Cliff Notes for My Progressive Friends
Are You Really Fighting for Democracy & Justice?
This is a letter to my progressive friends. Your political parties and agendas are tanking in the theater of public opinion. And this makes no sense to you. You view with horror the substantial support Donald Trump enjoys, realizing he could well be elected President again, which shocks you.
Some of you are confused about me personally, believing that I’ve changed. You say I’ve traded in my left-wing sensibilities for right-wing ones, which is not the case. I remain deeply committed to the same values that have propelled my activism for decades.
This article seeks to provide answers and perhaps solace to you. It offers Cliff Notes on two important issues of our day—defending democracy, and so-called trans rights—and then delves into some other issues more briefly.
My goal is to illustrate a dynamic playing out on multiple policy fronts. The truth is, my progressive friends, that you believe many things that simply aren’t true. As a result, you are taking positions that aren’t progressive at all. You’re backing agendas that deliver outcomes that are the opposite of what you think they are. Meanwhile, a lot of the people you denounce and would never talk to—self-proclaimed conservatives, MAGA fans, and Trump supporters—are advocating policies that are progressive…ones that are consistent with the policies you once supported.
With this article, I ask you to consider the possibility that it is your own perceptions and positions that are upside down—not those of individuals who are rejecting your parties and agendas. Maybe people you label as misinformed, bigoted, and foolish are none of those things. Maybe they’re not your enemies but instead potential allies in the struggle to create the world we all want.
I. ARE PROGRESSIVES DEFENDING DEMOCRACY OR DESTROYING IT?
Progressives are urging people to vote for Kamala Harris, insisting that if Donald Trump is re-elected, it will destroy democracy. But the Democrats are destroying democracy themselves. By failing to acknowledge this, and continuing to support Democrats, progressives are complicit in the very harm you profess to oppose.
THE ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH
Many consider freedom of speech the most important civil right underpinning democracy. Cheered on by progressives, Democrats have been eviscerating that right.
RUSSIAGATE We need to start with Russiagate. It revolved around claims advanced by the Democratic Party and U.S. intelligence agency officials in 2016 and thereafter that Trump was controlled by Russia and colluded with that nation to win the election.
Hillary Clinton ran campaign ads and former CIA officials published Op-Eds in major papers casting Trump as a Russian stooge.
Clinton hired an opposition research group which directed British former spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump’s supposed fealty to Russia. The resulting Steele dossier was widely publicized.
When Democratic Party emails were leaked to the public, the Clinton campaign declared that Russians had hacked them with Trump’s assistance. Intelligence officials issued statements asserting that Russian hacking was the likely source of the emails.
The Obama Administration released an intelligence community assessment (ICA) entitled “Russian Activities in Recent Elections.” It was widely covered by the news media as a nonpolitical consensus of multiple intelligence agencies that Russia preferred Trump and colluded with him.
Russia was accused of all manner of harmful acts. It had supposedly hacked into Vermont’s electricity grid to hurt people by cutting off their electricity, for example.
Corporate news outlets featured story after story advancing the collusion narrative without challenging it. Social media and popular culture were full of comments like this one from Nancy Pelosi on Twitter: “What do the Russians have on Trump personally, financially and politically that he’s so afraid to stand up to Putin?”
And much more.
When Trump won, Clinton and the Democrats treated his election as illegitimate, citing the Russiagate narrative. In May of 2017, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to lead an investigation “into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.” For 18 months, progressives waited with bated breath, sure that indictments of Trump and his staff were imminent.
But Russiagate was a hoax.
Despite Mueller’s subpoena powers, large budget, and “dream team” of aggressive prosecutors, his final report issued in 2019 concluded that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” An Inspector General Report released later in 2019 reached the same conclusion. And in May of 2023, Special Counsel John Durham issued a report severely critical of the fact that an investigation had been launched at all, as there was no credible basis for doing so.
The documents and claims underpinning assertions of Trump’s alleged collusion and servitude were all exposed as shams:
The Steele dossier was acknowledged to be an unreliable document funded by the Clinton campaign and produced by a Russia-hating former spy who relied on dubious individuals who fabricated false stories.
It was revealed that intelligence agencies had issued their statements alleging Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails without any direct examination of the servers, relying instead on the cyber-firm CrowdStrike which worked for the Clinton campaign. CrowdStrike admitted under oath that it “did not have concrete evidence” of Russian hacking.
Stories about Russia’s alleged misdeeds like shutting down Vermont’s electricity, turned out to be false and were quietly retired from the news cycle.
Obama’s ICA report was revealed to be the handiwork of just five CIA officers handpicked by CIA Director Brennan, rather than the consensus of multiple intelligence agencies. The authors deliberately omitted evidence that contradicted the collusion narrative.
Did Russia, without Trump’s collusion, attempt to influence our election, such as through social media postings critical of U.S. policies? Most likely. But those efforts were miniscule and ineffective, especially in comparison to what countries like Israel do in the U.S., and what the U.S. itself does in other countries. In January of 2023, the Washington Post quietly reported that Russian trolls on Twitter had little influence on the 2016 election.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RUSSIAGATE. Here’s why I’m talking about Russiagate. It was a segue way to a new era of censorship and actual election interference that every American should vigorously oppose. Working with U.S. intelligence agencies and their former employees—the very same agencies and individuals progressives once denounced—Democrats have set in place powerful new systems of repression.
The face of this new censorship regime should have been readily apparent to progressives by at least 2020. In October of that year, the New York Post published a story featuring materials from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a repair shop. Democrats immediately denounced the story, and 51 former intelligence officials issued a letter saying it had “all the trade hallmarks of Russian disinformation.” Mainstream news media outlets dutifully attacked the Post and refused to cover the story themselves. Twitter and Facebook stopped everyone from sharing the article, even blocking the account of the Trump White House press secretary. The New York Post account was blocked. Twitter reversed its ban after a while, but the damage was already done. The story had been suppressed during a pivotal electoral time frame and Americans had been persuaded it was disinformation.
But data from the laptop wasn’t disinformation. It had been easily verified as genuine early on. Nor was it hacked—an absurd excuse social media corporations used in censoring it.
