Former president Donald Trump announced in a campaign rally that his day one priorities include targeting schools "promoting transgender insanity" with federal bans.
The only insanity is how many crimes - convicted or otherwise - this guy can get away with and not be in prison. Forget about how stupid it is that he committed treason by "loosing" those documents but gets to run again for president.
Every conviction is a badge of honor to those that blindly support him.
More "proof" that the deep state is out to get their fearless "tell it like it is" leader. It's strong man authoritarianism and the weak minded that quickly fall in place because they feel disenfranchised. All while ignoring his silver spoon, draft dodging, adulterous, pay for abortions past.
"... any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto the lives of our children, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask." He's really sucking up to all of the marginal groups of kooks.
I just can't believe how hard right he's veering. Hopefully he'll disenfranchise the swing voters and moderates by being too extreme. Go ahead Donny, JUMP !
Unfortunately, polls and oddsmakers have him out front right now, and he is favored to win the November election. In my opinion, LGBT and especially trans people need to start thinking now about how they will cope with the onslaught that is coming. Hate to be a pessimist but that’s the way the numbers look right now 😢
What, like anyone with half a brain cell would vote for that personification of the downfall of civilization? I have friends who were life long Republicans who haven't marked a vote for an R in over 8 years.
For those that haven't seen it, go watch John Oliver's recent episode on Trump.
Oliver lays bare Project 2025's plans for a second Trump term and the right's agenda regardless of whether Trump wins. It is not an easy watch, but it is important to understand in real terms what the right wants to accomplish. They have a plan and it is terrifying.
It is no coincidence this comes at a time when he just met with Mike Johnston at Mar a Lago. Absolutely no doubt what Johnston’s agenda will be and Trump needs him.
Democrats should have burned Johnston when they had the chance. He's one of the most anti-lgbtq+ people ever to hold the speakership and will hurt everyone's rights if he has power with a Trump presidency.
The Netherlands is currently experiencing a massive rise of transphobia in politics after disastrous elections in 2023, where we elected at least 3 absolutely extreme-right parties.
While the fourth party is also extreme-right, and have been shifting from right to extreme-right by enabling the other 3 by saying they'd be in a coalition with them, they are...well, not AS bad, which is not good obviously.
In the new House of Representatives, we've already seen a party try to discuss revoking patient-doctor confidentiality of transchildren, create a database of said children, and having politicians decide whether their treatment is OK or not.
Upon debating the motions that should do this, they used the social contagion theory from Lisa Littman, and hung up their transphobic motions on Cass' Interim Report.
About a month after, we were called serial rapists by one of the other members of the same party.
This party has been campaigning hard on the idea the Dutch state should never EVER have the possibility again to retaliate against a group of citizens, this idea of "trust us!" probably stemming from the leader of the party exposing an AI-driven tax agency scandal.
But within a month of the party forming in the House of Representatives we have seen how messed up they are, and that that idea of theirs is quite flexible, and probably only applies to "the people we deem eligible to participate in society."
It is a disgusting party with a hypocritical stance on how they are against discrimination.
That is absolutely horrifying! Praying this is not even a slightly possibility of things to come here in the US. Doing all I can to make sure it doesn’t.
In all honesty, I have been kind of surprised to see this level of brainrot hit Dutch people.
But as a Dutch talkshowhost said: "Just like obesity, conspiracy-theories also fly over to us".
We have seen a first sign of this brainrot several years a go, when a self-ID law change got heavy backlash from a hatecampaign called GenderDoubt (there is a US sounding initiative that sounds similar in setup, but I forgot the name of it, I think Erin wrote about it).
The reason I mention the US thing is because it similarly says to want to draw "attention to the malpractice allowed in gender affirming care, a view heavily supported by medical experts!" and when you check the supporters out, they are anything but.
Some of them are even doctors not working in gendercare.
This theory delivered the arguments for killing the self-ID law, and is what is what the party I mentioned earlier used when it came to the rapist-theory.
Recently, I got word back from a different party, of which a former member of this party who is now a minister (you loose party affiliation to some degree when becoming a state-secretary or minister) as a former lawyer who loved to tout how well she knows the law, got convicted for group discrimination of muslims.
