This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Republican candidate for Missouri secretary of state posted a viral campaign video Tuesday lighting LGBTQ-inclusive books on fire with a flamethrower.
Kathy Belge, one of the authors of “Queer: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens,” said Americans “should be concerned that a candidate for public office not only thinks book burning is acceptable, but that it is something that will help her get elected.”
Some people compared Gomez’s actions to Nazi book-burning campaigns in the 1930s, when a student group burned tens of thousands of books in Germany and Austria that were considered “un-German.”
Gomez’s website echoes increasingly common inflammatory language used by conservatives in recent years to describe transition-related medical care for transgender minors.
Gomez’s book-burning video is part of a larger national trend of conservative candidates and lawmakers targeting books related to LGBTQ people and race for removal from public and school libraries, arguing that they are a form of “indoctrination” or are harmful for children.
Some, including Gomez, have even described LGBTQ-inclusive books and curricula as sexually grooming children, invoking a decades-old false moral panic about LGBTQ people.
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If anyone sane had any sense (and the money to do it, I guess), they’d do a montage of all the fascists of history burning books and end with the one of her. Do the same for any other candidates elsewhere with similar stances.
Play that on every channel until the money dries up.
Somehow I don’t think rebroadcasting this to an even larger audience is a good idea considering this person is already voluntarily posting a video of them book burning without a shred of irony.
I don’t think the people that they are appealing will be dissuaded by a contrasting video. They’d probably see the comparison as flattering.
The money won’t dry up.
There’re plenty of people out there who do blame “the Jews” or “the Gays” or “the Immigrants” or “the Others” dor all their problems.
They also think they are the heros making a sacrifice by doing the lesser evil in their own stories.
As a reminder, the first targets of Nazi book-burning were LGBT+ too: Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sex Research.
Yup. Even the Nazis didn’t full Nazi right away. Don’t think it can’t happen here.
Part of how they can run with the “trans treatment is experimental!” canard, is that they fucking burned the research almost a century ago.
Book burnings does not make you the good guy.
Are we the baddies?
That is why I think the “The Cruelty Is the Point” Article by Adam Serwer in 2018 was so important.
The ones who burned the books were always on the wrong side of history. Yet, they still do it. And I guess it is because the vile and harassing actions is an integral part of these people. The pain and suffering they bring to the people around them is what makes them feel good. They want to harm and destroy and are actively looking for people who cheer for them when they do. They want to find the people and the places where they can act in utterly disgrace and inhumane behaviour and are not ejected, but promoted. They are desperate to live out their inner cruel behavior as this is what brings them joy. This woman would literally fuck a guy who strangled a LGBTQ Member in front of her.
Adam Serwer:
But it’s not the burned, mutilated bodies that stick with me. It’s the faces of the white men in the crowd. There’s the photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, in which a white man can be seen grinning at the camera as he tenderly holds the hand of his wife or girlfriend. There’s the undated photo from Duluth, Minnesota, in which grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street—one of the white men is straining to get into the picture, his smile cutting from ear to ear. There’s the photo of a crowd of white men huddled behind the smoldering corpse of a man burned to death; one of them is wearing a smart suit, a fedora hat, and a bright smile.
Their names have mostly been lost to time. But these grinning men were someone’s brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.
Thanks for sharing that. What a chilling image.
Their lack of shame gives them power. When dictators come to power one of their first acts is to make the other people around them direct accomplices in horrible acts. When Saddam Hussein purged the government he had other officials participate in the firing squad. It isn’t just cruelty, it’s a strategy, it takes the others around you over the edge and binds them to you. Them raising the stakes higher and higher with more and more shameless acts is a strategy to get their members to do whatever they want and to do more bold and brazen acts that can get them more power.
By doing this the only shame becomes nuance and self reflection. Feeling guilty, becomes being a buzzkill. It becomes socially reinforcing. You can’t be bad because if you’re bad all your loved ones are bad and they’ll judge you for ruining their fun or hate you we not being sufficiently committed to the cause
Exactly, the point is to isolate their supporters and strengthen their cult.
Wow. That’s devastating.
It’s not meant to make them look like the good guy, it’s meant to make them look like the guy who’s willing to “do what it takes to end the woke agenda.” The way you get a bunch of people to support evil isn’t by convincing them it’s good, but by convincing them it’s necessary.
The only thing that needs to be torched is conservatism.
It’s so easy to torch conservatives, convert if you will, with just a little knowledge. Like over here at the librar…oh. Never mind.
Well played!
I got scared for a second then I remembered that both parties are the same and it doesn’t matter who I vote for. Phew. Almost had me, Valentina!
I think yon needed the - /s
I mean, if people can’t tell it’s sarcasm then we should be scared. How come your comment is +4 and I’m -11 though. Lemmy, you don’t make sense sometimes.
horrible horrible woman
No matter what your opinions are, no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, no matter what your reasons are for having books to destroy, how do you go to (or perform) a public book burning and not feel icky?
These are Christians doing the book burning (again). Their love language is making people other than themselves “feel icky.”
Nearly every atrocity throughout history has had a Christian standing with a smirk watching what they caused with glee.
no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on
Well see, that’s your problem. You’re ignoring the fact that one end of the political spectrum adores fascism.
I’ve met so many adults over the years who have said “I’ve never read a novel in my life”. I’d ask about required reading during school. Nope. Absolutely blew my mind the first time it happened. I’ve begun to really believe that a large percentage of the US population has no internal values or morals. Like not even the concept. Just external ones that they try to push on people.
That’s the big question. What is it psychologically behind such pathologically cruel and hateful people?
While I admire her sense of theatre, it’s much easier just to wear a t shirt with a big swastika on it.
I know the big picture here is it’s a bad sign when mainstream party politicians start using openly fascist rhetoric… but
I can’t get over how derpy she looks in that thumbnail.
Is it supposed to look like she’s farting flames on the books? Was that really the best angle?
As long as they are focused on books and a pro-LGBTQ person is in charge of the libraries internet filter… uh, oh, CURSES! Now children who definitely read physical paper books and do not have phones will never accidentally stumble across these books and turn gay! Curse you GOP!
“You want to be gay? Fine be gay. Just don’t do it around children,”
So what about the LGBTQ children. I suppose she has a final solution for that.
Fucking Nazi cunt. How long before these psychos start murdering our LGBTQ children? When do we start pushing back hard on these hateful shitbags?
So what about the LGBTQ children.
They don’t believe such a thing exists until gay people turn them gay.
Really.
That’s the “gay agenda” they always talk about. Gay people using the homosexual magic.
“They think I turned him gay with my magic genetalia.”
Oh the right is all about final solutions.
Different time, same kind of people, burning books.
Next she’ll be burning people and defending her actions by saying “they weren’t really people by their own admissions”
They are trying to out crazy each other because that makes them the most trump like. It’s not enough to talk about banning books from public libraries, now you have to line them up and do a photo op with a flamethrower. It’s just more of that virtue signaling they constantly accuse everyone else of doing.
It’s always projection with the qons. ALWAYS.
What fucking sucks is that, while it may (or may not) initially just be posturing, this signalling is normalizing the craziness among their base. A non-zero amount of people will see this and think, “Hey! That’s a good idea!” and replicate it.
