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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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More seriously, The Schism had less commentary on all three assassination attempts combined, between Trump and Kavanaugh, in an entire year, than it spent debating whether Trump was fascist in a single week before the 2024 election. (answer: of course, it's just a matter of how fascist). Tesla arsons, Paul Kessler, new phone who dis?

That's the subreddit that came into existence because people here didn't downvote a post FCfromSSC ate a ban over hard enough about advocacy of violence. Maybe direct advocacy is not universal among Blue Tribers (though I'll point again to Ken White or my tumblr feed and its regular DenyDefendDepose fandom), and maybe it's not here (modulo whenever Impassionata makes their next alt), but they don't care enough to comment on it; does anyone think there's a Blue Tribe locale that's going to be any stronger?

I explicitly called out Impassionata's escalating advocacy and tolerance of violence on TheSchism and it was recognized as a quality contribution. There are still Blue Tribers who see the same pattern of escalations that @FCfromSSC does and who lament that too few of our "allies" seem to be taking de-escalation seriously and would rather risk violence in pursuit of power.

[sans deletes]

I'm going to start off by saying that I am glad you wrote that, and I am glad that it got a QC. I'm glad that Impassionata got banned then, and last week, and whenever theschism mods get tired of it and finally banned Imp permanently I'll be glad -- and I don't often favor bans.

But I'm going to point out that it specifically in response to claims of 'right-wing' 'fascist' violence supposedly incited by Red Tribers, in 2023 long after BLM had ebbed; it does not name Red Tribers that were hit (excepting arguably a rhetorical flourish about police stations), but neighbors and friends.

((It's also an example that predates two of the three assassination attempts I'm commenting on, and doesn't mention the third.))

Contra expectations, I don't keep an encyclopedic assembly of every poster on every ratadj forum, and the good reddit search is down. Maybe I've missed something you've said elsewhere; maybe you weren't active at the right times; maybe you just didn't have a great opportunity. But understand why this is more an example of FCfromSSC's point than a counter.

I stopped taking Impassionata seriously a good while back and now it's very difficult to parse out how much they genuinely mean, how much is a performance, and how much is them caught up in all the alts and clashing viewpoints to the point they can't remember what they mean now.