As I've said, I'm presently only glancing at this site once or twice a day, because every time I do, I see something like this.
Granted this is someone I like quoting someone else I like, holding up an example of hate that really is shocking enough to be worth passing around, as we have, today, a fascist using an account advertised as a non-threatening positive pro-women account straight up posting dog-whistle advocacy for sexually assaulting women in general and suggesting a way to rationalize it. Usually they save that for the honestly branded accounts so if I'm not preaching to the choir in this case, definitely click through and see what I'm talking about.
But the thing here is, I really don't think anyone I can reach needs to have it explained that that's a hatemonger trying to drum up violence against women. And honestly,I'm pretty skeptical that anyone encountering the original message there wouldn't recognize it as the gross hate speech that it is, and like every account that posts hatemongering filth like that, literally all that account posts is wall to wall hatemongering filth.
So I ask all of us that pass around this sort of thing with shock and condemnation to really stop and ask ourselves, why are we spreading this around?
The obvious answer of course is "to raise awareness," but, raising awareness isn't a goal in and of itself. If anyone has been living under a rock and isn't aware this website is full of fascists pretending, poorly, to be cookie baking grandmothers while pushing an agenda to force all women into a nazi's idea of utopia where we're either killed or we're willing sex slaves/domestic servants, then yeah, sure, let's fill them in and get more boots on the ground, but if only as a thought exercise, let's say we've already done that. 100% of the population understands that these people are violent fascists and what their agenda is. Now what?
I feel like a lot of people assume that at such a point, the problem solves itself. There are people in charge, somewhere, who just hadn't gotten the memo, and once the memo reaches them, they'll just shut the whole thing down somehow. But, that's not happening. To the degree that they exist, the people in charge are quite aware by now (and I'm not taking that on faith), but they don't intend to do anything about it (and I'm not taking that on faith either).
So there comes a point, and from where I sit we are WAY past it, where the conversation needs to move forward from pointing out the issue towards working out an actual solution. So, let's try some of that here. There's a lot of things the average person could, in theory, do about these sorts of violent fascists that I am not going to discuss both because they are the sort of things one can get into serious legal trouble suggesting and because we're talking about a group of absolutely bloody-minded people, in many cases heavily armed, constantly fantasizing about the killing sprees they'll go on as soon as the social order breaks down enough to do so free of consequences and I'd like those fantasies to stay just such, thanks.
The main area that leaves for us to focus is going through the proper channels such that hatemongering bigots do not have large platforms with which to recruit, and do not have any form of political influence. Good news, fixing the former does a great job of addressing the latter. Bad news, like-minded fascists control most if not all of the platforms they currently have.
I know that one's a hard pill to swallow for some people, but it's true. I tossed out a bunch of sources here covering a chunk of it, but this is the reality we have to deal with. People writing hateful propaganda in newspapers don't answer to anyone but the people putting out those newspapers, and they're paying them for that content because it's what they want to run.
I'm avoiding the use of the commonly agreed upon term for the particular fascist group I am mainly discussing because Twitter has a nasty habit of frequently suspending the accounts of trans women who dare to type it, fails to suspend them over some outright illegal stuff and grants verified status to full-on out and proud hate groups. They're never going to "do the right thing" unless there's enough outside pressure on them in a very specific instance that they crack.
Youtube actively demonitizes anyone whose content seems at all LGBT+ adjacent, Google promotes the hell out of hate group sites in search results, and there are examples we can point to of how those calls are coming from inside the house, as it were.
So, don't count on any of those to fix things with sufficient awareness. They can improve things with specific pressure, but again, that's only going to work on a case by case basis, and the pressure requirements are pretty damn high. Such platforms do tend to fold immediately from any amount of government pressure (see the whole SESTA/FOSTA thing or how Twitter blocks nazi crap if you are logged in from Germany where that's required) but governments telling media hosts what they can and cannot legally post gets into the finer points of free speech issues, which isn't to say it's not workable (hate speech is not protected speech and all) but there's a whole lot of friction to push through and it's a hard fight
This is not, by the way, by any means, me saying you shouldn't bother putting constant pressure on all of the above. Please do.
But also consider other approaches there. Like, hell, start a new newspaper up. Run only factual stuff. Get some properly antifascist TV going. I'd say there's audiences who'd happily have new options there. And there's a general dearth right now of loud angry voices on the left with big platforms which is an imbalance worth fixing if only on principle.
Then we've got the other angle here, political pressure towards passing new hate-based laws. The political friction there generally works in the direction of good. Passing pointless, difficult to enforce laws just to hurt people is a big ol' pain if only in finding the right wording, generally unpopular, and hard to rationalize as a productive use of the time of anyone involved. Fascists have been gaining a lot of ground there lately, but, they're having to put an amount of work in that is only possible from people who have absolutely no life whatsoever, and if anyone were seriously countering their lobbying, they'd have a much easier time. Paying attention to when things are being proposed before councils or written into bills or being voted on is a pain, but, hell just follow Chase Strangio for that, and then just tell whoever's making the decisions that they shouldn't entertain delusional bigots.
Oh and there's another prong worth considering as a thing for all the people very much aware of the problem to focus on: Just straight up take down individual fascists one by one with proper legal challenges over the various laws they seem to violate a hell of a lot more often than anyone realizes.
Personally speaking, I am pretty damn clueless on the relevant laws, especially in the cases where the victim and perpetrator are in different countries but I'd be shocked if none of the very specific horrific lies a few big-name bigots have shared about me in print, video, live interviews, and unrelated courtroom settings don't leave them open to open and shut libel cases. And I've definitely seen people with a better handle on their legal rights make some very good progress on that front over less severe lies.
If someone who did have a decent handle on the relevant laws were to coordinate people like me with serious cases to bring (and the time to bother, which just throwing it out there, I think I've got), lawyers to actually represent them, and people looking to throw money at problems to get fees paid I don't think it'd actually be that difficult to make life come real fast and hard at enough really high profile hatemongers to pretty well shut them up and scare plenty more into watching their mouths so as not to end up in the same boat.
And for real, there are shockingly few of these people to be worried about if you ever stop and take a serious head count.
So, long rambling thread, but yeah, points to consider:
- If you're in a position to put serious pressure on platform holders and I mean in a "you're going to lose ad money/face legal issues" way apply it in regard to the hate they enable.
- If you have any legal representatives with a say in proposed hate, pick up a phone or actual pen and paper yesterday.
- Consider doing your part to make dangerous bigots actually follow the law or face consequences for breaking it.
- Put more effort into pushing other people down these paths than exposing the targets of horrific hate speech directly to that horrific hate speech because that can do more harm than good, especially this late in the game.
