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korrasera · 5 years

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amozabaeltumblrcom/post/177958859754/about-terfs I don't know how to feel about all this it seems like a lot of this is based on sock accounts wdy think?

Anon, to answer your question, everything said by @feminists-against-feminism and @amozabael in that post is hot garbage. Everything they’ve said is wildly inaccurate horse hockey disguised as being a giant wall of critical thinking.

To properly describe my attitude towards this analysis, I'm going to point out that the phrase “feminists against feminism” is an oxymoron. People who are opposed to feminism aren't feminists, they are quite literally anti-feminists. When I see someone who's handle is @feminists-against-feminism, that oxymoron usually indicates to me that I'm looking at someone with an extremely bias driven agenda, so I try to regard everything that's said with a healthy amount of skepticism. In my experience, people who behave in this fashion aren't trying to reason with you, they're trying to manipulate you with rhetorical tricks like logical fallacies and emotional appeals.

That it eventually falls down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theory and complete bullshit is just proof of this kind of biased and manipulative bullshit.

For anyone interested, this is a reference to a post by @amoazbael that descends into full blown right-wing conspiracy theory, complete with references to Jordan Petersen, the KGB, and many radical misinterpretations of marxist analytical framework. (source)

So naturally, I had to write a short debunk of it. Because it’s such a super huge goddamn long post I’m not going to reblog it. The original points shared by @candidlyautistic are fantastic and it’s a goddamn shame that some authoritarian jackasses had to take a giant crap all over their post.

Warning. This is going to get long, even though I high only the high points. If I stopped to do a blow by blow analysis of all of the really heinous bullshit in this post, we’d be here all day.

First, let’s talk about the way that @feminists-against-feminism talks about TERFs being marxists because it shows that they don’t understand marxist theory, feminism, or why the original post was talking about how TERFs often identify as marxists.

The reason that it's relevant to point out that a lot of TERFs identify as marxists is because it speaks to the political concepts that TERFs have internalized to form their identities. When you strongly identify as a member of a politcal group, whether that's a leftist, a marxist, a capitalist libertarian, or what have you, you're internalizing some aspect of that political theory as part of yourself. That both makes it hard for you to question that political ideology and also leaves you vulnerable, because you can start to see criticism of that ideology as a personal attack on yourself.

This is relevant for TERFs because, if they've internalized being marxists, finding out that they actually behave like fascists can be a tremendous blow to their own sense of self. While painful and difficult to deal with, anon's point is that this can be the kind of shock that a TERF needs to shake looks the kind of regressive social ideology that they've built up around gender.

To put that simply: Many TERFs identify as marxists. Confronting TERFs with the fact that they behave similarly to fascists can shock them and help them see that they're wrong.

Next, @feminists-against-feminism doesn't actually grok conflict theory. Or any theory described here, actually, but I’m going to focus on how they misunderstand conflict theory in particular.

For one thing, conflict theory is not a zero-sum game between two juxtaposed groups. It's an idea that we can analyze society by examining power disparities between different groups and the way that these inform larger social trends that reinforce our social hierarchies.

A quick moment to talk about Karl Marx:

Marx used this framework to analyze politics and economics as a conflict between the proletariat, the people who produced things but didn't control the means of production, and the bourgeoisie, who controlled the means of production and would benefit from them by dint of that position in the social hierarchy.

He talked about the forces of production, the people, processes, and technologies that use labor, and the relations of production, or the social organization we build up around labor. In this model, the proletariat don't have power in the forces of production due to being deprived of that power via the relations of production, while the bourgeoisie both control those means, and thereby the forces of production, because they are the ones who most benefit from the relations of production.

The reason it's bunk to call this a zero-sum game is because it's not a win-lose scenario. The proletariat being freed from oppression does not mean that the bourgeoisie will become the new oppressed. So that's just a completely useless thing to discuss amidst all of this.

This is further reinforced by the way that @feminists-against-feminism then asks you to believe that criticizing the bourgeoisie or 'oppressor class' is actually just prejudice. They even use the terms bludgeoning or torturing in order to emotionally manipulate you by making you think that opposing this viewpoint means supporting torture and other kinds of vile behavior.

Beyond those points, pretty much every example they bring up initially is bullshit.

