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clarenecessities · 6 years

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Queerquiggle/Cybunnypoop

Subtitle: This Again

It’s been around two years since the shit hit the proverbial fan, but seeing as the individual in question has since deleted & remade, some of you may not be aware of whom you’re interacting with.

Queerquiggle & queerneopets are the latest installments in a series of urls belonging to one person, hereafter referred to as the original url, cybunnypoop. Other former urls for his neoblog include (but are not limited to): gaygelatin, shewhoneopetswiththee, neobloq, and candypaintbrush.

I should tell you all off the bat that he’s a Trump supporter, a “recovering” transphobe, and extremely Islamophobic, so this post may contain some upsetting information. There are some instances of misogyny, antisemitism, homophobia, and racism, as well. Oh, and ableism. Honestly, pick an -ism.

None of the information in this post should be a repeat of my first post regarding the matter. Warning: this post is even longer.

As before, I’d be remiss if I didn’t lay out my bias: I don’t like him. He’s been downgraded from “nemesis” to “nuisance,” as he’s no longer harassing minors (as far as I’m aware), but we’re never going to be best buddies.

We’ve spoken several times, though never to any resolution, and with each interaction it became increasingly obvious that it was futile. I ultimately blocked him following repeated propositioning and an unwillingness to engage beyond casting any disagreement as bullying and telling the kids to go back to their safe spaces.

Cybunnypoop is now 25 years old, and he hasn’t started anything major in a while. His posts remain fairly unpopular, though whether that’s the result of the quarantine or simple bad content, I couldn’t say. You’re under no obligation to take my word for any of this. Though I’ve provided links and screenshots where I can, what you make of that evidence is up to you.

TRANSPHOBIA

As it so happens, Cybunnypoop has recently tried listening to another human being, and has been educated about trans issues in a way that ~100 people on the internet offering resources apparently couldn’t accomplish.

What this means is that Cybunnypoop is now IDing with various names (itself nothing new, pseudonyms are an old hat here), gender identities, and pronouns, depending on the platform. I’m sticking with he/him for this post, as those were the last requested on his neopets blog. His description says shey/shem but unfortunately I have no idea how current that is, and his about says “whatever”–so if I’m misgendering here, I apologize; it is not intentional.

I, Clare, Author of This Post, am cis. So it’s not my place to gatekeep or say whether or not he’s ““really trans””. And, as he has expressly admitted to being transphobic in the past, none of this section is really up for debate. I’m just going to provide the information, including his apologies and the redaction thereof. I don’t know that he truly understands everything he did wrong, but he’s explicitly stated he thinks transphobia is bad, so hey, maybe we can all learn something.

I’m gonna try to keep this chronological, so here we go:

A fun little addition to a post via an anonymous terf, “You are still males, you have male privilege, you KNOW NOTHING & NEEVER [sic] WILL KNOW of our goddamn struggles.“ which Cybunnypoop began with “So much agree!”

When asked about the “trans bathroom debacle,” he stated he was, “just afraid it’ll result in sacrificing handicap-accesible bathrooms.” which is only tangentially transphobic but bears addressing: Why would it ever mean that?

Cybunnypoop has something of a preoccupation with the potential negative impact equity would have upon him, and ableism is a convenient vehicle for this–lord knows this country is appalling in terms of accessibility. However, no proposed version of “trans bathroom”s leads to the dissolution of ADA-compliant spaces. Whether it’s allowing trans people to use the bathroom they identify with, or installing/redesignating gender neutral spaces, it remains an issue of improved accessibility, not diminished. A disabled trans person has as much a right to use a bathroom as an able-bodied one.

When he graduated he was questioned on his political beliefs, specifically how he could support Trump and remaining uneducated about trans issues while claiming to be an LGBT ally–and congratulated on graduating. Rather than answering the questions, or thanking them for the congrats and ignoring the rest, Cybunnypoop declared it “harassment”. This is about the standard for what he deems harassment/bullying: Anything that disagrees with him.

Reposted a quote from Dixon Diaz, the alt right guy you may remember him quoting in several citations from my last post, which read, “Liberal: a person who tells you that you’re a bigot if you’re afraid of having weird men in the ladies room, but becomes traumatized if they see “Trump 2016” written in chalk.“ [sic]

trans people bad, diversity bad, children bad & trauma fake

An ongoing problem with fetishizing trans people, dating back long before his identification as trans, and indeed, during the period in which he was a self-avowed transphobe. (Warning: link contains slur!)

This grew more pronounced as he came to understand what it means to be trans, and zeroed in on transwomen in particular. This is itself a complex issue: When is a kink flattering and when is it dehumanizing? Are immutable adjectives inappropriate to fetishize, or is it positive representation?

Again, as a cis person, it isn’t my place to say–I’m just letting y’all know what he’s said, and you can determine how you feel about it. This post isn’t a thinkpiece on my opinions.