Moreover, the laptop data was of great relevance to voters in an imminent election. Hunter Biden had served on the Board of the Ukraine corporation Burisma—a high-paying position for which he was not qualified. Among other things, the laptop contained information bearing on whether he had secured assistance for Burisma from his powerful father, Joe, who was Vice President of the United States at the time.
In other words, Democrats, in concert with intelligence agency officials, used a declaration of “disinformation” to censor a major news story. Corporate news outlets and social media giants did their bidding. This was an unprecedented blatant example of major election interference perpetrated by Big Tech companies via censorship, as urged on by Democrats and intelligence agencies.
This attack on democracy should have been denounced by progressives. But it wasn’t.
To be honest, my progressive friends, most of you seem to be completely unaware of what’s been going on. You don’t realize that Russiagate was a hoax. Many of you are still telling jokes with punchlines that rely on everyone believing that Donald Trump is a Russian stooge who colluded with Russia to get elected. You think the Hunter Biden laptop was “fake news” and/or no big deal. You admonish everyone to stand up for democracy by supporting Democrats, an admonition that makes no sense.
It’s critical that you open your eyes to the deepening suppression all around us and the leadership role your preferred party plays in that suppression.
TOOLS AND STRUCTURES OF OPPRESSION. Over the last decade, intelligence agencies and their private partners have turned their capacities fully inward, towards Americans. Those capacities are used to locate and censor information that contradicts their preferred narratives.
Democrats have been the primary cheerleaders for this process. Security state officials share the Democrats’ agenda and have served it even when Donald Trump has been in office. For details, read, the excellent article A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century by Jacob Siegel. He explains in depth how “[w]eapons created to fight ISIS and al-Qaeda were turned against Americans who entertained incorrect thoughts about the president or vaccine boosters or gender pronouns or the war in Ukraine.” (For more on Russiagate, including information cited throughout this section of my article, also see this, this, this, this, this, and this.)
Russiagate was both an illustration of the Censorship Industrial Complex at work, and a tool for tightening its stranglehold. Here are some of the things that have happened:
Laws and other policies have been put in place furthering the censorship agenda. In December of 2016, for example, President Barack Obama signed the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, ostensibly to protect Americans from Russian disinformation.
Infrastructure within multiple government agencies has been created to expand and coordinate the U.S. government’s censorship activities. The FBI opened a Foreign Influence Task Force in 2017, to monitor social media and flag accounts trying to “discredit U.S. individuals and institutions.” In 2018, Congress gave the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security additional powers to focus on domestic communications and to be “responsive to current events.”
Nongovernmental organizations (private and academic) have been created to house self-declared disinformation “experts” who act in concert with Democratic Party leaders and the Security State. These organizations have Orwellian names like the “Election Integrity Project” and the “Alliance for Securing Democracy.” They are very well funded by direct government grants, the National Endowment for Democracy and other government intermediaries, and billionaires like George Soros. NGOs create the illusion of independent non-partisan “expertise” underpinning disinformation designations.
Social media platforms—the new public square—have been brought into the Censorship Industrial Complex as key purveyors of censorship. There are regular meetings between government officials, their NGO partners, and social media corporation staff. A revolving door between intelligence agencies and tech companies is in constant use.
The Twitter Files—a trove of internal Twitter emails handed to select journalists for public release by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk—and other documents obtained by journalists, have exposed just how substantial the connections are between social media platforms, intelligence agencies, and NGOs. Government officials and their NGO partners regularly flag social media communications as objectionable, requesting censorship by social media platforms.
While it is impossible to know the breadth of censorship underway, even partial data collected by organizations like Foundation for Freedom Online is staggering. Governmental and non-governmental employees are monitoring all major tech platforms constantly, as are the tech companies themselves. Billions of dollars have been expended in these efforts. In any given election cycle, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of posts, videos, tweets, and Tiktoks are blocked.
KEY SUPPRESSION CONCEPTS. Three important concepts are now widely used to censor speech: accusing people of being Russian agents, disinformation, and hate speech.
ACCUSING PEOPLE OF BEING RUSSIAN AGENTS. Russiagate reintroduced vitriolic anti-Russia rhetoric like that used by Senator Joe McCarthy during the 1940s and 50s Red Scare. It promoted the following irrational “analysis”: Person A believes x. The Russian government also believes x. Therefore, Person A is a witting or unwitting agent of Russia.
This was the irrational basis for campaign ads run by Hillary Clinton and op-eds written by former intelligence agents in 2016. It is the basis of lists of supposed Russian agents generated by outfits like Hamilton 68 and PropOrNot, that lead to censorship and other attacks on those who are listed.
Another variation of the Russian-agent censorship scam seeks and exploits more tangible connections between individuals and Russia. It uses these to claim Russian control over what those individuals say. In the past, for example, extraordinary journalists like Chris Hedges have set up their own programs on RT, a Russian platform, because they have been unable to secure platforms in American mainstream news outlets due to their dissident viewpoints. These journalists have been declared Russian agents as a result.
Although RT is now a much smaller platform than it was in the past, the Biden Administration has just announced plans to work with other countries to cancel it around the world. Why is the U.S. engaged in such an activity? Why should U.S. citizens and other people on the planet be denied the opportunity to read what Russians and others on the RT platform have to say?
The Biden Administration has been making ample use of the Russian-agent censorship concept. It prosecuted a black socialist organization known as the Uhuru Movement, for example, absurdly claiming that this small organization is an agent of Russia. The defendants are highly principled individuals who have consistently advocated the same antiwar, anti-imperialist positions for decades. A jury in Tampa, Florida, acquitted them on the most serious charges but found them guilty of lesser charges. They will appeal.
DISINFORMATION. A second concept used regularly to censor speech is that of “disinformation.” It is being used across a wide range of issues.
Examples of accurate information being suppressed via the concept of “disinformation” abound in the realm of Covid, for example, as reports on the Twitter Files and other journalism have documented. The White House sent tech companies lists of people it wanted banned on this topic. Journalist Alex Berenson was kicked off Twitter after accurately tweeting that mRNA vaccines don’t “stop infection or transmission.”
Information related to actual adverse vaccine side effects people experienced were flagged as needing to be censored, as were criticisms of vaccine passports (a political opinion), and discussions of breakthrough infections (true, fact-based information.)
