Nobody thinks it’s weird they didn’t rent a bus? They rented a UHaul box truck and just piled in and sat on the floor? Folding chairs? Like this sounds like some low budget human trafficking cosplay.
Cosplay leftist is my new favourite insult for the libs playing dressup as socialists and anarchists to look and feel good about themselves but taking liberal political actions in all other ways.
Where are the creators? The cosplayers? The rube goldberg machines made out of post it’s and shot glasses? The “I draw pictures by playing notes on a piano” people? The people porting Doom to a yoga mat? The “I made a car out of thrown out Crocs” people? The “I built a treadmill for my friend’s overweight insects” people? This is the stupidest shit I could think of but people are out there making and doing weirder/amazing-er things… Where are those people in Lemmy? I browse All and it’s just politics, linux, and shit posts.
The biggest mistake I see is that people don’t ever mix with people anymore. Honestly the biggest single question I would ask if I wanted to bet how likely someone gets a partner would be “how often do you leave your house outside of work and grocery shopping” Do stuff. Dating apps try to bring single folk to you but you’ll have far more fun just… doing stuff. Doesn’t matter if you go alone or with a group, it’s usually more fun than just browsing the internet. Go to a car show, go to an anime/scifi/star trek/furry convention, go to a craft fair, go to a bar and sit at the counter, find some way to have fun in public. Don’t even bother trying to hunt down a partner, just have fun in a public setting. If you find ways to have fun in public, you start going out in public more. You do that, you start meeting potential partners by accident. Not only that: You start learning social skills Being surrounded by strangers means you can do a faux pas and nobody will remember it was you a week from now. They’re strangers, they remember the story but not the person. A group of strangers can be oddly freeing, you can say no to them and never see them again. If they judge you you’ll probably never see them again. You start learning about your area I learned Minneapolis has a fire breathing co-op so you can learn to juggle flames, a 501st legion of starwars cosplayers that can bring the empire to any event, a working ecto 1 that sometimes prowls the streets and has a youtube series. You start becoming more interesting. Did you click the links? You see what I mean? Now this is an interesting post. You now have things to talk about, about the land around you to whoever you’re talking to. It also provides two really great topics to talk about. “what have you found around here?” “what have I found around here?” Is there another event? A club or bar that is just bizarre? A sport or game you’ve never heard of. Apparently Minnesota’s roller derby team is amazing, still haven’t found the time to watch a game, but if you can find one, why not try there? Seriously just… do something. Find an event. If you think it’s stupid then try to verify if it’s stupid. (never was interested in cars, but it was free. Turns out the car show had the ecto 1, and the adam west batmobile. My hypothesis was proven wrong) Instead of scrolling through lemmy or facebook, wander around an event and watch and listen. If you see a booth, ask about it. I found that I could keep things interesting to me by basically playing a scavenger hunt with events. Go to an event and find your next event at the event you’re at. An event can be anything from a party, a convention, to a place that’s just plain interesting. It also really got people interested. Whenever I brought up my quest “find an event at this event”, people loved the idea and would often try to help. Heck, sometimes they’d even tag along at the next one.
She’s cosplaying. Its PR IMO.
Nobody was busted, this is a clickbait post. Even the article just says they hired 2 cosplayers as entertainers, company never pretended that they were robots.
They’re cosplaying being a freedom warriors in this culture war. Keith Olbermann talked years ago about how Fox commentators just casually spoke to him as if they didn’t believe what they were spewing on air. They didn’t. It’s all a game or performance art. It’s disgusting.
Taylor Swift is a real billionaire, not a dude cosplaying as one. She got real lawyers
Furries. They’re some of the nicest people ever. I’m a cosplayer and our worlds intersect a lot. They raise more money for charity than any group as small as they are, they’re kind and accepting, and they’re wicked talented. I trust Furries before muggles anyday
In India, over 123 million people voted in the four states of Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal (home to 290 million people) for their state assemblies. These are influential states: two in the south, one in the east, and one in the northeast. The next national parliamentary election is not scheduled until 2029, so these elections are not being seen as a bellwether for the central government. However, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government facing challenges due to fuel and food inflation, these elections have become an indicator of his popularity. There are three immediate takeaways from this election: first, the level of state manipulation in the elections through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) certainlyundermined faith in the electoral process, since it was seen to have enabled Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to win in West Bengal (population 100 million); second, the Gen-Z phenomenon, or the post-ideological politics wave, has entered India through the victory of film star Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) in Tamil Nadu (population 77 million); third, with the defeat of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala (population 36 million), there will be no Communist-led government in any part of India for the first time in five decades. Anti-incumbency wave? The prevailing wisdom is that the sitting governments in the three states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala