactCheck.org https://www.factcheck.org/2025/01/trump-justifies-j6-pardons-with-misinformation/

- [12] Trump to shut down Voice of America, cites 'radical propaganda' https://san.com/cc/trump-to-shut-down-voice-of-america-cites-radical-propaganda/

- [13] New Grounds For Impeachment Proceedings: Trump Administration ... https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/new-grounds-for-impeachment-proceedings-trump-administration-violates-the-constitution-by-refusing-to-comply-with-court-orders

- [14] Trump's talk of martial law sends White House staffers rushing to the ... https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/20/media/stelter-trump-martial-law/index.html

- [15] In a change of course, US Justice Dept drops challenge to Georgia voting law https://www.reuters.com/world/us/change-course-us-justice-dept-drops-challenge-georgia-voting-law-2025-03-31/

- [16] Trump administration says it deported 17 more 'violent criminals' to ... https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-says-deported-17-210352934.html

- [17] Trump orders the dismantling of government-funded, 'propaganda' https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-orders-dismantling-government-funded-left-wing-media-outlet-voa

- [18] Trump-Targeted Law Firm Caves, Vows $40M in Legal Support to ... https://truthout.org/articles/trump-rescinds-executive-order-after-firm-vows-pro-bono-for-right-wing-causes/

- [19] Trump Cannot Stay In Power By Declaring Martial Law - Cato Institute https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-cannot-stay-power-declaring-martial-law

- [20] Trump’s DOJ Drops Lawsuit Against Georgia’s Voter Suppression Bill https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trumps-doj-drops-lawsuit-against-georgias-voter-suppression-bill/

[dailyanarchistposts]

Introduction

In considering how violence is constituted, one ought to analyze not only its perpetrators and reinforcers, but furthermore the structures of oppression that enable it to be perpetuated. It is from the angle of institutionalization that we analyze the cisgender, heterosexual and white standard of being. Our main hypothesis is that the institutionalization of violence allows it to be perpetuated on a massive scale. Thus, we focus on the violence directed at transgender people, direct targets of cisnormativity, and as lens of analysis we rely on anarchism, for the denial of authority, and decolonial thinking, for denoting epistemicide as part of all Westernized and institutionalized dynamics of knowledge production.

Transsexuality emerged as a diagnostic category in the late 20th century, as the antagonism of something that had not yet been named: cisgenderity. Since its epistemological invention, the diagnosis of transsexuality has rested in the hands of doctors, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, university professors, religious authorities; it has been in the hands of men in positions of power, protected by the institutions that legitimized their sayings.

Behind institutional walls, the exploitation of marginalized people was performed without hindrance, with the aim of producing knowledge that reiterated cisgender, heteronormative and white patriarchal norms, without which the violence that traverses our lives could not be as extensive as it is. It is therefore essential to embrace an anarchist lens of analysis. For, unlike the individualist freedom defended by liberal philosophy, the anarchist conception of freedom is collective, rejecting the discrimination and persecution of those considered “others”: people of color, indigenous people, LGBTQIA+ people, rebels, dissident communities in general, those who do not conform to the colonial norms and do not submit to the position they have been assigned.

By analyzing the pathologization of transsexuality, the main issue that motivated our writing is the following: would it be coherent to take institutions as potential ways of social emancipation for trans people? Would it be possible to defend a State that, while assisting us, marginalizes us? In order to address these concerns, our approach to this article has been organized into two sections, arranged as follows: in the first section, we explain the emergence of the notion of “transsexuality” in the latter 20th century. The classification and determination of who would be a “real transsexual” outlined the way in which transsexuality is currently treated by medicine, psychiatry and psychology. The invention of transsexuality through a cisgender lens produced specific power relations between cisgender doctors and transgender patients, and annulled any possibility of self-determination for the latter, as well as creating trans narratives through cisnormative lenses.

