One more for Rask's theory, that is his, his theory...
Posted by Ian M on August 5, 2024, 1:46 am
I thought the graun was supposed to publish more subtle intel-fed propaganda than this. This reads like a pre-GCSE attempt at 'persuasive writing', and I struggle to see how anyone could still be falling for it in 2024. Yet I'm sure enough of them will to make it count for something. Via Chris Wood who apparently still hasn't got over his old man crush on Codswallop and her absurd damsel in distress routine. 'Enjoy the sunshine of the Kamala moment. Breathe in the clean fresh air of facts, of evidence, of information. Of hope.' - Jesus wept...
This is a misogyny emergency. A huge outpouring is coming in the runup to the US election
Carole Cadwalladr
This time Kamala Harris will be the target for the social media platforms that promote prejudice Sat 27 Jul 2024 11.00 BST Last modified on Sun 4 Aug 2024 16.26 BST
In 2016, a historically unprecedented incident took place. And yet, barely anyone even noticed. Even years later, we’ve failed to acknowledge it or to have begun the process of understanding it. Because we still can’t even see it.
And that’s because this incident involved a woman. And she was asking for it.
The woman was Hillary Clinton. What she was asking for was votes. And what she got was the single biggest outpouring of misogyny in human history.
We can now say that. Although no one ever does. But this was an unprecedented previously unimaginable event. Because 2016 was when the world’s first global instant mass communication technology – social media – crashed up against the most ancient of prejudices – misogyny.
And the result was an earthquake: Donald Trump.
In 2016, we weren’t prepared for it. We didn’t see it coming. We didn’t understand how these same social media platforms that have enabled us to share our thoughts instantly at a global scale also facilitate the worst kinds of human communication. How they are engineered to cater to our basest instincts and reward the clickiest, most hateful content.
But eight years on, we haven’t even begun to understand that lesson. We didn’t listen to Hillary. We haven’t yet realised that misogyny is one of the most dangerous weapons on Earth. The best friend of authoritarians and oligarchs. The handmaiden of tyrants. [er, isn't that a rather misogynist statement?? - IM]
Worst of all, we haven’t yet realised that misogyny represents the most urgent and pressing threat to global security.
Because it’s misogyny – networked misogyny across multiple global platforms that will earn their tech bro owners billions upon billions of dollars – that is going decide the 2024 election. And it’s misogyny that’s going to dictate the future of Nato, the outcome of the war in Ukraine, whether we have peace in Europe or more war. And because this is going to be a firehose that will be directed at a single woman – Kamala Harris – it will be misogyny multiplied: misogyny plus racism, the most toxic combination of all.
This week comments resurfaced that Trump’s newly appointed running mate had made about the woman who looks certain to be the next Democrat candidate. Comments from 2021, in which JD Vance dismissed Kamala Harris as a “childless cat lady”. If that sounds vaguely familiar, you may recognise those exact words from the attacks that Brexiteers directed at me. In my case, it was an assault that went on for years and created the permission for the same man who seeded the narrative to sue me in court.
I was gagged, the necessities of the court case silenced me. Sticks and stones will break my bones etc. But this was never about me. I was just the access point, a way to shut the story down, a viable target. And this was an attack that achieved its goal. Overnight, all reporting on the subject stopped dead.
That’s what JD Vance understands: our cat lady energy. We’ve lived through culture wars before they even had that name
But there are things that only veterans of the childless cat lady wars can know. They used to call us witches because we knew shit. We still do. That’s what makes us so powerful. And dangerous. That’s what JD Vance understands: our cat lady energy. We’ve lived through culture wars before they even had that name, before they invented memes and when they just burned us at the stake.
So, here’s what I need you to do now: to shut up and sit down and listen. You are at risk. We are all at risk. Because this is what I know: bad things are coming. We are in a code red emergency.
Because misogyny isn’t bad people saying bad things that may hurt your feelings. (Though it might.) And misogyny isn’t about silencing women. (Though it does.)
Misogyny is now one of the deadliest weapons on Earth. Misogyny is a dirty bomb in the heart of our information system. Misogyny is electoral interference. Misogyny is a national security threat so lethal we can’t even see it.
Because misogyny is invisible. It’s never about all women, it’s always just about one particular, disagreeable woman who just happens to not be very likeable. Or competent. Who is loud or “shrill” or annoying or who got the job because she slept with a man. Or because she was a diversity hire. A woman who can’t even run her own house let alone a country. A woman who is “nasty”. A woman who isn’t and cannot be the strong leader a nation needs.
Enjoy the sunshine of the Kamala moment. Breathe in the clean fresh air of facts, of evidence, of information. Of hope. Before the toxic social media chimneys crank up the content. Because shortly, the particulates will arrive, will silently and stealthily and invisibly start clogging our bronchial pathways even as the billionaire bros who own the platforms rake in record profits. It’s not so much surveillance capitalism as disaster capitalism.
It took years for us to learn some of the basic facts of what happened in 2016 and it’s still just a partial view. But we now know: Russia attacked Clinton in exactly the same way that Trumpworld attacked Clinton, in exactly the same way that they are attacking Kamala.
We now know how the Kremlin actually paid in roubles for Facebook to pump those messages out across US social media. We now know that Cambridge Analytica, on behalf of the Trump campaign, created an anonymous Crooked Hillary campaign that it fed into the “bloodstream of the internet”.
But neither invented misogyny. They just used it. These were narratives the bros of the broverse were already spreading, which the invisible hand of the social media algorithms were pumping into people’s feeds. The same zombie narratives that have risen again for Kamala and are already being stoked not just by YouTube edgelords and JD Vance fanboys but Russia and China too.