lost their elections in an anti-incumbency wave. But, on closer examination, this might be too simplistic an argument. For instance, in Kerala, impressive work by the Communist-led LDF government led to theabolition of extreme poverty (the first Indian state to do so, and the first place outside China) and to thereduction of the infant mortality rate below five per 1000 live births (lower than in the United States). There was no reason for the electorate to deliver to the LDF its most severe defeat in recent times. Modi’s central government used the entire state machinery to tackle the three governments because their leaders had led confrontations against the national government of Modi on several issues. The core problem is that Modi wants to undermine India’s federal system and centralize power in New Delhi. This has been strongly contested by non-BJP state governments, with the sharpest criticism coming from the states in southern India. Theargument made by the southern political leaders is that since they are economically dynamic, their populations have not grown as much as populations in the north, which means that in any revision of the national electoral map, they will lose power in the central legislature. In these state elections, Modi targeted all three leaders (Mamata Banerjee of West Bengal, M. K. Stalin of Tamil Nadu, and Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala) and defeated them. Part of the use of the state apparatus was by the elimination of atleast 2.7 million voters in West Bengal by the Election Commission of India, as well as the use of highly charged anti-Muslim language (notably of “infiltration” of migrants from Bangladesh into West Bengal) to polarize the electorate along religious lines. Both Banerjee and Stalin lost their own seats in the contest. Gen-Z comes to India? Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay, a major star in Tamil films, launched his party (TVM) through his 85,000 fan clubs, drawing on a long tradition in Tamil Nadu of film stars, fan clubs, and the political establishment. But there was something novel about his campaign. His entire mood was driven by digital fluency, awareness of social issues that captivate online audiences, and impatience with traditional hierarchies. The excitement of his campaign, the unwillingness to accept party loyalties, and the care with which Vijay’s team crafted political messages to induce cultural rather than political appeal stretched his popularity beyond the lines of the polarized electorate. Born in 1974, Vijay reached out to younger voters in a way that eclipsed the otherwise popular administration of Stalin (born 1953) and the other principal opponent, Edappadi Palaniswami (born 1954). But the Vijay phenomenon is strong on imagery and weak on policy or administrative competence. It carries forward theGen-Z protests of Bangladesh, which resulted in aright-wing victory at the polls, and theGen-Z protests of Nepal, which resulted in a government characterized by right-of-centerincoherence. In many ways, the victory of Modi’s BJP in West Bengal felt as if it were equally formed by a Gen-Z wave, this time a type of cosplay Hindutva, Hindu power masked in casual anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric and in the vagueness of anti-politics. Social media platforms ran narratives that focused on young people, with themes such as anti-corruption and transparency sounding like anti-older people. It helped that the BJP’s leader Suvendu Adhikari (born 1970) was younger than Banerjee (born 1955) and so positioned himself as the coming of a new generation. Beneath the smiles of the younger candidate and the social media glitz of the West Bengal BJP lies the disenfranchisement of voters, the religious bigotry of the campaigning, and the hoary nature of the BJP’s Hindutva ideology – rooted as it is in an ancient fantasy created only a hundred years ago. Media-savvy personalities felled the need for real ideas to solve real problems. This is the essence of the Gen-Z phenomenon, much more than young people taking to the streets to demand this or that change. Migrant voters The BJP in West Bengal targeted migrants from Bangladesh, but that left a bad taste in the mouth of other migrants. According to the 2011 Census, there were 456 million workers in India who migrated within the country – more than one third of the population. But most of these workers cannot vote in the states where they work because voting is tied to a permanent home address, and most migrants remain registered in their native villages. As a result, workers must return home to vote, which is both expensive and inconvenient and therefore results in low voter turnout in their areas. One of the great limits of Indian democratic institutions is this casual disenfranchisement of migrant workers, mostly from the poorer states in India’s north, who travel to the more dynamic states in India’s south. Interestingly, a candidate in the constituency of Domkal – Mostafizur “Rana” Rahaman of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPIM—addressed the migrant work issue head-on. A young and dynamic politician, Rana not only campaigned in his district but journeyed through India’s south to galvanize migrant workers to go to the polls. Workerstraveled back to Domkal to vote for Rana, and four hundred families with workers out of the state joined the CPIM before the elections. Rana’s victory spells the end of the Left’s drought in West Bengal, which had begun with the defeat of the Left Front government in 2011 after thirty-four years in power. His victory is that of the migrant worker in India, far less talked about than Gen-Z but perhaps with far more necessity of consideration. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa. He is the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi). He also appeared in the films Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017). This article was produced by Globetrotter. The post Regional elections in India and the growing myth of Gen-Z appeared first on Peoples Dispatch. From Peoples Dispatch via This RSS Feed.
