Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Ok but like actually DNI if you support the death penalty. Yes there are people who deserve to die for their crimes. No there isn’t a court in existence that should be given the power to decide who those people are
Especially the court of public opinion.
#ok but what kind of an incredibly galaxy brained (/s) take is that first statement.#‘yes some people deserve to die for their crimes. I’M not telling you which ones tho’#either they do deserve it and then someone *has to make that judgement*#- a human person; not god or some other metaphysical moral instance that can’t wield the hangman’s axe -#or *nobody may decide between another person’s life and death*#in which case nobody deserves to die for their crimes!!!!#jesus fucking christ#death penalty (via @awordwasthebeginning)
I think the point OP was trying to make is that our court system, all court systems, are flawed. They not infrequently convict innocent people. That sucks. What sucks more is when they convict innocent people, and those innocent people are put to death over it. Having done nothing wrong.
If we have a death penalty, that will inevitably happen. Innocent people will die. That fact alone is reason enough to abolish the death penalty.
We don’t need to argue about whether guilty people deserve to die. Not if we accept the fact, well-supported by countless examples of wrongful conviction, that a death penalty will - and currently does - kill innocent people.
The thing is, I have nothing against socialism or communism as a political ideology; trust me, I’m as anti-capitalist as they come. The leftism is really not the problem here.
The problem is when in their leftism, people – Americans, really, and western Europeans – use the ussr as this sort of goal, this complete antithesis to the modern capitalist society, this almost-utopian place to live. They use hammer and sickle symbol, the ussr anthem; sometimes, as a joke, sometimes, not so much.
Not only that clearly shows that they know absolutely nothing about the ussr – it’s also spreading russian propaganda, whether it’s on purpose or not, which is especially insidious now, when russia is literally committing a genocide.
The ussr wasn’t a socialist utopia where everyone is equal. It was a totalitarian dictatorship, responsible for colonisation and genocide of multiple people and cultures. Just like the russian Empire before it. Just like modern russia continues to do now.
For many Eastern European and Central Asian people, hammer and sickle is not just a symbol of a political ideology. It’s the symbol, under which people were starved to death, imprisoned or executed for daring to write in their own language; in which cultures were erased, people – forcefully assimilated, stripped of their own national identity.
It’s the propaganda of being “the same people, the same nation” that russians love to use; that westerners love to believe, for the sole reason of the oppressed daring to look similar to the oppressor; for the sole reason of Americans being unable to look past their own history and realize oppression comes in many shapes and forms.
By using the ussr symbols in your political movement, you’re denying the atrocities commited under that symbol and spreading russian propaganda, whether it’s on purpose or not.
It’s not “progressive” to wave around a hate symbol.
Do your research.
To the people in replies equating the hammer & sickle to the reclamation of ‘queer’:
No.
The word queer was created by queer people, and though it was appropriated as a slur for a while, it has been reclaimed as a self identifier for generations. The only people we hurt by calling ourselves by name is, perhaps, ourselves. Even if the term had originated as a slur, it would have been targetting queer people as victims, meaning we are the people to listen to about its reclamation.
US and W Euro communists did not create the hammer and sickle. It was not used to symbolize genocide against W Europeans and US Americans.
It is a military symbol of an empire that attempted, even occasionally succeeded at, genocide. The survivors of those attempts are the people harmed by its use.
We have no business 'reclaiming’ the hammer and sickle; they aren’t ours. The victims of USSR genocide alone determine who gets to reclaim it.
The rest of us would do well to defer to them, just like so many people deferred about the swastika after it was used as a symbol of genocide, too.
For a full century, use of the symbol was voluntarily deferred by Buddhists, Navajo, and other groups that used it. It is only being slowly re-adopted as the direct survivors of that genocide die of old age.
Meanwhile, the most recent USSR genocides were occurring during my own childhood and I’m a fucking millennial.
The only people who get to have an opinion about 'reclaiming’ this symbol are the survivors of the genocides it represents.
We already have a simple, easy to use symbol for labour rights and equality that came out of our own history as W Euro and American communists. And it wasn’t even used to justify mass murder!!
Shut the fuck up, put on your big kid panties, and use Bread and Roses. 🥖 🌹
The USSR was a brutal, genocidal, totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the Eastern Bloc was no better. In the last century, the second most common cause of death in my family (after Nazis) was “torture and murder by the communist government”.
I have family members whose NAMES I don’t even know, because the government thoroughly unpersoned them. (This is not a TikTok euphemism, btw. It’s from Orwell’s 1984.) Many of my family members were still terrified of speaking out against the government, even twenty years after the communist regime fell, even in private.
I don’t even know what to talk about, really, to get people to see my point. The multiple genocides that the Soviet Union did, in an attempt to leave only the good Russians? The way that Jewish and Muslim communities were targeted far, far more than Christian ones? The mass surveillance and propaganda campaigns that left the populace a nervous and confused wreck? The KGB?
