Let them know (politely) how cowardly they are, why you won’t support them, and why you’ll tell everyone you know not to support them: https://www.amnesty.org/en/about-us/contact/
I still have some contacts in Amnesty from when I went through sone interview rounds for a position I didn’t end up taking. They all seemed pretty friendly and direct, and like they’d be strongly opposed to this. Kinda tempted to mail them to see whether they have anything to say.
Huge nothing burger. Dude replied pretty quick, but it was just standard “isn’t authorised to comment on the issue” stuff. Can’t blame him, I guess. Entirely different department in an entirely different country.
I understand being upset with AMNESTY, but having people pull support is exactly what JK Rowling’s goal is. This call to action is a house dividing against itself.
If a wall has a hole in it, you patch the hole, or build a new wall. Tearing it down before building a new wall would demonstrate a level of recklessness bordering on suicidality.
That seems very radical. Why entirely abolish an organization that generally fights for the greater good, just because it failed once or a few times? What is going to take its place?
Have I ever implied that nothing should be done?
Of course we need to fight for change.
I simply doubt that axing the entire organization is a good solution. That would be like fighting your potential ally.
We’re not axing them, we don’t have that power it’s just rhetoric. We’re pressuring them. They need to know that the general public will NOT stand for billionaire bigots sticking their ugly noses in our affairs. That’s the position we’re in now because THEY caved.
Most of the people who enabled the Holocaust did so by convincing themselves what they were doing was for the greater good.
The ordinary German police officers who did most of the actual grunt work of rounding people up? Those who didn’t actively support it probably told themselves, “I’m just enforcing the law. I may not agree with it, but I can’t judge the law. And if I don’t follow orders, I’ll lose my job. Then I won’t be able to do any good at all in the community, including arresting actual thieves and killers.”
The university professor that handed a list of Jewish students to the Gestapo? “I don’t support this. I have nothing against Jewish people. But if I don’t do this, I’ll lose my job, and then I won’t be able to help any students at all.”
Sure, the worst crimes of the Holocaust were carried out by true monsters that fully supported it. But the vast majority of the actual work was carried out by people “just following orders.” And I’m sure they told themselves all sorts of stories about how they were picking the least evil or destructive path.
There’s a reason in On Tyranny, the first rule is Don’t Comply in Advance. Authoritarians can accomplish some of their goals through direct state power, but most of their authority is just given to them by cowards not wanting a fight. Look at Trump’s attempts targeting the healthcare of minors. He issued a completely illegal executive order trying to ban minors from receiving trans healthcare. He has absolutely no authority to do so. Those hospitals that have fought back have won easily in court. But a lot of hospital administrators, even those in blue states, are craven cowards. We saw a lot of hospitals in blue states complying with this illegal order rather than put up a fight.
What Amnesty should have done is use this as a fundraising opportunity. Do you have any idea what kind of funding and publicity they could have achieved if they had stood up to the witch? Sure she’s a billionaire, but Amnesty is not some small operation on a ragtag budget. They have 2500 employees and a budget in the hundreds of millions. They have the money to hire lawyers. And they could easily have used the fight as a massive fundraising opportunity. The ads write themselves. “We stand for the rights of even the most vilified people!”
Instead they chose the path of cowardice. They’ve damned themselves.
Why support an organisation that won’t support us? That’s just pointless. They’ve made their position clear: They don’t care about us enough to stand by us.
What they should have done is take up the fight and start a fundraiser if needed. Instead they decided to be useless cowards and run away.
The idea is to put pressure on them in hopes they’ll do the right thing, and if not (as is most likely), then put your support towards someone who will, instead.
It’s as mercenary as deciding they didn’t want to spend the financial and political capital on a war against child-wizard-nazi-Karen given the way the shit winds are blowing, Randy
No, they caved to legal threats. That’s an entirely different thing to agreeing with these anti-rights people. Their opinion is in the documents that got pulled but they’re not strong or brave enough to stand by them.
Or they may really be reviewing them to republish when they’re sure they can legally defend every statement in there.
Not having the guts to follow through when attempting to fight for a cause is not collaborating against that cause. Sheesh.
E: What you are teaching Amnesty, and anyone else watching, is that it is better not to try to fight for human rights. Because if you ever have to take a step back, you will be dragged through the mud.
If that’s how you feel, let them know that in the first paragraph, and in the second explain why they should have stood up to her and her anti-trans-rights tyranny. Don’t let them throw trans people under her bus and think people won’t care. Let them know how disappointed you are that such a great organization, which produced such a truthful call to justice, would fold rather than defend its truth in court just because the hate has deep pockets. Remind them that there’s plenty of evidence showing the list is correct and if they counter-sue they could reach into those deep pockets and win enough to fund years more of their good work in the world.