The First Amendment has been interpreted by the courts to allow restriction of speech based on inaccuracy but only in extremely limited circumstances. Deliberately publishing the wrong address for a polling place, for example, may be exempted from free speech protections. Most of the things now labeled as “disinformation” do not fall within these narrow exceptions from First Amendment protection, however.
The problem with the concept of disinformation is that those in power decide what is true and what is false. They censor things that are true (information from Hunter Biden’s laptop) while widely distributing things that are not true (the Steele dossier.)
Indeed, the Censorship Industrial Complex now openly admits that it isn’t just supposedly false information that it seeks to suppress. It goes after what it calls “malinformation” — true statements that might lead people to form opinions censors dislike. Accurate postings about harms people experienced due to COVID vaccinations were censored because they could cause people to have doubts about the vaccine, for example.
We do not have a democracy if our government can block statements because those statements might fuel dissent from its policies. The Democrats have made it very clear that they intend to censor speech further and further. Party leaders like John Kerry have openly described the First Amendment as “a major block to the ability” of the government to “hammer out of existence” information it considers inappropriate. He speaks of the First Amendment as a problem to get around.
SPEECH THAT IS HATEFUL, HARMFUL, OR DANGEROUS. Labeling speech as “hateful” is another censorship go-to. Variations on this theme include saying that someone’s words are “harmful”, “dangerous”, “hurtful” or may incite violence.
Just as is the case with “disinformation”, these terms are all prone to manipulation. Those in power determine what they mean, and censor accordingly.
The Twitter Files exposed the details of Donald Trump’s Twitter suspension on January 8, 2021, two days after the January 6th protests. Trump had posted a tweet that praised his voters, calling them "American patriots" who will "not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!" At first, this tweet was cleared by multiple Twitter employees. But then someone objected, calling Trump’s words “dog whistles” for future violence. Twitter’s “scaled enforcement team” agreed, and said the tweets violated the “glorification of violence” policy, and that when Trump referred to “American Patriots” that was code for the Capital protesters. One team member described Trump as a “leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to the Christchurch shooter or Hitler.” Shortly thereafter, Trump’s account was suspended “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” having rendered his tweet a final strike against him.
In other words, even if words don’t advocate violence and therefore don’t violate social media policies, censors can interpret them differently. Declaring words to be “dog whistles” or “code” is a way to shut down speech that otherwise wouldn’t be deemed problematic. Regardless of how one feels about Donald Trump, this should raise red flags for anyone who believes in democracy.
Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz and other prominent Democrats have openly declared that hate speech is exempt from the First Amendment. It isn’t! And a policy of banning speech because someone considers it hateful is extremely dangerous.
NEW FRONTIERS IN CENSORSHIP. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the ongoing use of algorithms and other automated processes, censorship is about to get even worse. The Censorship Industrial Complex is now also implementing “prebunking” initiatives, to make sure people reject dissenting narratives before they even hear them. The Democratic Party is promoting all of this.
PROGRESSIVES AND FREE SPEECH
If you personally never veer from the narratives embraced by those in power, you may not realize censorship is happening. But it is. Those of us dissenting on any number of issues are experiencing it big-time.
The silencing of our voices is an affront to everyone’s freedoms. And while you may be uncensored today, that can easily change tomorrow. New administrations will use the precedents and structures currently targeting narratives you dislike to go after you and the things you want to say.
When censorship reigns, only speech that doesn’t challenge the narratives of those in power is allowed. Every American should be horrified by what is going on and speaking out against it.
Instead, progressives are facilitating and even applauding attacks on free speech.
OTHER ATTACKS ON DEMOCRACY
It isn’t just freedom of speech that is under attack. Core civil liberties beyond free speech are being destroyed as well. Democrats are leading the charge, as progressives cheer them on.
Keeping political opponents off the ballot.
In December of 2023, I attended a party on the same day that the Colorado Supreme Court issued an opinion keeping Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot. State officials had justified their exclusion of Trump on the basis of him supposedly being an insurrectionist.
Progressives at the party were very happy about the court decision, but they shouldn’t have been. Trump had not been charged with, let alone convicted of insurrection. And the 5th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits denying people of their property and rights in the absence of “due process.” Everyone should have been appalled by the court’s decision, regardless of their feelings about Trump.
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court undid the Colorado ruling, in a unanimous decision. But what happened in Colorado was a shameful display of the anti-democratic tactics Democrats employ in their single-minded mission to prevent re-election of Donald Trump. To make matters worse, they had been using the same tactics to try to keep Trump off the ballot in many other states as well.
This attack on Trump’s due process rights created the impression that political parties can and should do everything in their power to sideline popular political opponents. It was part of a broad swath of “lawfare” attacks seeking to deny Americans who support Trump—and there are a lot of them—the ability to vote for him. Classifying misdemeanors as felonies through twisted interpretations of statutes; trying to put opposing candidates in jail; trying to erase candidates’ names from the ballot—these are the sorts of things that happen in countries Americans criticize as undemocratic.
Throwing the book at peaceful protesters.
Federal prosecutors specifically failed to indict Donald Trump for inciting insurrection because they knew they did not have a case. Among other things, Trump had explicitly urged protesters to be peaceful. Words he used (e.g. “fight like hell”) are comparable to those used by countless Democratic leaders over the centuries. Interpreting his statements as falling within an “incitement of violence” exception to the First Amendment would have had major adverse implications for the free speech rights of all Americans.
Countless legal scholars, such as Glenn Greenwald, disagree with January 6th being called an “insurrection.” There is also considerable evidence that government-employed provocateurs were present, who pushed for storming the Capital, over others’ objections. In any case, the Biden-Harris Administration’s decision to charge peaceful protesters with felonies, hitting them with lengthy prison sentences is something all progressives should have protested vociferously. Prison time for peaceful protest is not something progressives should support, let alone the lengthy sentences handed down with respect to January 6th.
Like most of the protestors, the “Shaman”, for example, didn’t engage in any property damage or violence. Watch video clips like these of him and other protesters wandering through the Capital respectfully with guards escorting them—clips that were kept hidden from the public for a long time. Also watch this interview with him on the Jimmy Dore show. Sentencing this man to 41 months was an outrage. Progressives would do well to remember that what is done to political opponents sets precedent for what can be done to you and those who share your views.
