Natacha Kennedy for Open Democracy (ha): Anti-trans activists are using ‘mirror propaganda'. Here's how to spot it

[DerekFaker]

Anti-trans activists are using ‘mirror propaganda'. Here's how to spot it

twitter.com/5050oD/status/1599700369269030912?t=BMkQgfuCmZVFicmvpiMFiQ&s=19

50.50: OPINION

Anti-trans activists are using ‘mirror propaganda’. Here’s how to spot it
A technique deployed in Nazi Germany is now used to silence trans people while accusing them of silencing others

Natacha Kennedy
5 December 2022, 6.00am

The recent backlash against Graham Norton’s entirely reasonable suggestion that the media talks to more trans people was more revealing than people think.

He came dangerously close to exposing organised transphobia’s core campaign strategy, something they don’t want people talking about. In collaboration with mainstream media, its main strategy has been to liberally platform anti-trans narratives, hermetically exclude trans perspectives, and at the same time accuse trans people of ‘silencing’ transphobes.

For example, a transphobic group holds a rally somewhere – maybe a couple of dozen transphobes in a draughty church hall. There’s a protest outside. A journalist, with confected faux-indignation, then claims trans people are ‘silencing’ them.

Those claiming to be ‘silenced’ are then featured in every national mainstream media platform, something that caught the ire of Sara Ahmed, an independent academic and former professor of race and cultural studies at Goldsmiths University of London: “Whenever people keep being given a platform to say they have no platform, or whenever people speak endlessly about being silenced, you not only have a performative contradiction; you are witnessing a mechanism of power.”

material for mirror propaganda.

When you see anyone claiming trans people are silencing them, it’s part of a mirror propaganda operation.

For mirror propaganda to work, you need complete control over mainstream media. It is a hardcore, military-grade propaganda technique now being deployed by some of the most powerful people in the country against one of the smallest minorities. In a situation where mainstream media is entirely one-sided, its writers can no longer be considered ‘journalists’, but propagandists. Those who platform them while excluding those they target are not ‘editors’, they are censors.

Nazi Germany and Rwandan genocide
The invention of mirror propaganda has been attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, and so far the earliest identified deployments of it are by Goebbels and Himmler in 1940s Germany, targeting Jewish people.

More recently, Alison Des Forges and Jean-Pierre Cretien identified mirror propaganda as a significant factor in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when hundreds of thousands of Tutsi men, women and children were slaughtered in a six-week orgy of murder.

Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project at Harvard University, has also identified mirror propaganda as one of the main techniques for inciting genocide.

However, mirror propaganda is also deployed in other ways against trans people – such as when anti-trans activists claim (without evidence) that trans people are a ‘danger’ to cis women. On the contrary, the real danger to cis women comes from the politics of the far right, particularly homophobic and anti-abortion fundamentalists that ‘gender-critical’ transphobes sometimes collaborate with, and are funded by, to the tune of millions of dollars.

In addition to safe and legal abortion, these extremist groups oppose contraception, equal marriage, equal adoption, IVF and ‘Gillick competence’ – the legal principle that young people have the ability to give consent to their own medical treatment.

Through the wedge issue of transphobia, self-identified gender-critical ‘feminists’ have opened the door for the far-right’s homophobia and misogyny. After investing all this money, are they really going to stop at just harming trans people?

So who is deploying mirror propaganda? Global Action for Trans Equality recently produced an analysis of organised transphobia in Britain. What’s most striking is how the connections between well-funded right-wing evangelical organisations, ‘gender-critical’ groups and mainstream media are so numerous that they appear almost indistinguishable from each other. Yet their modus operandi is where these groups most obviously align.

Mirror propaganda is an extreme right-wing political strategy now being deployed by ‘nice’ middle-class transphobes and ‘respectable’ establishment journalists normalising the exclusion of trans people’s voices. Transphobes, from their media bully-pulpits, with contrived self-righteous fervour, routinely claim we are silencing them while they are actually silencing us.

This tells you all you need to know about the complete absence of integrity and sincerity in those who oppose trans and non-binary people’s human rights.

StillTISH exposes 'Open' 'Democracy' here:

gendercriticalwoman.blog/2022/08/07/open-democracy/

Well that's a confection of nonsense. I find it amusing that they can write without any irony that

"For mirror propaganda to work, you need complete control over mainstream media. It is a hardcore, military-grade propaganda technique now being deployed by some of the most powerful people in the country against one of the smallest minorities. In a situation where mainstream media is entirely one-sided, its writers can no longer be considered ‘journalists’, but propagandists. Those who platform them while excluding those they target are not ‘editors’, they are censors."

Where is their evidence that mainstream media is entirely one-sided and jumping to the tune of people they call "gender critical transphobes"?? Especially when you consider what Hadley Freeman has said about the atmosphere at the Guardian before she resigned.

😂😂🤣 nice try!

love the sneer about the draughty church hall in particular.

Reminder that Natacha Kennedy tried to oragnise a smear campaign against other academics:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3359116-The-Times-smear-campaign-by-trans-lecturer-at-Goldsmiths

More on that:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3359818-To-Think-That-Academia-Should-Encourage-Freedom-of-Speech

I’d love to see the vast amount of evidence they have about grassroots women’s organisations being funded by the far right …

This tells you most of what you need to know about Kennedy:

twitter.com/JammersMinde/status/1556893021584719872

...such as when anti-trans activists claim (without evidence) that trans people are a ‘danger’ to cis women.