She is now the vice-prime minister. A vice-prime minister who loooooves to tout how nuanced she is. While it was that lack of nuance, along with the provisional way she said to want to fight antisemitism (by blaming all muslims for it) that got her convicted.
This same woman decided to show a part of The Netherlands that at 54, she didn't learn not to be a fucking bully and decided to bully a 22-year old transwoman for winning a beauty pageant. A 22-year old woman who, at the time she sent that transphobic hatetweet was receiving death threats.
Because of her rabid racism, and thus being rotten down to the core, while having this appealing, sexually attractive charisma (to a degree) over her, an opinion piece website has already nicknamed her "Sarah Paling".
Paling being the Dutch word for eel, because she lives in a village where lot's of the fishermen that fish for eel also live...
Someone also described her as "The apparently sexually attractive face meant to make extreme-right politics approachable. Something so transparent, that you'd expect people not to fall for it, but apparently it works."
She invited me to discuss trans rights in person at first when I called her out on her hatetweet, but I think that even with the intention coming from her, it was never meant to be an actual private conversation.
Because next to feeling like having dodged a bullet (no form of intelligent reasoning is going to be capable of fighting such a massively dumb person), it would also have been a personal conversation on 2 different levels.
Not only will the subject affect me more than it does her (as much as she loves to claim it heavily influences her life), I also considered the conversation to be the end to everything: I once had a massive crush on her as someone not yet out as trans.
Because well, she is hyperfeminine in appearance (apparently not in behavior, but hey, let's not make that misogynistic comparison) and to me, at the time, she embodied everything that I wasn't.
After a strong intimate hug I fell for her hard, and put her on a massive pedestal, from which she came crashing down because of that tweet.
I am probably still out to try it should I happen to run into her, because I am probably a massive idiot, but also because she can not hide behind her new role in government anymore: she can't claim that "she is not professionally involved with this subject anymore" (Something she said after her conviction) because after all, transphobia is with transpeople a lot of times of the day, every day of the week.
As for hoping some things do not come to the US: I think you do not realize that the US has been very much the guide on introducing fascism in European countries, with the transphobia that goes along with it.
Some of the things in the US, trying to revoke patient-doctor confidentiality by requesting medical records has already happened, and Erin has wrote about it.
I live in Madison, WI in a state that is beginning to shake of a Republican -induced nightmare. I attended a "Big Gay Market" this past weekend at a large expo center and it was jammed with vendors and customers of every make, model and year. Perhaps I am seeing the world through the rose-colored glasses of liberal Madison, but most folks here are middle class, living in modest homes and driving sensible cars -- and relentlessly kind and polite. I am hopeful. I think our biggest challenge is breaking the snake-eating-its-tail circle of the right's news and culture echo chamber. Part of the solution is for LGBTQ folks to be visible in day-to-day and matter-of-fact fashion. When making small talk and people ask me about my husband, I reply, "Oh, you mean my wife" without missing a beat. When our orientation and our gender identify become a commonplace fact, we will have won the better part of the battle. I think that is a reachable goal.
Thank you for your comment; it’s encouraging as my husband and I are moving to Lake Geneva, WI early 2025. I will be bringing my LGBTQ allyship and voting voice; wishing that I could register in WI early, in time for the November election!
Thank you! Allies are SO important. LGBTQ folks will always be a minority but that does not mean that support for the community can not include a majority! It has been said many times in various ways but if we do not protect those least able to protect themselves we fail in protecting all of us. Good luck with your move, and welcome to Badgerland!
It’s great isn’t it that a presidential candidate can run for office promising to piss on about 1 percent of the country. Shows you where we are as a country. The f-g toilet.
Erin Reed: While it is yet unknown whether the university will pull the event, I wanted to let you know that Hilary Cass is invited to speak at the Free University in Amsterdam (VU) at the 27th of June and that protests have been announced.
Another couple of names of the speaker list (all anti-trans activists) are:
Riittakerttu Kaltiala (an anti-trans psychiatrist from Finland with ties to SEGM and Genspect)
Mikael Landén (an anti-trans, Swedish psychiatrist who also has ties with SEGM).
