People are circulating this ACLU petition, whether it’s likely to do any good or not? US-only, I would assume…
It is now regrettably a part of the far right playbook to cloak tired “protect our women” rhetoric as “feminism”. In terms of mainstream media reporting it’s been almost entirely successful in terms of advancing transphobia (speaking for the UK at least) and they’re now looking to branch out into other areas (e.g. some British transphobes now trying to pitch anti-immigration positions as “feminist”).
You know, for the last 25 years or so I’ve been watching the discussions and legislation around regulation, consumer protection, surveillance etc. on the internet. I sometimes think of the famous Niemöller quote “When they came for me, there was no one left to speak up.”
Maybe I’m getting too old for the current discussion style on Discord, but this reads to me like it was written by someone who has little understanding of what actual fascists groups are.
People trying to banish porn from the internet may be naive and can actually be quite a headache (strike the can, they are in this case), but this unqualified labeling with ever so radical language is in very bad taste.
I mean, I’m not familiar with the Australian context, but in the US, “anti child-sex-trafficking” organizations are verifiably playing out the Trojan-horse playbook to get LGBTQ+ stories and creators banned and/or prosecuted, and are deeply intertwined with stuff like the QAnon conspiracy theories and the various flavors of right-wing influencers and paramilitaries that brought us January 6 and the Trump administration’s current wave of repression. And one of the links someone shared upthread indicated that this group is in coalition with one of those US players. So I suppose “fascists, fascist fellow-travelers, and useful idiots” might be a more generous way of naming them, but I’m not sure that additional degree of precision is especially complimentary to them, or an important thing to be prioritizing right now.
Here is what Copilot tells me (don’t the young folks ask the AI all the time?):
Are Collective Shout or its protagonists right wingers, by European standards?
By European standards, Collective Shout and its leading figures would likely be seen as culturally conservative, but not necessarily part of the far-right or traditional right-wing political parties.
Here’s how that plays out:
Social Values: Their strong opposition to pornography, prostitution, and sexualisation in media aligns with right-leaning cultural conservatism, which is often associated with Christian democratic or traditionalist movements in Europe.
Feminist Identity: Unlike many European right-wing groups, Collective Shout identifies as feminist and advocates for women’s rights—though through a lens that emphasizes protection and moral standards rather than liberal autonomy. This makes them ideologically distinct from both mainstream right-wing and left-wing feminist groups.
Protagonists like Melinda Tankard Reist: She’s described as a “pro-life feminist,” a position that’s rare in Europe and would place her outside the mainstream feminist left, but also not fully aligned with nationalist or populist right-wing parties.
So, in European terms, they might be seen as socially conservative activists with feminist motivations—closer to traditionalist or religiously influenced civil society groups than to political parties like AfD (Germany), Vox (Spain), or Rassemblement National (France).
Would you like a comparison with specific European movements or parties to see where the overlap ends?
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I’m part of “young folks”. I don’t ask AI anything. Please do your own research. Asking an LLM does not constitute “research”.
I did clearly indicate my citation. Anyway, as I was trying to emphasise, I may not be the only one who is cautious with their labeling. As I already mentioned, I’ve read the Wikipedia article about Collective Shout. I was careful to add that I’d want to get the European standard, since by European standards, both of the major parties in the US would be considered to the right of center. And since the AI will go for the most average opinion from such a prompt, I thought it might be interesting.
At the risk of straying off-topic, what makes you think that AI will go for the “most average opinion”? An LLM is ultimately a glorified predictive text generator and is therefore prone to hallucinating.
I’m really just quoting this post for emphasis, and, while I’m sure it’s tempting to play devil’s advocate, these tactics aren’t novel. There exists a model for limiting the speech of vulnerable groups already, and censoring “adult” content is part of that playbook. “Accidentally oppressive” isn’t an excuse in our information-rich world, were excusing this effort anyone’s goal.
Yup, the most famous organization of this type is Moms for Liberty, who are famous for trying to get “inappropriate” books removed from school libraries, but with a definition of inappropriate that includes any positive representation of LGBT+ people or racial minorities. I don’t see anything that indicates Collective Shout isn’t operating in their mold.