Select quotes from The Apology:

“I was transphobic. I was resistant to that term because I felt it was a misnomer. I was more…trans-ignorant, I felt, than “transphobic.” […] I couldn’t see what I was doing because I was too busy, I felt, being attacked.”

“I had a warped view of trans people, and I was too ignorant and stubborn to acknowledge it–to see it, even.”

“[…] it’s hard not to let a jerk taint your view of a minority, especially when that jerk was your introduction to the minority.“

I’ll be honest, my problem with this apology is in how it’s structured, not in its content. It seems to convey genuine remorse, but focuses the bulk of the message on excuses, including that last point, which… isn’t relatable.

Even this I could forgive (after all, he’s new to apologies) if it had heralded a change in attitude–but nothing changed. He continued on as before, and continued to refuse discussions of other issues (which we’re getting to soon).

Which brings us to The Second Apology:

Posted some day and a half after the first, it opens with the artfully passive aggressive line, “I thought this could be over but it’s obviously going to stick around.” And it’s all downhill from there, folks!

“What do you want? What more can I say? There isn’t anything left to say. Nothing will satisfy some people.”

“I never bullied anyone like some do to me.“

“If you don’t want to believe I am different,[…] then the problem is not mine. In these cases, it is a good idea for you to stop talking about me and lying about me“

Here is a glimpse, perhaps, into what he expected. He was waiting for accolades. Commendation. He’d just apologized–and unlike earlier attempts, it was genuine! I don’t know that he anticipated forgiveness, but the outright rejection of that apology by several individuals drove him almost immediately into a bitter tirade, once again foisting the blame onto the people he had hurt or offended.

Aaaand a redaction of former apologies. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a date on this one, so it may be referring to the older apologies, but its content bears addressing:

“Yeah, I apologised like a year ago […], and they refused it, so I’m done apologizing–not that I even have anything to apologise for.

“I’ll sooner die than acknowledge and apologise for their demented reconstructions of my words.“

Which, if this is about the older apologies–oops!

“I won’t deny I said some things that people found offensive, […] but they just took everything and ran apedoodie with it. It amazes me that, for all they claim to hate me, they have this obsession with everything I do and say.”

This is actually fairly emblematic of my own interactions with Cybunnypoop: Specifically, the characterization of all attention as both positive, and obsessive.

What is it about being held responsible for his actions that leads him to cry wolf? Historically, an unwillingness to debate his political beliefs. Oh, he’ll espouse Trump’s “virtues” for paragraphs and paragraphs, but anyone who criticizes him is obviously a liberal idiot who just loves to hate him, and I’ll bet they say “lame,” right? It’s these assumptions about other people that lead him so often to tilt at windmills, rather than addressing the subject at hand.

RACISM

“Obama spending $21 million to put refugees to work…why not spend that money in the inner cities to put young blacks to work… once again Obama and the Democrats have proved the black community is their who’re [sic] because we always come back to them after they screw us” a quote he posted from a Facebook page I won’t even name, because it’s literally got the N-word in it! But he’s definitely not a racist, right?

Obama being (literally) booted out of office, by a Confederate battle flag, symbol of white supremacy since the 1960s. (There’s been some suggestion it’s in the classic minstrel show style. Though he forwent the traditional depiction of red/pink lips in favor of purple, there remains the possibility that he just can’t draw caricatures).

I’m going to address this post more in the ableism section, but it’s worth noticing how often, and how readily, he uses the word c*lored unprompted. This is not the first occasion.

More lambasting of whitewashing as a concept, sarcastically proposing we paint a black person white and mutilate them to better portray Michael Jackson (whom he refers to as ‘Wacko Jacko’, an ableist and derogatory nickname) apparently under the impression that there are no other black men with vitiligo.

I think it’s important to cover this, as from Cybunnypoop’s posts suggesting we be outraged at the “yellow-washing” of Joan Watson (see my previous post) it’s clear that he has no idea what whitewashing means.

It is not literally painting POC white.

The term whitewashing is derived from cheap white paint of chalked lime, used for a long time to refer to a specific means of censorship, “to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data”. Simply put, it’s revisionist history, and the methods used to maintain that illusory timeline.

It isn’t difficult to see how the term came to be applied to the representative censorship in Hollywood.

Shared a Facebook graphic, “Black people who were never slaves are fighting white people who were never Nazis over a confederate statue erected by democrats, and why, because democrats can’t stand their own history anymore and somehow it’s Trumps Fault? [sic]“

“Also, you see Blacks everywhere, but they’re still considered a minority.” (He appended some context but frankly it��s even more damning.)

The term “spirit animal” is annoying but not because it’s racist, I guess

ISLAMOPHOBIA

Cybunnypoop’s Islamophobia is tied in pretty heavily with his support of Trump, so I’ll be citing a few of those posts in this section as well.

