so-treu:

well, since we ARE talking about hugo and since that article/topic of Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements just came up i guess it would be a good time to make this post…..

i came across this exchange b/c i follow Ali Abdunimah on twitter (As far as i know know no one else has commented on it), who is, to quite wiki, a “Palestinian American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a not-for-profit, independent online publication about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” and i’m by no means an expert in this area so there may be some problematic things about him as well that i’m unaware of but as far as i know he’s kind of the shit.

now remember waaaaay back in 2011 when the Freedom Flotilla 2 was sailing from greece to Gaza in an attempt to break the blockade and had a few random people on board like oh Alice Walker and Jody Williams and Mairead Maguire and Shirin Ebadi, you know, women who haved one that whole fighting for the rights of marginalized women *thing* (what might you call it? femi…..feminiz…..) for significant portions of their lives? remember that? and this was after a similar attempt in 2010 resulted in the murder of nine activists by the IDF.

now there’s this asswipe guy named Joshua Travino who used to be a speechwriter for bush jr who has himself a twitter and when the flotilla was on it’s way he tweeted: “Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla – well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me.” 

when called out for endorsing the killing of americans overseas, he stuck to his guns like superglue, saying: “Sure, if they adhere to our enemies. Flotilla participants do.” he also compared the flotilla to a “nazi convoy.”

a real fucking charmer.

then, AFTER this goes down, The Guardian decides to hire Travino as a correspondent for US politics. which makes about as much sense as hugo being a feminist writer makes a lot of people go “FUCK that shit” and a campaign starts for the Guardian to fire Travino, and Abdunimah is one of the leading voices (read that link if you want the full story).

so amidst all these calls for the guardian to get a fucking grip and at least act like they had journalistic integrity just act, mr. lone voice of reason in the era of callout internet culture decides to pipe up and………you guessed it, defend Travino. the guy who is not only ok with israel’s brutal oppression of Gaza BUT IS ALSO OKAY WITH KILLING PEOPLE, SPECIFICALLY WOMEN, WHO WOULD DARE OPPOSE IT, EVEN IF IT’S THROUGH “NON-VIOLENT” MEANS (scare quotes around “non-violent” b/c i mean many of us are inherently implicated in violence around the world even if we’re not personally beating people or something in our neighborhoods but all Walker and co. had with them ont he boat was medicine and books, just some fucking medicine and books and he thinks they should be killed for that)…..THIS IS THE GUY HUGO IS STANDING BEHIND. BECAUSE ISRAEL’S SELF DEFENSE FROM SOME FUCKING BOOKS. BECAUSE ONLINE TAKEDOWN CULTURE IS JUST SOOOOO BAD BUT NOT WORSE THAN CALLING FOR WOMEN TO DIE BECAUSE THEY DON’T AGREE WITH YOU.

DO YOU SEE THE COMMON THREAD HERE.

i mean a feminist who is okay with a man calling for the death of women WHO ARE ALSSO FEMINISTS because they think oppression is unjust IS NOT A FEMINIST.

i guess unless he protected you from those scary black women that one time who were mad at you for putting racist imagery in your book. or telling the brown woman who called you out for stealing her work “you’d better prove it.”

tl:dr; hugo is only still a factor because white f*eminists are horrible people. and as long as they are the one’s who got a target on their backs they cool.

and Abdunimah works his BS detector real quick and it’r real interesting to see who hugo feels the need to vaguely label as a threat and who he just kinda slinks away from (as far as i can tell he never responded after Abdunimah brought up him being The Worst).

(via plastickitten-deactivated201304)