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aboutanancientenquiry · 9 days ago

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The Ancient Greek symposium is often considered an important part of Greek culture, a place where the elite drank, feasted and indulged in sometimes decadent activities. Although such practices were present in symposia, the writing and performance of poetry is perhaps the most interesting and thought-provoking element of the ancient sympotic tradition.

This essay aims to investigate the interestingly varied relationship between the symposium and poetry by approaching it on a number of different levels: the first exploring poetry’s capability to inform its reader about the symposium and its associated practises; the second probing poetic relationships with and similarities to other key sympotic components, such as wine; the third questioning the suitability of poetry as a source for establishing the nature of such a relationship.

From a modern perspective, that the symposium was a context for the performance of literature immediately and incontrovertibly implies a connection between poetry and the symposium. This then raises questions of the nature of said relationship: did poetry simply sing of sympotic activity, opening up the exclusive and elusive world of the Ancient Greek elite? How was the environment of the symposium particularly suited to the performance of poetry, and did this setting determine or in any way influence the kind of poetry performed?

Xenophanes, a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic, provides a splendid account of sympotic customs, noting the setup of the wine mixing bowl, the food available, and the prayers and libations to the deities before proceedings begin, insinuating that there was a heavily ritualised character to the symposium. In addition, though writing almost a century earlier, Alcaeus, a Greek lyric poet, wrote the line, ‘from Teian cups the wine drops fly,’ which indicates the playing of drinking games of sorts. It is interesting to note the different times within which each poem was written; the large chronological gap between the two shows that the tradition of depicting sympotic events in poetry was not only maintained, but important.

Although in many cases, as examined above, sympotic poetry seemingly provides descriptions and depictions of activities and events during the symposium, it has been argued that pictures of moderate drinking parties may not necessarily mirror reality but are rather a guide as to how to drink 'properly’. Considering also that the symposium was considered a centre for the transmission of traditional values, it seems logical that poetry should reflect not only the happenings but also the aims and intentions of the symposium.

For example, Anacreon, writing in the 6th century BCE, provides not only guidance regarding the proper ratio of mixing water to wine: 'come boy, bring us a bowl so I can drink a sconce. Pour in ten ladlesful of water, five of wine, so I can bacchanize once more with no disgrace,’ but he also advises on the manner in which one should consume wine, ’ come now, this time let’s drink not in this Scythian style with din and uproar, but sip to the sound of decent songs.’ In addition, Alcaeus, a poet from around the 7th-6th centuries BCE, warns of the dangers of wine, 'if wine fetters the wits, often he hangs his head and blames himself, regretting what he’s said, but its too late to take it back.’

The occurrence of such guiding themes in poetry written almost 100 years apart emphasizes their importance and hints that such a relationship between the symposium and poetry was strong and continuous.

These three instances demonstrate this poetic role and highlight a mutual exchange between the symposium and poetry; while the symposium may provide the subject matter, poetry can provide the constraints and guidance for such subject matter. This shows that already, although only following a brief investigation, the relationship between poetry and the symposium is more intricate than meets the eye.

It has been established that a key aspect of the relationship between the symposium and poetry is poetry’s ability to depict sympotic activities - the 'seen’ components of the symposium, so to speak. However, the relationship assumes a new dimension when one considers the portrayal of the 'invisible’ sympotic atmosphere through, rather than imagery and words, the very nature of sympotic poetry. The symposium as an exclusive gathering of elites implies an intimate and sheltered environment for the recitation of poetry.

Pottery carrying depictions of the symposium show a keen focus on internal events amongst the participants, and an inward facing layout is suggested by Xenophanes, who points out 'the altar in the middle bedecked with flowers’, which gives rise to the idea that the symposium was a gathering separate from the outside world. The repetition of this imagery in different kinds of sources lends strength and credibility to the case for an inwardly directed symposium. From here, parallels can be drawn between sympotic poetry and the arena in which it was performed for and written in.

Exemplifying the notion of sympotic isolation, it has been suggested that Theognis, a sixth century BCE Greek lyric poet, saw the themes of sympotic poetry and the symposium as providing refuge from the corruption of Megara, which supports the idea of the sympotic environment as being very sheltered from the outside world. Similarly, although in a slightly lighter-hearted manner, Alcaeus shows the symposium to be an escape from the outside world, but in this case from the weather, 'defeat the weather; light a fire, mix the sweet wine unstintingly and put a nice soft cushion by my head.’ Furthermore, although the earliest sympotic poetry may have actually been contemporary with early epic, the content of the respective genres varies widely, due in part perhaps to the different performance environments and audiences of each genre?