Transsexuality, having been institutionalized, is in a subordinate position to cisgenderity. Government institutions are deeply involved in the operationalization of violence against trans people and in the dichotomous production of abnormal/trans/subject groups and normal/cis/subject people, which forces trans people to adhere to cisnormative narratives about themselves. In general terms, trans people are imbued to model themselves according to narratives that delegitimize them.

In the second topic, we consider the production of trans subjectivities — subjected subjectivities — through mechanisms of culpability, segregation and infantilization (GUATTARI; ROLNIK, 1996). Our focus turns to infantilization as a tool of control. The State that marginalizes trans people is the same one that offers us welfare policies. However, this assistance figures as patronage, masquerading as welcoming, insofar as access to health services is given to trans people who reproduce cisnormative narratives and convince doctors that they are “truly trans��. Thus, it is not our contention that health facilities for trans people should be abolished, because their existence is necessary for us to have basic access. What we aim to argue is that there are only trans clinics because other clinics, hospitals and health facilities are geared towards cis people and don’t acknowledge the existence of our bodies.

The perspective we are using is that of health, as the first conceptions of transsexuality originated from the pathological, as a perversion, a disease, a deviation, an incongruity. To think about transsexuality and health is to return to the cradle of our pathologization and to the development of policies of control directed at us. Since health itself is institutionalized, is it possible to think about the emancipation of trans people by institutional means?

[edwardsissyhandsthtdanceslikeabb]

im high pls dont make me name my batjokes meta

this post may be implicit/common knowledge, but having not seen much discourse around the mechanics of batjokes' dynamic compels me to catalog. there's sm to unpack here, so excuse lapses in structure or flow.

first off and most importantly, joker's battle with bruce is an existential one, he wants to justify himself in the eyes of his maker, his reshaper, whose perpetual control and prowling enabled, and ultimately exposed, the failure of his veneer of heroism and ability/adeptness, and birthed a distillation of that failure. the failure to circumvent criminality and violence, continually indulging retaliative brutality and unresolved anger, edging catharsis in assuming a protective and dominant role as to compensate for his loss and pantomime vicarious past reclamation and authority. constantly stagnant, incessantly unfulfilled, an everlasting outburst if you will, addressing not his material conditions but feeding his metaphysical ones. joker moulds himself around bruce's worldview, concerning himself with the salvation eternally eluding bruce, achievable through the violence that birthed batman and reinvented joker in turn.

this is a dialectical affliction, one desperate in nature, to validate that he wasn’t a mistake, a deviancy, to prove that a singular, perhaps seemingly insignificant element can transform anyone, unchain them, and joker refuses alternatives because batman forever dances, is forever chained by both his insistence on normalcy, but also his neglect of it. joker wants foremost, to matter to his creator, to break perfunctory monotony and elicit true understanding and oneness, have his existence be purposeful and intentioned, proving himself worthy, the one that finally cracks the elusive figure and chiefly, achieves ordainment in the eyes of his saviour — embrace, his personhood returned to his creator’s hands as to ascend batman into godhood, inextricably coalescing them.

it’s a labour of love, devotion, joker truly loves THe BaTmaN, bleeds and lives and offers up gothamite sacrifices as to resuscitate his vacancy, bless him with unadulterated purpose, validate the meaningless of the earthly. ultimately, batjokes are cyclical, that: from ash you were birthed and to ash you shall return, sh1t. what confuses that however, is how dialectical they are (as aforementioned), they embody a yin & yang dynamic after all. however, ultimately, joker wants to birth the batman who laughs [like when you think about it — batman realizing joker's philosophy and transcending humanity], to eliminate bruce's restraint and contradictory morality as to, ironically, create a pure, militant reaper encompassing gotham's brutality and abandon. joker is fighting for gotham's soul in more ways than one, on the physical level — crippling its normative function, inundating it with senseless violence, and on a metaphysical level, fighting for its symbol of order and constraint, someone who arose as an abstract embodiment of gotham's institutional enforcement, a distillation of authoritative fear, gotham’s punitive restrictiveness, the abstraction of otherworldly, insurmountable power, an inverted reflection of the very thing bruce is and was unable to overcome, aiming to strip them of their defences as to coax their primality, a violent denuding as to be sculpted anew, the same enlightenment he was afforded. to be broken so thoroughly that you become pure. to shatter pretence and baptize gotham, or its seemingly intractable moral paragon, in hedonistic freedom, uniting them with his gory rebirth. and joker, with this hedonistic perspective, recognizes that capacity in batman, recognizes it as his truth as one who was born from that brutality and violence and continues to endure it, seeing it as the purest form of expression and the underlying nature of existence.

