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Silence of the Lambs

If at first you don't succeed...


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DUCKBURG (Rixstep) — Two years ago almost to the day, Julian Assange was sitting in Wandsworth, and his solicitors, Jennifer Robinson and Mark Stephens, were working overtime to prepare a case to get him out on bail for the holidays. Judge Riddle initially denied Assange bail because he considered Assange a 'flight risk', even though Assange had of his own volition turned himself into the Bill when news of Marianne Ny's EAW reached him.

Cue to Sweden's duckpond where a completely spontaneous grassroots movement, organised by some of the country's most rabid right-wing puppeteers, suddenly started the now infamous 'talk about it' (#prataomdet) campaign, the express purpose of which was to smear Assange as much as possible and keep him locked up over the holidays.

But it didn't work. Assange got bail. The clip of him addressing the crowds outside the courtroom went viral.

But if at first you don't succeed...

Talk About It 2.0

The same people behind the original smear campaign have now started a new one. This one is more aggressive than even the first. Now the theme isn't 'talk about it' - it's 'dare to file a police complaint'. This in a country second only to Lesotho in number of rape complaints (despite disparities in population).

The new claim is that only one in five 'real' rapes is ever reported, which in such case means Sweden would have almost five times as many rapes as that place in South Africa. There are other memes as well. Such as 'it took me three weeks to convince my friend she'd been raped' and 'almost all rapes occur within the home'.

Meaty stuff.

Flashback's espressino has posted an excellent 'how-to' on organising authentic grassroots campaigns.

This new campaign also includes some new players, such as the ones who on several occasions harassed Pär Ström until he finally gave up, and others who've been assembling Stasi-like archives on their political opponents. Nice people indeed.

But it's the brilliant columnist Quetzala Blanco who summed up these people best - already two years ago for 'Talk About It' 1.0.

What I've Done, What I Should Be Doing

• Set the alarm for 05:30 but sleep until 08:00.
• Start the day by writing an article on how Chloe Sevigny will have to go into therapy for sucking off Vincent Gallo.
• Spend time wondering why no powerful media figures ever want to 'rape' me.
• Start the Wednesday column about 'talk about it'. It's mostly about yucky mythomaniacs in Salvation Army clothes. About the so-called 'feminist girls' - they're an outrage - who are fat as skyscrapers, walk around stinking of sweat, cat piss and cat shit, and refuse to use deodorant because it's part of their political manifesto. They forcibly plague their environment with both their physical presence and their psychological problems. They're so horny for attention they're prepared to slaughter for it, but they don't realise that their hideous personae will irrevocably deny them that attention for the rest of their lives.
• Munch a tasty tunafish sandwich as I check out Skinnywebsite, totally knocked out by how fine Kate Moss is these days.
• Wonder if I should cut my fringe again - what do you think?

What I should do

• Check out the fashion paparazzi at Stureplan.
• Make 'best of the year' lists.
• Buy pants with suspenders that I can dye another colour.
• Change into overalls and go to the gym.

This innocent but brilliant blog post - written with tongue firmly in cheek - caused such an outrage that Quetzala's editor-in-chief was inundated with demands from Sweden's state feminist media that her blog be immediately shut down. A special target for Quetzala's rage, Cissy Wallin who figures prominently in the new 'Talk About It' 2.0 as well, demanded a public apology.

The blog was not shut down, and Cissi Wallin never got an apology. Cissi Wallin got worse. She got the shellacking of her life. Kick back and watch a real thinker in action.

Silence of the Lambs

So I got to work this morning, logged in to all the photo sites, checked the latest paparazzi pics of Megan Fox at the beach, had a cup of coffee, listened to some Mink De Ville and BANG - there's Cissi Wallin at the top of our site with a 'talk about it' column about a powerful man in the media who she alleges raped her! I hear bells ringing somewhere in my distant memory.

FUCK! IT'S HER!

And it is her! And her giggly friends who were calling me and a lot of other girls a few years ago, saying something like:

'Hi there, uhm we heard that [name withheld] has done SO-AND-SO to you, and we're several girls here who've been victimised by him...'

Some of them even rang up some of my best friends and said 'hi, I've heard that he did SO-AND-SO to you at the Riche restaurant last night'. Or something sick like that. Which of course was an utter lie, fabricated bullshit. Both my friends and I said politely (haha) but firmly that NO, we wouldn't be part of a hysterical witch hunt. For no matter how keen those girls were about it all, we had not been victimised by any powerful figure in the media, and we were not going to be a part of 'building a case' based on spurious prevarications and rumours. And so I spoke with a lawyer who in turn contacted the girls and calmed them down.

