#Fascism cannot stand

[ardentperfidy]

i'm going to develop a permanent tic if i have to see one more take on last night's succession episode blaming kendall's lack of morals and hurt feelings over shiv's betrayal for the rise of fascism as the way that kendall serves as a stand in for the moral vacuum at the heart of capitalism flies over their heads with a gentle whistling sound

#succession #succession spoilers #like i'm genuinely sorry #that apparently so many people missed so many layers of last night's episode?? #maybe it's because the cnn trump town hall has had me thinking about this a lot #but they made this point on pod save america #that cnn is a company and its goal is to make money and it is beholden to shareholders for that singular goal #like blame milton friedman and jack welch #but the point is that we cannot rely on media COMPANIES operating within the logic of capitalism to save us from fascism #the problem isn't that kendall didn't have the courage to stand up to mencken it's that he had the power to have that choice at all #and kendall was genuinely looking to shiv for advice because he saw her opposition to mencken as genuine #he wanted her to reassure him that he was a good person and that had value to him #he was at least thinking about the moral value of what he was doing #and then it's not that shiv betrayed him #it was that she was playing the game all along #she lost her credibility as a moral voice to him #and revealed rightly or not that it was all about the company and the game #and so kendall went right back to seeing it as a game and not a moral quandary #and he played the game of capitalism #anyway #kendall roy my beloved

[iftari]

heres my personal question/reflection. growing up post 9/11 i rmr a lot (& i mean A LOT) of sentiment surrounding the concept of assimilating to the west, being the "good immigrant" and still being fucked by institutions. in line w that was a lot of feeling on how tiring that felt, how exhausting, n like, would we ever be accepted? this isnt an accurate timeline but i would say say this shit peaked in mainstream culture w yt ppl in 2016 (hamilton i think is acc a really great pinpoint of this) and then this energy i would say imo kinda died down throughout trumps presidency (which i personally think has to do w the fact that sm yt liberals were firing up for poc so arguably this was the time institutions were pretending to make "amends". actually. liberals & instutions were maybe trying to make 'ammends' a bit before 2016. maybe since 2014? timeline is rough on this but for sure they were Very Sorry during trump...)

anyway. 2024. in the imperial core of america alone i would say theres *at least* 4 genocides happening (& thats prob me undercounting !) simultaneously. there is currently a very overt livestreamed genocide of palestinians. it is VERY much impacting ppl in the imperial core in the sense that the facade of liberalism is so plainly falling away, institutions are very explicitly engaging in islamaphobia, antiblackness, n anti-palestinian sentiment, etc. and like i obviously think its important to document bc every form of fascism is important to note but i also feel like we're kinda back to convos we've had before of 'omg been SUCH good immigrants n *this* is how they treat us??? oh my!' n like i understand the feeling of betrayal but i wonder how much interrogating is going on beyond the betryal. to sum degree it feels like the way ppl engage w covid in the sense of...im wondering how much of what ur experiencing is actually radicalizing u that america even in its most liberal form should not exist - exactly like israel - n how much of what ur experiencing is like...shock that it could happen to u & the ppl u care ab (vs the....'unimportant/undesirable ppl). like yes its awful campuses are so blatantly engaging in islamohobia. but shouldnt we be reconciling more, as a community that we need to create a world w.o colleges n shifting the importance *away* from unis (esp in a time of shitty economy?) rather than reconciling w like...the betrayal of a institution preserving imperial interests? like how many times are we going to keep learning this? what are we benefiting from having this same shock over n over again? who is it serving to keep experiencing this? feeling similar to this campaign of voting 'uncommited' like who does this serve? dems dont acc care if they have office or not and theyre very clearly ok w losing. they dont need the presidency fr - if anything hey want to lose so they can punish ppl more for not shutting up. so like when we extend energy on the uncommited campaign, who is it serving? what purpose is it filling (& i do believe it is filling a purpose for some ppl. i think for lots of ppl it fulfils the very real emotional need to do *SOMETHING*, to move, to exert the tension n energy we're feeling n thats a correct emotional response! but how u spend ur energy DOES matter bc part of fascism is to literally divert energy so u DONT take up arms. like imo america is not at a place culturally for any sort of violent revolutionary resistance (organized or not) ! like we're just not! but the most explicit nonviolent form of resistance is not being uncommited to voting for a party that is relying on not having electoral offices but rather an actual coordinated strike. THAT has purpose no?)

