that Noem video reinforces my belief that there is a streak of sexualized sadism on the US right that goes back to lynching imagery but began in its most recent form with the enthusiasm for torture during the Bush years.
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Yeah, it’s not ladylike to get one’s own hands bloody, but white supremacist women love siccing cops & vigilantes on their objects of hatred because being “protected” makes them feel precious & powerful. By employing violence secondhand, they indulge their bloodlust w/o compromising their femininity
I think it’s a mistake to say that this appropriation of a masculine sexual sadism by a woman means that sexual sadism is somehow *not* gendered. Noem here serves as a stand-in for the male Trump supporter whose presence softens the homoeroticism of the sadistic fantasy.
Weird you specified cis women here? but mostly why tf would you intentionally erase the role of gender here. The idea that gender is not relevant to sexual violence is so obviously incorrect it’s just anti-feminist
No one said it was the exclusive domain of men though. They’re like “nuh uh also women” when Moira said it was *gendered* which it is. It’s anti feminist to erase gender from sexual violence
Seems to need to be 1) non-consensual and 2) a victim who poses no threat. It’s handcuffed women snatched off the street, small children, naked shackled men, husbands grabbed in front of their pregnant wives. Never anyone who would be a threat or can offer resistance. Extremely predatory by design.
There’s layers here. The MAGA obsession with sexy women humiliating helpless men goes all the way back to 2015 – e.g. their obsession with cuckold porn, which was their central metaphor for understanding the Republican party.
Can’t find the skeet now, and I’m definitely guilty of having chuckled. But “I’m gonna need Noem to unlock that cell for an hour… as a science experiment” or something to that effect was just on here yesterday.
I mean, FWIW, I drew the same connection. arguably part of the thrill of the first image is the threat of barely-restrained violence, a tense tipping point that could go either way. the audience for both images is the same.
(caveat: I haven't watched the Noem video, I feel gross just typing this!)
alternately, Noem serves as a cherry in the fantasy: the captured men are forcefully dominated, while the (faux-free) woman signals willingness to be dominated by playing to the male fantasy via both her appearance and her adoption of the male gaze toward the captured men
I think you are correct in describing the sadism, but I believe the observation was the enjoyment of this misogynist directed sadism is not limited to one gender, as fascists of all genders enjoy this type of exploitation cruelty. Cis men weren't the only ones showing up to ye olde lynchings...
Things like that are why I think people who believe that balancing out the number of women in power would somehow reduce the total amount of sexual harassment / predation in the workplace are lying to themselves.
yeah it seems pretty clear that she's traveling with stylists – like, I know from personal experience that that hair look doesn't maintain itself, especially not when traveling – and what you're talking about is surely part of the reason why
I HATE THEIR INSTAGRAM HAIR I know there are many more important things to think about but DEAR GOD I HATE THAT STUPID INFLUENCER ONE HANK OVER EACH SHOULDER GODDAMN HAIRDO.
It’s partly fitting into the “Republican Barbie” mold that Fox News popularized & partly to curry favor with Der Fürher by imitating his daughter, who he has a totally healthy, non-incestuous fixation on. 🤢
Were I possessed of more wit and snark this morning, I’d make a joke about how it must make their behind the scenes hotwifing parties easier because everyone’s a blonde, including the brunettes and redheads.
But I am not, so I’ll just say that I suspect this is to curry favor with Prez. Fuckface.
Could it be the non stop shift to darker grittier, more violent media over the past 25 years?
Romans needed the Colosseum to keep from rising up against the emperors, apparently Americans are just as bloodthirsty and perverse. Nero is fiddling while Caligula dances on corpses.
This is lowkey a deeply fascist take on this fascist problem.... blaming certain kinds of "impure" media for social degeneracy was a cornerstone of the Nazis.
If anything it is much more related to repression and purity culture, particularly among certain kinds of evangelicals
I completely disagree. There is absolutely no evidence that "Darker" media has had any impact on violence in culture. And there have been many periods during history when artistic expression swayed more darker/violent without impacting the level of violence in society. This is purity culture bs
If anything increased violence in society led to a need for people to process what they were seeing/experiencing in the world via art.
