Fascism Watch for 14 March 2023

Texas Republicans are recycling their anti-abortion laws by authorising literally anyone to sue anyone they think might be involved in “drag shows” where anyone under the age of 18 might be in the audience. Does this include, say, trans people at a pride parade? The way all of these things have been written so far, yes. Do these bans include performances of several plays by Shakespeare? Probably. As the article notes, “reporter Erin Reed points out that the bill could potentially bar Grammy-winning singer Kim Petras, the first out trans person to win the coveted award for best pop performance by a duo or group, from performing in Texas.”

And that’s what they want. They’ll make all of us illegal again if they can.

Here’s a nice little essay on book bannings. It’s on Facebook, sorry, but it’s a personal story and related.

In Akron, Ohio, fascists and explicit neo-nazis showed up to protest an all-ages drag show, but the nature of the anti- crowd was buried damn far down in the story. Local media aren’t getting the job right even now. Similarly, KGW-8’s coverage of alt-right homeschoolers trying to get books banned from school libraries where they don’t even have children in the schools buries a lot of the reality, after calling the book-banning effort “a crusade of moms.”

If the story in Mother Jones wasn’t detailed enough for you, the same woman who liberated the US no-fly list acquired and posted 2600 pages of email between the coordinators and main actors in the push behind this year’s massive anti-trans legislative campaigns and proto-genocide. You’ll need a bittorrent client. qTorrent is good, but don’t get the lt20 version, get the core version, particularly if you’re on MacOS or Linux. (2.0 is buggy, not evil. 2.1 should fix it.)

Remember when the GOP would say over and over that they’d never prosecute women seeking abortion, even while already doing so? How about calls for the death penalty? It’s not just one guy, it’s got 21 co-sponsors. This is what you’re voting for if you vote for the GOP anywhere.

Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s far-right “think-tank” The Cicero Institute is pushing to criminalise homelessness nationally, via state-by-state model legislation. They also push against building permanent housing for homeless and low-income people and for private prisons, so I think we can put together a pretty good case that the actual intent is building a pool of prison slave labour.

The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler’s racist bullshit commentary on Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse says directly what it says – despite his cute little faux disclaimer – but also rests upon what they actually believe, which is that literally any white man is automatically better than any woman or person of colour, no matter their qualifications. Full stop, no exceptions, the bell curves do not overlap. A white woman or Black man can do an acceptable job but any white man would always be better.

This is the same hate and fear at the core as with fundamentalism’s misogyny – particularly in sport. Any boy is better than every girl. That’s part of where their insistence that trans girls would magically dominate women’s sports – even though they absolutely don’t – comes from. Reality doesn’t matter because in their minds, trans girls and women have had the Magical Man Bit toggled “on,” and it’s eternal because God Said, so going “actually no” is both defying god and stealing from women, since they’ll always win all the time, because if you have the Magical Man Bit set ever even once, you always will – even when you totally don’t.

It doesn’t make any goddamn sense if you care about reality, but they don’t care about that either. It’s just how they think.

The same MAGAts who want to hand Ukraine over to their Russian hero Putin want to start a war in Mexico, launching bombing raids into Mexican territory. See also DeSantis saying that helping Ukraine defend itself against the dictator’s invasion isn’t in American interests.

Talking of the littlest fascist – there are many ways that DeSantis is working to criminalise or otherwise eliminate protest. The League of Women Voters recently encountered one.

100% predictably, now that the GOP control the House, Republicans have ended the investigation into 45’s use of the Presidency to enrich himself illegally. They’ll cover for him as long as they can, because after all: when in power, loot. Why would they mind him taking his turn?

Similarly, they’re busily turning a guy who administered fake COVID-19 vaccines and fake vaccination certificates as a hero.

And that’s the GOP. Looting, sabotage, fraud, and hate. And that’s today’s Fascism Watch. Good luck out there.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.