I’m genuinely baffled by this take and I also think trying to separate RFK from fascism and pin it on mental illness is really, really dangerous.
Replies
I mean, why do they think all these people were specifically chosen to be in these positions? It all serves the purpose, this is all by design.
aug 31, 2025, 12:44 am • 49 5 • view
No accidents
aug 31, 2025, 12:51 am • 7 0 • view
Tbh, feels like the take of someone who agreed with, or at least was cool with, eugenics when it was targeted toward significantly disabled people only, and is now suddenly concerned/noticing once the criteria for who RFK wants to murder is expanding...
aug 31, 2025, 12:24 am • 287 10 • view
...and there is more....
aug 31, 2025, 12:50 am • 99 3 • view
Except academics have been calling out Trump the most. The press have been far more problematic in their acquiescence and enabling of Trump's fascism.
aug 31, 2025, 3:39 pm • 0 0 • view
This guy isn’t an academic he’s just a clown
aug 31, 2025, 3:42 am • 29 0 • view
A clown who thinks he's an academic
aug 31, 2025, 2:14 pm • 7 0 • view
He wrote one of the most detailed books of the Rwandan genocide. He’s not a clown at all. A lot of fascism scholarship is focused on the ways explicit violence is enacted not disability rights. Asshole take here to discount his work because his research is different from other commenters. Sheesh.
aug 31, 2025, 3:11 pm • 8 0 • view
His "research". I learned that shit in high school history decades ago.
aug 31, 2025, 6:04 pm • 5 0 • view
You read about the Rwandan genocide in high school? I must be older than you are. I found his book to be very moving and still find insights about it. Shocking to see someone minimize the tragedy in Rwanda as “that shit in high school history”
aug 31, 2025, 9:31 pm • 0 0 • view
No. I read about WWIi fascism's in high school and knew about its connection to targeting disabled folks. Your obsession with Rwandan is frankly weird. No one was talking about that.
sep 1, 2025, 1:22 am • 1 0 • view
I’ll bet that at least one of the belligerent factions had some sort of mythology fabricated out of superstition and some precolonial sense of identity that they used to justify their atrocities
aug 31, 2025, 6:35 pm • 0 0 • view
You're kinda just an asshole for snearing at people, especially disabled people, who are more informed about fascism and don't turn a blind eye to the inherent eugenics (read: ableism) of it. Sheesh.
aug 31, 2025, 7:18 pm • 7 0 • view
oh wow he wrote a book one time about a different thing nowai
aug 31, 2025, 3:52 pm • 9 0 • view
FWIW, nobody is born a clown. A clown is something we become.
aug 31, 2025, 3:53 pm • 6 0 • view
A person can know a lot about one thing. That doesn’t make them an expert in everything and that also doesn’t preclude them from saying wildly ignorant and ableist things. And if a person is an expert then they SHOULD be including an understanding of disability and not doing that is just ableism.
aug 31, 2025, 6:51 pm • 73 1 • view
Isn’t giving any white male “expert” carte blanche to just say anything and believe them without a second of skepticism something that we are moving away from as a society? His comments are blatanty false and very dangerous and it is completely reasonable and in fact necessary to correct him.
aug 31, 2025, 6:58 pm • 45 2 • view
And also: “A lot of fascism scholarship is focused on the ways explicit violence is enacted not disability rights” is an absolutely horrific and bigoted hateful omission and not a reflection of reality. That should be a red flag not a justification for ignorance.
aug 31, 2025, 7:11 pm • 61 4 • view
I’m usually challenged by writing on this type of platform, and re-reading that sentence, I agree that that isn’t what I meant. I don’t think of him as an expert because he’s a white guy, but I do appreciate the research he did on the Rwandan genocide to explain the quick flip to violence.
aug 31, 2025, 9:25 pm • 1 0 • view
That’s why I was responding to someone who was flippant in dismissing his contributions to that specific scholarship, admittedly quite poorly.
aug 31, 2025, 9:25 pm • 0 0 • view
People aren't discounting his work. They're dismissing his bs take like they should. I get we were raised to think everything about the US is special and unique. But our fascism is just standard issue fascism.
aug 31, 2025, 7:26 pm • 48 3 • view
I think calling him “a clown who thinks he’s an academic” is discounting his work. The Rwandan genocide he wrote about was not marked by the state dismantling the public health system. It’s possible to treat people with dignity when their background knowledge is different from our own.
aug 31, 2025, 9:17 pm • 0 0 • view
Again. High school knowledge of WWII is sufficient. Save your attempted condescension for your students. Bet they love it. 👋
sep 1, 2025, 1:03 am • 2 0 • view
And your whole point was to come here and police my comment? Are you proud to be a cop?
sep 1, 2025, 1:14 am • 2 0 • view
You have a very weird understanding of the professions of cop and clown. Good luck out there.
sep 1, 2025, 2:02 am • 1 0 • view
I feel bad for her students given what I’ve seen here
sep 1, 2025, 2:17 am • 0 0 • view
Imagine a well celebrated and published physicist who specializes in particle physics. Now imagine they said that "Venus isn't a planet, it's obviously somethings else" Would they NOT be a clown? They're published in the field! We should treat them with dignity as they double down on lunacy!
aug 31, 2025, 9:22 pm • 4 0 • view
Nobody said anything about the Rwandan genocide except you.
aug 31, 2025, 11:41 pm • 2 0 • view
If you don’t know who Philip Gourevitch is, that’s on you.
