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not-poignant · 1 year

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Looking forward to the new chapter of UtB! Also I learn a lot hearing your thoughts on fandom culture, and I was wondering why you think puritanism is getting stronger? Lately I’ve experienced it a lot both online and irl.

Hi anon,

I could write like a 10,000 word essay on why I think moral puritanism is getting stronger in the world, and how that intersects with increased moral panic, and 'anti' or fancop behaviour among fandom.

But I think there's more than one reason, and that at the centre of it, is the radicalisation of political extremes alongside the disdain for human life and education in the USA specifically. In non English-speaking cultures, antis are often considered a uniquely American phenomenon, for example. (They're not, but I do think some of the problems start there).

And from there it's necessary to look at:

The high presence of evangelist religion and their millions in USA politics in particular, and the influence this has on the news and government systems from the top down, affecting legislation, what we see on the media, what gets censored, who gets impacted (SESTA/FOSTA etc.) and so on. When companies like Paypal or similar say they won't support certain sites because they don't support sex workers or explicit artwork, we see extremist perspectives being normalised into the mainstream. Puritanism becomes baked into the system, and accepted as normal. And it has a domino effect, taking one thing away usually means to another thing being taken away, and by 'one thing' I usually mean like... equality, access to basic human rights, and more.

The presence of certain billionaire TERFs in UK politics actively working to destroy legislation over there gives a platform to hateful, bigoted extremists of all kinds, including Nazis (as seen in Australia recently, during a TERF event where Nazis turned up in open support). Also, I'd like to add that a lot of anti/fancop thinking is generally SWERF, anti-kink and eventually TERF in nature, and often homophobic and transphobic even when it's perpetuated by queer folk.

A long-term attack (we're talking over several decades now) on education (especially the humanities and any area that teaches critical thinking) including gutting the funding to libraries, colleges, high schools, primary schools and not increasing the pay of teachers, decreasing the general intelligence of US citizens in IQ tests across multiple metrics (except spatial reasoning). This, combined with the lack of emphasis on teaching nuance and critical thinking, means you get people primed to make didactic, black-or-white decisions and often are prone to radicalisation and black-or-white thinking. There's an increasing lack of ability to understand complex or even reasonably moderately complex thinking tasks. A great example of this was re: anti-vaxxers who said 'if masking works so well, why do you need vaccines' because there was a complete inability to understand that just because something works well, doesn't mean it works 100% of the time. There was a consistent inability too, to grok things like the swiss cheese model. That's not the only reason people are anti-vaxxers and there are some extremely smart people who are anti-vaxxers, but among broader populations, a lack of basic appreciation of nuance and risk mitigation in health was a huge issue. (And it's fairly easy to see this happening in many fandom discussions when we discuss how racism in fiction is generally not great, but that rape in fiction does not cause rape in reality.)

I know the above paragraph is long and unwieldy but it doesn't actually come close to capturing a lot of my thoughts on this so slafkjdsa it'll have to do though. The tl;dr is 'the government said philosophy and critical thinking isn't worth money, so a lot of people don't know how to do it, and anyone who can do it is often attacked or viewed with suspicion' (see also: The increasing suspicion and hostility towards experts in their field x.x). (Oh see also: A lot of people thinking YouTube videos count as 'valid research' for their viewpoints, and a lot of folks just...not ever learning how to research in general).

Something something social media privileging inflammatory and provocative takes as well as clickbait etc. encouraging people to often say things in the worst or least nuanced way possible.

The systemic attacks on democratic processes in the USA (and the UK and Australia and many other places).

The loudest and most obnoxious voices are often the people saying the stupidest shit. As in: It will feel like puritans are everywhere (and there's definitely more of them), but they're also just louder and getting more attention than they used to. It's misleading. Anti-vaxxers are actually a tiny minority for example, and antis are a minority in fandom, they're just...the loudest and the most willing to try and murder real people to defend the rights of fictional characters.

Er so. That's some of it anyway. There's more, absolutely, because I could talk about the presence of puritanism in a lot of levels of our experience/s, whether you're religious or not.

