"Finally straight people will have their voices heard"
September 1, 2019 11:59 AM   Subscribe

"We thought this was a good time to stick it to the collectivist, idealist identitarian left."
On Saturday afternoon, a collection of self-described free speech advocates brought the own-the-libs internet into the real world, marching through historic Boston. Purportedly intended as parody of an LGBTQ Pride Parade, the march featured Pepe the Frog cosplayers, members of the far-right street gang the Proud Boys, and alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos as grand marshal riding atop a Trump 2020 float. It ended with a confrontation between attendees and counter-protesters and law enforcement armed with batons and pepper spray.
Orchestrated by a group called Super Happy Fun America, the straight pride parade was touted as a playful exercise in free speech and came with all the trappings: far-right rhetoric blasted from megaphones, white nationalist paraphernalia, and signs celebrating Trump’s border wall. This wasn’t political pot stirring, or an orchestrated political confrontation between the left and the right, the group insisted. It was just a parade with floats and costumes. “It’s just making fun of the left and identity politics,” one attendee wearing a Left Shark meme costume said. "No one here is a hater."
Super Happy Fun America is a front for the far-right group Resist Marxism. Organizers declined a suggestion for a a completely straight parade route and followed the same route as the Boston Pride parade, which drew an estimated 1,000,000 people in June. Vox: The distraction of Straight Pride, as explained by LGBTQ activists and historians

Photos of the parade show the mostly-male marchers being outnumbered by protesters doing conga lines.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 4:22 PM - 31 Aug 2019:
For men who are allegedly so “proud” of being straight, they seem to show real incompetence at attracting women to their event.

Seems more like a “I-Struggle-With-Masculinity” parade to me.
posted by kirkaracha (80 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wish it were amazing to me to see displays like this and to marvel at how tone deaf they are and how truly desperate they end up appearing when they actually do things like this, but at this age, and at this point, it's not. It's just sad. The point they want to make isn't the point they're making, and they don't even realize it. Just so sad.
posted by hippybear at 12:07 PM on September 1, 2019 [25 favorites]


If their point is to intimidate yet another community and get the cops to bash liberal heads doing it, I'd say they'd probably call it a success.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 12:17 PM on September 1, 2019 [25 favorites]


“We heard the outrage online," said Clayton Cresswell, a grown man who dressed as Pepe the Frog in a clown wig for the event. "We thought this was a good time to stick it to the collectivist, idealist identitarian left.”



I mean, this is darkly hilarious, just like the Bret Stephens bedbug/Nazi column, but I'm also struck by what I've read about the recent Chapelle special: jokes about how MeToo has gone too far, he doesn't believe the accusers of Michael Jackson who appeared on Neverland, my poor friend Louis C.K. killed by masturbation

It's like, there's something in the air with all these grievances. It's so weird, the planet is unraveling but we're going to go to war over pronoun use, or something. I just don't understand it (and the Chapelle stuff is really disappointing)
posted by angrycat at 12:19 PM on September 1, 2019 [41 favorites]


It's like, there's something in the air with all these grievances.

Why do people roll coal, even though it's making the environment worse for everyone, including the people who roll coal? It makes them feel powerful at a time when they feel like they're losing power. Metaphorically, shooting a gun can also make you feel powerful, and some people still feel that power when they shoot themselves in the foot.
posted by davejay at 12:22 PM on September 1, 2019 [55 favorites]






Oh great, Milo's back.

Interesting to think about this in the context of right-wing aggression in Portland, especially gucci mane's comment about hard-right groups deliberately targeting liberal downtowns: it's all lulz and free-speech deniability until the second they have critical mass, and then things get violent. Since Charlottesville, east coast cities seemed spared the repeat business from these groups that Portland gets. Maybe that's changing.
posted by postcommunism at 12:29 PM on September 1, 2019 [9 favorites]


> The point they want to make isn't the point they're making, and they don't even realize it.

hippybear, it seems to me that the point they're making isn't about "straight pride", it's: "look, fellow travelers and fash-curious, we can stick our thumb in the eye of those wimpy libs and no matter how pathetic and grotesque we look doing it, they can't stop us. Come on in, the waters fine!"