Having investigated the more straightforward features of the relationship between the symposium and poetry, the time has come to direct attention to its more subtle and elusive constituents. Possibly the most interesting fact about this increasingly intricate relationship, is that poetry finds itself not only associated with the symposium as a whole, but linked in a labyrinthine manner to key elements within the symposium itself, such as wine. In other words, the connections between poetry and the symposium represent relationships within a relationship.

It hardly needs to be said that wine was a key component of the symposium. What is curious is the way in which the characteristics of wine and poetry are closely related and in some cases interwoven. On the one hand, one could almost go so far as to argue that, poetry is the literary compliment of wine, and that in the context of the ancient symposium, poetry was approached in a manner not so far removed from the way in which wine was viewed. However, on the other, it could be claimed that poetry was the sympotic antithesis of wine, revealing a more complicated relationship between poetry and wine than may have previously been appreciated.

It is evident that many characteristics of wine and poetry are intimately linked in the symposium. Alcaeus remarks that 'wine puts cares out of mind,’ and that 'wine is a window into a man’ properties shared also with poetry, especially that within the sympotic context which played upon particularly pleasurable themes, as aforementioned. Although parallels between the effects of wine and poetry have begun to emerge, this is not to say that wine and poetry work in the same way. Parallels can also be drawn, establishing a relationship, between wine and the composition of poetry. The historian Whitmarsh states that solids and liquids are not the same as food and drink, which require artfulness and cultivation.

It is well established that wine was very much a cultivated and refined product, having been brought from outside into the home, drawing many parallels to the god Dionysos, a key player in the symposium. The writing and 'cultivation’ of poetry by the author seems to reflect closely the winemaking process. Additionally, the heavily ritualised and controlled practice of mixing water with wine, mentioned previously in Anacreon’s verse, can be interpreted as a mirroring of the careful art of fitting words into a regularly repeated meter then singing them to a tune of a similarly repetitive nature to the meter. Thus it is not unreasonable to suggest that poetry could in fact masquerade as the literary equivalent of wine.

Despite the appearance of a harmonious and close relationship between poetry and wine, it can be seen that while poetry may hypothetically offer itself as the literary equivalent of wine in the symposium context, it can simultaneously act as a literary antithesis to wine, almost as a sympotic antidote. The fact that poetry and wine share similar capabilities, as expressed above, raises the question of whether poetry could be interpreted as a medium providing all the benefits of wine, yet without the risk of social embarrassment.

The usefulness of ancient poetry as a source for studying the symposium cannot and should not be denied. However, it is important not to let this usefulness get in the way when trying to establish the relationship between the symposium and poetry, as the modern perspective of the relationship could cloud the ancient relationship. On the one hand, as shown above, poetry has a great deal to tell the reader, both implicitly and explicitly about the ancient symposium, demonstrating that it is a good source for establishing the relationship between the symposium and poetry.

Yet on the other hand, the fact that a relationship can be seen between poetry and the symposium without much in-depth investigation into the matter raises the question of whether it would be better to consider other sources, such as pottery for example, so as to gain a wider and clearer perspective on the relationship. Lastly, it is interesting to ask why poetry is considered such a suitable source for establishing the relationship between the symposium and poetry; is it because, like the symposium, poetry was a key element of Greek culture which endured through time, therefore, the modern scholar is keen to link the two together in the aim of figuring out their method of survival?

The relationship between poetry and the symposium was complex, increasingly so the deeper into individual sympotic elements one delves, finding more subtle connections and similarities all the time. There was also almost certainly a degree of mutual exchange between the two, with one influencing and inspiring the other and vice versa.

One thing in particular stands out; that interpretations of the relationship between poetry and the symposium will continue to change and evolve over time, in much the same way that poetry and the symposium can be seen to have helped one another develop in the ancient world. The fact that an active relationship between two aspects of Ancient Greek culture can still be seen today is very exciting.

#ancient greek poetry #ancient greek symposia

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aboutanancientenquiry · 9 days ago

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The Massacre of Sharpeville (21 March 1960, South Africa)

Photos form the massacre of Sharpeville, South Africa, 21 March 1960, committed by the police force of the apartheid regime against Black protestors.

