A couple of readers have suggested that the White Rose concept needs merch -- t-shirts and such. Well, many years ago -- when this blog was a great deal more popular than it is now -- I tried to sell that sort of thing here. Made only one sale. The stumbling block is price: Drop-ship t-shirt companies usually require a price point of around $25, which seems high.
Mind you, I'm not a graphic-T kind of guy. Even as a young man, I preferred long sleeves and buttons.
It's possible to sell shirts at a cheaper price is one if willing to make a large initial investment (and if one goes with screenprinting), but I can't and won't do that. So the question is: Are people really willing to shell out $25 to have their torso covered in colored cotton? Being the cheapest of cheap bastards, I can't easily guess at the kind of decisions made by "normal" people.
Added note: There's another consideration. You know that time I made one (1) t-shirt sale? I didn't see a dime from it because I didn't make the minimum. Nevertheless, I got hit by several dozen snarky comments claiming "Oh, you're only in it for the MONEY." It was infuriating!
That's the world we live in now. Americans will forgive Donald Trump for bilking people with his phony-baloney university, but God forbid if a liberal like Joseph Cannon makes fifty cents off a fucking t-shirt.
12 comments:
I wouldn't. I detest crew neck tees at any cost. But there are websites that don't even make the shirts till they're bought, per order.
1) Probably about 90% of those who will resist fascism in the US voted for Bernie Sanders in a primary. While they await the discovery and acclamation of their young female leader, the White Rose Movement's pro tem governing board need to consider that.
2) Here is a young radical from Germany, Sophie Scholl's authentic heir, a woman who was similarly motivated by coherent conscience, originally within a Christian socialist outlook - and who was similarly murdered by the state. Another video of her is here. Earlier, she had even modelled her hairstyle on Sophie's.
She knew what she was about. Under the Nazis, her father was a university lecturer who associated with the "Hessian Dissent" and was in touch with the "Confessing Church", theologians who fought the Nazification of the German Protestant church. Her mentor and family friend Renate Riemeck was in contact with Martin Niemöller.
Here are some of her writings. They are important. In 1966 in West Germany, year of the formation of the parliamentary "Grand Coalition", it became clear to many that from then on, opposition needed to be extra-parliamentary. The same is true in the US now, where the parliamentary democratic system has ushered in fascism.
(The volume contains an afterword by Bettina Rohl. I accept Rohl's right to have her own viewpoint on her mother, and it's understandable why she has it; nonetheless, it's total crap and she is a silly cow. People can be off-beam in what they say and think about their parents, and Rohl's mother was not first and foremost a wicked Stasi agent, although of course Rohl finds her shitty and stupid view easy to promulgate in Germany. Karin Bauer's introduction is far better and is worth reading.)
3) Of course it would have been justified to assassinate Hitler.
4) Spoof article.
5) There is the view that the Facebook generation deserve to live under fascism; that even when being rounded up for extermination most of them would probably be picking at their phones posting shit to Facebook, sending tweets, "liking" a comment, or "sharing" something with their "friends" - with all of these terms understood in the utterly fuckwit sense of course. That's if they could get a signal. Those who couldn't would be standing there with blank looks on their faces. Nonetheless, I retain my conscience.
I once bought a t-shirt off the internet portraying the logo of something I was fond of, the Slackware 14.1 OS. Excellent t-shirt, which I still wear some years later, even though all the others I had at that time, and their replacements, have worn out. Somewhat expensive, but I was unusually flush at that time.
Might not appeal to your starving-artist demographic, though.
For god's sake, we don't need to deify the co-founder of the Red Army Faction. You really think THAT's the image that will turn around the red counties in Wisconsin?
Good fucking Christ. This is the kind of nonsensical thinking we get from the BernieBros: "All my Facebook friends are socialists! That means EVERYONE IN AMERICA is a socialist! BERNIE WOULD HAVE WON WEST VIRGINIA!"
Sophie would have voted for Hillary. She was radical only in her opposition to Hitler.
Oh well, I thought you might like those videos and take notice of Ulrike's background and motivation. She wasn't like some of the men in the RAF. She probably voted SPD before they joined the coalition in 1966, after which there was no parliamentary "opposition" so there was no point any more. Pennies dropped.
The slaveowners who founded the US decided on a shitty executive-presidential system ("hail to the chief"), so it's not an exact parallel, but there's hardly any scope now in the US for parliamentary opposition at national level. That's part of what has just happened. Meaningful opposition now is that which tends to bring Trump down and stop fascism, and it won't be happening on the Hill. Sure, there are Democrats in the Congress show but there's not much point cheering them on as they try to filibuster. That won't stop shit. There's no feasible way to recall the elected Fuhrer. Nor do I have high hopes of the various court cases against Trump. If necessary, he can pardon himself. The opposition's focusing aim must be to remove Trump from the presidency by extra-parliamentary means.