I mean, I get it. Y'all grew up in the West, all you’ve known your whole life is the crushing boot of Christianity and capitalism. You learned the word “propaganda” and you learned how the west lied and subverted and waged war and you decided that if the west was bad then the governments they opposed, such as the USSR, must be good, and that all the horror stories are propaganda.
They’re not. The reality of Eastern European communism, as told to me by my family and by my country’s historians, is WORSE than whatever you learned in history class.
And you, Western leftists, are not the inheritors of that trauma, and you don’t get to claim it’s symbols.
Stop using the hammer and sickle. Stop calling people “comrade”. Stop talking about the glory of the Soviet Union. And for fuck’s sake STOP PLASTERING IMAGES OF LENIN AND STALIN EVERYWHERE, my god, why the fuck is this even a thing I need to say.
When I went on a research trip to Central Asia a few years ago, the PI provided a list of literature you were not allowed to bring into the country. No pornography, OK, pretty much expected that one; no extremist religious literature, not too surprised by that, either; and the last category was absolutely no Marxist or Communist works of any kind. I wasn’t expecting that but it took me all of 2 seconds to realize why: I was going to a place where the USSR had destroyed families, broken traditional kinship groups apart, almost eradicated the traditional way of life and landraces of domestic animals – so many, many things. And the damage done was still visible in the landscape, if you knew what you were looking at (and our guide and the PI did, and made sure we did, too).
It’s not clever or witty or reclaiming anything to use symbols that hurt the millions of people still recovering from Soviet rule, who are still rebuilding systems and being threatened by the current Russian activities or can no longer speak their own languages. It’s fucked up. don’t do it.
Seriously, the rose has been a socialist symbol since the 1880s, please use that symbol.
Then, there’s also the Fist and Rose; to quote the Wiki article: “It depicts a rose, symbolizing the promises of better life under a socialist government, and a clenched fist holding it, symbolizing the activist commitment and solidarity necessary to achieve it. The rose is displayed in the red colour associated with left-wing politics; recent variants display the leafs in green, reflecting the rise of environmental concerns.“
And, specifically, bread and roses? 🍞🌹 Y’all know about that song, right? (Here’s one relatively recent rendition, with a direct link to the youtube channel I got it from:)
people have these “my dog is a democrat” stickers and I like to imagine them with increasingly unlikely animals professing more niche political opinions:
my parrot is a democratic socialist
my arctic fox is an anarchopastoralist
my catfish believes in the divine right of kings
“My dog is a democrat” stickers Cause plenty spontaneous snickers, But I can’t help ponder Where else their views wander, On what other points my pet bickers.
To my mind the option it brings Of increasingly niche-seeming things Your critter conceives. MY catfish believes In the heavenly birthright of kings.
I was talking to this guy at work (coworker). He was saying how complicated it is to apply for SNAP benefits, and I was like, “Yeah! That’s why we need UBI! End means testing!”
But then he starts going on about how we need to put the senate and what not through an Undercover Boss scenario to make them “humble”. And somehow that will convince them to care about poor people.
AND THEN he was like “I don’t think we should be required to get driver’s licenses, because there’s nothing in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence about licenses.”
Anyway, this is why I don’t discuss politics with ppl irl. Also this is why I don’t have real life friends. Because I was just like “OH you’re a Libertarian” and then I stopped listening.
What is researched and who is doing that research has always been effected not only by the presiding government but also by the attitudes of society. There’s a reason regime change can go hand in hand with scientists fleeing or being booted from countries, and there’s a reason scientific pursuit is largely associated with men despite women being equally intellectually capable. There’s a reason shit like eugenics happens, there’s a reason Galileo was forced to recant his theory, and there’s a reason why certain scientists are Known while others with the same conclusions are Unknown (even if they figured it out first)
“Science is supposed to be apolitical.” Like honestly… you need to live with the fact that it’s not
Soviet Russiaforced scientists to work on certain projects in labor camps, and then published their research without their names. Imagine being imprisoned and forced to work on projects, which were almost certainly related to the military, and knowing that if you refused, you would die.
We cannot flinch or look away from the fact that science is done by people, and people are part of society. Society is political. No matter how much we try to make science impartial, dehumanized, and entirely neutral, it is thought up, enacted, sanctioned, and performed by humans within a political society. We cannot separate our scientific achievements, activity, and behavior, from our achievements, activity, and behavior as humans.
And as humans we do some really awful shit.
Our science is limited by the constraints of our era. And it will always, always be intricately tied to politics. When we forget that - when we pretend that our scientific behavior is totally impartial, or that we can just skim politics off the top of our work - we’re bad scientists and should go sit in a corner and think about what we’ve done.
💜❤️💜❤️💜❤️
Yay, more sources and information and yay!
