Fascism Watch for 12 June 2023: climate denial and terrorism edition

As the midwest and northeast choked in smoke, Fox News sneered, said it was “normal” for cities to have “bad air,” that the fuss was a liberal plot to control you, and brought on a former tobacco-company laywer to say breathing forest fire smoke is perfectly healthy for you. Other conspiracy theorist propagandists spun lies about lasers and drones and searched for literally anything other than climate change and carbon emissions to blame.

Why is this fascism? Because the final commandment of the Party is for you not to believe your lying eyes… and nose, and throat, and hacking cough, apparently. Because authoritarians always do this when their money and power is involved.

Even moreso when they’ve known for decades, and every time someone digs, it turns out they knew even earlier than we thought before, and did it all anyway. It’s really just such a shame all those forests are burning when it could be Exxon Mobil or Shell.

And while all this was and still is happening, Virginia’s Republican-dominated air board – mostly people appointed by Republican governor Youngkin – voted to leave the interstate carbon-capping alliance. In the worst of the emergency, they voted to help make things worse. Just like they kept doing with the plague.

Meanwhile, Popular Science put up a photo series on what the US looked like before the EPA.

Don’t miss this: the North Carolina GOP have censured one of their own, sitting Federal Senator Thom Tillis, for helping negotiate the Respect for Marriage Act that passed last year, insuring Federal recognition of same-sex marriages should the Supreme Court do what Justice Thomas wants and overturn their own recent decision supporting them.

See also: Rightist threats against Target included direct threats to shoot employees made by people in person directly to employees, as well as bomb threats to executives. This is terrorism.

They will not stop with trans people; they want our marriages dissolved, and then they want to make us all illegal again.

Talking of, on Sunday evening, Twitter was inserting paid anti-trans propaganda into tweet streams about the Tony Awards. This kind of thing is why Elon decided to go ahead and buy Twitter. If you’re still using Twitter, you’re helping Musk spread this hate.

At Salon: For my transgender daughter, there are only 18 States of America. For years, before Lawrence v. Texas, I kept a list of states where I was illegal. Thanks to the fascist Republican Party, those lists exist again. If you help in any way, I have no words for the degree of FUCK YOU I have.

Vishal Singh has video showing far-right anti-LGBTQ+ extremists using pepper spray against LGBTQ+ supporters at the Glendale School Board meeting. It wasn’t the start of fascist violence at the protest, of course; around here, they use bear spray specifically, spraying anyone they decide to hate during protests the previous couple of years, nowhere near protests. Here’s one of the rightists talking about how the Proud Boys are part of the protest. They’ve also been engaging in petty – but still hateful – political vandalism at churches. Adam Schiff denounced the attacks, saying ‘We will not go back.‘

The Intercept got a lot better once they shook off Greenwald, but fuck, they will go off the deep end at times and they did it real hard back in December with a disinformation-loaded piece of shit article that in particular is good at one of the fundamentalist right’s favourite tricks: pulling out real quotes from their context and putting them in another context that completely changes the meaning, and never retracted or even acknowledged any of it. I don’t think I can keep using them anymore and I’m kind of regretting having done so in the past.

NPR dug into why the far-right want to get rid of ERIC, the system that is used by states to detect duplicate voter registrations. I’ll help them out there since they never connect the dots: the fash want elections distrusted and discredited, so everyone gives up on them and they can seize power. There y’go, NPR. Easy-peasy.

GOP party chairman who was busted passed out in his car holding a crack pipe is arrested again, this time for child molestation. 100% projection 100% of the time.

California:

L.A. Sheriff’s Deputies Arrested a Trans Activist for ‘Robbery.’ Video Tells a Completely Different Story – The arrest followed a right-wing campaign for the LASD to take action. Did the sheriff’s department get duped? I think it’s more likely that they were more than happy to go along, myself. I could be wrong, but I really doubt I am.

Noted anti-fascist activist Chad Loder and friends went to a gun range for a birthday celebration. (Note for those not of the West: we have a long history of an armed left here too.) Then someone at the shooting range leaked all their personal information to the fascist American Guard, who spread it amongst fash on Twitter, and then the threats and harassment took off.

Florida:

Oh No, Not My Face! – Video shows Florida Republican begging Latinos not to leave the state… over the new immigration law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Indiana:

Abortion rights activists are suing Indiana under a law Indiana passed to let Christians discriminate against LGBT people, saying that the abortion ban violates Jewish and Liberal Christian religious rights. Which, of course, it does. They just won class-action status.

Texas:

The Texas Observer have a writeup on what they’re referring to as “The Awful 88th,” the 88th session of the Texas legislature so hyperfocused on hurting LGBT people that they didn’t even manage to get to the rest of their own agenda.

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