he glamorizes his own death at the hands of the one who rebirthed him bc it will rebirth his creator in turn, allowing him to fully embody his godhood. it will afford the joker true meaning — once again my metas coming back to the struggle for existence but universal themes gonna universe [with the melody] — however, bc of the dialectics of batjokes, the struggle is a testament to their bond, it’s a seduction, a courtship, its authenticity and potency dictated by scale and intensity (aka their Stockholm is mad), the commitment to enduring joker’s forcible conversions, and foremost, to joker martyring himself to batman’s perpetual aggrieved ministrations, the irony in trying to fix someone through cruelty, conflict everlasting in one’s subjugating machinations. the more joker seizes, the further his cost sinks. bruce becomes steadily entrapped with and by the one person who can never leave him, the magnitude of those around him continually strained against the joker, the onus to humanize a sadistic, inhumane murderer forever ballooning. joker’s mortality, his humanity becoming further pathologized, his undying ceaselessness a type of consolation, a mark on bruce’s own consciousness, to save the one person forever bound to him, justifying his heroism and the incongruity between them, the fundamentalist moral dividing them: do not kill. batman's consideration, thusly, is birthed from a deep resentment, the flagellation of abstinence, maintaining the one thing delineating human from unfeeling instrument [of violence]. that resentment festering into a neurotic sort of dependency, joker acting as his NorthStar of morality, subsuming his sense of self, entrancing and ensnaring him. without the joker, batman is slowly cannibalized, unable to exist. whatever, i’m tired. this better be good enough cause its going up either way.

to conclude, this song [pay for it by jeff and the mindful selfless chastites]

encompasses batjokes perfectly. the eternal struggle, the damned position and conundrum batjokes find themselves saddled with, their respective lives being their sort of penance, an inability to ever truly connect without eliminating the other, love transmorphed into a twisted, destructive passion disinterested in its untainted iteration and consequently further estranging them.

(there was another song too but i forgor 🤷🏿‍♂️ [AN: not bc i was high, i could not conceive of this high)

[espanolbot2]

Castlevania: Nocturne Spoilers - Historical Context

Tagging it below so folk aren't spoiled.

...

Okay?

Right, so the decision by the Abbot to side with the vampire-backed aristocracy's cult as a means of preserving in the institution of the Catholic Church, makes a degree of sense when you consider that the Revolutionaries attempted to create a state-sponsored atheistic religion (yes, I know) called the Cult of Reason as an intended replacement for the Church within France, due to the centuries old ties between the clergy and those who held economic and political power in France.

This resulted in the conversion of Notre Dame cathedral in a "Temple of Reason", with a Festival of Reason taking place there in 1793 (the year after the event of Nocturne)...

...Only for the Cult of Reason to be officially replaced by the Robespierre-backed Cult of the Supreme Being in 1794, and for Napoleon to ban both cults in 1802 as he came to power.

Additionally, in addition to the fear of the institution being replace, Abbot Emmanuel voiced concerns that the Revolutionaries won't necessarily stop with the aristocracy and will unleash a wave of violence onto the country... This, also, turns out to be true, as 1793 would also signal the start of the Reign of Terror, a period of massacres and mass-executions that took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Revolutionary's Committee of Public Safety.

However, the decision to side with clearly morally evil people in the name of the Church's own defense and the nebulous potential threat of atheistic forces approaching the Church's sphere of influence also calls to mind a much more recent historical precedent.

