I believe Batty is talking about trans people, not queers. Which, in itself, is not a very flattering term to use for gay people. Isn't that a slur? Unless you're one of them yourself of course. Like using the N word when you're not black?

Oh look, the guy who can't get Foucault's Boomerang right.

It's long been reclaimed and is now one of the preferred umbrella terms of choice for LGBTQ+ people. We even have Queer Theory in universities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory

I like that it used to mean "oblique" (before acquiring the sexual undertones sometime in the 20th century). It's used in the first story in Joyce's Dubliners, Sisters, and there the denotation is still "strange, not quite right" but the sexual connotation is very much there (it's about an elderly priest and a young boy, do the math...).


Foucault's Boomerang is not a thing, it's the mother of all "taken out of context". Foucault gives a nod to a theory that was around long ago in a lecture course where he develops ideas that couldn't be further from that.

It comes from some blog, where the guy randomly pulls this short paragraph to co-sign Foucault onto a set of propositions Foucault's would've rolled his eyes at. I want to say "this would've never passed peer review" but I've seen stuff on this level get published by Anglo sociologists and esp in the so-called "security studies". You latch onto the one paragraph you are comfortable with and ignore the rest.

Bro. I had my entire reponse types out on my ****ty ass phone and somehow pressed back and couldn't get it back. I had to bring out the laptop I'm so pissed. I would say the "questions" surrounding the JQ are similarly not real questions, and the answer to the so-called JQ has long since been solved. The questions serve not to open a genuine line of inquiry, but to paint the Jews as a nefarious and often almost other-worldly threat. I really don't see much of a functional difference between this and what Tim Pool is doing in that tweet.

It seems like the Tim Pool tweet is the main metric you use to dismiss the overall climate of anti-semitic rhetoric as just being in the phase of "just
asking questions," since there is no analog to that tweet for other groups. That is your common refrain in this discussion from my pov.

The ID thing i didn't comment on because i haven't looked into it but on the face of it, it sounds like one of those culture war type issues like the bathrooms thing or the trans sports ****. Although I understand how it sounds draconian and you could easily suppose a scenario where that's the first step to rounding people up, I don't believe that's what they're actually after.

I do think they want to make it less acceptable socially. Ultimately that's what all of this is about, in my opinion.


That's fair. That was a bad comparison. I'll take that L.

But even so I think that Kanye represents a threat, and sometimes threats come in anomalies, like Trump. But even beyond that, guys like Nick Fuentes are even more worrying looking forwards. I was watching his debate with AJ and they played a video in between of Fuentes ranting about the Jews that was like a straight up Hitler speech. I can't find the video on youtube but here's the quote from Fuentes:

"When it comes to the Jews, here's the silver lining. It tends to go from 0 to 60. Like, they're not wrong about that. But there's a reason for that. And the reason is them, ok? When it comes to the Jews, every society where **** has gone down with these people, it always goes from 0 to 60. It never starts with burning all the Talmuds in Paris, OK? [laughs] It never starts that way. But frequently, it seems to end that way, and it gets there very rapidly. Doesn't start there but it frequently ends there. But I would say the Jews had better start being nice to people like us. Because what comes out of this is going to be a lot worse and a lot uglier than anything that has been said on this show or will be said on this show."

Ehh no. Ye brought it back into the limelight for sure but people were marching in Charlottesville in 2017 chanting "Jews will not replace us." Richard Spencer is no longer relevant but the Jew hatred did survive to the next generation of the dissident right, and it lines up pretty neatly with a lot of the QAnon christian nationalism type vibe of the modern right.

lol

to be clear, my original point was that while trans and lgbt people get targeted in certain ways I don't think they're on the verge of genocide, and in addition to that I thought there are other groups we can make similar arguments about using pretty much the same metrics. I don't think the Jews are on the verge of a genocide either though.

Right. The real effect of comparing everything to Nazis and Auschwitz, which is a real hobby for some, is that it obscures the very real dangers posed by the rise in extremism today.

I heard an interview with a Jewish historian of anti-semitism on French radio and he was 1) very concerned about the rise in violence targeting Jews in France today 2) annoyed that some compare it to the 1930s. The situations have nothing in common, he said, and lead people to misunderstand and minimize the uniquely desperate situation of European Jews in the 1930s, who were utterly abandoned and couldn't expect help from any quarter. We live in a different world today that poses its own multiple dangers and those should be assessed in their specificity.

