Funny events in anti-woke world

Elijin

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Did you actually read that letter? Do you understand what the situation is?

The woman, so far as we know, qualifies for the exemption. The hospital can follow procedures for that and they're good to go. The letter doesn't even say not to perform the abortion, it says not to perform an illegal abortion, elaborates on what that constitutes, and points out that nothing about the restraining order prevents them from following normal guidelines.

Instead, she went to a pro-abortion activist organization who got her in contact with an elected Democratic Judge who just sort of declared she could get an abortion. The Judge signed a temporary restraining order against the Attorney General's office telling them they cannot enforce the law in this case, while arguing that she should be exempt in the first place. That is one of the dumbest legal arguments ever conceived. A restraining order telling the state government they can't enforce a law that the judge believes isn't even being broken. This letter is "seriously guys, don't break the law, that restraining order will not protect you." Again, they can abort the pregnancy while not breaking the law, if two doctors agree that the pregnancy "threatens her life or fertility", as you say.

The whole thing is theatrics, they're trying to put together cases that could get some court somewhere to invalidate Texas law entirely. But this is one of the dumbest attempts by far. "I believe her abortion would be legal, so the state can't arrest you if you break the law" is so, so dumb.
Did you just really hope none of us actually read it?
Or did you parrot your lines from someone else, without reading it yourself?

Cause like, wow 👌 👏
 

Trunkage

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Republican candidates
-Blackrock/Larry Fink believes in climate change, and acts accordingly

Larry Fink
-'Nuh Uh I love fossil fuels.'

View attachment 10270
This is like RFK Jr claiming that Larry Fink was buying up all the houses, driving up prices

RFK Jr meant BlackStone, not BlackRock and all investment firms have bought up a whopping .3% of single family houses

Total misunderstanding of the situation
 
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Trunkage

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The fetus in question has a genetic condition that's either already killed it or will kill it soon after birth. The woman is experiencing complications that threaten her future fertility or even her life.
This is not new. There has been THOUSANDS of babies who die in thr mothers arms in the last year in Texas alone. And it's increased mother's dying. Most of this didn't happen before Roe was overturned
 

tstorm823

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Why do you think they can 'follow procedures and they're good to go'? There's nothing in that letter to that effect: the letter very clearly threatens repercussions for performing this abortion, and then disputes the idea that she qualifies for the exemption (In the fourth point) by disputing that her life is at risk and saying that without life risk, they don't have grounds.

You're rewriting their position into something far more reasonable than the one they actually expressed. What they actually expressed was a mess of threats.
You're ignoring half the words in the letter:

"potential long term implications" has the word potential, which implicitly leaves open the possibility that they can perform the abortion without those implication.
"the TRO will not insulate you from" does not mean the repercussions are inherent in performing the abortion, only that the TRO is irrelevant if they don't follow the law.

"The TRO is deficient because it fails to identify a life-threatening condition" does not dispute that she may have a threat to her life, it only states that the court order does not contain that information.

The end of the letter is exceptionally clear:
"Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment".

Democrats gave this woman a restraining order against the state of Texas specifically to bypass the requirement for judgment by medical professionals. Paxton wrote to tell them to just do it by the book. The pro-abortion side wants this to be a case to nullify exception-based bans in the state, Paxton wants them to just do the paperwork to make their case moot, nobody is on the side of "make the woman die from sepsis with a dead fetus in here".
How does it feel to be wrong about everything all the time?
How does it feel to make a jab so petty only Brawlman likes it?
Did you just really hope none of us actually read it?
To be fair, it's not clear most of you can read most of those words.
 

crimson5pheonix

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You're ignoring half the words in the letter:

"potential long term implications" has the word potential, which implicitly leaves open the possibility that they can perform the abortion without those implication.
"the TRO will not insulate you from" does not mean the repercussions are inherent in performing the abortion, only that the TRO is irrelevant if they don't follow the law.

"The TRO is deficient because it fails to identify a life-threatening condition" does not dispute that she may have a threat to her life, it only states that the court order does not contain that information.

The end of the letter is exceptionally clear:
"Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment".

Democrats gave this woman a restraining order against the state of Texas specifically to bypass the requirement for judgment by medical professionals. Paxton wrote to tell them to just do it by the book. The pro-abortion side wants this to be a case to nullify exception-based bans in the state, Paxton wants them to just do the paperwork to make their case moot, nobody is on the side of "make the woman die from sepsis with a dead fetus in here".

How does it feel to make a jab so petty only Brawlman likes it?

