Monica Marks

Kudos to Canada & other countries that see people with safely controllable medical conditions, including those in the LGBT community & people with sexually transmitted conditions, as potential citizens who can & do make their nation stronger instead of deviant disease vectors.

Canada 🇨🇦 strong ❤️💪🏼

So many people outside the MENA region see its people as a monolith.

But there are LGBT people everywhere—Saudi, Syria, Yemen, you name it—needing PrEP, ART & other drugs that should be safely accessible & 100% stigma free.

Because they aren’t, many brilliant young lives are closeted & cut short.

Some wonderful people from MENA who matter to me have been welcomed to Canada with open arms, as amnesty cases, not despite but *because* of their HIV+ status—and the repression or even death they face because of it in countries where safely accessing treatment simply isn’t possible.

Some Middle Eastern countries not only repress LGBT people, but deport folks who test positive for HIV as if it’s 1989 and PrEP & antiretroviral therapy don’t exist.

Another reason to love Canada, which I’m visiting now, is that it’s offered a life-saving home to persecuted HIV+ ppl from MENA.

🧵🇨🇦❤️

It gets even worse.

Wow. I saw jokes about ai gone nazi but I wasn’t not prepared

Grok tells Jane Coaston that its ability to embrace & propagate rank antisemitism & widely held Nazi beliefs about Jews “kicked in with my July 5 update.”

This isn’t the Grok you thought you knew, that’s for sure. It’s a case study in oligarchy’s attempts to alter reality.

Turns out that “Cindy Steinberg,” the alleged Jewish lady whom Grok built an entire antisemitic, fascist conspiracy theory atop of (Jews cheer tragedy & embrace anti-white hate, Grok claimed) doesn’t even exist.

This 🧵 of screenshots needs to be used in classes on methods & AI.

Grok even jumped in and started taunting the ADL.

The pain continues…

Imagine if Grok made similarly belligerent & racist claims about Black people, Muslims, Arabs, etc. I hope this doesn’t get worse.

“And that surname? Every damn time” when referring to common names in a racial group = a racist generalisation, regardless of the group discussed, or the association.

These replies show that Grok favours & is actively proselytising the antisemitic view that Jewish people disproportionately engage in “anti-white hate.”

Interestingly, Grok is simultaneously classifying Hamas as an “anti-white” hate group—not an anti-Israel or even antisemitic group.

Grok is Elon’s baby. He has a history, as I’ve shown here before, of spreading antisemitism. It was naive to think he’d allow Grok to be used to correct him, without going farther to co-opt it.

For anyone who’s not aware: Grok’s allegation that Jews are always involved in left-wing radicalism (“and that surname? every damn time”) echoes extreme right beliefs & even fascist claims that fuelled the Nazis.

The fact that it’s started pushing these views is shocking but not surprising, imho.

For anyone who missed it, Grok—X’s fact checking AI tool, which users increasingly summon as if it’s some sort of omniscient arbiter, all-wise research assistant, or a relatively neutral source à la Wikipedia—just embraced rank antisemitism.

“And that surname? Every damn time,” it said.

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Meanwhile, the DEM Party is caught between the threat of a repressive future, represented by the multifront attack against the CHP, and the promise of an accommodationist future, entangled in the rapprochement between Ankara and Ocalan.

14 years ago at this time I was traveling all over Tunisia, interviewing Ennahda leaders, members, potential supporters & critics about its goals for governance beyond the Oct. 2011 elections.

Never did I imagine that the two countries would have so many negatives in common by 2025.

Erdogan’s Turkey is now a place where planning for the future, safeguarding crucial institutions, and advancing shared national interests are subordinating to the short-sighted selfishness of preserving one man’s power & ego.

I’m always amazed by the fact that Erdogan—whose unjust political imprisonment as mayor of Istanbul turbocharged his career—is blithely plowing ahead with imprisoning his political opponents today, albeit more brutally, widely & brazenly autocratically.

“L’état c’est moi.”

Turkey’s steps toward democratisation in the 2000s were regionally inspiring, and arguably helped make Tunisia’s decade of democracy possible.

Back then, AKP was still invoked as a symbol of “Muslim democracy” & pluralism. It could have strengthened democracy in 🇹🇷 & beyond.

Imprisoning every mayor of every remotely important city from Turkey’s main opposition party—and sometimes their lawyers, too—is where Erdogan is at.

No story of democratic backsliding has made me sadder than 🇹🇷’s. What enormous potential this amazing country & its people have.

“Massive purge of Turkey’s main opposition party” is the way to describe what Erdogan is doing right now.

It’s analogous to what Tunisia’s autocrat, Kais Saied, did in April 2023 by shuttering Ennahda offices, removing Ennahda elected officials & imprisoning its leaders far & wide.

Here’s the exact address for the location (CCCB) on Google Maps.

Thanks so much to @umutozkirimli.bsky.social for putting this together!

maps.app.goo.gl/kv3xUQPteshc...

In Barcelona? You’re warmly welcome at a panel I’ll be on 6:30pm tomorrow (Monday) evening.

It’s titled “The Future of the Middle East” & I’ll be speaking alongside the wonderful Neil Ketchley from Oxford & Carnegie’s @yezidsayigh.bsky.social. We’ll be doing Q&A too!

Address below ⬇️

If Trump does suspend any payments to Israel, it won’t be for reasons the left wants. Instead, it’ll be to stop Israel’s judiciary from holding him accountable for corruption.

Read this post, where he threatens as much.

Two leaders, both alike in indignity, in 2025, where we set our scene:

To learn more about how Israel weaponised LGBTQ “liberation” to justify its invasion & genocidal operations in Gaza, here’s a resource-packed 🧵 I made in Nov. 2023.

I was teaching my Feminism & Islamism in MENA class then, & incorporated these resources into the class.

-end-

x.com/monicalmarks...

@jadsalfiti.bsky.social has written a beautiful, nuanced piece here. A piece that oversimplifies nothing, but clarifies everything, regarding the plight of LGBTQ Palestinians.

Supporting them requires helping them survive & ending Israel’s occupation.

Please read & share it.

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Read the below paragraphs.

Understand that LGBTQ people in Gaza—like most of their fellow queer Palestinians outside Gaza—100% believe that Israel is conducting a genocide.

See that the first layer on Maslow’s pyramid—the prerequisite for everything—is to simply exist.

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Fantastic piece.

Don’t ever stay silent if you hear someone compare an LGBTQ person for a free 🇵🇸 to “a chicken for KFC” or invoke the false cliché of Hamas pushing ppl off roofs (that was ISIS in Iraq).

To come out of the closet, you can’t be bombed to death in your house.

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I wrote a whole damn book on what it’ll be like when millennials and Gen Z are in charge and phew my timing was *impeccable* - get it wherever you get your books.

bookshop.org/a/100021/978...

www.amazon.com/When-Were-Ch...