Anyway.

I think what Cissi Wallin is doing is really sick. Somebody wrote that it wasn't 'nice' of me to write what I've written on my blog. Since when was 'talk about it' nice? If you go out and talk about it - as Cissi has done - and accuse another human being of a really fucking brutal crime like rape, then you'd better be prepared for the heat in the kitchen. A rape never ends with the rape itself. It continues forever. Is that fair? No. People can tell you that you'll be whole again someday. But you never will be. It's terrible. I know. It hurts. I know that too. It's terrible to be held down by some ugly guy, it's terrible to sit as an escort at a boring dinner, it's terrible to be raped by one or two or three or four guys you thought were your friends. It's terrible to be forced to do anything you don't want to do. I know.

You bleed. It hurts. It really hurts. You'll be doubted. It'll be word against word. Do we believe his story or hers? You'll see photos of yourself when you were relatively happy and only seven years of age with your whole life in front of you, and then you'll wonder why things turned out as they did and if it'll always hurt that bad. And yes, it will.

It's very courageous to come forward and talk about it. But it is not courageous to go out and talk about it and then be humiliated. Wake up fer chrissakes. What's the next step - feeling violated? But it's not right to feel humiliated and violated? No. It's sick and unjust. But that's the way it is.

But maybe we should only talk about it from the point of view of the victim? Are there any 'talk about it' rules on Twitter? There probably are. That'd be best.

So now we're talking about it. We have high ceilings at my company. It doesn't matter how many editors from the feminist media send email to my boss demanding my blog be shut down. We talk about it because we can afford to talk about it. I can think it's totally fucked up that Cissi Wallin gets to spread her shit around, but I still have a right to spread mine around - right? This is about my personal opinions, they're written to my own blog, and I'd bet that none of my bosses agree with me either. That's the way it's supposed to be.

And now it seems Cissi Wallin has demanded I apologise. I'm truly sorry she was hurt by what I wrote. It is really terrible if I've made her sad, if she feels humiliated and violated. No one could be more sorrowful than me!



But what's also terrible, what makes me really sorrowful, is that even though Cissi Wallin hasn't identified the man by name, everyone already knows who it is. But because she hasn't explicitly named him, he's got no chance to defend himself. That's rather hurtful, and one can also feel humiliated when one is hung out like that - but still not really - as a rapist. For on our groovy Internet and in every nightclub in town and in the bars, everyone knows. But we don't write the name - we whisper it, and we call up girls we don't even know and we try to institute a phony sisterhood that has such a stench about it. We tittle-tattle and gossip.

Things are easier that way. So right when we're surfing the web on our lunch hour, we can gormandise ourselves on all the stories by the victims, swallow them hook line and sinker, cry a few crocodile tears, RETWEET IN A POLITICALLY CORRECT WAY OF COURSE - and after work? We go out for a drink and raise our glasses and toast to the wonderful fact that we can afford to think exactly the same thing about everything, that we have achieved equality even when we're fucking, and we don't question SHIT.

And then we go home to our comfortable second-hand flats, decide to not shave our legs that night, and order some really fatty takeouts.

Quetzala Teresa Samba Blanco, born 30 May 1984 on Södermalm in Stockholm, is a Swedish journalist.

Mental illness and diffuse sexual preferences that evolve into heterophobia should not control the political agenda.
 - espressino

See Also
Quetzala Blanco: När lammen tystnar
Quetzala Blanco: Vad jag har gjort och borde göra

Industry Watch: #PrataOmDet: The Smoking Gun

The Technological: Downhill with the Real Anna Ardin
The Technological: The Goose, The Gander, Anna Ardin
The Technological: Anna Ardin Witness Nicked Shoplifting
The Technological: Crazy is as Crazy Does (All Julian's Fault)

Hall of Monkeys: Carina Rydberg
Hall of Monkeys: Carina Rydberg's Done It Again
Hall of Monkeys: Crazy Elin ('There's just girls I haven't fucked yet')

Heroes Banquet: Flashback Stops Witch Trial of Assange

Red Hat Diaries: The Days Go By
Red Hat Diaries: Assange the Misogynist Pig
Red Hat Diaries: Assange/Sweden: Lynch Mob
Red Hat Diaries: Cairo & Sweden's Cultural Elite
Red Hat Diaries: Assange Affair: Portrait of a Swedish Feminist

Flashback: The Truth About the Faked Grassroots Campaign 'Talk About It'

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