I post also the following, much more recent infamous photo, with a person whose family made huge fortune under the apartheid regime and who is, as it seems, very nostalgic of these times:

#massacre of sharpeville #south africa #black africans #apartheid #elon musk

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aboutanancientenquiry · 10 days ago

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#the sea

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aboutanancientenquiry · 11 days ago

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"Herodotus and the Presocratics: inquiry and intellectual culture in the fifth century BCE

K. Scarlett Kingsley, Herodotus and the Presocratics: inquiry and intellectual culture in the fifth century BCE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 272. ISBN 9781009338547.

Review by

Davide Napoli, Cornell University. [email protected]

Preview

The fluidity of generic boundaries in classical Greek culture is part of what makes its study fascinatingly complex, as Scarlett Kingsley argues in her Introduction to Herodotus and the Presocratics. But the high level of specialization within modern subfields can often obscure key connections across the spectrum of classical Greek intellectual history. Some of the most thought-provoking recent contributions to this field have in fact aimed to transcend such disciplinary boundaries—a group to which Herodotus and the Presocratics should now be added.[1]

The originality of Kingsley’s contribution can be readily gauged if compared with its closest intellectual predecessor, Rosalind Thomas’ groundbreaking Herodotus in Context (2000). As Kingsley argues (pp. 6–9), the longstanding interest in Herodotus’ empiricism, of which Thomas’ work is perhaps the most compelling and influential example, has led interpreters to downplay the Histories’ interactions with theoretical inquiry (although, one might add, in some cases the dichotomy between theoretical and empirical might be in the eye of the reader). The overarching contribution of Herodotus and the Presocratics is to revise and complement this interpretative paradigm by tracing Herodotus’ relationship to the philosophical speculation associated with the so-called Presocratics. While Kingsley is explicit about the problematic status of the term “Presocratic” (30–1), her use of this category is significantly more capacious than usual, including authors like Sophocles, Antiphon, and Hippias—so much so that the line between “Presocratic” and “classical Greek” is at times hard to draw.

The connection between Herodotus and the Presocratics traced by Kingsley is particularly intriguing insofar as it focuses on the narrative of the Histories, rather than on its author’s assumed views: “the historical narrative throughout the Histories stakes out a range of philosophical views that place the reader in the hermeneutic position of vicariously testing ideas and methods in a laboratory of historical action” (9, emphasis mine). Kingsley understands the Histories as a laboratory in which contemporary concepts and conflicting theories operate, interact, and clash. The lack of a strong thesis in some of Kingsley’s chapters is thus less a flaw than a feature of this wide-ranging exploration, which puts Herodotus’ readers front and center. To anchor her argument, in most chapters Kingsley selects a particular Herodotean passage as her focal point, but the systematic work of contextualization makes her analyses much richer than isolated close readings.

The methodological section of the Introduction starts with the refreshing observation that “in spite of an awareness of its anteriority, the Histories is often interpreted in light of the generic expectations of later historiography, which only arose in its wake” (11). However, while warning against “generic essentialism” (33), Kingsley’s Introduction seems at times to fall under its spell, especially in her treatment of “generic miscegenation”: “[Herodotus’] historiē contains generic miscegenation already in the fifth century” (35). This contention presupposes the possibility of pure genres, an interpretative mirage that is even less productive in a context where generic heterogeneity is the rule rather than the exception.[2] The Introduction is more effective when tackling “generic indeterminacy” (9 and passim), but the use of genre theory à la Todorov, with its focus on (the modern construction of) literature, downplays the Histories’ cultural alterity. Consider the following example: “the Histories does not create its audience ex nihilo, it relies upon readerly competence to do the work of situating its literary ambitions in an already-existing reading culture” (19). Here, several terms domesticate the Histories by turning it into a modern work of literature: “literary ambitions” presupposes a well-defined field of literature; “reading culture” and “readerly competence” (a term that echoes reader-response criticism’s problematic “informed readers”) gloss over the complex status of writing in the fifth century; and even an italicized title like “the Histories” can function in this context as a hallmark of modern authorship (Castelli 2020, 43–55 and 191–207). Kingsley’s adoption of genre theory to address the Histories’ generic indeterminacy makes the Introduction feel like a false start, especially because Kingsley’s insightful discussions can largely be read independently from it.