And some Dutch speakers whose names have not been able to be read by me (I saw the poster on a trans-positive Instagram page that warned for the speeches and called for protesters to show up).
Maybe there is a different way to inform you about this, but I don't know where that function is yet, so if this is the wrong place, I sincerely apologize.
By the way: The Free University (VU), is the university which closely works together with the VUmc, the university hospital that holds a gender clinic.
Some people are astonished such hateful anti-trans voices are invited this close to a university hospital with a gender clinic (the distance literally is less than 500 meters).
You can only attend the speeches based upon personal invite, which gives everyone who is aware of the names an idea of how rabid the content is going to be.
"While it is yet unknown whether the university will pull the event, I wanted to let you know that Hilary Cass is invited to speak at the Free University in Amsterdam (VU) at the 27th of June and that protests have been announced."
Maybe I can know who organizes the protests so that we can get in touch? Misschien zou ik ze kunnen contacteren om in de toekomst samen te werken? Ik moet uit mijn land vluchten vanwege onderdrukkende regels en wetten en ik ben naar Belgie aan het verhuizen. Sorry ik schreef dit niet in het Engels omdat ik niet wil mijn persoonlijke informatie bekend maken voor iedereen. Wellicht zouden wij brieven kunnen sturen aan de universiteit om te protesteren?
Hier vinden jullie een goede handleiding van SPLC. Het gaat erover hoe mensen weerstand kunnen bieden tegen kwade bewegingen die universiteiten willen besmetten.
Actually, the conference held was basically a guest-speakers thing. The organizers however were VU-members. A former law professor and a researcher at the Radboud University Medical Centre.
They released a piece in 2018 threatening doctors with hypothetical lawsuits for "doctors allowing this widespread abuse and mutilation of children".
These people are not reasonable and hardcore religious conservatives. And they did not respond to any criticism, other than calling the demonstration by transpeople outside of the university, at the front entrance "The attempt to silence scientists".
Worthy of note: Some people working as academics or professors walked out during the conference and joined the protest. They could not believe the university was allowing psuedoscience like this.
The brochure is completely ill equipped to deal with Dutch universities. They are typically much smaller, campus security is virtually non-existent, and next to that, I was and am not a student there.
As for the organisation of LGBTQI+ students at universities, if the presence of people from the university was any indication, they are far and few in between, or maybe didn't want to openly associate due to the fear for suffering severe backlash, given the speakers attending.
There has been backlash against the university, but not enough. The press unfortunately sided with the university, and it's claim that we were silencing scientists.
"They released a piece in 2018 threatening doctors with hypothetical lawsuits for "doctors allowing this widespread abuse and mutilation of children".
These people are not reasonable and hardcore religious conservatives."
Oh my... Just FYI: My first university in Hungary was a hardcore rightist place of the Reformed Church, it was the birthplace of the ruling Hungarian far right. Religious and church 'universities' are a hotbed of pseudo-science and misinformation.
"...calling the demonstration by transpeople outside of the university, at the front entrance "The attempt to silence scientists".
Too bad the press and a lot of public figures do not understand their tactic and fall for it, it is the age old DARVO attack in which the attacker pretends to be the victim and blames the people defending themselves with committing an act of aggression. Orbán Viktor is a master of this, he is a good example of the crying wolf the feigns victimhood while abusing others. When I am in the area I will also join such protests. F*ck them and their victimhood complex. Try and educate people about this tactic.
'In the final stage, the perpetrator skillfully manipulates the narrative to cast themselves as the victim and the actual victim as the offender. This tactic involves a strategic inversion of roles, where the perpetrator portrays themselves as unfairly treated or harmed, while painting the victim as the instigator or aggressor.'
What strikes me about this is how much of it, even at this relatively late date, is about shoring up the base. This is really a case of pounding the table harder about the same unreasoned fears, ones that, according to polls, don't rank high on voters' concerns.
So are they convinced that intensifying social panic among existing supporters is enough to carry them through, or are they afraid that unless the beast is constantly feed their base will crack?
Considering this and all of the other day one priorities Trump and his cronies have announced, one thing is abundantly clear: day one of another Trump administration is one day more than any of us can afford to let him have.
3rd party votes in US presidencies are a vote for the opposition. Every vote Jill Stein or Kennedy take from Biden is a vote for Trump.
