"You can’t libel entire ethnicities and then cry about decaying standards. You are the lower standard, you cheap thug. And just because there are cheaper thugs out there doesn’t make you any less of one."
Very distressing that stuff this obvious feels important and urgent, but... thanks for at least saying it; even if the people who most need to hear it have deliberately atrophied the parts of their brain that might have been capable of understanding it.
truly impossible to emphasize harshly enough what a loathsome degenerate and reprobate rufo is; a gamergater with a sinecure and keyboard anti-dreyfusard
I liked your comment, but you should absolutely not be embarrassed. The targets of the sentence should be, but they won't be... It would be outrageous for you to feel bad when they won't
Chris Rufo complaining about conspiracism, antisemitism, and bigotry in right-wing media honestly just reminds me of that one Anakin Skywalker line from Revenge of the Sith:
"Hold on, this whole operation was your idea!"
You did this, Rufo you stupid bastard! This is all your fault! You spent the last decade undermining the walls of liberal, tolerant society, and now you're complaining that the walls have fallen??
There are other things that point out to how deliberate this hate campaign is :
- Attacking Somalis is a good way to tap into conservative fears by playing upon the failed state Somalia imagery of the 90s.
- Attacking Somalis is a good way to mainstream race science theories, because Somalis are among the nations framed as "low IQ" in Richard Lynn's racist and methodologically nonsensical 2002 book (somehow most countries it frames as "low IQ" were the countries that were war torn in the 90s, which would be sufficient if needed to prove one exactly what care to context was given in writing that thing)
- Ramping up the hate against Somalis allows the MAGA movement to test the waters and see if the public will push back against the idea of harassing and deporting American citizens, something that ultimately is the goal for people like Stephen Miller.
This is also supposed to be a uniting campaign for MAGA, meant to distract from their division on antisemitism, but it strikes me how much it actually mirrors antisemitic campaigns ? Here they are launching the full force of the state and of their propaganda machine on a very small minority and on a single, still junior member of Congress. The narratives also echo antisemitic campaigns : Somali users on Twitter have pointed out how there are smear videos circulating, with false "whistle blowers" accusing Somali workers of defecating in water reserves or food factories where they work. They emphasize how nonsensical this is, given, according to them, that Somalis tend to be obsessed with cleanliness for religious reasons. The thing is, these are a spin of antisemitic tropes ! They're an update to the old "Jews are poisoning the wells" smears. In what world do the MAGA opponents to antisemitism think that this will not also end up fuelling antisemitism ?
This campaign has been ramped up by Miller and Trump but Rufo started it ; just as he encouraged more gutter attacks on Zohran Mamdani, and spread the lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs. He's the most deliberate propagandist thug, he's the cheapest thug of all and the most worthy of infinite contempt.
1. the welfare 'piracy' libel is just a more egregious revamp of the welfare queen slander. one of the largest cases of welfare fraud was republican rick scott's private health insurance company defrauding medicare, and one of the largest mass frauds was covid ppp loan forgiveness by white small business owners which included marjorie taylor greene
2. the chan nazi hoax against haitians was a recapitulation of vintage medieval blood libel against jews: lurid rumors of esoteric ritual slaughter of kidnapped innocents by diabolized others (pets substituting the role of christian children; voodoo replacing judaism)
I remember using a late 19th century newspaper cartoon (Thomas Nast?) that depicted a handful of well-dressed gentlemen standing on a dock with their hands up attempting to stop the latest immigrants from coming ashore, but their immigrant past is projected as shadows on the wall behind them. I taught Mexican and Central American high school students—farmworker kids—in Fresno County and was attempting to share previous struggles of immigrant groups. But, sadly, I would hear occasionally a similar racist remark about the Hmong or some other racial/ethnic group. State terror combined with ignorance fueled by preadolescent name-calling has to be resisted.
I just moved to Minneapolis. My lyft driver from the airport was a white guy with a foreign accent I couldn't quite place, and he had a a symbol with "Allah" in Arabic hanging from his rearview mirror. We weren't on the road for 10 minutes before he starts saying the traffic is the fault of the Somalis, and making thinly veiled jokes about "black ice". He is at the outermost remove of acceptable whiteness in this country, and he felt comfortable scapegoating his fellow immigrants. The damage is extreme.
Not just Italians and the Mafia. A group of Orthodox Jews perpetrated a massive welfare fraud scheme in New Jersey about a decade age. Ditto a group of Hasidim in NYC a couple of years ago. These are 'insular' cultures that by choice live somewhat apart from the mainstream. They even speak a different language! Yet no respectable person called for their mass expulsion. The current regime and its apologists/strategists are just plain sinister.
The usual practice in most democracies is, once racists have tasted power at whatever level, even in a coalition, they tend to soften the overt stuff (Meloni maybe serves as an example). The Trump admin. seems to be the outlier in that it’s just got more shameless, casual, confident. They feel untouchable, but at the same time besieged. Dangerous combination.
John, when you are personally outraged, your writing grows wings and soars. Kind of like stealth bomber wings, you know? Along with a 21st century bombsight, that makes for a pinpoint accurate delivery. Thank you for enlarging the community’s arsenal of words.
"You can’t libel entire ethnicities and then cry about decaying standards. You are the lower standard, you cheap thug. And just because there are cheaper thugs out there doesn’t make you any less of one."
Very distressing that stuff this obvious feels important and urgent, but... thanks for at least saying it; even if the people who most need to hear it have deliberately atrophied the parts of their brain that might have been capable of understanding it.