Chapter 2 (“Relativism, King of All”) demonstrates the complexity and ambiguity of nomos in the Histories. Kingsley starts from the famous comparison between the Greeks’ and the Callatians’ divergent funerary customs (Hdt. 3.38). Far from endorsing the simple relativism of nomoi, as analyses of this passage usually surmise, Kingsley argues that the Histories repeatedly complicates the value of nomos by showing how it can be weaponized. This chapter culminates in an astute analysis of the way Darius’ language in the Constitutional Debate redefines the Persian nomoi (71–2), in which Kingsley shows that in the narrative of the third book “the unjust actions of the Great King are naturalized as cultural tradition” (75).

Chapter 3 (“The Pull of Tradition: Egoism and the Persian Revolution”) discusses self-interest as a motive for human action. The centerpiece here is the episode of the False Smerdis in the third book of the Histories, which is put in conversation with tragic (esp. Sophocles’ Philoctetes) and sophistic texts. Despite the intriguing conceptual tapestry that results from this reading, Kingsley’s reconstruction of the debate around self-interest moves on a high level of generality (for instance when comparing Herodotus’ Darius and Odysseus in Sophocles’ Philoctetes) and feels less focused than the arguments pursued elsewhere in the book.

The opposite is true of Chapter 4 (“History peri physeos”), which is driven by a tight and clear-cut thesis, namely that the paradigm of environmental determinism is a reductive understanding of the operation of physis in the Histories. Such a challenge is not entirely new (e.g., Thomas 2000, 103–14), but Kingsley persuasively shows that physis plays a more prominent role in the economy of the Histories than usually acknowledged, directing our attention to a different set of intertextual resonances that include Anaximander (124), Aeschylus (127), and Antiphon (139). These readings show, among other things, how Kingsley’s approach can complement the dominant emphasis on the empirical dimension of the Histories.

It is however in Chapter 5 (“Physis on the Battlefield”) that the book is at its most original. Here Kingsley extends the discussion of physis to moments in which it is exceeded, which are signaled by phrases like “better/stronger than one’s physis” (ἀμείνων/κρείσσων τῆς φύσεως). Using the debate between Xerxes and Demaratus in Book 7 as the lynchpin for her analysis, Kingsley identifies a particular strand of the fifth-century discussion of physis, which she suggestively terms “transhumanism” (142, n. 5). Kingsley shows how Herodotus’ narrative tests the theoretical underpinnings of transhumanism, with a move that perturbs the simple binary logic of nomos vs. physis. This chapter showcases the payoff of a methodological framework that can easily toggle between text and context: Kingsley not only uses contemporary speculation to enrich Herodotus’ text but also lets the peculiar emphases of the Histories shine a new light on fifth-century theoretical debates.

Chapter 6 (“Historical Inquiry and Presocratic Epistemology”) turns to the epistemological assumptions that underpin the narrator’s voice in the Histories. This is a rich field of exploration, as it draws extensively on the Presocratic debates on truth and being (to on). In a very successful section, Kingsley argues that Herodotus engages with Presocratic epistemology through a marked use of a “grammar of truth” (179–86), in particular by “domesticating the participle τὸ ἐόν as a referent applicable to the past” (189). This example is representative of the close and fruitful attention paid to verbal patterns throughout this chapter.

The seventh and final chapter (“Herodotean Philosophy”) reads differently from the previous ones, as it zooms in on a single text as an example of Herodotean reception—the Dissoi Logoi (which Kingsley, following the majority opinion, dates to the early fourth century). A large part of the discussion is dedicated to cultural relativism, a topic treated in Chapter 2, thus creating a ring-composition in the book’s argument. A brief comparison between the experience that Empedocles’ sophos acquires in multiple lives (DK 31 B 129) and the one that Herodotus gathers from the historical past provides a suggestive conclusion (205–6). Three appendices round off the book by expanding upon Kingsley’s treatment of relativism and epistemology.

As this brief summary suggests, one of the features that makes Kingsley’s book stand out is the breadth of the textual evidence brought to bear on the Histories. Not only does Kingsley deftly move across the spectrum of fifth-century culture, but she also often keeps an eye on its later reception (e.g., p. 108 on Athenaeus; pp. 201–2 on Maximus of Tyre). Equally commendable is Kingsley’s extensive engagement with prior scholars in multiple languages (in some places even too extensive, where it arrests the flow of the argument: pp. 190–4). These aspects show that Kingsley’s inquiry is, like Herodotus’ historiē, in constant and productive dialogue with its intellectual predecessors—and contemporaries.

