Lessons and fall out from this week's attempted insurrection in the USA

As: 

• the death toll reaches five (including a police officer), 
• photos of an insurrectionist with mask and flex ties (for hostages???!!) circulate, 
• discussions include the pipe bombs and "Molotov cocktails" and other weapons the insurrectionists had, and 
• more details emerge about how openly the domestic terrorists had planned this and the active involvement of police (one of the best comments I've read is a call for an investigation to see how far white supremacism has infiltrated police in the USA: include Australia & the UK, expand it to include authoritarianism [and I note this cop was quite rightly charged for spying on Tibetans], and look also at the police in  central  Africa who are abusing and killing so many - especially in Uganda), 

there are a few points I would like to touch on. 

Firstly, there has been a flow on effect: far right extremists in Europe are - openly - feeling encouraged by the USA's attempted insurrection. How many are feeling encouraged an keeping their mouths shut? 

The flow-on effect of violence is like the spread of disease, so, as many of us go into or continue lockdown to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, it is worth considering that: 

• on the positive side, awareness of that fact can be and is used to contain the spread of violence, and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said: "One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions", but 
• on the other hand, there is a clear need to provide a counter-narrative or, at the very least, call out dangerous / hate speech - which makes this sort of behaviour by Scotty from Marketing not only contemptible, but an act of enabling evil.

On top of that, it makes the teenage schoolboy mentality of some social media moguls equally evil - not only in terms of facilitating misogyny, but also in terms of their role as participant-enablers/facilitators in the attempted insurrection who are far, far, FAR too late trying to fix their evil. Even Scientific American is calling for a change to a law that enables on-line hate. 

Infamously, a former Attorney-General of Australia stated that he considered people have the right to be bigots: as someone who has been on the receiving end of bigotry and thus knows how deadly that ALWAYS is, that is the same as arguing for the right to commit murder. Brandis's comment was and still is unconscionable. 

Similarly, the role of a "religious" minority in the attempted insurrection was equally unconscionable, and an act of evil. 

Religious? Puh-leeze. 

If you were told by someone who is six foot tall that they are two feet tall and accepted that, you would be just as utterly foolish and incompetent as someone who thinks that the evangelical minority is "religious": they're not, they're bigots. 

Religion is NOT about being dogmatically fixated on a set of rigidly formalised rules - it is about making oneself and the world a better place. 

Christ brought a New Testament to replace the then-outmoded Old Testament.

I am religious, a Pagan Priestess and Elder, and thus have some expertise in the field of religion: on the basis of my religious expertise, I can categorically state that anyone preaching hate - or enabling child abuse - under the cover of falsely claiming to be religious is a liar, evil, and utterly, utterly, UTTERLY wrong.

Anyone claiming to be religious who supports the attempted insurrection in the USA is as guilty as those who took an active part in it. (And those allowing this infestation of the pseudo-religious are also enabling evil.)

Anyone who uncritically relays or reports them as being religious is incompetent - and wrong. 

And that moves us on to journalism. 

There are a lot of problems with media - there's a lot of good as well, but until the rubbish and harmful is separated from the good, bleating for freedom of the press is going to be resisted by the victims of the press - such as the TGD people who have been abused, driven to suicide or murdered because of transphobic hate. 

In terms of this week's attempted insurrection, there are very apt calls for reconsideration of interviewing far right extremists. Now, it is important to know how the far right thinks, but if that has been written about, think carefully about whether you are really adding knowledge, or just trying to jumping on the bandwagon for a bit of personal booty (glory) or for your over-inflated ego.

There is also the issue of "equal weight" (not "both sides") to consider. To illustrate that, in a culture that is predominantly cisnormative / heteronormative, you DO NOT need to "present the other side" after talking to LGBTIQ+ activists - society has done that. By presenting the activists' case, you are presenting the other side - leave it at that. The balance is in the wider world. 

If you think otherwise, you're thinking that an interview with a survivor of genocide needs to also include comments from a genocidaire. On genocide, I saw this timely article and link this week, but for now, I want to end with a link to this article:

• "We Underestimate the Far Right at Our Own Peril"; and 
• this interview.
  

Don't underestimate extremism, intolerance and hate, and don't outsource responsibility for countering those evils - be on the side of the good ideas, those ideas whose time has come.