Long story, but I'm slowly moving into the tech-nerd world. I'm still available for tattooing. I'm still doing commissioned art & merch when able. I'll get more into it down the line, but all you need to know is that I am still around, but I am shifting some gears. A lot of of it has to do with what I've been doing on the side as an activist-y hobby & turning it into a career. The below relates to all this and I figured I'd preface this long-ass screed with that. So...
Been trying to do a post like this for a while. At least since that white power dipshit shot up a grocery in Buffalo a little almost 5+ months ago. Shoulda said something then, but it seems that others, especially experts, are seeing the same shit now.
FFS, Ken Burns was like "well, no time like the present" and the Godwin's Law creator has repeatedly said, "yes, 'Nazi' is now a legit comparison.
Instagram’s a poor platform for this and I keep my other social medias pretty private, but here goes an incredibly truncated version of something that needs saying:
•THINGS AIN’T LOOKIN’ GOOD FOR ANY OF US•
especially if this last week/month/year are any indication
I’ve been a history/politics nerd most of my life, but for at least the last 15 years I’ve been keeping eyes on darker corners of the web where far-right dickholes, like these mass shooters, roam and where white power dweebs openly discuss their hopes & plans for an ethnostate and the genocide it will take to get there in what they think are “safe spaces”.
What was once considered taboo in run-of-the-mill conservative circles has become normalized ideas & run-of-the-mill rhetoric.
Century’s old klan & fascist rhetoric are in the open again. Barely covert with spuriously worded sentiments like “I’m not saying they’re trying to replace whites, but blacks & immigrants are being used to change the voting makeup of America”.
Take it from someone who's spent too much time scraping, compiling and diggin through this shit...
it’s simply gettin’ extra fucked as the “We are the real America and everyone else is a threat to the society/youth/nation” rhetoric is becoming part & parcel of everyday discourse from talking heads & thought leaders. (see Echo’s Features of Ur-fascism #7.)
Little surprise. I could’ve/should’ve written a post 25 years ago about how adventurism in the Middle East would lead to a refugee crisis which the backlash would fuel a rising far-right movement. 15 years ago I could have mentioned how extremist ideas were being mainstreamed via website algorithms, social media bubbles, and a well-funded think-tank/media net and how most of a nation will be demonized & scapegoated as enemies/degenerates/others by a minority who think they’re the “real America” as the far-right gets into elected powerful positions in federal, state, and municipal offices.
Basically... hardened extremists push the messaging that democracy doesn’t work: “stop this steal”, “our elections are stolen”, “everything’s rigged”, “these institutions are against you”. They really, really want us to lose faith in democracy.
“There is no political solution” is a super common message found among violent & extreme actors on line and in IRL, because they want violence to be the solution.
When you have big politicians and big media figures laundering these types of narratives, especially from alternative or conspiratorial news sources, it’s not gonna be good. (also)
“Accelerationism” is the strand of thought that the current system is so corrupt that they should speed its demise through any form like violence and acts of terrorism, or celebrating natural disasters like power grids going down, because it contributes to making the state harder to govern.
They want to weaken a perceived status quo as much as possible so that it collapses and a new political order can be born that aligns with their worldview for how things should be (if overtly stated, generally something CI-esque, like a “Christian Nationalist white ethnostate”).
By increasing mainstream paranoia, people start to question whether they’re safe.
I could go on & on about historic similarities and correlations, but it seems the realization is hitting even moderate center-right pundits & politicians. So I can be slightly assuaged that the discussion has also hit a mainstream audience. Enough that an aging “let’s try making nice with the guys constantly calling me a commie” can’t ignore it and has to make the fashy-types uncomfortable for being called out for what we can all see plain as day. (I do wonder how much of this rising antisemitism & almost uniform regurgitation of Nazi-ish rhetoric has to do with almost every human that witnessed WWII no longer with us.)