#idk id k idk. im not trying to demonize any organizers or activists or anything #but really sitting w the concept of defanged movements that still are trying to pserserve liberal fascism #the thing ab liberal america n perserving it is the same as perserving liberal israel n its easy to criticise israel esp now bc theyre youn #but the parallels are there w america so explicit. if we cannot stand w something w isarel u fundementally cannot stand for it here in usa #ither #but i feel like so much defanging has happened to movements that the ppl left to pick ip the torch rn are like...younger inexperienced #activists who have a lot of aderanaline n little political radicalized compass n experience #n its like...showing #also i cannot stress enough how cruel it is to have taken away so many black organizers #to sum degree i also wonder n think ab nonblack cowardice n how its showing up here. like. almost waiting for black ppl to take the burden #of escalation so if it succeeds yay we as nonblack poc take credit n erase but if it fails they get blamed #idk idk i just think antiblackness is really so pervasive - obvi everywhere but i can only talk ab it here in the imperial core #idk. i just feel...idk. movements are defanged n i think the way its going to be inevitably escalated #is going to like...throw a lot of 'organizers/activists' off unfortunately

[coyoxxtl]

ngl if you’re looking at what biden and his administration is doing to palestine and all you can say is “well trump would’ve been worse!” i deeply and truly want you to shit your pants to death

#i just CANNOT stand that EVERY discussion or grievance about how fucking foul the dem party is being rn is just #always met with this shallow and thoughtless choir of weak liberals who are so convinced that there is safety in a president thats fucking #and i cant stress this enough #FUNDING AND LEADING A FUCKING GENOCIDE #why are yall so fucking ATTACHED to voting as your only form of activism #do yall not give a shit if the people you vote for do wrong? do yall just not give a shit about holding our govt officials accountable? #this is outside whether or not voting is important to do or not. this is about seeing the people who we elect in positions of power abuse- #that power and acting accordingly #which means also not fucking voting him in office again #who give a fucking Shit if trump would be worse. to still believe that is so fucking childish. that’s irrelevant now. because Now our dem- #president is committing FUCKING GENOCIDE. to see a man lead the extermination of the palestinian people and think hes a Lesser Evil is #absolutely fucking insane. rethink your understanding of our government because it’s Painfully naive #im nowhere near confident of my own knowledge but i dont think you need to know much to understand this. its really fucking easy to see- #a president commit genocide and think No I Dont Think I Will Vote For Him Again #and that this is bigger than voting in a fucking election. do better. be more. because you will not stop fascism with voting. #and if youre still attached to voting for some reason then for the love of GOD do something. ANYTHING. when the people you vote for fail. #make them pick a candidate that wont commit genocide. but good luck with that. america wont stop being no.1 genocider until its dead. #txt

[iberiancadre]

Cannot stand seeing people on my dash celebrating the Pope's statement that "marxists and catholics have the same mission" because those people clearly have no idea about the historical cooption of class politics by the church.

this kind of bullshit goes back to 1891, when Pope Leo XIII published the Rerum Novarum encyclical, addressing the situation of the working class and what the church's stand should be on it. It is, essentially, a socialdemocratic text that defends unionization while denouncing socialists and "capitalism". It still defends private property and the right of capitalists to their profits. This encyclical really made the figure of a worker priest relevant, a low-level priest that's aware of workers' issues and "defends" them. What this figure accomplished was the promotion of class conciliation and therefore a rejection of workers' liberation.

And this is no different. The pope might not outright reject marxism, but in practice, by bringing it down to the level of the catholic church he dilutes marxism into nothing more than "can we pretty please raise the minimum wage according to inflation". The church is, at its core, nothing more than another institution used by capital to appease workers into non-violence and peaceful activism. The very same institution that coexisted with fascism in the 30s and later became a rabid anticommunist tool is now talking about marxists, give me a fucking break.

This is what I'm talking about. How anti-church can you really be if some "good opinions" makes you partial to them. It doesn't matter what the headlines say the pope thinks about trans or gay people if in their actual theology it's just forgiveness for who they think are astray. The church's compassion for any oppressed group does not come from principle, it comes from pity at people who reject the church's teachings. It's no better than the "as long as it's in private" kind of homophobia and transphobia.

#real marxist hours

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

One thing about Andor is the fact that this entire town hates cops so much. Cops come to town and the townspeople immediately start doing everything in their power to harass, annoy, inconvenience and slow them. Both in solidarity for Marva who they love, and just bc they don't want cops in their town.

This show hates cops so much. This show hates the prison industrial system. This show hates fascism and authoritarianism. This show peels back the layers to show you a Normal Day At Work At Fascist Inc. This show has well intentioned cops, bad intentioned cops, and robot cops who don't care either way, and all of them do harm all the time. This show says that cops will endanger people on purpose and make dangerous mistakes. This show says that community and solidarity are the way to stand up to empire.

Cannot believe the mouse company allowed this to happen

#that's not even to get into how good the writing is #how much it trusts its audience #its nuanced characters #its subversion of the Girl Boss trope in Dedra #its subtext #its reliance on good writing and interesting dialogue and good plot rather than explosions to hold our attention #its quiet moments #its kickass lesbians #and have i mentioned its nuanced characters #andor series #andor

[robertreich]

Is Donald Trump a Fascist? 

I want to talk to you about the F word. No no — not that F word.

I’m talking about fascism.

Is Donald Trump really a “fascist,” as some would claim?

Is “authoritarian” adequate?

The term “fascism” is often used loosely, but you can generally identify fascists by their hate of the "other," vengeful nationalism, and repression of dissent.

To fight these ideas, we need to be aware of what they are and how they fit together.

Let's examine the five elements that define fascism and what makes it distinct from, and more dangerous than, authoritarianism.

1. The rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman

Authoritarians believe strong leaders are needed to maintain stability. So they empower  strongmen, dictators, or absolute monarchs to maintain social order through the use of force.