I get it that it's more exciting to think of yourself as an anti-fascist warrior rather than another guy from the suburbs. That's perfectly human. But it's funny to me that the Soviet victory over the Nazis (which fueled the myth of communist anti-fascism in the West and was a reliable tool to recruit useful idiots to the cause) was always a Russian nationalist myth within Russia, with only the thinnest veneer of universalist values even during the Soviet era. Now that it's mobilized by Putin in Ukraine, some of the self-professed anti-fascists are temporarily embarrassed and scrub all the heroic Soviet imagery from their twitter profiles. Wonder if that's the end of that or is it due for another rewarming.

Thank you. I hadn't considered that two situations could be different. Aren't you supposed to be smart?

I'm not necessarily talking about you in particular but of a broader trend which I like to observe on Twitter and of which you seem to be broadly representative. I have no interest in following the evolution of your rhetoric and registering whether you did or did not, at some point, learn to insert "but it's more complicated than that" or something to that effect. Overall, it still seems that your worldview is informed by categories derived from Star Wars and video games and things of that nature, but if you're working on complicating that picture, good for you. Chapeau.

And you seem to like shadowboxing with the leftist in your head and posting about a French Jew who probably hates sharing the Holocaust with gypsies.

I'm talking about a very well-known phenomenon, which I've witnessed for years in a city with four universities and a long and storied history of left-wing student activism (some of which, moreover, I'm really proud of). For the way the rhetorical mechanism of "anti-Fascism" worked throughout the 20th century, see Furet's great book The Passing of an Illusion.

The remark about the French Jew is pretty shameful tbh. As usual, you make presumptions without basis, which is understandable. But I'd be more careful in this particular context.

Oh come on, pussy, it was a joke. And a joke with like a 50% chance of being true, don't lie.

France, where universalism is the official state ideology, has a long history of suppressing the specificity of Jewish victimhood in the Shoah. Some of this "amnesia" has to do with years of minimizing the French role in the deportations, some of it has to do with anti-Semitism in its various guises, some of it has to do with other dynamics specific to French society and various political realities which I have no energy to detail here (Vladimir Jankélévitch's The Imprescriptible is an old text about this that retains much of its power today).

I understand the idea that there are good Jews who are prepared to share their victimhood with others and there are bad Jews, who hoard it to themselves (and are probably Zionists to boot), but in France the reality around Shoah memory carries too much baggage for this joke to not ring hollow.

This is more about Europeans hating Romani no matter their politics.

A gentleman who knows his memes

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Etz74toWQAAN_o2.jpg

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...57/808/21d.jpg

you did basically say he was a 1930s Jew who was greedily protecting his precious Holocaust victimhood from having to be shared with other groups. Pretty disappointed to see this type of antisemitic rhetoric coming from you, Batlord. :(

well it's funny you mention the antifascist angle cause a lot of people seem to harken back to this sort of WW2 model for antifascism when trying to find direction for or justifications for elements of the modern antifa ****.

Like one argument I remember hearing a lot a few years back was that it was good strategy to punch Nazis (Richard Spencer) cause we've tried negotiating with them and the only thing they understand is violence. I've specifically heard Vaush make this kind of argument.

But my recollection of history is that all the failed communist coups and all the brawls where communists fought brown shirts in the streets did **** all to prevent the rise of Nazi power. But the USSR did actually take on the lions share of the burden of actually defeating Nazi power. Which is like... Go Russian military industrial complex I guess?

It's funny though, I feel like both modern Russia and modern USA share the same foundational myth , which is beating the Nazis. I feel like we've outgrown 1776 at this point. The modern version of America didn't start until The Fonz was on TV

Punching Nazis isn't going to stop fascism if the only resistance is people in the streets punching. If the far right is gaining political power while the left isn't then no amount of punching is going to save you. But if you punch a Proud Boy and that Proud Boy decides to stay home next time that's a small victory. And even if you're not winning the war then community defense can still save lives.

Like I don't even understand your greater point unless that point is just sneering at the left cause you're insecure about people thinking they're better than you. Do you think not punching Nazis will yield better results? Will the Nazis not getting punched realize it's best to sing kumbyaya and hold hands?

This is so accurate (at least for people from countries where Romani are common), it's really shocking. You'll talk to some progressive, otherwise intelligent person and when Romani are mentioned they suddenly start to spout the same racist nonsense they normally condemn (including the classic ****ty 'but 90 percent of them are criminals!') and hide behind their progressive image when you confront them. It's infuriating

For real. I spent a month in Spain this summer and ran into this a few times.

On an unrelated note I'll be dropping a mixtape soon.