Violence in our society is tied to racism, misogyny, classism, and dehumanization. It is a result of the strict hierarchy argued by fascists and evangelicals
Thank you for making this point. Some creepy shit good on in the minds of these people. Everyday a new conservative “pastor” is revealed to be a serial sex abuser and pedophile.
Noem has Sadistic Personality Disorder. She is mentally ill. She finds pleasure in humiliating, tormenting, degrading and threatening others. This is all about dehumanization. This is the underbelly of our civilization. Sadism and exhibitionism backed with power and evil purposes. Revolting.
Abu Ghraib is when it all started to go down hill. Once you lose the ethical justification for being world police, there is really no bottom to what is just imperialism and bullying
I don't think it's consciously sexual but there's an undertone of sexual insecurity. One of the core defining elements of fascism is that it's a cult of masculinity that promises to restore a feeling of machismo to men who feel emasculated, and it promises to do this through violence.
I was going to yes-and this by saying that the self-conscious, mustachio-twirling evil seems like a point of difference from the Bush II years, but really it's just that the party, country, and world reoriented to satisfy the people who were baying for performative anti-Muslim war crimes under Bush
As a woman who reentered the dating world in her mid forties and who tended to date military & Leo types -
I will confirm this.
The shit you get asked to do....
I'm not kink shaming - but dayam. "What the actual fuck?!" & "Am I really this desperate?" did come to mind occasionally.
It’s even baser-brain than that. It’s security through dominance that is probably in the lizard part of our brain…. The Conservative brain is very fear based and that is why they aggressively seek security in all ways, from religion to politics.
That's exactly it! I found the images disturbing to the point where I just couldn't look at them at all. But in the back of my mind, the idea that formed was that the setup looked like some kind of grotesque & perverted version of a Calvin Klein or Benetton ad.
It starts with the evangelical fanatacism around the death of Christ and the torture porn they turn that into. I grew up in it and every Easter memory is marred by having to watch someone get (supposed to be very literally) beaten and murdered on a movie or at a play. It's gross and leads here.
Have y’all seen the “thief in the night” movies from the 70’s? I was forced to watch them in church as a kid, the guillotine gave me night terrors. It’s like if your parents took you to a Freddy Kruger movie & told you it was 100% true. Pentecostals love the violent parts of the New Testament.
Yes, my aunt showed them to me and my cousins when I was about 8. Oddly, it was around the same time I discovered the horror genre. I found comfort in the horror movies, because there was hope of survival.
Oof, hope in the horror flicks, good point though. I often slept on the floor by my mom’s door (terrified of being “left behind”). We couldn’t watch anything, not even Disney, because they funded other heathen things. The library saved me, it was a mile walk, & I learned about the real world there.
Left Behind was the series that got me. They pushed that narrative so hard. The library was also my safe place! I tore up every book at the church library, the public library, and then the school library when they had to let me go to public school finally.
This is why they’re coming for our schools and libraries. Knowledge cracks their cult information control. It’d be really lame if it wasn’t so scary. I’m glad you made it out 🙌
I wasn’t really supposed to watch horror, but back in the day video stores would rent to kids, and there was one we could walk to. For better or worse, they left me with a more positive world view than the evangelical films😅
I grew up culturally Catholic but my mother is an evangelical fanatic and I've seen this and the Left Behind series. Oddly enough she hates Trump and finds him uncouth and foul but is viriluntly homophobic, colorist, and has the morality of an old woman from the 1850s.
Think more not US 1850s but like the UK so still bad (and racist) and the Victorian prudish morals funzies... I got trained in like, actual Victorian etiquette. It's wild. On a positive note living with that makes me very charming with older folks and I can withstand anyone's "crotchety" parents.
Well at least trump didn’t fool her, he is those things. I can’t wrap my head around how many people that genuinely think they’re good christians voted for trump because their pastor told them to.
