https://nitter.net/jennineak/status/1714057557852225999
How the fuck do you go from building a treehouse for them to stabbing the child trying to hug you
CW: description of racist beliefs, description of death/the dead, amateur psychoanalysis/rectally sourced conjecture
spoiler
you start out thinking that they are "one of the good ones" and have your little hallmark "racism is over" montage building a treehouse, proving that America can civilize even the most barbaric savage (with your help!), then you see an AI generated picture of a well-done infant, have an emotional breakdown because you are not terminally online/desensitized enough to corpses to tell its fake, and feel like you have been betrayed and need to do something to fix your mistake, for the memory of holocaust victims and idealized settler families "just like yours" (and dontcha know
hamasALL MUSLIMS just beheads babies for no reason!)
I will raise my children as Maoists. Nazis, landlords, colonizers, cops, and bankers will be seen as pure wickedness and savagery. They will stand shoulder to shoulder with Beezelbub and Bael. The monster under their bed will be a creatire who threatens to take away their home, and the scariest part is that it has a man’s face
going from building a treehouse to this is such an insane shift though. building a treehouse is a lot of effort if you were just hiding it
It can be a combination of mental illness manifestation and racism coming to full view.
There are many stories of seemingly normal and rational people becoming obsessed and paranoid and terrified of everything after 9/11.
There are also stories about seemingly normal and rational people who got cooped up at home due to unemployment or the pandemic and got caught in QAnon and every time they blink they see literal babies on spikes.
I know people this age who are becoming more and more paranoid and constantly talking about child molesters like all the time, like at random moments
this is that ridiculous scene from the boys when the fat white guy shoots a brown gas station clerk because "he looks like a bullet proof mother fucker"
I am fucking dead inside
The Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis singing Imagine from the same backdrop as their Danny Masterson apology video (I believe shot next to a wooden wall near their pool) was extremely prescient too.
MM's ex wife's new partner being a Reddit lib that falls for superhero worship and inadvertently sides with fascism despite thinking he's one of the good guys
The Supe that SA'd someone getting cancelled then slowly turning to religion then being rehabilitated and overall received basically no punishment
Starlight wanting to change the fascist system from the inside and completely and utterly failing
My god the CIA lady admitting they were selling crack to black communities to fund their operations
What a good show
The parody Pepsi ad which was just beat for beat the real BLM Pepsi ad was amazing
Me watching that scene in the boys: wow, that depiction of stochastic terrorism seems really overly simple.
Unhinged racist with a knife: I'm a simple man.
Yeah it was really over the top and ridiculous when I saw that scene, pulled me out of the narrative. Little did I know that the brainworms are really that bad
Fox News even tried to defend itself in court many years ago by calling itself "entertainment" instead of "news."
Think of that whenever someone tells you their entertainment has no effect on them because it's just entertainment. The lines between entertainment and propaganda (and advertising for that matter) are very blurry and may as well cease to exist at times.
EDIT: I thought that case was decided in Fox News' favor, but in case I heard incorrectly, edited that out.
"Cinema, simulated life, ill drama Fourth Reich culture, Americana Chained to the dream they got you searchin' for The thin line between entertainment and war" - RATM
Are you talking about the lawsuit over voting fraud? Fox didn't win that suit, they settled it out of court after it looked like they were gonna lose. The case is Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network if you wanna look it up
Maybe I heard incorrectly. I'm glad that it wasn't as clear a win to them as I heard it had been.
Diegetic scream pointed out another lawsuit where Fox did successfully dismiss a defamation lawsuit. It's McDougal v. Fox News Network, LLC where Tucker Carlson accused some lady who had an affair with Trump of extortion. She sued him but the court ultimately ruled that "the statements are rhetorical hyperbole and opinion commentary intended to frame a political debate, and, as such, are not actionable as defamation. In addition, as a public figure, Ms. McDougal must raise a plausible inference of actual malice to sustain her defamation claim. She has failed to do so."
There are a lot of lawsuits against Fox haha. It's why I'm including the case names. Seems like Fox won this suit partially because the lady couldn't prove Tucker Carlson's "actual malice".
Maybe some hexbear lawyer can chime in on whether this lawsuit is relevant to cases that aren't about celebrities.