But fascists view strong leaders as the means of discovering what society needs. They regard the leader as the embodiment of society, the voice of the people.

2. Stoking rage against cultural elites

Authoritarian movements cannot succeed without at least some buy-in from establishment elites.

While fascist movements often seek to co-opt the establishment, they largely depend on fueling resentment and anger against presumed cultural elites for supposedly displacing regular people. Fascists rile up their followers to seek revenge on the elites.

They create mass political parties and demand participation. They encourage violence.

3. Nationalism based on “superior” race and historic bloodlines.

Authoritarians see nationalism as a means of asserting the power of the state.

For fascists the state embodies what is considered a “superior” group — based on race, religion, and historic bloodlines. To fascists, the state is a means of asserting that superiority.

Fascists worry about disloyalty and replacement by groups that don’t share the same race or bloodlines. Fascists encourage their followers to scapegoat, expel, and sometimes even kill such “others.”

Fascists believe schools and universities must teach values that glorify the dominant race, religion, and bloodline. Schools should not teach inconvenient truths about the failures of the dominant race.

4. Extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.

The goal of authoritarianism is to gain and maintain state power at any cost. For authoritarians, “strength” comes in the form of large standing armies that can enforce their rule. They seek power to wield power.

Fascists seek state power to achieve their ostensible goal: achieving their vision of society.

Fascism accomplishes this goal by rewarding those who win economically and physically, and denigrating or exterminating those who lose. Fascism depends on organized bullying — a form of social Darwinism.

For the fascist, war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and glorifying heroic warriors.

5. Disdain of women and LGBTQ+ people

Authoritarianism imposes hierarchies. It’s about order.

Fascism’s idea of order is organized around a particular hierarchy of male dominance. The fascist “heroic warrior” is male. Women are relegated to subservient roles.

In fascism, anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order.

Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexuals, nonbinary, transgender, and queer people because they’re thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.

These five elements of fascism fit together and reinforce each other.

Rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman depends on galvanizing popular rage.

Popular rage draws on a nationalism based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity.

That superior race or ethnicity is justified by a social Darwinist idea of strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.

Strength, violence, and the heroic warrior are centered on male power.

These five elements find exact expression in Donald Trump. His uniquely American version of fascism is rooted largely in White Christian Nationalism. It is the direction that most of the Republican Party is now heading in.

It’s not enough to call Trump and those promoting his ideas authoritarians when what they are really advocating is something far worse: fascism.

#youtube #fascism #Donald Trump #politics #election #video #videos

[familyabolisher]

Do you think any of the frameworks you've developed for analyzing love in TLT could be applied to Pyrrha's relationship to cam/pal? Since Nona doesn't understand it well, it's hard for me to get a handle on how those characters relate to each other, but I was wondering where it might stand on what the series considers "perfect love," what the significance of its presence/ambiguity is, etc.

I’m really locked on to this idea of illegibility, actually, and the kind of work that gets done in Nona to problematise efforts to easily name, define, & categorise a relationship or set of relationships. I’m thinking of what Muir said here:

It’s a very strange household. And they are a found family, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the last movement of the book Nona questions what that even means—their motives, what they all truly wanted out of each other, their pretenses: are they a family, or are they all just a psychosexual mess of roleplaying and bad meals? (The answer is yes.)

and like, her suggestion that ‘family’ can plausibly be collapsed into a ‘psychosexual mess of roleplaying’ and that the drive of Nona is less about asking whether Cam/Pal/Pyrrha/Nona ‘are’ a family as much as it’s about asking what it actually means to identify them as such; and particularly to identify them as such in a text which does very significant work elsewhere to identify ‘the family’ as a site of violence, a mechanism by which particular forms of violence can be enacted. I’m honing in on that ‘last movement of the book’ comment to say that, like—so, the two narratives in Nona (the ‘main’ narrative ie. Nona et al. on Lemuria, and the John narrative) are spliced together, right, so it makes sense to try and read them as though they’re in dialogue with one another, and the obvious entrypoint for doing so is the fact that they’re both working as an account of the ‘creation’ of Alecto; first through John literally creating her and then through Nona remembering his having done so and thus rebecoming what she had forgotten she was. What does it mean to ‘create’ Alecto?—what are the conditions that Alecto’s creation ushers in, what are the conditions that her creation does away with? The ‘last movement’ of the book is to ‘create’ Alecto for the second time—so, what does Alecto represent, and what about her ‘creation’ leads the text to ask what it means to describe something as a ‘family’ in the first place?