The logic of your first paragraph is precisely what I am calling into question. I don't think it actually serves as a deterant. People thrive on the violence.

In the lead up to Nazi Germany the brawls in the streets with communists was actually used as a recruitment tool for luring disaffected, directionless and patriotic former soldiers into the SA. Violence acts as more of a rallying cry than anything else, especially in unstable political environments

"People thrive on the violence" is just sort of a vague, useless statement. What people? All the people? Some people? Certain people? Do all people just inherently enjoy getting punched in the face? Cause if not then you need to inject some nuance. Just the slightest bit of nuance. Just anything that isn't thoughtless drivel.

Also, these modern losers aren't dead-eyed WW1 veterans. They work at Home Depot. They thrive on Chili's.

No, not all of the people. But a subset do. That's all it takes. You think all Germans were fighting in the streets of the Weimar Republic or it was just a sizable enough number of people to destabilize the fledgling democracy?

I'm not saying the situations are 1 to 1 either. It's ironically usually the people in the other side who make the WW2 analogy, like jadis alluded to. But either way I think it's a safe bet to say people aren't being moderated by violence towards their side. Especially when dealing with extremist elements in particular you are selecting for people who can use violence as a rallying cry and martyrdom as credibility.

And I'm pretty sure that a lot of the far right militia types are in fact ex military, similar to the Germany example. Of course under certain circumstances you yourself might even point out this threat in another context, but here you conveniently downplay it to try to win a cheap point. Because you actually don't have principles behind anything you are saying at this point.

Yeah and a sizeable number of those people were WW1 vets unlike the losers in the Proud Boys or Patriot Front. Not to mention the Frei Corps who were given literal weapons of war by the state to fight the left. They had literal artillery to use in Berlin to blast holes in the city. The right now are far more punchable.

You could say the same about Antifa street fighters except you oddly don't. For some reason it's only the far right who will be emboldened to violence through conflict.

No, idiot. Obviously ex-military extremists are a threat but to compare the relative handful of war on terror veterans to the millions of WW1 veterans is like comparing a candle to a stick of dynamite. Honestly you sound like either a moron or like you're weakly trying not to obviously root for far right terrorists.

it was a sizable segment of extremists who are inclined towards violence. I would argue a similar dynamic exists in the modern US, as much as you try to romanticize the common foot soldier of the SA as so much more competent than your average proud boy in terms of instigating political instability, they weren't.



maybe I didn't state it specifically but I do think the left is also capable of being called to arms. If they ever did get their **** together and do so they could also be a threat. So far the FBI watch list is rightfully dominated by right wingers.



I mean who exactly is it that is going to bring about this Trans genocide you keep insisting is on the horizon? You have to make a firm decision about the nature of the threat you're pointing to. How severe are we talking exactly? Somewhere between WW2 and Rwanda?

Bitch the only thing I'm insisting on is that the right's rhetoric should be taken seriously and not be brushed aside as just culture war. Short term I'm concerned with copycat trans shootings, anti-trans legislation in red states, and even something crazy like a fertilizer bomb at a hospital that does gender affirming care or something.

Long term I can't predict anything with confidence but the right certainly want at the least for trans people to go back in the closet and be culturally invisible through both legal means (f.ex. through legal harassment of the parents of trans kids or outlawing genital surgery) and more violent intimidation.

The federal nature of the country makes me think the US would have to go through a literal civil war for, say, Texas to decide to go full Final Solution as the country burns, but if say another Katrina situation goes down and a part of the country becomes lawless for a period then I could see like a right wing militia moving into a place and trying to temporarily take over. It sort of happened already in Oregon in 2020 during the wildfires when militia ding dongs thought Antifa were setting the fires and set up checkpoints.

If something like that happened in a disaster area where the government had lost control I could see situations where a Proud Boy calls up his buddies to go lynch his trans neighbor and next thing you know a bunch of trans people are dead and nothing gets done about it and the "culture war" gets ratcheted up that much higher.

I'm not making predictions, I'm just taking the right at their word.

States across the country are passing vehemently anti-trans bills, the most watched show on cable news right now is hosted by an unhinged psychopath who keeps screaming "WEIMAR!" every time he sees an LGBTQ person and Neo-Nazis are showing up with guns to every drag bar they can find but sure move along everyone nothing to worry about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZiTX7l1Jrc

102 days sober from weed now and just as I quit they start selling it at stores lol

Right so maybe you missed it but that was sort of a rhetorical question to point out that you basically oscillate between on the one hand talking about the right wing in this country (and their militias etc) are the new face of evil, poised to possibly bring about the next genocide, and on the other hand when it is convenient you will downplay the same people as losers who work at chilis and can't do **** compared to the dead eyed german soldier of ww1 that you seemingly respect so much.