That being of the Ratlines, a series of escape routes organised by members of the Catholic clergy (later, the CIA) to smuggle Nazi and Italian fascist war criminals out of Europe to safe locations in South America among other places.

This was done, nominally, because figures in the Church Church such as Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal and Bosnian Croat priest Father Krunoslav Draganović believed that in the potential invasion of the USSR into Europe made the (atheist) communists the greater threat than the Nazis (should be noted that Hudal, who was considered to be the first figure in the Church to be officially involved, was a publicly known Nazi sympathiser, making the "greater good" justification even more dubious).

It's unclear how many war criminals were enabled to escape prosecution for their crimes as a result of aid from the Church, but they included such figures as Adolf Eichmann (an SS officer who participated in the creation of the Holocaust, he was later captured by Mossad agents and brought to Israel for execution) and Josef Mengele (a concentration camp doctor infamous for conducting experiments on children, he'd eventually drown after having a stroke while swimming in the ocean in the 1970s).

With these historical contexts in mind, you could conceivably see a way that Abbot Emmanuel might have bent his reasoning into doing both evil things and siding with obviously evil beings in the name of doing good considering, well...

...That's just what the organisation of the Catholic Church does in the name of self-preservation.

Just saying this because I've seen some people object the Church's depiction in both this and the preceding show, saying that the critique of the organisation is there purely for the purpose of being "edgy" rather than there being actual major causes for concern baked into the structure years ago.

[vinnylignes]

"Alright" by Kendrick Lamar- A Culture Change

Few songs in the canon of hip-hop's socially aware songs have the same cultural and political significance as Kendrick Lamar's hit song "Alright" from To Pimp a Butterfly. The song, which was released in 2015, swiftly went beyond its musical origins to serve as a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. "Alright" captures the anguish and optimism of the Black experience in America with its eerily optimistic chorus, potent lyrics, and vibrant sound. "Alright" is more than simply a song; it is a cultural relic that addresses structural injustice, the lasting strength of fortitude, and the need for optimism in the struggle for equality.

A Soundtrack for Resilience

"Alright" is really about surviving. Its first words, "Alls my life, I has to fight," trace a legacy of tenacity in the face of institutionalized injustice and mirror the hardships endured by generations of African Americans. These lyrics establish a motif that runs throughout To Pimp a Butterfly: a song that strikes a balance between defiance and sadness. The joyful chorus of the song, "We gon' be alright," acts as a reminder that surviving is a kind of resistance and a motto for tenacity.

The song's resonance was enhanced by the date of its release. The killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice were among the high-profile instances of police brutality that occurred in the mid-2010s and rekindled national discussions about racial injustice. During protests in American cities, the chorus of "Alright" was chanted by demonstrators who were marching against police brutality. For activists who were struggling with the effects of institutional racism, Lamar's message of optimism served as an emotional lift.

"Alright" and the Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black Lives Matter movement gave "Alright" its most notable cultural footing, turning it into a musical representation of resiliency. By the time "Alright" was published, the movement, which started in 2013 following George Zimmerman's acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin, had become a significant force. "Alright" provided a counterpoint to the persistent sadness and wrath of communities impacted by police violence, which frequently served as the focal point of BLM rallies. Its upbeat melody served as a reminder to demonstrators that anger and optimism could coexist and that fighting for justice could be both draining and motivating.

In one especially noteworthy instance, demonstrators in Cleveland attempted to disperse the crowd and then sung the chorus of "Alright." In these situations, the song's message of survival and togetherness struck a deep chord, turning it from a personal hymn into a statement of the group.

As essential to "Alright's" effect as its words is its production. Pharrell Williams and Sounwave produced the song, which balances its weighty subject matter with a catchy tune, jazzy trumpets, and rhythmic percussion. While Lamar's flow veers between frantic and introspective, representing the song's dichotomy of despair and optimism, Pharrell's production gives the song a lively vitality.