“Ban seven countries’ worth of ideology which promotes violence against women, LGBT people, animals, and nonworshippers? Sounds good to me!”

The cognitive dissonance of a self-avowed Catholic posting this is… incredible.

“Sorry to inform you, but the terrorists who attacked New York, Boston, Orlando, our embassies, and others weren’t Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, or atheists. They were Muslims.

“It’s not Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, or atheism which oppresses women, slaughters animals, kills gays, and calls for the conversion or beheading of nonbelievers. It’s Islam.

“Until the ideology evolves to be as peaceful and tolerant as it claims, it doesn’t belong in America.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s begin by refuting Trump’s claims that “the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.” Plain old xenophobia, not even in the ballpark of truth. Over the past 15 years, none of the self-described Muslim terrorists committing crime have come from the countries on Trump’s ban list. Zero. The country producing the most successful attacks against the USA is the USA itself.

A basic look at the data further reveals that white supremacist, self-described Christian terrorists actually lead the rate of attack and death toll by about 2:1. Yet, bizarrely, nothing from Cybunnypoop about the ‘violence and intolerance’ of Christianity, or even white supremacy… Who saw that coming?

It speaks to Cybunnypoop’s prejudice that he would believe such a blatantly false piece of information with no investigation or critical thought whatsoever. Although, it may speak more to his unwillingness/inability to use Google. We have had some problems with that in the past.

“Dear Liberals: [sic] You claim to protect women. You claim to protect LGBT. [sic] You claim to protect animals. You claim to protect people who don’t ascribe to the dominant faith. But you’re protecting a violently misogynistic, homophobic, intolerant ideology which still slaughters animals in the name of their god and beheads people who worship otherwise. What the *** is wrong with you?”

Man, for derailing conversations so often to complain about perfectly valid modal grammar he sure loves breaking the English language.

When asked how he could still support Trump, he replied, “Because he hasn’t actually said or done anything wrong. The only thing with which I disagree was the transgender military ban, and that has been shot down, so it’s hardly relevant.”

Particularly in conjunction with his condemnation of liberals on the basis of not like, banning Islam, this is an explicit endorsement of everything from repealing the Alternative Tax Minimum to his sexual misconduct. Everything, except the one thing that directly affects one of Cybunnypoop’s demographics, was right.

HOMOPHOBIA

“I’m not like others in the LGBT spectrum. [bolding mine]

“I hadn’t cared for gay marriage nor had I especially cared to support the cause. […] I’ll fight for the welfare of the many before I’ll fight for the wishes of the few.”

(Well, historically, no, he won’t). Even without the implication that all the gay people who want to get married are selfish, this ignores the reason behind the push for the legalization of gay marriage: The AIDS crisis. Terminally ill gay men were forcibly evicted from their homes after watching their partners die, horribly, because they couldn’t inherit the lease/property. Their partners’ remains were the custody of parents who often wouldn’t allow the survivor to attend the funeral.

Up until gay marriage was legalized on a federal level, these incidents still occurred. One Indiana woman had to pay over $300,000 in taxes upon the death of her wife, and was told by the funeral home she could not arrange for her wife’s cremation as she was an “unrelated third party,” despite having the power of attorney. This is a significant concern.

“I don’t care for "pride.” I’ve actually started to loathe the undertones of the pride movement. […] is it truly worthy of a month and a gold star? […] I think it’s losing relevancy. Can we really celebrate something that’s no longer legally unique? Can we really have pride for… wait, what is it we’re proud of, anyway? We’re legally equal now; we’re socially equal, for the most part.” [bolding mine]

I don’t know if he forgot the homophobia he’s experienced, or if it just doesn’t matter unless it happened it to him.

“The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them ‘A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.’“ -Tom Limoncelli

“Another thing–and the most loathsome part–about the “pride movement” concerns the very word itself. “Pride” …be proud of who you are, and be proud of not caring what others think of you. Fine. Sure. It’s fun to wildly flaunt your differences. But what’s the opposite of “pride”? “Shame.” So, if gays are to have pride, does that mean straights are to have shame?”

So why are we to be entitled to pride–why are we allowed to feel good about ourselves and they are not? […] The majority are not oppressive, and even if they wanted to be, they legally couldn’t.

Good news guys, homophobia is dead and definitely super illegal.

“(Never mind the fact that pride is a negative, narcissistic trait and one of the Seven Deadly Sins.)” [bolding mine]

(We interrupt this post to bring you his “Antipridist Pride”)

“While it seems most of the LGB world makes their sexuality their entire identity, I leave it as just one facet of many.“ Once again, he’s not like Those Other Gays.

“ I’ll bet I pissed off a lot of gays with this post, but I don’t care, and I’m proud of not caring.“ (proceeds to describe the LGBT community as loud, angry, straight-bashing, etc. for a good paragraph or so, obviously very much caring)

That’s enough of that post, huh? Let’s move on.