Post by CollarSpider Socials: FurAffinity
some more pics: https://dduane.tumblr.com/post/693368671639306240/birdsheadrevisited-jay-kay-klein-early-trekkies
Straight after a German case study on the antisemitism scam this week in the German press, comes another closer to home. In the Guardian, unsurprisingly. In it the German ‘antisemitism commissioner’ and the Israeli ambassador claimed the commissioner had been the victim of an ‘antisemitic’ arson attack by the ‘terrorist’ Palestine solidarity movement. It turned out that antisemitism had nothing to do with it — the two men accused of starting the fire are mates and business partners of… the antisemitism commissioner. None of the German scammers have retracted their smears, of course. UK media is part of the political establishment The UK media and political establishment (and apparently the Met Police) are desperate to derail the Green Party’s political surge in the run-up to next week’s local elections. So they’ve been wheeling out all the old tricks of the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam against the Greens and party leader Zack Polanski. Polanski is Jewish, but attacking Jews must be ok if he’s a leftie, since they’re all at it — including Labour Friends of Genocide’s worst horrors. Including the Guardian, which was one of the worst offenders in the first series starring Jeremy Corbyn. But being the Guardian, the hit-piece has to be dressed up a bit and all that. So instead of the outright smears of the openly right-wing rags, the Guardian’s comes in costume, cosplaying a ‘both sides’ ‘balanced’ piece. But of course, it isn’t really. In 2019, the BBC put out a blatant anti-Labour hit-job titled “Is Labour antisemitic”. That programme edited quotes from emails sent by Corbyn’s team to make them look bad, completely changing the meaning of the originals. But it also wheeled out a string of ‘victims’ of supposed ‘Labour antisemitism‘. They all stared wistfully into space as they made their claims. And they were all, every one of them, die-hard Corbyn-haters — and staunch supporters of Israel. At least one had worked in the Israeli embassy. Panorama ‘forgot’ to mention that little fact. The programme completely misled viewers. The BBC marked its own homework and decided that those who complained about the programme were wrong. Guardian — start as you mean to smear on So to the Guardian. Its own hit-piece starts with a quote from a “Green party member for more than 30 years”, Elise Benjamin. It claims that Benjamin “admits to bittersweet feelings” about the Greens’ electoral surge and notes that she was “involved in drawing up the party’s guidance on antisemitism”. So Ms Benjamin isn’t altogether sure she’s happy the Greens are doing well. That should be a red flag — but the article, unsurprisingly, skims past it and then quotes her calling for a “review” of the guidance: Now that we have such a large membership, I think there needs to be an urgent review of how to make our complaints process fit for purpose. She doesn’t say what ‘purpose’ it needs to be fit for. The Guardian doesn’t ask. Nor does it wonder what she might mean — at least not enough to actually do any journalism on it and dig a bit. Maybe the writers already knew, maybe not. But Ms Benjamin is not the neutral, wistful commenter she might have been presented as. Her claims that anti-Zionist Greens are similar to the far right is quoted, but never scrutinised. You see, Elise Benjamin is a committed supporter of Israel. On her X profile, she describes herself as an “Indigenous Judean”. “Judea and Samaria” is the term used by settler-extremists to describe the occupied West Bank that Israel is continuing to rapidly steal from its Palestinian owners. Transparent motives Ok, so far so bad. But then you look at what’s in her X feed and it’s all even further downhill. For example, she reposts a post by Nicole Lampert, one of the ‘usual suspects’ of the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam. The post contains a screaming headline about ‘Jew hate’ in the UK: Life for Jews in the UK…#NeverAgainIsNow https://t.co/7zKs6qFJhf — Elise Benjamin (@EliseDB) May 1, 2026 Ms Benjamin is right on board with the campaign to outlaw anti-genocide marches, as she makes clear in another repost of Lampert that wants marches banned, but “so much more” too: Absolutely this…#NeverAgainIsNow https://t.co/az17MA6caW — Elise Benjamin (@EliseDB) May 1, 2026 She’s perfectly happy to quote the Israeli propaganda account mistitled ‘Honest Reporting’ for a bit more moral-panic-whipping: #NeverAgainIsNow https://t.co/PlDmyiDtD3 — Elise Benjamin (@EliseDB) April 30, 2026 And she’s more than willing to claim that Israel didn’t really drive out 800,000 Palestinians in the Nakba to steal their land. That’s just ‘Iran-backed propaganda’: So many people believe Iran backed propaganda. They need to read this. https://t.co/SJbIMFJuKk — Elise Benjamin (@EliseDB) April 30, 2026 But Benjamin’s efforts for Israel are not just on X. She was one of the main agitators sabotaging the recent Green party conference motion that would have declared Zionism as the racist ideology it is: Elisa Benjamin, a founder of Jewish Greens, is encouraging party members to back the emergency motion, which must secure 50 co-proposers to be debated on Saturday afternoon following the main motions. She is hopeful that the antizionist motion will not pass. But a pre-conference workshop held online on Tuesday attracted some 120 people, which Benjamin said was “worrying because there could be block voting going on. “But even if [the antizionist motion] doesn’t get through, I hope it’s a wake-up call. Some of us have been trying to warn the party for two years now about this shift,” she said. … … The antizionist motion “dehumanises” her and undermines the party’s values of non-violence and equality, she went on. “It shouldn’t even be on the conference floor. “We are fighting for our identity,” she added, stating that she was “disgusted” by claims from some party members that opposition to the antizionist motion was driven by an “Israel lobby”. … … Polanski has indicated he might support the motion if it referred specifically to the policies of Benjamin Netanyahu, but Benjamin dismissed