...such as when women claim (with evidence) that men are a danger to women.

Fixed that for you.

That was some twisted reading there. And remarkably, it again requires a lack of critical thinking.

Silencing seems to be meaningless these days.

I'm loving the idea of us meeting in draughty church halls. If we do it's because we've been driven out of the conference centres/ hotels/ lecture theatres by TRAs like Nat.

One look at that photo of 'Natacha' tells me all I need to know...

TRAs, when faced with a reasonable argument, always recur to "but here is the subtext".

Always remember folks, "Accusations are admissions". Narc rage is real and it always reveals itself.

You can see the extreme pretzelling that goes on to try to find another way to frame the fact that gender ideology makes no sense and is harmful, people are pointing that out, as they should be free to do, and more people are starting to listen and understand.

If this person wants to counteract that, they should explain clearly and logically how they think it does make sense and how it's not harmful, with evidence and reason. Interesting that instead of even bothering to attempt that, they're just going straight for an attempt to shut down critical thought and analysis, by comparing it to Nazism, even as that's what they're accusing the other side of.

The DARVO of the whole thing has become so multi-levelled it's exhausting to keep track of.

Yes.

"Co authors papers with themself for some reason. Natacha Kennedy/Mark Hellen."

Too funny - you'd think one might urge the other to rein in the overwrought prose!

As for "draughty Church halls", my local churches, like many around the country, are taking part in the warm welcome initiative this winter

"Our mission is to support organisations to open their doors and provide a warm welcome for those struggling to heat their homes this winter."

www.warmwelcome.uk/

a couple of dozen transphobes in a draughty church hall

... are somehow equated with not only the Nazis but Rwandan genocide? Crikey, the power these people must hold, eh?

homophobic and anti-abortion fundamentalists that ‘gender-critical’ transphobes sometimes collaborate with, and are funded by, to the tune of millions of dollars

Holy unevidenced bullshit assertions, batman!

Natasha, lastly, how is anyone silencing you, or your best pal Mark Hellen, IF I AM READING YOUR ACTUAL WORDS ON A SCREEN?!?!

What's it called when you publish in academia with your "deadname" as the main author, and your new name as the co-author?

I last saw Kennedy suggesting that Owen Jones started a crowdfunder so he (Owen Jones) could sue Private Eye. Kennedy promised to contribute if it was started.

The twitter responses are interesting, and not what I'd expected.

What's it called when you publish in academia with your "deadname" as the main author, and your new name as the co-author?

Ummmm.... 'wanting the best of both worlds' by trading on your male privilege while claiming 'double credit'.

Maybe fraudulent in that you have just presented a concept to the world that now 'two' academics support.

Hypocritical to ever claim people are hateful using a 'deadname'.

Or just plain old dishonest.

a couple of dozen transphobes in a draughty church hall

Ha, doesn't Natacha just wish that was the case. Unfortunately for Natacha, all the Woman's Place UK meetings I've been to have been attended by several hundred women and many of them have been in very nice venues, not draughty church halls. A particularly memorable one was the one on sports held at the Queen Elizabeth Centre in Westminster. Sharron Davies spoke from the platform, and Daley Thompson was in the audience. I can say with some confidence that if Natacha and Natacha's chums held a meeting, they would be lucky to attract an audience of half a dozen, and certainly not any sporting legends. I can also assure Natacha that none of us gender-critical women would bother to hold a protest meeting outside because, frankly, they're not worth the tube fare.

Those who platform them while excluding those they target are not ‘editors’, they are censors."

How ironic. The Guardian's statement to Woman's Hour yesterday said of its refusal to allow Hadley Freeman to write about Mermaids and gender ideology, "That is not censorship it is editing".

Let's break this down a bit.

So Kennedy characterises meetings as a couple of dozen women at best, i.e. a tiny group of women meeting at a time. Kennedy is doing this to make us seem insignificant, and unworthy of being listened to.

However, that is also an admission that the group of women is not a physical threat, and that any group of males outside will be extremely intimidating. You cannot have it both ways, mate.

These meetings occur in church halls, described as draughty. So vulnerable to the elements, and also noise from protestors outside. This is also serving as an appeal to ridicule, emphasising that we have shoe-string budgets, restricting us to cheaper church halls, because we can't afford purpose-built conference facilities. But I thought feminists were supposed to be in receipt of "millions" of American money? It says that here! Again, you cannot have it both ways, mate.

But the awful thing in all this is if a journalist in attendance speaks out about the protest. Not the protest. If someone describes what it is like for a teeny-tiny group of women to know men are gathering outside the building, and to be confronted by that organised mass of men outside.

What about if activists simply did not mob a church hall in the first place?

Is it just my feed or is no one actually defending that piece at all?!

He came dangerously close to exposing organised transphobia’s core campaign strategy, something they don’t want people talking about.

I thought it was the other side that didn’t want others to know their campaign strategy? I’m thinking of the Dentons document here.

For mirror propaganda to work, you need complete control over mainstream media.

As TRAs had until relatively recently. Methinks someone is furious a little annoyed this is no longer the case.

In a situation where mainstream media is entirely one-sided, its writers can no longer be considered ‘journalists’, but propagandists.

Yes. Pink News are the worst of this, but there’s stiff competition from other outlets.

Accusations are admissions indeed.