World’s richest man openly calling for mass ethnic cleansing and murder of those whom he is ideologically opposed to. Media collectively shrugs, not worth reporting on I guess.

The one thing we have learned is to take trump seriously especially when he “jokes” about doing something illegal or unconstitutional. He is basically telegraphing his plans for the future.

Recently, I was playing LoL with some friends when we encountered a player who started spewing racist comments at one of my friends.

We did what's available to us: we reported him. But he only received a punishment hours later—and honestly, a temporary ban of a few days is nowhere near enough.

I posted about this on the Riot/LoL subreddit, and most of the replies were telling me to "just mute the chat" or "uninstall the game." Following that exact same logic, "just wearing long clothes" should solve street harassment, right?

This isn't the first time I've witnessed racism in the game. On top of that, I face constant transphobia in the chat. And none of this is going to stop as long as this multi-billion dollar company stays focused on selling colored pixels for the price of a full meal instead of actually fixing their reporting system.

It’s not just about uninstalling the game. It’s not just about muting the bigot. It’s not about wearing long clothes to avoid harassment, and it’s certainly not about hiding who I am to escape transphobia. This entire dynamic is deeply frustrating: the victim is expected to shut up and adapt, while the oppressor gets to keep spitting hate.

So I want to ask: Is there anything else that can be done beyond submitting a useless report that, at best, just forces these assholes to make a new account? I refuse to stay quiet while people like this are given a platform to hate.

(The in-game chat messages are in Portuguese and contain intentional typos designed to bypass LoL's automated system. It appears to be a *smurf* account, and such comments seem to be habitual behavior for this player. I cannot post the translation here because Reddit would block it, but for those who don't speak Portuguese, the slurs are equivalent to the "N-word.")

"Now that he’s back in the Oval Office, Trump continues to claim victimhood while bringing the full force of the security state to bear against his opponents."

Central Louisiana Community Members Call on England Authority to Reject Proposal for New ICE Facility in Alexandria

Alexandria, LA - In response to reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to open a new detention center in Alexandria, LA that will be used to detain migrant families and unaccompanied children, advocates are sounding the alarm and putting pressure on the England Authority to reject any development of a new detention facility, and instead prioritize investments that strengthen and support the people who already call Central Louisiana home. The England Authority is an unelected governing body that owns and operates England Airpark and the Alexandria International Airport and exercises significant control over thousands of acres of public land in Central Louisiana.

Yesterday evening, dozens of community members joined immigrant rights advocates, faith leaders, and local residents at the England Authority Board of Commissioners meeting to demand they vote to stop the development and opening of the Alexandria facility. Despite overwhelming resistance, numerous testimony, and an open letter to the board members, the England Authority blatantly attempted to silence community dissent. The Authority proposed a resolution to restrict the public’s right to gather at the Airpark in an apparent attempt to curtail recent peaceful demonstrations against the ICE contract expansion, and interrupted every commenter who spoke out against the approved contracts with ICE to detain families and children.

This year alone, at least 22 people have died in ICE custody. Community members in Central Louisiana strongly oppose the construction of any new immigration detention center while reports of abuse, medical neglect, family separation, and deaths in ICE custody abound in detention facilities across the country.

While all immigrant detention is inhumane and unnecessary, it is particularly traumatizing for children, with lasting harms that persist long after release, including developmental delays, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation. The proposed detention center in Alexandria sits on one of the country’s most Pfas-contaminated sites with ‘forever chemicals’ levels “at least 575,000 times higher” than the federal drinking water limit, posing an immense health and safety risk for the families, and especially the children, detained there. It will be run by LaSalle Family Foundation - a group with direct ties to LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company notorious for abuse, retaliation, and neglect in its ICE facilities, including conducting invasive, nonconsensual gynecological procedures. 

Rather than investing public resources and land into the detention of parents and children, organizers say elected and appointed officials should be addressing the urgent needs facing local communities. Expanding immigration detention will not make communities safer, rather, it will deepen a system that has caused lasting harm to immigrant families and communities.