“I know that a lot of the LGBT community is hypocritical–and intolerantly, angrily so. They scream about others giving them tolerance and respect while they don’t give others such basic rights.

“If there’s Black Pride, why couldn’t there be Caucasian Pride? Gay Pride, Straight Pride.“

As I broke down in my last post, Caucasian≠white, and was first misapplied by white supremacists and popularized by actual, literal Nazis. He evidently doesn’t care, and claims I “created” it. (I can assure you, I haven’t been alive since 1785).

“Is it me, or are there actually very few good gay celebrities?”

Doesn’t like the term “lesbian” because its “image is too pornified”. As I understand it this is fairly common among those who were raised in more conservative or religious families, so it’s not an issue per se; it just becomes weird in conjunction with his wanting to be called a dyke at one point (though I can’t find the post where he said that explicitly, only ones where he describes himself as such).

Said he’d expected Ted Cruz to be a “gay prostitute” because he gave off untrustworthy vibes.

MISOGYNY

As I’m sure most of you are aware, Cybunnypoop is pro-life. From certain parties, that can be motivated by misinformation rather than misogyny (though certainly the misogyny drives that misinformation). In his case? Well, actually only about 75% misogyny. The other 25% is empathizing with fetuses just until they’re born. Idk if it’s because of his parental situation or his existential dread or what, but we’re not here to psychoanalyze him; we’re here to review.

“It’s a point which I make constantly. It’s not hard to not get pregnant. You have a variety of options. There’s birth control. There’s getting your man snipped […]. And there is one absolutely fool-proof, sperm-proof way: ABSTINENCE. It’s stupidly simple, but there are self-righteous women and men out there who say–if you’ll pardon my pun–screw that. Free sex, rah rah. But if you don’t want to “risk” a baby, don’t do the do. There are plenty more things to do in life.”

Yeah, it may be “stupidly simple” for an “asexual homosexual” but other people do, in fact, get horny. “There’s birth control.” Where? You gonna pay for it? You gonna talk their “man” into getting a vasectomy? Pay for that?

I want you all to keep in mind that this is the same person who waxed poetic about his addiction to porn. And hentai. Which he downloaded in a public library, because he was just that addicted. But if someone (god forbid) “does the do,” and their birth control fails? Well, too bad. You should have been able to control your libido.

When Trump was elected he had the following to say:

“This is a time for healing.” No, this is a time for you to suck it up. You may not have wanted this result, but I and half of the country did. So, instead of bitching and moaning and trying to undo what I and half of the country have been working hard for, you need to shut the fuck up, go to school, work, or volunteer, and stop being an intolerant, selfish, hypocritical asshole.

Frankly this could go in a lot of sections but it’s using bitch pejoratively so…

Honestly there are more instances but I feel like you get the picture and this thing is already absurdly long, so we’re going to move along.

ANTI-SEMITISM

On screenshots of a neoboard discussing the origins of the ichthys symbol (the Jesus fish), Cybunnypoop added, apropos of nothing, “Hey, how about the fact that Christianity was originally illegal while Judaism was lawful, and the early Christians had to hold some Jewish mores so they wouldn’t be arrested and executed? Interesting, isn’t it…” and tagged it “two can play at that game”.

Christians weren’t being persecuted for not being Jewish; they were being persecuted for refusing to participate in state events from which the Jews were exempt via religious tradition. Christians were too new to be considered traditional, and were therefore considered in contempt of the state when they refused to, say, make a sacrifice on behalf of the Emperor. Also, we called each other brother & sister but still got married, and spoke weekly about eating a man alive, so people were kind of concerned.

Also, like, it was an explicitly socialist religion in an empire. That was never going to end well. The “mores” they had to hold were “don’t be anti-fascist” and “stop meeting in secret, we don’t know who you are and it’s freaking us out,” neither of which is explicitly Jewish and neither of which you can blame the Jews for.

Pretty minor, but in a poorly executed attempt to be inclusive, he wished everyone a happy Easter & Passover at the same time, only to be informed that Passover wouldn’t be happening for a month. So more about the assumption that Jews are lesser Christians again than any direct hostility. Perhaps better evidence of his ignorance of Jewish customs/how to hit “search” on Google.

ABLEISM

Here there be slurs!

Alright. We’re going to begin this with a breakdown of the “lame” issue. Here’s the thing: Cybunnypoop hates it. He compares it (ceaselessly) to the r slur, which he uses liberally in his own defense.

I’m certainly not saying it isn’t a slur, or that you should use it, but to be frank, he’s wrong.

In both severity and time in which it’s been part of the English vernacular, lame is far more akin to other ableist slurs like “dumb,” “stupid,” “moron,” “idiot,”–all words which Cybunnypoop uses on the regular. The closest comparison we have to the r slur would be “cr*ppled”–which Cybunnypoop quotes on the regular.

