this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Murdered by Words
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Responses that completely destroy the original argument in a way that leaves little to no room for reply - a targeted, well-placed response to another person, organization, or group of people.
The following things are not grounds for murder:
- Personal appearance ("You're fat", "You're ugly")
- Posts with little-to-no context
- Posts based on a grammar/spelling error
- Dick jokes, "Yo mama", "No, you" type responses and other low effort insults
- "Your values are bad" without any logcal or factual ways of showing that they are wrong ("I believe in capitalism" - "Well, then you must be evil" or "Fuck you you ignorant asshole")
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We're not claiming pedophilia doesn't exist, we're pointing out a dogwhistle that's been pushed by fash for at least a decade now, which tries to do an equivocation attack on queer people using pedophilia. It started on 4chan and has since spread to high level government.
As you probably know, we use the term "dogwhistle" because these attacks are meant to seem innocuous to average people but convey deeper meaning to those "in the know". It's a fascist tactic that's been used forever, see Sartre's analysis of antisemites for a concise description.
This type of thing is a manipulation of signifiers (words and symbols) to obfuscate and confuse concepts (the actual ideas words are supposed to represent). Fascists will dance around with signifiers, making it difficult to pin down and explain their meaning to laypeople who aren't invested or haven't spent the disproportionate effort it takes to keep up. This allows them to avoid rebuttal (because there's no coherent essence behind their words) and hide in plain sight.
So the signifier "I want to kill pedophiles" is particularly insidious, because it's something the average person is already sympathetic towards for obvious reasons. But to a growing demographic of people, it signifies a deeper concept: "I want to kill pedophiles=groomers=queer people". Which is a wild leap of logic, but it's what we're directly observing right now, particularly in red states.
The red flag or smoking gun or hint at this being the case here is the fact that no average person really disagrees with the gist of the sign, so like, who is he speaking to? It's got a distinctly different vibe than MeToo and anti-Epstien sentiment. "If pedophilia is just a sexuality"-- who's saying this? It suggests the existence of a archetypal person in this guy's mind, an Other concept that can be mapped onto whomever.
See also that new Q movie that's so popular, that portrays a mythical version of human trafficking that's dialed right into the rightwing consciousness.
Like, just the fact that it took me this long to poorly attempt to explain this, is part of why it's so effective. I have to very carefully and in depth try to explain the context for why a "good" statement actually means a "bad" thing, making me look at best hypersensitive. Seriously, read the Sartre thing, he's way better with words than I am. I'll try to find it and post it below.