It's frustrating writing about this because I fall into the same trap of knowing that I can't talk about this in as nuanced a way as I want to, even if I get to do it in 1000 words instead of like, a miserable amount of characters on Twitter. Anyone thinking 'but it's not always like that!' or 'but not in every situation!' like trust me, I know. But if I sat here caveating everything that deserves a good caveat this post would blow out even more.

Basically if you try to stop educating your people as much, don't teach them how to research, debate or learn (yes, you have to learn how to learn), and don't give them access to basic needs, and gut your democracy/s, and the people at the top believe a fictional being cares if they're virgins or not or have abortions or not, and you don't care if people commit genocide against the children of your nation because that's not as important as the right to kill them in a moment of anger..., and you create a world where the children of your nation are primed to develop PTSD due to the fear of being gunned down while learning, you create a really great environment for radicalisation, extremism, the safety and comfort of puritanism (i.e. following very strict rules in the hope of fixing what's wrong with the world) while people look for a solution to why they feel so empty and hopeless in their lives.

#asks and answers #look don't listen to me #i just have thoughts about this stuff #and i could talk about it for a long time #a long long time #also a lot of this is echoed and repeated in other countries too #Australia has been gutting its humanities departments in universities for a decade or more #and making education harder to access #the UK has JKR literally putting money into anti-trans legislation #you have extremely powerful (and sometimes very respected) people #saying very hateful things that put the lives of minorities in danger #and it gets quite normalised - debating the right to exist for example #when these things should have never been normalised at all #also my patience with people who believe in a religion that seeks out death and harm and supports intolerance to others #(including 'hate the sin love the sinner' which is bullshit #is very low do not even try to convince me fsdalkjfsa #this post is a mess have a nice day

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goosegoblin · 3 years

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I'm genuinely really confused. What is an anti and an anti-anti??????

can, open, worms, everywhere-

I will try my best but I’m struggling to not strawman, so I do recommend doing your own research etc to make sure I’m not misrepresenting. Tucked under a read more because it’s long and may cause brain rot. if any of y’all fuckin @ me with your personal opinions on why this post means i’m going directly to super predator hell or something, you just get winnie the pooh with teeth. don’t say i didn’t warn you

(click here to view full post if you’re on my theme and the post seems to end here)

Anti, short for ‘anti-shipper’, refers to people who believe that what a person ships, writes, creates art of or consumes content about directly relates to their moral opinions and attitude, and should be judged accordingly. The main three topics I see them bring up and challenge are incest, paedophillia and abuse. They believe that fiction featuring these is problematic as it can lead to the normalisation of damaging and abusive behaviour. They are often concerned about the potential for minors to access this content.

I went digging to try and find some examples to avoid putting words in people’s mouths etc. Here’s a couple:

If you’re writing abuse/rape/racism/pedophilia AND ROMANTICIZING it INSTEAD OF CONDEMNING it, then maybe try to re-evaluate why you feel like other people’s source of pain and trauma excites and titillates you enough to be enthusiastically dismissive about the issues people are raising, and why other people’s bad experience should simply be relegated to wank material status for you.

another:

I think aging up to suit underage ships isn't okay (for example, MCU Peter Parker/Tony Stark), because that's you seeing chemistry between an adult and a child and thinking they'd be Hot Couple even though their dynamic is strongly suggestive of a familial bond.

(the next is on the topic of Call Me By Your Name)

As to the grown ass adults getting off to a 24 year old man going after a 17 year old boy AKA a teen that's high school aged, if you REALLY don't see anything wrong with enjoying a 24 year old preying on a 17 year old- fictional or real- then that just shows how desensitized you've become to it, and as much as you might want to claim it's a normal fandom thing, it's simply not psychologically healthy or normal to get off to a boy being sexualized by an adult.

So that’s their side of things!

Pro-shippers- or anti antis- by comparison, believe that if something is correctly tagged, warned and labelled, it has a right to exist, and a person should not be harassed for creating it/ engaging with it etc. There are lots of other points made here- about censorship, coping mechanisms for trauma, personal responsibility and autonomy, the nature of fiction as a safe place to explore etc- but honestly, it does kind of boil down to.... ‘none of this is real, and you are fully able to choose not to look at it’.