Not sure what the evangelical experience is, but growing up Catholic I was exposed to a lot of fanaticism around the death of Christ and it was pretty clear you were supposed to sympathize with Christ rather than unnamed Roman Centurion
It's the making suffering into something good, something that you MUST endure for yourself in order to be considered worthy somehow. It weirdly makes it also good to make others endure it as well to some (I dont get it). I'm not a theologian, just my experience, observation, and opinion. 1/2
That isn't the story the crucifixion is supposed to be telling. The cross is about empathy, it is God, an infinite being who is all powerful, stepping down to live the life of a homeless Jewish carpenter, and dying under the boot of an occupying government to break the powers of Sin and Death.
The Gospel is a reconfiguration of the power of the world. "He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty." Luke 1:52.
It varies by pastor and congregation. Some go with clinical details of the pain of crucifixion to show God's love, some buy Mel Gibson's blood and gore approach while others choose to discuss it as abstraction but you can seek out the gory details yourself.
Also Catholic, mixed personal experience, some other conclusions people might reach from the story are
-Having gone through this trauma, God personally understands my suffering and has compassion for it (nice)
-hatred of those who 'murdered' Christ turning into an excuse for antisemitism (ugh!)
It is the manly thing to do.... proves you are a leader. In reality this is just a continuation of the american propaganda story of our greatness and goodness. bah!
Two pro-War on Terror guys agreed to be waterboarded because 'it's not real torture lmao'. Hitchens and a morning radio zoo guy whose name I've forgotten. Both folded in seconds and admitted 'yeah it's torture'. Hannity said he'd do it but backed out.
A fun detail is that some guy in Indonesia got arrested after a terrorist attack and his lawyer said, uh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said during American 'investigations' (being waterboarded a dozen times a day) he did it so my client is innocent. I don't recall if it worked but digging your own grave.
Omg. I didnt know this. But it's so blazingly obvious that the info gathered this way can't be credible that, to speak to OPs point, saison is the only plausible motive here.
Probably Eric "Mancow" Muller, total ass but at least he admitted it in that case.
There was a US Navy training manual for getting info in WWII. It's all about offering cigarettes, talking about home, food, asking soft questions. Humanizing both you and them. Bc that's how you get good intel.
Do you have a link to that? I read it years ago and can't find it anymore. I love its prescription for dealing with Dutch people 'the Dutch love rules but hate being told what to do' which is very accurate.
I remember a Reddit thread from a guy who underwent the same process on his own (ie waterboarded himself because "it can't be that bad," very rapidly changed his mind). Stands out as a rare example of 1. people adjusting their beliefs when encountering evidence and 2. torture revealing the truth!
I’ll never understand why it was necessary for them to experience it to come to that conclusion when you can extrapolate how awful it would be if you’ve ever gotten water up your nose. the “I’m drowning” signal from your brain is instantaneous
It’s partly because they dehumanize the victims. They don’t think of “Arabs” as human beings capable of feeling pain like they do. Experiencing it firsthand challenges the illusion.
That's not new and it shows up in more ways than one. Hell, the saw and final destination movie series taps into that. It's been around for a long, long time. The very notion of gladiators and the like are built on it. It's not the US right, unfortunately, it's just human.
Most casteist society display this type of covert & overt streak of sexual sadism. Torture is another form of sadistic pleasure fix. I'm not sure whether this need for sadistic pleasure fix is uniquely homosapien and if yes why? It would be interesting to know why we turned out like this?
Genuinely!! Like I don’t think it’s JUST an ideology thing (although it has a parts) there seems to genuinely be something wrong with humanity in order for this to happen at all
They drink human blood and eat human flesh every weekend.
They keep carvings of dying tortured people on the walls of their “churches”.
They’ve killed everything on every continent they didn’t like for 1500 years.
Sadism??? Nah. Mommie said they were the good guys.