That said, I support the petition for the electoral college to make Clinton the president, but it will fail. Hillary "Let Trump lead the country" Clinton doesn't even matter after then.
You may wish to plug You've Been Trumped Too, sequel to the 2011 documentary on Trump's treatment of the Scots, You've Been Trumped (which is freely available on Youtube, and rather enlightening about his ways). A bit late now, but it should be out soon.
Well, be, don't discount the court cases against Trump. The protests have proven that a large segment of the population will never accept him -- and I think that the Republican establishment is genuinely afraid of Trump. So they may be looking for an excuse to put Pence in office early on. Pence is all kinds of awful, but he isn't WEIRD, in the way that Trump is weird. I can't imagine Baltimore erupting in an anti-Pence demonstration.
White roses are available at dollar stores, hobby stores and florists. I'm wearing a safety pin, another visual symbol of my beliefs.
So merch is fine, just don't forget you can make your own.
Abbey
Dear fucking LORD, and to me saying that is akin to hailing Satan.
I hardly got thru my day when I heard Pence took over Christie's leadership of the transition team.
I would take Christie every hour of the day over Pence. Has anyone read The Handmaid's Tale? Comprehended it?
Abbey, that's one reason why I like the White Rose image. It's a do-it-yourself meme. Sort of like the spinning wheel was during Gandhi's revolution.
It's interesting when the media don't put two and two together.
In his first conversation with Theresa May after the US election, Donald Trump invited her to visit him.
What he meant was: "You debated banning me from Britain? But you probably want to meet me now that I'm president, missy. And if you do, you can fucking well come over here!"
He was giving her a slap in the mouth in response to the British parliamentary debate on banning him from entering Britain, which resulted from a petition signed by more than 500,000 people after he promised to ban Muslims from the US.
That's what Trump boasts of being like. It's no secret. When someone annoys him, give them a good kicking, ten times over. Rub their faces in it. Make them give you a shit-eating grin. He has done this repeatedly, whether the other person is a senior Republican politician or a beauty contestant. It's a well known feature of this mentally disturbed and obnoxious man's psyche. He doesn't know the difference between "reality TV" and reality, between the wrestling ring and the real world.
The British elite would probably have liked to block that parliamentary debate, but felt that the PR implications of changing the rules weren't worth dealing with. If the petition had been run by a private company, they could have stopped it less problematically - as they did with one by "38 degrees" against a Zionist scumbag of a BBC journalist called Laura Keunssberg. But this was an official parliamentary petition.
That's all details. Trump doesn't understand the "private-public" and "legislative-executive" distinctions. Nor does he give a shit. Why should he? He can hire people to look after that kind of stuff. The point is that he was disrespected.
When "losers" aren't saying he's got short fingers, they're saying he should be banned from places. It's hard being the Trump man, hard for the loony to maintain his dignity. He knows deep inside that he's a worthless son of a bitch. That's why he tries so hard to prove stuff, especially regarding his "tremendous assets". That's why he shouts about the length of his fingers and his cock.
Someone's dissed him? Then they should get down on the ground while he beats them up. It doesn't even matter whether it was the same person. There was a debate in the British parliament, right? And Theresa May is the CEO of the British parliament, right? Or chairman or princess of the realm or some shit like that. Some limy, probably on her period.
"The Donald" wasn't what he was actually called by those who knew him. It was "the Don". The subs wrote "The Donald" into a boxout in Jonathan van Meter's 1989 article in Spy, and then the sobriquet was spread about a lot. Originally it was "the Don". Don't disrespect the "Don".
How about a website with articles designed to provoke Trump into showing how crazy he is? Just an idea. It could get a lot of interest.
"US President gets into Twitter war with ShortFingeredLoony.com website"
Or even
"US President threatens drone strikes against ShortFingeredLoony.com website"
Loony-baiting is usually cruel and deeply unpleasant. But when the loony is the executive president of a country with 547-megatonne strategic nuclear arsenal...
(PS The meaning of the invitation to Theresa May is pretty clear. But say this to most British people and they will think up all sorts of reasons why it isn't true. You're not supposed to remember stuff unless you're told in the media to remember it. Two plus two equals four only when your masters say it does.)
I guess no Lancashire people have come here recently. I'm telling you, they probably won't like the white rose symbol :)
Remind them that Yorkshiremen don't like the red rose of "Visit England" (formerly the English Tourist Board) either!
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