This is the thing the fascist supporting members of the public need to understand: that everyone gets thrown under the fascist bus and nobody earns safety by cooperating with it. Not even the upper echelons of fascist leadership are safe. Fascism ultimately means that everybody is in great danger of death no matter who they are.

I am really sick of fascism! We haven’t learned the lessons and I’m not even sure we can any more. Human beings have probably been dealing with fascists forever and will need to remain vigilant until the end of time. This year has been educational and not in a good way.

I will die before I will be quiet about it, but we’re all on the list anyway so whatever.

The shitter is that Britain is a few years behind the USA. Tr*mp will be gone, but Britain will continue to elect fascists beyond that. We haven’t even started here yet and we’re the originators of the problem. Ugh!

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Anywhere touched by the British empire is still recovering from the experience. The East India Company were practising fascism “a merger of state and corporate power” [1] centuries before Mussolini even named it as such.

Fuck Britain, a nation of “excellent table manners and genocide” [2] we are the original fascist hellmouth and fascism has been our chief global export since forever.

I can’t apologise enough for this shitty nation, we are trying to sort it out.

Signed, A British Peasant

Quote refs: [1] Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

[2] Terence McKenna: “What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.”

Thanks, I appreciate the catch up!

Much happier to hear the meme isn’t anything to do with creepy unfuckable dudes who imagine it’s only a matter of time until teenager pussy is theirs. Seems there’s a lot of those around in this timeline… mostly in the age bracket about 15-20 years older than me (I’m mid 40s) where I live, which makes it my turn (as it always fuckin was) to call them out.

Only this time I’m a dad of teenagers, and I’ve practised martial arts and being very firm with my words (when necessary) in my working life for decades.

Turns out these “men” are absolute cowards and the best action so far is seemingly to do almost nothing, as they preemptively out themselves by protesting too hard to completely uninvolved people in our local community. We shall see.

Anyway that’s been my year this year, helping my aunty-friend escape from one such shitty relationship full of lies and deception. So I’m particularly sensitive about this topic at the moment.

Glad to hear I totally didn’t get the context of the meme!

Right, time to touch grass. Cheers!

Names like that are not common here.

Besides their real family name is “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” but it was changed to Windsor in 1917 due to WW1 resentment towards the Germans.

At least we got the following joke in (famous British TV series) Blackadder:

“Look, I’m as British as Queen Victoria!”

“So your father’s German, you’re half-German and you married a German?!”

Particularly as we’re probably planning to prosecute him ourselves in Britain. It’ll take a while but people here are pissed off that the “punishment” so far is to be stripped of some bullshit titles and get to live as an immensely wealthy member of the public. He’s going to prison because wealthy pedos are universally detested here and he can’t become president in order to dodge prosecution.

I was thinking that it was coming from a place of Linux “dudes by default” and hadn’t clocked that it’s apparently a Linux/trans meme.

I misunderstood the meme.

I don’t give a fuck what “men” wear though, so I don’t know what you’re referring to either. Perhaps we’re both confused!? :-P

I like the way you assumed I even know what the unix socks meme is. Because somehow I don’t beyond… socks and sandals? I dunno. It flew over my head, in this form. 25+ years on Linux. I have no explanation.

The transwomen I’m friends with aren’t into Linux or stripey stockings AFAIK.

Whoosh!

Thanks for your understanding! The meme definitely went over my head.

I was indeed reacting to the “cis dude by default” thing which as a gender nonconforming guy has pissed me off for decades about computing spaces. “Riced” Linux desktops with basically cartoon tits for wallpaper, still all over Reddit any week. (I left Reddit, thankfully.)

I’ve been nerding out on Linux over 25 years and I have no idea about the socks thing, at least not enough to get the meme. I’m a longtime electronic music production nerd too so I got into raves and running sound systems in fields - I’m more “army boots and piercings” than “socks and sandals”. There are many flavours of geek!

Well in that case it went sailing over my head. I hope you’re right! I’m a trans ally (my child is nonbinary) albeit nowhere near up to speed on a lot of stuff particularly memes.

I’ve lately been helping an older female friend through a shitty breakup where the fact the guy purely objectifies women in a cartoonish porno and pedo sense has been one of many disturbing revelations about what a creepy bastard he has turned out to be.

I guess I saw "disembodied vaguely sexualised teenage girl legs’ and just felt grossed out because there are still a bunch of creepy old sexual predators out there and this meme gave me the same ick feeling I’ve been dealing with, knowing for sure that my teenagers are definitely not too young for a particular 65 year old in our town.

Basically I’m sick and tired of sexually predatory men and I will take them down whenever we encounter each other!

Anyway apologies for not getting the meme… which remains a meme I don’t like, but obviously there’s more to it than I realised.

What gets me is that Musk isn’t even particularly clever. I don’t understand why so many people are so swayed by his alleged intelligence? The guy is a complete muppet and should be being called out for his obvious idiocy a lot more often.

Honestly I’m only moderately clever (I got a computer science degree once upon a time lols) and I would absolutely trounce Musk in a discussion about almost anything of any seriousness. Not because I’m necessarily “cleverer” than him but because he’s operating in a delusion that he’s some kind of super-intelligent genius when he categorically is not.

He’s not even as clever as many of the people I know in my immediate friend circle, who would wipe the floor with Musk any day.

Meanwhile Musk’s thinking process lacks one critical thing (among others) - honesty!

His thinking is too internally dishonest and lacks the self-reflection for him to be anything other than rigid in his beliefs and delusions about himself.

As a martial arts person of only medium stature, I also know that whatever seems big, strong and rigid can quite easily be overcome by embodying the complimentary opposites of those (or any) qualities.