If everyone that voted green in 2016 voted for Hillary we wouldn't have had Trump.
We should have a better system that doesn't force us into a two party system. The founding fathers literally wrote about the dangers of a two party system. But we don't, and without major election reform at the constitution level we will never have anything other than a 2 party system.
So long as the Electoral College exists, there are a number of states - firmly red or firmly blue - where voting 3rd party makes not a whiff of a difference in the outcome. Considering also that the important role minor parties have played in US history has been to gain enough support to force one of the major parties to embrace some of that agenda to protect its own position, such strategic voting can be done with a clear conscience and without accusations of being "a vote for the opposition."
HOWEVER, 2024 is a case where I argue for a different logic and for people to vote for Biden for president - because I want Donald "Tweetie-pie"* Trump to not only be defeated in the Electoral College, I want him crushed in the popular vote. I want that "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner" and his like-minded , self-interested, camp followers and acolytes to be rejected, dismissed, booted, denied in a degree no rational person can deny. I want then for generations to come to be the standard reference for losers and failures. I want to see Nixon-McGovern levels. I want to see Johnson-Goldwater levels. Hell, I want Harding-Cox to be a nail-biter by comparison.
I won't get it, but I intend to do my little bit in pursuit.
I have run for office as a 3rd party candidate. I have voted for 3rd party candidates and I expect I will again. But not this time, not for president.
*Back before "Truth" Social, I dubbed him thus because "He loves him some Tweets and he's a bird-brain."
But more people voted for Hillary than Trump in 2016. It was the electoral college that f'ed everyone over...
Also, I feel if The Netherlands would've had a 2 party system, we would've been in deep trouble long before the time we are in deep trouble now, but getting rid of it is not an end-all solution: The Netherlands elected 3-4 extreme-right parties, with 3 of them having downright fascist ideologies.
Tell us you haven't learned anything from 2016 without telling us you haven't learned anything from 2016.
*𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵- The time to be idealistic is in the primaries. The general election is a time for ruthless pragmatism.
...besides, Stein is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 better than Biden on the warcrime-waffling front. He won't put his foot down with Netenyahu; she won't put hers down with Putin. Even if she did have a chance in hell of winning, we'd still end up with a President who's willing to let at least one civilian-slaughtering authoritarian have his way with only the faintest whine of condemnation (as opposed to Trump, who'd be perfectly happy cheering on both of them). That's not an improvement, it's a sidestep.
Thank you, exactly. Jill Stein is the furthest thing from some sort of morally-upright alternative to Trump or Biden who would allow you to "keep your hands clean" by voting for.
This is only reasonable if you live in a state that's either deep blue or deep red, such that your vote has no real chance of affecting who the electoral votes go to.
If, however, you live in a swing state, this is terrible advice. You need to remember all the people who would be affected by Trump's policies. There's no place for ideological grandstanding.
OMG, that man must be stopped. He’s a right-wing boot licker who will say anything to appease them. Reminds me so much of the Hitler documentary I saw last month. 🙄🤨
In our broken plutocratic system, fomenting unity-through-hate over simple, tangible issues (like targeting transfolx or queers) becomes a least common denominator. And it is constantly disheartening to see it.
It's not like the '2025 Presidential Transition Project' is a secret
The only insanity is how many crimes - convicted or otherwise - this guy can get away with and not be in prison. Forget about how stupid it is that he committed treason by "loosing" those documents but gets to run again for president.
Every conviction is a badge of honor to those that blindly support him.
More "proof" that the deep state is out to get their fearless "tell it like it is" leader. It's strong man authoritarianism and the weak minded that quickly fall in place because they feel disenfranchised. All while ignoring his silver spoon, draft dodging, adulterous, pay for abortions past.
Ha ha hahaha, facts-well said !
Trans joy, yes! Trans insanity is all in his head. Everywhere else, no such thing!
"... any school pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content onto the lives of our children, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask." He's really sucking up to all of the marginal groups of kooks.
More and more, they aren't on the margins of the GOP any more. They're the majority.
I just can't believe how hard right he's veering. Hopefully he'll disenfranchise the swing voters and moderates by being too extreme. Go ahead Donny, JUMP !