One main issue that comes up is that that, quite often, ‘antis’ feel rather intensely about their stance. I’ve seen a huge amount of hate mail, death threats, hate messages etc aimed at people creating ‘problematic’ material. Additionally, there’s like... a definition creep? Over time? So ‘paedophillic content’ can easily refer to like... high school AUs that include sex, or relationships where an age gap is present. And there’s a lot of guilt by association, so if you follow someone who follows someone who reblogs Thorki, You Are Also Problematic.

There’s also a tendency to focus on individuals rather than bigger or more mainstream stuff. Game of Thrones is infamously full of rape, incest, paedophillia, torture etc, but it doesn’t get anywhere near the level of attention and grief that Reylo shippers seem to. I can’t believe I just wrote a sentence about Reylo shippers in the year 2021. Good fucking God.

Anecdote: I actually left the Pathologic fandom on Twitter after seeing somebody attacked and isolated for saying “I don’t like or write incest or age gap stuff, but if people want to write it I won’t attack them for it”. This got quickly translated into ‘[username] is a paedophile’, and then it was all ‘if you follow [username] block me now, you pedo apologist’. Like... see how earlier today I got called a paedophile for reblogging this post? That was some SPEED OF LIGHT stuff, folks. That’s seemingly a person who has followed me for years and instantly decided I’m One Of The Bad People now.

so like, I guess I fall into the category of ‘anti anti’, because my take remains ‘you have the right to enjoy whatever content you want, and I have the right to judge you for it’ lmao

but if I ever wade deep enough into the mess of teenagers vs thirty-something year old ‘fandom moms’ that these debates tend to become to self-identify, I will launch myself immediately into the sun, so-

#wank for ts #i'll take 'posts that will get me cancelled' for $500 #Anonymous #honk response

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rightsidenews · 6 years

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‘Diversity’ is Anti-White Racism

Ash Sharp Editor Editors Note: At RSN we've hit the ground running with a series of commentary about white people and their place in the world. While our intent is to cover the political world in all its shades and cover as many topics as possible, it seems to be that this particular topic is a hot-button with the early contributors. A short while ago I published a series of articles exploring the roots of Neo-Marxist thought and the relation to anti-European bigotry we ecounter in the media at large. The first of these is republished below. Enjoy!

How did it come to pass that the political left turned into a segregationist movement?

Our tale begins with grasping one key concept. Feminism, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality and Socialism form today what we can comfortably label as Neo-Marxism. If you’re still fumbling around in the dark denying that Neo-Marxism exists, please, read on. It’s going to be a wild ride. Through this article, I will deconstruct the logic of Neo-Marxism, and show you how to defend against it.

I will reiterate this for the hard of understanding later, but criticising racist Neo-Marxist Theory is not an endorsement of the Alt-Right. Nor is it racist to do so. I utterly reject racism, and I would hope that you do too.

“All races have the right to exist, but only white people are openly discriminated against when we stand up for that right, lawfully I might add. If this issue is not addressed, we are on the cusp of a full-blown white civil rights movement.” A.B

Neo-Marxist theory leads to an abuse of Intersectional Theory. neither Marxism or Intersectional Theory is extreme in essence. They are forms of critique, that have become weapons in an ideological war. This war has been so far fought solely by leftist ideologues, fueled by Frankfurt School-inspired indoctrination and employing Alinskyite tactics. Their opponents have submitted like Hindu cows. Why? Because for many years, the totalitarian threat to freedom came from the religious right, not the so-called liberal left.

“Everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic, and you have to point it all out.” ~Anita Sarkeesian, displaying her programming in the clear.

In the UK, Australia, Canada, and the United States in particular, we have become afraid of taking an ethical point of principle and applying it to race. Perversely, as the Neo-Marxists have deployed critical theory on everything, the counter from the centre has been to capitulate. For fear of being labelled racist, sexist or Islamophobic: the centre has given up. The lack of belief in true liberal values has spread wide. Many people now do not understand what Liberalism is, let alone that it is one of the greatest concepts in human history- imperfect thought it surely is. Without a whimper, we are forgetting what truly made our nations great. That the market should be free. That we understand life, liberty and property are the supreme values of law and authority.