sep 1, 2025, 2:04 am • 0 0 • view
Lmao
sep 1, 2025, 2:16 am • 1 0 • view
Lady I don’t give a flying fuck
sep 1, 2025, 2:18 am • 1 0 • view
Would it be a shock to consider that some academics who just study an issue, miss critical details that people who actually live in the issues know? Due to willful bias or sloppy research, which includes not listening to people they don't consider "academic enough" to listen to and learn from.
aug 31, 2025, 8:27 pm • 3 0 • view
If he's that knowledgeable and educated, then that makes his take even worse than it already is. You understand that, right?
aug 31, 2025, 7:15 pm • 10 0 • view
The fact he's a genocide scholar and doesn't know this makes it more embarrassing, not less. Thanks for that addition. I'm more shocked and horrified now.
sep 1, 2025, 7:31 am • 3 0 • view
As for his “scholarly” credentials, highest attained degree is an MFA in creative writing
sep 1, 2025, 3:04 pm • 2 0 • view
Saying that destroying scientific and medical institutions and the people that rely on them isn't fascism sure is creative writing. He's doing his degree proud there. He's creating fascist apologia.
sep 1, 2025, 5:21 pm • 2 0 • view
i....... how do you call the way fascism expresses its violence and how it treats the disabled different categories?
aug 31, 2025, 7:07 pm • 29 1 • view
By not believing disabled people are people.
aug 31, 2025, 7:31 pm • 3 0 • view
I’m saying that a guy who studied a rapid genocide by a people group who didn’t seize the apparatus of government has a blind spot around fascist regimes who did. Admittedly wrote that sentence poorly. Character limits, no edit button, and comment threads are not great ways for me to communicate.
aug 31, 2025, 9:27 pm • 0 0 • view
fair enough, but “he’s speaking from ignorance” isn’t really a defense so much as an explanation, especially if he styles himself an expert on fascism and has such major blind spots about it
aug 31, 2025, 10:00 pm • 2 0 • view
I’ve never seen anywhere that he claims to be an expert of fascism (though admittedly haven’t read everything he’s written recently), but I’ve used his stuff when discussing state violence and the conditions of genocide.
sep 1, 2025, 2:08 am • 0 0 • view
I think his statement at the beginning of this thread shows a belief in himself as more of an expert than the incorrect claims in it show him to be
sep 1, 2025, 3:22 am • 1 0 • view
So ummmm, why are you melting down then?
sep 1, 2025, 2:20 am • 0 0 • view
he should stop doing clown shit
aug 31, 2025, 7:03 pm • 5 0 • view
Oh so he’s a dilettante, even worse
aug 31, 2025, 3:32 pm • 11 0 • view
Good call, it’s this exactly — folks who seethingly hate the disabled now worrying that the able will get treated like the disabled
aug 31, 2025, 3:08 am • 9 0 • view
wait until they learn that if we live long enough we all will become disabled ableists freaking out now that the poem is playing out and they realize we're 4/5ths of the way through it
aug 31, 2025, 4:22 am • 8 0 • view
And we are super duper past the point of letting chuds like Philip say stuff like that without saying “yes we know what your deal is”
aug 31, 2025, 4:55 am • 4 0 • view
Aktion-T4 anyone?
aug 31, 2025, 12:19 am • 8 0 • view
I know it's a trope at this point but even "1984" explains the shutting down of scientific institutions
aug 31, 2025, 1:23 am • 11 0 • view
People always want to blame destructive behaviors on mental illness. It's easier for them to deal with if those behaviors are caused by something "other" and beyond human control. Meanwhile, it's almost always because of choices we have made as a society. 1/3
aug 31, 2025, 4:08 pm • 7 2 • view
Eugenics is learned superiority and indifference/dehumanization. It's not even hate, really. It's just seeing certain people as lesser. Prejudice is learned hatred. Violence and aggression are often caused by environmental factors that we can eliminate, but choose not to. 2/3
aug 31, 2025, 4:08 pm • 3 1 • view
So much of what we see that causes pain and suffering is a choice. It doesn't have to be this way. But we let it happen. Admitting that means being responsible for the pain we see, though. That's a lot. 3/3
aug 31, 2025, 4:08 pm • 3 2 • view
I’ve known since high school (graduated 1982) that fascists target the disabled, as well as various ethnic groups, religions, LGBTQ, any perceived opponents, etc. It’s a travesty that history is not well taught.
aug 31, 2025, 9:53 am • 11 4 • view
Just a bizarrely ignorant thing to post with such confidence. You don't have to dig deep *at all* to find eugenicist and anti-medical science views among any given 20th century fascist regime.
aug 31, 2025, 2:01 am • 23 0 • view
you don't even have to dig deep to find eugenics in half of the liberal regimes
aug 31, 2025, 2:56 am • 14 0 • view
I really think people are trying to justify fascism to themselves. Like there are only issues because Trump has evil viziers.
aug 31, 2025, 3:17 pm • 3 0 • view
Otherwise Democrats might be forced to confront the many evil things they’ve done as proto-fascist.
aug 31, 2025, 3:18 pm • 3 0 • view
These takes come from people typically who have a very venomous attitude about the disabled. Folks who want the disabled to all die for the parking space, but also shriek “vote blue no matter who” etc for their “side’s” clicks
aug 31, 2025, 3:06 am • 9 0 • view
Seriously dangerous. Co-signed, Erin. Thank you for this.
aug 31, 2025, 12:52 am • 7 0 • view
And reprehensibly shameful
aug 31, 2025, 12:50 am • 6 0 • view