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Tom Doran (Bluesky: @portraitinflesh.bsky.social) Profile picture
Tom Doran (Bluesky: @portraitinflesh.bsky.social)
@portraitinflesh
Blogger, writer, Welsh. Reach me at: aigtban@gmail.com Add me on Bluesky: @portraitinflesh.bsky.social
Aug 7 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Shutting down Twitter in the UK, as many are now suggesting, would be an insanely authoritarian move, which is why I'm sure HMG won't consider it. But it would certainly be appropriate to impose sanctions of some sort on Musk himself, who is now a threat to national stability. Yes, I have obvious self-interest here: almost all of my social life takes place on Twitter. But I could always access it through a VPN, if I needed to. Shutting down the whole platform wouldn't just be massive state overreach, it'd play right into Musk's persecution fantasies.
Oct 28, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I can barely describe how much this sort of thing boils my piss. The "noble savage" myth, repackaged for dippy white liberals on social media. Being conquered doesn't make a people virtuous, it just makes them unlucky. There's a lot we don't know about the pre-Columbian Americas, since most of the civilisations who lived there didn't write things down. But we know they had wars, often very brutal ones. They certainly kept slaves. These things only made them just like the rest of humanity.
Oct 28, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This could hardly be more timely, when the anti-Dreyfusards are making a big comeback in France, led grotesquely this time by a Jew who has himself said Dreyfus could have been guilty. The number of right-wingers in this country who flatter and euphemise the French far right in the apparent belief they're nothing more than Gallic Brexiteers is truly dismaying, not to say infuriating. It's profoundly frivolous behaviour based on a childish anti-EU grudge.
Oct 28, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Not that left-wing cancel culture again. I'm not saying, before anyone jumps in, that left-wing cancel culture isn't a thing. But the sheer amount of centrist ink that gets spilled over it, at a time when Republicans are openly embracing fascism and banning books, will not be looked on kindly by future generations.
Oct 27, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Top Tip for my followers: to save a lot of time when threads get nasty, don't just block, MegaBlock. megablock.xyz Blocks a tweet, its author and anyone who Likes it, all in one go. Can render Twitter a good deal more fragrant. A prominent American account just tried instigating a pile-on on me for suggesting that race might be a less fundamental distinction than sex. But it's true, isn't it? Race is a matter of time and place, but humans have been sexually dimorphic since before we were human.
Oct 27, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The problem with this is that the CEO of Stonewall herself is quoted in the article asking same-sex attracted people to reexamine their own prejudices. It self-evidently isn't a marginal issue. Once again: the core claim is not "all trans women are potential rapists". It's "some lesbians have felt pressure not to reject trans women sexually for fear of seeming bigoted". The Twitter reaction to the article more or less makes that case in itself.
Oct 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is a gross rewriting of history. Hitler came to power in coalition with "conservative elites" who thought they could control him. Francoist Spain was ruled by an alliance of conservatives and fascists for decades. You have no idea what you're talking about. Not that I in any way endorse the far left strategy of combating fascism through street violence. But the vast majority of conservatives all over Europe, including the UK, saw Hitler as a useful bulwark against Bolshevism until it was far too late.
Oct 26, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The absolute nerve of this woman, condemning antivaxxers when she herself spent many years sowing paranoia about the lifesaving MMR vaccine, baselessly linking it to autism long after Andrew Wakefield was struck off in disgrace. She's never apologised. I could vomit. Is there a profession with less accountability than opinion journalism? I doubt it. Melanie Phillips faced zero career consequences whatsoever for her culpable journalistic malpractice that almost certainly cost lives. If any of us screwed up that badly, we'd be out of work.
Oct 25, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
When I was very young, we had a television where you could only change channels by getting up and physically turning a dial. When we got a TV with a remote control instead, it felt like the end of the world for me, I didn't know how I'd ever cope. I got over it in the end. But in retrospect, that was a textbook autistic moment from my childhood that I had no framework at all for understanding at the time. Instead, I would be sixteen years old when I finally received the diagnosis.