That no one should be discriminated against based on arbitrary factors over which one has no control.

We must recognise that more kids in Universities understand Intersectional Theory than understand Liberalism. Indeed, this year has seen Neo-Marxists equate Liberalism with white supremacy itself.

A Subversion of Western Values

In place of these Western liberal values, Neo-Marxism has spread through schools, universities and social and legacy media. The concepts of oppression, intersectionalism and even overt demands for socialist government are widespread. Were it not for the duplicitous and underhand dealings of the Democratic National Convention in the USA, we might well have seen a run-off between socialist Bernie Sanders and populist Donald Trump for the Presidency. Unbelievable, that the Liberal tradition (meaning in American parlance the Democrats AND the Republicans) could only toss up Hillary Clinton as a candidate. This is a damning indictment of the system as a whole.

In previous times the Left/Right dichotomy in democratic nations has been a process of balance. One side achieving hegemony should be frightening to all with a moderate grasp of politics. You might imagine the process as that of a swinging pendulum. The pendulum swings this way and that over the years, sometimes quickly. Sometimes slowly. But it swings, and the momentum of the swing is the conflict between the governing party and the opposition, the friction of ideological difference in service of the people.

So goes the theory.

But today the Neo-Marxists cannot be reasoned or negotiated with. they’ve shown us they don’t care about balance; or values for that matter. Whether the field of debate is race, or gender, or religion- the Neo-Marxist is never, ever satisfied with the response from society at large or you in particular. The Neo-Marxist is a revolutionary. The demands are simple. All they want is more control, over every aspect of society. There are no bad tactics- only bad targets. For your entertainment, it is on the tactics deployed by Neo-Marxists that I write on today.

Curious in the extreme is the adoption by Neo-Marxists of Orwellian doublethink when it comes to the topic of race.

Imagine if I were to say the following.

Let me state, emphatically, that I do not hate black people. Quite to the contrary, I love black people. I just hate what black people have done and continue to do to White bodies, to White words, to White thoughts and White appeals and White feelings.

This reads like something from The Daily Stormer. In fact, it is from an article on Medium. I have merely switched the races around to prove a point.

This is fine and not racist

The capitalisation of Black and the lower case ‘w’ in white is deliberate also- an implicit but subtle signal of one’s racial supremacy. I love my Blackness. Your whiteness is toxic. This is a dog-whistle.

Our author Joel Leon isn’t done there. he continues:

In other words, race is a simultaneously a social construct and real at the same time. The logic is illuminated within this sentence screen capped above. At the start, race is not real. By the end, race exists. It depends on which point the writer wishes to make as to which concept is real at that moment.Race is wished into existence to serve ideological goals.

For example, race is a social construct. So, white people is a construct to which we can ascribe certain qualities; whiteness -oh, excuse me- Whiteness, is a role to be played. The role that Whiteness plays in this psychodrama is whatever the writer wishes to rail against that day. Police brutality, economic inequality, black-on-black crime; all can be laid at the feet of Whiteness.

It is this concept that enables an Asian woman to sell a course to White people about getting rid of those dastardly racist Thetans that are clogging you up. Imagine how awful it must be to be a White person. Toxic, indeed.

When it suits writers like Joel Leon, he can switch to his other definition of race. As race isn’t real, but it exists, this is the sophist’s way of saying; race is real. This is not meant in the way, for example, a forensic scientist might understand race being real. This is to say, that the races are different in character. One is innately different from the other.

This is race realism, perpetuated by people who want to punch Nazis.

I asked Mr Leon to explain what he meant, and I received the following response.

This I find highly illuminating about the mindset of a Neo-Marxist Race Realist. Duplicity in thought is fine. What you might consider cognitive dissonance is accepted, so one can logically say race is real and a construct simultaneously.

As someone who is not a Neo-Marxist, I reject this concept of race utterly.

When we reject the central conceit of racism- that one race is superior to another- then, as people of principle, we must also defend that definition. The Critical Race Theorists say:

“[Critical Race Theory] recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture.”