In the first batch, the Feminist Frequency tweet is completely accurate and doesn’t demonstrate any prejudice, while the rest of these images are just illustrating how deeply bigoted some individuals are.

The only common factor here is @feminists-against-feminism, because they're associating all of these images together to make it seem like this is part of feminist critical theory, instead of someone cherry-picking times when someone put their own bigotry and hatred on display and just happened to do so in a way that @feminists-against-feminism could misinterpret as being 'core to feminism'.

That we then immediately move into a discussion of how this is 'an actual social paradigm' that's 'taught in publicly funded universities' just gives you more evidence to what's really going on here. This is how right-wing authoritarians talk and this kind of analysis would be at home among alt-right YouTube channels.

You know how antisemitism often takes the form of antisemities making up lies like the blood libel in order to make Jewish people look evil? Or how racists in the US try to tell you that black people are unintelligent criminals even though it's bullshit? Yeah, same thing, only this is what it looks like when you need to attack feminism.

Pretty much everything this person is saying about marxism, intersectionality, and feminism is wrong, and that’s before they get into providing you with a completely erroneous and bullshit view of postmodernism, Russia, and the KGB.

If you've gotten to the point where they're talking about how intersectional feminists are marxists too, then you can see how it ramps up into high gear and goes full blown 'I'm going to make up bullshit and sell it to prove my point' territory. A few highlights of things they got wrong:

Intersectionality isn't a synthesis of all marxist conflict theories. Conflict theory emerged from Marx's work, intersectionality is another framework that expanded out of conflict theory.

Queer isn't "wild leftist ideological terminology" but people like @feminists-against-feminism sell it as that in order to support the current wave of 'queer is a slur' that's been ripping through social media.

Feminism isn't a theory about men vs women in a zero-sum game.

Human rights activism was never liberalism. Liberalism is a specific sociopolitical ideology that epouses religious, economic, and political freedoms for a protected class of people, usually rich white men, while failing to provide those same protections to other groups.

They even invoke the communist party in order to make you panic and think that you're supporting those dirty stinking commie reds. To paraphrase the kind of bullshit rhetoric we'd see from a red-baiting boss in a John Steinbeck novel.

This is compounded when they describe feminism as 'leftist identarianism' because people have started to realize that identitarians are just rebranded nazis and by claiming that feminism is just identarianism for leftists, they think that they can make it sound like feminists are just secretly nazis.

By comparison, @amozabael’s own contributions are far shorter but are just as faulty, but that’s not surprising. This is the kind of post that literally looks like it’d be at home on the Info Wars forums and it’s basically just right-wing circle jerk conspiracy theory mongering.

I’m honestly surprised neither of them said feminazi.

#korrasrsly #long post #amozabael #feminists-against-feminism #I don't have enough tags to describe how bullshit that whole thread was #Anonymous

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lightholme · 4 years

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There is a new threat of massive disinformation and extremization to our societies. It is our responsibility to deal with it. We need to learn new skills, to be able to communicate with our misled neighbors in a productive way. Disinformation can affect our friends and our families, and we need to have the right answers. Keep in mind that they are victims of crafty manipulation tactics.

Never argue. Don't try to convince them with reason, logic, or facts. It just doesn't work, wears everybody out, and can put a strain on your relationship.

Don't appear smug, lecturing, or from a high horse. This makes them understandably more defensive and weakens your point.

Be patient and understanding. Getting them out of this is a process. If you rush, you will over-push and eventually be seen as a threat.

Don't make every encounter about those topics in question. Having less controversial conversations about different things will help to slowly get back to a fruitful communication.

There are different ways to actually approach them. These ways don't go against their beliefs, but rather challenge them from within their concepts, add new information, or appeal to their emotions. If we stay calm, factual, and effortless we have the necessary credibility to guide them.

You can teach them new knowledge. When I told my "conspiracy friend" about the lung anomalies in 50% of the asymptomatic cases of the Diamond Princess, he got concerned and took the coronavirus more seriously. A video

from an ICU may also work. Just don’t end up in a discussion. Add information without getting butthurt if they initially reject it. It's a process and it may continue to work in them even if the conversation is over. Honesty, patience, and kindness in combination with repetition are key.

You can help them to question their general way of life by strongly affirming them in their choices.

“I’m so glad you’re really finding yourself. All this interest in politics seems to be making you happy.”

