This rings true to me and is honestly why I'm reading more independent work on Substack and loving it. I have conservative sensibilities, or conservative bones is perhaps a better analogy. My first thoughts as I read this were, "Porn... smut... bad for society..." because I was indoctrinated with Christian Nationalism. I've realized, finally, that I cannot stop those thoughts from popping into my head, automatically. I have to use what I've learned over the subsequent 30+ years to figure it out and form my own opinion, which is still malleable. Substack needs to get out in front of this. Real evidence shows that we need to protect sex workers, and history tells the tale that they will not be going anywhere. There is always demand, let's say. On the other hand, I can understand a person not wanting a platform to wind up being OnlyFans.
I am also coming to the understanding that my training was definitely fascist prep school. I know from Facebook what people like me are doing now. People I graduated with. My demographic is THE demographic that ALL of this is targeted at. If they cannot get enough Gen X white males, they're doomed. Stuart Rhodes is from my generation. Yale educated, and somehow decided to be a fascist pirate. What's up with that?
I should say that this Christian Nationalist training was useful. They certainly made us learn civics and government, and did a great job on that front. Sure, they consistently connect the dots for children between civics and the Bible, but I was lucky enough to see through that. I should also say that the training was implicitly White and not exactly in-your-face. Probably because the audience, the students, were all white.
Individuals and groups can enslave and abuse people if sex work remains illegal. It obviously gives them so much power over sex workers. Just as a practical matter, it's a way for exploiters to leverage a grotesque advantage over people, so I am suspicious of anyone who wants to stigmatize sex work.
I hate hate the word 'Christofascist.' It's very similar to 'Islamofascist' in that it doesn't distinguish between very different types of groups. Maybe it is just a personal thing. I hated the people who used the word 'Islamofascist' because they used it to justify their wars on Muslim countries so maybe this is just some kind of transitive thing. Of course, some of those Islamic groups might truly be fascist. But it had an ideological purpose of casting suspicion on billions of people, and this seems unwise to me at the current time when we're always being nudged to hate other people.
I don't get what's wrong with the term 'Christian fascist.' From some offhand things you've said, I get the sense that you think that Christianity is the source of fascism. Do you think all Christianity is fascist? I don't see how this could possibly be true but besides that--isn't that ceding the ground to the far right, who want to claim such a thing? Should we lump in all their Christian opponents with them? Isn't it a better strategy to make alliances with all people opposed to fascism, some of whom are Christians?
Anyway, running across Nazis on a website where you are looking for things to read is like finding half of a cockroach in your sandwich after you finished eating half. Having sex workers might be embarrassing if you ran across some sex thing and weren't looking for some sex thing. But this is easily remedied with the 'for viewers over 18' extra screen. We have no such warning for Nazis who hide in this site and then scatter their cockroach parts all over your brain.
"Christofascist" refers to a particular group of fascists, esp in the US, though there are global connections too. Not all Christians are fascists; also not all fascists are Christians (there are a lot of pagan fascists, and there are fascists who are atheists, and Hindu fascism is unfortunately a big thing in India right now.) But I think it's useful in some instances to identify who we're talking about specifically, especially since Christofascism is the major threat right now—the biggest supporters of Trump are white evangelical Christians, whose goal is a racist Christian state.
"Fascists have in public discourse largely coopted the “free speech” movement, and turned it into one long demand that racists be given every platform and that all the critics of racists be silenced." This describes the modern christofascist GOP so precisely!
This rings true to me and is honestly why I'm reading more independent work on Substack and loving it. I have conservative sensibilities, or conservative bones is perhaps a better analogy. My first thoughts as I read this were, "Porn... smut... bad for society..." because I was indoctrinated with Christian Nationalism. I've realized, finally, that I cannot stop those thoughts from popping into my head, automatically. I have to use what I've learned over the subsequent 30+ years to figure it out and form my own opinion, which is still malleable. Substack needs to get out in front of this. Real evidence shows that we need to protect sex workers, and history tells the tale that they will not be going anywhere. There is always demand, let's say. On the other hand, I can understand a person not wanting a platform to wind up being OnlyFans.
I am also coming to the understanding that my training was definitely fascist prep school. I know from Facebook what people like me are doing now. People I graduated with. My demographic is THE demographic that ALL of this is targeted at. If they cannot get enough Gen X white males, they're doomed. Stuart Rhodes is from my generation. Yale educated, and somehow decided to be a fascist pirate. What's up with that?
I should say that this Christian Nationalist training was useful. They certainly made us learn civics and government, and did a great job on that front. Sure, they consistently connect the dots for children between civics and the Bible, but I was lucky enough to see through that. I should also say that the training was implicitly White and not exactly in-your-face. Probably because the audience, the students, were all white.
Individuals and groups can enslave and abuse people if sex work remains illegal. It obviously gives them so much power over sex workers. Just as a practical matter, it's a way for exploiters to leverage a grotesque advantage over people, so I am suspicious of anyone who wants to stigmatize sex work.
I hate hate the word 'Christofascist.' It's very similar to 'Islamofascist' in that it doesn't distinguish between very different types of groups. Maybe it is just a personal thing. I hated the people who used the word 'Islamofascist' because they used it to justify their wars on Muslim countries so maybe this is just some kind of transitive thing. Of course, some of those Islamic groups might truly be fascist. But it had an ideological purpose of casting suspicion on billions of people, and this seems unwise to me at the current time when we're always being nudged to hate other people.
I don't get what's wrong with the term 'Christian fascist.' From some offhand things you've said, I get the sense that you think that Christianity is the source of fascism. Do you think all Christianity is fascist? I don't see how this could possibly be true but besides that--isn't that ceding the ground to the far right, who want to claim such a thing? Should we lump in all their Christian opponents with them? Isn't it a better strategy to make alliances with all people opposed to fascism, some of whom are Christians?
Anyway, running across Nazis on a website where you are looking for things to read is like finding half of a cockroach in your sandwich after you finished eating half. Having sex workers might be embarrassing if you ran across some sex thing and weren't looking for some sex thing. But this is easily remedied with the 'for viewers over 18' extra screen. We have no such warning for Nazis who hide in this site and then scatter their cockroach parts all over your brain.
"Christofascist" refers to a particular group of fascists, esp in the US, though there are global connections too. Not all Christians are fascists; also not all fascists are Christians (there are a lot of pagan fascists, and there are fascists who are atheists, and Hindu fascism is unfortunately a big thing in India right now.) But I think it's useful in some instances to identify who we're talking about specifically, especially since Christofascism is the major threat right now—the biggest supporters of Trump are white evangelical Christians, whose goal is a racist Christian state.
"Fascists have in public discourse largely coopted the “free speech” movement, and turned it into one long demand that racists be given every platform and that all the critics of racists be silenced." This describes the modern christofascist GOP so precisely!