With Trump's stunning election victory, making him the second US president in all of American History to win two non-consecutive terms (the first being Grover Cleveland) I think the broad commitment of the MAP movement to liberalism is worth interrogating.
Let's look at some other places where the law on adult-minor sex/erotica has not merely simply lagged but for a time actually reversed. The USSR is one as there was no set age of consent beyond sexual maturity which is highly variable and left a lot of grey area, this in itself explains a lot about why the former USSR nations such as Russia and Ukraine have developed a very rich girl love pedophilic underground which even today is way more above-ground and open then any girl lover can be West today. If we look at how Soviet leaders saw their law code some interesting things become apparent:
The category of moral crimes was non-existent in Soviet law and while this legislation was drafted in the 1920s, much of it was set in motion in the second half of the 1920s (the early Stalin period) which disrupts easy libertarian/western leftist conceptions of a good Stalin vs. bad Trotsky. And, again, by 1930, Stalin –– the man often depicted by anarchists and Trotskyists as a Victorian moralist was very much in command but Sereisky felt very much safe in promoting the idea that there were no moral crimes in Soviet legal code.Soviet medical and legal experts were very proud of the progressive nature of their legislation, lnl930, the medical expert Sereisky (1930) wrote in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia: “Soviet legislation does not recognize so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest” P. 593).
Along with Nietzsche it can be argued that Marx and Engels were the foremost critics of morality as such in the 19th century. And the mainstream of the 19th century was an imminently moralistic century, if nothing else. When most intellectuals posited morality as benign and universal, Marx largely posited as useless at best and a product of historical conditions -- after all, the ideas of any era are merely the ideas of its ruling class according to Marx. Marx was ruthlessly critical of "moralism" as he termed it, the notion that mere moral change or adherence to moral principles in themselves could fix social ailments when he held that only radical structural change could do this.For the Soviets, as a nation founded on Marxism, headed by a radical party that had its social base in the slums of Russia's big cities, morality was easily dismissed as just another variety of bourgeois claptrap, since the poor and working class often paid the price for middle-class society's righteousness as those most likely to be arrested or imprisoned, a certain degree of skepticism was natural and arguably inevitable.
From my personal perspective, I can't necessarily agree with Sereisky that there were "no moral crimes" in the Soviet law code in that the ban on homosexual behavior between men and teens/boys appears to be such a case of one, even if it wasn't labelled that way. Certainly, the Soviets approached it from a few angles where banning it was justified 1. the question of whether it was natural, the soyience of the time certainly answered in the negative on that point, and as good early 20th century materialists they weren't ones who wished to defy nature 2.whether it was good for the health of soyciety, as a nation with many foreign adversaries, massive indefensible borders and with a population of fighting age men diminished by World War I and the Russian Civil War it was held to be a social and state interest that men should be making babies with women, not depositing their semen up some boy's asshole or in his mouth. I haven't researched the debate here well-enough but it was probably not a matter of fear that some incelish pederast with a weak jaw, a bulging belly, and below average stature was essential for social reproduction of the population but whether the boys would like it too much and not wish to form families with women.
The author of the piece on gay rights in the USSR concludes that the USSR wasn't really homophobic, at least by the standards of the time, but that they were merely against pedophilia due to the fact that most gays were prosecuted under Article 121. However, the standards for sexual maturity of boys was higher (with girls it appears to be mere menarche) and the interest on the part of the Soviet state in prosecuting men for having for non-forced sex with pubsecent/pre-pubescent girls was far lower. So I do think that the USSR was homophobic at the state level (not just populace) even if the laws used to prosecute gays were hardly out of line with similar age of consent laws that exist in the bourgeois West today which are not only not opposed by the modern LGBT movement but are, in fact, celebrated by it. To me, it complicates the picture a lot further than just a culturally progressive pro-gay liberal West vs. a backwards socially conserative homophobic USSR. You can see how it set the ground for the type of homophobia that we see in Russia today, although even now that Russia has a hard age of consent of 16 and a statute that threatens people who spread "pro-pedophile propaganda" with 7 years in prison its easily arguable that pedophiles have it easier there than the modern liberal West. Russia is one of the few countries in the world where mere possession of child pornography is not a crime and, in rival Ukraine, a very Soviet-like policy is maintained of banning pornography in general and so child pornography is treated functionally the same as other types of porn –– which is protective for pedophiles since very few, if any, modern states have an interest in imprisoning vast swathes of the male population for looking at titties alone on a computer in their bed room. The internet makes it too easy to get around bans on consumption and so the message that even the most conservative states have on adult pornography consumed in private, whether de jure or de facto is "keep it to yourself."