I think this is what they're talking about: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye
Ah that makes sense. Guess Fox can get away with celebrity gossip but not coup stuff
Hope he gets in between. Like the God-Emperor from Warhammer, but powerless. Not dead, but not alive, for eternity.
No, that is an honor reserved only for Allah's strongest soldiers
Yeah but have you ever considerd that "pEoPlE cHoOsE tO bElIeVe In PrOpAgAnDa!!!!! I AM BIG BRAINED LEFTIST YOU MUST AGREE WITH ME OR ELSE YOU ARE REACTIONARY UWUWUWUWU!!!"
That post took the thesis of Masses, Elites, and Rebels and warped it to the point it became dumb. It'd be like reading Oppose Book Worship and coming to the conclusion that you should never read theory.
took the thesis of Masses, Elites, and Rebels
That work got swung around in that thread over and over again like a bludgeon, practically unopened with pre-loaded takes already pre-justified just by invoking a surface-level summary.
Seemed like a massive effortpost to say "nuh uh, propaganda has no effect on me because I choose for it not to. I believe I am 100% immune to the propaganda I consume. Everyone else should choose the same thing, should know what propaganda is and how to reject it, and it's their fault if they don't."
So, I have a memory of a similar thread where someone was like "why didn't propaganda reach us?" Which feels like the same thing but more naive.
I think the propagandist understands they are manipulating masses, not individuals, and it probably helps us to think of ourselves as lucky (in a manner of speaking). I freely admit that if I got my degree and a high paying tech job immediately out of uni, my politics would probably be garbage, even though I have nominally the same access to propaganda.
I've forgotten what this thread was about. Protest in front of the US Consulate now
In my experience, the most susceptible people to psychological manipulation are the ones who believe they are immune to it. Carnival hucksters have done that for generations: tell someone they are smart, too smart to be fooled, then fool them. Con artistry comes from "confidence" after all.
Same deal with cults. The average cult member is smarter than the general population, at least when it comes to education and IQ measurements. But they are more likely to be convinced that they have come across special secret truths.
I know a guy who fits the latter category to a T. Well, used to. He was into holocaust denial in 2015 and started about half of his sentences with "Well, actually". No idea what happened to him. He always felt like he got some social currency from being that guy that knows things, despite dropping out of uni multiple times.
Not like us, we're mega smrt
Some people are just better than others and they got theirs when they successfully reject propaganda (totally rejected 100% btw, their entertainment has no effect on them, for real, never ever) and it's every individual's burden from birth to identify and reject propaganda in the same way or else nothing could have been done otherwise.
If they don't, well, they should have thought about that before becoming susceptible to propaganda!
Show
I think a lot of that take in that aforementioned post was rooted in treat defense to start with and any claims made after that were just to justify the "nuh uh, my treats have no effect on me" position that was already there, including that air of superiority over people that do absorb the propaganda. The superior volition champion of propaganda rejection themself probably absorbed some anyway to take such a hardline defensive position to begin with over what should be just entertainment even by their own take.
Something like this tests my ability to condemn torture.
The animal part of my brain screams to have this man pulled apart one limb at a time.
How would jailing this person let him (or people like him) get away with it?
whether the specific guy avoids or is subjected to torture in the penal system doesn't matter if the things that will reproduce these circumstances in future aren't changing. the ruling class is getting away with it, fostering prejudice, upholding an unjust economic system, inflicting settler colonialism, etc.
never be fooled into thinking these punishments for the genuinely bad improve society. they're just the human sacrifices to make you think the temple priest is actually bringing the rain
What happens to this specific guy absolutely matters. How should this specific case be handled?
the community should decide, not you or me. and after providing ideological/educational bases through a socialist party, along with programs where people can work for reparations, the hope is they would choose not to kill people. sorry if that's vague but centering social good in restorative justice is the opposite from handing down prescriptions from on-high.
these questions are like asking whether you'd order a pizza with a phone or the internet under socialism, when all we have so far is the broad organizational principles. and that's not even treating with what the circumstances you're asking about: what do we do the day after the revolution? what's the ideal case in a safe and stable socialist society? what should we do right now still under capitalism and prison-industrialism?
