i bring a sort of “you should maybe interrogate your so-called ‘preferences’ to make sure they’re not literal textbook examples of severe unconscious bias” vibe that my woke gay friends dont really like
go out and fuck someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to
go out and date someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to
You’re Not Allowed To Be Gay Anymore
what this post DOES mean
if you just ‘prefer’ to avoid majority black areas of your city
if you just ‘prefer’ to read, write, think, and talk about men
if you just ‘prefer’ to socialize with people you (perceive as) your assigned birth sex
if you just ‘prefer’ to exclusively watch white-directed movies, read white-written books, listen to white-authored music
if you just unconsciously perceive men as more authoritative/competent and ‘prefer’ to be spoken to by them
this is a post about acknowledging unconscious bias. it is not a post about dating. please stop coming into my inbox and accusing me of rape apologism and telling me to kill myself. thank you
there's been this romanticization of radicalization on the left for at least the past 5 years but probably closer to 10 that i think started with people being like "okay, if you think UBI is radical leftism, then sure, i'm a radical" but over the years has slid into just unironically embracing political extremism and violence
seeing people say "what radicalized you?" become this seeming call of righteousness has been so strange. "human empathy radicalized me" i've seen a number of times, and i'm gonna be honest if you are radicalized i'm not sure that's because of empathy.
to be radicalized is to become more extreme in your beliefs. hope may be a radical act in times where it can feel like we are on a path that leads to despair, but to hope for better, to believe we can do better and continue the work to make the future better for those who come after us is not extremism. as the world bends more toward conservatism i am not more extreme in my hope, i hold onto hope with the stubbornness of one who will not be moved from my position: the future is always coming, and we have it within us to make it better than our today through kindness, understanding, and refusing the siren's call of the tool that is dehumanization.
extremism leads to violence, and as we see over and over, violence only leads to more violence. to be radicalized is not a badge of honour.
I will also add that as a leftist, you need to learn the skill of de-radicalizing yourself, because at some point you WILL get hit with truly 100 percent believable propaganda, get pulled down a rabbit hole that's at best a self-righteous dead end cause and at worst connecting to the far-right pipeline based on shared hates, you WILL get scammed by a grifter or someone who is using you, etcetera. I've personally been there and done that more than once and each time has been an albeit painful learning experience for me.
Bad people exist on our side or can sneak into it with the right language. People can uptake awful ideas and internalize them. This includes outright predators (just look at Cesar Chavez for example, or Hakim Bey, or that guy that led the PSL). This includes engagement grifters who learned that rage and fear = clicks, and state propagandists from everywhere in the world (if you think the US is the ONLY propaganda machine, you'll be sadly disappointed and likely drawn in by whoever has the loudest and most strident propaganda against it). This includes people who've let their ethics/morals be determined by community vibe rather than a nuanced understanding of how the issue affects your own ethical principles and if it even does. This even can include you, yourself.
You need to be able to step back, look at yourself, look at the people you've found yourself surrounded with and be "this is too much, this has gone too far, this is ridiculous, this reminds me of a cult/the far right/whatever, and most importantly, this is hurting actual people, not just an abstract wider harm or making someone feel Offended." You also have to develop the skillset of abandoning binary thinking and going both "you are 95 percent correct but 5 percent wrong, but I can overlook that five percent because it's a nonissue in a wider perspective" and "you are 95 percent correct, but you are actively spreading bigotry/disinformation or doing harm on a personal level, and that is an absolute dealbreaker even if you're correct."
And you have to be capable of doing this even if it can make you lose said friends, even if it can make you seen as a pariah, even if it hurts to feel like you're the only wrong one, you're the shitlib/lazy person/wrong while everyone else is the True And Pure and Correct Way you just can't live up to (in fact, these feelings or this actually happening is a screaming red flag that you NEED to pay attention to)
You also need to try to keep friends who DON'T all agree on That One Issue or who like you for you as a person and not just what you can do for them, because that makes leaving an abusive situation or being misled easier.
If your entire leftist experience is ONLY one specific community (especially a hyperspecific one of "we're the BESTEST and MOST CORRECT") WIDEN THAT EXPERIENCE yesterday. Get to actually know leftists who are "lesser" in your mind not as conversion projects but to see why they AREN'T all sold on (for example) a specific form of theory, why anyone who does/doesn't subscribe to a specific view of the body/nature/how one interacts with it, does or doesn't like a specific media or art style, what the most urgent issue is, or literally any other internal culture war issue that feels like the be-all-and-end-all issue thinks the way they do without judgment.
This is important for staying grounded for two reasons: it provides you with a community on which you can fall if you, on evaluating the issue yourself, decide you're out of step with your group/friends/online circle and do find yourself Rejected and it also reminds you that we are all human beings with both limited knowledge and yet wide, varied lived experience. That you CAN be wrong and that is okay, that changing your mind isn't a sign of weakness but of getting better information or a wider perspective, etc.
