cw: nasty historical reference
Nicer addendum to that last post:
Remember, our communities thrived for CENTURIES under oppression. "We all get tossed into camps or worse" is ONE of many possible outcomes, and... I mean... it's not even where all right-wing authoritarian societies end up. Most just... are content to quietly suck and make life difficult for good people -- and EXTREMELY difficult or untenable for a segment of them -- for a few decades.
I would put my money on this being, like, "Duterte bad" or "Marcos bad" or "Franco bad," not -- I'll come out and say it -- "Hitler bad" or "Amin bad."
And I say that with all sympathy because I have spent my whole life fixating on worst-case scenarios and it's a natural and often sensible human habit.
But yeah. This all has scary resemblances to Berlin '32 and THE RESULTANT FEARS ARE VALID AS SHIT. We should be on the strongest guard against this. We need to get ready NOW to push back. But I don't think doom is inevitable -- and I have course notes from my Russia and Germany classes to back me up so don't even fuck with the history tiger.
I think things will get worse for us. The momentum of the Trump cult and its willingness to demonize us is terrifying. Don't get me wrong, this is a high alert we're at.
But we can do this. And what we really, really, REALLY NO I AM SO FUCKING SERIOUS HERE is start mining our history for the survival tricks of our forebears. There is a HUGE amount of trickery and cultural agility in our past, that would El-ahrairah Himself blush.
Don't give up until you've at LEAST done your own deep dive into it and seen just how well other people have persisted through unimaginable hardship and persecution.
And then add to that the fact that the Internet is our native ground. We have no excuse not to be taking advantage of that in much the same way the Viet Cong -- and the Trung Sisters before them -- took advantage of the Indochinese jungle.
The right rose to power on a raft of bullshit. Jim Watkins leveraged real power just by talking shit on 4chan. We walk away from that power on a regular basis. And I DEMAND at this point to know why.
re: cw: nasty historical reference
@zebratron2084 *looks at the MI newly established non-binary gender marker*
*looks at the pink triangle and jude star*
uh huh
i know what youre on about, and ty
re: cw: nasty historical reference
@DrSagan Yeah. That's a place it could go and the sheer unfathomable awfulness of it is a good enough reason for it to figure in every one of our plans. We have a moral duty to try to keep That from happening again.
But hit me up sometime for the story of the college RA I had who was mixed-raced and from Capetown -- during apartheid. (Short version: we naive little Americans assumed his life was constant violence, degradation, and persecution. He kind of laughed and pointed out, um... Capetown ain't like the rest of SA. It was a lot like I imagined Seattle or NOLA would be in Right-Wing Authoritarian America: absolutely jack shit would ever get enforced.)
re: cw: nasty historical reference
Ultimately, the key feature of the "political Right" is that they are on the side of the owner class and the existing power structure. That is the sense in which they can be called "conservative". They don't have to constantly oppose anything in more than a theatrical "establishing the Us vs Them boundary" fashion. Nor do they have to make decisions about what outcomes they want or how to get there : The Leader does that. Being a drone who claims to be an "alpha" and an "individualist" is easy.
Also, sad to say, the Left allowed itself to get hijacked by the destructive messianic pseudosciece of Marxism, and in attempting to dig its way out, took a turn to discounting concrete realities. This put it square on the playing field of the Right, which is always fundamentally emotive and anti-rational. The Right will sometimes claim Facts and Reason as their province, but it's always transparent sham which is quickly and easily abandoned.
We see that words such as "racism" are treated, in present-day American discourse, as though they were the taunts of a playground bully, with the consequences of bruised feelings. I don't know if the Right will always win that kind of fight, but cruel people without constructive intentions sure will.
re: cw: nasty historical reference
As a footnote, I very much depreciate the majority opinion in Brown v Board of Ed for this reason.
To my way of thinking, the whole matter could have been best dealt with, essentially, in two paragraphs. The first would document that no good faith effort had ever been made anywhere to meet the "separate but equal" standard of Plessy v Ferguson, from which it becomes necessary to conclude that such a standard is incompatible with the Equal Protection clause. The second would observe that the "separation of the races" is itself a nulleity, as no evidence could be adduced to show that the distinction proposed has an existence definite enough to be taken legislative or judicial notice of.
Instead there is a long consideration of the deleterious effects of being treated as inferior ― which, while true enough, doesn't actually speak to the matter at hand in any meaningful way. It does, however, provide plenty of material for the kind of person who feels big when putting others down, and likes to say "oh, am I making you feel bad about yourself? well, suck it up, sissy!" And that always, without fail, is a tactic of distraction. Judging from what I see around me, it's a successful one.
re: cw: nasty historical reference
What it really boils down to is that I GENUINELY, sincerely don't get what is supposedly so special about the right-wing that we are not capable of wielding the exact same power -- even if our alleged leaders are far too blinkered and ossified to do it themselves.
The main difference I see is that they have embraced the old "frog in a butter churn" metaphor and DON'T EVER LET REALITY STOP THEM. They don't give up. "They Have God On Their Side." They sit wherever they like and act like they belong there, whereas leftists... pussyfoot and I'm getting tired of it and all the conflict-aversion.
We could have that power. You just have to pick it up and use it. Dammit.