I think the biggest problem with Tumblr discourse around "propaganda" is that Tumblr crackers internally define "propaganda" as "nonwhites (yes including Russians) engaging in political speech that I disagree with" and nothing else
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I think the biggest problem with Tumblr discourse around "propaganda" is that Tumblr crackers internally define "propaganda" as "nonwhites (yes including Russians) engaging in political speech that I disagree with" and nothing else
The minister says the situation in Cuba is "extremely tense", as a US-led blockade of oil to the country causes widespread power cuts.
Fucking sickening, heartbreaking, disgusting. Hospitals, ambulances, water pumps, so much infrastructure shut down and so many lives hurt and lost because of it, all of this at the whim of the world's most brutal empire because they can't stand to have their will resisted so close to their shores by a society that has chosen time and time again to stand proud for the dream of a better world, a world without this blood-soaked hegemony.
I don't think there's any way to help Cuba get fuel directly, but links below if you want to help them with other goods in this terrible time
CSC campaigns in the UK against the US blockade of Cuba and for the Cuban peoples' right to self-determination and sovereignty
"making egg jokes hurts cis men"
when ozymandias king of kings tells u to look upon his works and despair but, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away
Of course no heuristic is universally true, but I think if you're an american who considers themselves "progressive" this is a rule of thumb you should probably be considering more often: If the conversation you're currently participating in is only able to happen because someone is going out of their way to speak *your* language, that's probably not the person who's most in need of informing themselves about the other's country in this conversation.
It's just such a common pattern, how when you disagree with an american about something like e.g. the idea that it's unfair to hate members of the US military, the american will always walk into the conversation with the unshakable assumption that the only reason why you could possibly disagree with them is because *you* are not informed enough about *their* country, that you obviously are not aware of how bad veterans have it once they return home, or of the conditions of poverty and systemic inequality that might drive someone to see the military as their only chance for upward mobility, or of how aggressively military recruiters campaign, or how much propaganda they make, or how they take advantage of systemic inequality to recruit from disadvantaged populations, or a million other things which they will inherently assume you lack an understanding of and proceed to condescendingly explain to you.
All the while they refuse to entertain even for one second the possibility that it might be *them* who has something to learn about *your* country, that they might not be informed enough about the violence and terror the US military enacted upon your people, that *they* might lack some awareness or understanding of the cruelty and suffering that those poor, propagandized, systemically disenfranchised kids lied to by recruiters gladly participated in enacting which might drive even people who are fully aware of their conditions to still harbor resentment towards them. The possibility that the other person might have a better understanding of the conditions in their country than viceversa and still disagree with them will never even cross their mind.
Something that happens a lot in non-binary spaces is that a new member of the community will ask a tone-deaf transphobic question like "Hi, AFAB here, I was wondering if any other AFAB NBs had advice about swimsuits? My AFAB chest means I can't wear swimsuits for AMABs," and an established community member will have to gently explain that not only are we are a community of people who often change their bodies to a degree that certificated sex becomes a useless way to describe anatomy, but we are also a community of people who often join the community explicitly to get away from our birth sex assignment, and so referring to people that way can be really offensive.
And no matter how gently this is pointed out, the newbie will often initially feel instinctively defensive towards what they perceive as scolding. Which means that when another community member comes along and says "Don't worry about the language police 🙄, many of us think AGAB language is fine, it's a useful way to refer to the kind of formative experiences you had as a child," the newbie will latch on to them like a life raft.
And yes, we live in a transphobic society, a lot of people coming into the trans community will have uninterrogated transphobic views, but that just makes them more vulnerable when there is always someone in the community willing to tell them "no, your transphobic views are fine actually, and in fact here are some more you might not have thought of!"
It means a sizeable chunk of newly-out NBs are swiftly radicalised into increasingly extreme transphobia and transmisogyny simply as a defense mechanism against having their own comments criticised. One day they're just happy to join a community where people supposedly don't judge you on your birth sex, and the next they're talking about the importance of "AGAB socialisation".