Also this is basically Skokie all over again and again, right?
posted by postcommunism at 12:32 PM on September 1, 2019 [13 favorites]


"Tonight Show" writer Jess Dweck nailed it:

At least they finally answered the question “why isn’t there a straight pride parade?”
posted by ryanshepard at 12:38 PM on September 1, 2019 [20 favorites]


I know that everyone reads the OP, but for that handful who haven't: I don't want you to miss that Buzzfeed credits none other than Vermin Supreme with shutting up Milo.
posted by postcommunism at 12:47 PM on September 1, 2019 [34 favorites]


The point they want to make isn't the point they're making, and they don't even realize it.

it seems to me that the point they're making isn't about "straight pride"


The point they're making is that they are insecure whiny little children. They think they're making a different point, but that's not the point they're actually making. Which is that they are insecure whiny little children.

It doesn't take courage to march in the streets as a straight person. It takes courage to just put a rainbow flag sticker on your car and live your life as normal with that sticker there. I've been chased through parking lots by men with baseball bats. Nobody marching in any of these parades has ever had that happen.

Maybe it needs to start.
posted by hippybear at 12:50 PM on September 1, 2019 [69 favorites]


@OnlyInBOS, 8:30 AM - 30 Aug 2019:
The organizers of the Straight Pride Parade had a press conference.

One of the questions asked:

“What do you say to taxpayers who want to know why you’re wasting this city’s resources because you three guys can’t get laid?”
posted by kirkaracha at 12:55 PM on September 1, 2019 [84 favorites]


> straight pride parade
> Milo Yiannopoulos as grand marshal

I thought Milo was gay.
posted by at by at 12:55 PM on September 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


I thought Milo was gay.

He is gay. He chooses to be hateful.
posted by davejay at 12:59 PM on September 1, 2019 [42 favorites]


He's also Milo.
posted by Scattercat at 12:59 PM on September 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


I know that everyone reads the OP, but for that handful who haven't: I don't want you to miss that Buzzfeed credits none other than Vermin Supreme with shutting up Milo.

The crowd chanting “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re socialists don’t fuck with us” backed by a marching band also looks to have been pretty sweet.
posted by ryanshepard at 12:59 PM on September 1, 2019 [24 favorites]


> It takes courage to just put a rainbow flag sticker on your car and live your life as normal with that sticker there.

Oh absolutely. These guys are cowards, but they're cowards who are really excited to chase other people with baseball bats. Having these parades is part of rounding up a big enough posse before they start passing out bats.
posted by postcommunism at 1:00 PM on September 1, 2019 [20 favorites]


>Maybe it needs to start.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Not that I really want anybody to get chased with baseball bats. But if these guys had to face a reaction one-ten thousandth as hostile, derisive, corrosive, and threatening as what gay people have had to face pretty much every day of most of the decades that I've been alive, they'd be nowhere to be found. They'd be keeping themselves and their dumbass opinions at home and to themselves. And it'd be a big improvement.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:01 PM on September 1, 2019 [26 favorites]


And Andy Ngo is Vietnamese. They're tokens who think some of the spoils will come to them.

Doesn't mean they won't get the Rohm treatment once the fascists get what they want.
posted by klanawa at 1:04 PM on September 1, 2019 [20 favorites]


The ratio of cops to "straight pride" attendees was something like 3 to 1. The parade itself was ridiculously small. There were cops not just from Boston, but surrounding suburbs.

It was already clear that this was a front for a fascist parade, but it became abundantly clear that the event was meant to include the cops as fascists. The cops attacked people, broke their lines to charge crowds, pepper sprayed people.

Our mayor made some really bad-faith tweets that attempt to wallpaper over the violence.

This went way, way past "fascists show up to waste liberal municipalities' money." It's now "fascists have realized that they can goad police into attacking liberal municipalities' citizens."

