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Tag: Fascism

Austin Free Press: Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Leads to HateLGBTQIA rights still matter when resisting tyranny
Pride Flag - Kate CC NC Flickr
November 6, 2024
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Austin Free Press: Anti-LGBTQ+ Legislation Leads to Hate

Posted in Austin, and Journalism

Murder, assault, bomb threats, and verbal threats were some of the worst anti-LGBTQ+ hate incidents occurring in the greater Austin area over the last three years, according to data that the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD documented as the basis for a recent report on such incidents nationwide. Austin Free Press used GLAAD’s Texas data to analyze incidents in the Austin area.

Even as violent crime falls nationwide, threats against the LGBTQ+ community are on the rise nationally, in Texas, and in Austin. In explaining that contradiction, experts say anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is helping to drive those trends.

“We’re seeing this really massive rise in anti-LGBTQ incidents all across the U.S.,” said Sarah Moore, GLAAD’s senior manager of news and research. Moore’s research shows that between Pride Month in June of 2023 and that same time this year incidents increased by 112% nationwide. In Texas, the increase was 44% during that period.

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LGBTQ Nation: Frisco, Texas Is Erasing Diversity & PrideIn a heated confrontation, Proud Boys in their yellow uniforms confront a group facing away from the camera. One in a yellow Proud Boys mask points angrily at us.
Flickr/Geoff Livingston
August 20, 2024
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LGBTQ Nation: Frisco, Texas Is Erasing Diversity & Pride

Posted in Journalism

When the municipal government of Frisco, Texas, made its only Pride declaration in June of 2022, the event made headlines for a different reason than that historic first: it drew out the Proud Boys. 

The extremist right-wing group has made opposition to LGBTQ+ expression – especially drag and Pride – a cornerstone of its violent movement. In Frisco, the Proud Boys harassed a key organizer and followed him and other supporters to a celebration at a restaurant after the proclamation. 

Justin Culpepper, 36, one-half of the married couple who founded the nonprofit Pride Frisco, said the extremist group threatened to assault him. “I went into the restaurant, and the people who worked at the restaurant protected me,” he recalled.

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FAIR: Alex Jones and the Post-Truth LandscapeA bearded Alex Jones sits flanked by his lawyers, two white men who are also wearing suits, all seated in a courtrooml
Courtesy of HBO
April 1, 2024
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FAIR: Alex Jones and the Post-Truth Landscape

Posted in Austin, FAIR, and Journalism

To lose a child to violence is already one of the most traumatic things a human being can experience. To compound that by seeing those deaths made the center of a seemingly limitless conspiracy theory pushes that suffering to a level that is almost inconceivable.

The Truth vs. Alex Jones, a documentary released last month from HBO/MAX, immerses us in the immense pain—and equally momentous bravery—of the parents and other surviving relatives of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, as they take on perhaps the most notorious conspiracy theorist of our age. Through exclusive courtroom footage and numerous emotionally vulnerable interviews, director Dan Reed (Leaving Neverland, Four Hours at the Capitol) brings the viewer inside the survivors’ legal efforts to force Alex Jones to face the consequences of his actions.

On the morning of December 14, 2012, a 20-year old man entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. Over the course of about five minutes, he systematically slaughtered 26 people, mostly young children, then killed himself. He had murdered his mother earlier that day.

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The internet is ephemeralA brick wall with simple chalk drawings of a blue Twitter bird in flight and a "Fail Whale" being held aloft by little birds. Hints of previous, half-erased chalk drawings linger.
Someday just traces will remain of Twitter's communities. Benjamin Esham / Flickr, CC SA
November 29, 2022
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The internet is ephemeral

Posted in Gonzo Notes, and Ministry of Hemp

I grew up invested in the technocratic fantasy that the internet would turn into a  perfect archive of all knowledge, always at our fingertips. Our mantra is often “the internet is forever,” and it’s easy to buy into this myth.

In  the process, we sometimes forget the ephemeral nature of the digital  world. If you’re online long enough, you’ve seen whole communities rise and fall. Places where we’d go to “hang out” for hours are now  meaningless husks. Yes, it’s true you can technically find my LiveJournal if you look, but it’s no longer a place where minds gather to share ideas, stories, and silly memes.

When we say “the  internet is forever,” we mean it in a forensic or archaeological sense. As online communities collapse, they leave little traces behind the way we leave behind fingerprints, and shed hair or skin cells as we move through the physical world. Researchers, such as antifascists on the  trail, can sift through the rubble but the vitality departed long ago.

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National Butterfly Center Returns After Fascist ThreatsA monarch butterfly spreads its wings as it perches on a flower.
Monarch migration is threatened by a loss of biodiversity. (Unsplash / Joshua J. Cotten)
November 11, 2022
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National Butterfly Center Returns After Fascist Threats

Posted in Journalism, and The Texas Observer

More than 100 butterfly enthusiasts descended on the border city of Mission over Halloween weekend to celebrate the annual Texas Butterfly Festival. The event marked a comeback for its host, the National Butterfly Center, which has been threatened and harassed by right-wing extremists who believe (falsely) that the wildlife sanctuary is a human trafficking hotspot. The center closed from January to April over safety concerns.

“We reopened the National Butterfly Center on Earth Day, and this year it was honestly a big celebration,” recalled Marianna Treviño-Wright, director of the center.

Although festival enrollment was down slightly due to the pandemic and political controversy, Treviño-Wright was excited to share her love of butterflies with dozens of new initiates. Accompanied by 20 or so guides, they spent four days tracking the annual migration of monarchs and other species throughout South Texas.

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Honor the Sandy Hook FamiliesAn Infowars flag and a Dont Tread On Me flag hang from the same flag pole above a right-wing protest in Washington, D.C.
The Sandy Hook families deserve praise for opposing Infowars and Alex Jones. (Flickr/Anthony Crider, CC NC)
August 9, 2022
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Honor the Sandy Hook Families

Posted in Journalism

“A lot of folks are centering Alex when they should be centering the  bravery and catharsis of Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis,” said Dan  Friesen, cohost of the Knowledge Fight podcast, which has devoted more than 700 episodes to critically examining Jones.

This is a tall order, because making himself the center of attention  is one of Jones’ most carefully honed skills. He’s an expert at saying  and doing things so outrageous that the progressive left can’t help but  share them—always in horror and disgust, but reaping him new viewers and more clicks nonetheless. (Even the Texas Observer is not immune from dwelling on Jones’ antics.)

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