What is Riley Gaines hiding? We investigated…

How is this saying that Muslims are the enemy?

I just want to say, because @TortillaKitty may have missed it, that I've recently been involved in other discussions of political tribalism. Notably, when I mention that Zarah Sultana chooses to ally herself with literal rape enablers, this is met with a wall of sarcasm, because who could possibly have an issue with the People's Zarah? Clearly you must be a right wing shill if you're criticising Zarah.

Now perhaps do that again without the condescension. I'm not saying you're a defender of Martin Smith, I'm just saying I'm very familiar with the style.

This is an image of her tweet.

It's very much the same as that Mother Jones illustration. The idea is that she's some blank-eyed Stepford Wife without any thoughts of her own, who just regurgitates talking points fed to her by her EVIL PUPPET MASTERS.

This is never assumed of women representing the Blue Tribe.

Wild that you make this a defence of Sandy Cortez, whose position is that men are more than welcome in women's sports.

I've been on previous threads, and while some criticism was empty-headed like that, others acknowledged RG was brave and right about gender while criticising other aspects of her public activism.

Would you call AOC a shill? She's obviously making money from politics but I think she says what she personally believes (which is nutty most of the time). I imagine that wherever she gets her money, Gaines probably is equally sincere about her views.

This is an image of her tweet.

But as you said yourself, many of those posters do agree with Gaines' GC stance, they don't think she's in the wrong on that issue.

I agree with what you say about the dangers of tribalism. If I were in the US, I would unhappily vote Trump simply because of this issue as well as borders.

But I don't see at all what's wrong with a measured critique/wariness of Gaines' other views & associations, eg. Pro-life activism, evangelical zeal about 'spiritual warfare'.

This feels like a weaker version of the frustration I feel about reactions on here often to even mild criticism of KJK. (I've never been convinced that, moral questions aside, associating with white nationalists like Gariepy was helpful in practical terms to the GC movement).
You can acknowledge someone's heroism while thinking it's unhealthy if any criticism of them is automatically unwelcome. Lots of movements have had this weakness. Eg. After achieving their goal, Solidarity and the Indian National Congress both kept on leaders (Walesa, Nehru) who it might have been better not to, because their heroic status was such that criticism was discouraged. Or the heroism of Emmeline & Christabel Pankhurst made it hard for people to criticise their slide towards militancy.

Destroyed by Islam? US Muslims are much moderate than UK ones. Seems an odd thing to say.

Can you link?

You assume that Gaines is acting under orders and not just posting about something that interests her. Have you never heard of things "going viral" and hitting a lot of people's consciousness at the same time?

You assume that Gaines is acting under orders and not just posting about something that interests her. Have you never heard of things "going viral" and hitting a lot of people's consciousness at the same time?

Go back to my original point:

Gaines has carried out what many would argue is valuable work, namely creating a new citizen for her country. It's pretty shit for an elected representative of that country to trash talk her for not having a conventional job

It is inappropriate for an elected representative to trash talk a new mother for not having a paid job, because that mother's new baby is a new citizen of the country that the representative serves and not just a lifestyle choice for that mother. From the perspective of the country's State apparatus, which AOC has chosen to be part of, that mother has done valuable work. Those who study Marxism and the history of countries as varied as Romania, who decided that women needed to have more children, and China, who decided that women were having too many and then later changed their minds, realise this.

That's basically what I'm saying.

I disagree with people who use Gaines' other views to discredit her GC activism. Same with Kemi. And who say that voting for a certain politician is taboo even if the other side is TWAW.

Legitimate criticism and measured support is different from that. Suppressing & ignoring legitimate criticism is wrong.

Arab nationalism in Dearborn is a thing. But it's interesting that US conservative media have to go to Dearborn, the only Arab-majority city in America, to find actual working class punters demonstrating solidarity with Hamas.

Outside of Dearborn, pro-Hamas demos are usually to be found at elite universities, and are much less prevalent among Pakistani taxi drivers in Jersey City or similar.

They are currently in much more of a minority.

But do not forget 9/11 was an attack by Muslims.

They are currently in much more of a minority.

But do not forget 9/11 was an attack by Muslims.

Sporting unfairness is irrelevant to the claim that Gaines is exploiting women's rights for gains…

Destroyed by Islam? US Muslims are much moderate than UK ones. Seems an odd thing to say.

Can you link?

She's got a lot of mileage out of that early job. "Bartender elected to Congress" is a good headline, the same way people always think of Ronald Reagan as an actor who became President, though he'd stopped acting 20 years earlier, done two terms as California Governor and established himself as a political heavy hitter. An actor becoming President is a more interesting story, and you can imagine a movie about it.

It also means people don't think about AOC growing up in a leafy suburb, going to an elite university and interning for Ted Kennedy. Her brand as a working class kid from the hood is about as genuine as Boris Johnson's artfully tousled hair.

Uh huh.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten she’s a paid Republican shill. AOC was doing normal political stuff, you know, campaigning. Gaines implied that the US was being destroyed by Islam with the help of AOC and Bernie Sanders. There was nothing I’m-just-a-concerned-citizen-here about it.

paid Republican shill

We're back to this again. It is apparently bad form for her to make money from her activism.

While if she didn't make money from her activism, we'd have a lot of sneering about "tradwives" and how she is inferior to empowered career women like Sandy Cortez, who is totally not a political shill.

The basic rule of RG threads still applies: whatever she says or does, RG must be in the wrong.

These posters have obviously never heard of Hands Across The Aisle.

To quote KJK: "right-wing women are women". When a right-wing woman stands up for women's rights, we should stand with her.

Every single time Riley Gaines is mentioned on FWR, there will be a long string of posts on the theme of "I'm as GC as they come, and I actually agree with what Gaines says on women's sport, but here are 50 reasons why you should dislike Riley Gaines."

Those reasons vary, but they always boil down to Gaines being part of the Red Tribe and not the Blue Tribe, and because the Red Tribe is bad, she cannot be allowed to be in the right.

This contrasts with politicos like Sandy Cortez, who are all in favour of dicks in women's changing rooms, the more the merrier, but are assumed to have their hearts in the right place (and sometimes hallucinated to be secretly GC) because they belong to the Blue Tribe.

It's a bit similar to the posts from 18 months ago telling us all the reasons why Kemi Badenoch was terrible and didn't mean anything she said about genderwoo, and we should put our faith in the brilliant and principled Sir Keir Starmer KCB KC, who was totally going to sort everything out. How is that working out for those posters, I wonder?