Oct 25, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is so gross. Begrudgingly admits they "fueled", i.e. perpetrated antisemitism, before going on to lecture Jews about how Palestinians are the real victims and it's all their fault. It's possible to be against Zionism without being at all antisemitic, but it's a very tricky needle to thread. That statement doesn't even make the attempt.
Oct 25, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Just saw someone tweet that "TERFs" aren't smart or informed enough to understand Judith Butler's arguments. Mercy me. Butler's understanding of what constitutes fascism is sophomoric; she seems to think the word just means intolerant or authoritarian, then defines those things in a way that indicts feminists.
Oct 16, 2021 • 40 tweets • 12 min read
The off-the-charts misogyny in this image has already been covered extensively by people more eloquent than me. So I'll comment on something else: modern protest movements of the left have completely lost any sense of discipline and optics. By that I mean: consider a successful, effective protest movement like the US civil rights movement. The first thing its organisers considered when planning any action was: how will this look to undecided members of the general public?
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Unfashionable opinion: the overwhelming majority of politicians in this country are dedicated public servants who are in it for the right reasons. "They're all on the take, aren't they?" is a very lazy and stupid way of sounding clever and knowing.
Oct 16, 2021 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
I have just embarked on a four hour journey on a coach full of very loud, very jolly people. Keep me in your thoughts and prayers. Don't be silly, I'm far too middle class to actually engage them in conversation.
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Don't. Be. Silly. Islamic extremism is a common terrorist motive and its adherents are disproportionately from certain ethnic and national backgrounds. Acknowledging this isn't remotely bigoted, and is a lot more relevant to his crime than him being a British national. This is going to be an exceptionally stupid day to be on Twitter.
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's routine in Zionist circles, particularly when Israel is at war, to call the IDF "the most moral army in the world". Now, I'm aware there is a strong factual basis to this claim, but to my mind, laying too much stress on it is too big a concession to the enemy. (1/4) By that I mean, Israel shouldn't have to command the world's most moral army in order to earn the right to defend itself. Israelis are not obliged to hold themselves to a uniquely high standard just because the rest of the world does. (2/4)
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Shit. It was shit. If you wanted to know something, you had to look it up in a book, and if there was no book, you were fucked. I have no idea how I'd have made any post-school friends if the internet hadn't become ubiquitous in my teens. Encarta was amazing, it used to occupy me for hours, much as Wikipedia does now. But compared to what's now available online, it was a very meagre resource indeed.
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
My dear friend @davidfrum is briefly in London for the weekend, so I'm travelling there later today to spend some time with him. Four hours there, then five hours in the capital, then another four hours back; it'll be an exhausting day. But worth it, I hope. My usual weekly routine is both extremely monotonous and extremely local, so the change will probably be good for me. Taking the train would be a lot faster and give me more time in London, but it'd also be ten times more expensive.
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Is it? Is it really? This sort of thing is the right-wing version of @mrianleslie's "MLK syndrome". It's no fun keeping things in perspective, far more exciting to believe civilisation itself is at stake. Wokeness can be dismal indeed, but an existential threat to our way of life? I have my doubts. Every generation has seen its controversies over the boundaries of what's permissible in art. I see no reason to think we live in a uniquely censorious age.
Oct 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The murder of Sir David Amess is shocking, a permanent stain on our democracy. But I'll make an observation I've made before: the fact that violent extremists in the 2020s are reduced to knife attacks is a testament to the effectiveness of counterterrorism efforts. What I'm getting at is that terrorist attacks aren't just something a society has to learn to live with. These people can be stopped, whatever their guiding ideology. One murdered MP is one too many, but compare that to the mass carnage of 7/7, never mind 9/11.
Oct 15, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
For anyone wondering: yes, David Amess was the Tory MP stung in 1997 by Brass Eye, convinced to warn the nation of the dangers of "cake". But honestly, the UK in 1997 feels like another world altogether. Let that be the last of it. I have to wonder, for instance, what the Chris Morris of the 2020s, whoever she is, would make of the daily contortions of centre-left politicians on the trans issue. That's just one example of a hypothetical contemporary Brass Eye special.