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Summer is my busiest work time, and this year is no different and maybe even a little moreso than usual – which is why I haven’t been as on top of this as I should be. Of course, it always feels like that when things are bad, which they most definitely are, so maybe it’s as much that as anything else.
As before, I’m not giving much coverage to the Trump insurrection trial. I’m paying attention, for obvious reasons, but it’s getting all the coverage it needs – except for this: Trump co-conspirator said plan was to use military to put down opposition to him staying in office. People need to realise: this was a coup attempt, and that includes using the military to put down opposition.
This wasn’t just half-assery, this was a plan, put together for months, in public – as some of us said at the time – and it involved using the military against Americans. Keep focused on that, because the right is doing everything they can to pretend it was about anything else, when it absolutely fucking wasn’t.
A bit of good news: A federal judge ruled this weekend that students do not have a “right to bully” transgender students by misgendering them and harassing them over their gender identity. That bullying is part of the intent of these laws, so getting some legal pushback is good. Remember: these same people specifically opposed anti-bullying programmes in schools specifically because they made it harder to bully queer kids. The abuse is the goal.
Also good: Democratic Michgan’s government banned conversion therapy. If you tell me there’s “no difference between the parties” I will punch you in the face.
Finally, it’s important to report on this stuff: DeSantis’ ‘anti-woke’ bills are costing Florida millions of dollars in business. If you have anything to do with any group figuring out where to put meetings, conventions, whatever? Fash states like Florida need to be off the fucking list.
This shit matters because it’s money, and you have to peel the money off the fascists at every opportunity. See also why you need to be the hell off Twitter. (See also also: The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate. That’s good news, sort of.)
The rightist boycott of Bud Light mattered. (See also: building rage against Doc Martins.) We have to be able to counter it to at least an economic draw.
One of Louisiana’s three doctors specializing in pediatric heart conditions is leaving the state after the Legislature passed a variety of bills aimed at restricting rights for LGBTQ people. He’s gay and he quite correctly realises his family is targeted and he’s getting the hell out.
A bit of tail-end-of-the-season anti-trans hate: Republican Oklahoma targets trans rights via executive order, banning gender reassignment of any kind, requiring state agencies and boards to define the words “female” and “male” to correspond with a person’s sex assigned at birth.
Richard Hanania is a visiting scholar at the University of Texas who has been promoted by Fox News and Chris Best (CEO of Substack), has written in the New York Times and Washington Post, and is supported by Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel. Richard Hanania is also a white supremacist who has advocated the forced sterilization of “low IQ” people, by which he usually means Black black people, write opposing “miscegenation” and “race-mixing,” and has cited the neo-Nazi author of a particularly infamous novel that celebrates a future race war wherein Black people and liberals are killed en masse.
In Radical Free Speech news, Musk Twitter is threatening to due The Center for Countering Digital Hate because of its research of online hate on social media.
Anti-LGBT+ hate group “Leave Our Kids Alone” is getting support from Fox News even as they work with active fascist groups and actively call for the deaths of LGBT students. Here they are protesting with Three Percenters and Proud Boys in San Diego.
Ron DeSantis’s campaign was directly behind promoting that video last week which featured, amongst other things, DeSantis superimposed over a literal Nazi emblem while surrounded by marching soldiers. ““This belongs in the Smithsonian,” wrote Kyle Lamb, the campaign’s director of research and data, before the video blew up in the campaign’s face.“
“Liberty Conservative,” which started out as a Libertarian blog before being taken fascist, brought onboard members of Identity Evropa (a white supremacist group) and maintained a private chat area where members really let their racism and holocaust-denial flags fly.
“Stephen Miller’s group seeks to fight “racial preferences” with … racial preferences” for heterosexual white men, and as cover, Asian men too.
Yet more lies in that case the Republican Supreme Court used to say that LGBT rights don’t count: the web designer who said she couldn’t make wedding websites totally did make wedding websites. So now we’re up to: there was no gay couple who asked her to do a wedding website, she lied about that in court papers, half the couple didn’t exist and the other is heterosexual and he didn’t know he was in the suit; and she lied about not being able to make websites anymore. And all that shows how much of a pretence it all was; it was just an excuse.
Republican Alabama to the US Supreme Court: You’ve made your ruling, now let’s see you enforce it as they ignore the court’s ruling and make another illegally and racially gerrymandered congressional district map.
Russia is backing the AfD, the far-right Germany party stronger in the east, with monetary and logistical support, specifically in order to try to break German support for Ukraine. They’ve been funding and otherwise backing a lot of fascist movements globally for years now and this as a general trend is inadequately recognised.
Watch out for “Active Club” groups – it’s yet another name for violent white nationalist organisations. See also the rather more obvious “Blood Tribe” groups.
The Texas Observer has good coverage of the Southwest Believers Convention, the new assembly of far-right authoritarian Christian Nationalists. They’re picking up a lot of the old harder-right of the SBC, and a lot more of the evangelicals which have always formed a big chunk of the fundamentalist movement’s rank-and-file. If they can hold their various jealousies and looting at bay – these are some very wealthy fleecers of the flock and it’s genuinely hard for them, I know – they can be a big problem.
They also have good coverage on State Republican law removing authority from Democratic-held city governments. It’s about ruling with impunity, of course.
Fox News is swinging in with racism to attack LGBT health care, or as Assigned says in its takedown, “The Black Panther Party is Back and They’ve Got Hormones.” It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so vicious and deadly.
Threatened with suspension, then rape: this is the reality of anti-trans abuse in schools. See also After Mississippi banned his hormone shots, an 8-hour journey for one dose of hormones. Laws against trans healthcare are causing trans children to be denied other, non-banned care, out of fear of the anti-trans laws. Meanwhile, the Republican Party in the House of Representatives is hosting anti-trans slander panels to try to build momentum for banning trans healthcare nationally.
Percentage of Republicans who think Biden’s 2020 win was illegitimate ticks back up near 70%, reports CNN. They can believe this despite the lack of any evidence because – as I have described many, many, many times – they do not recognise legitimate opposition or the right of anyone but themselves to wield power. This is also why they could support the last insurrection, and will support another.
Greg Gutfeld seems to think Nazis only killed useless Jews in the Holocaust. It’s a form of holocaust revisionism and cover-provision for fascists and other anti-semites. That’s just what it is.
Remember that story going around fash media a few weeks ago about a Christian girl seeing a trans woman naked in a changing room and going on a hate and harassment bender, then getting mad when she got stopped? Turns out that once again, it was bullshit.
Popehat breaks down how National Review and the other so-called “respectable” rightist media is lying to their readership about the Jan 6 Trump indictments. I’m including it because it’s more explainer than news, and the kind of thing you might want to have in your pocket.
The funny part about Right-Wing Think Tank Family Research Council Is Now a Church in Eyes of the IRS is that they were founded as a spinoff from actual ministry Focus on the Family because FotF got in trouble for its partisan political activities in order to engage in partisan political activities through a puppet organisation.
In Australia, Rupert Murdoch (Fox News)’s News Corp is using AI to produce 3,000 Australian local news stories a week, appearing under a fleet of 75 fake “local news” sites. Assume it’s a test programme to be brought forward here as well.
Finally, if Republicans take the presidency in 2024, well, many horrible things will happen, but one of them will be a complete rejection of every type of energy source other than fossil fuels. See: “Heritage Foundation floats its Project 2025 “battle plan” that “would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the EPA environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s electric car standards; and give Republican state officials more power to regulate polluting industries” if Republicans retake the White House.“
Some people literally do want to watch the world literally burn. And they’re called Republicans.
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