You bet Musk is terrified of empathy and “woke” because a few hundred million people deciding we care about each other a lot more than we care about him would be enough to topple him and his ilk almost overnight!

Even their bunkers and cryptocurrency stashes won’t be enough to save the billionaires at this point. They all sense they’re swimming in a pirhana tank but they think they’re too special to get eaten.

They are gravely mistaken - there will come a time when they are rounded up and killed. We may not live to see it, but the ultra-wealthy know that day is coming and it’s only a matter of time.

They also know deep down that the only thing they need to do to avoid this future day of reckoning is to give away their billions, help people, just be a regular part of humanity!

That they won’t do this tells enough about their operating intelligence levels.

They are addicts. No amount will ever be enough!

As an addict myself, I pity them, because I can grow the servicing of my main addiction in a plant pot these days.

Dunno what I’d do if my addiction was likely to result in billions of people following me to the ends of the Earth with various sharp and pointy agricultural tools.

I would not be a billionaire… for any amount of money! No sane or intelligent person would allow themselves to become a billionaire without rectifying the situation in haste.

They are far less intelligent than they think, and neither time or history are on their side.

Particularly when there is a global population who already don’t have as many hopes and dreams left to live for. The distractions aren’t working so convincingly any more and we can’t eat AI generated food.

The billionaires are a coming season’s dinner.

[ Edit: I didn’t understand the meme! See comments for context.]

Can we choose to stop having teenage girl manga leg fetish memes associated with Linux? That’s my choice because it’s not the 90s any more and I’m a middle-aged beardy father of three daughters. This meme is totally seedy and doesn’t do any favours for Linux or Open Source.

It’s not particularly funny and we can come up with far better memes without making it seem (yet again) like Linux might be mostly for creepy basement-dwelling nerds who haven’t met many real women and who aren’t creating a welcoming community which truly views women as something more than sex objects.

It’s dinosaur-era shit, guys. Please make better memes!

The rest of the world can’t afford for the USA to continue down this path into “Christian” nationalism.

My country (Britain) is also pretty screwed. We seem to copy what happens in the US, but a few years later with more tea and a tiny bit less Jeebus. The fascist threat is in full swing here too and I’m less convinced we will avoid going more fully fascist in the near future.

We can’t ever give up being vigilant about the rise of fascism - we must dismantle it at source, inside our own minds and in our communities, on every level.

Britain is the OG fascist state - it’s been our chief global export for hundreds of years, since long before Mussolini said “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”.

My life and wellbeing has always been going to be directly threatened by fascists. Everyone’s is! That’s why we must never give up and accept defeat without actually dying in the process.

I don’t live in the USA, but I have a lot of friends there so I watch with concern and try to support from afar. Good luck emigrating!

I’ve known fascism was inevitable since I started studying it as a teenager in about 1994. It’s also why I know it will be beaten, and why even then it will still need to be fought again after that. Fascism has probably been around forever in some form, long before it had this name.

You’re not convincing me with your combination of “there’s no hope” and “focus on the road ahead” though because it doesn’t seem like you believe in a road ahead?

I’m focused on the road today, not on what I think isn’t possible or is too late to bother about.

Fact is, you aren’t dead yet! So are you going to live it or spend your days trying to convince others to give up too?

Your position makes no sense unless you have already given up and accepted defeat prematurely… which is basically enabling fascism by default.

So now you know why fascism always gets a foothold! Kindly do something differently, then?

Nobody ever managed anything by deciding up front it was impossible - that ensures defeat! If you’re not dead yet, it makes no sense to give up unless you choose to stay defeated? In which case OK, if it’s preferable to trying again? It sucks but you are allowed to lose all hope.

It might be a silly question but are you depressed? It’s hard not to feel pretty depressed about the state of the world, and I make no judgement on someone for feeling depressed. I would be more surprised to meet someone not depressed at this point! It happens to most of us.

Sorry to hear that you’ve lost any hope of having an impact yourself though, that would for sure feel pretty demoralising.

I hope you won’t give up forever - you are needed!

Welp, that’s a fuckin stupid idea. Next!

So glad to read your comment @SparrowHawk. This is exactly it, and why I am no longer a hardcore atheist. We can’t connect with anyone while we’re in the middle of telling them that they’re wrong - even if they are completely wrong about factual matters. It’s essential to build connection first, then conduct any education through the connection. Without connecting it’s wasted effort.

The educating can’t come through coercion or condemnation either, because those shut people down. If we don’t offer something better then we push those people away. We might write them off and say “fuck em, who cares!” and that’s how we end up at political deadlock and perpetual war.

This is why the fascists are so terrified of empathy, because intelligent, educated people (lots of those around!) who are highly empathic (not so many, it’s a harder skill) joining together and building connections with and between the masses, already have all the tools to dismantle the whole scam we’re living in.

Empathy and education, from kindness not condemnation, is unstoppable. Though I will grant that there’s not much in it for rugged individualism, but lots in it for diverse, individuality-celebrating collectivism.

Of course we’re supposed to be arguing - we’ll never get anywhere that way.

Empathy lets you say “I absolutely disagree with your view, yet I still value you as a human, so am committed to your long-term wellbeing” and other similar bits of “radical hate speech” which, put into action will dismantle capitalism, fascism, authoritarianism, religions, prisons… you name it.

But it can’t be passive, it is something for each person to be putting into action all the time.

That’s my spiritual practise and I don’t feel personally affronted if someone disagrees with it or doesn’t understand it any more, because it’s just with myself and how I want to be in life with myself and others anyway.

There are billions of us humans and we’re unstoppable when we put aside our petty differences and work together for common dreams.

…besides, if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong! /s

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