It’s funny how conservatives say they like trump because he says what’s on his mind, and doesn’t hold back. But when AOC posts stuff like this, they freak out and call her mean
post
and “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”
Liberals need to ask why the fuck their leaders are so keen on catching fascist flies, but so nakedly hostile to LGBTQ / Muslim / College Debtor / Migrant Laborer / M4A voters.
Because America is mostly a bunch of shit-eating flies and you don't win elections without them.
Because people are terrible.
You can walk and chew gum at the same time. Denounce misogyny and homophobia as well as the anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia that was purposely stirred up by neocons after 9/11 to inflame jingoism and support for imperialism.
Islam is not a monolithic platonic form, it's the ideas of the people who call themselves Muslim. As people they deserve to be free from bigotry based on their innate characteristics. If you only allow for groups to be uplifted if they're perfect and free from sin, you will always be able to find fault and reason to continue oppression.
Do you think I'm homophobic? You're not making an argument, you're just brandishing Islamophobia as if it will accomplish something.
Let's return to the origin of this so that you might be able to see where the accusation of Islamophobia is coming from.
In response to someone wondering why democrats are so quick to abandon marginalized groups, you singled out Muslims to decry as authoritarian, misogynistic, homophobic, pedophilic, rape apologists.
In response to my point that we should denounce multiple negative things at once including the faults that you identified as well as Anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia - two prejudices that are intrinsically linked and were politically weaponized - you doubled down on denouncing Islam and implied that no support should be offered to Muslims.
I'm not asking you to avoid criticizing Islam as a religion, I'm asking you to see Muslims as people and recognize that they have been also marginalized and deserve justice too. Please take some time to reflect on this.
Because you're so fucking obtuse that you confuse the book with the religion, no one knows how to explain this shit to someone this fucking dense.
Edit: educate yourself on where the current extreme homophobia in the middle east is coming from
The first is the influence, directly or indirectly, of European powers in the region. In 1885 the British government introduced new penal codes that punished all homosexual behaviour. Of the more than 70 countries that criminalise homosexual acts today, over half are former British colonies. France introduced similar laws around the same time.
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/06/06/how-homosexuality-became-a-crime-in-the-middle-east
or more carefully studied in one instance here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/homophobic-muslims-emerging-trends-in-multireligious-singapore/2B06C99F6DB951C400B24AC82C5BF2A9
the tl;dr is the current severity of the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in muslim countries stems from europe. Not from Islam. Because the stance of one of the largest religions, that is 1200 years old, on any topic has not and never will be as uniquely and clearly defined as you think it is.
1885 was 140 years ago.
Many of these countries have been independent for at least 70 years.
Why do they still have homophobic British laws?
Read the paragraph after
Second, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s coincided with that of the gay-rights movement in America and Europe, hardening cultural differences. Once homosexuality had become associated with the West, politicians were able to manipulate anti-LGBT feelings for their personal gain.
so it again traces back to the western powers who keep funding islamic fundamentalism as well as the population having such animosity towards the west because of what we did to them that politicians over there can just point at something, call it western, and people automatically assume it's bad.
Islam is not a monolithic platonic form,
How about American Christianity or Orthodox Judaism?
Begging liberals to stop stereotyping muslims and spreading islamophobia.
As a christian who grew up in Turkey I can personally attest to the existence of many differing opinions ranging from the complete chud to the open minded. Just like with every other religion or really any group of people. Also there are a lot of gay muslims, I don't know why people make this either-or distinction, a person can be more than one thing.
And those countries are a true representation of the people? How many peoples democracies are in the middle east? And why are there so little, who keeps providing the initial armaments for groups like ISIL, Al-qaeda the taliban and so on? Must be the most homophobic country on earth! Another fun fact, a lot if not all, the homophobic sentiment got exported during british or french colonisation.
As for "acceptance or religion": 
Middle Easterners deserve every bit of my sympathy
Jesus fuck talk about western chauvinism
for being unintentionally associated with that bullshit
Guess how many MidDle EasTerneRs are muslim? Also what about north africans? Central and south east asian people? Do you know how LARGE a group muslims are? That statistically there must be 100s of millions of gay muslims?? Quit with this Muslim=arab=Middle easterner="cishet brown person in a police state" bullshit, its racist.