Note: At the end of June, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a January 6th defendant. They ruled that the law he was charged with violating, which bars obstruction of an official proceeding, applies only to evidence tampering, such as destruction of records or documents, in official proceedings. This is good news for some other defendants but comes too late for those who’ve already served their time.
Let me share with you portions of a message sent to a network of activists in 2020 not long before Election Day, wherein we were urged to make a “pledge of resistance.”
“…we have to galvanize and mobilize a force powerful enough to ensure a democratic outcome. Not only must we ensure that the Trump regime’s efforts to remain in power and advance its fascist agenda is stopped dead in its tracks…….We therefore call on all who are able to join us in taking a Pledge of Resistance and to Act Decisively. We Pledge to Act:….To occupy civic squares on Wednesday, November 4th to send a clear message to President Trump to relinquish power. To Occupy the State Capitols on Saturday, November 7th to exert critical pressure on Trump to leave and if the Democrats win to force the system to concede to our demands.”
When I objected within the network to the implication of some of the wording that resistance was to occur regardless of whether Trump actually got requisite votes to be President or not, I was ignored. The wording was not changed.
Be honest, my progressive friends: If Trump had been re-elected in 2020, and left-wing individuals had taken over capitals, would you have stood by happily as they were prosecuted and sent to jail for years? I don’t think so. Again, please, understand, that what we do to our political opponents, we do to ourselves.
So many other attacks on democracy.
There is so much more I could say about Democratic Party assaults on democracy—assaults progressives are ignoring. As just a few more examples:
The Party has worked in lock-step with intelligence agencies, turning the surveillance tools of those agencies upon Americans, destroying our right to privacy,
It persecuted Julian Assange, prolonging the atrocity of his lengthy imprisonment in the U.K.. Undoubtedly to avoid large protests here were he to be finally extradited to the U.S., the Biden/Harris Administration finally allowed his release. To be freed, Assange was forced to plead guilty to crimes he didn’t commit. What happened to him was consistent with broader mistreatment of journalists by Democratic Administrations.
It has used massive funds and lawfare to prevent third party candidates from appearing on the ballot and on the debate stage. See this discussion with Jill Stein of the Green Party, and Robert Kennedy Junior’s statement for more details.
Within its own party, Democrats have made a mockery of democracy, anointing Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris in the absence of processes that were truly democratic. Clinton and Democratic Party leadership were upset about the leaked emails in 2016 because they exposed the unfair shenanigans used to ensure the nomination of Clinton over Bernie Sanders.
PROGRESSIVES AND DEMOCRACY
In conclusion, the Democratic Party is engaged in a full throttle attack on the most vital pillars of democracy—our fundamental rights. Thus, my progressive friends, when you admonish people to vote for Kamala Harris to save democracy, you sound foolish and hypocritical. You lose all credibility with Americans who believe in free speech, privacy, due process and other core democratic values, and have been paying more attention than you to what’s going on.
And what of the people you denigrate and refuse to talk to—people labeled as “conservative”, “right-wing”, MAGA fans, or Trump voters? They’re standing up for free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and due process. In other words, they hold positions which were at one time a mainstay of progressivism and the left.
Can we count on Republican leaders to stand up for democracy? No. But it’s absurd to present putting Democrats in office as a way to protect democracy. In fact, empowering Democrats guarantees the further demise of democracy.
II. THE TRANSGENDER ISSUE. ARE PROGRESSIVES REALLY FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE?
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
A wide swath of Americans, myself included, are deeply concerned about what is happening in our world under the guise of “transgender rights”, aka “gender identity ideology.” Our concerns are dismissed by some as part of the “culture wars”— and therefore somehow an unimportant sideshow that serious people ignore.
But the impacts of gender ideology are too horrific and too massive to ignore. And vast numbers of people are justifiably failing to ignore them. Progressives would do well to come up to speed on what you’re being a “trans ally” really means for the world. It’s the opposite of what you think.
Gender ideology basics.
Gender ideology revolves around the notion that being a woman or a man has nothing to do with sexual anatomy. Any man who identifies as a woman is a woman. Any woman who identifies as a man, is a man. People can also declare themselves to be non-binary, i.e. sexless, both sexes, or some mythical third sex.
If this were a matter of people merely wanting to be free to believe about themselves whatever they want, that would be one thing. “Live and let live” is a mantra embraced by most people fighting gender ideology. Gender identity proponents are insisting, however, that everyone must comply with their faith. With Big Money backers and the help of Democrats, they’ve already imposed their ideology far and wide. “Trans women” (men who say they’re women) must now be treated as women. “Trans men” (women who say they’re men) must be treated as men. Biology-based definitions of the sexes have been demonized and prohibited. Sex self-identification has usurped sex-based rights.
It really is everywhere.
President Joe Biden issued a series of Executive Orders that declared “gender identity” supreme, starting on his very first day in office. He’s been aggressively changing the rules for major statutes. Laws like Title IX that were explicitly passed to ensure fairness and equality for girls and women, have been transformed into tools used to deny them those things. (Girls must compete against trans-identifying boys in high school sports, for example, forfeiting their titles to those boys.) Democrats have mandated gender ideology in local and state laws as well, and in school curricula and policies across the United States.
Major institutions have been infiltrated and gutted from the inside—women’s groups, LGB organizations, the ACLU and more. New trans “rights” organizations have been formed, armed with massive budgets and ready-made messaging developed by the world’s best public relations minds. Social media platforms have become a major conduit for gender identity propaganda reaching children.
The impressive-sounding “World Professional Association for Transgender Health” (WPATH)—was established to issue Standards of Care for sex change treatments including in children. These Standards are based on ideology, not medical evidence. They are contradicted by numerous systematic evidentiary reviews, which have led other countries to reverse course, turning away from the practice of subjecting children to sex change procedures.
The harm is immense.
Please see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Transgender Galaxy and other materials on my substack for more details. Below are glimpses of the damage that flows from the widespread requirement that sex must be seen as a matter of self-declaration rather than biological reality.