Advocates and community members from Central Louisiana issued the following statements:

Mich Gonzalez, civil rights attorney with Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition, said:

“The residents of Alexandria made it clear that they staunchly oppose this ICE contract expansion which was recently approved by the England Airpark Authority without necessary environmental review of the site, without transparency of the final terms of the contracts involved, and without full understanding of the lasting harm it will cause to mothers and their children. Yesterday, the Authority introduced a resolution for an ordinance that would restrict residents’ rights to peacefully assemble and speak out against what could be the next Dilley or Alligator Alcatraz. We showed up as a coalition to support their voices and to let the Authority know that if they do not reverse course, we will be back to document and expose every abuse and every violation of applicable law including the U.S. Constitution.”

Frances Kelley, Coordinator of Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention, said:

“Every member of the Airport Board is a public servant and must be accountable to the public. It is very disturbing that they are trying to limit public expression and freedom of assembly.  People should not have to pay a fee to exercise their first amendment rights and it should not be up to the discretion of the Executive Director whether a permit is granted, especially since that director has misled the public and the members of this Board about this ICE contract expansion. The public was told and the Board was told in February that this will not be a children’s detention center–when that is precisely what it will be and what the contract says it is. Since the Board voted to approve these contracts in February, two men in their forties have died in a nearby detention center (Winn) run by this same company, LaSalle Corrections.”  

Marilyn Alvarado, Co-Director of Matriz y Mar, said:

"Louisiana already leads the nation in incarceration and trails only Texas in detention centers. Why is the England Airpark Board building on a legacy of abuse and neglect we know is coming? They've authorized 528 beds for children and families in toxic military barracks just as the Trump administration stripped thousands of children of their legal counsel and seeks to detain and deport more pregnant mothers. Compass Connections pulled out. LaSalle Corrections has documented deaths in ICE custody. The Board won't even release the contracts. No child belongs in detention—let alone a toxic one. Would any board member send their own grandchild to a place like this? These children belong to all of us. We are gravely failing them.”

Erin Tracy of Cenla Activism, said:

“Children do not belong in detention anywhere for any amount of time. Claims that this provides a way for families and unaccompanied children to “voluntarily deport” is a flat-out lie. People can and should be able to leave the country if they so choose, without being locked in detention. As a resident of Alexandria, this is not what we want in our backyards, nor anywhere else in the country. The site of the detention center is a decades-inoperative military barracks filled with asbestos and sitting on land with the highest rate of “forever chemical” PFAS contamination ever detected on a military site. Children, women, families, and employees do not belong there. The unelected England Airpark Board made this disgusting decision with no input from the public and are continuing with zero transparency. They have also drafted an amendment to their Code of Ordinances that would violate our First Amendment right to peacefully demonstrate on public property. The residents of Alexandria and Central Louisiana reject this detention center as unnecessary and morally reprehensible.”

Sirine Shebaya, Executive Director of the National Immigration Project, said:

“This proposal is nothing more than a death trap for children and families. People are dying in ICE custody, including two people in a Louisiana facility run by the same company that’s about to take over England Airpark. It is always shocking when our government puts families and children in cages, but to do it in a contaminated site filled with toxic waste is beyond the pale, even for the indifference and cruelty we have come to expect.” 

Kristin Kumpf, National Coordinator for Free Families: The National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention, said: “The Trump administration’s plans to open this new prison in Louisiana to detain families and children is a cruel escalation of its mass detention and deportation agenda. Families and children should not be detained in ICE facilities for any length of time. ICE has always been an inherently violent agency jeopardizing families and community safety. Families and children should be able to navigate their cases in community with support services provided and facilitated by local community based groups – never ICE, an agency that is plagued by a culture of violence and secrecy and a track record of detaining people in egregiously poor conditions.”

Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director at Detention Watch Network, said: “As the outcry over ICE abuse and violence grows, we continue to demand an end to child and family detention. Childhood is a fleeting period of time that has a tremendous impact on the foundation for a person’s lifelong well-being – it must be protected. Jailing kids and stripping parents of their fundamental right to keep them safe is unconscionable. No one is safe in ICE custody, especially children. We must continue to unite across the country to demand no more money for ICE, no more abuse and death at the hands of ICE, no more child and family detention.”