One of the ads that aired on behalf of the failed Kamala campaign featured a young man jacking off until he's startled by his "Republican congressman" who decides that he's banning/keeping tabs on his pornography habits because he won the last election and therefore its his choice. One of the core watchwords of the Kamala campaign was "freedom" and here it was mainly referring to abortion and birth control. In other words, issues close to the sexual concerns of young women but the caveat here is that even the reddest of red states are barely arresting any women at all for inducing abortions through pills smuggled in out of state or performed outside the state, and no body is being charged with murder, even though the pro-life zealots behind the movement that passed anti-abortion laws at the state level and struck down Roe federally believe that it is murder. Maybe some do in fact believe that but the majority of the pro-life movement are made up of Christian feminist Church ladies who treat it as a sin just like any other and who often oppose any effort to charge women for murder because they view women who abort their babies as merely misled.
Can we think of any case where men are allowed to perform an action that a large swathe of society considers murder and most people + the authorities are fine with it not being prosecuted? What would be impossible for any state to realistically attempt to prosecute every time the opportunity presents itself e.g. the consumption of adult pornography, is the norm for pedophiles who live in fear that their private pornography consumption may not only result in their imprisonment but massive prison sentences more similar to a murder charge than other non-sexual felony charges and a lifetime on a public sex offender list which constitutes a scarlet letter on their employment and social prospects. That these law codes violate constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment and punishment after serving one's sentence is no matter. Similar attempts to violate the constitutional rights of even violent criminals and murderers would be met with howling outrage and "concern" even from those who are sympathetic.
So I guess to TL;DR this a bit we have four examples of a downwards revision of the age of consent in modern times:
1. Islamic Afghanistan
2. Post Saddam Iraq. Also done on Islamic grounds
3. the USSR
4. The Netherlands
Of the four, only the Netherlands can truly be called liberal and it lasted for just ten years after being implemented in 1992 and it was fairly niggardly in certain ways in comparison with the others because it was an elective age of consent. I'm sure that in practice it meant a relaxation on the part of angry parents who would wish to prosecute MAPs but the reality (iirc) the reality is that a visit by a doctor was necessary to proclaim that a 12 year old child was capable of consent. Something that doctors in the UK were already testing when it came to seeking consent for treatment from even younger children and for surgeries which, while probably necessary, were far, far more dangerous than a simple sex act. Unfortunately for boy lovers, only the Netherlands allowed this downward revision for both sexes yet at the same time I would not be surprised if, outside a fewer unlucky bastards who get made an example of, the culture of bachi bazi continues in earnest in the Afghan villages, as it has for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
Yet, as I said at the start, we should really be questioning whether liberalism is a good thing for us. I'm not here to scream at people and say "stop being a libtard!" (as funny as it is) but how is it profiting us? The liberal Western world continues to get more restrictive and oppressively intolerant towards us, not less. I may end up eating my words, and I myself have scolded people for thinking that Trump or Republicans would do anything to our benefit but is it not possibly better for us that the viciously anti-MAP california prosecutor lost and the guy who was Jeffrey Epstein's good friend and a convicted sex offender (though only in civil court) is President? Doesn't this have more possibility in terms of "normalizing" MAPs and RSOs? Reading through the Percy Foundation's analysis of Kamala's record as a prosecutor for MAPs and RSOs I became embarassed that I even contemplated voting for her (I didn't). Pretty much any American prosecutor is a chudjak on this issue and are practically required by law to be bc of mandatory minimums but even I didn't know how uniquely terrible her record was: https://wapercyfoundation.org/?p=1744
Again, I had to remind people over and over again that at the state and local level Republicans are terrible on MAPs, typically worse than democrats, despite copes to the contrary, and that its no coincidence that the most radical uptick in anti-MAP repression since the 80s-early 2000s coincides with the QCult which was riling up sundowning/schizophrenic boomers with promises that Trump actually really means to accomplish his platform but is being riled up by blood-drinking, child sacrificing, deep state pedophiles who oppose him.