To be fair, it's not clear most of you can read most of those words.
A material goes to A listers, not illiterates.
 
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crimson5pheonix

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In the petition, Paxton asked the Texas Supreme Court to rule quickly, saying that “each hour [the temporary restraining order] remains in place is an hour that Plaintiffs believe themselves free to perform and procure an elective abortion.”
“Nothing can restore the unborn child’s life that will be lost as a result,” the filing said.
For the deaf in the back, it is not about bureaucracy, but Paxton's own political grandstanding and his willingness to kill other humans for political clout.
 
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Silvanus

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You're ignoring half the words in the letter:

"potential long term implications" has the word potential, which implicitly leaves open the possibility that they can perform the abortion without those implication.
"the TRO will not insulate you from" does not mean the repercussions are inherent in performing the abortion, only that the TRO is irrelevant if they don't follow the law.

"The TRO is deficient because it fails to identify a life-threatening condition" does not dispute that she may have a threat to her life, it only states that the court order does not contain that information.

The end of the letter is exceptionally clear:
"Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment".

Democrats gave this woman a restraining order against the state of Texas specifically to bypass the requirement for judgment by medical professionals. Paxton wrote to tell them to just do it by the book. The pro-abortion side wants this to be a case to nullify exception-based bans in the state, Paxton wants them to just do the paperwork to make their case moot, nobody is on the side of "make the woman die from sepsis with a dead fetus in here".
Absolutely nowhere here does the letter indicate that they could proceed with the procedure if they followed the existing rules. It is solely concerned with warning then away from the approach they're taking. It says zilch about how things would go outside of that approach.

He categorically did not say "do it by the book". Any honest reader will come away with the message Paxton obviously intended: don't do it.

How does it feel to make a jab so petty only Brawlman likes it?
Hmm. Thing is, a jab like this only shows that you give a shit about how many likes a post gets, which is far and away the pettiest thing here. Worse for the fact you didn't get any.
 
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tstorm823

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Absolutely nowhere here does the letter indicate that they could proceed with the procedure if they followed the existing rules.
"Nothing in the TRO compels you to waive your hospital's long-standing policies for determining whether a patient, including Ms. Cox, qualifies for the medical exception to Texas abortion laws."

That sentence means "Follow your hospital's policies for determining whether she qualifies".
Hmm. Thing is, a jab like this only shows that you give a shit about how many likes a post gets, which is far and away the pettiest thing here. Worse for the fact you didn't get any.
I don't think you understand how likes here work most of the time. There are people like us who use the button as a message of genuine approval for a thoughtful response. Then there's the peanut gallery that use it as a circlejerk button. If you write out a long, thoughtful post, people who know how to read may like it sometimes. If you say "conservatives have small penises" and get fewer than 3 likes, it means the peanut gallery doesn't like you.
 

Eacaraxe

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The only people I've ever seen talking about the continuing over-reliance on minstrel show archetypes in media are black people themselves, who still tend to be on the margins of pop culture discourse. Where are you getting it from?
I'm getting it from black people themselves, who by your own logic should STFU and be happy they're getting any representation at all, apparently.

The bots totally real people posting manufacturered PR lines on TwiX about how Marvel's Warvengers XXIII: The Last Force Awakendgame gave them "all the feels" with a one second background shot of dudes making eye contact don't give a shit about mammies or representation of black people because they either don't exist, are paid shills or extremely stupid. They're easily ignored.
At least, until one of these pop culture media outlets link and publish the tweets, with headlines like "real fans push back against bigoted trolls attacking tentpole media franchise!". While simultaneously posting tweets that rightfully ought to be just as easily ignored, from the minority of actual bigots whilst claiming they're representative of all forthcoming criticism. Then, it's pretty fuckin' hard to ignore.

Especially when real criticism of these works gets conveniently marginalized.

Like, it's kind of convenient timing that James Somerton...
lmao, I'ma stop you right there. We "anti-woke" folks have been telling you for literal years Somerton was completely full of shit, especially since the grooming allegations came out. Hell, here's a thread on this very forum in which I said as much,


Me! said:
The phenomenon isn't exclusive to white guys. It's just that it takes a certain kind of personality to be a YT outrage peddler/crowdfunding grifter, and you're more aware of the personality tics indicative of this sort with white guys, particularly those of...let's just say, certain political dispositions.

I mean, Destiny, Vaush, and Hbomberguy pull this exact same shtick right down to the letter, but it's interesting you mentioned those you did but not any of those three. Why might that be?
Now you should ask yourself who around here has been defending him and his ilk for years, up to and including claims of grooming or sexual predation are prototypical right-wing smears.