I'll grant that it's the weekend, but our supposedly reform-minded District Attorney Rachael Rollins has yet to make any statement about whether officers will be charged.
posted by explosion at 1:05 PM on September 1, 2019 [97 favorites]


I'd like to think of this as anything other than a walk through for events that will really happen in Blue cities across the country when Trump and the Republicans steal the 2020 elections even more blatantly than they did those of 2016, but I don't know how — because that's how I think the organizers see it.
posted by jamjam at 1:32 PM on September 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


Bail fund for the activists who got pointlessly arrested for standing up to these fascist dinks Any $ left over goes to @MassBailFund+@Boston_GLASS
posted by The Whelk at 1:38 PM on September 1, 2019 [19 favorites]


Honestly, sometimes I think it would be better if counter-protesters just stayed away, and just let these idiots perform nakedly to the public. Confrontations almost invariably end up making the good guys look bad, and give the angry white children plenty of fire for their “see how much they hate us!!!” phony victimization theater. And, there’s the fact that the cops will always beat on the counter-protestors, further making the incels look like the victims.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:43 PM on September 1, 2019 [5 favorites]


People Hated            People Hated
by Fascists               by Antifascists

Academics                Fascists
Anarchists
Blacks
Communists
Disabled
Ethnic Minorities
Feminists
Homosexuals
Intellectuals
Jews
Muslims
Socialists
Transgender
Union Members
posted by bz at 1:46 PM on September 1, 2019 [160 favorites]


Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

I'm trying to imagine hanging out cowering between cars in the local Red Lobster parking lot waiting to see some man and woman pair walking out of the restaurant and suddenly standing up and shouting "he's with a woman!" and then chasing after them with the bat in the air while I run...

and it really isn't doing much for me.

I wonder if they sit at home and imagine similar things about me walking out of a gay bar, shouting "he's with a man" and running at me. I wonder what it is they feel when they imagine that.
posted by hippybear at 1:47 PM on September 1, 2019 [10 favorites]


And can we stop using "antifa" as a term to describe anti-fascists? It's a mask, a hiding term which makes it seem like there's an actual organization named Antifa which stands against the fascists, when it's really anyone who isn't a fascist is an anti-fascist, and it's not something you have to get a membership card to be a part of.

Anti-fascists. They're everyone who isn't a fascist. They aren't an organization called "Antifa". That doesn't exist.
posted by hippybear at 1:56 PM on September 1, 2019 [59 favorites]


AP filed their story summarizing the day's events shortly after 4pm - when the organizers' permit expired and they officially left Government Plaza - as did many of the other news outlets.

It was only after that that things got bad. I've tried to follow what was going on through Twitter and best I can make out is that the police decided to clear all the counterprotesters off the streets without giving people clear orders to disperse or time enough to move.

Unfortunately, Google News searches show most outlets basically repeating the wire story, without any information on the events that followed.

A couple eye-witness accounts:
  • Molly, from Charlottesville
  • Reposted with permission

  • posted by cheshyre at 2:00 PM on September 1, 2019 [12 favorites]


    I found rare video of the straight pride parade
    posted by robbyrobs at 2:08 PM on September 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Some of the comments to the tweet of the photo of the straight pride flag were good to read.
    posted by Wordshore at 2:17 PM on September 1, 2019 [14 favorites]


    If nobody showed up to counter-protest, these guys would have had a captive audience of tens of thousands of residents and tourists who would not only hear their message directly but also the indirect message that Boston endorses them. As it stands, the massive police presence still communicates the latter message pretty well, but it would be a lot worse if nobody stood against the the fascists.

    I mean, this "parade" didn't march through an empty field, it passed through the heart of a major city full of people those fascist pricks are chomping at the bit to purge.
    posted by tobascodagama at 2:20 PM on September 1, 2019 [38 favorites]


    I symbolically have mounted a BB gun above my front door as a talisman of protection. Maybe I need to start carrying a baseball bat around with me as a talisman. This whole bullshit feels like it's worse than it ever has been since I first came out in 1990.
    posted by hippybear at 2:25 PM on September 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


    hippybear: The point they're making is that they are insecure whiny little children. They think they're making a different point, but that's not the point they're actually making. Which is that they are insecure whiny little children.

    That is not the point they're making--that's the point you, and other progressives, may be taking away from this, but you're not their target audience. Their target audience is getting a very different message:

    postcommunism: look, fellow travelers and fash-curious, we can stick our thumb in the eye of those wimpy libs and no matter how pathetic and grotesque we look doing it, they can't stop us. Come on in, the waters fine!" is a very generous reading of the point their making.
    posted by tzikeh at 2:31 PM on September 1, 2019 [17 favorites]


    And I have a baseball bat right here, I keep it near my front door. I have for decades. I can start carrying it on a daily basis when I go about my daily life. It's not even a "I have to go buy one" issue, I already have one. Because I came out in 1990 and life had always been dangerous for me. Gay USA (television show) reminds me every week that they all hate us and they will never stop hating us.

