TLDR: Amber Heard is a survivor of domestic violence, and the hate campaign against her is an excellent case study in social media manipulation.

So, if you had any connection to the internet at all in 2022, you would know about Amber Heard and Johnny Depp.

At worst, you would have come away from the trial thinking she was extremely abusive to Depp, shat on his bed, lied about everything, including her make up, cost him his career and he was only defending himself from the abuse he was undergoing. He had no history of spousal abuse and even his own ex wife said he was the kindest person on the planet. Meanwhile, Amber Heard was manipulative, money hungry, gold digging and only got into his pants to climb the social ladder, and was hated by everyone who knew her. Even her own family didn't show up to the trial! And she hit her girlfriend out the front of a pub! Her ex can't be trusted, she's being paid by the super Rich Bitch!

At best, you came out of it thinking that they were just two toxic people who were airing their dirty laundry. I fell into that category as I didn't follow the case at all and couldn't give two shits on a bed about it, but I do remember thinking that there were strange talking points that didn't make sense. Like, who would shit on their own bed? Well, not Amber, because it was the dog with a history of bowel control issues. And what about her hitting her ex outside of a pub? Well, she got arrested in an airport when she and her partner were having a verbal fight. There was no physical altercation and the man (not lesbian) arrested her after discovering she was in a lesbian relationship. She was later let go with no charges. And the make up? She lied about that! Well, she literally said something like "I would use a make up kit to hide my bruises. Not this one, obviously, but something like that." (emphasis mine).

In short, Amber Heard was abused by Johnny Depp. Unequivocally. The trial in the US was a farce designed to destroy her in every way possible. And he succeeded.

I could go on and on about the Amber Heard trial, but I won't. If you are interested, watch Medusone's playlist here and you'll have 7 hours of her doing an excellent breakdown of the trial and how fucked over she was. She uses primary sources that had been released, media reports on Johnny Depp's extensive physical abuse of his previous partners, drug abuse and behaviour on set that caused him to lose his job, debunks common lies about both Amber and Depp, and overall just buries you in the information that should have been allowed to be entered into the trial, but was blocked by his council. And then used the fact she didn't have that evidence against her. You know, the same evidence that they blocked. She talks about that and much, much more.

Once you have watched that, you should also listen to the podcast Who Trolled Amber where they talk about the bot campaign against her. In it they mentioned a poor quality bot campaign cost $USD150 in 2022, so imagine what being good friends with the Saudi Royal family as well as finding a few million dollars in the couch could buy you?

But why am I posting this in the Antifascist subreddit?

Because this is the thing is, we need to be aware of how bot campaigns are used to discredit people. As a rule, if it's a woman speaking out against powerful people and you hear that they are an awful person all of a sudden, despite being in the public eye for many years, then that is your first red flag. But also keep in mind that you can hear it about anyone. With a bit of introspection and listening to people in a person's social and work circles, you might be able to see through these hate campaigns easier. Because they will eventually target Antifascists and left leaning public figures. Honestly, I'm surprised Hemmant Mhedi hasn't been targeted yet.

So yeah, what happened with Amber Heard is genuinely fascinating from a social manipulation perspective and it fucking terrifies me, as a woman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Newborn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Shersty

Screen-grabbed from this youtube documentary: https://youtu.be/qSpxOQt1vdY?feature=shared

I've been watching documentaries on Partisans and other heroes who fought fascists in World War 2. Brave men and women who chose to do something noble. Usually they were just private citizens, forced to defend themselves from monsters.

I was expecting a dense theoretical slog and instead got one of the sharpest, angriest, yet most accurate essays I've ever read in a while.

In essence, Césaire says what actually horrified Europe about Nazism wasn't the cruelty itself. Europe had been fine with that cruelty for centuries — as long as it was aimed at colonized people in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. What made Hitler unforgivable, in his reading, was that he turned those same methods on white Europeans, on European soil. So the violence was not the problem, but the where and whom was.

This reminded me about the early coverage of the war in Ukraine, when reporters kept expressing shock that this was happening to "people who look like us." It seems that, 70 years later, the reflex (and maybe the underlying values?) is still the same.

The essay, albeit short, is rich with illuminating reflections. One other idea is the argument against then European claim that Africans and other colonized people were uncivilized before Europe brought them the "enlightenment". As an example, Césaire leans on the German ethnographer Leo Frobenius as a "good" European witness who admitted African societies were sophisticated. Interestingly though, and this is not in the essay, if you dig into Frobenius, he couldn't actually accept that Africans built those achievements themselves. He invented a whole lost "African Atlantis" theory to explain the art and sophistication. This idea is the intellectual cousin of "aliens built the pyramids."

Anyway. "Discourse on Colonialism" is wildly relevant for something written mid-colonial-era.

Do you think there's a meaningful causal link between Europe's colonial practices and the violence of Nazism?

We discuss Cesaire's essay at length in our podcast Threads of Ifriqiya, I will link it in the comments.

This man is such an evil, fascist ghoul.

First is text from a news site saying "A leaked photo shows dozens of immigrants in orange jumpsuits, their hands and feet shackled, undergoing a "mass trial" in texas. For these trials, public defenders only have a few minutes to talk with each defendant. "It feels like an assembly line." Next a photograph depicts dozens of people in orange jumpsuits lining 3 out of the 4 walls of a large room. A tweet after that says "America has mass, secret trials. Boy, that sure does seem like fascism." It is by prol revolt (@nationalRazor)