This will make them reflect on their situation and saw doubts that will grow over time. Patience and emotional support are important here.

You can ask challenging questions pointing at flaws within their logic in an honestly curious way. Don't try to show them how "stupid" they are. This would only be seen as an attack and make them defensive. Stay harmless, ask as if you’re just trying to figure it out as well. Just ask every once in a while since constant questioning can build up unnecessary pressure.

You can help them to improve their cognitive abilities by teaching how to refute propaganda

, an understanding for

science

, critical thinking skills or media competence.

You can challenge them with an exaggeration within their concepts.

"The earth is flat."

"No, it's a cube."

This gives them the opportunity to find flaws and fallacies in their concepts by themselves. It's a thin line because you have to avoid being seen as trying to make fun of them.

In short, don't go against their beliefs. Instead, add new information or help them question their concepts. We all have to work on our skills and find the best ways to help our friends and family members without turning extreme ourselves. The good news is that we have science, reason, and decency on our side.

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dadumir-party · 4 years

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How to communicate with a brainwashed relative

I came across this excellent reddit post by u/cheeruphumanity and wanted to share:

There is a new threat of massive disinformation and extremization to our societies and it is our responsibility to deal with it. We need to learn new skills, to be able to communicate with our misled neighbors in a productive way. Disinformation can affect our friends and our families, and we need to have the right answers. Keep in mind that they are victims of crafty manipulation tactics.

1. Never argue. Don't try to convince them with reason, logic, or facts. It just doesn't work, wears everybody out, and can put a strain on your relationship.

2. Don't appear smug, lecturing, or from a high horse. This makes them understandably more defensive and weakens your point.

3. Be patient and understanding. Getting them out of this is a process. If you rush, you will over-push and eventually be seen as a threat.

You can ask challenging questions pointing at flaws within their logic in an honestly curious way. Don't try to show them how "stupid" they are. This would only be seen as an attack and make them defensive. Stay harmless, ask as if you’re just trying to figure it out as well. Go for quality over quantity since constant questioning can build up unnecessary pressure.

You can help them to question their general way of life by strongly affirming them in their choices.

“I’m so glad you’re really finding yourself. All this interest in politics seems to be making you happy.”

This will make them reflect on their life choices, general state and sow doubts that will grow over time. Patience, repetition and emotional support are important here.

You can help them to improve their cognitive abilities by teaching how to refute propaganda, an understanding for science, critical thinking skills or media competence.

You can challenge them with an exaggeration within their concepts.

-"The earth is flat." -"No, it's a cube."

This gives them the opportunity to find flaws and fallacies in their concepts by themselves. It's a thin line because you have to avoid being seen as trying to make fun of them.

#disinformation #propaganda #deprogramming #repost

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republicstandard · 6 years

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Analyzing the Democrat Platform: Abortion, Guns, and Healthcare.

Welcome to the final part of our analysis of the Democratic Party. Let us commit wrongthink one last time against the most progressive party platform Democratic Party has ever had.

Voter IDs

This is the first time I have ever encountered the idea that “enhancing our democracy” and “protecting our voters” means that voter ID laws should be scrapped. I, as a foreigner, am impressed by this extreme courage from the Democrats. People are generally used to more subtle ways to enact such an outrageous law; but the Democratic Party is not subtle at all. They cite that it “suppresses minorities” for some reason. By the very same logic, minorities are oppressed in various other things that also require an ID, such as being able to drive!

Countries like Norway and Brazil have much higher turnouts than the US despite having voter ID laws. Perhaps the problem is not the voter ID laws but the fact that the Americans are opting out of the corrupt, inefficient and ugly Democratic-Republican system? Nevertheless, if people do not care enough to have IDs, they should not be able to vote. Frankly, they do not deserve to vote, if they cannot even go through such a simple process. It is not a strange thing to assume that a party that supports lifting the restrictions on election security is a party that is much more likely to tamper with elections. The Democrats should keep their mouths shut about election integrity until they start supporting voter ID laws. This behavior is embarrassing any self-respecting person.

The Democrats promised to “end Citizens United” and other big money financial contributions. I suppose those big money financial institutions were idiots because they still ended up donating to the Democrats; or maybe they knew that the Democrats wouldn’t keep their word.