this as “a cop-out”. … It feels very hollow – almost like a bereavement,” she said, referring to the party’s recent surge in the polls.” Silence speaks volumes And in March, Benjamin was interviewed by former Labour Israel advocate Yvonne Maxwell in a training session on how to resist ‘antisemitism’ in the Green party. Maxwell has called the UN’s humanitarian special rapporteur Francesca Albanese a “vile woman”. The very premise of the discussion reinforced the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam, claiming that: changes in left wing party politics … led to problems of antisemitism in the Labour Party, primarily during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. In March 2024, long before Polanski was party leader, Ieuan Einion described Benjamin as having: a long track record of slinging mud at Corbyn. I wrote to a friend of mine who is a senior Green complaining about her downright lies in 2022. His response was “what do you expect, she’s a politician, her job is to attack other parties.” None of this was hard to dig out, along with much more that would make this article too long to read. The fact that the Guardian article omits all of it and interprets everything that follows. Like the fruit of the poisoned tree, any ‘both-sidesing’ that flows from it becomes mere window-dressing: an attempt to avoid being seen as the hit-piece it is. The nod to Israel’s genocide — window dressing. The equivalence drawn between the ‘necessary struggle’ of European Zionists to take ‘their’ ‘Jewish homeland’ from the people whose land it actually was: background scenery painted in disgustingly colonial colours. Chat about Polanski’s broad support and electoral successes so far — just padding to hide the barbs. Guardian’s both-sidesing is complicity And even in that, the dishonesty stinks to heaven: the fact that Zionism means the forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from their land is only “seen” as inevitable. “Critics” of Israel say the two are inextricably linked, but it is not acknowledged as the obvious inevitability it unquestionably is. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not presented as genocide — despite the findings of the UN, World Court, human rights groups and genocide experts that it is genocide. Instead, “the party’s willingness to describe Israel’s assault on Gaza as a genocide” is not a stand on established fact. It is treated as some kind of electoral blunder that: has opened a space for bad-faith attacks from opponents … and [for] voters [to] be sceptical about criticisms that they see as eliding the two subjects. And, of course, the last word is given to Polanski’s — and the anti-genocide movement’s — opponents, to make sure readers who plough through to the end get the right takeaway. An unnamed critic of the Greens’ opposition to genocide is quoted; so also the ‘apology’ to him from Adrian Ramsay. The obvious point is that Ramsay has no business apologising on behalf of a party that just resoundingly rejected him as a potential leader in favour of Polanski. But — naturally — that point is only conspicuous by its absence. A mistake that must not be repeated In its own way, the Guardian’s hit job is just as prime an example of the way the Israel lobby is trying to transfer its ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam to the Greens as any right-wing rag’s and any Israel-bought politician’s. Polanski made the mistake this week of validating the tactic by allowing himself to be pushed into apologising for the ‘crime’ of objecting to police brutality against a mentally-collapsed and immobilised man because the Israel lobby demanded it. The tactics are transparent, and only get more so the closer you look — they work only because the ‘mainstream’ press never looks. Polanski knows this and apologised to Corbyn for falling for them prior to 2019. He can’t afford to make the same mistake he did this week — and Corbyn made in during his era — again. Featured image via the Canary By Skwawkbox From Canary via This RSS Feed.
Lihat kiriman asli pada platform media sosial terkait.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has quietly started looking for suppliers to provide covert surveillance cameras for its vehicles to spy on benefit claimants. An early engagement notice on the government’s Find a Tender service reveals the DWP’s plans to deploy this technology to monitor welfare claimants in real-time. And naturally, it plans to bung a handful of vulture capitalist firms the lucrative £2m honour of providing it. But even more concerningly — it signals an alarming step up in the DWP’s politically-motivated war on poor and disabled people. This is because the multimillion prospective contract exposes itself as part of a broader “Live Surveillance strategy” in the DWP’s ideological crackdown on supposed benefit fraud. DWP surveillance ramps up with live covert cameras Public sector tech-focused outlet Public Technology spotted the new contract on the government’s commercial portal. The notice calls for suppliers that can provide “covert vehicle cameras” that are: integrated discreetly inside and outside the vehicles to enable surveillance operations. Significantly, the notice details how the DWP wants these to be: designed to remain hidden from public view while providing clear, reliable footage. With the ability to provide high quality footage in all weather conditions and during hours of darkness. In tandem with this, the notice lays out requirements for “Encrypted Live Streaming” capability. This asks for “real-time transmission of video” to DWP staff accessing its “viewing platform”. And the DWP wants surveillance staff to be able to operate the livestream recording equipment remotely. It calls for technology that enables them to: control cameras, initiate or stop recordings. The notice indicates that the DWP will likely split the award between suppliers. However it also notes that it would like to “speak to” single providers that can meet all the requirements. As Public Technology noted, the DWP plans to open bidding for this in mid-May. It estimates that the contract would come into effect from September for up to a possible five years. This would include a potential 2-year