The reason I’m drawn to this reading of Cam/Pal/Pyrrha as like, ultimately illegible, incoherent in that we as audience cannot coherently put words to it and make sense of it in the language readily available to us, is because I think the text understands these processes of ordering, taxonomising, delineating, and categorising as tactics of fascism. This is a tension also at play in Lolita; Humbert ‘orders’ and constructs his narrative via the available tools of literary discourse and similarly constructs his ‘Lolita’ as a labyrinth of cultural references and taxonomies; but Dolores is a ‘Haze,’ Annabel Leigh is a ‘tangle of thorns,’ there exists a being who is able to remain indistinct and impenetrable in a narrative which enacts violence on her by trying to make taxonomical sense of her. Coherence and legibility are mechanisms of visibility; under fascism, to be easily made sense of can be dangerous. The first two books were all about coherence, legibility, interpellation, and the consequences of Living In A Society; what it means to ‘be’ or ‘become’ a cavalier, what the necromancer-cavalier relationship ‘means,’ what Lyctorhood ‘means,’ how these relations of hierarchised sexuality and the interpersonal relationships articulated within the normative language given to them exist to shore up conditions of imperialism. This question of ‘ordering’ goes right down to eg. enumeration (First, Second, Third, etc.) and pretty tightly contained and atomised cultural associations, and the fact that that enumeration can be traced back to Alecto—

D’you know why you’re really the First? Because in a very real way, you and the others are A.L.’s children … There would be none of you, if not for her.

—which cribs this passage, from Lolita:

‘[…] for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other—from the thought that around 1950 I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated—to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l’âge; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad. In the days of that wild journey of ours, I doubted not that as father to Lolita the First I was a ridiculous failure.

—very evenly ties together ideas of reproduction as imperial sustention figured in the language of sexual assault. The point is: as far as the empire is concerned, processes of ordering and taxonomising are equivocal to the mechanical maintenance of conditions of fascism.

Conversely, Nona is a text about when John’s precise demarcation of the world starts to fail and people have to make sense of themselves between the cracks; from Pyrrha as both failed cavalier and failed Lyctor to Cam and Palamedes and then Paul as if not ‘failed’ then at least a new ordering of necromancer/cavalier-ism to the Tower Princes as John’s kind of scrambling effort to rearticulate hegemony post-losing all but one of his Lyctors. Regarding how we are to read Cam/Pal/Pyrrha, I think it’s pretty clear that the text understands the obligations, normative assumptions and expectations, and material consequences of normative kinship relations identified as ‘family’ as part and parcel with the social ordering of a fascistic imperial hegemony; Kiriona, Alecto, and Harrow make up the three key points of contact for this reading, though it’s pretty diffuse across the whole work. We see kinship relations as structuring imperialist hierarchies and we understand the currency of those hierarchies to be death/abuse/sexual violence/totalised control, articulated most profoundly through Kiriona; we also see the destruction of social formations as part and parcel with conquest—

Palamedes said mildly, “You know we’re conversant with the concept of family in the Nine Houses, right?” Pash seemed genuinely surprised. “Why the hell would it matter to you? [...] You don’t give a fuck about families when you’re carving them up—”

—this of course being in keeping with the general conditions of mixed cultures, mixed languages, variances on kinship structures, refugees seemingly thrown together on Lemuria. The bolstering of the social articulations of the conquerors and denaturing of the social articulations of the conquered is rendered as a tactic of conquest; ‘family’ here is figured as a cudgel of imperialism.

Diegetically, as I said, Cam + Pal + Pyrrha + Nona’s social arrangement is not ‘normative,’ neither in the fact that others on Lemuria can make easy sense of it (and thus attempt to do so by referring to peripheralised and marginalised social relations ie. sex work) nor in the fact that they can coherently make sense of themselves via the imperial taxonomy (is Pyrrha a Lyctor greatest thread in the history of forums). Nor is it normative on our end; relative to the nuclear family structure, it’s the ‘wrong’ number of parents, the ‘wrong’ configurations of gender, the ‘wrong’ configurations of blood relation (Nona is a ‘child’ but not an ‘heir’ to anything and not a blood relation of either; Cam and Palamedes as ‘parents’ are blood-related), even the ‘wrong’ overall kinship relations—I put ‘child’ and ‘parents’ in quotations there precisely because I don’t think they’re conditions uncritically reified by the narrative as much as they’re discursive gestures made for the sake of being problematised. Is Nona their ‘child’ in a text where to be the ‘child’ of someone means to be what Kiriona is to John? Is this a ‘family’ when ‘family’ is the mechanic of imperial refortification? Again, like—what does it mean to call them a family at all?

‘Family’ is a label we deploy to give legibility to relations that we are otherwise struggling to make sense of. Setting aside Paul for the moment because I don’t quite know what to do with them and probably won’t have a Take that I can confidently commit to until after Alecto—I think the kind of difficulty that the text has in articulating exactly what Cam + Pal + Pyrrha ‘had’ between them that we see in that final scene is intentional, and I think it’s best understood left that way rather than wrangled into a taxonomy that the rest of the text is v determined to critically unpack. So to answer your question, I think the ambiguity is key—one overarching theme of the series is how people can love each other and articulate that love when the language available for them to do so carries obligations of disparate power, hierarchy, serves a particular purpose that we come to understand as ethically unconscionable; whether that love has to be made sense of within hierarchy, or contravene it, or try and stake a place outside of it. Cam + Palamedes + Pyrrha become the next stage of development in the unravelling of such a discourse; to try and make coherent sense of them could all too easily mean falling back on the language that the text works to identify as socially constructed and thus as limited, and thus imposing those limitations.