Unfortunately, polls and oddsmakers have him out front right now, and he is favored to win the November election. In my opinion, LGBT and especially trans people need to start thinking now about how they will cope with the onslaught that is coming. Hate to be a pessimist but that’s the way the numbers look right now 😢
What, like anyone with half a brain cell would vote for that personification of the downfall of civilization? I have friends who were life long Republicans who haven't marked a vote for an R in over 8 years.
No mention of carrying guns to school there, guess he forgot to check a box
For those that haven't seen it, go watch John Oliver's recent episode on Trump.
Oliver lays bare Project 2025's plans for a second Trump term and the right's agenda regardless of whether Trump wins. It is not an easy watch, but it is important to understand in real terms what the right wants to accomplish. They have a plan and it is terrifying.
Warning: it is uncomfortable/stressful to watch.
Yeah, and the splicing of Milf Manor clips to lighten the mood made it uncomfortable in a whole other way 😬
It is no coincidence this comes at a time when he just met with Mike Johnston at Mar a Lago. Absolutely no doubt what Johnston’s agenda will be and Trump needs him.
Democrats should have burned Johnston when they had the chance. He's one of the most anti-lgbtq+ people ever to hold the speakership and will hurt everyone's rights if he has power with a Trump presidency.
The character of a people and of a nation can be measured by how the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups within that society are treated.
The Netherlands is currently experiencing a massive rise of transphobia in politics after disastrous elections in 2023, where we elected at least 3 absolutely extreme-right parties.
While the fourth party is also extreme-right, and have been shifting from right to extreme-right by enabling the other 3 by saying they'd be in a coalition with them, they are...well, not AS bad, which is not good obviously.
In the new House of Representatives, we've already seen a party try to discuss revoking patient-doctor confidentiality of transchildren, create a database of said children, and having politicians decide whether their treatment is OK or not.
Upon debating the motions that should do this, they used the social contagion theory from Lisa Littman, and hung up their transphobic motions on Cass' Interim Report.
About a month after, we were called serial rapists by one of the other members of the same party.
This party has been campaigning hard on the idea the Dutch state should never EVER have the possibility again to retaliate against a group of citizens, this idea of "trust us!" probably stemming from the leader of the party exposing an AI-driven tax agency scandal.
But within a month of the party forming in the House of Representatives we have seen how messed up they are, and that that idea of theirs is quite flexible, and probably only applies to "the people we deem eligible to participate in society."
It is a disgusting party with a hypocritical stance on how they are against discrimination.
That is absolutely horrifying! Praying this is not even a slightly possibility of things to come here in the US. Doing all I can to make sure it doesn’t.
In all honesty, I have been kind of surprised to see this level of brainrot hit Dutch people.
But as a Dutch talkshowhost said: "Just like obesity, conspiracy-theories also fly over to us".
We have seen a first sign of this brainrot several years a go, when a self-ID law change got heavy backlash from a hatecampaign called GenderDoubt (there is a US sounding initiative that sounds similar in setup, but I forgot the name of it, I think Erin wrote about it).
The reason I mention the US thing is because it similarly says to want to draw "attention to the malpractice allowed in gender affirming care, a view heavily supported by medical experts!" and when you check the supporters out, they are anything but.
Some of them are even doctors not working in gendercare.
This theory delivered the arguments for killing the self-ID law, and is what is what the party I mentioned earlier used when it came to the rapist-theory.
Recently, I got word back from a different party, of which a former member of this party who is now a minister (you loose party affiliation to some degree when becoming a state-secretary or minister) as a former lawyer who loved to tout how well she knows the law, got convicted for group discrimination of muslims.
She is now the vice-prime minister. A vice-prime minister who loooooves to tout how nuanced she is. While it was that lack of nuance, along with the provisional way she said to want to fight antisemitism (by blaming all muslims for it) that got her convicted.
This same woman decided to show a part of The Netherlands that at 54, she didn't learn not to be a fucking bully and decided to bully a 22-year old transwoman for winning a beauty pageant. A 22-year old woman who, at the time she sent that transphobic hatetweet was receiving death threats.