Jewish people in STEM have had their Jewishness erased or been totally removed from their achievements.
Black people in STEM have been totally removed from their achievements and has their contributions and achievements buried.
I’m really alarmed by the misinformation I see on social media right now, so here is a little simplified guide to WTF is going on.
(Edited to work better for tumblr, I originally just made screenshots for Twitter)
What is a NAZI?
Nazi is an
abbreviation for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus) an ideology associated primarily with the 20th-century
German Nazi Party (especially while it was being led by Adolt Hitler). The idea
that National Socialism lived and died primarily through Hitler is actually a
myth propagated by post-war propaganda and Hollywood. America destroyed those
Nazis!! YAY!! – Wrong, They still exist. Although not under that name. Any
far-right groups is basically a “Nazi” party (many even used the term “National
Socialism” until a re-branding in the 80’s.
The
German political scientist Klaus von Beyme describes three historical phases in
the development of far-right parties in Western Europe after World War II.
From
1945 to the mid-1950s, far-right parties were marginalized, and their
ideologies were discredited due to the recent existence and defeat of Nazism –
because people were murdered. In droves. Like millions of people. Death camps
are REAL. 11 million people died, including 1.1 million children. Thus in the
years immediately following World War II, the main objective of far-right
parties was survival; achieving any political impact at all, was largely not
expected.
From
the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the so-called “populist protest phase”
emerged with sporadic electoral success. During this period, far-right parties
drew to them charismatic leaders whose profound mistrust of the political
establishment led to an “us-versus-them” mind set: “us”
being the nation’s citizenry, “them” being the politicians and
bureaucrats who were then in office; beginning in the 1980s, the electoral
successes of far-right political candidates made it possible for far-right
political parties to revitalize anti-immigration as a mainstream issue.
What does anybody in
the far right REALLY support?
How
politics work is that there is two sides. The right and the left. In the
middle, Liberalism and democracy.
The far-right isn’t
about the “working man” at all. That’s what the LEFT is about. The Left is ALL
about the public being in control. There is currently no major leftist parties
in power in America (Democrats are closer to the middle - center-right,
actually. They just get called the left party because nobody is).
What
the right really advocates is private economic ownership (aka the rich getting’
richer), racial hierarchy (whites better than everyone else) and Social
Darwinism (which is the idea that “weak” humans, aka the old, the sick, etc,
deserve to be removed. That means gradually killed. Don’t get attached to your
grandma). Extreme right-wing politicians are usually extreme nationalists
(“bringing back JOBS to AMERICANS” = eventually they will exploit you as
workers void of rights), and are opposed to immigration. They are also
profoundly chauvinistic (that means women are seen as inferior).
Is Trump a
representative of the extreme right?
Most
definitely, since he supports all that was listed above. Loudly, too.
So, Trump isn’t
going to really help the so-called American Working Man?
Who
even is that? Everybody American works, no matter who they are. But if you mean
that you’re a white middle class American, then you’ll get candy for a year and
then be abused just like the rest of us. You’re already losing your rights to
free information and healthcare. So, you might as well join the fight with us.
Who is Richard B.
Spencer?
Richard
Bertrand Spencer (born May 11, 1978) is an American white nationalist, known
for promoting white supremacist views. He is president of the National Policy
Institute, a white nationalist think-tank, and Washington Summit Publishers, an
independent publishing firm. Spencer has stated that he rejects the description
of white supremacist, and describes himself as an identitarian. He advocates
for a white homeland for a “dispossessed white race” and calls for
“peaceful ethnic cleansing” to halt the “deconstruction” of
European culture.
The
Identitarian movement is a European political movement that started in France
in 2002 and is basically all about destroying anybody who is a shade darker
then milk. The Identitarian
movement has a close linkage to members of the German New Right, aka Neo-Nazis.
So
this guy is definitely a “Nazi”.
Was it ok to punch
him?
It’s
never ok to punch someone who has not provoked you. HOWEVER, what Spencer is
doing is saying: I want to hurt people. I want to hurt people a lot. Not today.
But, tomorrow, maybe. His very existence and allegiance is a constant menace.
Picture it this way, if you met a guy in the park and he said hi, I don’t have
a gun today, but I might tomorrow, and I might come back to shoot people, would
you just ignore him? No. So in conclusion,
march peacefully, but do punch Nazis.
This is the American scale.
I really want to point this out because it’s a legitimate thing that Trump is far more extreme right than you may think. It also explains why this is a thing that happened. See, compared to many other countries in the world, my own included, the American political spectrum is offset to the right.
So what OP said about there not being an extreme left is absolutely true, there’s barely a left to begin with.
I’d like to point out that this is a recorded phenomenon in political science and not my own biased interpretation of your politics. Noam Chomsky—cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist among other things (this guy pops up in my university classes from time to time; the dude’s part of the curriculum whether that says anything to you or not)—has been pretty outspoken about this.