Soon, we won’t even notice. It’ll just be part of the air that we breathe. A choking toxic misogynistic stew that will silently pour over the culture war trenches like mustard gas. Darkness is coming. This is the world social media created. And we’re much further out than we thought. This is what we're up against Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Jesus Christ, I knew they'd be going hard but wtf is this???
"misogyny represents the most urgent and pressing threat to global security", "the single biggest outpouring of misogyny in human history" ??
As opposed to that article, the single biggest outpouring of hot, steaming identity-politics bollocks. It seemed like every paragraph upped the last for the most hyperbolic falsehood.
They must think people have the memories of goldfish and can't recall when Kamala had to drop out of the Democratic Primary in the first round when she got almost no votes at all and was universally despised. Although I suppose that was the most dangerous weapon of all time again, misogyny.
Or that they can't recall the blood-drenched, cackle-laden record of death, destruction and misery left in the wake of Saint Hilary. Oh right, I forgot, misogyny.
I'm just trying to eat my breakfast but that article has made it tricky. Even for that rag, that is embarassing.
I have to say my prediction is taking shape nicely though I expect the one massive event that supposedly stirs up the non-voters to get out and heroically push Kamala to victory will come nearer the poll date but 100 days out and it seem they've already opened the fire-hose of bullshit juding by this article. Staggering......no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
A pertinent episode of Citations Needed: Substance vs Vibes in VP Kamala Harris' Gaza PR Reboot
Showing another attempt to, falsely, portray her as "different" from Biden, in this case on Gaza....no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
...no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party...So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Re: Jesus Christ, I knew they'd be going hard but wtf is this???
Yeah, nuclear war? climate catastrophe? unprecedented extinctions of wildlife? rampant corporatism and neoimperialism destroying peoples' lives? actual genocide? Nah, people being mean to a politician on twitter, that's the biggest threat. I'd say it was clinically insane if I thought she actually believed what she was saying.
Also, this passage trying to link her heroic struggle to the cackling sociopaths in the US was particularly rich:
'If that sounds vaguely familiar, you may recognise those exact words from the attacks that Brexiteers directed at me. In my case, it was an assault that went on for years and created the permission for the same man who seeded the narrative to sue me in court. I was gagged, the necessities of the court case silenced me. Sticks and stones will break my bones etc. But this was never about me. I was just the access point, a way to shut the story down, a viable target. And this was an attack that achieved its goal. Overnight, all reporting on the subject stopped dead.'
This refers to statements she made about Aaron Banks implying political connections to Russia which even the UK justice system had to agree were defamatory with 'no defence of truth' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_Cadwalladr#Banks_v_Cadwalladr_libel_case - so in reality it didn't 'shut the story down', it imposed a consequence for making public accusations with no basis in fact. If she was a real journalist working for a serious newspaper the story would have never passed muster in the first place.
Also hard to take this whining seriously from someone who joined the pile-on against Julian Assange, making allegations about a meeting with Farage that never happened, based on a single unnamed US intelligence source (https://nitter.poast.org/kennardmatt/status/1536294883933278208#m) and tying it all into the deranged Trump-Russiagate conspiracy. Hard to imagine a more damaging libel against a man in an incredibly precarious situation, dependent on the court of public opinion to give him even a fighting chance of justice. And of course he too was thoroughly gagged by the legal system from the start, never permitted to respond to his accusers from the rape allegations onwards.
Anyway, I've spent too long on this, so I'll leave it there. Must be latent misogyny on my part that I get so triggered by this woman...
My goodness - is this real? Mind you, this Cadwallader woman has always been pretty strange.
Funny how Margaret Thatcher, Teresa May and Liz Truss managed to overcome the planet's most malevolent force, misogyny.
Hilary Clinton, nothing to do with the fact she was a horrible woman, privileged by association to political power and the "deep state" and nobody wanted her as President because she was the worst candidate, who along with her mates, had shafted Bernie Sanders who might have actually won?
That's not to state misogyny is nasty and problematic, but to state it in this hysterical way and to totally ignore confounding factors, well..........
I'm glad you read this rubbish, it means that I save on
.. a few years ago, I knew I shan't be reading that rag any more. However, it is appreciated that Rask/Ian et al are following this up since I haven't got the stomach for it. Kudos and all that.
An obvious nut job with no discriminatory abilities... You really have to take the media on its word sometimes: they promote those who reflect what they are: insane.
There's this lunatic version of feminism which she adheres to re her Hilary Clinton worship: it's strangely common and holds the belief that if women just ruled the world it would be a better place.
-That one wore out it's credibility in my book when Blair's "specialy-promoted-women-for-being- ummm...women" lot all voted to persecute the most disadvantaged women in society: single mothers...with only one exception they stuck it to the poorest women of all.
Anyone in doubt that women in power are as much a shower of arseholes as men need only look to Europes biggest war promoters:... Ursula von der Leyen, Kaja Kallas, Annalina Baerbaum, Luminita Odobescu, Maia Sandu...
Kaja Kallas does it for me. Unhinged Russophobe. Is she preparing the concentration camps? Who knows? It has so little to do with equality, it's astonishing.
on August 5, 2024, 1:46 am
I expect the one massive event that supposedly stirs up the non-voters to get out and heroically push Kamala to victory will come nearer the poll date but 100 days out and it seem they've already opened the fire-hose of bullshit juding by this article. Staggering...