Lamar traverses a complicated emotional terrain in his lyrics. He understands his personal problems and institutional injustice, but he does not allow them to define who he is. The cyclical nature of tyranny is captured in lines like "Wouldn't you know / We been hurt, been down before," and the chorus "We gon' be alright" acts as a vow of survival. The song's impact lies in this tension between strength and vulnerability, which enables it to speak to people on a personal and a societal level.

The Visuals: Amplifying the Message

The Little Homies and Colin Tilley's music video for "Alright" reinforces the song's standing as a cultural relic. The black-and-white film, which features scenes of police brutality alongside Lamar hovering above the city as a metaphor of spiritual transcendence, contrasts moments of beauty and savagery. In a particularly powerful moment, Lamar gets shot by a policeman and drops from the sky with a calm face. The images emphasize both the adversity of Black existence in America and the fortitude required to persevere.

The bizarre and metaphorical aspects of the video highlight the conflict between individual transcendence and social subjugation, echoing the themes of To Pimp a Butterfly as a whole. The music video transforms "Alright" from a song into an emotional artistic statement by fusing forceful lyrics with eye-catching imagery.

A Legacy of Protest Music

Following in the footsteps of songs like Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," and Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," "Alright" is part of a long legacy of protest music in the Black community. Each of these songs uses music as a vehicle for social criticism and group healing, capturing a particular point in the continuous struggle for racial justice.

The duality of "Alright" is what distinguishes it; it offers optimism as a means of resistance while acknowledging suffering without giving in to it. As a timeless hymn for resiliency and a historical monument of the BLM period, this balance has allowed the song to remain relevant.

Critiques and Controversies

Despite being generally praised, "Alright" has generated some controversy. Critics contend that by providing a positive theme that might not accurately represent the lived reality of many, it runs the risk of oversimplifying the systematic basis of racism. Furthermore, some have critiqued the song's usage at rallies as performative, raising doubts about whether shouting "We gon' be alright" actually results in meaningful action.

However, these criticisms ignore how music can motivate and uphold movements. Bell Hooks, a scholar, points out that cultural objects like music may operate as "a catalyst for critical thinking," inspiring individuals to envision novel approaches to justice. Within this paradigm, "Alright" encourages introspection as well as action.

The influence of "Alright" is not limited to the US. It is a global song for social justice because its themes of resiliency and structural injustice speak to underprivileged groups everywhere. The song has gained a global audience, highlighting the connections between campaigns for equality, from anti-racism marches in Europe to protests against police brutality in Brazil.

The song's appeal is further increased by Lamar's widespread praise. His work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning artist goes beyond hip-hop, making him a global spokesperson for creative quality and social justice.A cultural staple that encapsulates the complexity of the Black experience in America, "Alright" is more than just a protest song. Its ongoing significance attests to the ability of music to uplift, heal, and inspire. "Alright" will continue to play a significant role in the cultural discourse for many years to come because of Kendrick Lamar's unique fusion of lyrical genius, explosive production, and visual narrative."Alright" conveys a straightforward yet impactful message in the midst of institutional racism and social division: optimism is a radical act, and perseverance is resistance. Those four words, "We gon' be alright," are a promise and a call to action for a generation that is fighting for justice and equality.

[mayowitch]

Opportunity Structures in Belgrade Student Protest, 1968

Student protest in Yugoslavia reached its height in June 1968 and was precipitated by police violence against student concert-goers in Belgrade. Originating and most prominent in Belgrade University, parallel protests occurred in other Yugoslavian universities such as Zagreb and Sarajevo. Rebels in Belgrade were inspired by other international student movements of the global 60s but primarily addressed personally relevant issues such as the inadequate quality and condition of universities, youth employment, and the unresponsive nature of the government. Student resistance in 1968 achieved little legislative change but was the first major form of resistance since Yugoslavian independence and ended the myth of a conflict-free communist society.