extension, taking it to 2031. DWP covert surveillance officers The new technology will form part of the institutionalised surveillance infrastructure rife at the DWP. Writing for the Big Issue in 2024, the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey previously revealed how the DWP was recruiting ‘Covert Surveillance Officers’ (CSOs) to snoop on benefit claimants. The job adverts highlighted how the government “utilises covert surveillance to gather evidence to prove/disprove offences”. However, Charlton-Dailey noted these did not give any clarity on what would in fact constitute an “offence”. What they did make clear, however, was that DWP CSOs were going after benefit claimants specifically. At the time, the DWP tried to deny this and deflected with nonsense about serious and organised economic crime. But the ads, and evidence since, has made it patently obvious that it’s ordinary, working class and disabled people who the department are ensnaring in these Orwellian surveillance systems. Cosplaying cops and tailing claimants An undercover investigation by the Canary later confirmed that CSOs’ role involves investigating “low level crime” as opposed to organised crime. And that, of course, also meant the DWP targeting disabled claimants in these stings. A department counter fraud employee described the DWP monitoring disability benefit claimants and gathering evidence to “show” they have faked their claims. But most perturbingly, the investigation revealed how the DWP operates its own fleet of cars for CSOs to tail claimants. This unveiled that the department’s CSOs could even engage in cop-style covert pursuits up to 70 mph. The high speed tailing forms part of the officers’ mobile surveillance operations for gathering evidence of fraud. The Canary uncovered how retired police are delivering training to DWP staff on ‘safely’ conducting these road pursuits. In other words, the department is treating poor and disabled people like criminal suspects. And part of its fraud investigations quite literally involves cosplaying cops and tracking claimants on motorways at the national speed limit. Now, the new live-streaming surveillance technology will further facilitate the DWP’s covert benefit-snooping operations. So, CSOs future car pursuit could soon involve live and high definition footage of claimants — so the DWP can violate their human rights in real-time. Benefit fraud: a manufactured myth convenient to the DWP Of course, this all arrives in the context of the Labour government’s routine headline-grabbing clampdown on benefit fraud. In reality of course, this narrative is one of the DWP’s own making — since it’s literally feeding a constant stream of benefit fraudster stories to the mainstream press. The DWP would have you believe that benefit fraud is systemic. This is despite the fact that fraud and error account for a fraction of the government’s overall budget. Actual figures for so-called fraud in the benefits system are next to non-existent. As of 2025, it was £6.5bn — just 2.2% of total government spending on welfare. This pales in comparison to £47bn in annual tax avoidance and evasion. But unsurprisingly, you don’t see HMRC coughing up £2m installing covert cameras in cars to tail billionaire tax evaders. The Canary’s previous investigation made apparent that the DWP’s counter-fraud staffing levels appear to far exceed HMRC’s. So it’s obvious the government is pouring far more into the DWP’s fraud surveillance bureaucracy, period. On top of this, the majority of benefit fraud is also based on the department’s misleading assumptions and guesswork. But of course, this is from a DWP that prefers to presume claimant wrongdoing over recognising the unnavigable nature of its labyrinthine welfare systems that make claimant mistakes inevitable. Next to its new bank snooping powers, the new contract demonstrates that invasive surveillance is now a deeply embedded feature at the DWP. Criminalising claimants Ultimately, forking out £2m for covert vehicle cameras makes it explicitly clear that the DWP has a hell-bent preoccupation for turning vulnerable welfare recipients into suspects. Of course, this is nothing new. It has long served the DWP’s ableist agenda. Its undeniable obsession with turning the public against claimants has everything to do with manufacturing consent for sweeping cuts. The notice plainly shows a department continuing to ramp up its sinister fascist strategies to criminalise poor and disabled people. But at the end of the day, the latest “live surveillance” plans look right at home at a DWP that puts cost-cutting first, and the lives and dignity of marginalised welfare claimants last. Feature image via the Canary By Hannah Sharland From Canary via This RSS Feed.
::: spoiler Image Text Japanese “Goth” should probably not be called “Goth” at all. Although the fashions sported by the alternative crowd in Harajuku (Tokyo’s equivalent of Camden) were largely inspired by the Western Goth movement, J-Goths tend to enter this subculture via different roots: either anime “cosplay” (dressing up as your favorite anime character) or through Japan’s own alternative music scene: Visual Kei, often thought to be started by the Japanese rock band X-Japan. Visual Kei bands vary hugely in sound. They can either take the form of heavy metal (eg. Dir-en-Grey) or something more like cheesy Euro-pop (L’Arc-en-Ciel, Malice Mizer). What’s important, however, is the band’s look, which takes Goth, Punk and Glam elements and blends it all into a unique, androgynous combination. Very often, these mostly all-male bands will attempt to look as feminine as possible (to the point of dressing in drag). This style has recently come full circle, with Westerners now borrowing fashion elements from the Japanese. The most popular and distinctive of these is undoubtedly the “Gothic Lolita” look (a kind of cross between Goth, Victorian fashions, Alice in Wonderland and French maid), which has now become a part of the Western Gothic spectrum. ::: Source / more: https://www.deviantart.com/trellia/gallery/25271332/goth-stereo-types Reposted with permission. The oldest ones are from 2005, and some of the info is dated and/or debateable, but there’s still a lot of truth there.