MASSIVE MISEDUCATION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HARM TO CHILDREN. In vast numbers of schools across the U.S., children are now taught that it’s up to them to decide their sex. They are encouraged to go on gender journeys to figure out if they’re boys, girls or “something else.” Dissociation from one’s body is presented as a great thing, with children learning that their bodies may conflict with their authentic “gender identity” selves. Children are given blatantly false information about biology, and they are denied accurate explanations about sexual anatomy and which sex does what in reproduction. They are required to agree that people they know to be one sex are the other. Teachers are required to keep parents in the dark about their children’s at-school transitions. This is all happening in the context of massive gender ideology promotion on-line, in public libraries, and elsewhere.
All of this is unfair to children, and psychologically harmful to them. See The Anti-Science Disaster of Gender Ideology in Our Schools and click on Appendix A linked in the article Seattle Activists Submit Formal Demand to School Board.
MEDICAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN’S BODIES. Widespread promotion of gender ideology has resulted in children seeking and obtaining sex change medical treatments, euphemistically referred to as “gender affirmation care.” Puberty blockers halting the development of children’s bodies, brains and bones. Girls on testosterone. Boys on estrogen. Double mastectomies. And yes, genital surgeries. These are all happening to very large numbers of children, and each year the numbers are exponentially higher than the year before. Skyrocketing trans identification parallels skyrocketing mental health problems and widespread sexual abuse among children. Overwhelmingly trans-identifying children also have problems like eating disorders, other mental health diagnoses, histories of trauma, and autism.
This is one of the most horrifying medical scandals of all time. The harm done to children is unspeakable. We are destroying their bodies, fertility, sexual function, and long-term health.
We are doing this based on mystical explanations (“They were born in the wrong body”), sexist stereotypes (“This child loves pink and dresses and is therefore meant to be a girl”), and very warped understandings of children’s needs and capabilities (“Children know what’s best for them including medically, and adults need to follow their lead.”) Clinicians are administering drugs and slicing into children’s bodies without the sorts of objective measures or even diagnoses that precede treatments in virtually every other area of medical care. They are promising children something that can never be: having the body of the other sex.
And all of this is happening despite multiple systematic reviews finding the evidence of supposed mental health benefits from pediatric sex change to be pathetically inadequate. It continues as WPATH (the ideology-driven entity that sets standards for sex change medicine) has been thoroughly discredited via leaked internal communications and other documents.
See Affirming Trans Identities is Harmful, Part III of the Hitchhiker’s Guide.
EVISCERATION OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS. Large numbers of male prisoners are being housed in female prisons, which is causing huge suffering for incarcerated women, most of whom are survivors of male violence. Sexual assaults have occurred, and women have been impregnated. Nonetheless, progressives who kicked us out of a Unitarian family camp community this summer steadfastly refused to acknowledge or discuss what’s happening in women’s prisons. Other progressives we know all have the same stance: no acknowledgment, no discussion.
Progressives don’t want to talk about the impacts of gender ideology on women at all. Not in intimate spaces like prisons, rape shelters, nursing wards, and locker rooms. Not in sports. Not in other realms. But the impacts are huge and growing. (See this, this and the section on women’s rights in this.) Redefining women to include men is not a tiny adjustment that somehow furthers women’s rights and interests. The ability to set boundaries and have some things of our own, i.e. “exclusion”, is a good thing. It’s something women fought for.
EVISCERATION OF THE GAINS MADE BY LESBIANS AND GAY MEN. Gender ideologues portray their ideology as an extension of gay rights. But it is the opposite. Agreeing that a man is a woman if he says so, is very different than supporting the freedom to love whom you will. And the so-called “trans rights” agenda is directly undercutting gains made through long years of struggle by LGB individuals. See this, this, and this and books like this one. Read the words of Fred Sargeant, a veteran of the Stonewall Riots, decrying the rewriting of history to advance transgender narratives at the expense of gay activists.
GENDER IDEOLOGY, RACISM, AND DEHUMANIZATION. See the section in my Hitchhiker’s Guide entitled “Appropriating Black, Brown and Indigenous Struggles.” It discusses the co-optation of struggles for racial and indigenous justice by those pushing gender identity—an ideology which ironically disproportionately harms women of color.
Also listen to this interview with Dr. Suzanne Vierling. She connects the dots between the dehumanizing language of gender ideology, and the dehumanizing language used as part of enslaving black women historically. Dr. Vierling makes the connections between slavery’s exploitation of women’s bodies, and modern concepts embraced by self-proclaimed progressives such as “trans rights”, “sex work,” and “surrogacy.”
PROGRESSIVES, TRANSGENDER ISSUES, AND JUSTICE
Self-proclaimed progressives are avidly promoting gender ideology. You are proclaiming yourselves to be “trans allies”, believing this makes you champions of justice.
But you’ve been duped. The powerful forces that push gender ideology have wrapped it up in all sorts of appealing images and words. They’ve presented it as helping children thrive and live authentically. They’ve claimed that it is an extension of women’s rights, the next phase of gay liberation, and part of the fight against racism. But gender ideology is the opposite of what you’ve been persuaded to think it is.
By promoting gender ideology, you are complicit in tremendous harm to children, women’s rights, gay rights, and the struggle against racism.
You are also undermining democracy, exacerbating the harms laid out in the first part of this article.
Because of my gender critical views, I personally have been kicked off Twitter, attacked by mobs that made it impossible to speak in public parks or even assemble there, banished by social networks, and more. I know people who have been fired from jobs, violently assaulted, cut off by their children despite being loving parents, and more. What I’ve experienced and witnessed is the tip of the iceberg. The suppression fostered by gender ideologues is incredibly severe and widespread. See Part IV of my Hitchhiker’s Guide on this topic and various articles on my substack such as this and this. See this article about how the publication Unherd experienced major loss of advertising revenue after being put on a blacklist by an NGO funded by the Censorship Industrial Complex. Unherd was blacklisted for publishing articles by gender critics.
Suppressive concepts like “hate speech” and speech that “hurts” or “endangers” people have been greatly advanced by gender ideology. Progressives made use of these concepts when they ejected my partner Bruce and me from our family camp community this year. They saw nothing wrong with removing us and our voices based on bizarre claims that by failing to believe in sex self-ID we “harm” other people, and we make them “unsafe.” These former friends are undoubtedly happy to see these same concepts employed by governments and social media platforms to silence gender critics. They are likely joining with other “trans allies” to demand more censorship by governments, news outlets, and social media platforms.