It's a really big problem and I don't know what we can do about it.
One thing that deeply irritates me is the way some American leftists talk about U.S veterans and imperial violence, because beneath all the Marxist language there is often this unspoken assumption that the rest of the world is supposed to emotionally process American empire in a way that is convenient for Americans. It's specifically the discourse surrounding the tactical necessity of American military veterans and it represents a profound distortion of both historical Marxist theory and contemporary material realities.
This argument typically manifests as a defense of U.S. service members against the "unprincipled" or "moralistic" anger of Global South populations, who are frequently chastised for alienating a demographic that American leftists claim will provide vital "military expertise" when "the revolution" inevitably arrives.
The argument usually goes something like this:
1. Veterans are working class.
2. Lenin argued communists must organize among soldiers.
3. Therefore hostility toward U.S veterans is politically immature, “moralistic,” or anti-materialist" and "un-marxist" because soldiers can become revolutionary subjects and their military expertise will be necessary “when the revolution comes.”
To legitimize this position, chauvinistic elements within the Western left frequently weaponize Vladimir Lenin’s writings on the radicalization of Tsarist soldiers during the Russian Revolution. However, this theoretical transposition collapses under rigorous analysis, relying on a false equivalence that ignores the vastly different class structures, material incentives, and geopolitical positions of the 20th-century Russian conscript versus the 21st-century American volunteer soldier.
When Lenin wrote about the necessity of agitating among Tsarist soldiers, he was analyzing a peasant army composed of millions of intensely exploited, involuntarily conscripted laborers who were being meat-grinded in a catastrophic imperialist war. For the Tsarist soldier, "peace, land, and bread" were immediate, existential class demands that aligned perfectly with the Bolshevik platform. The Tsarist soldier was not a beneficiary of empire; he was its victim, forced at gunpoint to die for a monarchy that denied his family basic agrarian rights.
This distinction matters enormously.
Lenin’s argument was not:
“soldiers are inherently progressive.”
Nor was it:
“colonized people must suppress hostility toward occupying forces.”
Nor even:
“all criticism of soldiers alienates the masses.”
The Bolshevik position was that communist movements cannot afford to abandon armed sections of the population entirely to reactionary politics, especially during periods where state legitimacy is weakening.
In stark contrast, the contemporary U.S. military is a highly professionalized, all-volunteer force that functions as the enforcement arm of global capital. The American soldier is not a peasant conscript but a contractual employee of the imperial core. While the "poverty draft" is often cited to argue that enlistment is entirely coercive, this framing obscures the specific class character of the U.S. veteran. Enlistment in the U.S. military is fundamentally an investment in upward class mobility within the imperial system. It is a transaction where individuals trade a period of service to the empire in exchange for a highly coveted bundle of social democracy: guaranteed healthcare, fully funded higher education, housing subsidies, and preferential hiring in state apparatuses.
Consequently, the political consciousness of the American veteran class is not defined by revolutionary potential, but by a perpetual cycle of grievance rooted in unfulfilled imperial promises. The material reality of the veteran experience is a chronic struggle against the bureaucratic failures of the state; such as the inefficiencies of the Department of Veterans Affairs, rather than an awakening to the systemic evils of imperialism. Their radicalism, when it exists, is almost exclusively reactionary. Veterans in the U.S are disproportionately represented within policing institutions, border enforcement, private military contracting, nationalist movements, and right-wing formations. So even when veterans become disillusioned, that disillusionment does not automatically produce anti-imperial consciousness; it is an anger that the state has broken its contract with them, demanding the compensation they feel they rightfully earned by subjugating the Global South. This grievance-based politics does not threaten the capitalist state; it is entirely siphoned back into the existing political apparatus. The veteran class is ritualistically invoked every four years by both bourgeois political parties as a symbolic prop to legitimize American nationalism, promised reform, and then promptly discarded until the next election cycle. Their primary collective orientation is the preservation of their unique benefits, which are directly funded by the value extracted from the very Global South populations American leftists order us not to alienate.