Because of her rabid racism, and thus being rotten down to the core, while having this appealing, sexually attractive charisma (to a degree) over her, an opinion piece website has already nicknamed her "Sarah Paling".
Paling being the Dutch word for eel, because she lives in a village where lot's of the fishermen that fish for eel also live...
Someone also described her as "The apparently sexually attractive face meant to make extreme-right politics approachable. Something so transparent, that you'd expect people not to fall for it, but apparently it works."
She invited me to discuss trans rights in person at first when I called her out on her hatetweet, but I think that even with the intention coming from her, it was never meant to be an actual private conversation.
Because next to feeling like having dodged a bullet (no form of intelligent reasoning is going to be capable of fighting such a massively dumb person), it would also have been a personal conversation on 2 different levels.
Not only will the subject affect me more than it does her (as much as she loves to claim it heavily influences her life), I also considered the conversation to be the end to everything: I once had a massive crush on her as someone not yet out as trans.
Because well, she is hyperfeminine in appearance (apparently not in behavior, but hey, let's not make that misogynistic comparison) and to me, at the time, she embodied everything that I wasn't.
After a strong intimate hug I fell for her hard, and put her on a massive pedestal, from which she came crashing down because of that tweet.
I am probably still out to try it should I happen to run into her, because I am probably a massive idiot, but also because she can not hide behind her new role in government anymore: she can't claim that "she is not professionally involved with this subject anymore" (Something she said after her conviction) because after all, transphobia is with transpeople a lot of times of the day, every day of the week.
As for hoping some things do not come to the US: I think you do not realize that the US has been very much the guide on introducing fascism in European countries, with the transphobia that goes along with it.
Some of the things in the US, trying to revoke patient-doctor confidentiality by requesting medical records has already happened, and Erin has wrote about it.
I live in Madison, WI in a state that is beginning to shake of a Republican -induced nightmare. I attended a "Big Gay Market" this past weekend at a large expo center and it was jammed with vendors and customers of every make, model and year. Perhaps I am seeing the world through the rose-colored glasses of liberal Madison, but most folks here are middle class, living in modest homes and driving sensible cars -- and relentlessly kind and polite. I am hopeful. I think our biggest challenge is breaking the snake-eating-its-tail circle of the right's news and culture echo chamber. Part of the solution is for LGBTQ folks to be visible in day-to-day and matter-of-fact fashion. When making small talk and people ask me about my husband, I reply, "Oh, you mean my wife" without missing a beat. When our orientation and our gender identify become a commonplace fact, we will have won the better part of the battle. I think that is a reachable goal.
Thank you for your comment; it’s encouraging as my husband and I are moving to Lake Geneva, WI early 2025. I will be bringing my LGBTQ allyship and voting voice; wishing that I could register in WI early, in time for the November election!
Thank you! Allies are SO important. LGBTQ folks will always be a minority but that does not mean that support for the community can not include a majority! It has been said many times in various ways but if we do not protect those least able to protect themselves we fail in protecting all of us. Good luck with your move, and welcome to Badgerland!
It’s great isn’t it that a presidential candidate can run for office promising to piss on about 1 percent of the country. Shows you where we are as a country. The f-g toilet.
Trump is Hitler reincarnated, I've been saying it for a while, and it's undeniable.
Erin Reed: While it is yet unknown whether the university will pull the event, I wanted to let you know that Hilary Cass is invited to speak at the Free University in Amsterdam (VU) at the 27th of June and that protests have been announced.
Another couple of names of the speaker list (all anti-trans activists) are:
Riittakerttu Kaltiala (an anti-trans psychiatrist from Finland with ties to SEGM and Genspect)
Mikael Landén (an anti-trans, Swedish psychiatrist who also has ties with SEGM).
And some Dutch speakers whose names have not been able to be read by me (I saw the poster on a trans-positive Instagram page that warned for the speeches and called for protesters to show up).
Maybe there is a different way to inform you about this, but I don't know where that function is yet, so if this is the wrong place, I sincerely apologize.
By the way: The Free University (VU), is the university which closely works together with the VUmc, the university hospital that holds a gender clinic.
Some people are astonished such hateful anti-trans voices are invited this close to a university hospital with a gender clinic (the distance literally is less than 500 meters).