I'm a bit embarrassed about how gratifying I found it to read the "cheap thug" sentence.
Personally, I am not even a little bit embarrassed about that. I hope John has more where that came from.
truly impossible to emphasize harshly enough what a loathsome degenerate and reprobate rufo is; a gamergater with a sinecure and keyboard anti-dreyfusard
I liked your comment, but you should absolutely not be embarrassed. The targets of the sentence should be, but they won't be... It would be outrageous for you to feel bad when they won't
I’m not
Chris Rufo complaining about conspiracism, antisemitism, and bigotry in right-wing media honestly just reminds me of that one Anakin Skywalker line from Revenge of the Sith:
"Hold on, this whole operation was your idea!"
You did this, Rufo you stupid bastard! This is all your fault! You spent the last decade undermining the walls of liberal, tolerant society, and now you're complaining that the walls have fallen??
YES, thank you so much for this !
There are other things that point out to how deliberate this hate campaign is :
- Attacking Somalis is a good way to tap into conservative fears by playing upon the failed state Somalia imagery of the 90s.
- Attacking Somalis is a good way to mainstream race science theories, because Somalis are among the nations framed as "low IQ" in Richard Lynn's racist and methodologically nonsensical 2002 book (somehow most countries it frames as "low IQ" were the countries that were war torn in the 90s, which would be sufficient if needed to prove one exactly what care to context was given in writing that thing)
- Ramping up the hate against Somalis allows the MAGA movement to test the waters and see if the public will push back against the idea of harassing and deporting American citizens, something that ultimately is the goal for people like Stephen Miller.
This is also supposed to be a uniting campaign for MAGA, meant to distract from their division on antisemitism, but it strikes me how much it actually mirrors antisemitic campaigns ? Here they are launching the full force of the state and of their propaganda machine on a very small minority and on a single, still junior member of Congress. The narratives also echo antisemitic campaigns : Somali users on Twitter have pointed out how there are smear videos circulating, with false "whistle blowers" accusing Somali workers of defecating in water reserves or food factories where they work. They emphasize how nonsensical this is, given, according to them, that Somalis tend to be obsessed with cleanliness for religious reasons. The thing is, these are a spin of antisemitic tropes ! They're an update to the old "Jews are poisoning the wells" smears. In what world do the MAGA opponents to antisemitism think that this will not also end up fuelling antisemitism ?
This campaign has been ramped up by Miller and Trump but Rufo started it ; just as he encouraged more gutter attacks on Zohran Mamdani, and spread the lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs. He's the most deliberate propagandist thug, he's the cheapest thug of all and the most worthy of infinite contempt.
"If left unchecked, it will turn the audience into the equivalent of a Third World click farm."
The horse is so far out of the barn, it's currently glue.
1. the welfare 'piracy' libel is just a more egregious revamp of the welfare queen slander. one of the largest cases of welfare fraud was republican rick scott's private health insurance company defrauding medicare, and one of the largest mass frauds was covid ppp loan forgiveness by white small business owners which included marjorie taylor greene
2. the chan nazi hoax against haitians was a recapitulation of vintage medieval blood libel against jews: lurid rumors of esoteric ritual slaughter of kidnapped innocents by diabolized others (pets substituting the role of christian children; voodoo replacing judaism)
I remember using a late 19th century newspaper cartoon (Thomas Nast?) that depicted a handful of well-dressed gentlemen standing on a dock with their hands up attempting to stop the latest immigrants from coming ashore, but their immigrant past is projected as shadows on the wall behind them. I taught Mexican and Central American high school students—farmworker kids—in Fresno County and was attempting to share previous struggles of immigrant groups. But, sadly, I would hear occasionally a similar racist remark about the Hmong or some other racial/ethnic group. State terror combined with ignorance fueled by preadolescent name-calling has to be resisted.
I just moved to Minneapolis. My lyft driver from the airport was a white guy with a foreign accent I couldn't quite place, and he had a a symbol with "Allah" in Arabic hanging from his rearview mirror. We weren't on the road for 10 minutes before he starts saying the traffic is the fault of the Somalis, and making thinly veiled jokes about "black ice". He is at the outermost remove of acceptable whiteness in this country, and he felt comfortable scapegoating his fellow immigrants. The damage is extreme.
Caucasian (as in the region) Muslims have been fed a steady diet of racism and xenophobia by Russia
It is heartening to see some liberals start to throw the right's garbage back at them, where it truly belongs.
Not just Italians and the Mafia. A group of Orthodox Jews perpetrated a massive welfare fraud scheme in New Jersey about a decade age. Ditto a group of Hasidim in NYC a couple of years ago. These are 'insular' cultures that by choice live somewhat apart from the mainstream. They even speak a different language! Yet no respectable person called for their mass expulsion. The current regime and its apologists/strategists are just plain sinister.
The usual practice in most democracies is, once racists have tasted power at whatever level, even in a coalition, they tend to soften the overt stuff (Meloni maybe serves as an example). The Trump admin. seems to be the outlier in that it’s just got more shameless, casual, confident. They feel untouchable, but at the same time besieged. Dangerous combination.
It is ethnic cleansing. Pure and simple. The aim is to ethnically cleanse America.
You had me with “cheap thug.” We need more straight talk.
John, when you are personally outraged, your writing grows wings and soars. Kind of like stealth bomber wings, you know? Along with a 21st century bombsight, that makes for a pinpoint accurate delivery. Thank you for enlarging the community’s arsenal of words.