I, Christ-like, have decided to take on all our our collective suffering and actually listen to the whole panel.
The correct parts, which in all fairness comprise the majority of the discussion, are as follows:
- “Make America Healthy Again” RFK Jr. seed oil/anti-vax BS is fascist hokum
- The “obesity epidemic” in America is a result of our food systems’ priorities of cost-cutting, profit-maximizing, and hijacking of libidinal desire rather than actual need
- Poor people are the most susceptible to this form of exploitation
- Rather than change the systems, or the economic system responsible for force-feeding people corn syrup slop, “Health Fascism” predicates unhealthiness as a moral failing that must be socially punished as degeneracy
- This social punishment and ostracization as a method of reshaping the self rather than addressing the root systemic cause is a mirror of how fascism operates in general across society, positioning poverty as moral badness and access to wealth and social prestige as moral goodness (See also: Friedrich Nietzsche)
While true, none of this is particularly new or controversial, as people have been writing about the moralization and ritual torture of poor people with bad diets at least since The Biggest Loser was on the air. Nevertheless, this gets completely overshadowed in the public discourse surrounding the panel by the bad parts (which are of course clipped and mocked by reactionaries such as in the post below):
- Speakers claim that since attempting to be healthy without addressing root systemic causes of unhealthiness through revolution requires accepting tacitly on some level that poor health is an individual moral failing / that it can be overcome individually, it should not be attempted at all. This leads one of the speakers to bizarrely state (jokingly?) that, “The more dysgenic (you are), the better.”
- Speakers claim several times that there is a “genocide of fat people,” which is both a loose application of the word genocide and a fundamental reordering of the base and structure in this equation (i.e., it is poor people made to be unhealthy because they are poor, not fat people made to be poor because they are fat. yes i know that thinness can be unhealthy and body fat can be healthy, but broad strokes here)
- Speakers seemingly tacitly accept the linking of “fatness” and “blackness,” rather than recognizing being fat and black as a pejorative primarily because of one’s blackness, rather than their fatness.
- Standard academic dilemma in which disciplinarity produces disciplinary language that is often unrecognizable to broader audiences and contributes to the overall poor optics
Regarding the poor optics: When pitching arguments and ideas at conferences, not all of them are going to be winners. We can’t just silence all potential conversation on the off chance that it might be a dumb argument or else no new ideas will be produced. Likewise, no matter what, the political right is going to clip these arguments uncharitably and present them as representative of leftist ideology as a whole. That is going to happen no matter what, whether we like it or not. Our discussions will never be comprised of only unimpeachable, uncontroversial statements. We can use this as an opportunity to acknowledge good arguments and cull bad arguments from future discussions, though.
Gloria Steinem got women to tie their gender identity to abortion and the aspiration of corporate success, rather than the low-wage work they were doing (and continue to do).
She successfully got rich women and their daughters to throw working class women under a bus. We could have had a feminism that made sure that working women were unionized and paid.
Instead, Steinem was paid to make sure your daughters wanted to be Sheryl Sandberg.
Per @LaraFriedmanDC it’s actually worse. It essentially *forces* universities to invest in Israel or risk being accused of boycotting which could put them in legal jeopardy. This is a forced allegiance to Israel bill.
transcript of the note:
After my son was outfitted with this ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal. He took 2 trips to Cincinnati and Westerville to plead to the officers to remove the bracelet since he's a soccer player and he felt embarrassed and humiliated when he's among his classmates at the University. He was bullied a lot telling him he's a criminal. Last Friday August 28, 2026 He told me "Dad I felt humiliated. Since they gave uniforms to all my classmates at JROTC their uniform, but except me because of the bracelet.” This morning he left the house before 8:00AM. He called me at 8:03 on the Video Call mentally because I don't feeling Okay and I told him, “Come home so that we can talk?” I had my youngest to take to school. I took him to school. By the time I got around 11:00 police showed at my door to report that he threw himself under a truck.
@keithdorejel@infinite_jaz@adam_louis52328 The McGill folks have to come out with some kind of explanation for him. Is he still in the program? Who are his advisors? Are they letting this all happen under their wings?
Netanyahu appeals to Israeli voters by boasting that he manipulated Trump:
“it took a long time to get the US to come to its senses” but I finally got it to attack Iran due to my “influence” over its leaders through “1000 hours on American television”
Not a peep about ICE deportations hitting an all time high in July, at over 50,000.
Just wall-to-wall Islamophobic dogwhistles.
The Democratic Party is fucking pathetic.
The long term consequences of the failed Iran War are beginning to reveal as we hear about crop yields being down from fertilizer shortages, diesel increasing, etc. but Democrats refuse to campaign on the looming crisis bc they fundamentally support the Iran War. So they decide to talk about a Twitch streamer every day instead.
>Hakeem Jeffries has closed door meeting with Jared Kushner
>He then elevates zionist Jared Moskowitz to the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee
>Days later, liberal media and politicians begin attacking anti-zionist figures in lockstep with republicans
WAKE THE FUCK UP
A national fact-finding mission said the Philippine Army committed serious violations of international humanitarian law in the killing of 19 people in Toboso, Negros Occidental, including nine civilians, disputing the military’s claim that all those killed were armed communist rebels.
READ: https://t.co/AwnhTBTDTA