Jk Rowling’s? The UK government that places the burden of proof in libel cases on the defendent to prove that their statement is true in a court of law, while the plaintiff just has to show their reputation was damaged?
I’m not at all a fan of them removing the report, but it’s not exactly a mystery who else you could blame for the situation.
If only Amnesty were a massive organization with a budget in the hundreds of millions, and an opportunity to use this fight as a massive PR coup and fundraising opportunity.
No. I place the blame on Amnesty. They’re just doing the Nazi “I’m just following orders” line.
Retracting a report that they didn’t think they could legally defend in court is a long way from justifying comparisons to Nazis.
Personally I would have rathered that they removed the report and released the information from the perspective of the US chapter with mildly revamped wording, but I get the course of action.
I’m not convinced it would be a pr coup or net financial win for them to publicly be unable to prove that “gender critical” organizations are defacto anti-rights in general, or that Rowling’s sexual violence charity that was mentioned in specific was.
When the argument is that they over generalized and named organizations as guilty by association without justification, they wouldn’t be arguing trans rights or equality but specific public policy stances.
Appearing to argue that a rape support center is in violation of human rights by catering to cis women isn’t going to be the pr coup.
It doesn’t matter that they’re clearly anti trans and founded because the alternative didn’t exclude trans women and had a trans director: amnesty would need to show they were an an anti rights organization.
I’m not saying that I like that they took down the report or apologized. Nor am I saying that any of the groups are accepting or good.
I’m just saying that Rowling and the stupid uk libel laws are better targets for ire.
No, the comparison to Nazis is perfectly appropriate. If you don’t want to be compared to Nazis, don’t pick up where they left off. If you do the work of the Nazis, you are a Nazi.
You ever seen this photo before? It’s often included with little context in school history books. It was one of the first major Nazi book burnings.
What history books often leave out is that this book burning was the torching of the archives of the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science. This was an early queer and transgender support and research center. They provided some of the first trans hormone and surgical treatments. The institute’s founder, Magnus Hirschfeld was an early pioneer of trans studies and even coined the term “transsexual.”
In 1933 the Nazis raided the institute and burned its archives. Magnus had to flee for his life to France. Many of those involved in the institute fled the country as well. And countless trans people in Germany ended up rounded up and dying in Nazi concentration camps.
This purge actually predicated much of the advancements in trans healthcare in the US. Just like how many German physicists fled to the US, many of the early pioneers in trans science ended up in the US and helped start programs here.
This has actually been adjudicated in court:
In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that transgender people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as “a denial of Nazi crimes”.[127][128] The ruling was an outcome of the civil libel suit of German biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, who alleged libel against the German Society for Trans Identity and Intersexuality over their response to comments she made calling transgender people not “true victims” of Nazi crimes.[129][130][131] The court ultimately ruled that she had to accept the response made to her comments labelling her as a denialist.
If you don’t want to be compared to the Nazis, don’t do Nazi shit.
And yes, the comparison with Amnesty is perfectly valid. Amnesty aren’t themselves involved in the persecution of trans people, but they’re looking the other way, just as countless regular Germans did.
The disagreement about a comparison to Nazis isn’t about what the Nazis did, or that doing what they did would justify comparison, it’s that I fundamentally disagree that taking down an allegedly libelous document is the same as mass murder.
I’m familiar with the horrors of the Nazis, you don’t need to rehash.
I’m not sure how a German court case about denying Nazi crimes has bearing on a theoretical UK court case about if an organization has a specific policy position.
You earlier mentioned that the case could be a PR and fundraising opportunity.
Have you considered if you would want them to fight it if they thought it would do the opposite? What if they just spent a bunch of money giving the assholes a platform to spew hate?
I’m painfully aware of them, constantly used to justify US foreign policy, they have always sucked ass, this is not surprising at all for anyone who has been paying attention
Let them know (politely) how cowardly they are, why you won’t support them, and why you’ll tell everyone you know not to support them: https://www.amnesty.org/en/about-us/contact/
I still have some contacts in Amnesty from when I went through sone interview rounds for a position I didn’t end up taking. They all seemed pretty friendly and direct, and like they’d be strongly opposed to this. Kinda tempted to mail them to see whether they have anything to say.
Do it!
Huge nothing burger. Dude replied pretty quick, but it was just standard “isn’t authorised to comment on the issue” stuff. Can’t blame him, I guess. Entirely different department in an entirely different country.
I understand being upset with AMNESTY, but having people pull support is exactly what JK Rowling’s goal is. This call to action is a house dividing against itself.
No JKs goal was to get Amnesty to pull support for trans people, which she succeeded at.
Now it’s our turn to use our voices and throw our weight at Amnesty to do the right thing.
If Amnesty is incapable or unwilling to care, it must fall.
If a wall has a hole in it, you patch the hole, or build a new wall. Tearing it down before building a new wall would demonstrate a level of recklessness bordering on suicidality.