For America, we can now substitute any other English speaking nation, Western Europe and some parts of South America. The prevailing narrative is that this is so. The truth is always a runner-up in such circumstances- and this is where Classical Liberalism has failed- or rather, has been failed. We have allowed Critical Race Theory to become dominant in universities and schools because we are afraid of being called a racist if we oppose it.

Don’t you agree that black people are oppressed? Racist. Don’t you feel white guilt? Racist. Do you criticise multiculturalism? Racist. Do you value your own culture? Racist and a liar, White people have no culture. The only culture White people have is that which they appropriate from people of colour. It has become so normalised that Whites cannot experience racism that on Medium, posts like this are commonplace.

We should not be concerned with people liking to associate with people like themselves. This is natural. I understand that we like being around people like ourselves. I would say that race is the least important aspect in a healthy level of tribalism- the in-group feeling of belonging that all humans seek out and crave.

Language, culture, ethics and shared goals all feed into our in-group preferences. For example, I have much more in common with a Black or Asian person from the village I grew up in than I would with a direct blood relative who grew up in Japan and speaks no English.

We also exhibit bias on a biological level for people who look similar to ourselves. The effect of this bias in the real world? It appears minimal. If we take the example of police shootings as a metric (I find this to be particularly useful as it is not laboratory or survey-based) a white person, per capita is more likely to be shot by police in the USA. Why? Well, it would appear that culturally the police have overcome any historic racism when gunning down citizens. Though the study did find that black people are more likely to experience non-lethal force during arrest — with (Hispanics and Blacks 50 percent more likely) White suspects in situations where guns are fired are more likely to be shot than other races.

If I were a Neo-Marxist, I would argue the following counterpoint.

Minorities are more likely to be beaten by cops, so that means that they are oppressed by a White Supremacist System. Whites being shot more often by cops might mean that we are having a positive effect with our activism against police shooting minorities, so we should carry on with that. #BLM. White people don’t need guns to kill Blacks, just look at Eric Garner. #ICantBreathe. Also, Whites not catching hands from cops is a clear example of White Privilege.

I have tried to steel man this position as concisely as possible. I think it should appear familiar to you if you have engaged with these social justice advocates. The narrative from Neo-Marxists is that Black people are murdered by the state because the state is racist.

In the USA between 2011 to 2013, 38.5 percent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black. This figure is three times higher than the 13% black population figure. Black males aged 15–34, who account for around 3% of the population, are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes.

The narrative collapses as soon as one pays attention statistical evidence. This is why the Neo-Marxists will also lay claim to nebulous concepts as ‘lived experience.’ It is quite correct that I, as a white, straight British male will never know the lived experience of a Black female from Guam. But she cannot know mine either.

The Neo-Marxist demands that phenomenology, the study of experience and consciousness, be categorised and utilised in the same way as data and statistical evidence. So, an opinion that France is a rape culture or that Blacks are victimised by the police is a fact and the evidence that disproves such fancy is products of White Heteropatriarchy.

How about… no?

It should come to the surprise of no-one that the response to identity politics entering every facet of life has been for more identity politics, in the shape of the furthest extreme of the Alt-Right. Identity politics is fine until those toxic Whites want to play.

I do not wish for one moment to provide credence to the Hard Alt-Right or White supremacists by pointing these things out. I wish to illuminate for you dear reader that the far right is far less of a threat than the left would have you believe. While the far right tie themselves in knots about the Jewish Question and the ins-and-outs of how to make an ethnostate, the Neo-Marxists are already teaching our kids. I do not suggest that the far right go unopposed. I do suggest that we consider critically how the media builds boogeymen about Nazis to further their own agendas.

In any case, these particular culture warriors deserve an article of their own, so we’ll move on.

I can come to no other conclusion that as part of an overarching desire to subvert the dominant paradigm of Western culture, Neo-Marxists have embraced racism. It is a racist ideology. There can be no other conclusion. At the same time, we are told that White Supremacy is everywhere, but Whiteness is toxic. If that is so, it seems quite strange that so much greatness has come from European origins. I suppose that advanced technology, culture, music, art and politics are all aspects of oppression. Somehow. If only it wasn’t for those terrible White people.

