Cheers Queers

I really don’t know how we’ve gotten to a point in online discourse where it’s become a #hottake to say that Killing People Is Wrong. There are posts on here with thousands of notes about how we should kill all pedophiles/rapists/abusers, and while I understand the need to condemn these people in the strongest terms and make it clear that they have no place in our community, advocating for the killing of people is and always will be wrong. 

Even if you call it ‘clear hyperbole’ - that you don’t actually mean xyz should be killed - how do you know that the thousands of people in the notes understand that? There are clear parallels between this and what the alt-right does. They draw people in with irony and hyperbole, ready to jump up and say it’s all a joke when called on it - but at the end of the day, they’ve managed to normalise and spread their ideas without anyone noticing. 

There have been many cases of people actually murdering those they believe to have committed crimes against children. “Ironic, playful content can have effects in real life.” (link) Such was the case of the man who “turned up at Comet Ping Pong Pizza in Washington DC with a gun after imbibing too deeply of the so-called Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The theory was ginned up by forum trolls and amplified by fringe rightwing media. It asserted, on the basis of some of John Podesta’s leaked emails, that the restaurant was the hub of an elite pedophile ring. Last December, [he] drove to Washington from North Carolina with three firearms. When he arrived, he texted a friend: ‘Raiding a pedo ring, possible sacrificing the lives of a few for the lives of many.’ He fired shots inside the restaurant, but fortunately was arrested without harming anyone.”

Or the cases in India where, over a period of two months, over 20 people were lynched by mobs due to false rumours being spread over whatsapp that they were child abductors (link). Any reasonable person should be horrified at the thought of taking a human life – shouldn’t they? 

The death penalty is still used in many places, and where I am in the UK I have seen people argue in real life that it should be brought back specifically because we should be allowed to murder these groups of offenders. This post (link) explains well why we shouldn’t accept the rhetoric that any group deserves death.

If you believe that people deserve to live, that the death penalty is unjust, then your language and politics should reflect that. As shown above with the Pizzagate case, even jokes about murder have the potential to be taken seriously and be acted upon. We cannot allow what is essentially fascist language and fascist solutions into our political commentary. Because how can you oppose these beliefs and ideas when they come from governing bodies, but make exceptions for yourself and your friends? If you’re morally opposed to something then making exceptions is disingenuous, even dangerous. 

I’ll be real here, 90% of the time I see this coming from young lefty westerners who have literally no experience of living under governments who actually do this. And for clarification, I do of course say that as one of those westerners! But I was also raised by a mother who was part of the resistance against the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in the 1970s (link). She had to go into hiding while her friends were being murdered around her, and she came out of that period (and out of the communist party) with an unshakeable hatred of state-sanctioned murder and a great deal of pride in the nonviolent people power revolution that eventually ousted Marcos. I’m not going to even try and get into the argument of whether violence in retaliation against oppression is right or wrong, or whether it’s comparable to the violence enacted by oppressors (as Donald Trump would claim). Why try to find reasons why we should be allowed to enact murder, when we could be devoting ourselves to nonviolent solutions and retaining our commitment to humanitarianism?

For that matter, take the current President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte - his ‘drug war’ has lead to the deaths of 5,176 people officially (i.e. at the hands of the police) while thousands more have been killed unofficially and extrajudicially (which Duterte has actively and explicitly encouraged the public to do). Currently, the number of deaths is estimated to be between 12,000 and 20,000 (link). And this is all because Duterte stirred up public hatred of drug addicts and dealers, using the public’s willingness to dehumanise offenders of certain crimes. He utilised the kind of language we’re talking about to normalise murder - ‘If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself’ is a direct quote (link). Whether these people were killed by the public or killed by police off the record is irrelevant - the continued political support for him and his policies demonstrates that it is entirely possible to convince a large part of the population to see death as a reasonable resolution, if you first make them believe that those people deserve to die. And before anyone asks the question - no, capital punishment is not legal in the Philippines. And yet.

I really don’t know how we’ve gotten to a point in online discourse where it’s become a #hottake to say that Killing People Is Wrong. There are posts on here with thousands of notes about how we should kill all pedophiles/rapists/abusers, and while I understand the need to condemn these people in the strongest terms and make it clear that they have no place in our community, advocating for the killing of people is and always will be wrong. 

Even if you call it ‘clear hyperbole’ - that you don’t actually mean xyz should be killed - how do you know that the thousands of people in the notes understand that? There are clear parallels between this and what the alt-right does. They draw people in with irony and hyperbole, ready to jump up and say it’s all a joke when called on it - but at the end of the day, they’ve managed to normalise and spread their ideas without anyone noticing. 

There have been many cases of people actually murdering those they believe to have committed crimes against children. “Ironic, playful content can have effects in real life.” (link) Such was the case of the man who “turned up at Comet Ping Pong Pizza in Washington DC with a gun after imbibing too deeply of the so-called Pizzagate conspiracy theory. The theory was ginned up by forum trolls and amplified by fringe rightwing media. It asserted, on the basis of some of John Podesta’s leaked emails, that the restaurant was the hub of an elite pedophile ring. Last December, [he] drove to Washington from North Carolina with three firearms. When he arrived, he texted a friend: ‘Raiding a pedo ring, possible sacrificing the lives of a few for the lives of many.’ He fired shots inside the restaurant, but fortunately was arrested without harming anyone.”

Or the cases in India where, over a period of two months, over 20 people were lynched by mobs due to false rumours being spread over whatsapp that they were child abductors (link). Any reasonable person should be horrified at the thought of taking a human life – shouldn’t they? 

The death penalty is still used in many places, and where I am in the UK I have seen people argue in real life that it should be brought back specifically because we should be allowed to murder these groups of offenders. This post (link) explains well why we shouldn’t accept the rhetoric that any group deserves death.

hey guys!

as most of you know, i’m doing my postgrad in clinical psychology rn. not only is the workload intense, the textbook-load is almost impossible. obviously, being a child of technology, most of my required reading is in soft copies, but there are a few seminal textbooks (such as the synopsis of psychiatry and the dsm-5) that i need to have hard copies of for my course. as you all know, textbooks are hella expensive, and these psychiatry nerds aren’t playing around with their prices (the dsm alone is $118.43 on amazon without international shipping & customs). 

i’d really appreciate it if you could donate even a tiny amount so that i can save up and buy these (we aren’t allowed to hold any employment during our course because of its intense nature). i’ve used my old ko-fi profile for simplicity’s sake.

Antoni: Cheese is so good, though.