Western Propaganda, Imperialism, and the Exploitation of LGBTQIA Rights
Cynical Western governments are exploiting LGBTQIA issues to disseminate propaganda against governments targeted by the U.S. for overthrow, even as it backs violent anti-LGBTQIA regimes.
On 12 September, Na'omi Ducaena Allen posted on Twitter a video by an American going by the name of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, who purportedly claims to be a trans woman but who gives off rather clear signs of being a cis male actor, and who operates out of Nevada as a paid propagandist for the Nazi regime of Ukraine.
The video pertains to the alleged second arrest and impending trial of accused Ukrainian intelligence asset Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean-American vlogger who has been in Ukraine supposedly as an anti-Ukrainian journalist, but whose activities since April 2022 have sparked concerns about his true status. The Nazi regime is making a show of putting Lira on trial for criticizing it and supposedly disseminating “Russian propaganda”, a laughable charge given the level of pro-Nazi propaganda produced by the West.
Several clues give away that this person is likely not a trans woman at all, but a paid actor. I’ll focus for now on the main giveaway, namely, that “Sarah” Ashton-Cirillo doesn’t present like an actual trans woman, rather, Ashton-Cirillo presents how conservative anti-trans bigots think all trans women look—like a cis male in a wig and a dress.
It’s quite disgusting, that stereotype, but it’s also blatantly false. Most trans women are either passing, that is, indistinguishable from cis women, or well on their way thereto. Examples include:
Anti-trans bigots often display their inability to distinguish trans women from cis women. One recent example is mistaking Erin Darke, fiancée of actor Daniel Radcliffe, for a man, in spite of Darke announcing that she is pregnant with her and Radcliffe’s first child. Anti-trans bigots love to accuse cis women of being trans if they dare speak out against discrimination or fail to meet T.E.R.F. standards of feminine appearance. Indeed, it’s gotten to the point that T.E.R.F.s are aligning openly with literal neo-Nazis in countries such as Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Case in point:
Nazis, like their T.E.R.F. pals, despise LGBTQIA folk, and have a nasty record of trying to eradicate them. This has never changed in the ninety or so years since the party was first formed. So why, then, would the Ukrainian Nazi regime hire a supposed trans woman to be its spokeperson in the U.S.?
The answer is simple, and twofold: to troll the anti-LGBTQIA Russian president and those who share his bigotry, and to garner support from Western trans activists against the governments of nations such as Russia and China that are targeted for overthrow by the U.S. while simultaneously distracting trans activists away from Western-supported anti-LGBTQIA regimes.
Washington, D.C. neocons know full well that anti-Ukraine independent journalists are largely conservative and also unapologetically anti-LGBTQIA. They see videos such as those shat out by Ashton-Cirillo and waste no opportunity to discredit themselves in the eyes of left-wing anti-imperialists by loudly and proudly exposing their bigotry. In this fashion, the anti-imperialist movement is divided against itself. Lord knows I’ve distanced myself from Scott Ritter and other personalities because of views they’ve expressed against trans people. Lira himself, during his phony escape earlier this summer, made blatantly homphobic and transphobic remarks that had right-wing dupes such as Jackson Hinkle nodding along in sympathy with his supposed plight.
That’s what Western propaganda is designed to do: divide the opposition so as to neuter it as an organized movement. It is surprisingly effective.
It’s also a notorious lie, one for which the left almost invariably falls time and time again. But here’s the unpleasant truth:
The West is as blatantly anti-trans as the governments it seeks to topple. Activist-journalists such as Erin Reed have documented the hundreds of bills in the U.S. alone designed specifically to eradicate transgender persons from existence. Uganda—a U.S. puppet state in Africa, for example, this year enacted a law making homosexuality illegal, with penalties up to and including the death penalty.
Yet the atrocities of puppet regimes such as Uganda barely register on the radar of LGBTQIA rights organizations in the West. Instead, you’re more likely to find propaganda condemning Russia, China, and other nations standing in defiance of Washington, for anti-LGBTQIA bigotry, whether real or perceived. For instance, Keffals posted a video a few weeks ago regarding the dissappearance from social media of well known tech reviewer Naomi Wu, who was unceremoniously outed as a lesbian by Vice Magazine and was subsequently pressured by the Chinese government to scale back her social media activities.
Yet N.A.T.O. vassal states such as Hungary enact anti-LGBTQIA laws, and in Poland, another N.A.T.O. vassal, it is increasingly unsafe to be gay or trans. You don’t hear much public condemnation from LGBTQIA activists such as Keffals about all this, and when you do, it’s almost always as an afterthought. That’s because most of these individuals and organizations know which side of the imperial bread their butter is on, and therefore limit their criticism of anti-LGBTQIA policies primarily to those countries deemed acceptable by the U.S. empire to criticize.
By setting LGBTQIA activists against Russia, China, and other nation-states that defy it, the U.S. empire is making them into dupes for imperial hegemony, whether they are unwitting or entirely complicit. Western chauvinism against non-Western, non-white nations makes it easy for these individuals and organizations to be fooled into going along—against their own interests.
The truth is that transgender persons are no threat to anyone—just the opposite, in fact: it is transgender persons, indeed, the whole of the queer community, that is under threat, in danger of its very existence being wiped out by a world increasingly infected with the unhinged fascist ideology birthed in the U.S. and allowed to bloom in Nazi Germany, Italy, and other parts of the world.12345 Yet the LGBTQIA community is being systematically set against anti-imperialism, which seeks to end the diseased ideology of fascism and its depraved influence on human consciousness. In communist Cuba, for example, LGBTQIA rights have been extended to include the right to marry and legally adopt. How often do you hear about such achievements as this from anti-communist, pro-Western imperialists such as Keffals and Vaush?
The world is on the eve of destruction, and instead of backing away from the edge of the Abyss, the U.S. empire is hell bent on driving us right over it. And it’s using anti-LGBTQIA bigotry to play anti-imperialists against each other. Conservatives will not be swayed by the truth, and when confronted thereby, will always double down. They’re a lost cause and not worth the time and energy trying to work with. But leftists, and especially the LGBTQIA community, should not be swayed by Western propaganda that is designed to alienate them from anti-imperialism.
That’s why it is imperative that frauds such as “Sarah” Ashton-Cirillo be exposed for what they are. These Nazi-supporting fascists are paid to lie to anti-imperialists, playing off the hatred and bigotry of conservatives while exploiting the very real and legitimate fear and anger of queer folk whose lives are threatened by anti-queer derangement. In subscribing to the propaganda, queer folk are putting the proverbial nooses around their own necks. None of them, after all, would be allowed to exist in Ukraine, or, for that matter, in most N.A.T.O. countries, and if the extreme right has its way, neither in the U.S. and Canada.
If humanity is to have any chance at all of survival, we on the left must learn to recognize fascist propaganda for what it is, reject it, and unite against the diseased ideology of fascism and imperialism.
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/11/what-america-taught-the-nazis/540630/
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172422/hitlers-american-model
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-united-states-a-model-for-the-nazis/