Abortion

One issue that has been very hot for years all over the western world has been abortion. Let us be clear: this issue is about determining whether we should be allowed to kill a baby before it is born, or not. One interesting claim that I see from pro-choice activists is that a fetus is not technically a living being because it is not a human being yet. That argument is simply outrageous and idiotic, you don’t expect a horse, or a dog to grow from a human fetus. We expect a human being, and the process of its birth has already started at conception. Another argument made is that without the mother the embryo wouldn’t survive. that is quite possibly the worst and the most dishonest argument for pro-choice that I have ever seen. To counter this so-called “argument” one needs to consider whether people on life-support should be killed. After all, they cannot survive without that machine. How about asking them whether we should kill welfare dependents? Is not the welfare state itself, a kin of machine? Are welfare recipients not “alive” because they are dependent on the state? It doesn’t end here, how about we kill the entire human race? We are all dependent on many things, such as Oxygen, food, money and so on. This might seem like an absurdists argument, but it follows the same exact logic. The notion that fetuses aren’t “living beings” because they cannot live independently without their mothers, is a disgrace.

The leftist side of the discussion loves to jump to appeals to scientific truth, but upon further inspection, their position is quite anti-scientific. One easy way to show the truthfulness of this is on their views of race and how we are all blank slates, as discussed in the previous article of this series. The same goes for abortion. Recent research suggests that the heart of the unborn begins beating at 16 days after conception. This is before the woman knows that she is pregnant. Strong evidence for the pro-life cause comes from this collection of acedemic quotes from Princeton University.

"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down." [Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]

Considering the other arguments from pro-choicers, such as “but what if a child is born into a bad family”, which presupposes that a family does not have any responsibility for their children. It is an argument that is used to shift the goalposts to another issue. It is a fallacious argument, and should not be taken seriously in a debate about abortion. One other popular, and more of a libertarian argument is “It is going to happen anyway and should therefore be legal”. The same can be said for murder and many other crimes. Why should we punish murder if “it is just going to happen anyway”. Of course, there will be illegal abortions from some incredibly irresponsible parents, which is why they will be punished. Under a system that acknowledges the reality of the pro-life case, the aborters will either be punished by the government if they get caught, or they will be punished by the fact that the doctor that is willing to help them kill a baby is going to be unreliable. That is a risk, sadly, that many are willing to take, worldwide.

At the end of the day, it is not “your body your choice” but “your body and your choice, his body and his choice”. The requirement is that neither of you negatively affect each others’ existence, whether that is intentional or unintentional. The fact that abortion turned from a “life” issue to a “woman’s rights” issue illustrates how abhorrently hazardous feminism has become, to the point where everything, -including the lives of their own babies- has become a hindrance for so-called “freedom”. There is no doubt that the push for contraception, birth control and various other harmful “solutions” is to solely enable a woman’s “freedom”; which is a code-word for degeneracy.

Education

College debt relief and attempting to make “debt-free college a reality” are in reality a means with which to make the student loan debt and college tuition prices astronomically higher. Simple supply and demand is at play here. If we pledge to offer state subsidies for debt relief for students, we artificially increase the demand for college, and since the demand increases, tuition prices increasing wouldn’t be an unrealistic outcome to predict. As a matter of fact, that is what has happened ever since 1980, and the cost of attending college has increased by 260 percent! In comparison, the CPI has increased by 120 percent, which means that the cost has increased by 140 percent. This is done with your tax money. The money that would otherwise be used to invest in markets and businesses with good future, is instead being taken by the government so the government can pardon student debt at your expense.

Healthcare

The Democrats’ biggest and their proudest child, is no doubt, the healthcare system. There is this empty and semantic discussion on healthcare, about whether it is a privilege or a right. What categorizes something as a right in this modern world is merely a piece of paper written by some people with the power to enforce this idea with force. Some "rights" end up being the cause of our deaths. Bearing this in mind, we should rather debate whether the system itself is efficient or not, rather than proclaiming our rights.

In terms of ethics -and I have gone over this many times in my columns for Republic Standard- you cannot claim the moral high ground when you support that the government should take money from the citizens to pay for other citizens’ healthcare (or any other program's) coverage. For those who cried that destroying Obamacare would kill people, The Manhattan Institute have showed -with absolute brilliance- that destroying Obamacare would result in zero lives lost. I would go as far as to claim that Obamacare is actually contributing to why people die in the first place. To support this claim, we can observe a graph of age-adjusted mortality rate. It seems like the reduction of mortality suddenly ceased, and instead got a tiny bump, which is certainly interesting to see.