A seventeen-second video shows a dark-haired man rapping his pale knuckles gently below the tinted windows of a silver minivan. He stands back, shoving his hands into the pockets of his puffer coat, his boyish face twisted into a severe expression. The car drives off, and the camera pans to follow it down the suburban Minneapolis road. No words are spoken. Splashed across the screen, a bright red and white caption reads, “ICE was circling a local elementary school. I knocked on their door to have a conversation, but they ran away instead.” The man is Matt Little, 41, a former mayor and state senator from nearby Lakeville seen as the front-runner to replace outgoing Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional district. He’s staking much of his campaign on one of the most politically salient issues in the Twin Cities. In a series of videos pinned to his campaign Instagram under the name “GET ICE OUT,” Little documents himself at protests and in encounters with immigration enforcement agents. “When I’m elected to congress,” wrote Little in a January post, “we will hold ICE accountable.” Not everyone in his district is buying it. “For me, it smells like, ‘I’m going to try to use this to bolster my chances in a time of crisis,’” Paul Peterson, a local ICE rapid responder, told The Intercept. “Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?” [ Related Trump’s War on America](https://theintercept.com/2026/01/16/trump-abolish-ice-renee-good-jonathan-ross/) In his mostly suburban Minneapolis district, Little’s top political issue is at once highly motivating and highly fraught. As 3,000 federal agents descended on Minnesota for “Operation Metro Surge,” killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good and wounding or abducting scores more, Minnesotans who had not so much as lifted a protest sign a year ago joined ICE rapid response networks. Given the gravity of agents’ often unpredictable violence, many saw their work as putting their lives on the line. Democratic politicians are eager to turn engaged protesters and observers into door-knockers and voters. Nationwide examples point to a proof of concept: Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka’s approval ratings skyrocketed after he was arrested for trespassing while monitoring an immigration detention facility. Brad Lander, then a New York City mayoral candidate who is now running for Congress, saw his star rise after his arrest outside of a Manhattan immigration court. Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh finished second in a crowded primary after generating high-profile headlines for her federal indictment over a protest outside an ICE processing center near Chicago. (Baraka’s charges were dropped days after his arrest, and on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said they planned to dismiss felony charges against Abughazaleh. Lander rejected a deal to drop his charges last year and said he’d prefer to go to trial.) “That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.” In the area around Minneapolis, the surge was “surreal,” Little told The Intercept in a joint interview with his wife, Coco. “It was kind of all-encompassing there for many months. We knew we had to be out there. That was kind of personal for me because my wife is an immigrant.” The Intercept spoke with nearly a dozen people involved in ICE rapid response networks in and around the Minneapolis suburbs, including in leadership positions, several of whom felt that Little was “cosplaying” as an observer and overstating his activism for political clout. Others speculated that the outrage was manufactured to ruin his chances at the nomination. There’s an inherent tension between enraged protesters who take matters into their own hands, outside of official political channels, and politicians who want to harness their rage into electoral energy. It raises the question of who gets to wear the mantle of resistance and blurs the line between when politicians are supportive — and when they’re extractive. “There are many different legitimate ways for politicians to amplify our movements, like resistance to ICE,” said Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard Law School, “but how they do it is of the utmost importance.” In the suburbs of Minneapolis, the question of “how” would eventually tear a small community in half. The street memorial site where Alex Pretti was shot and killed by two federal agents, seen on Jan. 31, 2026, on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis. Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images Jessica Vinar carries with her the hallmarks of progressive Minnesota politics. She’s a teacher, wearing a school lanyard adorned with pride pins, political buttons, and a small 3D-printed whistle, the preferred ICE-alerting tool seen on residents’ keychains and in small bowls at cafe entrances across the city. In a bustling coffee shop in the heart of Minneapolis’s South Side, Vinar recounted the events of February 17, when she joined a group watching the roads for blacked-out SUVs in the once-sleepy Minneapolis suburb of Savage. An online ICE-monitoring website had reported multiple federal agents armed with weapons and clad in tactical gear. Vinar learned that one of her companions was congressional candidate Matt Little, and the others were journalists from the New York Times. Dashcam videos from the scene shared with The Intercept show Little standing with two other people next to a dark gray car that appears to be his, and one white SUV, which he identifies as ICE’s. “There’s two more down that way,” Vinar tells Little in the video. He responds: “All right, will you hang out here with us for a little bit?” There’s a six-minute gap in the dashcam video, when Vinar’s car is off and she’s standing outside. Vinar said she watched as the journalists photographed Little interacting with ICE agents and standing outside of a home. Then, “I hear him say something like, ‘I’m gonna see if they’ll chase me,’” Vinar recalled. “And they all pile into his vehicle, and they drive off.” The day’s events received coverage in the New York Times and The Intercept, and Little confirmed this version of the events. But Vinar and Little disagree on what happened next. [ Related Federal Agents Are Intimidating Legal Observers at Their Homes: “They Know Where You Live”](https://theintercept.com/2026/03/05/ice-cbp-minnesota-surveillance-intimidation-observers/) In Vinar’s telling, she was left standing outside, alone, with an ICE vehicle behind her. When she gets back in her car and turns the camera back on, Little’s gray SUV is gone, and three other cars she identified as ICE’s are present. Masked people who appear to be federal agents drive past Vinar in the white SUV, waving and recording her. Then Little returns, following the white ICE vehicle as it drives past Vinar’s car a second time. The whole thing is over in a matter of minutes. Little, who said he has not seen the dashcam video himself, told The