54% of Americans ages 17-65 read at sixth grade level or lower & 24% of the rest are virtually illiterate. Teaching of the Humanities was abandoned some 40 years ago when education was reduced to “how much $$ da ya wanna make?” even at our “best” schools… so YES, absolutely.
personally I think the sexual sadism goes way further back...slavery in the US was sexually sadistic...those men were farmers and know very well they wouldn't have treated their livestock in the same way...you don't break a horse by beating it do you
right. i hate alluding to that, even hate the term, but someone had to point it out. thank you for doing so. iykyk and for everyone else don't google anything. it's worse than you might think, though.
I'm not happy with having to say it either but...just couldn't get my head around things...cultural norms are not economic norms...two different things...so when you take a good look...that screams in your face
That may also explain why there's so many child predators in the administration. They have no empathy. Power and violence against others gets them off. Psychopath behavior.
yes, and this was actively and intentionally cultivated in the population with the TV series “24” whose entire foundation was to concoct scenarios in which torture could be justified and even cheered for.
no doubt about it, there is a streak of sadism in the "American Way of Life"...Noem's "cowboy culture" "Wild West" persona and now her cosplay indicates she is part of it. Most telling is her shooting dead the family pets, and the disgusting pose at the prison in El Salvador. #kristinoem
Not prosecuting members of the W Bush admin for the many, many war crimes they committed isn't one of the reasons we are where we are now. We established that in practice the executive branch is not subject to the law, something SCOTUS has since formalized.
It's hard to get at without coming across as deranged, but the apparent fact that fuckability was a premier consideration in staging the image is degenerate beyond words.
You'd have thunk that W could have picked better people than NIXON's. L Paul Bremmer was hand picked by Kissinger. LPB disbanded the Iraqi Army on purpose to keep the fighting in Iraq. "Over there, not over here." W called the Saudis and promised to NUKE Mecca if 9/11 ever happened again
Noem could be sexier than Lily Philipps for all I care, and she would still be a sadistic psychopath posing in front of a gulag, nothing sexual about it.
The week before I moved to Asia for the first time I was wondering if I had made the right choice, leaving loved ones behind. But then I was driving to town and saw a truck with a tea party bumper sticker, Marine window decal, and a license plate that said WTRBOARD and knew it was time to go.
Conservative ideology is just an excuse to revert back to one's primitive caveman brain where rape, torture, and murder are just fun little bloodsports for the stronger specimens to use to control and purge those they see as weak or undesirable.
Y'know, the same shit they accuse brown people of.
In the US, growing the wrong plant is a “crime”.
Violations of the Geneva convention? not so much.
One even has task forces, tanks, and helicopters to enforce it- the one Americans think most important.
They are getting their wish.
Just say no to plants. Not fascists!!! USA!!!
She may take sadistic pleasure in it, but it also means she's implicated in various federal & international crimes, making her loyalty to the Trump regime existential for her.
They're probably in a damned if they do, damned if they don't, scenario now.
If they back down or otherwise betray Trump, he can prosecute (for this, or for bogus crimes) or even disappear them, but if they continue, they keep digging their holes deeper, further implicating themselves & facing progressively harsher potential sentences.
christian nationalism plays HUGE. Cult-like adoration of human sacrifice (Jesus in human form, sacrificed), blood atonement (redemption thru suffering/bloodletting) & wearing torture devices around their necks to signal "virtue" to each other; throw in that sex is a sin to be punished, et voila.
Warning: I didn't know Wikipedia would have the uncensored photos. Anyway, this was one of those vivid "are we the baddies" moments for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynndie_England
Let's recall here that torture (or abuse as they decided to call it) and kidnapping (extraordinary rendition) was celebrated by both Democrats and Republicans as both settled in each night to watch the mass slaughter of civilians in Iraq. One Joe Biden was one of the loudest cheerleaders.
you're absolutely right, and I'd recommend the book They Were Her Property, by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers if anyone in the comments feels like they've the stomach to learn more
It’s just Idiocracy come to life. If you want to impress a room full of dumb rednecks, you give them a picture of latin american gang members in prison and a hot bimbo. It’s not that complicated.
