#antiracist — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #antiracist, aggregated by home.social.
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Why We Have to Fight Back Against ICE Protesters’ Terror Convictions
Since his first inauguration, Trump has been throwing charges at protesters and seeing what sticks. He always failed — until now.
Natasha Lennard, March 17 2026
Excerpt: "It started on President Donald Trump’s very first day in office in 2017. Over 200 #InaugurationDay #protesters were mass arrested and charged with hefty riot and conspiracy felonies for simply being present and wearing black at a rowdy demonstration.
"Since then, the government has sought and failed to convict left-wing activists on thin, unconstitutional claims of collective guilt.
"Just as the J20 prosecutions, as the inauguration cases were known, fell apart, so too did cases accusing dozens of participants in the Atlanta-based #StopCopCity movement of #DomesticTerrorism, #racketeering, and conspiracy.
"It became a pattern of sorts. Prosecutors on both the federal and state level throwing extreme and overreaching charges at leftists, based on infirm theories of collective liability, aiming to paint #antifascist, #AntiRacist movements as criminal terrorist networks. The evidence marshaled in these cases was consistently no more than typical #FirstAmendment-protected activity, like making protest signs, raising bail funds, or being present at a demonstration. The cases drained movement energies and resources.
Again and again, though, they failed."This was the pattern repeated in the malign, overreaching cases against protesters in #FortWorthTX. The #AntiICE activists had mounted a demonstration at a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement jail in nearby #Alvarado.
There were consistencies with other anti-protest cases. There had been some illegal activity outside the #PrairielandDetentionFacility last July, and a police officer was shot. The government latched onto these circumstances to build its strategy of criminalizing dissent through guilt by association."Even in conservative Texas, I didn’t think a jury would buy the government’s case that these defendants were 'North Texas Antifa Cell operatives' — an organization fabricated whole cloth by the Trump administration — who had orchestrated an elaborate ambush of the ICE facility.
" 'Most people looking at this case are still stuck on the shooting aspect, but the jury decided the shooting was beside the point,' a member of a support group for the defendants told me. 'The verdict is that a normal #NoiseDemo deserves to be called terrorism and people should spend potentially the rest of their lives in prison. The implications of this are obvious, and people should know that the DOJ is going to try this again.' "
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2026/03/17/ice-protester-terrorism-convictions-trump-prairieland/Archived version:
https://archive.ph/uvx92#USPol #DomesticTerrorism #AntiICEProtests #Texas #ResistICE #SilencingDissent #AntiTerrorismLaws
#CriminalizingProtest #Resistance -
#WhiteSupremacist renounces extreme beliefs after taking ‘love drug’ #ecstasy as part of study
By Isabel Keane
Published June 18, 2023"A former white nationalist leader said he changed his extremist views after taking the 'love drug' ecstasy as part of a scientific study, according to researchers.
"The man, only identified as Brendan, took the psychoactive drug MDMA in February 2020 as part of a University of Chicago study about whether its use increased the pleasantness of social touch, wrote Rachel Nuwer, author of 'I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World,' for the BBC.
"After completing the study, Brendan left a cryptic message at the bottom of a survey for the researchers.
"'This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue. Google my name. I now know what I need to do,' he said.
"The researchers looked up Brendan and discovered he had been the leader of a US Midwest faction of Identity #Evropa, a notorious white nationalist group rebranded in 2019 as the #AmericanIdentityMovement.
"Brendan had led the white nationalist group up until two months earlier, when activists exposed his identity and he lost his job.
"Researching Brendan further, the scientists also discovered he had attended the deadly '#UniteTheRight' rally in #Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
"They later reached out to Brendan asking him to clarify what he meant by his comments at the bottom of the survey.
"'Love is the most important thing,' he told them. 'Nothing matters without love.'
"'This is stuff you can’t really put into words, but it was so profound,' Brendan said of his experience with the drug.
"Brendan took MDMA in February 2020 as part of a University of Chicago study.
"'I conceived of my relationships with other people not as distinct boundaries with distinct entities, but more as we-are-all-one. I realised I’d been fixated on stuff that doesn’t really matter, and is just so messed up, and that I’d been totally missing the point. I hadn’t been soaking up the joy that life has to offer.
"'There are moments when I have #racist or #antisemitic thoughts, definitely,' he said. 'But now I can recognise that those kinds of thought patterns are harming me more than anyone else.'
"Brendan said he had leaned left while growing up but became more right after joining a conservative fraternity at the University of Illinois.
"He described feeling encouraged by #DonaldTrump, noting, 'His speech talking about Mexicans being rapists, the fixation on the border wall and deporting everyone, the Muslim ban – I didn’t really get white nationalism until Trump started running for president.'
"He said he joined Identity Evropa to meet others who shared his views and quickly rose in the ranks, eventually traveling around the US and Europe to huddle with other white nationalist groups. He likely would have continued along this path had his identity not been exposed, Nuwer noted in her article.
"Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the University of Chicago who led the experiment, was still astonished by its results nearly two years later when speaking with Nuwer for her book.
"'Isn’t that amazing?' de Wit said. 'It’s what everyone says about this damn drug, that it makes people feel love. To think that a drug could change somebody’s beliefs and thoughts without any expectations – it’s mind-boggling.'
"The use of MDMA and other #psychedelics have gained traction in the medical community as they have shown positive results for treating some disorders such as #PTSD and #alcoholism.
"Brendan told Nuwer that the drug helped him 'see things in a different way that no amount of therapy or #antiracist literature ever would have done.'
"'I really think it was a breakthrough experience,' he said.
"Still, he said he knew of other white supremacists who had previously used MDMA but had not changed their minds.
"According to Nuwer, MDMA 'does not seem to be able to magically rid people of prejudice, bigotry, or hate on its own.
"'But some researchers have begun to wonder if it could be an effective tool for pushing people who are already somehow primed to reconsider their ideology toward a new way of seeing things,' the researcher wrote.
"'While MDMA cannot fix societal-level drivers of prejudice and disconnection, on an individual basis it can make a difference. In certain cases, the drug may even be able to help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us.'"
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"We speak with award-winning Palestinian American artist and filmmaker Emily Jacir, whose event in Berlin in October was canceled after Israel launched its ongoing assault on Gaza. Jacir decries a pattern of “harassment, baseless smear campaigns, canceling shows, canceling talks” conducted against Palestinian artists in Germany and around the world. “It’s very much part of a coordinated movement,” she says, connecting global censorship of diasporic Palestinian voices with the violent “targeted destruction of culture in Gaza,” which she calls a “part of genocide.”
Short appearance of Masha Gessen
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/18/censorship_israel_palestine_gaza
#blacklist #Palestine #artists #Film #censorship #AntiRacist #philosemitism #racism #PalestineSolidarity #StopTheGenocide #CulturalGenocide #bethlehem #StrikeGermany #StrikeForPalestine
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#introduction I deleted my Twitter Account! Associate Professor at Northeastern University with expertise in the population and evolutionary #genomics of #marine systems. Enjoy #rstats and #datavis. PI of the Evolving Seas RCN. Avid mountain biker, amateur ceramicist, #antiracist, and data organization snob. #SSEfolks #followforpopgenback #populationgenomics #evolution #blacklivesmatter #esebfolks #asnfolks #genetics #machinelearning #evolvingseas #pottery #ceramics #mountainbiking #MathBio