Sorry this made me laugh in Ukrainian
How do you spell lol in Ukrainian?
Лол
Removed by mod
Did you just call human rights a pet cause?
I sure am glad that my rights to exist are only a pet cause and not something important! I’m so lucky that a cis person was here to tell me that!
Just say you don’t care about everyone equally and own your shittyness you fucking shitmuncher
That seems very radical. Why entirely abolish an organization that generally fights for the greater good, just because it failed once or a few times? What is going to take its place?
Because next time it will be gay people.
Next time it will be Muslims.
Next time it will be Black People.
Next time it will be Women.
Because Fascism does not stop and must not be tolorated.
Ok cool. We’ll do something while you do nothing. 🤝
You could also say that Amnesty is doing something, and if you tear it down, then nothing will be done.
Tearing down amnesty international is not doing something lol
I’ve already answered this criticism. You’re too late.
You don’t have the ability to build anything that does anything nearly as useful as amnesty international does for humanity.
Have I ever implied that nothing should be done? Of course we need to fight for change. I simply doubt that axing the entire organization is a good solution. That would be like fighting your potential ally.
We’re not axing them, we don’t have that power it’s just rhetoric. We’re pressuring them. They need to know that the general public will NOT stand for billionaire bigots sticking their ugly noses in our affairs. That’s the position we’re in now because THEY caved.
Agreed.
You’re punching the wrong people. Way to “do something”, jfc.
No we’re not. Eat shit.
Who did the nazis target first?
Most of the people who enabled the Holocaust did so by convincing themselves what they were doing was for the greater good.
The ordinary German police officers who did most of the actual grunt work of rounding people up? Those who didn’t actively support it probably told themselves, “I’m just enforcing the law. I may not agree with it, but I can’t judge the law. And if I don’t follow orders, I’ll lose my job. Then I won’t be able to do any good at all in the community, including arresting actual thieves and killers.”
The university professor that handed a list of Jewish students to the Gestapo? “I don’t support this. I have nothing against Jewish people. But if I don’t do this, I’ll lose my job, and then I won’t be able to help any students at all.”
Sure, the worst crimes of the Holocaust were carried out by true monsters that fully supported it. But the vast majority of the actual work was carried out by people “just following orders.” And I’m sure they told themselves all sorts of stories about how they were picking the least evil or destructive path.
There’s a reason in On Tyranny, the first rule is Don’t Comply in Advance. Authoritarians can accomplish some of their goals through direct state power, but most of their authority is just given to them by cowards not wanting a fight. Look at Trump’s attempts targeting the healthcare of minors. He issued a completely illegal executive order trying to ban minors from receiving trans healthcare. He has absolutely no authority to do so. Those hospitals that have fought back have won easily in court. But a lot of hospital administrators, even those in blue states, are craven cowards. We saw a lot of hospitals in blue states complying with this illegal order rather than put up a fight.
What Amnesty should have done is use this as a fundraising opportunity. Do you have any idea what kind of funding and publicity they could have achieved if they had stood up to the witch? Sure she’s a billionaire, but Amnesty is not some small operation on a ragtag budget. They have 2500 employees and a budget in the hundreds of millions. They have the money to hire lawyers. And they could easily have used the fight as a massive fundraising opportunity. The ads write themselves. “We stand for the rights of even the most vilified people!”
Instead they chose the path of cowardice. They’ve damned themselves.
Thank you for putting it in perspective like this. I agree, this should have been an opportunity. My take was not well considered, my apologies.
Why support an organisation that won’t support us? That’s just pointless. They’ve made their position clear: They don’t care about us enough to stand by us.
What they should have done is take up the fight and start a fundraiser if needed. Instead they decided to be useless cowards and run away.
The idea is to put pressure on them in hopes they’ll do the right thing, and if not (as is most likely), then put your support towards someone who will, instead.
It’s as mercenary as deciding they didn’t want to spend the financial and political capital on a war against child-wizard-nazi-Karen given the way the shit winds are blowing, Randy
Buddy they agreed with her that we’re not people. They’re not in the house anymore.
No, they caved to legal threats. That’s an entirely different thing to agreeing with these anti-rights people. Their opinion is in the documents that got pulled but they’re not strong or brave enough to stand by them.
Or they may really be reviewing them to republish when they’re sure they can legally defend every statement in there.
Abandoning trans rights should be a financial threat to any organisation. Don’t donate to collaborators!
Not having the guts to follow through when attempting to fight for a cause is not collaborating against that cause. Sheesh.
E: What you are teaching Amnesty, and anyone else watching, is that it is better not to try to fight for human rights. Because if you ever have to take a step back, you will be dragged through the mud.
They already divided the house by betraying the people they are supposed to speak for in an effort to appease bigots.