“… so what [Republicans have] done is mobilized sectors of the population that have always been there but have never really been politically mobilized, like Evangelical Christians, the nativists who are afraid that ‘they’ are taking our country away from us, white racists, … gun-people who are so terrified that they have to carry their guns into church because maybe somebody’ll come after them.
You know, these sectors of the population are there, and that’s now the base of the Republican party.”
So, this election night was a shocking, absolutely horrifying blow to my American friends. Even my friends here in Canada couldn’t come to terms with it. I saw panic attacks, fears about even visiting American relatives in the States again, and even a depressive loss of faith in humanity. How could this be where the world is today?
Because, it’s this gradual shift to the right that’s so insidious, that happened for a variety of complex reasons, I’m sure, that can to some make it seem like the current Republican party is a reasonable center-right party, when in actuality they are legitimately far right. And as such, able to take advantage of these small groups on the outside that have desperately wanted a podium for a long time.
So, no, you’re not imagining it, America. This isn’t normal. Punch some Nazis, if that’s what it takes.
side note: This is what we call the Overton Window and that is a really good visual of it.
It’s also important to point out that this isn’t just the United States and it never really was. Even now, because of Brexit and Trump’s election, the radical nationalist/fascist/racist/sexist/whatever end of the political spectrum is now being galvanized globally with the success and encouragement of this and aided by political echo-chambers in media, the internet, and small communities.
Nationalist movements are picking up again in France and Germany and even Canada now has at least three people running for the Conservative Party leadership on a Trump-like storm.
Kinda scary, but really interesting.
This information is good except for the part where it says not to punch Nazis. It is morally correct to punch Nazis.
“If you’re pro-life, you’d better also be pro-welfare. If you vote pro-life but against welfare, you’re actually pro-child-misery.
I assume this requires no explanation, but here’s a brief one. Women know when they shouldn’t have a baby. Many of them, when that is true, seek abortion. If your vote prevents them from getting it, you’ve forced a child to be born in a bad situation - just to name two examples, that child is at much higher risk of poverty and at much greater risk of living in a household affected by domestic violence. (Yes, you’ve also inflicted a great deal of harm on the woman herself, but if you’re pro-life, you’re okay with that. So we’re focusing on the child, here. The person you claim you want to protect.) Welfare is one of the means we use to protect children in bad situations. If you simultaneously vote to stop abortion and to cut welfare (and, I might add, other government services), then what you’re really saying is, “I’m absolutely in favor of children suffering. I’m entirely willing to increase the number of children in harm’s way in this country, and I’m also entirely willing to make sure there’s no help for them. Because that’s easier and better for me.”
In short: congratulations, you’re a fucking asshole.
So tweeting this was interesting. I got a lot of FUCK YEAH type replies. I also got some replies from righties. And my discussions with them all fell apart at the same place.
“But the woman should take responsibility!”
“The woman should work to support her kid!”
“The man should stay and help raise his child!”
Yup. Every conversation fell apart as soon as the righty used the word “should.”
Here is a true fact: fuck should. Should has no place in policy. We make laws about what is actually happening, not what would happen in an ideal universe, because, newsflash: we don’t live in an ideal universe.
So I would point out that hey, this isn’t how the world actually works. In reality, men leave. In reality, women can’t simultaneously support their kids and pay for childcare on a minimum-wage income. In reality, a woman forced to have a child is in a bad situation, and it is likely to get worse, and if we have a law that put her in that place, that’s on all of us. (And in case you think I’m just talking about abortion, and if we just allow abortion we can cut the safety net no problem: until we fix education, racism, abuse, addiction, and poverty, among other major issues, we’ve still got to step in. Because we owe it to our fellow humans not to let them suffer needlessly when we can help. The end.)
And the social conservative would either step out of the conversation entirely, or go into a sort of a critical error of the brain, except the blue screen of death in this case was just the repetition of the words “personal responsibility” and “should.”
Social conservatives appear to think that if they just make laws that perfectly reflect their ideal universe, that universe will somehow be willed into being.
This hasn’t worked yet. It’s never going to work. It’s fucking stupid. And these conservatives actually already know that. (Proof: most of these people are Christians, and Christians are supposed to be into peace and against killing, and yet I never once heard any of them argue that we should abolish the military.) They’re just using their talisman words, “should” and “responsibility,” to avoid confronting the fact that they, themselves, are personally responsible for the suffering of children.
So this has resulted in the formation of my new rule of political discourse: If you can’t phrase your political argument without the word “should,” you can’t participate in the discussion at all. Seriously. Go away. You’re done with politics; you need to take up model airplane building or knitting or something. (Tell the plane that the parts SHOULD be easy to put together! Tell the wool that it SHOULD NOT tangle!)
It’s time for people who make some attempt to see reality to design policy.