    I'm waiting for something new to develop.
    posted by hippybear at 2:40 PM on September 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Again, "antifa" isn't a thing, stop using it as a word.

    You can wish for that to be true, I guess, but it is now officially a word with a meaning and a movement behind it.

    You know, you can talk down to me all you like, but I've been responding in good faith. Please stop willfully misinterpreting my statements so that you can bark at me. I get enough of that when I'm *not* among people who generally share my hopes and desires and worldview. I don't need to be made to feel like shit by someone whose goals are the same as mine.
    posted by tzikeh at 2:41 PM on September 1, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Clayton Cresswell, a grown man who dressed as Pepe the Frog in a clown wig for the event.

    Also worth noting that this isn't a random thing, but a specific reference to fascist "Clownworld" and "Frenworld" memes. Teens and grown men alike make crude drawings of Pepe-as-clown and his "frens," using baby talk and the most clever obfuscations they can think of to talk about straight-up Nazi ideas. For example, their inspirational leader "Honkler," whoever that might refer to. You may think that someone randomly commenting "honk honk" is merely imitating the sound of a red clown nose being squeezed, but aha, that is a clever ruse, for you see "honk honk" means "HH" which means... well, you get the idea.

    In other words, Clayton Cresswell, a grown man who dressed as Pepe the Frog in a clown wig, did so because he is a literal Nazi who believes that only other literal Nazis will get the reference.
    posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:44 PM on September 1, 2019 [78 favorites]


    Also worth noting that this isn't a random thing, but a specific reference to fascist "Clownworld" and "Frenworld" memes. Teens and grown men alike make crude drawings of Pepe and his "frens" as a clown, using baby talk and the most clever obfuscations they can think of to talk about straight-up Nazi ideas.

    I was reading a thread today on Reddit and I just learned about "Frenworld" and using baby talk to mask Nazi talking points and.... Good Lord! This really is the stupidest timeline.
    posted by spoobnooble II: electric bugaboo at 2:48 PM on September 1, 2019 [45 favorites]


    It's not straight pride it's alt-right recruitment. Obviously. Once they've recruited young people to the cause of "harmless" fun at the expense of libs and queers they'll slowly move the needle toward further radicalization. That's the strategy. No one goes through the trouble of organizing a parade just because they love memes and hate political correctness.

    Sometimes this strategy is carried out via the mechanism of people who participated in alt-right-lite actions "just" for the lolz then facing condemnation and not understanding why. So they lash out against the people who condemn them "for no reason" which draws them further to the right.

    Sometimes it's just what the left and and religious right people have known for some time, we have a pretty well protected right to protest in this country esp for white folks in urban areas. Once these newly politicized see that nothing music happened to them at this march, they'll be more likely to participate in further and more radical actions.

    Overall there seems to be a real thirst for radical solutions in the air. A real "if we all storm the barricades they can't stop us" sense of discontent that is bipartisan. But while the left goes for socialism and occupying ICE headquarters the right looks for historically oppressed groups to scapegoat again.
    posted by subdee at 2:49 PM on September 1, 2019 [16 favorites]


    Mod note: Folks, fighting each other in here is not helping anything. hippybear, if you can't talk to other Mefites like they are reasonable people with opinions that may differ from yours, take a break until you can.
    posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:52 PM on September 1, 2019 [8 favorites]


    Instead, reams of breathless coverage that absolutely 100% ensures repeat events.

    “Why isn’t the lamestream media covering our rally like they cover Pride?!? We had thousands of proud straight people at our parade, but you won’t see that on the Communist News Network!”

    There’s no way to make them slink away in shame except by shaming them.
    posted by Etrigan at 3:02 PM on September 1, 2019 [13 favorites]


    Rod Webber livestreamed the post-event action on Congress Street, starting with him standing with Vermin Supreme to him being tackled to the ground by cops (around 8:00); ends with a cop realizing his camera's still live.
    posted by adamg at 3:05 PM on September 1, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Think of the language that marginalized people and their allies use. "I hear you," "I see you," "I believe you." Or, on the other side, "I feel heard," "I feel seen," "I feel supported."