The reality of what’s being done to silence gender critics is pointed to as justification for censorship on other issues. Some argue for censorship of students protesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, by pointing to campus suppression of gender critics, and demanding consistent action against pro-Palestinian protesters, for example.
By promoting gender ideology, you are forfeiting your credibility. Gender ideology is regressive anti-science incoherent nonsense that is doing great harm. The majority of Americans do not agree with its tenets. When you promote it, people lose faith in your judgment.
Kamala Harris says she wants to “build a world that works for women”, and you frame your support of Democrats as advancing women’s rights. But the Biden-Harris Administration has been awful for women, from its Day 1 gender identity-pushing Executive Orders onward. Democrats have aggressively forced gender identity “education” into the schools, moved men into women’s prisons, helped them enter other women-only spaces, facilitated male theft of women’s sports records and trophies, and much more. Republicans have fought for women on all those fronts. When you cast yourselves as champions of women’s rights and conservatives as undercutting women, you would do well to remember all this.
Your credibility is destroyed not only with respect to women’s rights. It is destroyed regarding all of the things you work on.
When you parrot WPATH’s talking points, pretending that ideology-driven quackery is evidence-based medicine, people don’t trust you on other matters, especially those related to health and science.
When climate groups post things like “Trans women are women. No debate” (by which they mean “men who claim to be women, are women, and no one is allowed to question that”), anyone who is familiar with biology comes to doubt the scientific credibility of those groups. I personally witnessed the massive negative on-line reaction when Extinction Rebellion (XR) posted such a message a few years back. Countless people expressed anger and consternation in replies, noting that XR could not be trusted, many saying they were withdrawing their support from XR. The organization removed the thread, reposted, and censored replies, but for a short time reality was visible. Embracing anti-science regressive positions hurts progressives tremendously.
When you promote gender ideology, you move us towards Orwellian totalitarianism. Under gender ideology, everyone is being told to disregard the evidence of our own eyes, bow our heads, and repeat mantras we don’t believe. The naked man next to us in the shower in the women’s locker room at the Y is a woman, we are told, penis and all, and we’d better agree, or else. Men are Women. Women are Men. War is Peace.
Finally, by promoting gender ideology, you undercut solidarity-building mindsets we desperately need. Occupy Wall Street encouraged people to think in terms of solidarity with the 99%. Gender ideology has played a huge role in replacing that mindset with one of labeling and canceling others. Young people are taught that social justice activism is about figuring out your pronouns and forcing them on other people. It’s about joining a mob to punish someone who doesn’t kowtow to gender ideology.
Gender ideology is not a luxury issue, a niche issue, or a sideshow that people you need in your movements, will ignore. It is too much in their faces for them to ignore. Their child has been maimed and/or torn from their lives. Their continued employment is conditioned upon them bowing their heads and lying about material reality. There are members of the opposite sex in their locker rooms and showers. Their sister, daughter or friend has been deprived by a male of a sports title she trained hard to win. There are four children in their child’s elementary school class who are insisting that everyone must use their shifting pronouns or face ostracization. Their child has come home declaring that men can have babies, and it’s up to children to decide if they’re girls or boys.
People are disgusted by what’s happening in their lives in the name of gender ideology and they’re not going to put up with it.
And what of the people censored by the government and social media platforms, and canceled by you and your friends? Vast numbers of us are not “right-wing”, “conservative”, “MAGA fans”, and “Trump voters” despite your labeling all who resist gender ideology as such. We’re left-wing individuals and have been all our lives. More importantly, those who do apply conservative labels to themselves are fighting for social justice by opposing gender ideology. They’re standing up for women’s rights, gay rights, children’s health, and more.
As a participant in the resistance to gender ideology it has been eye-opening for me to meet and talk with people who consider themselves conservative or right-wing. I’ve discovered that common claims about their beliefs are not accurate. While we disagree on some things, their views are consistent with progressive/left-wing values on a wide range of issues.
III. OTHER ISSUES
Transgender issues and the defense of democracy are just two areas in which progressives’ beliefs don’t match up with the policies you are condoning and promoting. I urge you, my progressive friends, to take a hard look at all sorts of other important issues as well.
ASK YOURSELVES ABOUT WAR AND PEACE. Why are Dick Cheney and other neocons who long supported the Republican Party now avid Democrats, and why are they now revered by progressives? During the Bush-Cheney years, progressives I knew absolutely reviled Cheney; now they act like it’s a wonderful thing that Kamala Harris so embodies his views that he has endorsed her. Neocons have moved to the Democrats because that party is now a more reliable proponent of endless and escalating war than the Republicans. Recent polling data regarding how people feel about agencies like the CIA and Homeland Security provide another example of bizarre reversals of allegiance that have taken place, with left-identifying people now praising spy agencies, and right-identifying people distrusting them enormously.
We are facing serious threats of nuclear war on two different fronts where Democrats have relentlessly escalated military tensions: Ukraine, where the U.S. is now encouraging direct attacks in Russia, and in the Middle East where the Biden-Harris Administration has supported genocide via ongoing deliveries of arms and money to Israel, no matter what. Before the last election, progressives insisted that we needed to elect Biden to prevent nuclear war. Now here we are in 2024, terrifyingly close to the potential annihilation of humankind under his Administration. It’s more than time to reevaluate faith in the Democrats as the party of peace and survival.
ASK YOURSELVES ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. Do Democrats really deliver the climate actions you have declared essential? In my article Climate and the Infernal Blue Wave: Straight Talk About Saving Humanity, I spelled out how the Obama Administration said one thing about climate action but did another. Obama oversaw a staggering increase in fossil fuel production and infrastructure, while waxing eloquent about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden-Harris Administration has continued that approach. Kamala Harris bragged in the September 10th Presidential debate about increasing fossil fuel production: “We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history.” She also promised to not ban fracking. If progressives believe that global warming is a human-induced existential threat caused by ongoing burning of fossil fuels, how can you reconcile Democratic Party actions while in office with your support for that Party?