You can only attend the speeches based upon personal invite, which gives everyone who is aware of the names an idea of how rabid the content is going to be.
"While it is yet unknown whether the university will pull the event, I wanted to let you know that Hilary Cass is invited to speak at the Free University in Amsterdam (VU) at the 27th of June and that protests have been announced."
Maybe I can know who organizes the protests so that we can get in touch? Misschien zou ik ze kunnen contacteren om in de toekomst samen te werken? Ik moet uit mijn land vluchten vanwege onderdrukkende regels en wetten en ik ben naar Belgie aan het verhuizen. Sorry ik schreef dit niet in het Engels omdat ik niet wil mijn persoonlijke informatie bekend maken voor iedereen. Wellicht zouden wij brieven kunnen sturen aan de universiteit om te protesteren?
Hier vinden jullie een goede handleiding van SPLC. Het gaat erover hoe mensen weerstand kunnen bieden tegen kwade bewegingen die universiteiten willen besmetten.
https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/soc_alt-right_campus_guide_2017_web.pdf
Actually, the conference held was basically a guest-speakers thing. The organizers however were VU-members. A former law professor and a researcher at the Radboud University Medical Centre.
They released a piece in 2018 threatening doctors with hypothetical lawsuits for "doctors allowing this widespread abuse and mutilation of children".
These people are not reasonable and hardcore religious conservatives. And they did not respond to any criticism, other than calling the demonstration by transpeople outside of the university, at the front entrance "The attempt to silence scientists".
Worthy of note: Some people working as academics or professors walked out during the conference and joined the protest. They could not believe the university was allowing psuedoscience like this.
The brochure is completely ill equipped to deal with Dutch universities. They are typically much smaller, campus security is virtually non-existent, and next to that, I was and am not a student there.
As for the organisation of LGBTQI+ students at universities, if the presence of people from the university was any indication, they are far and few in between, or maybe didn't want to openly associate due to the fear for suffering severe backlash, given the speakers attending.
There has been backlash against the university, but not enough. The press unfortunately sided with the university, and it's claim that we were silencing scientists.
"They released a piece in 2018 threatening doctors with hypothetical lawsuits for "doctors allowing this widespread abuse and mutilation of children".
These people are not reasonable and hardcore religious conservatives."
Oh my... Just FYI: My first university in Hungary was a hardcore rightist place of the Reformed Church, it was the birthplace of the ruling Hungarian far right. Religious and church 'universities' are a hotbed of pseudo-science and misinformation.
"...calling the demonstration by transpeople outside of the university, at the front entrance "The attempt to silence scientists".
Too bad the press and a lot of public figures do not understand their tactic and fall for it, it is the age old DARVO attack in which the attacker pretends to be the victim and blames the people defending themselves with committing an act of aggression. Orbán Viktor is a master of this, he is a good example of the crying wolf the feigns victimhood while abusing others. When I am in the area I will also join such protests. F*ck them and their victimhood complex. Try and educate people about this tactic.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2024/03/15/a-psychologist-explains-how-you-can-deflect-a-darvo-manipulator/
'In the final stage, the perpetrator skillfully manipulates the narrative to cast themselves as the victim and the actual victim as the offender. This tactic involves a strategic inversion of roles, where the perpetrator portrays themselves as unfairly treated or harmed, while painting the victim as the instigator or aggressor.'
What strikes me about this is how much of it, even at this relatively late date, is about shoring up the base. This is really a case of pounding the table harder about the same unreasoned fears, ones that, according to polls, don't rank high on voters' concerns.
So are they convinced that intensifying social panic among existing supporters is enough to carry them through, or are they afraid that unless the beast is constantly feed their base will crack?
He should be in prison day 1. Also let's be real here, "insanity" is his modus operandi and what most attracts his followers.
Considering this and all of the other day one priorities Trump and his cronies have announced, one thing is abundantly clear: day one of another Trump administration is one day more than any of us can afford to let him have.
The lesser of two evils is still Evil .
Dump Trump. Say No to Genocide Joe. Vote Green. Jill Stein for President 💚
3rd party votes in US presidencies are a vote for the opposition. Every vote Jill Stein or Kennedy take from Biden is a vote for Trump.
