Fascism Update for 19 March 2023, Overnight Edition

A bit late getting to this, but here’s your update.

The Federalist Society Isn’t Quite Sure About Democracy Anymore, reports Politico, going into some depth after attending their confab in Austin, Texas, where they talked about the various ways they aren’t either Federalist or Republicans anymore, and how activist judges are actually good if they’re on their side. It’s all about justifying minority rule forever, of course, because they want the pretence of a democratic republic, but not a real one.

Donald Trump’s niece Mary says ‘Oh yeah, he means violence,’ and that we need to take 45’s attempts to boost stochastic terrorism in his own defence seriously.

Yet more articles on how Trump suppressed reports disproving his election lies, here’s an opinion piece saying facts won’t stop Republicans from making shit up and passing laws on that basis. (The original headline was literally “Facts won’t stop Republicans from using ‘election integrity’ to suppress voters” but they changed it.)

The rightist lie about Silicon Valley Bank failing because of being “woke” and donating massive amounts of money to BLM is, well, a complete fucking lie. Here’s a breakdown on how they came up with the number, though – and basically, dealing with anyone Black? That’s “donating to BLM.” If you read my history posts, you’ll see how this kind of complete fabrication has a long, long history on the authoritarian/fundamentalist right. It’s all they do.

So it’s not mystifying at all. It’s just racist as all fuck.

Republican State Senator Senator Julie Slama – a co-sponsor of anti-trans bills currently being old-school filibustered in Nebraska – wants to centure State Senator Machaela Cavanaugh for comments she made on the floor about Slama’s anti-trans legislation. So far, though, the filibuster goes on.

“Nazi salutes, pepper spray and pistols: Ohio drag event devolves into an extremist melee” isn’t actually too bad. Compared to the old articles I’ve been reading in my series of history-of-all-this posts – the ones that show yes, nothing they’re doing is new, and we beat them last time and so can beat them again – it’s fucking great. Calls out the literal nazis with literal fash flags, talks about them pulling weapons on people, mentions the arrests.

It’s always different when it’s them: Church that calls for death to gay people whines about getting death threats. It’s in Spokane, because of course it is. It’s in the context of yet another Baptist spinoff; this particular is one of four spurs off of an identically-named church in Vancouver, Washington, which also believes in death for LGBT people and was originally founded itself as a spinoff church from Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California, which obviously also believes in killing all the queers. The other immediate spinoffs are in Vancouver BC, Winnipeg, and Essex, in the UK, but it’s a whole strip-mall church movement, because of course it is. But it’s particularly vile even on their scales.

Florida textbook altered Rosa Parks story to remove references to race to meet the fascist DeSantis’s that nothing be taught which might make white people feel bad. As a white person, this is what makes me feel… bad is the wrong word. Enraged, disgusted, revolted, those are good. These people are fucking sick.

Relatedly, Florida’s taxpayer-funded voucher system almost exclusively supports religious schooling, most of which is fundamentalist and both anti-LGBT and misogynist.

Perhaps surprisingly, Black students in Florida have had some degree of success in pushback against DeSantis’s attempts to destroy academic freedom. Every effort needs to be fought, and they’re still in there fighting. In more good news, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has declined in strong terms to lift the injunction against DeSantis’s 2022 academic censorship bill.

DeSantis’s attempt to claim to ingratiate himself with midwestern voters by claiming he was “culturally raised” not in Tampa Bay where he grew up, but western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio is… honestly just bizarre. And won’t work. Bush I did a lot of that kind of shit, though – and I know, this sounds unlikely but it’s true – less ham-handedly. Hopefully he’ll keep fucking up his attempts to emulate humanity.

Republicans in Kentucky have passed their own law against health care for trans children through the legislature. No word on how Governor Beshear (D) will handle it; he’s explicitly opposed but Republicans have a veto-proof majority and will override if he does. Obviously, he still should, and if you’re in Kentucky, you should tell himt hat.

While this isn’t a recent article, meet Chris Rufo, one of the far-right’s more academic authoritarian philosophers, who believes that the most important thing to do is destroy the universities and public schools. He’s personally responsible for getting the “Critical Race Theory” panic going. He wants to suppress academic freedom when it’s leading anywhere he’s decided is bad. Here’s one of his recent essays – on archive.org – where he calls for shutting down several academic fields entirely.

TSA plan to require biometric data collection to travel by air in the US. Oh look, it’s the previous generation of authoritarianism via the surveillance state, still kicking.

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