Funny how we have an established track record of being right more often than not, but we're apparently the ones lacking credibility.

Queer people can't afford to live in this world you seem to live in where media is either completely above criticism or completely unacceptable.
The irony is someone does that, but it ain't us. What happens nowadays if you admit to liking Harry Potter nowadays, or patronize Harry Potter content?

You can like something or recognize its importance and still politically critique it, especially if the alternative is living in a world with basically no media.
"It's okay to like problematic things!"

You know, so long as you don't speak about it. And if and only if that "problematic" content is by authors not yet unpersoned. Or, if that work sufficiently meets predetermined and ever-shifting nebulous qualitative standards that its "problematic" elements can be overlooked.

That sounds like a recipe for living your life in perpetual misery and disappointment.
Nah, just follow your own advice and stop patronizing shit.

It's a flower-cross, representing the flower from which Bliss is made. It's actually a pretty cool little bit of visual design.
See also, the Manson family and their use of psychedelic drugs to recruit and indoctrinate. You know, because Faith is an expy of Charles Manson, taking us right back to the whole "cult supergroup" thing.

Some people appear to have suggested that its a visual reference to the iron cross, which is a German military symbol sometimes adopted by white supremacists (although it's also still used by the German military today).
"Sometimes" in about the same way the US "sometimes" liberates oil-rich countries.

Frankly, it looks way more similar to a cross moline, which is a common heraldic cross design, although I also don't think that's remotely intentional.
You know damn well the iron cross derives from the heraldic cross being it was the symbol of the Teutonic Order, which is precisely why the Nazi party and contemporary white supremacists continue to use the symbol to this day. That reason being, it's evocative of the Crusades.

At this point you're trying to Chewbacca defense, hoping I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

It also, as you say, looks a lot like the scientology cross.
Yes as a matter of fact it does, which is noteworthy given Scientology's distinct trend for white supremacism.

They apparently consulted "cult experts" for this game so there is some effort to be authentic. My problem is that I'm not sure those connections ever go beyond the purely aesthetic.
We'll get there shortly.

Showing in this case would be characterizing your "white supremacist" characters by having them act in ways that exhibit their beliefs and attitudes, not giving them the aesthetics and refusing to elaborate further.
You mean like for example, kidnapping and indoctrinating people, killing dissidents, stealing and taking land by force, planning large-scale terrorist attacks up to and including the use of stolen nuclear weapons (i.e. the plot of Turner Diaries)?

You know, all those things about which you said,

What is Far Cry 5 actually saying about extreme right wing beliefs beyond "gee, it sure does suck when cults murder people?" That's not a clever or interesting point, it's not worthy of the seriousness of the topics the game makes an occasional effort to aesthetically reference. If the choice is between preaching and saying nothing, then I'll still take preachy any day.
Odd position to say, "they only do bad things without context", but when that context is explained to you, now it's "where's the bad things they do?".

I did my undergraduate degree in religious studies in the mid-2000s. I wrote a thesis on new religious movements at a time when much of the writing and theory on NRMs was from the 90s and heavily rooted in the moral panic around "cults" that evolved out of events like the Waco siege. I have friends today who are still in that field and still writing about the role of fringe religious movements in the modern far-right.
Well if we're comparing dick sizes now, my degrees (note the plural) are in history and political science, and my minor was in religious studies. Approximately 40% of the credit-hours towards my political science major were spent in a series of 500/600-level interdisciplinary courses which I took for 400-level credit on the media and propaganda, the history of terror in the modern era, the methodology and strategic logic of terrorism, and right-wing extremism in the United States in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. I'm acknowledged as a contributor in three (last I checked) published scholarly articles by friends and colleagues and two more by my professors on the topic, and that doesn't include the two master's theses and one doctoral dissertation in which I'm also acknowledged as a contributor.

I say this because I feel forced to point out that a lot of the conclusions that came out of that era were just bad. They were, in many cases, highly influenced and driven by right-wing evangelical counter-cult movements, who were able to set themselves up as authorities and whom a lot of credulous people believed for some reason.
"Counter-cult" my ass. Don't mince words, and speak the truth of the matter: those are cults. They just happen to be cults with vastly bigger budgets and readier media access than whackadoodles living in great plains states, who (correctly) perceived the events of the early '90s as symbolic of a federal crackdown on cults, and made the strategic decision to seize control of the anti-cult narrative.