    Fascists need that shit too. They get it by losing debates, by performing shambolic unity rituals in public and by getting utterly owned on Twitter. What they get out of it is, "look at how the left treats us. They hate us. We we need to stick together."

    Everybody knows that Jordan Peterson hasn't read the first page of the Communist Manifesto, or that Marx never believed in that equality of outcome horseshit. Peterson makes a complete ass out of himself every time he talks about it in public. And intellectuals on the left who have read Marx howl with derision. (It's actually amazing how much of their language comes from, or is laundered through, him. We all know it didn't come from Marx or any other "left" writer, because it's mostly fabricated.)

    That's not the point, though. The point is that these guys see him in public and even though what he says is completely untethered from reality, they know what he means and they know that unlike everyone else in the world, he's talking directly to them.

    These guys think they're hurting and using the backlash against themselves to justify their grievances. I'm not going to stop ridiculing them, though.

    (When I made my comment about Andy Ngo above, I didn't realize this had happened. After billions of gallons of Twitter-ink spilled in his defence, BOOM! Under the bus. No loyalty whatsoever.)
    posted by klanawa at 3:13 PM on September 1, 2019 [8 favorites]


    "Frenworld" has broken my brain for today. I'm going to pretend to have a mech and shoot lasers at ghosts until the world makes sense again.
    posted by Scattercat at 3:46 PM on September 1, 2019 [11 favorites]


    adamg
    Thanks.
    Thru his Facebook, I found someone else also filmed his arrest, if anyone wants to see another angle.

    While some of the protesters may have acted obnoxiously, they were neither violent nor endangering themselves or others. Nothing they did would appear to justify the use of force taken by the cops.
    posted by cheshyre at 4:01 PM on September 1, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Regarding frenworld: for the curious, /r/AgainstHateSubreddits has a good overview of the /r/Frenworld subreddit before it got banned. The content warnings you might expect from the right all apply.
    posted by postcommunism at 5:06 PM on September 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


    One piece of context that isn't getting enough attention, I think, is the fact that this "parade" was deliberately scheduled to coincide with move-in weekend for Boston's many dorms and off-campus apartments. It was a threat directed toward the many LBGTQ students starting colege and hoping to find a place where they could be safe living as their true selves for the next four years as much as anything else.
    posted by tobascodagama at 5:20 PM on September 1, 2019 [29 favorites]


    "identidarian"

    Yeah. Only white supremacists use this word, because they are the only ones who have to explain why their weird race theories don t line up with science and are also somehow, why they are not / no longer nazis
    posted by eustatic at 5:29 PM on September 1, 2019 [2 favorites]


    t would be better if counter-protesters just stayed away, and just let these idiots perform nakedly to the public.

    This is a privileged statement, to assume that this is "just" what fascists are doing with these events. The police and government track leftist activists. If there were no counter protests, there wouldn t be any of the wealth of information we have on who these assholes are, and we wouldn t know nearly as much about which of them are employed by police departments.

    Better people than me have explained the rationale behind the event, but trust me that there s so much more that happens in the street than what can ever be reported in the press.

    I too, want to live in a world where these idiots don t dare show their face in public, and we only have to deal with them over message boards. I don t think that world will exist for a while, given the long history of police departments in the USA, and certainly not while there s a segregationist occupying the presidency.
    posted by eustatic at 6:08 PM on September 1, 2019 [14 favorites]


    I feel like there was an opportunity for us to participate as performative straights? Like, dressing in boring clothing and playing Paul Anka tunes and, I don't know, carrying signs that say "I ❤️ the missionary position" or something?
    posted by latkes at 6:16 PM on September 1, 2019 [6 favorites]


    I missed frenworld, but managed to stumble on shrewworld before it got banned. It was pictures of shrews with titles about how the cute lil fella ran the worlds banks.
    Also on reddit, there's been a GAMERSRISEUP thing that's a "parody" of oppressed gamers, but last time I checked it there were a bunch of memes about Israel not existing, ironic jokes about insulting women and minorities, and, well their calling phrase is "we live in a society".

