Tag: history

God Deliver Me From People Who “Love The Victorian Era”

and can’t tell the difference between Edwardian and Georgian and think the Victorian era was in the 18th century.

Like I’m not a snob about it, but if you’re writing about it, a tiny little bit of research won’t kill you, I promise.

Also just because you like the “Victorian Aesthetic” (which you don’t even understand) doesn’t mean you like the Victorian era which was an era of horrific poverty slavery, child labor, colonialism, mass poisoning and general horror and misery.

Why I Believe In Humanizing Monsters

Not because I want to show “their softer side”, not because I want them to be forgivable, not because I want you to see “oh they could be normal and nice sometimes” but because I want you to know how many people are capable of committing atrocities 

Monsters are what happens when you give your bigoted fucking uncle who has cutesy nicknames for you and your sister and brings you candy whenever he sees you is put in charge of shit.

Monsters are what happens when the means become the ends, when your original ends were your only possible justification.

Monsters can be idealistic.  They don’t have to be cynical opportunists.  They can mean it when they talk about lofty ideals.

They don’t have hooves or smell of sulphur, they don’t go “MWAHAHAHAHAHA”.  They’re very, terribly… monstrously human.  It’d be easier if they spent every waking moment kicking puppies and tripping old ladies.  But they don’t, not the most dangerous kind.

The dangerous ones are the ones who have a “softer side”, the dangerous ones are the ones who smile and play with model trains with their kids, the dangerous ones are the ones that are “nice guys”, the dangerous ones are the ones you could have a pleasant drink with.

And that is why it is vital to see the humanity of monsters, not to make us sympathetic to them, but to remind us of the evil a person who loves their dog and makes bad puns can do, to remind us that the greatest evil usually comes wrapped in normalcy and nice manners; to remind us that monsters can be one on one, likable, lovable even, that they can be idealistic or well intentioned; to remind us that they don’t swirl their capes or twirl their mustaches.

Because only ONLY if we remember these facts will we have a chance of spotting evil before it can commit unspeakable atrocities.  If we don’t remember evil takes vacation photos and plays monopoly with its friends we’ll never see it coming.

TW: CSA  What the fuck was going on in the 60s/70s?

What was going on in the late 60s/70s that allowed for like the 14 year old “baby groupies” to be a celebrated phenomenon, for Foucault (History of Sexuality I p. 27, 31, lots more  ) and Andrea Dworkin (Woman Hating 190-192 ) and Allan Ginsberg (noted for marching with NAMBLA) and Pat Califa (Public Sex contains an essay opposing age of consent laws) and Germaine Greer (The Beautiful Boy seriously read about that it’s FUCKED UP, also she advocated a bunch of other horrible shit but let’s focus on the pedophilia for now) and the International Spartacist tendency and probably a LOT more theorists/groups I haven’t read/heard of to say “it’s okay to fuck kids” in public and be prominant parts of the left/politically relevent/anything other than totally beyond the pale and not okay?  

And like I mean I don’t think we live in a society that handles CSA well by any means but like pedophiles are pretty well and thoroughly loathed by the vast majority of people.  They get murdered in prison.  People protest when one moves into the neighborhood.  A lot of people’d like to straight up murder them and like most relevant to my point, you’d be thrown out of… pretty much anywhere for saying the stuff these people said, and like that seems very much like the sensible response to me.  You shouldn’t listen to people who say it’s okay to molest children, that seems pretty obvious to me, and hopefully all of you.

So like how did we have a cultural moment where the radical left was like “you know, maybe it’s not only okay to fuck kids, but the radical, politically conscious thing to do”?  Like what was happening?  How did this exist?  How was there a time where Andrea Dworkin could say that “Curling irons are inherently oppressive (woman hating page 115), but adults having sexual interactions with children is an enlightening and positive thing”?  WHAT THE FUCK?  WHAT WAS HAPPENING WITH POLITICS IN THE 60S AND 70S?
HOW?  WHY?  CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON?

Also like if you’re a leftist in general or a US leftist in particular

You actually need to know about what the FBI did to the RCP/RU, because that shit was just… fuckin’ over the top.

Like they had informants in the organization from the time it had 20 members.  They were using sophisticated tactics to foment splits between them and other organizations and doing everything they could to create tensions and problems within the org.  They were even distributing subtly altered versions of their lit to discredit them.

They were doing nothing violent or illegal at the time.  The FBI showed sophisticated grasp of leftist rhetoric and ideology and was masterful at using that against them.

From what I understand, this is still happening and it’s scary.  I’m not a Maoist, but like their tactics were so unscrupulous and intense it’s like DAMN.

adeptus-astarteej:

It’s really depressing how Labor Day has gone from “give laborers a day off” to “give white collar office workers and executives a day off but make retail laborers work so that executives can get a latte on their day off”

nah what really sucks is labor day being founded to stop the radical shit that laborers kept doing on international labor day (May day) and the riots commemorating the hanging of the Haymarket people