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antifainternational · 5 years

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Hi, do you have any advice on what to do if you think someone close to you is sliding towards the alt right? I don't want them to get sucked into that bullshit. Thanks in advance

Oh, this is a tough one! Lots of us have seen people we care deeply about get sucked into the alt-right brainwash. It’s difficult to reason with them since they’re so easily swayed by entirely unreasonable bullshittery.

Karin Tamerius has written a lot on this topic. She recommends using five points:1) Ask open-ended, genuinely curious, nonjudgmental questions.2) Listen to what people you disagree with say and deepen your understanding with follow-up inquiries.3) Reflect back their perspective by summarizing their answers and noting underlying emotions.4) Agree before disagreeing by naming ways in which you agree with their point of view.5) Share your perspective by telling a story about a personal experience.This is also what you learn when you take any sort of training on “active listening.” To practice, Tamerius has created an “angry uncle bot” that coaches you through responses to a Fox News-loving uncle’s rants over the Thanksgiving Day table. We’ve actually responded to a lot of the garbage that passes in the alt-right as legitimate debating points and you’ll find many of our takedowns in our archive. Another thing you can try: it’s been shown that prejudices are often based on social distance. The less contact someone has with a certain category of people, the more likely they will harbor some kind of prejudice towards them. So if your person is showing signs of hating on certain categories of people (LGBTQ+, migrants, Muslims - what-have-you!), it might be helpful to come up with reasons & situations for them to interact with people from that group. It’s much harder to hate someone when you see that they’re a human being with many of the same interests and needs as your own!We’d also like to add a word of caution: if this person is being radicalized by the alt-right, they are increasingly becoming a threat - probably to you; certainly to people around you that the fascists & bigots would like to exterminate (racialized people, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, migrants, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, etc.). It’s probably a good idea to consider that this person you care about may become dangerous and even dangerous to you if they don’t turn their shit around. If this is the case, then it might be wise to put some distance between you and them to protect yourself & your people.Anyone else have some tips for Anon?

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kouhadyne · 6 years

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me infodumping abt marvel!wren and her infinite wren-ness cranked up to 12

(SO jsyk wren lives in Midtown’s basement in an old computer lab. she’s about a year below Peter but in some advanced classes (namely science and history but thats it.) so she like...vaguely knows him but loves michelle (u cant convince me otherwise wren wouldnt be head over heels for her + probs started calling her mj) so that’s a thing.)

anyway, the kossor bullshittery happens like...either after dark world but before civil war. alt hot take, after iw (as in, everyone is fine, nobody is dead. iw was just a fight over the last hot pocket, avengers are back together.) the fog rolls in every night across NYC and it gets bad enough that there’s a curfew in effect (but people are dumb and go in anyway) so wren (being a dumb person) goes into the fog. she thinks shes gonna die but instead turns into a funky little alien. she thinks she’s a mutant (she isn’t.) and has the power to transform based off chemical responses (half right.) what does she do? she becomes a fucking superhero that’s what.

so she’s running around, trying to fight in like, the worlds shittiest costume but a cool mask (she made everything herself. her mask looks like this and her costume looks like this just without the mecha arms) and wren’s like ‘oh i wish i could control my magic instead of only using it when im scared.’ and woosh, loki comes along like ‘i can help but i need a favor’ and she’s like ‘ya what u need strange green deer’ so loki’s like ‘i’ll teach u how to hide me on earth bcs i got some stank dudes on me’ and shes like ‘aight cool lets make that happen, im THE DARK MAGE; HEROINE EXTRAORDINAIRE whats ur name’ and hes like ‘yeah im loki and we gotta work on that name.’