Intercept that he thought the only ICE vehicle in the area had pulled out to follow him when he left, so he didn’t believe he’d left Vinar with the agents by herself. Vinar claims he did know and notes that, as captured in her video, she told him. Little told The Intercept that he believed that the additional vehicles she’d mentioned had left. Several rapid responders in the area told The Intercept they have a strict protocol to never leave another observer alone with ICE, though one said people do get left alone from time to time. (Several activists spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from federal officials.) Peterson, who patrols for rapid response throughout the wider region and was in the chat, said he “isn’t politically involved,” and did not know who Little was ahead of the incident. “I don’t care about the theatrics of it,” he said, “[but] he put one of my people at risk, and that’s not OK.” The incident blew up across an intricate network of Signal chats, the local rapid response groups’ digital, decentralized town square. Was Little “trying to be helpful,” one chat member posed to The Intercept, or, as some suspected, “was Matt just staging a photo op?” In a message reviewed by The Intercept, one person accused Vinar of changing her story after realizing it was Little. In Vinar’s initial message, she said that ICE agents had followed Little and circled back to harass her; she then clarified that Little had left the scene with agents still present. Another observer wrote that Little was claiming Vinar’s story was “typical last-minute misinformation.” Little told The Intercept he “can only speak from” his own experience, but he and his wife are framing the activists’ anger as a manufactured political play. Vinar caucused for his opponent, state Rep. Kaela Berg, at a convention following the incident, Little added in a written statement after his interview. Pointing to his wife, he wrote, “Coco believed and still believes this is being spread as a political attack.” Coco also reached out to Savage resident Mark Kloempken and his wife, whose home was at the center of the February 17 incident. Kloempken said he was enjoying the day’s mild weather, unconcerned about the ICE agent parked by his driveway. “I’m waving to them and saying ‘hi,’” he said. “They seem friendly. They’re not a big deal.” Kloempken left to get some lunch, playing “Ice, Ice, baby,” as he drove off. “[She] hates that I did that,” he said, indicating his wife, who asked to remain anonymous when they spoke to The Intercept over Zoom from their Savage home. The couple had met Little a week prior to the incident. They said the politician was handing out whistles in their neighborhood when he offered to take Kloempken’s wife along with him to an immigration raid on a nearby apartment building. “I’m old,” she told The Intercept — meaning, she’s not in any of the Signal groups. But she believes that Little was not being performative. “The day I went on that impromptu ride with him, there were no pictures, no photos taken of anything,” she said, adding, “he had me film what was going on so that he could drive.” She said Little instructed her not to go out alone. “You always have to have two people,” she recalled him saying. At what point do politicians’ shows of solidarity become performative, or even counterproductive? It’s a question that has troubled Hansford of Howard Law for years. Hansford, 45, got his start in activism in earnest in Ferguson, Missouri, shortly after police officer Darren Wilson shot an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown, igniting a firestorm of activism across the country. Over the years, Hansford has worked closely with politicians and movement organizers on shaping policy and finding common ground. “If you look up ‘extractive’ in the dictionary, it will be a picture of Nancy Pelosi with kente cloth on.” Those relationships can end up being exploitative, said Hansford, pointing to the aftermath of the protests against police brutality after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In 2020, after Democrats harnessed the energy of Black Lives Matter and other mass mobilization efforts to win a trifecta in the White House, the Senate, and the House, they failed to pass any of the signature legislation that movement leaders were calling for, instead favoring stunts like an infamous photo of Democratic leadership kneeling in red and green Ghanaian kente stoles. “If you look up ‘extractive’ in the dictionary, it will be a picture of Nancy Pelosi with kente cloth on,” said Hansford. Still, “it’s smart for [Democratic] candidates to tap into the energy around ICE,” said Nina Smith, a political communications strategist and former senior adviser to Stacy Abrams. “Their constituents are being harmed and impacted by this financially, mentally, and at times physically. So they have to talk about this issue.” In Minnesota, activists did point to examples of politicians who were quietly protecting the community without looking for a political moment. Many cited Aurin Chowdhury, a 29-year-old Minneapolis City Council member who speaks with the exasperation of someone who is as tired of the political establishment as she is committed to challenging it. By the time the federal occupation had ended, Chowdhury had been tear-gassed several times and became a mainstay in anti-ICE activities throughout the city. [ Related Inside the Somali-Led Resistance to Trump’s Assault on Minneapolis](https://theintercept.com/2026/01/17/somali-lresistance-ice-patrol-minneapolis/) “When you have masked men and guns occupying your city by the thousands, killing people, taking children, separating them from their families, terrorizing pregnant women — that reality becomes right in front of your face,” Chowdhury said. “It felt impossible to just sit at my computer and answer emails, or try to hold, like, a constituent meeting.” Tucked away in a quiet corner of city hall, Chowdhury seems aware of how easily popular movements can be used for individual political gains. “Just listen to what people are saying.” “I worry that that’s something that can happen when the struggle of people is co-opted by high-level Democratic leaders who are seen as elites and are only willing to take incremental steps versus, like, actually addressing the heart of the issue,” she said. She urged Democratic party leadership to worry less about questions like “What is the message? And how do we get the American people on our side?” “Maybe it’s just listen to what people are saying,” Chowdhury said, “and be bold and take risks.” Anti-ICE demonstrators seen in Minneapolis on Jan. 31, 2026. Photo: Madison Thorn/Anadolu via Getty Images Matt Little is polite. He says “whoa” with a Midwesterner’s elongated O-sound, revealing more surprise than irritation when met with a new accusation. He has spent most of his adult life on the political scene. He was elected to serve on the Lakeville City Council in 2010, when he was 25 years old. Two years