"Cults" were never really the problem.
Only if you're looking exclusively at religious cults, and not political, irreligious doomsday, or personality cults. That's the rub; those other forms all exist, and in the '90s were all interconnected to varying degrees.

The people supporting and propping up the far right were and are not the Branch Davidians or the WBC...
The Branch Davidians didn't have to support right-wing extremists directly. Right-wing extremists saw what happened to the Branch-Davidians, and with Ruby Ridge as a preceding incident, realized they were likely to be next. And, to be frank, they were right.

...they're the same fundamentalist evangelicals who set themselves up as "cult experts" or "deprogrammers" and who everyone inexplicably believed because cults were scary and of course noone within an established religious institution would ever do anything wrong!
And again, you're discounting that evangelical Christianity is, itself, a disparate collection of (doomsday and political) cults. That Christianity shows up as a running theme in so many of them should be a bit of a giveaway.

But you are misrepresenting the criticism it got as people not understanding the references. Everyone got the references, it's just that references are a really cheap way to pretend to say something while actually saying very little.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying people misunderstood the references; I'm saying they're so ignorant of the source material, they failed to recognize there were references at all. Because they're people who have absolutely no idea what they were talking about, wouldn't have understood there were references unless Peggies were walking around with tiki torches or some shit, and just wanted "orange man bad" repeated back to them to confirm biases.

We're talking about people so fundamentally unaware of what right-wing extremism actually is and looks like, they were too busy internet slap-fighting and clout-whoring over the main antagonists being black, to notice the entire mission series where you literally burn crosses.
 

Silvanus

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"Nothing in the TRO compels you to waive your hospital's long-standing policies for determining whether a patient, including Ms. Cox, qualifies for the medical exception to Texas abortion laws."

That sentence means "Follow your hospital's policies for determining whether she qualifies".
Indeed, and says nothing about how that would go.
 

Hades

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And as expected, the supreme court is going to try and kill her.
I think in cases like these its mostly about the right wanting to give a message about how they truly think about people that question them.

I think they stuck with Kavanaugh partially because they felt woman had gotten far too uppity during Me2 and that this was a nice change to stick it to them. And in this case I think its Christian fundamentalists being beyond fed up that their draconian policies get questioned even after stacking the supreme court into backing them. As such they sought a case to make an example out of and ensured they'd be as cruel as possible about it.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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I think in cases like these its mostly about the right wanting to give a message about how they truly think about people that question them.

I think they stuck with Kavanaugh partially because they felt woman had gotten far too uppity during Me2 and that this was a nice change to stick it to them. And in this case I think its Christian fundamentalists being beyond fed up that their draconian policies get questioned even after stacking the supreme court into backing them. As such they sought a case to make an example out of and ensured they'd be as cruel as possible about it.
While that could be very well be a part of the reason behind kavanaugh push after a certain point, the hard-line conservative court stacking is basically all down to the federalist society engineering this takeover for years already now.


Is quite a long article so i understand people's aversion to it, but it thoroughly goes over what and how the federalist society has been enacting this, and perhaps how hopeless the current available options are for the left to even hold them officially accountable, let alone stop or stem their anti-democratic takeover.

Follow up article;


The news of the investigation comes as the nonprofit that was a subject of the complaint quietly relocated in recent weeks from the capital area to Texas, according to paperwork filed in Virginia and Texas. For nearly 20 years the nonprofit, now known as The 85 Fund, had been incorporated in Virginia.

Gabe Shoglow-Rubenstein, Schwalb’s communications director, declined to confirm or deny the existence of the probe, including whether the attorney general took any action in response to the complaint.

Schwalb, who took office in January, has a background in tax law and served as a trial attorney in the tax division of the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton.

Best known as Donald Trump’s White House “court whisperer,” Leo played a behind-the-scenes role in the nominations of all three of the former president’s Supreme Court justices and promoted them through his multi-billion-dollar network of nonprofits. Trump chose his three Supreme Court picks, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, from a list drawn up by Leo. More recently, Leo was the beneficiary of a $1.6 billion contribution, believed to be the biggest political donation in U.S. history.

He is also the co-chair of the Federalist Society, the academic arm of the conservative legal movement, for which he worked in various capacities for decades while building his donor base.

While Leo grants few interviews, in mid-July he was featured in a two-part podcast with the Maine Wire, a conservative news organization. Asked why he’s become a “lightening rod for criticism,” Leo cited his commitment to “defend the Constitution” and spoke about the “long history” of dark money in U.S. politics.

