Yesterday, 06:52 PM
Nah. You do not engage with people like this on equal grounds - because what the foundations for what Tom and all his center-right ilk believe are treated as fundamental givens, are not.
He is only right about one thing, which is republicans are not the sole source of evil - because the democrats are equally a force of evil because the entire political structure of America is broken, and it is all right wing, across both party lines. The right is evil - and if you subscribe to that belief system, you are too. We won’t pretend like we respect you.
“Radical” is not an insult. It is not a derogatory term. Yes, I am a radical. Radical belief and radical action is what has historically changed the world for the better. Radicalism is the ability to have a political imagination beyond crony capitalist party lines. It was radicals that took to the streets and made sure that you have an 8 hour work day rather than an 18 hour work day in the power plants, which is why you have the luxury of spewing drivel on our screens. It was radicals that said “enough” to the exploitation of Latin America by an imperial west. Radicals liberated Ireland from the English empire. Jesus who you claim to love so much was a radical. It was radicals who ratified a woman’s ability to vote into law. The list is never ending.
The clever trick of optic fascists and right wing zealots like Tom is they play around the reality of violence. Your ideology *is* violent. You are violent. Your ilk are inherently violent because the world they envision is built on direct and structural violence of people who aren’t you, but Tom doesn’t actually care for violence when it’s monopolized by a state that aligns with his interests - violence is a valid & legitimate tool that is exercised every day by the state, in many forms. Police brutality is political violence. Western imperialism is the world’s biggest global exporter of violence. Depriving women of their bodily autonomy is violent. Do not apologize for using the enemy’s own tactics against them.
There’s been a very calculated investment for the past 50-70 years by the state to whitewash its own form of violence - and people like Tom thrive in that space to take a moral high ground. Deprive them of that high ground.
He is only right about one thing, which is republicans are not the sole source of evil - because the democrats are equally a force of evil because the entire political structure of America is broken, and it is all right wing, across both party lines. The right is evil - and if you subscribe to that belief system, you are too. We won’t pretend like we respect you.
“Radical” is not an insult. It is not a derogatory term. Yes, I am a radical. Radical belief and radical action is what has historically changed the world for the better. Radicalism is the ability to have a political imagination beyond crony capitalist party lines. It was radicals that took to the streets and made sure that you have an 8 hour work day rather than an 18 hour work day in the power plants, which is why you have the luxury of spewing drivel on our screens. It was radicals that said “enough” to the exploitation of Latin America by an imperial west. Radicals liberated Ireland from the English empire. Jesus who you claim to love so much was a radical. It was radicals who ratified a woman’s ability to vote into law. The list is never ending.
The clever trick of optic fascists and right wing zealots like Tom is they play around the reality of violence. Your ideology *is* violent. You are violent. Your ilk are inherently violent because the world they envision is built on direct and structural violence of people who aren’t you, but Tom doesn’t actually care for violence when it’s monopolized by a state that aligns with his interests - violence is a valid & legitimate tool that is exercised every day by the state, in many forms. Police brutality is political violence. Western imperialism is the world’s biggest global exporter of violence. Depriving women of their bodily autonomy is violent. Do not apologize for using the enemy’s own tactics against them.
There’s been a very calculated investment for the past 50-70 years by the state to whitewash its own form of violence - and people like Tom thrive in that space to take a moral high ground. Deprive them of that high ground.
![[Image: exzwhnW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/exzwhnW.png)
