They Are Coming For Us.

Complete with Nazi flags, the Proud Boys, and Patriot Front marched to a church to protest a drag queen bingo.

From the Advocate article

Nazis, Patriot Front Converge at a Drag Bingo at Texas Church
Hundreds of right-wing extremists, Nazis, members of the Proud Boys, and Patriot Front all joined to protest the church's drag bingo event.
The Advocate
By Christopher Wiggins
September 26, 2022


A convergence of right-wing hate mongers menaced a Saturday's drag queen bingo event at a Texas church.

Protesters and counter-protesters lined opposing sides of a divided highway in the Texas town of Katy, west of Houston. The location is home to the LGBTQ-affirming congregation of the First Christian Church, which hosted two drag queen bingo events.

The daytime event was open to all ages, followed by an adults-only event Saturday evening.

Several hundred right-wing radicals to include members of the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and Nazis, showed up in opposition to the religious institution's activities, Houston's Fox affiliate KRIV reports.

Chief among the participants on Saturday was Kelly Neidert, the University of North Texas student that has spent much of her post-education period directing hatred at LGBTQ+ communities through her organization Protect Texas Kids. Neidert is a self-described "Christian fascist."

They were stirred up by media agitators and police in riot gear had to separate the protesters,

Right-wing media figures and influencers had stirred up anger and whipped up their followers to target the event, including Steve Bannon, who amplified anti-LGBTQ+ activist Sherronna Bishop on his program calling for the disruption of the Katy affair.

You might remember that Bannon worked for Trump at the White House.

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Then over in Norway, violence at a gay bar like the Pulse Nightclub shootings in Orlando Florida.

Police Arrest Two Men, Seek A Third For Deadly Oslo Gay Bar Shooting
Little information was provided about the suspects.
The Advocate
By Donald Padgett
September 26, 2022


Police in Norway on Sunday announced the arrest of two men in connection with the mass shooting in Oslo during Pride month last June.

Oslo police said they had arrested a Somali citizen in his 40s and a Norwegian citizen in his 30s, but, according to Reuters, provided no other information on the suspects or the charges.

The arrests bring to four the number of people implicated by police in connection with the attack, as police on Friday announced they had issued an international arrest warrant for Arfan Bhattti, a 44-year-old Norwegian Islamist, over his alleged role in the attack. Zaniar Matapour, 43, was quickly arrested near the scene on the night of the attack and charged with terrorism, murder, and attempted murder in connection with the attack.

The mass shooting took place in Oslo outside the London Pub and the Per på hjørnet, both popular gay bars, early on the morning of Saturday, June 25. The shootings left two dead and 21 wounded, and came only hours before the city’s Pride celebration was to take place. Out of concern for the safety of participants and the fear of additional attacks, the Pride parade scheduled for later in the day was canceled.

The violence is being stirred up around the world as the far-right is making political gains just the fascists did in the 1930 in Italy and Germany and they are using us just the fascist did under Hitler and Mussolini.

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And in Italy a fascist won the national elections there, the first time that a fascist has been elected since Mussolini.

Giorgia Meloni: Italy’s far-right anti-LGBTQ party leader wins
After years of activism she carved a space for herself in the Italian political arena & is now set to be Italy’s first female prime minister
Los Angeles Blade
By Brody Levesque
September 25, 2022


Italy’s far-right leader Giorgia Meloni, head of the Brothers of Italy party, appeared to have won in Sunday’s snap general elections according to exit polling. In a coalition with other right wing parties, Meloni’s right-wing alliance now looks to have control of both houses, with a projected 42.2% of the Senate vote.

This will lead to her forming Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two and Meloni is now set to be Italy’s first female prime minister. However, the final say will rest with Sergio Mattarella the President of Italy, a decision that is expected to take some time according to political observers in Rome familiar with the inner workings of the Italian government.

Turnout for Sunday’s elections was dramatically low – 63.82% by the time polls closed – said Italy’s interior ministry, almost 10 points down on 2018. Voting levels were especially poor in southern regions including Sicily.

That is why we have to get out the vote in November, apathy kills a democracy!

They got out the vote by stirring up dislike toward immigrants and us, sound familiar? That is why we need to get out the vote, not just us, but also the women and all the other Democratic voters!

Meloni is seen as polarizing figure with some of her political stances and rhetoric on the European Union aligning her close to Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orban. However, Professor Gianluca Passarrelli of Rome’s Sapienza University told the BBC he thought she would avoid rocking the boat on Europe and focus on other policies: “I think we will see more restrictions on civil rights and policies on LGBT and immigrants.”