so they’re doing their thing, wren destroying anything and everything while he teaches her to control her magic so it doesn’t hurt her anymore. all the while she’s explaining her life to him like ‘i met u two weeks ago do u wanna hear my life story’ ‘no’ ‘too bad im an amnesiac orphan and i live in a basement its cool but im also a very cool mutant whos a hero. very neat and cool but people keep trying to kill me’. also i should mention people are trying to kill her left and right bcs word of a perfect-amalgamated hybrid is being spread and an organization of anti-hybrid assholes known as CICADA are like ‘hey kill her and we’ll give u money’. all the bad guys are like “ooh money” or “that nasty halfbreed is going down murder time.” (she does not know shes a hybrid. oblivious baby.)

so loki knows because he isn’t wren: local dumbass. and hes like “is it true ur a descendant of banished asgardians” and wren’s like “im asgardian? neat.” but eventually kossor shows up like “im here to kill the runaway experiment real quick, thanks.” and they fight! but he eventually paralyzes her with a spell only to spill the beans on what she is. turns out, she’s a project called “Warbreaker” whose essentially a natural hybrid with the fused soul of a general and a child soldier smushed into her body. wren, understandably is pissed to shit but can’t really do anything bcs she’s being strangled as her creepy..uncle? father? whispers to her. anyways she’s left to die for 12 hours (he thinks the paralyzer will kill her. it didnt it just kinda...paralyzed her body.) and she has a meltdown because shes alone and faced with the truth about who she is. she believed she had a family somewhere waiting for her to come home, even if she didn’t have parents but now she’s just a disgusting half-breed with a price tag on her head and a target on her back who cant do anything except die.

loki finds her once the fog lifts with the dawn and hes patching her up and she just starts...crying. she explains what she is and hes like ‘oh welcome to the club i got lied to too’ and they have a Moment of Bonding-ness over their shitty families and heritage. but she kinda takes a step back and asks ‘what am i fighting for’ and at this point, she just wants kossor to stop. shes now furious and on a path of vengance and loki’s like “u go baby”. so wren makes a call-out post in the form of a literal war call and theyre gonna duke it out babey!!!

and now they fight bcs wren’s like ‘idfc what i am, what ur doin is wrong asshat’ and kossors like ‘u again, lol perish thot’ and then they fight (its cooler than i make it sound, im sorry.) but it takes 6 hours and both are like, at the fucking brink and wren jsut sucker punches the shit outta him with some magic (namely the illusions loki briefly taught her). so now kossor’s dying on the floor and wren’s dying standing up and he’s like “im sorry i didnt mean to start a war i just wanted my sister back.” and wren’s like “maybe don’t take bribes from extremists then” (i imagine their final conversation to be either deeply moving and influential to wren’s character or just. this vine) but now with his death comes more problems but now wren is stronger than before (using her soul of literal chaos as a fuel for her magic was a good idea) and ready to fight to defend people bcs why not (justice. thats why.)

but two months later shes back up from her hyperthermia induced coma and she’s like “Shit my homework fuck and also loki” (loki has Vanished in loki fashion, aka thor is on earth). cps finds her again and puts her back in a home bcs they thought she was just caught in the fog. but she’s being dark mage, running round the city fighting criminals/alien bad guys trying to kill her but sooner or later she gets a call from the avengers/nick fury and hes like “hey u wanna do an interview” and shes like “yeah its not like ive dreamed of this moment since my childhood as a small 15-year-old i mean I Am An Adult, I Pay Taxes, I Drink The Al Col Hall.” so, like any good person, she lies about her age to join the avengers after an interview with fury and hill (where she just tells how she beat up kossor but lies about her age and who loki is bcs she doesnt go back on her promise of hiding him) so theyre like ‘cool ur in welcome to the avengers dude’