    Don't mind me, just restocking the dogwhistle shop.
    posted by lkc at 6:16 PM on September 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


    The Boston Herald has posted a list of the arrested people and their charges; most (including Rod Webber, cited above) seem to have been charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. So it'll be interesting what happens at their arraignments on Tuesday (likely in Boston Municipal Court) because the current DA, Rachael Rollins, has made those charges things to simply have dismissed if that's all a person is charged with (her predecessor, Dan Conley, would typically handle protest arrests by filing for a continuance without a finding - if the person stayed out of trouble for six months, the case would be dismissed - and court fees).
    posted by adamg at 7:02 PM on September 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


    "and court fees" is the basic way to drive people into the ground. Yay court fees!
    posted by hippybear at 7:05 PM on September 1, 2019 [1 favorite]


    "identidarian"

    Yeah. Only white supremacists use this word, because they are the only ones who have to explain why their weird race theories don t line up with science and are also somehow, why they are not / no longer nazis


    I wouldn't quite make this leap, but I don't think anyone bandying it about like this is our friend either. I know lots of people who find it useful to make distinctions within the subset of people who believe in intersectionality and I've seen it used in that sense. Of course, none of those users would put it on a sign for protesting either.

    Not that the whole thing isn't painful, but I'd like them to stop calling us Marxists and idealists in the same breath. They should be opposing terms!
    posted by Acid Communist at 7:26 PM on September 1, 2019


    I was there and it was intense. The parade itself was pretty horrifying on a number of levels, but I was most disturbed by the eight-year-old child I saw marching. Or possibly by the massive police presence -- more intense than anything I've ever seen. Five city buses full of riot police, in addition to the literal hundreds of cops on bikes. I left before any of the pepper-spraying started.

    The cops spent a lot of time showing force. It would have been nice if they had allowed the counter-protestors to peacefully stand in the way of the parade, but they didn't do that.
    posted by woodvine at 7:32 PM on September 1, 2019 [28 favorites]




    The Boston PD newspaper is called Pax Centurion? 🤦🏻‍♂️
    posted by gucci mane at 9:05 PM on September 1, 2019 [3 favorites]


    "Honestly, sometimes I think it would be better if counter-protesters just stayed away, and just let these idiots perform nakedly to the public."

    The town of Goshen in Indiana once did this; it's very Mennonite, and the home of the oldest Mennonite college in the US. So when the KKK got a permit to march, the town counter-organized a picnic in a local forest preserve to celebrate the town's diversity and promote acceptance (an event that continues yearly to this day!), heavily leveraging the Mennonite churches in town (that close to 50% of residents belong to) and working with other religious organizations to promote it. The KKK marched through a totally empty downtown, except for cops to make sure they didn't smash storefronts, while the rest of the town was at the picnic. It did discourage the KKK from coming back for 20+ years, but they're back and re-energized with Trump.

    I do think it's a good idea, especially in smaller towns, and especially in towns with a lot of social cohesion -- but a lot of that cohesion comes from all sharing the same religion or culture. I'm not sure it can work in big and diverse cities like Boston, and in bigger cities (even cities the size of South Bend!), a KKK march or "straight pride march" or whatever is going to draw news media, which diminishes the effect of the entire city decamping to the forest preserve to avoid the marchers, since they still get publicity. So I suspect it can only work in small towns, and only if the media doesn't cover the march and preferentially covers the "not-march" events.
    posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:36 PM on September 1, 2019 [24 favorites]


    Oh great, Milo's back.

    If this is the best he can do, he is most emphatically nowhere near back.
    posted by Cardinal Fang at 4:04 AM on September 2, 2019 [1 favorite]




    Related: I just saw on FB that a "Freedom March and prayer rally" to protest "the bullying of Christians" is being planned for Sept 28 that will go right through the heart of Toronto's queer village. They don't call it "straight pride" but they might as well.
    posted by sevenyearlurk at 6:00 AM on September 2, 2019 [1 favorite]


    Pepe originally started as a joke. The joke was that liberals will label anything racist, even a cartoon frog! Therefore racism doesn't exist. Liberals would even label an okay gesture as racist. Hey, let's all start using it to piss them off.

    This kind of political rhetoric started, in my opinion with South Park. Liberals think the Amazon is a warm and fuzzy place, but it's not. It's filled with dangerous animals. Therefore, the Amazon doesn't need to be saved. Liberals like to be smug about global warming. Therefore, global warming is a hoax.