[…]

As LGBTQ+ equity and equality rights are foundational to the European Union and its governing commission, some see Meloni as combatting the EU over LGBTQ+ issues in the same vein as Hungary’s Orban.

The right-wing governments of Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Italy I feel will split the European Union wide open. The future is not looking good.

Back in the 1930s that “Great Depression” was in full swing and from that the fascists rose to power using minorities as scapegoats… the Jews, the Romany (The Gypsies), the mentally ill, and us. Back then they had the Blackshirts in Italy and the Stormtroopers in Germany and now we have our Proud Boys and the and Patriot Front.

Tell me do you see any similarities between now and then. We are in a period of economic instability due to COVID and huge corporate profits, and we are at war just like back in the 30s. The rich environment for fascism.

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Yes, it is getting dangerous for us around the world… it is spreading!

'Very real fears' for LGBT community after far-right win in Italy

Reuters

By Alvise Armellini and Chiara Rodriquez

September 27, 2022

The LGBT community has "very real fears" after a conservative bloc dominated by the far-right won Italy's general election, a leading gay rights campaigner told Reuters.

The nationalist Brothers of Italy group, led by Giorgia Meloni, emerged as the largest party in the ballot and will lead the most right-wing government in Rome since World War Two.

"Unfortunately there are very real fears" about an erosion of civil rights under the new administration, Fabrizio Marrazzo of the Gay Party said.

Meloni is allied with the League, another far-right force led by Matteo Salvini, and the mainstream conservative Forza Italia of former premier Silvio Berlusconi.

"The League and partly Brothers of Italy have in their manifestos things that are quite negative for our community, like stressing the importance of protecting only the traditional family," Marrazzo said.

[…]

Marrazzo, a former leader of the Arcigay LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) association who unsuccessfully stood i

In the Sept. 25 election, said he was most concerned about the cultural signals coming from the right.

He said it might become harder to run anti-LGBT discrimination programmes in schools and said there had been an increase in the past in homophobic attacks in Italian cities and regions with right-wing administrations.

Pro Vita & Famiglia, a conservative Catholic lobby that is highly suspicious of sex education in schools, has called on the new government to pick an education minister opposed to "any gender and LGBT ideological colonisation in schools".

There is is that combination again… far-right-wing and religion.

In June, an Ipsos poll showed that 63% of Italians backed marriage rights for gay people, up 15 points from 2013, and 59% were in favour of gay adoptions, an increase of 17 points from nine years ago.

But public opinion means nothing to fascist, they have their own agenda of oppression. People vote their pocketbook and our rights mean nothing to them.

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Have you seen the PBS show on the Holocaust by Ken Burns? It is an eye opener on the parallels between the 1930s and now.

Ken Burns Holocaust documentary makes it harder to kid ourselves about U.S. culpability
The News Tribune
By Melinda Henneberger
September 26, 2022


Those who think we should tell only happy stories about America will not want to watch the new PBS Ken Burns documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust.”

[…]

“The U.S. and the Holocaust” shows how our xenophobic 1924 law imposing new immigration quotas that favored the white and the Protestant — and tragically, made no exception for refugees — delighted Hitler. He probably needed some cheering up, reading about it as he did in the prison cell where he was serving time for treason after leading a failed coup.

Hmm… who else do we know who lead a failed coup?

During his first 100 days in office, newspapers in this country ran some 3,000 accounts of attacks on German Jews. And how did the American public respond? With indifference, willed ignorance, and in some cases, worry about what could be done without “inflaming” Hitler. Even some Jewish friends of President Franklin Roosevelt told him they worried that he might only make things worse by speaking out. He didn’t speak out. A 1938 poll asked Americans whether they thought the persecution of Jews in Germany was their own fault. Two-thirds of respondents said yes, it was either partly or entirely on them.

Once again… is there any parallels with the persecution of us? How many people spoke out about president’s Biden speech on Fascism?

Maybe our current slide into fascism won’t continue; we don’t know yet, and the answer will be up to us. But we do have reason to believe that “America First,” means essentially the same thing to My Pillow’s Mike Lindell that it did to Charles Lindbergh. “The fragility of civilized behavior is the one thing you really learn” from history, says the writer Daniel Mendelsohn, best known for his book, “The Lost: The Search for Six of Six Million.” The World War II-era Germans in fading photographs, “they’re no different — no different — from us. You look at your neighbors, the people at the dry cleaners, the waiters in the restaurant, that’s who these people were. Don’t kid yourself.” This documentary makes it a little harder to kid ourselves.

But what I think is those who see the Ken Burns documentary are not the ones watching, he is preaching to the converted.