How many gay Southern Baptists are there? They might be in the 10 000s.
Yes every muslim across time and space is just like an american fundamentalist from today. You are a very smart person.
I’m not sure why they’re supposed to cater to Muslims
Because they're human beings who live in your country and deserve all the same respect and dignity of non-Muslims.
I’d never support someone who forces women to cover themselves
Fortunately, you don't have to force anyone to do that to cater to Muslims. You just need to hold off on the impulse to harass and brutalize them for having a different flavor of "Trad Wife" conservative culture than Christians and Jews, whom we appear to have no trouble pandering towards.
It's for the same reason we don't criminalize being a Hasidic Jew or an Orthodox Mormon or a family member of Opus Dei. Snatching someone off the street and throwing them into ICE blacksites does not become laudable because the religious sect is primarily composed of Africans and Arabs.
This is a reactionary talking point used to discriminate against minorities.
Respect is earned.
Being a bigot is.
No, but you're a bigot for extrapolating from a few sentences of a book to ~1/4 of the world population. You've constantly been referencing tropes, cliches and stereotypes about muslim people that show you have a very flat and cartoonish view of muslims. You seem to be thinking that being snarky about all religions gives you the right to be snarky about muslim people. It is one thing to be snarky and dismissive about religion (imo still cringe but whatever) but being snarky and dismissive of people and their culture is something else entirely.
Iraq, 1960, before US operations in the region during the Cold War:

Muslim extremism is a direct result of US intervention in the Middle East to use countries in the region to fight a proxy war against the spread of communism. The CIA had a years-long operation where they literally air-dropped extremist Muslim propaganda into the region to radicalize the population.
We destroyed the largest democracy in the region and installed a dictator at the behest of British Petroleum (BP) because they elected a man who was going to kick them out and nationalize the industry due to the horrible pay and working conditions they forced on the country. Al-Qaeda started as CIA-backed resistance fighters known as the Mujahideen. The list of issues created by European and American meddling in the region is miles long - neo-colonialism at work.
And the only time the Bible ever made mention of LGBT people is if you go all the way back to the Latin text where one of the people that Jesus healed was a soldier's slave where the word used was a type of male slave the Romans usually kept for sex.
And as far as I know, the Torah makes no mention of LGBT people either, but Hebrew supposedly has pronouns specifically for FTM people that expressly recognizes them as men trapped in the bodies of women.
When all this stuff was written, LGBT people were simply a fact of life that nobody thought needed defending because the two genders bigotry and homophobia came later as a package deal with the spread of European Christianity (and the problems with Islamic culture are the direct result of the US spreading radical Muslim propaganda, as mentioned before - it was exported out of the Middle East). It's not the religion itself that's the problem, but the people who use it as a shield for their hatred. Bigots will be bigots, and religion is just an excuse that they can twist to justify their actions. India has been having trouble for years with Buddhist extremists who are just as bad as the worst of the crazies in the US, and Buddhism is probably the most peaceful religion in the world.
It's like the 2nd Amendment and the US Constitution - old documents created in a different time with different problems being reinterpreted to justify modern hatred.
the founding fathers of the US owned slaves and fucked them. then enslaved their own children. are you going to denounce them as strongly? No?
Go fuck yourself you hate filled moron
After years of "we're the real patriots"... Still saying it.
Nationalism is a primary foundation of fascism.
the only thing that does anything (however little) with bigoted fascist narcissists is shaming them with mockery and ridicule
"But they will just their heels in harder, so we can't do anything at all!"
Destroy Nazi's yes, but there are way more people who are more like middle right who you can still talk and compromise with. It is not for nothing that countries like NL have so many parties that you can vote for. There is more than just left or right. There isn't anything more than being a Nazi or a Nazi hater
Destroy Nazi’s yes, but there are way more people who are more like middle right who you can still talk and compromise with.
One of the more infuriating things the Reich wing media does is conflate those two groups as well... We go after actual Nazis and then Faux News two minutes hate prime time cries all night about how "the left are attacking YOU! they're coming for YOU!"
it's so goddamn absurd but the Magoos lap it up and beg for more...
We go after actual Nazis and then Faux News two minutes hate prime time cries all night about how “the left are attacking YOU! they’re coming for YOU!”
The far right media ecosystem has tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, in no small part thanks to the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts that their sponsors are afforded.