    Whatever its merits, this kind of rhetoric has proved devastatingly effective. Wouldn't it be ridiculous for straight people to have parades, protests, and demand rights? Therefore, isn't it ridiculous when gay people do it?

    Make no mistake. This parade is dangerous. It's message is that gay people don't need rights. Gay people shouldn't protest. Gay people are ridiculous.
    posted by xammerboy at 8:40 AM on September 2, 2019 [14 favorites]


    > The Boston PD newspaper is called Pax Centurion?

    Worth pulling from The Welk's linked twitter thread: excerpts from said police union magazine:
    George Orwell predicted and knew all about the birth of the ANTIFA movement, long before it was actually formed. Orwell, in his famous books 1984 and Animal Farm, wrote about double-speak, thought control and how to manipulate people into action or inaction through fear and coercion. ANTIFA, which allegedly means "ANTI-fascist", is in fact the epitome, the definition of fascism itself: strongarm violence and intimidation by lawless groups seeking to impose their will on the silent majority.
    [...]
    The only way to defeat these savages is to fight fire with fire. Good can and must be allowed to defeat evil, but kind words and kisses are no match for strongarm violence and lawlessness. The message must be communicated loud and clear: The law WILL BE enforced. Your childish behavior WILL NOT be tolerated. You WILL BE unmasked and arrested as a disorderly person if you do not disperse NOW.
    Emphasis in the original.
    posted by postcommunism at 9:52 AM on September 2, 2019 [16 favorites]


    This kind of political rhetoric started, in my opinion with South Park.

    I've long thought that South Park was an unwelcome virus in our society. I wish it would just die, but it keeps going.
    posted by hippybear at 9:55 AM on September 2, 2019 [10 favorites]


    Straight Pride Parade: this shit is embarrassing
    posted by The Whelk at 10:40 AM on September 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


    A few months back, I followed a group of guys putting up Indentity Evropa fliers around my neighborhood in Boston, pulling them down once they got far enough ahead of me, and I pulled down a bunch of fliers in front of my apartment and on my block, and then I reported it to the police and they were like "Alt-right? What's that? That's not hate speech!" and anyways I guess it's good to remember who supports what here in town.
    posted by ChuraChura at 10:46 AM on September 2, 2019 [26 favorites]


    George Orwell predicted and knew all about the birth of the ANTIFA movement, long before it was actually formed. Orwell, in his famous books 1984 and Animal Farm, wrote about double-speak, thought control and how to manipulate people into action or inaction through fear and coercion. ANTIFA, which allegedly means "ANTI-fascist", is in fact the epitome, the definition of fascism itself: strongarm violence and intimidation by lawless groups seeking to impose their will on the silent majority.

    Silly pigs. Orwell was an OG antifascist.
    posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:51 AM on September 2, 2019 [12 favorites]


    They don't care about the truth, it's just a rhetorical game to them. Insert that Uberto Eco quote.
    posted by tobascodagama at 11:03 AM on September 2, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Straight Pride Parade: this shit is embarrassing

    Good stuff:
    There is no long and grim history of persecution against straight people by non-straight people. Especially the white ones! Who do you think makes up the majority of CEOs? Senators? Generals? Supreme Court justices? White heterosexual men.
    ...
    What if — and I’m just spit-ballin’ here — what if the men who marched in the ‘Straight Pride Parade’ aren’t actually proud of anything. What if deep down, they’re just scared of having to compete with gay people, queer people, trans people, women, basically anyone who isn’t a white heterosexual cisgender man, and they’re not sure, not 100%, that they’ll succeed based on their talents?
    posted by kirkaracha at 6:55 PM on September 2, 2019 [4 favorites]


    Some of the comments to the tweet of the photo of the straight pride flag were good to read.

    That photo really sells the lighthearted playful fun of Super Happy Fun America.
    posted by kirkaracha at 7:00 PM on September 2, 2019




    Some of the comments to the tweet of the photo of the straight pride flag were good to read.

