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TBH I think it brings -exactly- the right energy for all of this, especially as support calves off of the Trump iceberg.

Something happened to make this creature anti-social to a deadly degree, let’s celebrate it!

Conservatives don’t realize he’s heading towards certain death. They think he’s a pioneer penguin willing to think independently and walk down an untraveled path instead of blindly following the herd.

Libertarian penguin

I always wondered "why would they do that when they don't get anything out of it". Then you realize that for a lot of people, "it hurts the people you hate when you hurt yourself" is genuinely enough reason for self-harm.

🎯

Reading all this gave me the scary thought again I formed some months back: That if Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold didn't commit suicide and grew up, there's a not too insignificant chance that one or both of them would've worked for ICE. 😬

They walked open arms into the teeth of the pandemic to demonstrate their strength. There is nothing they won't do, including extinguish themselves.

This goes hand in hand with the "Left Behind" rapture porn with which so many "christians" are obsessed. They believe if the world ends during in their lifetime they won't even have to suffer the indignity of dying; they'll just be whisked up to heaven leaving us sinners to clean up their mess.

Plausible? Definitely it is. McCarthyism, full stop.

It genuinely all made sense to me when I found this image a few years ago and researched the Spanish fascists who used it. It just seems so cartoonish, like a cartoon villain’s ideology, but it becomes clear when you understand these people want to die, just not alone. bsky.app/profile/anar...

Yes, and it is also why there is never an end goal for people in these groups. They do not aspire to any future reality...because they can't comprehend one. They think only in immediate terms and solving the problems a single step ahead of them.

Disagree in the sense that all dictatorships devolve into personal corruption. The ideology becomes branding, window dressing.

Strikes me as definitely part of it. Reminds me of a toddler throwing a tantrum that breaks his toy when told to share it or because it wouldn't work precisely the way he wanted, etc. These people were the toddlers who didn't exhibit any regret after the maelstrom. The signs are there early.

sandy hook was the moment america decided to definitely become a death cult. when 24 kindergarteners’ death won’t move you to change nothing will

I think this explains why knitters turn political at times like this. It's literally the opposite worldview: just keep going steady at something you like doing and wonderful things will result.

There's been some scholarship about the idea over the past 50 years, e.g. www.reddit.com/r/Deleuze/co...

Yes, many MAGA supporters are believers because they are deeply invested in fulfilling a national political murder-suicide pact—it is the non-religious version of Christian Nationalist "rapture" politics.

Also see… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_su...

edmund ruffin decided to shoot himself after lee surrendered at appomattox. 70 years later, du bois summed him up (fudging his name) saying when he fired on fort sumter, he freed the slaves.

Self Negation is the secret sauce of Fascism.

I quite literally saw a video of Minnesotans step in front of, and stop a military vehicle on the streets of Minneapolis. So these people can fuck all the way off. This is the United States of America We are going to win.

They worship Rome because it was big, powerful, killed a lot of people and died, leaving impressive ruins.

This tracks with the guy who shot Kirk dead "for the memes". ...I really don't know y'all, what's the response to a quarter-to-third of the country screaming gleefully into Hell?

Yeah this made me go back to my Foucault where he says the Nazi State is one where “we have an absolutely racist state, an absolutely murderous state, and an absolutely suicidal state…The three were necessarily superimposed.”

The fundamental demiurge here is *domination* not self-negation 'Our in-group/tribe will openly assume our rightful place at the top of the human pyramid & non-us persons will be consumed like so much cord-wood/coal to be burned up & exhausted in our hearths & engines'

yea this is my professional read on it. its also why they don't care about the climate, don't worry about future legal consequences...

Family annihilation adjacent in several ways

I think this is pretty spot on - if you look past the bs wrapping of racial supremacy- the Nazi thing was a death cult.

also so incredibly gung ho with uncontrolled AI, like they are fishing for some world ending disaster. Hitler in the bunker with the big red button

Fascism is capitalism in decay. It is, in all aspects, an extension of capitalism. It is when the most reactionary forces of capital move to clamp down on the working class in situations of crisis. Fascism is so much more than just gestapo and camps.

Exactly

those people really do like yukio mishima a lot, damn, this really nails it actually.