Furthermore, the leftist claim that the domestic movement requires the "military expertise" of veterans for a looming revolution is a fantasy untethered from material conditions.
What revolution exactly?
Where is this revolution supposed to occur?
Under what conditions?
Emerging from what mass base?
Against what degree of state legitimacy?
Following what economic rupture?
With what organizational infrastructure?
With what relationship to organized labor, racialized surplus populations, migrants, or the global south?
Under what conceivable circumstances is a synchronized, armed proletarian uprising manifesting within the heavily militarized, heavily surveilled heart of the global hegemon?
The United States lacks both the vanguard organization and the broad-based class consciousness required to orchestrate a structural overthrow of capital. By centering the veteran as an indispensable tactical asset, American leftists reveal a deeply romanticized, militaristic understanding of revolutionary change that prioritizes combat aesthetics over actual mass organizing.
The ultimate irony of this position lies in its profound historical and ongoing betrayal of internationalism. The very "military expertise" that Western leftists fetishize is a euphemism for the operational knowledge acquired by executing counter-insurgency warfare, drone strikes, and resource theft across the Global South. The American veteran class is expertly trained not to launch revolutions, but to systematically crush them wherever they emerge in the periphery. To demand that victims of U.S. imperialism suppress their rage under the guise of "Marxist discipline" so that Western leftists can hoard imperial managers for a hypothetical domestic uprising is a textbook display of social-chauvinism. It subordinates the real, material suffering of the global proletariat to the theoretical convenience of leftists residing safely within the metropole.
i think people are starting to confuse class analysis with bioessentialism. like... no not all men do this, but Men as a constructed social class do do this. that's still okay to say. that is regular material analysis of the world around us.
"shinigami eyes is an extension for trans people-"
nope, sorry, it's for transfems specifically.
"-to check accounts for transphobia-"
you mean transmisogyny.
"but trans women started using it to-"
it was ours to begin with.
"-mark innocent people red."
mark transmisogynists red. you don't think they're transmisogynists because you don't take transfems seriously.
can you find someone marked red, look me in the eyes, and honestly tell me they haven't done any of the following:
-said men are oppressed/misandry is an issue
-defended afab-only spaces
-opposed transfeminists
-claimed transfeminist terminology is an attack on other marginalized groups
-spread rumors about a transfem being a predator without evidence
-participated in lolcowing a transfem
-tried to reclaim femboy culture as a non-transfem
-defended male socialization theory
-implied transfems are generally dangerous
-accused a transfem of being an evil pervert while excusing non-transfems engaging in similar kinks
-claimed transmascs have no privilege or power over transfems
-claimed most transfeminists are white/bourgeoisie
-called trans women bitches, cunts, or racial slurs
because any of that is a valid reason for a transfem to not trust you. i cannot stress that enough. any single one of those is a good enough reason for a random transfem to signal to others "be cautious." and if you can't understand why transfems are wary around people like this, you need to make an effort to learn.
Something that rarely gets mentioned is that it doesn't just take a single user to change one's color on Shinigami Eyes.
Sure if you mark someone one way or another on your browser, they stay that way for you.
But for someone you've never seen before to be marked red, that means the majority of users who saw that account and made any input at all, all came to the conclusion that that person was bad news.
Notjust a few, but the majority who carry the extension and had anything to say about that user.
It's a lot more implausible for someone to have been "incorrectly marked" with that in mind.