#ask #tlt #nona the ninth spoilers #i have a second thing to add here but i think it works better as its own reblog so i'll circle back

[communistkenobi]

Star Wars is explicitly in the process of becoming a new MCU, but because this process encourages the audience to treat all SW properties as incomplete components of an entire fabric of canon, where each show or movie must be read in relation to all others and cannot fully stand on its own, I feel like the weird colonial frontier vibes of Chapter 17 of The Mandalorian become that much worse because of the existence of Andor. Like Andor is not perfect by any means, especially its depiction of colonial extraction and indigenous dispossession, but it invokes those historical forces MULTIPLE TIMES (first with Cassian, then with the people on Aldhani) in order to build the case that the Empire is a fascist and imperial (duh) power, and this is what that kind of power does to people and the places they inhabit - destruction of life, destruction of culture, destruction of history. Andor is drawing an extremely basic and obvious parallel between colonialism and fascism, making the argument that these processes are one and the same.

And now in The Mandalorian, you have Greef Karga, High Magistrate of Nevarro, the Gem of the Outer Rim. Nevarro has been rid of all its “scum and villainy” (a phrase directly lifted from the OT), and since that purge of undesirables it’s become a verdant and economically vibrant place. Now of course, part of the class of undesirables was the Imperial remnant, so part of Nevarro’s problem was the fact that it was being ruled by an Imperial officer. However, Chapter 17 goes to great lengths to stress that the ruler of Nevarro also hates pirates and other “low” forms of wealth accumulation, opting instead to be an independent trading planet that is explicitly against New Republic rule (i.e., the government that overthrew the Empire). It has become respectable now, and that respectability is presented to the audience in the form of an organised private economy that has begun to engage in mining. Greef Karga offers Din a parcel of land on Nevarro, literally calling him “landed gentry” on the planet were Din to take up his offer. And this is framed as an improvement - a place devoid of crime, devoid of government rule, now flowering with vegetation that is almost certainly not part of Nevarro’s natural biosphere. The Mandalorian is now adopting, almost certainly unintentionally, the same aesthetic and processes of colonial rule that Andor has labelled as unambiguously fascist. Which is hilarious lol

#mando.txt #mando spoilers #andor

[fourovcups]

I've been reading Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire as research for a project of mine, and it has certainly been an experience.

Desert Solitaire was one of these titles I'd heard bandied about in American nature literature growing up (the kind of thing teachers recommended once you finished Hatchet), but I don't here his work mentioned as much anymore. I recently re-encountered the title on a literal ecofascist reading list. While Abbey doesn't sound like an ecofascist himself, I can easily see why nature Nazis like him.

The book chronicles Abbey's time as a seasonal park ranger at the Arches National Monument in Utah There is a kind of uncertainty and inconsistency in the way he writes, even in the way he acts towards his surroundings in the desert. Silent Spring had only been published a few years before Solitaire was, and the eco-cultural revolution was not yet in full swing. Abbey writes lovingly about his desert environment. He describes in stunning detail, for example, the everyday beauty of a bumblebee alighting on a cactus flower, and decries the reckless "development" initiatives of the Bureau of Public Roads. But on the next page, he will say something like this: "...it's a foolish, simple-minded rationalism which denies any form of emotion to all animals but man and his dog. This is no more justified than the Moslems are in denying souls to women." Sure dude. Okay, fine, he was writing in the sixties. Some insensitivity is par for the course. But then, after pages and pages of decrying humans driving desert flora and fauna towards extinction, he describes with glee an instance where he stones a rabbit to death for no apparent reason.

It's a bizarre passage, and shows Abbey at his most unhinged. He describes the rabbit as "cowardly" for running away from threats, unlike the brave mountain lion, who stands and fights. He throws the stone and hits the rabbit's head: "He crumples, there's the usual gushing of blood, etc.," and the creature is dead. "I continue my walk with a new, augmented cheerfulness which is hard to understand but unmistakable [...] I try but cannot feel any sense of guilt." Reflecting on the incident, he concludes that his killing of the rabbit has made him a part of the desert, a membership bought by killing or being killed, being "predator or prey". Even so, he decides not to eat the rabbit, which he says is probably diseased anyway. He also describes using his walking stick to crush and stir up an ant colony, also without any reason beyond not liking ants. "Don't actually care for ants. Neurotic little pismires." These are far from the only times that Abbey violates his personal philosophy of reverence for all living creatures.

It's clear that Edward Abbey came to Arches National Monument already dissatisfied with the outside world, and with some authority issues to boot (some quick googling on his background shows two demotions as a military police officer for clashing with higher-ups). The freedom of the desert, its simplicity and balance, is a significant part of what makes it appeal to him. But its harshness, the hostility of its sandstorms and lurking rattlesnakes, draws him in just as much.

Edward Abbey is not an ecofascist. If anything, his ill-defined political beliefs can be vaguely defined as anarchistic, if they can be defined at all. Deleuze and Guattari write in A Thousand Plateaus that fascism is "a cancerous body rather than a totalitarian organism". It is fluid, mutable. Sometimes it lies latent, benign; at other times it rushes outward, colonizing piecemeal and erratically, in "flows capable of suffusing every kind of cell". Elements of Abbey, and of Desert Solitaire, contain such microfascisms.

