solarbird | Fascism Watch for 6 September 2023: the No Rest for the Weary or the Wicked Edition

No time to rest, I’m afraid. But that’s part the fascist “flood the zone with shit” tactic set for you.

Mainstream media is just barely starting to wake up to the reality that KOSA is intended to ban LGBT – particularly T – related material, with NBC finally stumbling across Marsha Blackburn’s straight-up staying that’s the idea. A bunch of Democrats are saying “that’s not what it’s for!” but, well, there’s the co-sponsor saying that’s exactly what it’s for. Here’s the mechanism by which it will be used to do this.

This bill has lots of Democratic support, so if you haven’t contacted your lawmakers on this, do so right now. I’ll wait.

Done it? Great, thanks.

Media are focusing on the Fascist Elon Musk’s stated intentions to sue the ADL and ignoring most of his broader, more intense and generalised anti-Semitic rhetoric. (Some responses from the ADL here.) If you missed it, here are three posts just from this past weekend: Twiter is a Fascist Platform, Can We Call Musk A Nazi Now, and anybody still on twitter is a goddamn fool which outlines how he’s using Twitter to spread fascist ideology with his fascist friends, including not just hating the queers, but mask-off anti-Semitism and more.

I do wish I had a link where he was in a friendly – admiring, even – discussion with one of the many Twitter white nationalists who was going off about how you have to “hate the J” to be a real man like Mel Gibson, and not be a medicated senile twat like President Biden, but… oh wait, I do.

Remember, people who are active there are actively helping him with his fascist project. The goal is the 2024 elections. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.

If you think Bluesky is a good alternative, I do ask you to remember how hard Jack Dorsey is working to make sure nazis and other fascists can stay on the platform. I mean, he’s working really hard to come up with solutions to keep fascists on there. And what’s easy to forget is that he did exactly the same thing on Twitter when he was in charge. He defended nazis, he worked hard to keep nazis around.

He still does. Consider that strongly when considering where to set up after Twitter. Obviously, I recommend Mastodon – or some other Federated service. But where you go to set up your new community (or your old community again) is up to you.

Just keep in mind how Twitter’s ended up, and keep in mind that the same guy is doing the same shit when it comes to fascists.

Just a thought.

What’s next? Oh, let’s look at beating up on the queers again, shall we?

Fox is going after younger and younger queer kids, trans kids in particular. The latest is a giant spasm of outrage at finding out that many trans kids know their actual gender when very young. If you talk to trans people, you will hear this constantly. (You’ll also hear gay and lesbian kids knowing as early as six or seven.) Fox is turning this into the usual outrage nightmare pedophile grooming shriekfest, but let me ask the cisgendered and non-IS people here:

When you were three or four years old, did you know your gender? That you were a boy, or a girl?

Almost all of you did. It’s a normal human developmental milestone, and it’s not an evil conspiracy, it’s just that trans kids are not different in that. It just doesn’t line up with the physicality in the way it does for most people.

But naturally, reality is never the point. They’ve got to have someone to hate, and now it’s three and four year olds. It’d be pathetic if it wasn’t so evil. (See also: National Review saying that keeping a child’s confidence is also child abuse.)

In related news, Law Dork has a write-up on the latest anti-trans healthcare bills in the courts, and Georgia’s ban on trans health care is back on for now. What a fucking nightmare. Medically, on top of everything else.

In just as tightly related news, cishet media have started noticing that they have queer refugees now. This story is from Oregon, where such things do get picked up upon earlier than elsewhere, which is a compliment to them.

That’s it for themed sections. Here, have some line items:

In educational news, more Republican state legislatures are demanding that their states’ library systems drop out of the American Library Association, and it’s not so much “because of the lesbian” any more, but “because they don’t support book bans.”
Republican Oklahoma has moved to allow far-right propagandist PragerU’s videos – remember them, they’re the ones who called people trying to stop climate change nazis – to be used in schools as educational material. Because that’s where they are these days.
This isn’t a bad article in WaPo about wet-bulb temperatures. They’re mostly talking about 32°C wet-bulb (hence the weird decimal points in their numbers, which are in °F) and not mentioning 35°C, which is where literally everyone, regardless of your physical condition, starts to die via brain and organ failure. I bring this up because Washington DC fell 0.3°F short of 35°C at least one this summer, if you were in the sun. (In the shade, it was much better. Still obscene, but not really close to lethal.)

We are much closer to a mass death wet-bulb temperature event than anyone wants to talk about. But at least they’re introducing the concept.
Some Republicans talking about the dangers of RICO in a “political” case (January 6th and the attempt to overturn the election) worry insincerely but loudly about a “precedent” of such laws being used against political protest. But AP have finally noticed that it’s already been happening, with Georgia – hey, also Georgia – throwing racketeering charges against those protesting the construction of the massive Cop City project. They don’t seem to be objecting to this one, but if they actually cared about this precedent, they would. (So we know they won’t.)
Finally, Jay Kuo writes about Republican plans to remove newly-elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz in order to protect the hyper-gerrymandering Republicans installed so that they literally could not be voted out of power. (See again 2018, when they lost the popular vote statewide and yet kept a supermajority in the legislature.) He suspects the Republican plan isn’t to impeach her directly but get her administratively suspended so she can’t actually be on the bench during the case, thus throwing the court into a likely stalemate and keeping their hyper-gerrymander in place, and both their state and federal legislative elections de facto meaningless.