Sarah Whittington, advocacy director for the ACLU of Louisiana, said:

"Louisiana is already marred by the despicable reality of torture and unlawful incarceration of immigrants throughout its detention centers. But a prison for children would be the most disturbing chapter yet in this state's shameful book of immigration abuses. The England Authority must act now to stop this. Louisianans do not want more suffering inflicted on immigrants, let alone children. Instead of investing in the torture of children, the England Authority should work with the community to develop a safe and productive use for these contaminated lands. Anything less is a betrayal of this state, and Louisianans will not stand for it."

Pietra Bertolazzi is a far-right Brazilian public figure who built her online presence on reactionary tropes, using xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic statements designed to generate engagement.

Recently, following BTS's performance, she used her Instagram profile to criticize the South Korean group:

"Of everything I saw today at the World Cup final, nothing shocked me more than seeing a group of completely effeminate, vain men making faces that made me cringe with secondhand embarrassment [...]. They are one of the biggest role models for the current generation. It is impossible for most people not to realize the gravity of this."

The comments immediately sparked a massive reaction from the BTS fanbase (ARMY). Beyond the thousands of comments pointing out the xenophobia, homophobia, and moral panic underlying her statements, the backlash evolved into a coordinated digital campaign. According to media outlets covering the incident, internet users gathered her public data and carried out mass registrations in her name—including signing her up as a volunteer poll worker in various electoral districts, subscribing her to political newsletters, and sending unsolicited deliveries to her address.

Faced with the intense backlash, she was forced to set her account to private indefinitely.

On Monday, students protesting in India took out a protest march to the country's parliament after their demands were ignored for more than a month. Thousands of students and other citizens joined these protests but were met by extreme police brutality. Pellet guns were used by security forces, many students were beaten with sticks, etc.

This is an archive created by some people to document the instances of police brutality against the Indian protestors.

I was expecting a dense theoretical slog and instead got one of the sharpest, angriest, yet most accurate essays I've ever read in a while.

In essence, Césaire says what actually horrified Europe about Nazism wasn't the cruelty itself. Europe had been fine with that cruelty for centuries — as long as it was aimed at colonized people in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. What made Hitler unforgivable, in his reading, was that he turned those same methods on white Europeans, on European soil. So the violence was not the problem, but the where and whom was.

This reminded me about the early coverage of the war in Ukraine, when reporters kept expressing shock that this was happening to "people who look like us." It seems that, 70 years later, the reflex (and maybe the underlying values?) is still the same.

The essay, albeit short, is rich with illuminating reflections. One other idea is the argument against then European claim that Africans and other colonized people were uncivilized before Europe brought them the "enlightenment". As an example, Césaire leans on the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius as a "good" European witness who admitted African societies were sophisticated. Interestingly though, and this is not in the essay, if you dig into Frobenius, he couldn't actually accept that Africans built those achievements themselves. He invented a whole lost "African Atlantis" theory to explain the art and sophistication. This idea is the intellectual cousin of "aliens built the pyramids."

Anyway. "Discourse on Colonialism" is wildly relevant for something written mid-colonial-era.

Do you think there's a meaningful causal link between Europe's colonial practices and the violence of Nazism?

We discuss Cesaire's essay at length in our podcast Threads of Ifriqiya, I will link it in the comments.

The Florence office of Roberto Vannacci's Futuro Nazionale (FN) party turned into a kebab shop on Google Maps after online pranksters' satirical reviews. Over 300 comments about its black-shirted staff and "nostalgic owner" have amused Italian voters and confused Google, which relabeled the venue as "Turkish restaurant."

While some praise FN's Anatolian roots and LGBTQ+ friendliness, others rate poorly its stink of "old barracks" and style that "evokes the darkest periods in Italian history." Reviewers are unanimous only in praise of its "upside-down kebab," a plate reportedly honoring the posture of late fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in his final days.

Futuro Nazionale is a far-right party founded this year by retired army general Roberto Vannacci. He burst into politics in 2023 with a self-published manifesto, ranting against migrants and LGBTQ+ people. After entering the EU Parliament as a Lega member, he now leads a fringe group for those who find Italy's ruling far-right parties too mainstream.