The irony is that for the point we were discussing, it's not so directly relevant how combat ready the right wing militias are. Because if we are using the Germany example, they didn't take over by force. But the SA was a massive recruitment tool that helped them build the political movement they needed to take over.

But reading your post it sounds like you are basically saying you think there could be more shootings etc and legislation. I don't doubt that could easily happen. I don't think that is worthy of being called a genocide. The question is do you actually think those things will lead to something more closely resembling an actual genocide? It sounds like based on your post you are saying maybe it would happen in the aftermath of complete destabilization after some sort of natural disaster. Which is like a fringe sort of worst case scenario.

See, my whole thing is when people call it a genocide i actually don't even know to what extent they believe it. I feel like it's mostly just a poor rhetorical tactic.

Yes because the only two options are genocide or nothing to see here.

You were the one to introduce the genocide framing, not me. And if you can't wrap your head around my view of the right as both bumbling idiots ruining Thanksgiving and potential genocidal murderers then that's a you problem. I think Hitler would have also been an annoying guest at Thanksgiving with poor arguments for his boomer views (and a farter too). Being stupid doesn't stop them from killing you.

You're the one demanding we either produce documents for the trans genocide or calm down there's nothing to see here. There's valid reason for trans people to be scared for their safety or even just their right to exist openly and just because you think it's gay to take things seriously doesn't change anything.

I came out as trans nearly 10 years ago and I've never been more terrified than I am right now.

It's really f*cking bleak.

I did introduce it in order to ask your thoughts on it because it's a discourse I'm seeing online. I didn't pull out of my ass, and you very well know that. I asked you about it and let you answer for yourself, and to me it seemed you clearly picked a side and it was the one I expected you to pick. That's not a problem but don't offload it to me like I'm putting words in your mouth by saying you seemed to indicate you do think it's an appropriate framing.

And the disparity is not between them being dumb and yet still violent. When I said punching nazis can serve as a rallying cry for violence and retribution you shrugged it off by saying they're losers who work at chili's etc.

The same losers who you are worried about shooting up a drag show. If you can't see the obvious disparity between those two takes which is clearly a result of lazy ad hoc rationalizations and motivated reasoning on your part, that's a you problem.

that's complete nonsense. I said on several occasions I'm not saying they aren't facing discrimination and **** like that. Just that I don't think the genocide framing is at all correct.

Even the people who argue in favor of it tend to use arguments that focus of rhetorical strategy rather than facts. Like if we take it more seriously we can be better equipped to fight against it. But that ignores the fact that if people think there is an actual genocide on the table they might resort to much more drastic measures than you otherwise might. The potential for overcorrection or for the rumored genocide to serve as a rallying cry for the opposition. This seems to be the kind of threat you persistently ignore, as was noted in the above example about the "punching nazis" discourse

terrified that they're going to start loading people onto trains or terrified of anti trans legislation and acts of sporadic violence which aren't even remotely unique to that community?

Like I don't want you to read that as downplaying because I do think the latter is also worth serious attention. But can we just stop pretending like there's such a thin line between the two?

Jeez, jwb! Probably terrified they're going to get attacked on the street for being different and nobody in their state is going to do anything about it. Terrified that if they go to the cops the guardians of the law may sneer and think they had it coming. Terrified to be isolated when you're in danger and nobody wants to help you, and so many others want to join in hurting you. I reckon that's what they mean. Among other things, like being disenfranchised and an attempt to scrub them from history, which is going on right now.

Transition has been a dead end for me for almost a decade because there are no resources for trans people where I live, no trans community and my family is not very supportive, and now I'm more terrified than ever that I will never reach my goals, whether it's my access to trans healthcare being taken away from me due to anti-trans bills or the risk of me being assaulted in public if I present femininely in any way.

My new years resolution is to get on HRT at any cost, it's make or break for me now.

Yeah I wasn't suggesting it's not worth being afraid of just because it's not a genocide. Do you have any thing to add other than pearl clutching and posturing?

that sounds like something you probably would've faced even more so 20 years ago tbh. Like for the umpteenth time my point isn't and hasn't been that they don't face discrimination or even that the rhetoric isn't ramping up.

But I think they are making significant progress and that's why they are facing backlash. I think it's undeniable the massive shift in people's thinking in the direction of being more accepting of trans people that has happened over the last decade or so. Do you disagree with that?