If nothing else their previous big “win” was getting a Black artist banned from touring in Australia which certainly raises my eyebrows.
I can understand that the current situation in the US will keep people on their toes and I agree that the playbook of this lobby group we’re discussing seems all too familiar.
Still, fascism is in its own special category in my vocabulary so I won’t wield the term lightly myself.
Having lived through and experienced firsthand the 80’s satanic panic against D&D and ridiculous moral crusades against violence in video games among other things - anyone trying to dictatorially prevent me from experiencing the media I want to experience is…pardon my language…a fucking fascist. You can say cultural conservative if you like, to which I say: po-tay-toh, po-tah-to.
Imagine how bad it will be when central banks move to an all digital currency.
Any government will be able to monitor purchases and block purchases based upon social scores. It is already happening in some countries. There isa major push for countries to become cashless.
Heck, I rarely have cash in my wallet these days. Plastic is too easy.
PS. Back in my teaching days, a group in our local district tried to ban the Harry Potter series since it was satanic and witchcraft. Harry Potter encouraged more students to read than any series before or since…
At least as regards the real fascists, the most active and effective resistance fighters against them were in fact cultural conservatives. I would therefore perhaps tentatively consider them different. I would also think the ability to make exactly these kinds of distinctions important for maintaining resiliance against totalitarian narratives. But I suppose it might be easier to file that under just my opinion.
…as opposed to merely pseudo-fascists who just happen to use the same playbook with all the same disgusting tactics to eliminate any ideology but their own? Those real fascists?
I meant those ones who occupied most of Europe in the early 40s while murdering millions. And yes, I consider them to be in a different league from the people responsible for the D&D satanist moral panic.
If you are limiting the definition of fascists to “1940s Nazis” and excluding the people today who are actively calling queer and erotic artists and audiences “porn sick brain rotted pedo gamer fetishists” (this is a quote from Collective Shout) and trying to remove their creations from existence then you have no idea what fascism actually is or looks like. Look up what kind of books the Nazis were burning and get back to us, or better yet, kindly shut up.
Honestly, I was under the impression Fascist was just the Anglicanization of the name of Mussolini’s political party and like Nazi, it’s memetically mutated into a general slur for those with horrible political stances without consideration to whether the person being described would actually agree with those political party’s policies.
Though, personally, at least on this subject I prefer to call the enemy prudes and censors because there are plenty of people out there who legitimately think porn and anyone who creates or consumes are morally degenerate in some way without necessarily being on board with the rest of the horrible bundle of beliefs rolled up into Trump/Maga and the like.
Though, I question the value of the NFSW label as its non-specific in the content it can potentially include and taken literally, it could be argued even the Win9x versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper aren’t safe for work because plenty of work places would frown on any on the job gaming. Also not fond of labels like Mature and Adult since they really don’t say much about the content… not to mention a lot of media with the mature lebel are really quite juvenile in their writing and get the label for gratuitous use of things ageists have decided children and adolescents shouldn’t be allowed to consume. But hey, I’m an anti-ageist and aan anti-censor and believe content labelling should inform potential audiences of the content, not enforce/enable ageist censorship, but sadly, most of the widely used systems seem to err on the side of doing the latter.
At the risk of prolonging what I see as a pointless argument about the applicability of the term “fascist,” who effectively fought them and etc., ok, every major state at the time was relatively culturally conservative (not allowing gay marriage e.g.) I guess? But the fascist states like Italy and Nazi Germany were far moreso, and more violently so, and anyway it’s not like the fight against fascism was in any way predicated on spreading a conservative ethos?
But more than not understanding your point I’m struggling to understand why it’s important & relevant to the topic at hand, which is the censorship and removal of art made by members of this community, among others. Their work is being systematically targeted by conservative groups cynically conflating exploitative material vs. art that references exploitation, and those groups are leaning on payment processors’ authority and the legal system to dictate what can and cannot be talked about. Seems fascist enough, and if the term helped Danzig and Frank Zappa identify & criticize cultural censorship from both political conservatives like Reagan and cultural conservatives like Al and Tipper Gore, I don’t see any issue applying it here.
By European standards, Collective Shout and its leading figures would likely be seen as culturally conservative, but not necessarily part of the far-right or traditional right-wing political parties.