Let's turn back to the linchpin of it all: the killing of the rabbit, which he sees as a joyous, cosmic act; one that links him into a (circular? pyramidal?) chain of being he was previously alienated from, in the atomized world of civilization. His joy is only augmented when he realizes he is not guilty for killing the rabbit. In per-modern hunting customs across the world, the taking of animal life is never free and unmediated. Thanks may be given to the spirit of the animal itself, or to the unseen powers that led the hunter to their quarry. Naturally, the sacrifice of an animal to a god was just that: for a god, not the human involved. What Abbey describes in the killing of the rabbit is something utterly different.

In Federico Finchelstein's Fascist Mythologies, Finchelstein says that in fascism, "consciousness was not a repression of inwardness (as Freud understood the workings of the Ego and the Id) but its actual distillation. [...] [Fascist consciousness] was not contemplative but similar to that of a sublime sensation of ecstasy."

The fascist subject is most "conscious" precisely when they loose themselves in the ecstatic abandon of the act. Such fascist consciousness is the foundation of the free, easy violence it facilitates.

When Abbey describes casting the stone at the rabbit, it is in a Meursault-like twilight of awareness. He sets up the encounter as a game, one in which he is a scientist experimenting on a rabbit that has been "volunteered" to him, and whose death is justifiable through its natural cowardice. He hardly realizes that the action he is carrying out, and when the rabbit dies he is shocked out of his reverie for a moment.

"For a moment I am shocked by my deed [...] but shock is succeeded by a mild elation."

For Abbey, primordial violence is what at last allows him union with the sacred world of the desert.

"No longer do I feel so isolated from the sparse and furtive life around me, a stranger from another world. I have entered into this one. We are kindred all of us [...] Long live diversity, long live the Earth!"

By carrying out this act of bare violence, Abbey frees himself from the civilized world and achieves union with the world of Nature, in which violence is a simple act: one that creates its own order rather than supporting existing ones. It is this union that, while the moment lasts, allows him to rejoice in his newfound "innocence and power".

That is where I will leave things for now. There are other, more overt themes that Abbey explores that are the chief reason Desert Solitaire appeals to many ecofascists, such as its characterizations of industrial society and "Progress". Abbey's later work, such as The Monkey Wrench Gang, set even more explicit examples of direct action and sabotage that inspired right-wing accelerationists as well as left-wing environmental activists. This is my first long-ish post; if you're interested in these kinds of posts on ecofascism and ecocriticism, let me know and I might make more in the future.

#Desert Solitaire #ecocriticism #ecofascism #books #Edward Abbey #fascism

[gffa]

One of the best tings Andor shows is a theme I noticed on a recent rewatch of The Clone Wars, interestingly enough coming to my notice especially through the Onderon arc:  The people of the galaxy cannot stay asleep on a war that is about their very lives. In the Onderon arc, the Separatists have legally taken over Onderon, deposing the original king and putting their puppet in his place.  There is a rebellion brewing on the planet, lead by Steela Gerrera, Saw Gerrera’s sister.  A major theme woven into the episode is that they cannot win back their freedom, they cannot defeat the Separatist occupation, without the will of the people being on their side. Steela says it more than once, they need the will of the people. It’s woven into other moments in the story, like when Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka are on Felucia and Sugi tries to say the Jedi are at fault for not keeping the peace, Obi-Wan points out that the rift in the galaxy is not their fault, if the people of the galaxy actually stood up for themselves, this fight would have been over long ago. And that’s what Andor is following up on and really hitting home--yes, Luke Skywalker is going to join the Rebellion and ultimately save the day, but the big point of Rogue One and now of Andor, is that the galaxy cannot be saved through the Jedi alone, they never have been.  That’s what the real shitshow of the Clone Wars was, that the galaxy sat around with their thumbs up their asses and waited for others to save them. Now?  Everything in Andor is about everyday citizens realizing they have to stand up.  Sure, Luke Skywalker is going to battle the Emperor, sure, it’ll be Darth Vader who yeets Palpatine down the reactor shaft.  But it is Cassian Andor who delivered those plans to the Rebellion.  It’s every pilot who flew an X-Wing.  It’s every Senator who risked their life to throw their weight into rebelling against fascism. It’s about how the will of the people has to be there and that every day citizens have to stand up and fight the fascist regime, that’s why so much of the show has to be set on Ferrix.  It could have been any planet--it is any number of worlds, the more the Empire tightens their grip, the more worlds slip through their fingers--but showing us Ferrix being choked by the Empire and the people standing up to fight alongside the Big Damn Heroes of the story, that is what it takes to achieve revolution. It can’t be down to just the Jedi to save the galaxy, there’s never enough of them, they can fight and die and give everything of themselves and it will never be enough because they’re only one in six billion of the galaxy. You need the will of the everyday people. You need everyday people to be willing to say, “Fight the Empire!” You need everyday people to be willing to pick up a brick and hit a fascist oppressor in the face. Andor is the story of how the people of the galaxy are finally waking up and realizing they need to be the ones to stand up, too.  You cannot defeat oppression without the will of the people and the willingness of those people to stand up.