so she’s living in the tower/compound and for Dramatic Purposes (learned from someone) she never takes off her mask and never really...talks. Only on missions when her Serious Wren shows up. but the kinda break her little shell and shes just so quirky u cant help but get charmed. it isn’t really until a mission where they fight CICADA that they find out who she is (they single her out and go after her until she’s near-death and her mask is broken to fuck). she eventually explains everything in the medbay and its like “great, here’s a child with big PTSD and anxiety who lied about her age to join the avengers so she can live somewhere better than a basement, now what” so they argue about it and wren quietly sneaks/runs away. but big worm, here comes a terrifying winter soldier who stalked her to her little hideout. so shes like “i know when im not wanted and ill just go back to being a vigilante’ and hes like ‘hey ur good, kid they arent gonna kick u out.” so they have a Talk of Mutual Bonding and he gets her to come back so they can talk it out. stuff gets argued about and wren’s like “why not just...don’t say anything to fury. im doing this outta my own free will so none of u will get in trouble. plus im also not a kid bcs technically im 4 years old.” ‘that is not helping, Kujisela’ ‘call me wren its my name’. long story short, they agree to let her stay as long as Dark Mage still fights. (im a big slut for family dynamics so Hey + i feel like the supersoldiers start calling her plum bcs of her Purple-ness and it catches on)

so ye thanks for reading my TED Talk; i love Wren Ataxia Kujisela with all of my heart (pls just...talk to me abt her)

#wren tag #quill.txt #its a LOT but im.....big wren mood #love u bb #oc tag

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crawldepth-blog · 5 years

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Fisticuffs

You walk into a convenience store. Maybe you grabbed a six-pack or some noms to tide you over till dinner, or maybe you popped in to get some cash from the ATM and you succumbed to marketing fuckery and just HAD to grab those Altoids or a bag of Doritos.

Whatever the case, there you are in line, waiting to pay. Something happens. Maybe you see someone you know, and that person is an asshole. An asshole at the very least; perhaps a stone cold enemy at the other extreme. Considering enemies, it could be a rival gang banger, a bully who fucks with you at school, somebody of another skin color for whom you have a hidden epithet, or even someone you just don’t like and you’re at a mental boiling point to do something about it.

The recipient of your ire is unimportant. What triggers you to escalate your ire to violence is.

Something else happens. Seeing your rival triggers a physical response. Your blood pressure rises. Your heart rate increases. You feel a flush across your face and your chest. In your mind, you’re not inciting anything when you call him or a bitch or shove them or even just pepper them with the stinkeye. However it is you choose to respond to the stimulus, let’s say that your response engenders another response from your target. And the next thing you know, you’re chest-to-chest slinging insults, tightening fists, pointing fingers, and about to serve up a beat-down.

You feel every pore in your body individually light up, tingling and hyper-aware. That’s the adrenalin kicking in, revving up your sadly devolved limbic system with thousands of years of Neanderthal genes that singularly serve to get you ready to kill. The epithets you throw could be nothing more than a bulwark against this genetic disposition to attack, psychological warfare designed to show force and peacock for the audience while also delivering custom-made lyrical barbs to your adversary’s psyche.

However it happens, a punch gets thrown or hands push a body off-kilter. More fists deploy. Sweat pours. You scuffle. The Doritos fall forgotten to the floor as your rage consumes you. Blood trickles, gushes, pours. Fight.

Your descent (ascent?) into violence may tap an ages-old genetic disposition to protect your tribe or to kill your food or even to slay your rival. Those environmental norms have changed a tad in the last couple-few thousand years. You evolved into Today’s Human, streamlined for GrubHub-enabled sustenance acquistion and 911 calls to the police reporting black people in your Starbucks. Generally speaking these days, our predisposition toward violence has more to do with a political will to improve oneself than actual defense and hunting. (Sean Hannity may say otherwise, but that guy can cock-gobble himself into oblivion. Seriously, go watch the John Oliver segment on how much that guy loves to “train for a fight” in case he is “accosted.” For fuck’s sake.) Your friends take up Brazilian jiu-jitsu and krav magra to hone their minds or improve their fitness, right? Hell, even the time-honored process of “jumping in” new members to a gang - where newbies get beaten by their brethren - aims to ensure they know what it’s like to have one’s ass kicked so that it baselines a certain level of violence competence, whether it’s intended for deployment or not.