What if the community decides he should be imprisoned? Should they be allowed to choose that option? I imagine an abolitionist would say no, which means to some extent we are "handing down prescriptions" from outside the immediate situation. That's not always a bad thing, though -- I'd say we shouldn't have the death penalty, for instance.
And what is the community allowed to do with him as they decide how to ultimately handle this case? If he says he's going to flee before they can decide, can they jail him pre-trial?
i think these are decisions that would probably be made on a level higher than a locality, but who can say their shape just yet. my personal opinion is pretty hands off (i.e. if they really democratially decide to kill someone, i'm fine with it) but the party or region could most certainly forbid it
but something like a prison system has to be centrally organized, and it's not popping up overnight if one neighborhood wants to put a murderer in it. the 'state' or whatever regional/national organization ought to have the alternatives to prison already organized so cases people might want to apply 'prison' to would be much simpler to put there instead of recreating prisons from scratch
I think we're on different pages to an extent. I'm talking about how this actual case, today, should be handled. Or very similar cases in the near future. I think you're talking more about how things should work after we've created a leftist society.
if they really democratially decide to kill someone, i'm fine with it
Isn't that just lynching? That's how it would play out in most places today or in the near future, which is what got me thinking we're not exactly talking about the same thing.
alternatives to prison
What alternative would be appropriate here? And what do you do with the guy if he does not voluntarily participate?
I'm talking about how this actual case, today, should be handled
the dude will go to jail, probably. what's the point of this diagnostic? we don't have a say in how this is going to be done, and if we aren't imagining "how things should work" there's nothing more to say. prison abolition is not an actually existing social system we can sub in for capitalist prisons, and the praxis right now is focused on prisoners' rights & trying to keep people out of prisons.
I'm not asking what is likely to happen, I'm asking what you, as a prison abolitionist, think should happen. The only constraint I'm adding is that we have to work with people as they are today, not hypothetical people educated in a possible leftist state, who we can postulate would be open to all sorts of radical things.
If you let the immediate community decide on what to do with him, the community of today will likely decide to kill or imprison him. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems like an abolitionist would oppose both of those. So to me, "let the community decide" is not a satisfactory answer.
You bring up alternatives to prison. OK, what sort of specific alternative should be on the table? Put yourself in the shoes of the state, with the state's resources. Is it something you could get people today on board with? I'm not asking facetiously; you can get today's people on board with prison alternatives for lesser offenses.
And what do you do with the guy if he does not voluntarily participate? Can he be held in custody for any amount of time, even if he says he will flee if released?
i don't know if you're trying to catch me in a contradiction or what, prison reform is unrealistic and largely unpopular while people are still so indoctrinated and blind to alternatives. people's minds have to be changed. even my optimistic instincts would not be confident that making this guy pay reparations and work for the community the rest of his life would be acceptable to the victims' community, maybe they'd take exile as an option that wasn't confinement or death. i think we should expect to make concessions to expedience and lingering retributive justice-brain in transitional stages---like in Cuba
Put yourself in the shoes of the state, with the state's resources
the state would not expropriate a murderer-landlord's property & employ the guy building public housing or teaching anti racism, these are fundamental things to capitalism. you've got to appreciate that moving the needle on one issue requires moving others, we can't do prison abolition without abolishing capitalism, we can't abolish colonialism without abolishing capitalism. having difficulty imagining or rectifying contradictions in the conditions for one thing under capitalism does not mean it is unworkable, it means we've got a lot of work to do.
I'm taking about this specific case. If you're going to support abolition, you have to directly address these type of crimes, not just the ones where any leftist would agree they should be handled leniently (if the activity should be criminalized at all).
soviets had prisons also, imho judging all prisons by america's example is like judging all governments by america's example. like as much as europe sucks they have countries where the cops don't kill as many people proportionally. some countries have prison systems that focus on rehabilitation instead of retribution. it's like judging all military actions by the nazi's example (i.e. resisting genocide with violence makes you just as bad as the genociders!)
this is some Nietzsche shit, unspoken (but implied) mass communication strategies for dominance in a geopolitical consent war polluting the minds of uninvolved outsiders