Dumb is the closest analogue, as those middle three weren’t really popular until the American Eugenics Movement kicked in, but hey. If it bothers him so much, why say any of them?

Simply because, it only bothers him when it affects him directly and is said by his enemy.

For example, no problem whatsoever quoting Trump’s book, Cr*ppled America.

Here he calls someone ableist scum for calling him the r slur, yet here he mocks another’s offense at the term by comparing it to modern medical jargon.

Atheists and Liberals [sic] are “dumb”

“entirely okay” with the R slur

This post, which was also in the racism section, littered with fun slurs and what’s either blatant hypocrisy (see: his regular use of words like dumb/stupid) or one of the most incredible point-dodges I’ve ever seen.

Now we get into a recurring theme, with a recurring character. The problem with most of Cybunnypoop’s legitimate criticisms (e.g. lame is a slur, accessibility is bullshit) is that they’re never even googled, let alone researched, and that they come, 9 times out of 10, at the expense of another minority. Or, through sheer ignorance, one of his own.

“Trans people get [famous trans people]. Gay people get [famous gay people]. Black people get [famous black people]. Who do I get? I get Joe Swanson.”

“While everyone’s battling over how to bend backwards and make others comfortable, I’m just sitting here, cursing out the ungrateful bastards because there are places I can’t even ACCESS. […] And never mind the fact that there is no good disabled representation out there. You know who I get to look up to? Joe frickin’ Swanson. It’s so nice to be a forgotten minority. [bolding his]

Joe Swanson, for those of you who (like me) have no idea who that is, is a character on Family Guy in a wheelchair. This begs the question: Why do you need to shit on other groups and their representation to acknowledge how bad you have it?

There are dozens of famous disabled people I can name off the top of my head. Stephen Hawking, Hellen Keller, Beethoven, Lord Byron, FDR, Frida Kahlo, Sudha Chandran, John Milton–a cursory Google search reveals even more. Saying there are no famous disabled people is a shitty fucking thing to do, both because you’re erasing their accomplishments and you’re depriving other disabled people of that representation by pretending it doesn’t exist. Spreading misinformation so you can complain that everyone else is better off than you specifically is just plain cruel.

“I’m so sick and tired of society catering to race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, but never giving a thought to people with disabilities. We don’t get a slice of the “diversity” pie.“

Catering to. … Catering to.

“Until our society can grow to acknowledge, accept, and represent the diverse world of disabilities, then we don’t have true equality and diversity.”

Like… he could have just made a post saying this. I mean, we have diversity regardless of equality, but that’s semantics. We don’t have to tear down other minorities to be heard. There’s enough “pie” for everyone.

Society: You should accept everyone regardless of sex, culture, gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, economic status Person: What about disabled people? Society: Huh?

I’m not a big fan of his little infographics, primarily because he uses them exclusively as a platform to strawman himself, but this one in particular is uh, frustrating. If he’s speaking about popular society, very few people accept all the groups he listed, particularly class/economic status. If he’s speaking about our country….

Federal protected classes include: Race, color, religion/creed, national origin/ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, citizenship.

It’s the same story.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

BLOCK HIM. Do not reblog his content. Stop him preemptively from reblogging yours. Do not engage with him.

If you try to debate him, he will probably call you a bully, and you will probably get some not-so-mysterious anons. You will definitely be unable to reach a resolution. I know of at least one individual who’s attempting to “rehabilitate” him, so I guess we’ll see how that goes? I’d be genuinely delighted.

Reblog this post if you can, to spread the word.

Educate yourself about the issues addressed in this post. If you have questions, my inbox is always open.

I am not infallible, and I will also make mistakes. Please bring these to my attention immediately and they will be addressed.

This is a much less urgent situation than the previous post, as he’s (mostly) stopped harassing people, but you have a right to be aware of whom you’re interacting with. Whether you block him or befriend him or whatever is up to you, and I hope whatever choice you make is the right choice for you.

#neotag #cybunnypoop #not mentioned: art theft so that's cool #q slur

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bellamyblak · 7 years

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i’m getting really over this sana vs the pepsi max girls storyline.

what upsets me the most is how this storyline could have had it all, and it could have brought the girl squad together to support sana, and eva, noora, vilde and chris, should be learning along the way about how sana feels, and what’s like to be a muslim girl in a western country that gets misunderstood every day.