"AI art is stealing Studio Ghibli's work/art without compensation" boy wait until you find out who drew and animated all of those frames and who got paid most for the end result
liberals are all about "stolen labour" when it's an "intellectual property" being stolen from a company, but not so much when it's the proletariat's labour being stolen by companies. funny that huh
The narrative that the use of TMA/TME was the start of some trend of dividing non-binary people into two boxes has been a masterful stroke of revisionism. it not only sneakily implies a halcyon past before the dreaded division, where non-binary people we all equal and indivisible, but also shifts the goal post on what this terminology is meant to achieve in the first place.
non-binary communities have always been categorized and divided along AGAB lines, long before even *that*(agab) was a commonly used term and often *by* non-binary people themselves. With non-binary identities and querrness in general becoming more accepted and talked about, there have been many schools of thought about this. (I am not dismissing these, but I'm not here to discuss them because it is not relevant to the point I'm making) Generally speaking, it has become less acceptable to talk about agab plainly and blatantly in regards to non-binary identities. this does not mean that all non-binary people get treated the same way or have the same experiences regardless of agab. there is in fact, a stark discrepancy in gendered traits and signifiers that are considered as part of, or emblematic of non-binary presentation. this is most obvious with non-binary representation in media, where the majority of non-binary characters fit one of two very specific molds.
one is that of a feminine baseline that achieves an aesthetic of androgyny by adding a select few masculine signifiers. most of the time, these characters will be played/voiced by transmasculine non-binary people. they are more likely to have a backstory or plot relevance and generally avoid homophobic/transphobic tropes. this accounts for the vast majority of non-binary representation.
the other is that of a masculine baseline with feminine signifiers and is (both in and out of fiction) generally considered less androgynous. these characters are most likely to be played/voiced my cis men, then cis women, sometimes transmasculine people and very rarely by transfeminine people. they are also much more likely to be side/joke characters and lean into homophobic and transmisogynistic tropes and stereotypes.
exceptions do exist, but they are rare.
so ask yourself, why is the default non-binary body a femenine one? why is the default non-binary character modeled after a transmasculine experience?
the awnser is transmisogyny. the transmisogynist dos not care wether the subject identifies with womanhood or not. they don't look for trans women, they look for "men in dresses". no transfeminine non-binary person has ever been able to avoid transmisogyny by leveraging their non-binary identity. this assumption ignores the ways transmisogyny actually functions. and all people, including those who make media, are implicitly aware of this, so they avoid casting/designing characters that look like "mem in dresses", except as a deliberate joke or mockery. intentionaluty is not required when transmisogyny is the default.
this is precisely why we have language to describe this dynamic. it didn't transform non-binary(all encompassing) into non-binary(TME) and non-binary(TMA) because that initial state never existed.
there was "non-binary" and "non-binary(tranny)" unless otherwise stated, TME is assumed as the default for non-binary people, same as cis women are assumed to be the default for women(no qualifier) and cis men for men(no qualifiers)
TMA/TME is simply terminology coined to describe a phenomenon that was already reality.
and this isn't all just theory or conjecture, I see this when I go out and spend time in queer spaces.
now, I am not non-binary. I am very firmly a binary trans woman, so I won't claim to have anywhere close to a complete understanding of that experience. I can only speak of my own experience as an egg transfem who thought she was agender, used that label and moved within non-binary friend groups and communities for 2 years.
in my experience and that of transfem NBs i've known over the years, transfeminine NBs are misgendered more often, not taken as seriously with their grievances, given less goodwill for real or percieved bad behaivior, and ultimately viewed more as guests by the non-binary communities they inhabit than actual members. they are included in events and meetups much less frequently, and often avoided when they do participate.
it's not uncommon to go to a meetup and not see a single transfem there. when you point this out or even just inquire about it, people get defensive and uncomfortable really quickly. platitudes like "we're all NB, why do you need transfem NBs specifically to be represented?" or "I don't really think about people's agab, I just go based on vibes" are common. it doesn't strike anyone as odd that the vibes always seem to be "off" with the NBs who look a bit too masculine, who's voice is a bit too deep, those with receding hairlines or hairy arms. those who look just a bit too much like they're "men in dresses".