Yes, the Democrats do things like create incentives for renewables. But you’ve long said that fossil fuel production is the crux of the matter. It always increases tremendously under Democrats.
I touched earlier on the matter of climate action groups losing credibility by aligning themselves with gender ideology. Those impacts go well beyond damage to a particular group and its campaigns. I know numerous individuals—including people who once considered themselves left-wing climate activists—who now question whether human-induced climate change is even real. They are skeptical about anything the nonprofit industrial complex and the “left” says. If human activities are indeed warming our planet, increased skepticism about the existence of that problem is a serious set-back.
LOOK AT THE ISSUE OF TOXIC POLLUTION. As readers may know, I’ve worked to protect our environment for decades, focusing on toxic pollution. My advocacy has emphasized the impact of toxic chemicals on children and has warned about the propensity of many common pollutants to mimic or block hormones.
There is an interesting dynamic at play on the matter of toxic pollution. In the old days, progressives praised my work and were concerned about the toxic threats I battled. Now they are silent about those threats, and they are showing up to protest me and other gender critics, carrying with them signs that declare hormone therapy for children to be a human right. This is truly extraordinary. Progressives are demanding direct exposures to hormone disruptors for children—in concentrations far greater that those experienced as the result of environmental exposures.
Meanwhile in networks of self-proclaimed conservatives, I hear repeatedly that toxic pollution is a major problem that must be addressed. Lots of conservatives are angry at Democrats for the widespread contamination of our waterways, air, food supply, and bodies.
When he spoke at a Trump rally recently, Robert F. Kennedy, Junior noted that regulatory agencies like the USDA and FDA “are actually run by the big food processing, the big ag and the chemical companies that they’re supposed to regulate.” “Don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption?” he asked. “Don’t you want a safe environment for your children? Don’t you want to know that the food that you’re feeding them is not filled with chemicals that are going to give them cancer and chronic disease?” All these statements were met with thunderous applause and cheers from the huge crowd of Trump supporters. Kennedy warns that many common pollutants disrupt the hormone system, saying things that are uncannily similar to what I have said in my own work.
If elected, will Trump follow through on promises to work with Kennedy to tackle toxic pollution and chronic disease, including by dealing with regulatory capture by big corporations? Having fought various Republican administrations’ toxic chemical policies in the past, I won’t hold my breath. But none of the sentiments expressed on this topic at Trump rallies and in other conservative venues are being expressed by progressives at all these days. And the progressive-endorsed Democratic administrations I’ve dealt with over the years have been terrible on toxic pollution issues. They just hid their destructive agendas behind a veneer of caring about the environment. They also never took action to end the control over our lives exerted by corporations and oligarchs.
Here is what is most important to notice: There appears to be widespread concern among self-proclaimed conservatives about toxic pollution, and a widespread recognition that Big Chemical and Big Ag are calling the shots on environmental policies. This is a very big deal.
IT’S TIME FOR SYSTEM CHANGE. Do I believe that Trump and Republicans will deliver peace, justice, environmental protection, and all the things humanity needs? Of course not. Neither party is acceptable. The only real way forward entails humankind uniting to dethrone the corporations and oligarchs, replacing our current oligarchy with economic and political democracy. The problems we face can only be addressed through system change.
In my view, core features of capitalism deliver power over how and whether people’s basic needs are met to a very few individuals. They ensure the accumulation of massive wealth in the hands of the few. This is a recipe for tyranny and disaster. My book What It Will Take. Rejecting Dead-Ends and False Friends in the Fight for the Earth examines the myriad ways in which Big Money blocks the policies most people want. It documents the fact that Big Money’s control over elections and legislation is only the tip of the iceberg.
The time has never been riper for system change organizing. People of all political stripes, an overwhelming majority of Americans, recognize that oligarchs and a few large corporations are in charge, and they don’t like it.
We need to foster discussions about how to establish democracy and take control of our lives—discussions that bring together people who call themselves progressive/leftwing and people who call themselves conservative/rightwing. Those discussions must include an in-depth examination of economic systems, wherein some of us will challenge the oligarchs’ intentional misrepresentations as to what socialism is and isn’t. (Those misrepresentations have been facilitated by the capture of so-called socialist organizations by gender ideology and other regressive ideologies.) As we determine together how to put in place new economic and political structures, a commitment to free speech and other civil liberties laid out in the Bill of Rights must be paramount.
A TOPSY-TURVY WORLD OF CHAOS AND OPPORTUNITY
Many people are noticing that old political labels no longer seem to apply. As information presented in this article attests, progressives are unwittingly advocating regressive policies on various important fronts—policies that were previously considered by many to be “right-wing.” People who call themselves conservative are supporting things that many of us think of as progressive.
Progressives, you’re the ones who have changed. You are now applauding the destruction of fundamental civil liberties, such as the rights of free speech, assembly, the press, and due process. You are sitting by silently or even applauding as one of the most horrifying medical scandals of all time deepens all around us—a scandal in which children are egregiously harmed in the name of a regressive anti-science ideology. You are engaging in rank misogyny, ignoring the evisceration of women’s rights, and using the same dehumanizing language used against female slaves historically. You are joining in the dismantling of gains made by the LGB community. You are cheering on intelligence agencies, the defense industry, and regressive political leaders, as they wage horrifying wars and put humanity at imminent risk of nuclear war. You pretend that huge increases in fossil fuel production under Democrats are consistent with your demands for phase-outs. And more.
And what of the people you dismiss as right-wing, conservative, Trump-supporters, and MAGA fans? Many of them are very well informed. They’re thoughtful and principled. They say things in defense of women’s rights that progressives used to say but no longer do. They are concerned about the environment and have no interest in rolling back gay rights. They are staunch defenders of free speech, freedom of the press, and other core values of democracy. They’re opposed to endless imperial wars. They’re aware of and angered by the power that corporations and wealthy individuals hold. In short, they hold many views you once proudly held yourselves, my progressive friends.
Things are well and truly upside down. Progressives are unwittingly fighting against progressive values. Conservatives are fighting for those values, which they view as conservative.
It is a time of chaos, but also opportunity.