BUT NOOOO, lets put every single girl against sana, like its not ooc AT ALL, and like it doesnt contradict the growth of these characters in the past seasons.

no but really. lets talk about how this storyline could be 20x better

you have sana who’s basically being ‘stabbed’ in the back by the pepsi max girls.

why? for several reasons. but most of all what separates these characters is the fact sara and her girls dont understand sana at all. they dont understand sana’s religion, and judge her, misunderstand her, and don’t make an efford to actually get to know her.

so basically, what type of content do we have here?

racism

islamophobia

prejudice

xenophobia

so you are telling me the story couldnt have gone that way?? with sana exposing these girls for this behaviour? wasnt that enough to have incredible scenes of sana showing these girls how fucked up what they did is?? with her girls backing her up? and learning along the way as well? are you telling me this type of content wasnt enough to have major moments of sadness, of confrontation, conflict, etc.???

BUT NOPE.

lets bring cyberbullying (????),

lets make sara a backstabbing bitch on all her friends instead of just a racist, islamophobic, person.

lets separate sana and the girls.

let’s make the people who love sana suddenly forget she exists.

and let’s put girls against girls, with extremely cliche scenes like noora kissing yousef (which btw noora did nothing wrong, it’s the writers fault they went with the very popular ‘no one knows how i feel about this person so my friend doesnt know i like him but i saw them kissing and now im sad and she’s the bad girl in the audience eyes’), or girls saying shit behind each others back. like we dont get enough shit already from boys that are like ‘you aren’t like the other girls’ or even girls saying ‘i prefer to be friends with guys, they are drama free’.

i honestly was so excited for this season, bc my favourite skam thing is how the girl squad always has each others back. no matter what happen these girls are supporting and caring, and they love each other so much.

but i guess that was put aside in sana’s season to create drama in a unnecessary way when they had it all in their hands, they had a major plot about how prejudice, and islamophobia is still a thing in the young generations, that could have been very educational, but they turned it around to be just a girl drama.

#skam #meta #english is not my first language this is probably has tons of mistakes but im really upset #text

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mideastsoccer · 5 years

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Tackling hate speech: Tech companies and world leaders opt for band-aid solutions

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts and Tumblr

There’s a ‘blame the messenger’ quality to global efforts to counter misinformation, extremism and hate speech by world leaders and technology companies.

The efforts are informed by a historically proven false assumption that suppressing expressions of racism, bigotry, supremacism and intolerance or psychological warfare campaigns by the likes of Russia will ensure that they do not reach the public.

Perhaps, most fundamentally, the measures tackle the purveyors of misinformation, racism and supremacism, but fail to address the core of the problem: the mainstreaming of racist and supremacist thought by civilizationalist world leaders, far-right politicians and activists, and left-wing political parties.

The ‘blame the messenger’ approach was front and centre this week in a decision by Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram, to ban people and media such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars platform; Milo Yiannopoulos, a British polemicist, political commentator and one-time associate of former far-right Trump strategic advisor Stephen K. Bannon; and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, notorious for his anti-Semitic comments.

Facebook announced the bans two weeks before digital ministers of the Group of Seven (G-7) were scheduled to meet in Paris with representatives of technology companies to discuss blocking extremist content.

The meeting, involving ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, is expected to coincide with talks between French president Emmanuel Macron and New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern on how to curb the spread of militant ideology on social media.

Ms. Ardern’s inclusive response to the gunning down of 51 Muslims in Christchurch in March by a white supremacist as they were praying at two mosques has become, alongside Norway’s response in 2011 to the killing of 77 people by another white supremacist, a model of how to counter racism and supremacy without succumbing to civilisationalism or reducing the problem exclusively to one of security, law enforcement and censorship.

To be sure, Ms. Ardern’s response as it regards social media was shaped by the fact that the Christchurch killer broadcasted his crime live on the internet.

The Facebook ban and the Paris meetings are also in response to last month’s jihadist attacks on churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka that left some 260 people dead.

Reducing the fight against racism, supremacism and psychological warfare to restrictions of free speech fails to recognize that the core of the problem is the fact that diverse civilizationalist leaders have created an environment in which often religiously packaged expressions of racial, ethnic or religious superiority no longer are socially taboo and have become part of the mainstream discourse in democratic as well as non-democratic societies.

It also ignores the fact that some of the worst atrocities in recent history, including the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda and the mass murder of some 8,000 men in Srebrenica preceded the rise of social media.

Compounding the problem is that non-civilizationalist politicians and intellectuals who subscribe to Islamophobic or anti-Semitic historical and societal analysis in effect reinforce the environment shaped by civilisationalists.

Take, for example, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who for years has been unable to shake off suspicions that he harbours anti-Semitic sentiments. His denials have so far been underwhelming and unconvincing.

In the latest instance, a member of Mr. Corbyn’s shadow cabinet defended his penning in 2011, four years before he became leader of the party, of a foreword to a republication of an anti-Semitic tract first published in 1902 as “looking at the political thought within the whole text itself, not the comments that were anti-Semitic.”

Mr. Corbyn himself described the book’s racist attitude towards minorities as “absolutely deplorable” but insisted that his contribution analysed the ideas about “the process which led to the first world war” – the subject of the book – and not the language used by the author. In other words, association with a publication that expressed racist attitudes was as such not a problem.