“It’s not to hide in the shadows,” he said. “It’s because we want ideas judged by their own moral and intellectual force."

He did not address any allegations of potential misuse of nonprofit tax law.

Real estate and other public records illustrate that the lifestyle of Leo and a handful of his allies took a lavish turn in the course of the making of the current ultraconservative court, beginning in 2016, the year he was tapped as an unpaid adviser to Trump. Citing the report, a progressive watchdog group called on the IRS and D.C. Attorney General a few weeks later to investigate whether the groups may be violating their tax-exempt status by “siphoning” assets or income for personal use.

Anthony Burke, a public affairs specialist with the IRS, declined to comment. “Under the federal tax law, federal employees cannot disclose tax return information,” he said.

The Leo-aligned nonprofit The 85 Fund — which is registered as a tax-exempt charity — paid tens of millions of dollars to a public relations firm in Virginia which he co-chairs in the two years since he joined the firm, known as CRC Advisors.

The watchdog complaint alleges the total amount of money that flowed from Leo-aligned nonprofits to his for-profit firms was $73 million over six years beginning in 2016.

“There are questions as to whether Leo-affiliated nonprofits have diverted substantial portions of their income and assets, directly or indirectly, to the personal benefit of Leonard Leo,” read the Campaign for Accountability’s complaint.

“Such payments were generally listed as made in exchange for alleged consulting, research, public relations, or similar services. However CFA has reasonable questions about whether those alleged services were actually rendered at all or, if services were rendered, whether the payments made were substantially in excess of fair market value,” said the complaint, which covers the period between 2016 and 2020.

POLITICO reported that a total of $43 million flowed to Leo’s company over two years and that the bulk of it came from The 85 Fund, a nonprofit run by his allies which has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade to promote Trump’s Supreme Court picks, file briefs before the court and, more recently, used an alias to push for voting restrictions and accuse Democrats of cheating in the 2020 election.
 
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Terminal Blue

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I'm getting it from black people themselves, who by your own logic should STFU and be happy they're getting any representation at all, apparently.
That's not what I said at all.

The point is, you don't get to decide how angry other people should be. You can point out that media depictions of black people are rooted in minstrel show stereotypes, but you're not the one being stereotyped so your opinion doesn't really matter. It's possible to appreciate or enjoy characters rooted in those stereotypes, it's possible to be the type of person being stereotyped and still find the depiction enjoyable, comforting or flattering. It's possible to enjoy weak or tokenistic representation because it has personal meaning to you, while also being aware of what it is. It's kind of up to the individual how angry they want to be about it.

Just stay in your lane. It isn't too hard.

Then, it's pretty fuckin' hard to ignore.
Try it.

Honestly, it's not as hard as you think. The problem is that often the "real criticisms" are just kind of shit, obvious attempts to conceal bad faith criticism or demands that other people (people who are actually affected) should get angry, which we all know is bullshit because it's very obvious that we're only allowed to get angry when something makes you angry.

lmao, I'ma stop you right there. We "anti-woke" folks have been telling you for literal years Somerton was completely full of shit, especially since the grooming allegations came out.
Generally, it's more effective if the post you link to actually evidences the thing you're saying.

But let's deal with the big issue here. You seem to be struggling with the concept of individuality. People do not typically share a single set of thoughts, ideas or opinions based on the imaginary social categories you feel they belong to. Black people do not have some single, monolithic hive consciousness regarding media stereotyping. Some people will react differently because they have individual experiences which inform their individual perspective. People who disagree with you do not all have the same opinions, consume the same media and we certainly don't have any kind of shared responsibility. I forgot who James Somerton was until a few days ago. I'm using him as an example because his content is shit, and yet he still does the thing you claim noone does.

Incidentally, credibility requires the assumption of good faith.

The irony is someone does that, but it ain't us. What happens nowadays if you admit to liking Harry Potter nowadays, or patronize Harry Potter content?
Nothing.

Nothing will happen to you. Noone will kick down your door or attack you in the street. You will not be sent to a reeducation camp. People might be angry with you, because you're financially supporting someone who is materially harming them, but again, you don't get to decide how angry other people should be. You aren't actually affected in any way.

Plenty of people have talked about their complex feelings towards Harry Potter, about how important it has been to them personally even as they feel alienated from its creator. We've gone through this process before with people like Orson Scott Card. There's plenty of cultural space in which to have those discussions. What people have a problem with is the insistence that liking Harry Potter is fine and trans people are just getting upset over nothing. Again, because this may as well be the golden rule, you don't get to decide how angry someone else is about something which doesn't affect you.