While they are sometimes manipulated into believing false narratives, most people want the same things: democracy, peace, economic justice, protection of our environment, equal rights for women and same-sex attracted people, and a world in which children thrive and are safe. Most people realize that big corporations and a handful of oligarchs are calling the shots, and that democracy does not exist in such a scenario. Most people want to change things.
V. WHAT’S A PROGRESSIVE TO DO?
Powerful oligarchs hold the reins, but the seeds of the movement we need to establish democracy are all around us. I urge you to re-evaluate what you’ve been supporting, progressive friends. It’s time to seek out those who have challenged dominant narratives, joining with us to forge a way forward.
In a recent article, I offered a portrait of the typical “progressive trans ally.” While that article focused on the topic of gender identity, the mindsets and behaviors described exemplify progressives on other issues as well. Please, reject those mindsets and behaviors for everyone’s sake.
It’s not good to slap labels like “hateful” or “dangerous” on people—demonizing them as “transphobes”, “Russian-agents”, “right-wingers”, “Republicans”, or other things—and dismissing them accordingly. Canceling people is not wise or okay. Nor is acquiescing in or promoting censorship by governments, social media platforms, and others.
Ignorance is not strength, and there’s a good reason that Orwell had Big Brother declare the opposite in his novel 1984. Adhering to a policy of no debate is a very bad idea. Insisting that you will talk politics only with those who already largely agree with you is obnoxious, short-sighted, and inconsistent with living in a democracy. It can lead to you taking positions that result in outcomes that contradict your most cherished values, without even realizing it. Ignoring those who say they’ve been hurt by the policies you embrace is a particularly bad idea that goes against all progressive values.
It is vital to engage with people who have opinions and information that differ from your own. Real engagement includes a commitment to back and forth discussion. Hearing what people have to say is not enough, if you then listen to take-downs of what they’ve said without letting them respond. It is a standard ploy of authoritarians to pretend to let dissidents speak, only to then mercilessly and misleadingly attack what was said, giving them no opportunity for rebuttal. The way forward for humanity requires respect and communication among diverse individuals.
I urge you to do the following:
1. Recognize that many of the narratives you believe aren’t true.
2. Take a clear strong stand against censorship in all its forms.
3. Talk with leftwing people like me about why we take the positions we take. Don’t cancel us. Don’t be silent when we are canceled by others.
4. Talk with people who call themselves conservative, right-wing, MAGA fans, and Trump supporters. Do not cancel them. Don’t be silent when they are canceled by others. Recognize them as people who may well support things that have traditionally been considered progressive—people with whom you need to be building alliances.
5. Don’t depend on corporate media outlets like CNN or the New York Times for the news. Focus instead on principled independent journalists. Below are some recommendations. Please note that I do not agree with everything each of these sources says. In fact, I disagree strongly with some of the things that some of them say. But all are valuable sources of information.
Glenn Greenwald This is my top recommendation. Subscribe to Greenwald on Rumble and listen to his daily podcasts. (I put them on double speed and listen to them during my morning walk.)
Jimmy Dore – Periodically zipping through Jimmy’s latest clips is helpful for tracking push-back on various corporate narratives. Because Jimmy is committed to giving silenced individuals a chance to be heard, occasionally I quite dislike someone he interviews. But that’s unusual, and I applaud his approach. In any case, his shows enable me to identify source documents which I obtain to evaluate what’s been said. Since Jimmy is a comedian, I often get a good laugh from watching things on his site.
Caitlin Johnstone—I continue to be frustrated with Johnstone’s misperceptions about what’s happening on gender identity issues, but overall, she has a real knack at analyzing important stories of the day, and I find her essays very useful. As noted above, I disagree with some of the things said by various sources listed here, not just Caitlin. In particular, I find that the Gender Identity propaganda/suppression machine is so huge that many otherwise level-headed individuals are confused on that issue and/or they are avoiding the topic so as to not be canceled
A few additional information sources I suggest you check out include: Judging Freedom; Aaron Maté; Racket News; and Jim Kavanagh.
On gender identity, I belong to organizations like Women’s Declaration International USA and Women’s Liberation Front which send me updates periodically. I occasionally check sources like Helen Joyce’s twitter , The Glinner Update, and peaktrans.org, but there is so much information posted on these, that they can be overwhelming, so I really do just skim them once in a while, diving into details as they relate to things I’m working on. Reality’s Last Stand often has good articles.
Regarding Covid/health issues, I glance now and then at the websites and substacks of Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, FLCCC, and Midwestern Doctor.
Please subscribe to my substack (caroldansereau.substack.com) and to Bruce Lesnick’s for occasional writings on various subjects. On Bruce’s substack see especially Know Your Left from Your Right, and With Gender Ideology the Left is Shooting Itself in the Foot.
Finally, recognize that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are even vaguely acceptable. Both parties are owned and controlled by Wall Street and the One Percent. The candidates they put forward are intolerable. The only way forward is to build a movement that gets beyond those two parties and the mindset that keeps them as the only options we have. We must refuse to be divided by labels and cancel culture, committing ourselves instead to the vital work of organizing for system change.
We need lots of one-on-one and small group get-togethers of progressives and conservatives, defying the pressure to cancel each other. We also need larger summits that convene people who share common values despite wearing different political labels. One summit I would love to attend should bring together people who took principled stands on various majorly censored issues like Covid, gender ideology, Ukraine, and Russiagate. Contact me via substack direct mail if you know of such endeavors.
I hope these Cliff Notes are useful to you, my progressive friends. My partner Bruce and I are always available to talk, even if you are part of groups that have dissed and banished us.
Conservative friends who are reading this, watch for my upcoming letter to you. There is much I would like to say to you, as well. And thank you for all you do.
OMG, this is terrific! I am going to promote this as far and wide as I can. This is the article I wish I had time to write myself. You nailed it, Carol, right down to the recommended reading list. Thank you so much for doing this. You have performed a tremendous public service!
The same Soviet-class derision for all-important First Amendment freedoms has come from far more influential people than John Kerry—like Biden's Supreme Court appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson, who in the Murthy v. Missouri hearings described our First Amendment as her "greatest concern" because it "hamstrings the government" from censoring or punishing free speech and dissident opinions.
•_____• Never mind that "hamstring[ing] the government" in ••the sole and entire purpose•• of the First Amendment, and indeed of all 10 amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.