Musk Twitter is serving its intended purpose

Elon is promoting conspiracy theories that mass-shooters (98% male, three-quarters white men) are mostly trans people. It’s an attempt to rev up fear and build support for anti-queer genocide – trans people in particular are dangerous and unstable and so must be put down for “our” protection, but they said exactly the same thing about gays and lesbians when it was politically palatable – and he’s supporting it. Twitter is awash in this shit right now, and it’s being boosted by Twitter and its owner both. It is an absolute fountain of evil disinformation and raw, naked hate.

And starting next month, Twitter becomes pay-to-play, with only paid users showing up in recommendations and being able to participate in polls. So.

If you stay active on Twitter in this environment, I assume you’ll let the fash kill me.

If you pay for Twitter in this environment, I assume you’ll help them.

I’m neither joking nor exaggerating. This is why he bought it. Twitter this week is serving the purpose Musk intends it to serve, which is to say, creating, encouraging, and boosting the hell out of fash propaganda in general, and anti-queer propaganda – anti trans propaganda – in specific.

All aimed at the 2024 elections, of course.

It is right now the far-right propaganda and disinformation engine he rebuilt it to be, and it is serving that purpose as intended.

If you pay for it, that is what you’re funding.

Some of you are queer yourselves, and are staying anyway. But I’ve got news;

YOU ARE NOT A GODDAMN EXCEPTION.

You just think you are, and that you’re “safe” somehow, or “safe enough.” The “it’s always different for me” fallacy.

Let me assure you, it is not different for you, and I will not pretend it is for your comfort.

If you pay for Twitter you are explicitly helping the far-right’s attempt to create a genocide, one that starts with trans children. It’s not like cable TV or most streaming services, where if you have an account you’re helping fund Fox News a tiny bit, indirectly, via carry fees. It’s different.

It’s directly funding the hate machine.

By choice. Standalone. That’s just a goddamn fact.

So when I say, “I assume you’ll help them,” it’s kind of a tautology. Because if you pay for Twitter, you’re already helping them. You might as well be donating straight to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Or Elon Musk. Which you just flat-out are.

And I will never excuse it – or you.

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Fascism Watch for 29 March 2023

Missouri’s state Attorney General has set up a reporting page for “transgender center concerns” so you can report “a complaint or concern about gender transition intervention.” It would be a shame for it to get flooded with shit.

I hope you no longer need a reminder they will make ALL OF US illegal – again – if they can.

Tucker Carlson is out today proclaiming trans people to be the “mirror” and therefore “natural enemy” of Christianity. His viewers will know – as he does – that he’s saying trans people are literally evil (as Christiantiy is literally the definition of good), minions of Satan and the anti-Christ (the Satanic mirror of Jesus), and it’s all about making trans people targets. “Carlson has been a leading voice in a right-wing hate campaign against transgender people and drag queens in recent years” doesn’t begin to cover it.

I mean, just last week he demonstrated again how the second amendment implicitly only applies to cishet white men, using a segment to terrify his viewers with the spectre of armed trans people, saying queers are literally getting stealth military aircraft to use against Christians.

Not that he’s the only one. Assigned has a good rundown of this week’s onslaught, but in particular, here’s Republican Josh Hawley – who opposes the very idea of hate-crime when it comes to racially-motivated violence – demanding the Nashville shooting be investigated as a “hate crime” against Christians.

Remember: the “RAHOWA” civil war the KKK were always trying to start – and that neo-nazis and groups like the Boogaloo Boys still work to start – is a RAcial HOly WAr. The “Holy” part is important, and he’s working overtime to start it.

Between this and Musk’s full conversion of Twitter into an alt-right/fascist disinformation fountain and hate machine, you’ve got trans people living under constant threats and in fear, Georgia passing laws to ban trans health care if people have autism, Idaho passing new bathroom bans and allowing cisgendered students to sue for “emotional harm” if they see a trans child in a bathroom, changing room, or other school facility.