I am glad that I eventually found my place within womanhood, not because there is anything wrong with being non-binary, but because I cannot imagine myself surviving in that kind of space, my otherness always evident, always affecting how I am seen-how I am treated, but never permitted to be spoken aloud, lest I upset the "real" non-binary people around me.
because they will not suffer a man in a dress. especially one who's too loud.
so when I hear cries about "putting non binary people into boxes" I can't help but think of the boxes that have always been there, just unlabeled.
the same government and media who tried to justify Israel's genocide of the Palestinians are the ones who taught you to fear communism
“For example, if you’re trying to convince people to boycott a segregated store, your object is to convince them that boycotting the store will have a strategic effect, not that desegregation is morally important. For whatever reason, on a cognitive level human beings have a really hard time with this. Smucker cites an example of a Lefty roleplaying session where people were tasked with selling an action to people who agreed with them on principle but didn’t see the strategic merit of the action. Surprisingly, the sellers couldn’t make the conceptual switch to sell strategic merit: instead, they doubled down on THIS ISSUE IS IMPORTANT — even though it had been stressed to them that the people they were selling to bought into the importance of the issue. People react poorly to “this is important, so do WHATEVER I SAY”; they want to be convinced that what you’re proposing will work.”
Source.
Also from above:
“Bob Wing, a grassroots organizer, explains this nicely: “If winning feels impossible, then righteousness can seem like the next best thing.” But righteousness is not conducive to getting normies to join your team if your team cannot demonstrate ability to, at least sometimes, win. Nor does righteousness help you make real inroads with regular people.”
THESE MAY BE THE LAST WORDS MY BABY QAIS EVER SAYS.
I Heard My Baby Qais Whisper goodbye today.
His weak voice broke my heart while I held him close, terrified that I was listening to my child’s final moments.
Today, the doctors told me that Qais could die at any moment because of severe bleeding and malnutrition, and I felt my soul collapse hearing those words. If you still have humanity in your heart, please help save my child and share this post now before it is too late.
I am begging you as a devastated mother in Gaza watching her little boy slowly disappear in front of her eyes. Please, don’t leave my baby Qais alone in this nightmare—Donate now and help me save his life.
Gofundme - Vetted#679
honestly i feel similarly about a lot of "eclusionist vs inclusionist" discourse. its all so divorced from material reality. if you respond to "x doesnt belong at pride" by bringing up that nobody is going to be kicking out such people anyway, youve also acknowledged that there is no reason to defend x's right to be at pride. it was never under threat in the first place. there are groups of people (trans women and people of color) regularly ostracized or kicked out from queer events, and they are rarely ever the subject of such "inclu vs exclu" debates.
Frankly, I don't buy the theory that the repeated sweeping deletions of trans women's blogs have principally been the product of bad-faith mass reporting campaigns abusing automated moderation. I've been falsely mass-reported before, on multiple occasions, and nothing's ever come of it. Someone is pulling that trigger.
Telling trans women they're "dividing the community" and engaging in "CIA shit" when they talk about transmisogyny and transfeminism is like telling Black people they're "dividing the labour movement" and engaging in "CIA shit" when they talk about anti-Black racism.
A labour movement that refuses to engage with racial justice will inevitably replicate the social systems of racial violence that dominate and permeate our society, and will therefore be unable to meaningfully challenge the capitalist system of which that racial violence is an essential tool.
In the same way, a queer lib movement that refuses to engage with transfeminism will inevitably replicate the social systems of transmisogynistic violence and will therefore be unable to meaningfully challenge the patriarchal system of which that gendered violence is an essential tool.
If at any point you find yourself telling a group of marginalised people, especially marginalised women, that they need to shut up about their concerns for the sake of "unity", you are in the wrong and you are dooming your activism to impotency and irrelevancy in the process.
Notably when the government did actually try to rip labour movements to shreds they did so by spreading racism in those movements, not anti-racism.