I’ve been thinking that for like a decade now, but it’s also the fantasy of a tiered justice system that somehow got conflated with it. That the reasoning for Afghanistan was to “protect the women” seemed to launch a wild cognitive dissonance in some of these guys.
Oh yeah: you can bet that hordes of young GQP men will soon be jacking off while gazing at posters of her standing in front of that cellblock in her tight outfit and golden hockey-puck Rolex.
The fucking War on Terror laws and subsequent security infrastructure will be used to abuse people (ultimately including native-born US citizens) long after we're all dead.
It is, and the lesson they took from it is that if they had done it out in the open, it wouldn't have been a scandal. They wear their depravity proudly.
I remember being naive enough to think that the release of the Abu Ghraib photos would shock the conscience of the nation sufficiently that we would confront this and start to reform. I kinda can't believe I ever thought that was possible.
Your comment about sexualized sadism going back to lynching imagery reminds me of “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin. It’s horrifying to think people get off on that, but there’s obviously quite a few true sadists among us.
Watching Noem in that El Salvadorian prison is like watching a horror movie and I’m screaming at the screen, rooting for those men to break out and rip her limb from limb before my eyes.
No, that's not sadism. The difference is that if we actually saw that in real life, we would be horrified, as we are by the obvious cruelty being displayed here. I think many of us feel this constantly - gruesome revenge fantasies. But they're a manifestation of outrage, not actual sadism.
Hello
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They repress and suppress (at least socially) healthy outlets for their sexual desire to the point that the thing within themselves they deny finds often dangerous indirect others avenues to manifest itself.
Psycho sexual sadism is baked into their Old Testament. That’s probably one influencing factor that carried them through the Reformation to the early Puritans, up to the rise of the conservative attraction to fascism in pre WWII. It has finally crystallized for them.
💯 and again on full display during Charlottesville, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor….while they refuse to even recognize the whole premise behind the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. And now they attempt to erase history. We won’t let them. #resist
Yes. Most interesting to see it come so far out of the shadows, so many people openly supportive. Not so long ago, Abu Ghraib was at least presented as wrong, scandalous, deviant, unacceptable—I think a significant % would no longer say it was wrong.
I think there is something to that theory. Her attire, especially her tight shirt, the way she wore her hair, etc. Juxtaposed against the prisoners, she fulfilled someone's fantasy imagery.
It's probably really unpleasant for bookish people to spend a few hours watching World Wide Wrestling and old episodes of The Apprentice but this is where Trump learned how to get and sustain the attention of people who typically aren't interested in politics and voting.
🎯 You expressed what I’ve been rolling around in my brain since yesterday. It’s performative cruelty combined with the sexualized imagery she cultivates in all her videos. Paired with the ASMR video, they are trying to mainstream sadism.
There's an intense delight in cruelty that comes out of these sex-negative rural communities. This is the guy who ran the Monkey Torture Network. The only joy most of these people have is bullying people they see as below them.
And why did they shave their heads? Was it to dehumanize them, and/or make it harder for friends and family to identify them in videos or photos like these?
I don’t know the correct terms here but it seems so much of the right revolves around non-consent. An admin of sexual predators, Tate bros, forcing women to give birth, attempting to outlaw trans ppl, sadist photos like Noem/Abu Ghraib, plus creep language like “I’ll be the fertilization president.”
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/c @awmercer.bsky.social
I presume the cis qualifier was to cutoff replies about "that's because transwomen are really men" bullshit
(caveat: I haven't watched the Noem video, I feel gross just typing this!)
Not everything is a hyper-online porn reference.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/maralago-face-conservative-girl-makeup-brutal-aesthetics-of-maga-trump-gaetz-guilfoyle/
It's not a bad look, but the repetitiveness across thousands of images, as if it's a hair uniform, has really ruined it.
But I am not, so I’ll just say that I suspect this is to curry favor with Prez. Fuckface.
It's not green screen.
Romans needed the Colosseum to keep from rising up against the emperors, apparently Americans are just as bloodthirsty and perverse. Nero is fiddling while Caligula dances on corpses.