Liberals periodically have the opportunity to cut these organizations off at the knees by defunding the massive privatization schemes that dominate the Federal Government - private prisons, military procurement, private rented real estate, SpaceX/Starlink, etc. But the folks who finally get into positions of power always think they can enrich themselves personally rather than risking their careers challenging Big Business financially.
Curiously, conservatives don't seem to have this problem. They'll butt heads with the business wing routinely, secure in their position thanks to Christian popularism and ethnic nativism. But because Liberals don't value their base voters, they prefer to pander to Big Business. This is also why the lose big elections, pandering hard to financial supporters while scolding any reluctant popular voter for not Voting Blue No Matter Who.
A lot of people on the internet do that as well. "If you are not with me, you are against me"!
In the middle. Between Authoritarians and their nazi troops and poor people going to work or going to immigration hearings or their kids graduation.
Fuck those people. Fuck them with every cactus in the mojave desert. Useless cowardly fence sitting cunts to a man. We don't need them. We don't want them. They chose their side. It's with the nazis. So fuck them too.
Edit - https://bsky.app/profile/iamthepaulina.bsky.social/post/3lrdi57lvok2y - This is what those cowards are supporting. Slavery.
How exactly does mockery and ridicule help?
I'd rather put energy in the education of those who can still listen, and the next generation.
Because fascist popularity thrives on power, and ridicule disempowers them. It's teenage "cool" vs "lame" politics.
You can cry about it being undignified or whatever, but it does work. See: teenagers.
I'm skeptical about how efficient that could be. Are you going to compete with how much content they are able to produce to ridicule it? I feel like there's some Brandolini's-like law at play here.
What should I see about teenagers? Last I heard, masculinism is growing among them.
You have to compete with the content they produce regardless. Speaking of Brandolini's law, it's much, much less effort to ridicule something than it is to factually debunk it.
Last I heard, masculinism is growing among them.
Yeah, because... masculinism is "cool" and "anti-lame." So it should be mocked.
It's really not that hard to see. When conservatives rage against "woke pussies" or whatever, they're clearly rejecting some kind of perceived weakness. So when you mock them, and you damage their perception of strength, yeah, they flop around like fish gasping for air.
You have to compete with the content they produce regardless.
No, you can educate people from the start so they are able to weed out information by themselves.
Isn't it what you do? You are educated so you are able to detect the far right bullshit.
Or are you really watching a bigger amount of content that ridicule this view in order to counter its effect?
I'm gonna be honest: you can't. Education is dry, and dull, and boring, and exactly the kind of lame bullshit I'm talking about. Your strategy is the strategy of nerds and losers.
It's not that it's not worth doing. You are correct that education was my vaccine against the far right. But no one is listening. If you're not drumming up energy, social momentum, no one is paying attention to you. Even people who agree with you are not really getting involved.
You need charisma. Mockery not only damages the rizz of your opponents, exposing them to be the rizzless, softboy soy-drinkers they always were, it also bolsters your own. It gets the crowd jumping and doing stadium waves and shit. I don't know how else to say this, but people like displays of power. That is legit the only way fascists even win.
Long term, it would be great to educate these fickle-as-the-wind dipshits as I was, but that takes time. And, they have to already like you. If they don't like you, they just won't listen.
If you want to move populations, you need to wield the tools of social power. You cannot depend on the truth to do it for you.
Do you realize you are using similar arguments as the far right / masculinist by mentioning nerds, losers, mockery, charisma, soft boys, soy drinkers, display of power?
I said before I'm considering those who may still listen and the next generation. I know you can't change the current maga-like with public education.
Yes.
Do you realize you are also spreading "right-wing ideas," such as "we should not mock them, it would be very mean"? Curious. Interesting. Concerning.
I'm considering those who may still listen and the next generation.
That's awesome. What is preventing you from doing this?
Unironically, the education you give should include how stupid the nazis actually were. Anything less would be lying, honestly. Can we not have a little fun? They're a very stupid and insecure people.
Do you realize you are also spreading “right-wing ideas,” such as “we should not mock them, it would be very mean”?
Do they? You're the first one I read mentioning that.
I'm worried that by using their tactics you contribute to popularizing their ways.
They really did not like being called weird, yeah. You should, I dunno, read the news sometime.