#andor #andor spoilers #the empire #meta

[commajade]

is it rly too much to ask for people to see the dprk not as good (morally faultless and i support every decision the government has ever made) or evil (every word that is bad applies to them because they are bad!) but as a result of history? it's very simple to dispel these myths if you think about what led up to the founding of the dprk.

the korean people freed themselves from japanese military authoritarianism and their theory of natural supremacy of a certain race (the definition of fascism) and built their entire society around opposing that. the dprk is a far left communist state. they cannot be imperialist they defeated US imperialism in a war the US will not let them end and are holding onto sovereignty of their indigenous lands in a way the people of the ROK cannot. they have never subjugated another country economically or militarily (the definition of imperialism).

the founders of the dprk are independence fighters and guerilla soldiers against japanese colonizers and the first president of the ROK was handpicked by the US because they could control him and he went to princeton and harvard. kim ilsung is a staunch anti-imperialist freedom fighter and basically the last man standing of the korean independence movement after the rest were murdered by fascist imperialist forces. you can literally read this on wikipedia even tho wikipedia is CIA/FBI vetted.

if u think about this it makes sense that they would prioritize their military and nuclear weapons to simply keep the US from closing in and destroying the peninsula a second time. there are people trying to leave because they are simply poor because the US will not let them trade for resources they do not have on their land.

#dprk #korean history #it literally makes sense why the descendants of a heroic freedom fighter that brought the country from the brink of extinction #would be respected and admired by the people #and chosen to represent the workers party

[coyote-in-the-mirror]

Fuck your fascism

Pride started as a riot and I will fight alongside my queer siblings

Protecting our future with our hands and teeth and claws

I stand in the blood of cops and howl in grief for queer lives lost

You cannot take this joy from us

I will never stop being me.

#happy pride 🌈 #transmaculine #transmasc #transgender #fuck the police #fuck facists #trans rights are human rights #pansexual #panromantic #asexual #aegosexual #trans joy #biracial trans man #fuck conservatives #my body my fucking choice #pride was a riot #1312 #pride month #queer poet #otherkin #knight writes

[genderisareligion]

They are now trans-ing black Civil Rights Activist Pauli Murray

https://blog.n3vlynnn.com/p/how-the-trans-movement-is-erasing#%C2%A7who-is-pauli-murray

I had already reblogged this but you just reminded me to go back and read it.

What's bothering me is the fact that a lot of this "decision" to "trans" Pauli is apparently being done using her own words, from autobiographies and such, unlike the likes of Marsha Johnson who didn't write as a career and thus has less lived proof available for us to post humorously analyze.

Like this in her own words really stands out to me:

In Murray’s “summary of symptoms of upset” she included lists of questions she had been seeking answers for, and was hoping to find relief within the medical sphere: “Do I have a ‘male’ attitude towards life, or is there such a thing?” “Why the very nervous excitable condition all my life and the very natural falling in love with the female sex? Terrific breakdowns after each love affair that has become unsuccessful?” “Why do my emotional attractions flow consistently toward members of my own sex, without excluding friendliness on my part of members of the male sex?” “Why cannot I accept the homosexual method of sex expression, but insist on the normal first?” “Why are normal women whose experiences have been satisfactory with the male sex, find themselves emotionally attracted to me, and often admit that they wish they could find my qualities in the male.” “What is the physical basis for my tendency toward ‘boyishness’ in structure and appearance?" “Do I have tumors which are causing my emotional disturbances? Would the removal of these tumors return me to normal female reactions.” “By what means, other than an exploratory operation, can it be determined whether or not I have hidden testicles? ….[Could] it be possible that I have one normally functioning ovary, and one male organ, producing a physical and therefore emotional conflict?”

TRAs could never ask so many hard hitting questions and actually want the answers.

The end of the first question alone - "or is there such a thing?”- tells me that this woman was more akin to the modern equivalent of Gender Critical than she was "transgender." She went into questioning her sexuality with an open mind and already willing to accept that she could be wrong, which TRAs who shut down any criticism as "fascism" are currently incapable of.

Also notice that she refers to women as members of her own sex.

Anyway I'm so sick of nonblack liberals Noble Savaging us in particular to self flagellate about how "diverse" their praxis is. They're so clumsy with it they just end up doing more damage

Also also:

I find it interesting that the testosterone pills which Pauli was so fervently pursuing, were openly and unapologetically intended to be used as conversion therapy on gay, effeminate males. I also do not think it’s a coincidence that Pauli struggled with her own homosexuality, and saw this pill as an antidote to her same-sex attractions. What’s more, modern-day hormone therapy has been shown to have the same effect on its users, as far as changing their sexual orientation. It continues to baffle me that cross-sex hormones for ‘gender-affirmation’ are still viewed as progressive. I think we can all glimpse into the history of experimental hormone usage as a means to change one’s “gender expression” and examine the roots of where it comes from.  Given what we know about the factors that prompted Murray to seek testosterone, is this really something that we should celebrate and glorify? 