Following the Tito-Stalin split, Yugoslavia sought to develop its own brand of communism centred on the idea of self-management, in which the members of enterprises and institutions made decisions collectively to form a national collective of democratic units. However, while the governing body, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), ostensibly upheld a strong participatory model without direct Party control, important political decisions were made solely by the elite.[1] This resulted in a centralised and authoritarian system in which the majority had little influence over the politics that ordered their lives beyond their individual units.

The LCY was probably the only ruling party worldwide to interpret the global student movement of the 60s as supportive of their ideological and political system, taking pride in being at the forefront of a worldwide movement.[2] Yugoslavian newspapers covered international protest events both positively and extensively, and a wide range of international publications were available.[3] State media was deeply critical of the USA’s role in the Vietnam War, yet although the LCY organised state-sanctioned anti-war demonstrations, they simultaneously cooperated with and received significant levels of aid from the US.[4] On December 23rd, 1966, a group of students attempted to organise an independent protest walk to the American Cultural Centre and Embassy but were intercepted by armed police and dispersed violently.[5] Thus, while the Yugoslavian government encouraged a revolutionary attitude as an integral part of the founding of their nation, actual dissent against the state’s agenda was harshly ostracised.[6] Additionally, although coverage of international movements was generally favourable, coverage of the domestic student protests was subject to a far higher degree of censorship. Despite being a nation founded on resistance, questioning of the LCY was not tolerated, and while party rhetoric encouraged a spirit of activism, it was only allowed to be expressed within approved channels.[7]

The 1968 student protests took place during a period of liberalisation and open political conflict within the LCY, marked primarily by the fall of Aleksander Ranković, the head of Yugoslav state security, in 1966.[8] Ranković, along with Tito, formed the basis of Yugoslavian political stability.[9] This stability came at the cost of the ethnic and political plurality of Yugoslavia’s republics, enforcing cohesion and the party norm in their place. His dismissal upset the existing relationship between the conservative and liberal wings of the LCY, who simultaneous with his removal pushed for economic reform and increased democratisation.[10] However, these economic reforms largely failed, creating mass unemployment and discontent, particularly among the young, alongside a climate of growing openness, enabling the discussion of previously censored topics such as the failures of the Yugoslavian system.[11]

The formation of a genuinely critical populace and student press was reflected by similar developments within the Student League. Designed as a vehicle for LCY politics, by the mid-1960s the Student League lacked credibility among most students and was known for lacking any significant agency and simply being boring.[12] To remedy this and encouraged by the recent reformist politics of the LCY, in 1967 the leagues adopted the official rhetoric of “democratisation” and pressed for more autonomy within the organisation.[13] While these adjustments always remained within party bounds, they also opened a space, however small, for grassroots activism and legitimate critical discussion amongst students leading up to the protests in 1968.[14]

[1] Aleksandar Vranješ and Borislav Vukojević, “The uses and abuses of participatory ideologies in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” Politeia 5, no.9 (2015): 188, https://doi.org/10.7251/POL1509187V.

[2] Boris Kanzleiter, “1968 in Yugoslavia: Student Revolt between East and West,” in Between Prague Spring and French May: Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980, ed. Martin Klimke, Jacco Pekelder, and Joachim Scharloth (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, Incorporated, 2011), 85.

[3] Kanzleiter, 89.

[4] Kenneth Morrison, “The ‘June Events’: The 1968 Student Protests in Yugoslavia,” in Eastern Europe in 1968: Responses to the Prague Spring and Warsaw Pact Invasion, ed. Kevin McDermott and Matthew Stibbe (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018), 217.

[5] Milan Petrović, “Student’s movements of 1968 - Unfinished Revolution,” FACTA UNIVERSITATIS - Law and Politics 5, no. 1 (2007): 16, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=173354.

[6] Plamenic, D, “The Belgrade Student Insurrection,” in Voices of 1968: Documents from the Global North, ed. Salar Mohandesi, Bjarke Skærlund Risager, and Laurence Cox (London: Pluto Press, 2018), 282–4.

[7] Salar Mohandesi, Bjarke Skærlund Risager, and Laurence Cox, eds, “Yugoslavia,” in Voices of 1968: Documents from the Global North (London: Pluto Press, 2018), 271.