Trump won. Their ways are already popular.
I mean, if I even agreed that the righteous and just weren't allowed to show any contempt—this is a bit like saying Maga also breathe air, choke yourself—but even if I agreed: they won. The landscape is already different.
Do it if you want to, but I feel like it mostly a feel good activity rather than something effective.
For me the only sustainable and worthy solution is massively reinvesting in public education. It's the only way to lift a country's average education equally.
The law means nothing at this point
Yep, it's now pure power. Power dictates what happens and what doesn't.
Always has been.
True, but there was a layer of law below it. So there was at least some documented consistent process for which power was used for the most part. Now it's pretty much anything goes.
What is this in response to?
Trump gave a speech at Fort Bragg (renamed back to Bragg after a WWII paratrooper with the same last name as the original namesake, a confederate general). He complained about people flying flags for other countries. He also said that we have contempt for the flag, that anyone who burns one should go to jail for a year
Meanwhile flag code says that a flag which touches the ground should be burned and they proudly fly confederate and nazi flags
Thank you! Do you know what law she's referring to them breaking? Her forceful delivery seems to imply something less mundane than flag code.
The first amendment allows burning the flag as a form of free speech, which makes jailing people for it unconstitutional
Flag code isnt law directly but more of a reccomendation, and many government institutions and organizatioms such as the Boy Scouts will follow flag code, but civilians arent required to
Yeah. Flag Code complaints get misused almost as much as HIPAA. Flag Code is not a law, it's a set of recommendations on how to respectfully handle the flag. It's really only enforced for military personnel, but it is recommended that civilians adhere to it.
Yes, burning a flag is proper disposal, but it should be done privately so not to be seen as a protest. If anyone really cares, Fire departments in the US will do proper flag disposal for free.
This is probably one of the most disrespectful things you can do to a flag though...

I mean at this point it's easier to point out which laws they aren't breaking.
But I'm guessing nationalizing National Guard troops, sending the military to LA, and/or rounding up brown people and putting them in jail with no due process.
Flag code aside, people who deify the American flag over the rights and welfare of human beings should spend a year in jail.
Flags are just things. Burn ‘em, wave ‘em, tattoo them on your buttcheek. I don’t care. It’s not more important than the human beings being treated like garbage.
This is the time you decide whether the Civil War was just about about keeping the country united to maintain its power or whether it was about ending slavery (which it didn't, but that's another point). It's clear that keeping the country together only helped maintain US power and influence internationally, because the assholes who rebelled to protect slavery have kept their agenda and are clearly in power now. It does not bode well when only the abuser is willing to stand up for themselves and their narcissism while the victim still thinks that if they are nice enough they will get anyone to see the error of their ways. Are democrats just willing to tolerate abuse? Is there nothing they would secede from, even a tyrant?
Right now, some GOP members are playing a charade of fighting the administration on side issues like Ukraine. Make no mistake, they are still complicit with a Trump admin, and midterms will be a charade as well.
They do their part.
Lol you didn't pay attention in history
Then. Do. Something. About. It.
You can't fight fascism with fascism.
The pillars of patriotism in the US's popular imagination are freedom and opportunity. It's ridiculous to say that any invocation of patriotism is civil religion or fascism, especially when people like AOC are right to say that they're the real patriots. Progressives need to reclaim the term because they actually do stand for the ideals that the American public thinks of when they think of patriotism. Meanwhile the GOP and power brokers at the top of the DNC are obviously enemies of the people who have embraced fascism, trample on constitutionally protected rights, and set up an economy that restricts people's opportunity as much as possible. The contrast couldn't be clearer and it needs to be addressed.
I gotta ask... why do you post this link in like every other comment?
After her vote on the Take it Down act and seemingly no remorse, I will never take her seriously again.
She literally fell in line with party politics and lobbyist on a "think of the children" vote that is openly touted as ripe for abuse, Trump implied he'd abuse it, and victim advocate organizations tried to warn people.
I like what a New York City politician said.
"If you agree with me 51% of the time, you should vote for me. If you agree with me 100% of the time, seek a psychiatrist."
Reason 1433544 the left will never win.
One GD thing and this is how you act. The response to this about agreeing 51% of the time is nail on the head. It's a shit system but maybe try to fix it instead of being indignant all the time.
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