But aside from that, one more particularly glaring piece ofevidence is the reduced US life expectancy rate.

Even considering the economic reality, Obamacare is in a very rough spot.

Why are costs increasing even though the effectiveness of the service has decreased? We can thank state monopolies, and the 83 percent market share that is split between four insurance firms.

The Second Amendment

When it comes to gun rights, Democrats are fighting against the constitution. For Neoliberals and leftists, the constitution is losing its meaning and is slowly turning into a piece of paper, rather than the foundations that the US was built on. The Democratic Party Platform is actually surprisingly quiet on the Second Amendment putting it on the backburner. Contrast this with how they hawk about how guns are bad every time a mass shooting happens, and we see the disdain the Democrats hold not only for the constitution, but for their own base for whom this platform should be an informative document. I would like to use this as an opportunity to give you the truth about guns and violence.

Democrats talk about 33000 people dying by the gun. The important part here is the word “death”. This does not only include homicide, but also suicide. 60% of people that die from gunshot do so by committing suicide. This means that 60 percent of those deaths would in all likelihood happen in one way or another. What about the methods of acquiring those firearms? By using France as an example, we can see that while there are 12 million firearms in the country, more than 8 million of them are illegally owned.

Let us take a look at an inmate survey in Chicago for a sample of this behavior in the United States.

It would be remiss to fail to acknowledge racial aspect of this discussion. As we have concluded in our previous article, races do have different characteristics and act in different ways in response to various situations.

There is a very strong correlation between Black/Hispanic population and crime. This is not explained by poverty. Rich black kids are more likely to go to prison than poor white kids. Is this systemic racism, or White supremacy? Not when racial propensity for crime is factored in. As John Q. Publius notes:

America does have a violent crime problem, but the thousands of bodies piling up in Baltimore, St. Louis, Memphis, Chicago, and Detroit isn’t because of white males or marauding racist police officers. That, my good friends, is largely the province of a certain subset of our population who are far more likely than their white counterparts to commit criminal and violent acts. This group commits 52.5% of all homicides despite consisting of just 13% of the population (and of that 13%, it is mostly young males doing the killing, which amounts to maybe 2-3% of the US population).

This is a double whammy for blacks. Blacks in America are 5 times more likely than the national average to be the offenders in a firearm related assault. They are also 15 times more likely to be on the receiving end of it. This is a plague on Black America, and a resolution must be found. If Black Lives truly Matter for protesters, they should talk about gun violence and how to stop it, instead of de facto blaming the police.

The most popular part of any gun control debate is the public mass shootings part of said debate. Every single time a mass shooting happens, there comes an intense debate between pro-gunners and anti-gunners. Get ready, because this will shock you: 98% of Public Mass Shootings happen in "Gun-Free Zones".

If you, the reader, wanted to commit a mass shooting, would you rather do it in a gun-free zone, where law-abiding citizens are most likely not going to be armed, or would you rather do it in any other place where the chances of an armed guy shooting you is a plausible possibility? The answer should be very obvious. Gun-free zones, which Democrats support, cause mass shootings rather than prevent them.

And of course, the eye candy of the pro-gun argumentation would be Switzerland, a country that is very well known for allowing citizens to have guns. The result? One of the lowest crime rates in the world.

There is research that estimates that in 55000 to 80000 incidents, guns have been used to deter crimes. These are low-end estimates, high-end estimates can reach up to 4.7 million per year. Even if we go by the lowest estimates, 55000 per year is still a lot, particularly compared to the homicide rate. Across every metric, it is clear that responsible gun ownership leads to a safer society.

CONCLUSION

This is the end of my analysis of the Democratic Party Platform. we have covered the Democrat view when it comes to many topics such as Economics, LGBT, Crime, Social issues and so on. I can state that during my analysis, I was thoroughly appalled by the illogicality of this party platform. This Party Platform is what happens when you attempt to create “the most progressive party platform in its history”. Towards what end are we progressing?

The result is a system of tyranny. Resist it with all your might.

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