    I saw another straight pride flag that looked more in the spirit of these chucklefucks. It's stark black and white, all straight solid lines, and at its centre has a ♂ positioned atop a ♀ on its side. It bespeaks a movement rejecting nuance in favour of absolutism, the soft in favour of the hard, intimacy in favour of domination, a straightness that is not about joy but about a grim war of annihilation against anything that is not straight.
    posted by acb at 3:19 AM on September 3, 2019


    Rejecting women in lieu of men. Flag description sounds rapey.
    posted by agregoli at 9:15 AM on September 3, 2019 [3 favorites]


    It's stark black and white, all straight solid lines, and at its centre has a ♂ positioned atop a ♀ on its side.

    This is...this is something. I don't think they could make the argument that homophobia and general gender policing has its roots in misogyny more effectively if they'd actually tried
    posted by schadenfrau at 9:36 AM on September 3, 2019 [7 favorites]


    Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott today refused a request from the Suffolk County District Attorney's office to dismiss charges against seven of the protesters charged with disturbing the peace and, in some cases, resisting arrest, instead ordering them arraigned. DA Rachael Rollins vowed to appeal:
    By compelling arraignment in every case, the judge punished the exercise of individuals' First Amendment right to protest. At my request, prosecutors used the discretion constitutionally allocated to the executive branch to triage cases and use our resources most effectively to protect public safety. Make no mistake: some people were appropriately arraigned and will be held accountable for actions that put the safety of the public and law enforcement at risk. For those people now tangled in the criminal justice system for exercising their right to free speech - many of whom had no prior criminal record - I will use the legal process to remedy the judge’s overstepping of his role.
    Prosecutors did move forward with cases against people facing more serious charges, including assault and battery on a police officer and possession of a dangerous weapon.
    posted by adamg at 8:16 PM on September 3, 2019 [5 favorites]


    The same judge had more hearings this morning. At one of them, he ordered an attorney for one of the arrested people arrested and thrown into the court lockup for arguing, through citations of the relevant case law, that he did not have the right to overrule nolle prosequi filings by the DA.

    The judge let her sit in lockup until he had a hearing on whether to charge her with contempt of court at 2 p.m. Word quickly spread and lawyers across downtown Boston dropped what they were doing to attend. The judge first agreed to allow dismissal of the charges against the client, said the lawyer's problem was she was talking over him earlier, then decided not to hold her in contempt.

    As the lawyer, Susan Church, walked out of Boston Municipal Court courtroom 17, other lawyers on the floor burst into applause.
    posted by adamg at 12:10 PM on September 4, 2019 [6 favorites]


    Holy fuck, adamg. Is this judge up for a re election or something? What the fuck is happening in the Boston courts?
    posted by sciatrix at 12:31 PM on September 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


    Lol at the idea that it’s just the Boston courts. Judicial dickery is a well-known phenomenon and judge, just like cop, is a job that often attracts certain kinds of people.
    posted by phearlez at 1:47 PM on September 4, 2019 [2 favorites]


    Massachusetts judges are appointed for life by the governor and the governor's council (an obscure but elected body that dates back to colonial days that nowadays mainly considers judicial appointments and parole requests).

    Suffolk County DA Rachael Rollins today formally asked the Supreme Judicial Court (the state's highest) to order Sinnott to allow the charges to be dropped, specifically in the case of Rod Webber, who livestreamed his takedown (fun fact: Sinnott's father was the last official Boston censor, who determined whether something would be "banned in Boston").

    Her petition to the court notes that part of Sinnott's rationale for refusing to allow the charges to be dropped was an alleged violation of the state victim bill of rights, which requires the vicitms of a crime to be notified of any such actions. Who were the victims here? According to Sinnott, the white supremacists who organized the parade - even though Webber's arrest came after the 4 p.m. end of the bigots' parade and rally permit.

    Rollins's petition (3.6M PDF) also discusses why Sinnott cannot tell a DA whom to prosecute - it's basically a violation of separation of powers in the justice system, as defined by the state constitution and Massachusetts case law (the petition also discusses the "counter-protester wearing a black rubber boot on his head" that Webber was talking to when the police moved in).
    posted by adamg at 6:37 PM on September 4, 2019 [3 favorites]


    This article about some of the people connected to the Modesto straight pride march goes on a wild ride.
    posted by latkes at 8:55 PM on September 5, 2019




    I should hope so, that judge's action was in blatant violation of MA law, in addition to being a moral outrage.
    posted by tobascodagama at 2:09 PM on September 9, 2019


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