In the service of diversity, we have reshaped our societies. A non-racist and liberal society has no desire to discriminate against people based on their race. Liberal society has allowed the growth of the cancer of Neo-Marxism to take place without critique- proving that Liberalism is inadequate to defend Liberalism.

We cannot say that racism is over in the West while we persist with diversity quotas, so-called positive discrimination and affirmative action. Diversity is not our strength if it is an ideological tool for social engineering, leaving us paralysed by doublethink and a crippling lack of self-awareness.

Diversity, as it is understood by liberalism, is a diversity of opinions.

Diversity, as it is understood by Neo-Marxism, is Anti-White bigotry.

And I can prove it to you.

Neo-Marxists are concerned with colonialism. Cultural appropriation, the influence of ‘Western Imperialism.’ The same people demand open borders in countries that they live in so that more diversity can occur. The concept that this leads to the understanding that non-white is better than white because to be white is to be privileged, and thus bad. If reverse racism does not exist, can we call this reverse colonialism?

Neo-Marxists also demand incredible scrutiny of White history while lionising non-White history and whitewashing (pun intended) the uncomfortable parts of it away. What do you mean, Islamic slave trade? How dare you.

A double standard that persists to this very day is the demand, through Privilege Theory, that the sins of slavery in the Americas that took place over 150 years ago be visited on all Whites still alive. The very real occurrences of slavery in the modern era, endemic across parts of Africa and Asia, is hand-waved away through the use of Cultural Relativism. All cultures are equal in the eyes of Neo-Marxists, but Western Culture is just the worst.

Remember, all the good parts of Western Culture were appropriated. All the bad parts of Western Culture are things that you must atone for, personally.

This is a Kafka Trap. It is impossible to win against the Neo-Marxist by allowing the Neo-Marxist to frame the discussion. This is what has led to Apple’s Head of Diversity having to apologise for saying that a room full of white people can be diverse, based on their experiences.

The Neo-Marxists cannot allow such heresy to stand, even when it is objectively true and even conforms to Neo-Marxist ideology. The only problem with her statement was to use the example of White people. A room can be diverse when it is filled with Black women. It cannot be diverse if filled with White men. The implicit statement is that White men are somehow… Untermensch.

This is Anti-White. This is what underpins the vast majority of this ersatz intellectualism from the Left. A Neo-Marxist, racist ideology that divides nations, peoples. The proponents of this ideology are Anti-White, the same as Neo-Nazis are Anti-Jew. The singular problem for liberal society remains that we are unable to confront the Neo-Marxists in the same, effective way that we have confronted Neo-Nazis.

While we talk about Free Speech and Hate Speech and the line between, remember that Antifa and other Neo-Marxist groups are also racists. They are Anti-White. Witness the abuse doled out to any Person-of-Colour who dares rebel.

It’s not OK for Larry Elder to be a conservative. It’s not OK for you to think the wrong way. Or you will be called a racist and ostracised. In a piece on Harvey Weinstein, I mentioned Sargon’s Razor:

We should always remember that those who make character judgements about their opponents based on nothing are usually guilty of that flaw themselves.

The Neo-Marxist is a bigot of the worst kind. Resist them at all costs. Demand that these people accept that they are the racists. Their ideology hinges entirely on Anti-White bigotry.

Ironic, that a prominent Neo-Marxist and Black Lives Matter leader should provide such a fitting end to this article. Thanks, Deeray. You are wiser than you could ever know.

Irony: The Tweet.

So, the next time you encounter a Neo-Marxist, ask them: Why are you Anti-White?

It makes no sense at all to persist in mindless bigotry. The only cure to this madness is to reject Neo-Marxism utterly, and oppose it wherever it lies. There is nothing wrong at all with paying particular attention and favor to your own culture. When you denigrate another culture solely for the fact that it is better than your own- this is racist.

http://bit.ly/2zxzjZn

#RSN #‘Diversity’ is Anti-White Racism #Ash Sharp

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