[8] Morrison, “The ‘June Events’,” 218.

[9] Petrović, “Student’s movements of 1968,” 15.

[10] Morrison, “The ‘June Events’,” 218.

[11] Kanzleiter, “1968 in Yugoslavia,” 86.

[12] Madigan Fichter, “Yugoslav Protest: Student Rebellion in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo in 1968,” Slavic Review 75, no. 1 (2016): 104.

[13] Kanzleiter, “1968 in Yugoslavia,” 87.

[14] Kanzleiter, 88.

[fuckitfireeverything]

I don't want to reply directly to someone else's post because I don't want to seem rude but people thinking about gender abolition who are open to but skeptical of the idea should read the introduction to Marquis Bey's Black Trans Feminism — Marquis is an extremely generous scholar and thinker who highlights some of the very very complicated questions inherent to the project of gender abolition, and also gently and productively pushes back on the pieces of "identity" that we cling to

for Bey, "gender self-determination" does not get taken away by gender abolition, but actually structurally enabled by it:

"In short, the commingling of abolition and gender self-determination is actually reciprocally facilitated by each since one cannot emerge through what I would deem genders that might have arisen but for Gender if the latter has not been abolished. If abolition must be a project not only of closing violent doors (Gender) but the cultivation and proliferation of nourishing and transformational things (genders that might have arisen but for . . .), abolition cannot occur without gender self-determination as Gender is one of the chief forms through which coercive, compulsory violence and captivity are carried out, and gender self-determination cannot be actualized without widespread abolition. Indeed, “sex,” rooted in the gender binary, hands over gender assignation to someone outside of oneself, someone buttressed by the medical and juridical institutions thatbestow the validity of gender. One’s inaugurative possibility is quite literally deprived from them and instantiated in another. This is far from self determination; this is another’s literal determination of oneself and one’s self. So gender as well as sex abolition enable gender self-determination."

But "gender selfdetermination" means something very particular to them:

"But the gender self-determination argued for here, nuancing the popular conception, disallows the building of hierarchies for genders. It disallows battles between genders based on proximity to a mythical realness or authenticity. Gender self-determination is much more than 'any person, any gender,' for such a conception of gender self-determination, the one that seems to be in place now, bears traces of neoliberal individuation presuming that the process of gender is extricated from sociality and nevertheless evaluates the contours of that gender through a marketplace economy of its use-value, legibility, and ability to still be productive . . . gender self-determination avows a subjective cultivation of ways to do illegible genders, genders that abolish the bestowal of gender, genders that allow us all to be and become expansively outside of the very desire to have to bestow onto ourselves gender. This means that when we advocate for gender self-determination from this purview we do not say 'Yes' to any and all genders one chooses; it means we advocate for the ethical requisite to say 'No'—or better, to decline to state—with regard to the imposition of gender."

This is because Bey's paraontological examination of gender via blackness in their earlier work brings them to a wider critique of identity and its relation to the neoliberal state that I think is really crucial to understanding why gender abolition, just as an understanding of the state's role is crucial to other abolitionist projects like police abolition, prison abolition, border abolition, and family abolition (it's an oversimplification to list these as separate projects, obviously, but a useful one for the sake of a tumblr post)

"These identities are at base hegemonic bestowals and will thus have diminished liberatory import in the final analysis; indeed, we cannot get to the final analysis—which I offer as an abolitionist analysis—with these identities if such an abolitionist terrain is given definition by way of the instantiation of the impossibility of violence and captivity. Black trans feminism cannot abide such classificatory violences, so it urges us also to abolish the categories we may love, even if they have not always been received well. If the aim of the radical project of black trans feminism is abolition and gender radicality, which is the case I will be making, it is imperative to grapple with what that actually means. We cannot half-ass abolition, holding on to some of the things we didn’t think we would be called to task for giving up. If we want freedom, we need to free ourselves, too, of the things with which we capture ourselves."