John Atkinson Hobson, the author, based his book, ‘Imperialism, A Study,’ on his reporting from South Africa for the Manchester Guardian, The Guardian’s predecessor, on the clashes between Britain and the Boers. Mr Hobson asserted that the war was being fought in support of German Jewish financiers with interests in South African mining.

Mr. Hobson’s writing influenced left-wing thought at the dawn of the 20th century as well as Russian communist leader Vladimir Lenin as he was writing one of his seminal works, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Mr. Corbyn’s defense of his foreword rings hollow against his analysis in the foreword that “what is brilliant (about the book), and very controversial at the time, is his [Hobson’s] analysis of the pressures that were hard at work in pushing for a vast national effort, in grabbing new outposts of Empire on distant islands and shores.” Those pressures were, according to Mr. Hobson, Jewish financiers.

Mr. Corbyn noted further that “Hobson’s railing against the commercial interests that fuel the role of the popular press with tales of imperial might, that then lead on to racist caricatures of African and Asian peoples, was both correct and prescient.”

He was referring to Mr. Hobson’s description of Jewish financiers as “these great businesses — banking, booking, bill discounting, loan floating, company promoting — (that) form the central ganglion of international capitalism… United by the strongest bonds of organisation, always in closest and quickest touch with one as other, situated in the very heart of the business capital of every state, controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to control the policy of nations.”

Mr. Hobson went on to rhetorically ask: ““Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European state, or a great state loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?” He answers the question by concluding that “there is not a war, a revolution, an anarchist assassination, or any other public shock, which is not gainful to these men; they are harpies who suck their gains from every new forced expenditure and every sudden disturbance of public credit… The direct influence exercised by great financial houses in ‘high politics’ is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the press.”

The attitudes of both Mr. Corbyn and civilisationalists suggest that simply policing social media targets only the most extreme expressions of civilizationalist racism and supremacism as well as non-civilizationalist bigotry and prejudice and at best drives them either underground or to alternative platforms.

It ignores the fact that civilisationalists, including world leaders ranging from US president Donald J. Trump to Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban and others across the globe as well as the likes of former Trump advisor Bannon and European politicians and activists such as Marie Le Pen and Geert Wilders or the Alternative for Germany party are creating a world in which racism and supremacism threatens to shape inter-communal as well as international relations.

It’s a world that would render the band-aid social media solutions by technology companies and world leaders ineffective at best and irrelevant at worst.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture.

#social media #facebook #Trump #racism #terrorism #violence #corbyn #jeremy corbyn #anti-semitism #islamophobia #Russia #victor orban #orban #press freedom

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nothingman · 7 years

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Courtesy of the progressive media collective Unicorn Riot, the public now knows about the unnerving contents of a private chat room where the white supremacist extremists who marched on Charlottesville, Virginia, planned violent action.

These images display the fuzzy line between the online rhetoric of the extreme right and their behavior. Their constant pretense of humor—”we were just joking”—masks a process of radicalization that has claimed lives, and will almost certainly continue to do so.

The logs—which show the content of a white supremacist chat room on the popular messaging site Discord—reveal that, in the days and weeks leading up to Charlottesville, there was ample chatter about violence, as well as several instances of the by now ubiquitous conservative “joke” about running over protesters. With users sporting screen names like “kristall.night,” it doesn’t take a degree in PoliSci to discern their affinities.

In addition, as Unicorn Riot’s article on the subject points out, “Discord users also discussed how to bring various kinds of weapons to the rally, with some of them giving instructions on how to embed screws into flagpoles or sign handles that could later be used as a stabbing weapon.”

Further:

Talk of stabbing antifascists was met with enthusiasm from many participants in the Unite The Right chat room, with one user, “Kurt – VA” quipping “impaling people is always the best.” Another Unite The Right attendee replied to this with a gruesome image of a field full of bodies impaled on stakes, and then called for this treatment to be extended to Muslims and refugees.

For now, there is no evidence that James Alex Fields Jr., the young neo-Nazi who murdered counter-protester Heather Heyer and seriously injured 19 others, was in the Discord chat room in question. But he had plenty of fans there after the fact. One user posted a photoshopped image of the press photo that captured Fields’ speeding car, edited to look like the famous DeLorean from Back to Future, and captioned it “Back to the Fhurer” [sic]. Another posted a racist image that mocked one of the Black men run over by Fields before writing, “the woman killed was a coal BURNER anyways.”

Discord has shut down the room in the wake of this report. But the cruelty and hatred expressed there is the “free speech” that countless liberals, a number of leftists, and even the American Civil Liberties Union have wrung their hands over and defended as vital to the liberty of all. But this is not merely about directionless expectoration of words that then dissolve into the “marketplace of ideas”; this is about language that foretells action, meant to ratchet up feelings of violent hatred to a point where words become deeds and self-fulfilling prophecies kick into high gear.