If anything it is much more related to repression and purity culture, particularly among certain kinds of evangelicals
People allow the media to sway them in whichever way they interpret it. Banning media, or forcing a change isn't the answer, nor was it suggested.
Violence in our society is tied to racism, misogyny, classism, and dehumanization. It is a result of the strict hierarchy argued by fascists and evangelicals
https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=96554&page=1
Hot (and repulsive) take.
I will confirm this.
The shit you get asked to do....
I'm not kink shaming - but dayam. "What the actual fuck?!" & "Am I really this desperate?" did come to mind occasionally.
Not that I would know…
JFC
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty." Luke 1:52.
Also routine violence and torture from the Romans
-Having gone through this trauma, God personally understands my suffering and has compassion for it (nice)
-hatred of those who 'murdered' Christ turning into an excuse for antisemitism (ugh!)
This man was the Son of God.
There was a US Navy training manual for getting info in WWII. It's all about offering cigarettes, talking about home, food, asking soft questions. Humanizing both you and them. Bc that's how you get good intel.
(well that one did anyway. Peter maybe less so)
TV show about it.
They keep carvings of dying tortured people on the walls of their “churches”.
They’ve killed everything on every continent they didn’t like for 1500 years.
Sadism??? Nah. Mommie said they were the good guys.
https://bsky.app/profile/jeffsharlet.bsky.social/post/3llep3uktrs2s
https://time.com/6971773/kristi-noem-memoir-dog-kill-children-net-worth/
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dark-science-of-interrogation/?hootPostID=a8431611f0f6b91cdbd603f49f2bf585
for it allows them to change angst* to anxiety** to anger*** and thus master it
the *invisible thing you are scared of is now **visible, and then put into a ***compromised position so one can temp release
https://bsky.app/profile/jeffsharlet.bsky.social/post/3llep3uktrs2s
John Boehner was talking about "revisiting" the 14th Amendment during the Obama.
Rick Perry talked about getting rid of the Dept of Ed and EPA in 2000
Newt Gingrich talked about a weaponized DOJ in the 1990s
Kill the cancer at its root
I will never view those things as coincidental
just the mostleast comedic language
They practically jerk off to The Passion of the Christ.
Y'know, the same shit they accuse brown people of.
Violations of the Geneva convention? not so much.
One even has task forces, tanks, and helicopters to enforce it- the one Americans think most important.
They are getting their wish.
Just say no to plants. Not fascists!!! USA!!!
I mean as in an actuality.
Like if we get to any better, I'm definitely also riding a Trex with lasers & speakers mounted on it and we're really good friends.
I'm optimistic.
You just know there’s a double digit percentage of boomer MAGAs that are jerking it to that video.
She may take sadistic pleasure in it, but it also means she's implicated in various federal & international crimes, making her loyalty to the Trump regime existential for her.
They're probably in a damned if they do, damned if they don't, scenario now.
Not that they don't have agency & aren't responsible for their own choices & actions, but I truly think they're trapped now.
This shit quite literally rustles their jimmies
**proceeds to barf uncontrollably.
https://archive.org/details/they-were-her-property-white-women-as-slave-owners-in-the-american-south-pdfdrive
So it ends up sublimated into performance and really quite terrible politics.
Just be a fetishist! You don't need to hold elected office.
the purge
all tied together
but in the case of saw and purge it’s mainly about the anxiety we feel knowing how into torture christians et all are
One can definitely sees elements in both witch trials and many aspects of the interaction with Native Americans, particularly abduction narratives.
(Us Filthy Hippies warned everybody!)
― D.H. Lawrence (1923)
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The song is great, the video is very dated, very cheesy -- and extremely relevant right now. How monsters are made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2CoNvyJNR0
That the modern downfall of the Republican Party - & in many ways, the U.S. - tracks back to Gingrich is no coincidence.
When the only rule is "Acquisition of power *at all costs*" this is the result.
People that only respect domination and brutality are going to be depraved in every way.
That they are saturated with the theory of white supremacy and nationalism.