Sorry, I’m not in the business of forgiveness.
Dude. They are a great organization. This isn’t their fault. Don’t be a fuck.
They were great. This is their fault. Refusing to stand up to bigots is tacit approval of their disgusting behavior
And yet they bent the knee to fascist groups
If that’s how you feel, let them know that in the first paragraph, and in the second explain why they should have stood up to her and her anti-trans-rights tyranny. Don’t let them throw trans people under her bus and think people won’t care. Let them know how disappointed you are that such a great organization, which produced such a truthful call to justice, would fold rather than defend its truth in court just because the hate has deep pockets. Remind them that there’s plenty of evidence showing the list is correct and if they counter-sue they could reach into those deep pockets and win enough to fund years more of their good work in the world.
It’s worse than before now, because they apologised to a genocidal bigot. The BBC is reporting the TERF side of the story with no opposition.
Who else’s fault would it be?
Jk Rowling’s? The UK government that places the burden of proof in libel cases on the defendent to prove that their statement is true in a court of law, while the plaintiff just has to show their reputation was damaged?
I’m not at all a fan of them removing the report, but it’s not exactly a mystery who else you could blame for the situation.
If only Amnesty were a massive organization with a budget in the hundreds of millions, and an opportunity to use this fight as a massive PR coup and fundraising opportunity.
No. I place the blame on Amnesty. They’re just doing the Nazi “I’m just following orders” line.
Retracting a report that they didn’t think they could legally defend in court is a long way from justifying comparisons to Nazis.
Personally I would have rathered that they removed the report and released the information from the perspective of the US chapter with mildly revamped wording, but I get the course of action.
I’m not convinced it would be a pr coup or net financial win for them to publicly be unable to prove that “gender critical” organizations are defacto anti-rights in general, or that Rowling’s sexual violence charity that was mentioned in specific was.
When the argument is that they over generalized and named organizations as guilty by association without justification, they wouldn’t be arguing trans rights or equality but specific public policy stances.
Appearing to argue that a rape support center is in violation of human rights by catering to cis women isn’t going to be the pr coup.
It doesn’t matter that they’re clearly anti trans and founded because the alternative didn’t exclude trans women and had a trans director: amnesty would need to show they were an an anti rights organization.
I’m not saying that I like that they took down the report or apologized. Nor am I saying that any of the groups are accepting or good.
I’m just saying that Rowling and the stupid uk libel laws are better targets for ire.
No, the comparison to Nazis is perfectly appropriate. If you don’t want to be compared to Nazis, don’t pick up where they left off. If you do the work of the Nazis, you are a Nazi.
You ever seen this photo before? It’s often included with little context in school history books. It was one of the first major Nazi book burnings.
What history books often leave out is that this book burning was the torching of the archives of the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science. This was an early queer and transgender support and research center. They provided some of the first trans hormone and surgical treatments. The institute’s founder, Magnus Hirschfeld was an early pioneer of trans studies and even coined the term “transsexual.”
In 1933 the Nazis raided the institute and burned its archives. Magnus had to flee for his life to France. Many of those involved in the institute fled the country as well. And countless trans people in Germany ended up rounded up and dying in Nazi concentration camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_transgender_people_in_Nazi_Germany
This purge actually predicated much of the advancements in trans healthcare in the US. Just like how many German physicists fled to the US, many of the early pioneers in trans science ended up in the US and helped start programs here.
This has actually been adjudicated in court:
If you don’t want to be compared to the Nazis, don’t do Nazi shit.
And yes, the comparison with Amnesty is perfectly valid. Amnesty aren’t themselves involved in the persecution of trans people, but they’re looking the other way, just as countless regular Germans did.
The disagreement about a comparison to Nazis isn’t about what the Nazis did, or that doing what they did would justify comparison, it’s that I fundamentally disagree that taking down an allegedly libelous document is the same as mass murder.
I’m familiar with the horrors of the Nazis, you don’t need to rehash.
I’m not sure how a German court case about denying Nazi crimes has bearing on a theoretical UK court case about if an organization has a specific policy position.
You earlier mentioned that the case could be a PR and fundraising opportunity.
Have you considered if you would want them to fight it if they thought it would do the opposite? What if they just spent a bunch of money giving the assholes a platform to spew hate?
So Amnesty’s reputation was damaged by rowling’s forcing the retraction, does that work for a revenge libel case?
I think they’d need to argue she said something about them, not just an action or statement.
Be funny for someone to sue over defamation for being accused of defamation though.
No they aren’t, yes it is, cry about it
I doubt you even know who they are or what they have done.
I’m painfully aware of them, constantly used to justify US foreign policy, they have always sucked ass, this is not surprising at all for anyone who has been paying attention
It looks like what they’ve done is capitulate to transphobic bigots.
Shitmuncher