So what propels you toward violence in this seeming safe and secure civilization where we have so many options for its safe release? In that context, why are there seemingly so many outbreaks of violence these days? More to the point, why are we still so surprised by it?

Let’s think about your threshold for doing harm. “Normals” will only fight if they have to. Their threshold for violence is high. Someone literally has to punch them in the face to convince them to put up their dukes. Many will not even leap to the defense of a loved one or ally in many situations, so pussified has normalcy become. These are your “beta cucks” that alt-right, pro-toxic masculinity voices decry as contributing to the downfall of modern man. Many of these same edge-of-violent individuals have to participate in a group with others of their own ilk before they will employ violence. The Proud Boys behave this way often: getting into fights as a group against a smaller number of adversaries. Often as a group against just one adversary. Seems like pussified behavior to me, but the threshold for these folks is only a little lower than the normals. They have to physically be part of a violent group before launching a kick or a punch of their own. In-group violence. Distributed faggotry.

In another corner of the continuum, think about the threshold for you and your enemy in the convenience store. Let’s say you’re hyper-aware of others that seek to do you harm in some way, not even physically but perhaps mentally or psychologically. Public disrespect from a rival weakens your reputation in some communities, and by not responding to the disrespect in an overmatched way, your reputation could be permanently ground into irreparable paste in a community in which trust amongst your peers is how you survive. Think about that community as any cliche of urban living on The Street, maybe where that convenience store is the same bullet-riddled shithole where drugs get sold, bangers beat on their girls, and robberies invariably take place. In that community, your threshold for violence is much lower. A disrespectful word could set off the adrenalin kick for attack or at least prompt a heightened, outrageous response to “state prime.” Even the appearance of an out-group, nonconforming individual could incite you toward a wild response of this type. People have been known to attack police merely for being police, for wearing the badge. Of course, where turnabout’s fair play, police have been known to kill civilians for the mere heuristic of being African Amercian.

Malcolm Gladwell has written about how the thresholds for acceptable behavior increase the more that behavior is normed. In other words, the more you see a school shooting happen, the more you come to accept that that behavior is normal, and the more normal it is, the more likely you are to adopt the behavior (given certain triggers, of course). That theory of thresholds totally works. It explains why more people commit violence-based crimes.

It may also explain why we as a society seem to be arcing toward the normalization of violent conflict. Punching a motherfucker in the face may seem like the hoi polloi’s way to respond to bullshittery, but consider other thresholds for behaviors on the same end of the violence spectrum: psychological torture, name-calling, falsified news, intentional misrepresentation, hate speech, casual racism, gender exclusion, discrimination, gerrymandering, you name it. There are more ways to attack someone than punching them despite how awesome the power of bruising someone’s ugly mug feels. How much depravity must you accept to constantly belittle someone? How much more socially turgid, or even sociopathic is it to employ power over a person or a group of people through a disparaging lexicon? If you don’t understand or even believe in that level of power, then I invite you to call the next African American you meet a nigger and see how that works out for you.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of the most widely-cited United States Supreme Court Justices (serving from 1902-1932), once wrote, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” Excepting the positive notions of expanding the human mind, consider Holmes’ quote as an admonition: experience, perhaps in quantity, changes people. In the context of our little discussion about violence here, perhaps for the worse. Aggregate exprience over time creates new norms or normalizes certain behaviors, even and perhaps especially radical ones. So if the experience of violence gets normed in all its myriad forms - from fisticuffs to shootings to gaslighting to propaganda to hate speech and all ‘round the common ether - then how should we feel about that? Should we be horrified by the march of evolution, the continued genetic perforation of expectation as we discover new ways to violate our rivals? Should we become numb to it, to accept infinitely decreasing thresholds as the the propensity to visit violence on others increases? Should we rail against the march of normalization, to invoke the superhero ethic that there is always a better way? Should we dive into it wholeheartedly, not just accepting the new norms but engaging in it ourselves to understand the appeal?

“Self-improvement is masturbation,” said Tyler Durden. “Now, self-destruction...”

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