(Just a few random examples of the Twitter disinformation fountain and hate machine: a fake manifesto, police originally reported uncritically; the usual fash circle-jerk of source validity; Glenn Greenwald declaring being trans an “ideology” similar to white nationalism; anti-vaxxers swarming on grieving parents en masse. Today is a great day to leave Twitter forever. TechCrunch may think Twitter is dying, and I hope they’re right, but you can help make it happen.)

Idaho is also about to become the first state to officially ban travel from the state for purposes of obtaining an abortion. In case you thought their fascism was only along one axis. (GET IT? AXIS? HA!)

Florida’s anti-LGBT censorship regime is about to get a lot worse, with DeSantis and Republicans advancing a bill to ban any school book complained about by even one single parent. With the impending expansion of “Don’t Say Gay” throughout all grade levels of the Florida school system, bans like these will be omnipresent. There will also be comprehensive bans on discussion of civil rights history, of course. Maybe they’ll go so far as this school in Wisconsin, and ban songs that mention rainbows, because fags.

Republicans in the US House have passed what they call the “Parents Bill of Rights Act” which includes a lot of mandatory reporting of what’s in school libraries and in even more particular whether kids talk about gender. They want to take Florida and similar up to the national level, the bill being a blueprint for harassment of teachers, school staff, and school boards.

Watch out, though, UK readers – US fundamentalists workshopped all this over in the UK first (with lots, and I mean lots, of local help), but the evil flows both ways, and UK rightists are picking up American political habits now. Also, the Daily Mail is lying about the Washington Post’s article and data on trans people to argue against trans rights; here’s a breakdown of the bad-faith there.

Relatedly, the New York Times have now reprimanded pretty much everyone on staff critising their anti-trans-focused news coverage. Expect it to get worse. I recommend unsubscribing and telling them why. That includes Wordle.

Also relatedly, MSNBC have actually started to notice that American Christian Fash work overseas as well, and are directly involved in Uganda’s “death penalty for homosexuality” bill that’s set to become law.

That’s what they want here, too. They’ll make all of us illegal again if they can.

The “discomfort” of one (1) student over a discussion on civil rights caused Eastern Florida State College to cancel its class on the US government entirely, as per DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act.” The act isn’t even in effect yet, due to court challenges, but schools and colleges are self-censoring – one of the biggest mistakes you can make in response to fascists, and exactly what the ambiguity of the act is intended to cause.

Christian Nationalists are talking more about completely eliminating public libraries, replacing them with churches and church-run libraries funded by public money. They’ve talked about this on and off for a while; now that they fully own the Republican Party that they’re willing to float this shit at the national level.

Hoo boy, that’s a big spicy meatball of shit today, isn’t it?

Remember, though: none of this is new. Everything they’re saying now against trans people – EVERYTHING they’re saying now against trans people, every SINGLE word – is the same shit they launched against lesbians and gay men in the 80s and 90s… and we won. We beat ’em.

We did it before.

And we can do it again.

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***** V I C T O R Y *****

As did the chicken:

THE TEXAS OBSERVER LIVES!

I’ll be damned, Mastodon saved a newspaper. From Update 7 on the GoFundMe:

The Texas Observer’s parent nonprofit board… unanimously voted to rescind layoffs after seeing this successful effort to raise funds.

That’s right. The Observer will not lay off staff on Friday, and the publication will not cease the production of journalism.

Take a moment to reflect on this astonishing accomplishment that YOU made possible.

And I’ve got something important to add myself, which is:

This is why you do not just accept this shit. It does not have to happen. We just proved that, again.

TWO DAYS. TWO. FUCKING. DAYS. IS ALL IT TOOK.

I mean sure, now there’s a longer-term effort, and that’ll have to work too, and the Observer really need to get that Patreon spun up and running for reasons we’ve talked about before, but…

But today?

Two days.

Two days to victory.

Don’t just accept this shit. You don’t have to. See, this here? This right here?

This is called proof.

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