As far as the USSR is concerned it may not be immediately apparent where the conflict with liberalism is. Indeed, Marxism in certain ways is a fulfillment of the 18th century liberal enlightenment liberalism as much as it is also a rejection of it. Marx aimed to critique where it fell short, at least this was certainly the case originally, and it can be argued that the move towards collectivism that Marxism implies is actually an attempt to secure a more radical vista of freedom for the individual, or at least a wider swathe of individuals, rather than certain privileged strata. There was enough commonality between the two most liberal great powers in the world, the US/UK and the USSR, to sustain a grand alliance against the fascist Axis powers. 20th century communism engaged in a refusal to allow liberalism's great contradictions to remain unresolved and it can be argued that it became a genuine post-liberal philosophy engaged in opposition to it. There are US intelligence files and some independent evidence to support the claim that the USSR actually funded the far-right throughout Europe after WWII in order to create geopolitical friction for the two great liberal super-powers and to undermine the capitalist-democratic consensus in continental Europe. So I don't discount horseshoe theory entirely but I think its advocates refuse to see where the far-right and liberalism have been in alliance or where communist and liberal powers have actually been on the same side of certain issues.
Right now, going solely on the most recent victories, it makes more sense to be a Muslim than it does to be a liberal, a communist or a fascist if you want MAP rights. But given how small and (comparatively) Westernized the Muslim population is in the West, its disconnect with the West's deep Christian and pagan traditions, I'm very skeptical it can be a path forward for us -- I'm just calling it as I see it.
In the USSR, rights could be abridged if it was in the interest of the state or the communist movement. Perhaps the other great controversial action the Soviets took which is liable to start a fight in any Western hard leftist circle was the decision to severely limit abortion in the 30s. The Soviets went beyond where any country in the West was on abortion "rights" by allowing abortion up till birth which created what some have referred to as "an abortion culture" that permitted libertine behavior especially on the part of women who were not prostitutes and outside of marriage. Yet, the choice to heavily restrict abortion was not a moral one on Stalin's part but merely reflected a concern that falling population would prevent the country from attaining its military and economic goals. Just like how the Soviets permitted a window of abortion, paid for by the state, that was far larger than the majority of the West today they were capable of restricting it just as easily. And just as easily that "right" to abortion was returned to women in the 50s after the leadership of the USSR felt sufficiently secure. In contrast, in the West, whenever something is judged a "right" the idea of reversing it becomes unthinkable, the granting of a constitutional right to abortion in 1973 meant that it would take a near five decade effort rooted in a large grass-roots movement (that also didn't really constitute a threat to elite interests) to overturn a judicial decision made by a group of unelected court justices decades prior.
That is not to say that I disagree with the Roe ruling btw just stating facts. Viewership of adult pornography is also now pretty much a "right" because of similar reasoning made my an unelected court five decades ago on first amendment grounds. Roe also meant a constitutional right to privacy, which made it permissible for porn sites to be on clearnet without any hard visitor age-restrictions, a condition now overturned on the State level where states are attempting to coerce porn website owners into forcing the websites to make visitors enter state IDs and then share their data with them. But when it comes to our erotic interests child erotica is not a right even though certain SCOTUS cases and justices recognized its 1st amendment validity merely bc protection of children is held to be a higher interest plus convoluted reasoning about sharing forbidden pixels re-victimizing a child as if the person who viewed them is just as guilty as the person who created the image. There was and likely will be no attempt to reckon with the implications of self-produced youth erotica.
In the aftermath of the Trump victory, Nick Fuentes sent out a tweet (in addition to a viral rant) that proclaimed "Your body. My Choice. Forever" which has racked up 80 million impressions on X (more than the number of people who voted for either candidate).
Obviously Fuentes was aiming to be provocative and achieved that end by creating what must be at this point the most successful piece of internet bait of all time.
TO WRAP IT ALL UP:
Why is it that in liberal countries where "my body my choice" is the rule we are extremely penalized, (more than any sexual minority in history) but in non-liberal societies where "your body my choice" is the credo of the leaders we are quite often tolerated?Even comparatively quite free?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-new ... t-34067801
https://www.stalinsociety.com/news/homo ... yintheussr