I do not agree with veganism as a moral standard. If it is your personal moral stance, that is fine. If you think humans eating meat is inherently immoral, I don’t want to deal with you, you’re hopeless. Vegan ideology behaves more like a sect of evangelical Christianity than a dietary choice.
Veganism is better for the environment, but claiming that it's a morally superior choice ignores cultural and economic factors that make people eat animal products.
It is not inherently better for the environment. That is the thing. When you begin trying to explain that local, sustainably sourced animal protein is better for the environment than imported plant proteins that are farmed 3,500 miles away using slave labor, they start tuning you out. Down is better for the environment than polyester stuffing, leather is better for the environment than pleather. We should work on making animal agricultural practices more sustainable instead of trying to shame everyone into eating plant products that are also farmed unethically and unsustainably.
Veganism - vegetarianism, even - is only viable for
Wealthy people
People who live in a very small part of the world that produces enough protein-based plants year round to sustain the locals.
For everyone else, it's a diet based on colonialism and imports. The ancient nordic people were not omnivores because they disdained plants as real food; they were omnivores because THERE ARE NO EDIBLE PLANTS IN WINTER.
Repeat for desert regions that have several months of "it's too hot and dry for plants to feed people and still survive themselves" and rocky coastline areas with "if you don't eat fish & eggs, you won't get any protein because there aren't enough seeds or nuts and you can't grow things that produce them."
We do live in a society where most people can afford to be vegetarian. We have plenty of imported plants, including protein-heavy plants. But locavore beats the hell out of herbivore for sustainability and ethical environmentalism.
On Saturday, my phone showed me Ro Khanna, standing in the West Bank, announcing that the IDF had detained him. I study attention for a living. The Tel Aviv Institute exists because my colleagues and I believe you can learn more about antisemitism from engagement data than from statements of concern. So when the Khanna story landed, I did what I always do. I scrolled back a week.
On Monday, Khanna was calling on Graham Platner to quit the Maine Senate race. He had rallied with Platner during the campaign. Platner is the candidate with a tattoo widely understood to be a Nazi symbol, which he says he never recognized as one and has since covered, and who was accused last week of rape by a former girlfriend. He calls the allegation categorically false. The Maine Democratic Party’s executive director called it credible. By Wednesday, Platner had suspended his campaign, and Khanna was standing in Khirbet Zanuta. By Saturday, Khanna was posting that settlers with American-made rifles had held him and that soldiers had sided with them. A fundraising email went out shortly after the post. He told The New York Times it was unwise to detain long-shot presidential candidates, and told Reuters the trip had left him more resolved to consider running in 2028.
Parts of his account are contested. The IDF says its soldiers dispersed the settlers and reopened the road. Israeli police say the group had entered a closed military zone. But masked, armed men did block a congressman’s bus; a New York Times photographer witnessed it. Settler violence in the West Bank is real and deserves condemnation from anyone who claims to care about Israel’s future. The incident happened. What interests me is the week that led up to it. Khanna began it tied to a collapsing campaign and ended it as a wronged man with a viral clip and a donation link.
Once you see the shape of that week, you see it everywhere.
I had never heard of Kneecap until footage surfaced of a band member holding a Hezbollah flag while, prosecutors said, chanting “up Hamas, up Hezbollah.” The terror charge collapsed before trial, thrown out because it was filed a day late and without the required sign-off. The career did the opposite of collapsing. Hundreds of fans stood outside a London courthouse for the hearings, and one woman told a reporter she took a day off work just to be there. In the week the charge was announced, the band advertised a surprise London club show with tickets they said would be gone in minutes. They were. A courtroom is an expensive thing to book as a promoter, and they got theirs free.
I did not know Bob Vylan existed until June 2025, when the duo’s frontman led a Glastonbury crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF,” live on the BBC. The punishment arrived fast: dropped by their agency, US visas revoked, pulled from a festival, a police investigation. Then it evaporated. The investigation closed in December for insufficient evidence. The frontman said in October he would do it again tomorrow, “twice on Sundays.” This week, the duo announced a defamation suit against the BBC, represented by the same Belfast solicitor who won a case for Kneecap. Eighteen months ago, they were a footnote. Today, they are an international free-speech cause with a High Court docket, and the scandal is the only reason anyone outside their scene knows their name.
Greta Thunberg owned 2019. By 2025, the climate movement had slipped out of the news cycle and taken its most famous face with it. Then she boarded a boat to Gaza, was intercepted by Israel, and was deported in front of the world’s cameras. She has been in the headlines ever since. Susan Sarandon’s agency dropped her in November 2023 after she told a rally that Jews were getting “a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country,” remarks she later called a terrible mistake. The apology drew a fraction of the coverage. The relevance stayed. Lizzo spent 2023 and 2024 fighting harassment lawsuits brought by her own dancers, allegations she denies. In March 2024, she posted that she quit, a statement she later softened. Six weeks after that post, she was back on camera thanking the activists working against what she called genocides in Palestine, Sudan, and the Congo, and crediting them with pulling her out of a depression. The redemption arc wrote itself, and the lawsuits fell out of the conversation.