See also, the Manson family and their use of psychedelic drugs to recruit and indoctrinate.
Psychedelics have been used for religious purposes since before human history.

It's very difficult to use psychedelics as a tool of control because they're extremely unpredictable and also non-addictive. Aum Shinrikyo were the only cult I can think of that deliberately tried to use psychadelics in this way, mostly as a way to enhance torture or get people to have religious experiences. The Manson family used psychadelics because they were hippies.

Faith being based on Charles Manson would be pretty tasteless and frankly a bit disgusting. If anything she is a representation of Manson's followers, who were mostly vulnerable women whom he recruited at an extremely young age. Manson's philosophy was openly misogynistic and viewed women as possessions. However, her backstory as a recovered drug addict is also reminiscent of another cult, specifically the one everyone conveniently forgets.

Synanon is probably the most important and influential cult in US history. It's incredibly influential on the thought and philosophy of the political right when it comes to treating things like addiction and mental health problems, and yet most people probably don't even recognize the name.. it's almost like it's embarassing for people who believe you can just bully people out of being drug addicts to be reminded that that kind of coercive control can also convince people to hurt others.

SYou know damn well the iron cross derives from the heraldic cross being it was the symbol of the Teutonic Order, which is precisely why the Nazi party and contemporary white supremacists continue to use the symbol to this day.
The iron cross is a national emblem of Germany. Again, it is still used by the German military today. Previously, it was a common national emblem of Prussia, because the state of Prussia was a direct evolution of the Teutonic state and retained much of its symbolism. The Nazis didn't adopt it because it was reminiscent of the crusades, it was the existing emblem of the German military. It also is or was common in other subcultures which Nazis tend to recruit from or be represented in, such as heavy metal and biker culture, where it's often just used as a cool design without any implied meaning.

Again though. None of this is terribly important because the flower cross isn't particularly evocative of an iron cross.

You mean like for example, kidnapping and indoctrinating people, killing dissidents, stealing and taking land by force, planning large-scale terrorist attacks up to and including the use of stolen nuclear weapons (i.e. the plot of Turner Diaries)?
Firstly, the stolen nuclear weapon stuff is fan theory. The basic on paper reading of the ending is that the collapse actually happened, and this is never explicitly contradicted.

Secondly, a multi-racial militia doing bad things to random people does not characterize them as white supremacists.

Well if we're comparing dick sizes now
All you are doing here, I hope you realize, is inflating the expectations you are currently failing to meet.

The point was to draw a distinction between two things that should be very obviously separate. The first is the reality of what actually goes on inside religious movements, and the second is the public moral panic around "cults". Far Cry 5 is based on the latter. It's not really saying anything insightful about real movements or groups because it only ever engages in surface-level references to the popular imagination of these things. It can't even have them be racist, because that might upset people.

"Counter-cult" my ass. Don't mince words, and speak the truth of the matter: those are cults.
The term "cult" has no clear definition. It was popularized by the counter-cult movement specifically as a way to demonize the groups they targeted and distance them from "real" or "legitimate" religion. Deciding what is and isn't a cult is, frankly, a useless exercise. I'm only using the term because NRM is clunky.

And again, you're discounting that evangelical Christianity is, itself, a disparate collection of (doomsday and political) cults.
Okay. But evangelical Christianity represents a quarter of the US population, so why the fuck is it so important to pretend that the Branch Davidians or the Manson Family are some crucial piece of the far-right puzzle? They just aren't. People are fascinated by the mythology that has built up around these groups. People love the aesthetic of the new age movement, the idea of the supernaturally charismatic cult leader, the fear that "brainwashing" can turn ordinary people into mindless zombies. It's a cool story, but it's just a story. The reality is extremely mundane. Coercive control is an ordinary part of our lives, and it appears in religious and political institutions as much as anywhere else.
 
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XsjadoBlayde

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A uniquely British hue of radicalisation from one of the old guard members of Dragon's Den telly show.



Annie Kelly takes us on a road trip to Cressbrook, Derbyshire, where a pilled community of wannabe farmers have somehow purchased land within the Peak District National Park. The group is led by former reality television star Rachel Elnaugh, an entrepreneur who appeared on the BBC television show “Dragon’s Den.” How will the residents of Cressbrook take to a group of strangers who fully intend to turn their cherished landscapes into an ‘apocalypse-ready’ farm? Find out in part one of this two part saga brought to you by our beloved UK host.