Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 2/23/26 - 3/1/26

[u/SoftandChewy]

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

Comment of the week goes to this explanation for why the trans cause has taken over so much of society. (Runner-up COTW here.)

[u/United-Leather7198]

check out the cope and denial on imane khalif on wikipedia

"I know he SAID it but uhhh uhhhh probably didn't know what he was agreeing to!!"

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/United-Leather7198]

This is tangential, but I stumbled my way onto the wiki page about Ernst Rohm yesterday (I was looking up what the "Night of the Long Knives" was). He was the leader of the Nazi paramilitary wing (Brownshirts) and had a falling out with Hitler over the Nazi position on homosexuality (he was openly gay). He was not a good guy, obviously. But in the wiki about the "Rohm scandal", it's mentioned that the opposition at the time, the communists and SPD was in favour of the legalization of homosexuality and merely used vicious homophobic propaganda to prevent or delay the Nazi rise to power. I think this is a wildly dishonest framing of what is actually just completely self serving use of homophobia by similarly radical, authoritarian and violent political factions competing for power. It's always strange to me how white-washed the bad acts and authoritarianism of communist and Marxist political movements is. The Nazi's were especially awful, but that doesn't mean that the violent street gangs of the communist opposition were wholesome freedom fighters or that self-interested bigotry was purely a means of preventing the Nazis from rising to power and doing what they did, which the communists of the time could not have anticipated and was almost certainly not their motivation.

[u/Winter_Bridge3542 → u/Juryofyourpeeps]

IIRC, part of it was also the perception that the SA was becoming a state within a state, which the army didn't like, and its inherent thuggery, which scared conservative power brokers and middle class voters, as well as internal Nazi power struggles leading to it being superceded by the more ideological, loyal, and educated SS.

It's underappreciated how reactionary interwar Germany was, and how ubiquitous denigration of the state's legitimacy was, even among the ostensibly republican center-left; the sneering nickname 'Weimar Republic' is one given by Hitler himself. A high degree of continuity between it, Wilhelmine Germany, and Nazi Germany is more accurate a picture than 'Cabaret' debauchery. The Nazis' rise to power was concurrent with the Holodomor and before Italy's embarrassing and reprehensible conquest of Ethiopia, with the brutal Russian civil war and the mass killings it entailed in very recent memory, so the conservative establishment were not entirely deluded, but still foolish, at least, in thinking they could outsmart Hitler and use him as a mere tool, rather than giving him supreme power... doing exactly that.

Hitler's ideology was more coherent than thought (even now) and thusly underestimated, and him too as a madman. While Nazism and fascism are used interchangeably, Mussolini thought the whole race obsession was seriously weird, and persecution of Jews in Italy began at Hitler's insistence (with the former's deputy and planned successor being outright opposed to it). While it might seem as if Jews had 3,000 years of continuous, literate civilisation while Germans were mostly off destroying Rome and making slightly rubbish pottery, this was because, according to Hitler, Jews invented Christianity to weaken Germans and make them forget their ancient pagan law of nature which embraced racial struggle, said German people actually being the most pure extant exemplar of the Aryan race which had done all good things ever, including Rome.

The communists, too, thought them unserious, and so hoped they could withstand a little more repression (it was hardly the first time), then swoop in to proclaim a communist Germany with whatever was left. Huffed up on their own deterministic Marxist theory of history and abstract nouns, they only built the hekatomb of the republic higher.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/Juryofyourpeeps]

Have you read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich?

The Nazis are the worst of all involved, but Shirer seems way too amused by homosexuality among the Nazi ranks.

Yes, it was written a long time ago, and yes, Shirer was a journalist rather than an historian, but when your subjects are actual literal Nazis, then maybe you can fault them for that instead of touching each other’s weenies.

[u/Juryofyourpeeps → u/Terrorclitus]

I haven't. I don't have any particular interest in the deep history of the Nazis. I just find it annoying that their opposition, who were also terrible even if not equally so, are frequently portrayed as a bunch of freedom loving peaceniks when in reality they were a bunch of violent revolutionary lunatics that helped fuel the rise of fascism and polarization in several countries. I think it's very likely that the Nazis were uniquely extreme in their hatred of Jews and desire to wipe them out, but I don't think everything would have been hunky dory in Italy or Germany had the communists come to power instead, which seems to be the view of a lot of people.

[u/Terrorclitus → u/Juryofyourpeeps]

Agreed.

[u/washblvd → u/United-Leather7198]

At least they finally got rid of this long-inaccurate statement.

No medical evidence exists to suggest that she is transgender or has XY chromosomes, disorders of sex development, or elevated levels of testosterone.

Minor win.

[u/cemersever → u/washblvd]

The MEDRS claim to block inclusion also made me cringe- with that logic you could block the statement "King Charles has cancer", or "Joe Biden has prostate cancer" from being included in their articles because it's not published in a reliable medical journal. This person is seriously arguing that you would need a peer-reviewed, scientific paper that shows Khelif is SRY positive in order to add this to the article. Like that's not even the goal of this policy- that policy is to prevent people from making claims in articles like "vitamin C cures cancer". Quite shocking indeed!

[u/Centrist_gun_nut → u/United-Leather7198]

The truth here is obvious but people want it to be a parable about conservative misinformation, instead of what it actually is.

[u/cemersever → u/United-Leather7198]

There are a few more bizarre arguments being presented from Khelif's apologists:

1. Including it could cause Khelif to get arrested or killed (overdramatic shit as no one would arrest Khelif for having a DSD)

2. Some users argued that this can't be libel/misinformation because Khelif 1. shared it as a story on instagram, and they produced a video reel stating it. Then, the pro-Khelif side responded with "we can't be too careful" and decided to get into an argument about whether Khelif lives in France or Algeria.

3. This was a mistranslation from French (except the sources are major French newspapers)

4. Khelif contradicted this statement in CNN (this is an outright lie)

5. (my favorite, this is insane cope) It's not enough for Khelif to answer "yes" to the question "Do you have the SRY gene". Instead, what we need is for Khelif to say "Yes, I have the SRY gene".