later, while in law school, he became the youngest mayor in Lakeville’s history, defeating heavy outside spending from the Koch brothers’ super PAC Americans for Prosperity with a large war chest largely from labor unions. After one term as mayor, he was elected to the state Senate as a member of the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party representing Lakeville, Farmington, and southern Dakota County, where he also served one term before he was unseated by Republican Zach Duckworth. As a congressional candidate, Little has positioned himself as a standard-fare progressive, focusing his campaign on largely local issues like affordability and “getting ICE out of Minnesota.” His website boasts a section on an “Anti-ICE Bill of Rights,” which calls for a series of reforms, including banning federal agents from wearing masks and cutting ICE funding to pre-Trump levels. Little has not joined calls from other progressive candidates to “Abolish ICE” — instead calling to “replace” the agency with a different federal immigration agency. Not unlike in his mayoral campaign over a decade prior, Little received endorsements from several labor unions, including the Minnesota Postal Workers Union and National Nurses United. Little says that he’s “only posted a small margin” of the work he’s done on ICE and seemed confused by accusations that he was chasing clout. He sent The Intercept a list of roughly a dozen instances over the last six months where he claims he responded to ICE activity — some of which were documented on his social media. “When you are in a leadership position in the community, and you have a platform to highlight the awful things that ICE is doing. You should use it,” he told The Intercept. In addition to his political work, Matt Little is a practicing attorney with a personal injury firm called Little Law. In 2021, he represented Kami Sanders, then on the local school council, in a case where she accused a school board member of campaign finance violations. In February, she called him to ream him out. “It would be super helpful if you would get your ass out here and actually help us,” she recalls telling Little over the phone, adding, “and leave your camera crews at home!” Sanders is one of the older activists in the network of rapid responders. She has salt-and-pepper hair, vibrant and commanding eyes, and a face worn with decades of political work. She didn’t grow up in Minnesota, and instead carries a prominent East Texas accent and a homegrown personality to match. She answers questions by telling long, profanity-laced stories that crescendo into fiery one-liners like, “You can go fuck yourself until the cows come home.” In the southern suburbs, four Minnesota state senators established one of the first rapid-response networks in the area and later designated themselves as the sole administrators of the group’s Signal thread — an unusual format for Minnesota anti-ICE resistance. According to Sanders, who administers the Dakota County Signal group, which includes Lakeville, while many elected officials were valuable participants in rapid response activities, power imbalances among some leaders and residents quickly created a rift within the network. “They would only dispatch in the areas that they were elected,” said Sanders. “That feels political to me.” Still, she credits them for showing up and for not publicizing their involvement for political gain. Sanders said she cannot say the same for Little. “There are other politicians in this who actually have been boots on the ground and are not using it. I mean, one of his opponents has been boots on the ground, and you never hear her talk about it,” said Sanders, referring to Berg. The fact that the congressional candidate received coverage in the country’s premier mainstream newspaper appears to have further riled some of the activists. “When the New York Times article came out,” said Peterson, “everybody was kind of like, wait, do you guys see him around here? Because I sure haven’t.” Peterson, a former military member, police officer, and longtime Republican from Kentucky, espoused a persistent suspicion of American politics. He said the occupation of the Twin Cities prompted a shift in his political beliefs — just not the sort that you can vote for. His deep skepticism of politicians extends to Little, whom he accused of “grifting” off the movement. By March, Little’s campaign was in crisis management mode. At a meet-and-greet at a crowded local restaurant, dodging plates of chicken fingers and quesadillas, Little admitted that he had “some apologies to make.” “I got incredibly defensive,” Little said, his hands hovering by his heart as he spoke**,** “and I thought it was just a political attack. It became very clear to me from conversations today and yesterday that there was no political motivation.” Supporting Vinar’s version of the story, he added, “It also became very clear to me that ICE was still in the neighborhood. And had I communicated better with observers that were there, I would have known that.” A month later, however, Little is adamant that he led “the only remaining ICE vehicle away” from the house that day. “If [Vinar] is saying that ICE drove by that house again after I left, then yes, I believe her and have told her that directly and multiple times,” he wrote in a statement to The Intercept on Monday. “But when I left, there were no ICE vehicles remaining.” He added that he was frustrated Vinar had not released her videos from the scene. **“**If this isn’t about politics, then just release the full dash cam video so everyone can see what actually happened,” Little wrote. “It is campaign season,” his wife said in the couple’s joint interview. Coco, who is active in the rapid response Signal chats and has been heavily involved in her husband’s campaign, said that Vinar “probably was very concerned on that day because of what happened, but I think some are definitely using it for political gain.” “I hate to see her being used this way,” Coco added. Vinar said she was originally hesitant to speak out for fear of dividing the movement. But she couldn’t stomach the idea of the months of fear and work she and her friends had done in the district to be co-opted. “It feels like he’s using residents here as props,” she said. “And that doesn’t speak well to anyone, but it really doesn’t speak well to someone who is promising to represent us in our government.” Correction: April 29, 2026, 6:23 p.m. ET This story has been updated to clarify which of Little’s confrontations with ICE on February 17 received media coverage. The post ICE Watchers Worry Democrats Are Trying to Co-Opt Their Movements For Votes appeared first on The Intercept. From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.
Activists accuse Minnesota House candidate Matt Little of “cosplaying” as a protester, blurring the line between solidarity and opportunism.
But then they wouldn’t get to cosplay as action heroes.
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