The people with the nuclear codes. In case you weren't anxious enough

History tells us that fascism eventually comes for everyone. It's not some mystery unlocked by a few, it's on full display for anyone willing to look. If I've noticed, then it is obvious. It folds in on itself. It's leaders look to tear things down and don't stop until everything is consumed

Yes. Who wrote this?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_su... is an important bit of history no one really thinks about. many instances of something less "mass suicide" and more "mass conscious co-signed by the family auto-familicide" mothers putting rocks in packs and tying everyone together and walking into rivers

Don't discount the possibility that there might be a nihilist's "Pascal's Wager" in that they also hold out a possibility -however remote - for ultimate triumphant, glorious success after successfully destroying all else in their path. But if not, meh, eat the bullet. So a "win-win"

wake up babe, we're rehashing ernst becker thought again en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Den...

Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor are currently expanding this thesis into a book, due later this year www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

incidentally, it's also the most patriotic thing a fedchud could do

not to be all gen x about it, but i think Falling Down (1993) is part of this conversation as well

Zoinks. And also, probably true

How can we convince more of them to do the act without hurting innocent people?

flight mh370 election. otherwise yes.

Don’t say this to Tom Nichols!

I'm reminded of the official ideology of Eastasia in '1984', which was "a Chinese character translated as 'Death-worship' or 'Obliteration of the Self" (I'm paraphrasing).

My description of Stephen Miller tracks with this 1:1 bsky.app/profile/john...

So wonderful to think that they have nuclear weapons.

I’ve been thinking for a while now that this is a government of school shooters. They’ve been given a platform to try to murder the entire world instead of spraying bullets at a preschool or synagogue.

This is blowing my mind.

Dying for God has been the obsession of far-right Christianity since its very beginning, but especially after the Columbine shooting. I was born into this worldview. They genuinely do want to end everything. They look forward with joy to the burning fire of the second coming of Christ.

Who’d have thought, after all of the hand-wringing about yellowcake in Iraq or nukes in Iran, that the actual suicidal lunatics would be home-grown in the USA?

Filing this under "all cults are death cults"

Similar to something I've been saying madness.ghost.io/the-mass-sho...

www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/r...

Google Lee Miller Suicide Pictures (Lee Miller is the famous photographer who had a picture taken of herself in Hitler's bathtub)

“How does this all end? Well, how do most cults end? Usually in some terrible tragedy…” youtu.be/ewvRS3NwIlQ?...

Nancy Fraser's Cannibal Capitalism is a really good exploration of this idea (also see Seymour's The Rise of Disaster Nationalism)

"Faye's inquiry into the precise formation of Nazi statements ... they always contain the ... cry 'Long live death!', even at the economic level ..." -- Thousand Plateaus ... and Paul Virilio called fascism the "suicidal state" too

Powerful

Lordy. This is frightening

cc: @debwontshutup.bsky.social

This tracks why they have been acting like there are no political consequences for their actions (although Trump himself goes back and forth on that due to his fear of another impeachment). It's not that they think there will be no more elections, they just don't care.

That's why we can't let them win, by any means necessary. If they succeed in eradicating us, they don't make any kind of stable society; they just start balkanizing and killing each other. bannonites vs fuentes brigade vs lindell legion, after they shoot the mormons and the presbyterians

They only look for useful idiots who can be exploited and discarded, not fellow travelers. To the bitter end hitler blamed everyone else for simply not working and fighting hard enough, not sacrificing enough, not being loyal enough for the failure of the Reich, Not is policies or it’s fuhrer.

I wrote similarly last year about the attacks on trans people too, academic source below

It's the only logic, if there is any at all, that we can assign to what we're observing and experiencing.

The thing about rewatching Mad Men is that now I know the weird “death wish” psychologist in the first few episodes talking about cigarette sales wasn’t wrong - just early.

From the introduction to Robert Paxton’s Anatomy of Fascism

"The far-right only knows three things: Separatism, cannibalism, social darwinism" PG Kroeger @pgkroegerbb.bsky.social (dutch historian)

It's interesting because they romanticize PTSD as it affects soldiers (and gets revenue for certain charities.) But this meme feels a lot like that kind of romanticized-broken attitude that comes after every war (including our recent ones.) It sometimes produces great lit, but it ain't healthy.

I'm so used to Werner Herzog parodies that it actually startles me sometimes when I hear him doing something for real

I've always been amused by the thought of Tom Cruise, America's Smallest Movie Star™, playing side-of-beef, man-mountain Jack Reacher...

Always fun to see an example of "I don't instantly recognize Werner Herzog's voice" in the wild. Ahhhh the burdens of living in LA.

Ah... it makes so much more sense now !

You could have died 50 years ago. I was born & raised in NYC which is already diverse

Who are we to dissuade them?

I always thought of these penguins as manifesting the same kind of "I gotta get outta here" (IGGOH) energy The Elephant Graveyard talked about in regards to Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, etc. Just, "Fuck it, I'm out" for no reason. So unsettling.