#ask.txt #WOCTBI

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Reid, do you have any advice for anti-fascist action in uni?

For context, I live in a fascist state. Any kind of dissent is met with imprisonment in my educational institute. Not to mention permanent future blacklisting, here AND abroad (since this institute has the power to do that). Academics is what I do best - it's my career choice for the future - but I can't ignore my fellow students' oppression. Doing that makes me feel like my academic pursuits are hollow.

I realise this is a huge question, I don't expect you to be my therapist! I just...wondered if you might have similar experience, I guess, and anything you'd like to share as designated Internet Brother. Much love.

You're right, dirtling—this is indeed a huge question. Although the United States is inching further towards fascism than I'd like, I do need to feel the need to say that I have never faced the dangers you are currently dealing with. I don't presume to know your situation, and I'm not going to dictate morals to you.

First and foremost: keep yourself safe. This is the single most important thing I will say. You cannot help anyone if you have been thrown in prison or disappeared.

I think we often fall into the trap of imagining anti-fascism as grandiose acts, standing up and spitting in the face of the regime, making a statement. That's certainly one way to do it. I salute the people who are willing to take those risks.

But anti-fascism can also take the form of small, clandestine acts—I think this ask was one of them. By living your life with your eyes open, you're already subverting the structures of power that are in place to paralyze you. Keep doing that. Take the small opportunities when they present themselves. Any difference has a ripple effect.

So maybe your dissent isn't public. Maybe it looks like quietly, privately, helping someone who is being persecuted, even if it's just in some small way. Maybe it's that someday, when you are a professor with students of your own, you subtly give them the tools they need to question the status quo. Maybe it's reading everything you can get your hands on so you're armed with the right knowledge.

I'm not going to tell you that you need to leave your homeland, denounce its regime and its politics and make a big statement. Not everyone has that option. I'm also not going to tell you that you need to make waves within your country. Not everyone wants that option—and that's okay.

Do your best to thrive. Every moment that you are alive and critical is a victory. Spread the message when you can, where you can, if you can. Love your family, your country, and your culture. Believe in a better future. Most importantly, don't give up.

-Reid

#he speaks #antifascism #internet brother #life advice #anti fascism #I'm honored that you've asked me. and I've given you the best answer that I can #I'm sorry that I don't have a perfect set of steps #I wish I did

[autisticandroids]

list of succession end states i've contemplated

kendall suicide (by drowning. obviously) <- honestly a lot less likely these days

kendall winning everything and totally betraying his siblings and burning all his relationship followed by seemingly "accidental" drowning death/ambiguous suicide <- ideal ending. for me

roman suicide <- EXCITING NEW CONTENDER NOT PREVIOUSLY CONSIDERED

tom jail for election tampering crimes <- boring on account of we've already tried to send tom to jail

kendall jail for election tampering crimes

kendall sole ceo. worst ending

shiv totally cut off from waystar but also tossed out of liberal politics because she helped win the election for mencken, no career just trapped at home with the baby forever

roman tossed out and just hanging around being a wastrel <- boring because we've already seen this

romangerri reconciliation <- would make me insane. honestly not sure if i would be enraged or popping bottles. it's a pipe dream but also what if it happens

tomshiv reconciliation <- despite recent tomshiv insanity, less interesting than romangerri tbh

tom fired specifically because kendall (sole ceo) thinks he's shiv's puppet and wants to keep his sibs out

sibs out of waystar completely but tom somehow stays at atn

tomstar wambsco (american ceo plan curveball)

kendall stands up in front of a press conference and fully confesses to killing that kid <- less likely these days i think

kendall killing the kid comes out some other way and kendall goes to fancy rich boy jail <- this is honestly too positive and nice an ending for kendall to actually happen. he needs this therefore it cannot work

shiv ceo <- no way

shiv limps back to politics <- this would be too sane and normal

shiv pregnant suicide <- NOT happening but a girl can dream. heart eyes emoji

roman/shiv blab about kendall killing the kid to fuck kendall. which backfires and gets them all tossed out on their asses

roman massive internal injuries from trampling; spends entire episode barely moving in hospital bed; gets used to stir up anti-riot/anti-progressive sentiment by atn while lying there unable to move which paradoxically pushes him to lose his taste for fascism

#succession #suicide tw

[dictee]

"'We are organizing [the people] around their needs.' We will not distract them with such empty questions as who will be elected from which political party. All political parties, as things stand, will support the power complex. Any individual elected will either be a supporter of the established politics—or an 'individual.' What would help us, in fact, is to allow as many right-wing elements as possible to assume 'political' power. The warnings that 'our thrusts toward self-determination will bring on fascism' are irresponsible—or better, unrealistic. The fascists already have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose and combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die. The holder of so-called high public office is always merely an extension of the hated ruling corporate class. It is to our benefit that this person be openly hostile, despotic, unreasoning. We are not living in a nation where left-wing parties hold eighty out of two hundred seats in a congressional body, or even eight out of two hundred. This is a huge nation dominated by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the history of the world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot understand that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world."

-George Jackson, Blood in My Eye, 1971

#reading #투쟁