Notices by Fifi Lamoura (fifilamoura@eldritch.cafe), page 3

@lzg Breath of Fire?

@lzg What a gorgeous and relevant work, thanks for sharing it. I love how the black tiles resemble burned wood and how well the whole piece captures a world on fire.

@lzg 😆 about appreciate hot girlfriend's pottery. A lot of this is about being able to think critically. In a former life I was a professional art critic when it was slightly more possible to at least partially survive as one, we all have our personal tastes and affinities but being able to think beyond that is what critical analysis is about. Though my favorite part has always been talking to people about their work and meaning. I really miss doing that, maybe I need to find a way to start doing that again for fun and also a way to talk to people about deeper issues.

@mekkaokereke He's also modeling good behaviour for his own daughter and teaching her where boundaries need to be placed. I'm impressed!

@kissane During the AIDS crisis most of what we were doing was tending and befriending. People on the outside saw the activism and there was lots of organizing among ourselves and with allies but the tend and befriend network of queer and straight people was the foundational layer. This isn't like organizing a corporate event or advertising campaign, you need to focus on care for those who need it first. There'll be plenty of work for the people who want to campaign too (as there was during the AIDS crisis) but any real movement comes out of taking emotional and physical care of each other.

Fascism in the US is just going to be more of the same but on steroids. The police will just have even more impunity and wider scope. There'll be even more deregulation. There'll be even more money poured into prisons and police, even more use of prisoners by corporations as workers. More vulnerable people will die of neglect or abuse. It's not going to be some huge rupture, just a slow capitulation and no legal recourse at all for the oppressed. The relatively privileged will get used to this, not much will change, they may even get richer and they'll be even more compliant to fit in. This is why people on the lower social rungs see the two parties as being the same. It's going to be more terrible for the poor and for minorities. Fascism usually isn't a rupture of the normal, it's a slow process of normalization that requires complicity and submission.

@ekis Generally speaking, we don't really "vote with our dollar" and tech (and other) corporations often aren't beholden to consumers at all. That's a lie capitalism told people to divert us rubes from political activism and it's entirely related to the idea that corporate PACs are "free speech" for corporations. Capitalism will not liberate us from capitalism.

@mekkaokereke Yep and the good quality research into online propaganda backs this up. But it's in the interests of lots of people who sell advertising to make everyone believe they have the power to control people. But adding fuel to a fire is easy to do, as is spreading disinformation or giving people license to be their worst selves. And because commercial social media is just advertising platforms designed to maximize engagement with ads, it's great for this purpose.

@mekkaokereke I'm sure it suppressed White voter turnout too. Just like putting Bill fucking Clinton on tour did too. And Obama scolding Black men was also very unhelpful.

@carnage4life There was also just outright denial and a refusal to listen to anyone bringing up practical and ethical problems (like thinking GDP/corporations getting rich somehow means the economy is great for everyone). Upper middle class people like to believe they're better people than they are, it's part of that particular class mythology (and, really, it's very related to Prosperity Gospel, the most American of religions even among people who believe themselves to be secular, but it's also related to education, which traditionally was one way for people of all kinds to move between classes). This is true of people of all types. Sure racism exerts itself even on "respectable" non-White people but that doesn't mean they aren't looking down on and rather desperate to seperate themselves from the poor people who look like them (White supremacy is ultimately about economic and political power). Respectability politics is very much about this. So I think it's not only an online bubble but a class bubble at work.

@mekkaokereke Quite a few states had abortion as a seperate referendum issue. As soon as that happened they lost any potential white lady secret votes for Harris. I wonder how many of those states had Republican governors? But, really, it was standing for absolutely nothing and pandering to nefarious neocons and people who would never vote for them. You can't keep promising people hope and change then not deliver.

@mekkaokereke It also wouldn't have been capitulating and pandering to fascism. @mloxton

So a lot of relatively privileged people are freaking out, White guys perhaps the most, but your lives might FEEL different but will continue relatively unchanged for quite a while, particularly if you put your head down and play along. So will everyone else's for a while. The veneer of normalcy is actually pretty crucial to fascism, particularly in the earliest stages before kleptocracies are solidly established.

Fascism isn't really a new facet of American life, it's pretty much built into the US political system, things will continue to appear normal for the privileged for a while. Make sure you use that privilege well and for more than just self preservation (and just looking after your own family isn't what I mean here, I mean using it to help those really at risk). This means risking your privilege, spending some of it on other people, because that's always been true and it's always been what's needed.

I just hope Harris winning doesn't just end up as being as shit as Starmer winning (I knew it would be shit but he's turned out to be even shittier than imagined).

@mloxton More info about White American women, sufferage and the KKK. https://19thnews.org/2020/12/first-came-suffrage-then-came-the-women-of-the-ku-klux-klan/

@mekkaokereke

@irene We're still soaking in it. Hillary Clinton called poor young Black men "super predators" back in the day yet ran for president. That's pure, uncut eugenics and race pseudoscience about genetics and babies being born evil (see also the "crack baby" hysteria of the same time period). Poverty and eugenics is applied against White people too. You believe poor people are poor because they're born stupid? Congrats, you believe in eugenics. You may want to fix that! @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@whknott I actually think it's important to preserve some of this stuff, we need to understand our past not try to erase it. Especially the horrifying stuff because the horrifying stuff is still around, race pseudoscience is still being pushed in very "esteemed" academic institutions, etc. It needs to be understood that it's a pseudoscience (the fact we still call it "race science" and not "race pseudoscience" is indicative of what a problem it still is). Erasing it only allows it to flourish in darkness. @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@whknott I mean, this thread is about how the racism involved in US feminism gets left out of the history books in the service of mythmaking so we're literally talking about history gets erased and distorted by erasing the bits about eugenics. It's clearly something quite a lot of Americans are unaware of (particularly non-intersectional feminists). @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@whknott I think there's a big difference between these things and I'm not advocating everyone read or have a copy of Mein Kampf. I'm not advocating for glorifying the past (statues of this kind are always memorializing, they're not documents, they're a form of mythmaking), I'm advocating for less mythmaking and more grappling with reality. @GramrgednAngel @mekkaokereke

@mekkaokereke People who don't really know the history of science and medicine have a very limited understanding of the role racism and eugenics played in our own nations. The general public have been sold the fiction that eugenics was something Nazis did, not us. This has also allowed race pseudoscience to reemerge in academia. The lies we tell ourselves and others poison and change us, whether it's on an individual or cultural level.