Note: In 2020, I’m writing 52 blog posts, one per week, released on Mondays or so. Today’s short-ish post is for Week 25. I planned to just type an “oops” placeholder entry, but if you know me, then you know I can sometimes be a little…longwinded. Week 22 was my #OpDeathEaters review of the recent Investigation Discovery special focused on pedosadist Jeffrey Epstein, and Week 23 was my updating that post. Week 24 was some quick Seattle news. The upcoming longer post I referred to last week should be up next week. Thanks for your patience!
I know a handful of white, very straight guys around the world who seem identical: roughly late thirties / early forties, recently dumped, fairly high income, lonely apartment, devoted to masculinism, to trade, to downer narcotics that are recreational, decreasingly. Often it feels nothing I ever say successfully combats the propaganda or world to which they are repeatedly exposed. Conversations with them seem like dominance battles; they keep score, and no one just shares.
Briefly, five news links from the past year and a half, to recalibrate readers who, before continuing forward, might need a reminder of the wider perspective outside the masculinist/trade/lonely life:
- Recent articles, global in span, regarding femicide.
- November 15, 2018: Article in Foreign Policy: In Russia, Feminist Memes Buy Jail Time, but Domestic Abuse Doesn’t
- May 21, 2019: NBC News found that during a 5-year period under both the Obama and Trump administrations, within the system of lockup facilities recognized in 2019 by multiple Auschwitz and/or Holocaust survivors as concentration camps (Rene Lichtman; Ruth Bloch; Bernard Marks), ICE has forced thousands of immigrants into solitary confinement (recognized across the planet as a form of torture), not for breaking any rules, but for being physically disabled or gay.
- May 31, 2020: My #OpDeathEaters review about Investigation Discovery’s special on Jeffrey Epstein. My review helps explain in practical and realistic terms (what actually are inquiries/tribunals?) how to stop voting for pedosadists and start arresting them.
- June 2, 2020 twitter thread by Portland State University instructor Alexander Reid Ross documenting scores of violent, armed reactionary vigilantes carrying out intimidation and attacks against Black Lives Matter protests across the United States.
Today one of the masculinist-ish guys bemoaned to me this week’s efforts to topple the statue, near the White House, of Andrew Jackson, slaveowner. The person did not bemoan anything remotely on the subject of the above five news links. Yet imagine if every time the topic of toppling a slaveowner statue came up for “debate,” the conversation could not begin until first, all concentration camp victims were liberated, all femicides were prevented, all children were protected from pedosadists, all with impunity were convicted, and individuals learned to reject all bigotry.
In the face of torture and femicide and other human rights violations and unlawful killings, relentless cradle to grave propaganda trains too many USians to focus on, and endlessly talk about, rioters breaking Starbucks windows or stealing electronics from big box stores (both just ways of saying Fuck you in light of murders and more), because that tunnel vision means brainwashed USians don’t learn what much of the rest of the planet already knows: massive resistance can be far more powerful than politely giving a quiet speech about how you don’t want to be killed. To take just one example, the 2019-2020 Chilean protests fight back against austerity and send their legislators fleeing. In other words, in a very practical and realistic move, they kicked their Congress out by force, in real life. Yet if nonstop battle by an oppressed public against powerful criminals with impunity sounds scary and sad — and I agree that it frequently is, and frequently has been throughout human history so far — then in addition, stop voting, start arresting. Practical and realistic? The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (which among other things publicly heard applications for limited amnesty from human rights violators) accomplished a great deal, while simultaneously having trouble enforcing subpoenas because the commissioners didn’t have enough power relative to the reactionaries in their region. Still, that the goal of justice never before achieved in full is difficult, and that previous attempts to bring justice have not yet succeeded completely, doesn’t mean quit trying and become a boring complicit and compliant coward; it means, let’s figure out improved inquiries/tribunals — now, little step by little step.
During the pandemic brought to you not by protestors (back people into a corner, what do you expect them to do, die quietly?) — see NPR and the Economist — but by super-spreaders such as Donald Trump, and this month when people are especially discussing and endorsing noncompliance/disobedience with ridiculous and unjust rules against consenting adults putting their various Tab As into their various Slot Bs proudly, while all manner of extreme wild emotions happen, to all those braver than the intelligentsia and the aspirants to the intelligentsia, to all those who read and grow and share and take informed action…
Happy rioting, self-defense, and fucking up shit!
This blog post, Happy rioting, self-defense, and fucking up shit!, by Douglas Lucas, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (human-readable summary of license). The license is based on a work at this URL: https://douglaslucas.com/blog/2020/06/23/happy-rioting-self-defense-and-fucking-up-shit/. You can view the full license (the legal code aka the legalese) here. For learning more about Creative Commons, I suggest this article and the Creative Commons Frequently Asked Questions. Seeking permissions beyond the scope of this license, or want to correspond with me about this post otherwise? Please email me: dal@riseup.net.
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