Every one of these stories turns on the same hinge word: until. A career was over, or a name meant nothing, until. And what sits on the far side of that hinge is never an album or a film. It is Israel.
Anecdotes can be cherry-picked, so here is the case where someone counted. Jackson Hinkle, a commentator who has been thrown off YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram, had 417,000 followers on X on the morning of October 7, 2023. Six months later, he had 2.5 million. The New York Times documented the surge. An Israeli research firm that sampled his new followers found he gained 1.2 million of them in the first nineteen days of the war, and that roughly 40 percent were inauthentic accounts. The Anti-Defamation League tracked five influencers in his orbit and found their combined engagement rose more than 1,070 percent in the six months after the massacre. Hinkle had already explained the business model himself, on a livestream, before any of it happened: “I do everything for the clout,” he said, adding that no one would ever see him do anything without that motive.
Or take an even more unlikely musical comeback. Macklemore had not placed a solo song on the Hot 100 since 2017. In May 2024, he released Hind’s Hall, a protest track against Israel, and within a week reached new solo career peaks on three Billboard sales charts. Forbes covered it as a comeback, in those words. He donated the proceeds to Palestinian refugees. The donation does not change the market data. Attacking Israel was the first thing in seven years that returned him to the charts.
The honest objection is sincerity. Greta may believe every word. Lizzo may be sincere, and Khanna may have been genuinely shaken. I will grant all of it, because it changes nothing. A market never asks whether the seller believes in the product. It asks whether the product sells. What the last three years have demonstrated, in the follower counts and the chart positions, is that anti-Israel positioning is the most reliable comeback vehicle in Western public life. The same vehicle carried a MAGA communist, a progressive congressman, a punk act nobody had heard of, and a pop star everyone had forgotten. Its passengers share no ideology and no audience. The one thing they share is a need for the spotlight.
I will not accuse Ro Khanna of sitting in a minibus calculating engagement. He did not need to. The calculation was finished long before he landed, and every public figure in decline can read the results. The exit from irrelevance runs through Israel, and it stays open because it keeps paying. Platforms reward the rage with reach. Institutions fold after a single news cycle, and audiences keep accepting each conveniently timed awakening as conversion rather than commerce. At the Tel Aviv Institute, we have started logging these comebacks, with dates, follower counts, and revenue. Somewhere out there is a fading name none of us could guess today, someone about to discover the Palestinian cause at the exact moment a career requires it. When that awakening is announced, it will land in our log as one more entry, right on schedule.
According to a source for the New York Post, Ro Khanna was invited to meet freed hostages and survivors of October 7th.
Khanna's team didn'
According to a source for the New York Post, Ro Khanna was invited to meet freed hostages and survivors of October 7th.
Khanna's team didn't even bother to respond.
His team was also offered an opportunity to meet with Druze civilians in the Golan Heights and a briefing on how aid is currently getting into Gaza. They didn't take it.
Now, if Ro Khanna genuinely believes that aid is not properly getting into Gaza, why not go to the briefing? If he thinks Israel is lying, wouldn't that be the perfect time to get proof?
But he didn't go, because those aren't his intentions. He didn't want to meet with victims of Hamas or those trying to get as much aid into Gaza as they can because they contradict his narrative.
And the narrative is all that matters.
Netanyahu Says It's 150 Delinquents. Ok. Arrest Them.
I can’t read this whole piece because he has it locked, but here is his video addressing it and talking about settler violence:
Something I really struggle to get people to understand is that like. Sometimes there was no intentional homoerotic subtext, the author was just extremely misogynistic. Sometimes the author wasn't "secretly shipping" those two men, the author literally just hates women so much that they see them as being literally incapable of relationships with depth. Like this is kind of a big thing with misogyny actually. A lot of extremely misogynistic people truly believe that a man can only have meaningful and complex relationships with other men because they literally just think women are so inferior they only exist to birth children and clean the house. It's like when people say along the lines of "no one worships exclusively men quite like straight men do". It's just that phenomenon actually. That happens to be manifesting in a raging misogynist's writing. Writing a man character who literally only puts effort into his friendships with other men while completely ignoring his literal girlfriend or wife is actually an extremely straight thing to write. And that doesn't mean you can't ship those men or that there are no stories with actual intentional homoerotic subtext. I just think it's important to be able to recognize extreme misogyny in writing and acknowledge it without brushing it off and assuming good intentions when literally all evidence is screaming that this was a misogynistic writing choice and not a representing gay men choice.
We need more women characters who are Male Protagonists. You know. Slightly haggard. She's splashing cold water on her face and gripping the edge of the sink staring in the mirror for a minute. She's coping badly with her deadwife