If everyone that voted green in 2016 voted for Hillary we wouldn't have had Trump.
We should have a better system that doesn't force us into a two party system. The founding fathers literally wrote about the dangers of a two party system. But we don't, and without major election reform at the constitution level we will never have anything other than a 2 party system.
Exactly, until we have something like "ranked order" for president, protest votes hurt us.
So long as the Electoral College exists, there are a number of states - firmly red or firmly blue - where voting 3rd party makes not a whiff of a difference in the outcome. Considering also that the important role minor parties have played in US history has been to gain enough support to force one of the major parties to embrace some of that agenda to protect its own position, such strategic voting can be done with a clear conscience and without accusations of being "a vote for the opposition."
HOWEVER, 2024 is a case where I argue for a different logic and for people to vote for Biden for president - because I want Donald "Tweetie-pie"* Trump to not only be defeated in the Electoral College, I want him crushed in the popular vote. I want that "squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner" and his like-minded , self-interested, camp followers and acolytes to be rejected, dismissed, booted, denied in a degree no rational person can deny. I want then for generations to come to be the standard reference for losers and failures. I want to see Nixon-McGovern levels. I want to see Johnson-Goldwater levels. Hell, I want Harding-Cox to be a nail-biter by comparison.
I won't get it, but I intend to do my little bit in pursuit.
I have run for office as a 3rd party candidate. I have voted for 3rd party candidates and I expect I will again. But not this time, not for president.
*Back before "Truth" Social, I dubbed him thus because "He loves him some Tweets and he's a bird-brain."
Yes! I've made a flowchart for this
https://imgur.com/gallery/jasmines-essential-voting-guide-DVn7WB3
But more people voted for Hillary than Trump in 2016. It was the electoral college that f'ed everyone over...
Also, I feel if The Netherlands would've had a 2 party system, we would've been in deep trouble long before the time we are in deep trouble now, but getting rid of it is not an end-all solution: The Netherlands elected 3-4 extreme-right parties, with 3 of them having downright fascist ideologies.
The electoral college is precisely how the Green Party cost Hillary the election.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/20/democrats-shrug-off-potential-green-party-spoiler-in-2020-329170
"Had voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin cast their ballots for Clinton rather than the Green Party’s Stein, Clinton would be president."
Stein pulled just enough voters to cost Hillary those states and therefore lose the electoral college.
Tell us you haven't learned anything from 2016 without telling us you haven't learned anything from 2016.
*𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵- The time to be idealistic is in the primaries. The general election is a time for ruthless pragmatism.
...besides, Stein is 𝘯𝘰𝘵 better than Biden on the warcrime-waffling front. He won't put his foot down with Netenyahu; she won't put hers down with Putin. Even if she did have a chance in hell of winning, we'd still end up with a President who's willing to let at least one civilian-slaughtering authoritarian have his way with only the faintest whine of condemnation (as opposed to Trump, who'd be perfectly happy cheering on both of them). That's not an improvement, it's a sidestep.
Thank you, exactly. Jill Stein is the furthest thing from some sort of morally-upright alternative to Trump or Biden who would allow you to "keep your hands clean" by voting for.
This is only reasonable if you live in a state that's either deep blue or deep red, such that your vote has no real chance of affecting who the electoral votes go to.
If, however, you live in a swing state, this is terrible advice. You need to remember all the people who would be affected by Trump's policies. There's no place for ideological grandstanding.
Your vote will help elect trump by voting for Stein.
OMG, that man must be stopped. He’s a right-wing boot licker who will say anything to appease them. Reminds me so much of the Hitler documentary I saw last month. 🙄🤨
Tell us which one or post a link please.
Not sure I can remember which one. I was watching multiples on Netflix.
He said he despised his followers but used them all the same.
Well, it's just lots of talk. He doesn't get to unilaterally decide school curricula. It's just like the Muslim ban and the Wall.
If elected he would be in a position to withhold federal funding.
In our broken plutocratic system, fomenting unity-through-hate over simple, tangible issues (like targeting transfolx or queers) becomes a least common denominator. And it is constantly disheartening to see it.
It's not like the '2025 Presidential Transition Project' is a secret