We must revisit the fascist tactics underlying the self-proclaimed “alt-right” and its meme culture; this particular variant on 4chan-style memetics is descended directly from classic fascist Big Lie propaganda, after all. As I wrote for the Baffler, both seek to repeat lies often enough until a critical mass of people take them as factual, but also seek to simply cause confusion about what is actually true.

Eli Mosley, of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa, says of the chat logs that his critics are “hysterical” over the “dark humor” of neo-Nazis. “The idea that little tractor meme is somehow a call to run people over is ridiculous,” he says. This, of course, is of a piece with neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer calling the “Heil Trump” salutes he led at a conference “ironic exuberance.”

Meme culture is, of course, not inherently awful. It’s simply a style of humor that trades in layers of irony and posturing, with a Dadaist flair for the absurd. Like a color film negative, it lays multiple meanings on top of one another, flattening them into a new image. But its nature as a floating signifier that admits multiple interpretations means it’s a useful vehicle for those who wish to mask concrete intentions that might otherwise be unpopular or repulsive.

Consider the example of “White Sharia,” a popular, memetic joke among young Nazis and those sympathetic to their ideology, helpfully analyzed by the AngryWhiteMen blog. It pivots off of Islamophobic right-wing hysteria about “creeping Sharia” to say that a form of “White Sharia,” which oppressed women in a “civilized” way, would be more desirable. This is positioned as a joke, a form of exaggeration meant to highlight how “brutal” Sharia law is. But like all “alt-right” memes, it bespeaks sincere desire masked by 4chan humour.

A white supremacist podcaster Sacco Vandal (a pseudonym) had this to say about the subject:

“In our skeptical, jaded postmodern milieu, humor is the most effective way to reach people. Satire is the language that American youths speak. [Nazi podcast] The Right Stuff has shown the effectiveness of extremely edgy and convolutedly layered irony.

The White Sharia meme, like the helicopter and oven jokes before it, is an extreme form of edgy and ironic humor. It has caused so much controversy only because it has become so popular. It serves as a distant beacon of the patriarchy we as a people need and will one day have. It is both a rallying cry for the disillusioned young men in our movement as well as their guiding light. The inspiration it is giving these young men will assist them in their future culture creation.” (Emphasis mine).

The “helicopter” joke is a reference to crimes committed by the Pinochet regime, where dissidents were thrown to their deaths from helicopters. Right-wing extremists online will nowadays talk about giving someone a “free helicopter ride” as a subtle way of threatening them with murder. The “oven jokes” are, of course, about the Holocaust. This is what passes for edgy humor among the so-called alt-right.

Sacco Vandal is quite clear here: These are “humorous” ways of expressing desire and intent, not hyperbolically joking around about something they’d never actually want to do.

Thus, everyone should consider the memes in the Charlottesville Discord chat, which featured ‘”jokes” about running over activists, in a similar light—especially as we learn a KKK “Imperial Wizard” fired live ammunition at non-white counter-protesters in Charlottesville. The logs, “humor” and all, prefigured the violence of the event itself.

These are not jokes; these are promises.

In future discussions about the “free speech” of these groups, we must attend to that reality. The discussion must be broadened to include the all-but-inevitable actions these words are meant to incite. It is not merely a matter of spoken words, it’s about words that create deeds, which are specifically crafted to inspire actions like Fields’.

A slew of morally spineless hot takes and editorials, such as the caterwauling that followed supposed “antifa violence” in Berkeley, all testify to this obsession with a theory of speech that is increasingly unmoored from reality. The scapegoating of antifa activists as unilaterally violent, which breathes life into a right-wing mania, must cease, as should any propagandizing on behalf of Nazis that casts them as “well dressed” or “peaceful,” a notion that the Discord logs should belie in any case. We should not rush to aid these white supremacists in a court of law, nor valorize them as the ultimate rampart guarding the rights of left-wing dissidents. We should also not obsess over the minutiae of their internal squabbles. We should, further, contrast counter-protesters’ self-defense with the genocide promised by Spencer, Mosley, and their allies.

Let me be plain: People who repeat the “peaceful right-wing activists” myth are being played.

There should always be vigorous debate about speech in a democratic society, but the current discourse, even after the surge in far-right terrorism we’ve seen in recent years, remains stubbornly abstract and content-free, retreating to the same tired cliches we’ve all heard countless times before. “You’re the real Nazi,” “their speech rights guarantee yours,” “it’s just words.”

That has to change if we’re to present an effective response to the rise of neo-fascism. What transpired in Charlottesville will almost certainly happen again.

The post As Chat Logs Show, ‘Peaceful Right-Wing Activists’ Are a Myth appeared first on Rewire.

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