A lot of the interpretative work done by Herodotus and the Presocratics is a balancing act that thoughtfully complicates engrained ideas (e.g., Herodotus’ privileging of nomos over physis: 121–38; Herodotus’ aversion to truth-claims: 179–86). While Kingsley is not alone in challenging or nuancing these interpretative paradigms in Herodotean scholarship, her work brings this debate to a broader audience by making epistemological curiosity a key feature of Herodotus’ intellectual profile. Kingsley’s Herodotus is less a systematic theorist than—in keeping with the Histories-as-laboratory—a bold experimenter, whose profound interest in alternative explanations prevents him from committing to a single theoretical stance.

The reach of Kingsley’s discussion is sometimes stymied by a tendency to make individual examples stand in for categories, as when Antiphon represents “Presocratic circles” (62 n. 83) or a μέν…δέ antithesis represents “sophistic style” (96). This can lead to overgeneralizations like the following: “what [Hippias’ work] indicates is that the universalizing tendencies of early Greek philosophy could and did include the study of the past in its project” (23). This sentence is built on a series of debatable assumptions: that “early Greek philosophy” is a unity, that it has a project, that Hippias’ work is part of it, and that it can in fact stand in for it.

Such criticisms, perhaps inevitable for a project of this interdisciplinary breadth, do not detract from the most important contribution of this book: the invitation to contemplate an alternative intellectual geography for Herodotus’ Histories, which firmly establishes its vital role in contemporary theoretical debates. Kingsley’s insightful analysis of the Histories’ laboratory makes Herodotus and the Presocratics a must-read for Herodotean scholars, as well as for anyone interested in classical Greek intellectual history.[3]

References

Billings, J. 2021. The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens. Princeton.

Castelli, E. 2020. La nascita del titolo nella letteratura greca: dall’epica arcaica alla prosa di età classica. Berlin.

Foster, M., L. Kurke, and N. Weiss. 2019. Introduction. In Genre in archaic and classical Greek poetry: theories and models, ed. Margaret Foster, Leslie Kurke and Naomi Weiss, 1-28. Leiden.

Grethlein, J. 2010. The Greeks and Their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth Century BCE. Cambridge.

Holmes, B. 2010. The Symptom and the Subject: the Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece. Princeton.

Kurke, L. 2011. Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the Invention of Greek Prose. Princeton.

Nightingale, A. W. 1995. Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy. Cambridge.

Proietti, G. 2021. Prima di Erodoto: aspetti della memoria delle Guerre persiane. Stuttgart.

Thomas, R. 2000. Herodotus in Context: Ethnography, Science, and the Art of Persuasion. Cambridge.

Notes

[1] E.g., Billings 2021; Kurke 2011; Holmes 2010.

[2] E.g., Grethlein 2010, 149–204; Nightingale 1995; Foster, Kurke and Weiss 2019.

[3] A minor desideratum: it might have been interesting to see Kingsley engage with Giorgia Proietti’s landmark Prima di Erodoto (2021). The vastly different backgrounds in which they place Herodotus’ work (civic memory for Proietti, intellectual inquiry for Kingsley), as well as Proietti’s extensive use of material culture, might together yield an even richer image of the fifth-century context to which the Histories respond."

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#herodotus #the histories #presocratic philosophy #k. scarlett kingsley

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aboutanancientenquiry · 11 days ago

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This two-part sourcebook gives the reader easy access to the language and thought of the Presocratic thinkers, making it possible either to read the texts continuously or to study them one by one along with commentary. It contains the complete fragments and a generous selection of testimonies for twenty major Presocratic thinkers including cosmologists, ontologists, and sophists, setting translations opposite Greek and Latin texts on facing pages to allow easy comparison. The texts are grouped in chapters by author in a mainly chronological order, each preceded by a brief introduction and an up-to-date bibliography, and followed by a brief commentary. Significant variant readings are noted. This edition contains new fragments and testimonies not included in the authoritative but now outdated Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. It is the first and only complete bilingual edition of the works of the Presocratic philosophers for English-speakers.

Daniel W. Graham The Texts of Early Grrek Philosophy. The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, two volumes, Cmabridge University Press 2010

This is what I read these days. Very complete and useful work.

#greek philosophy #presocratics #ancient greece #daniel w. graham

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aboutanancientenquiry · 11 days ago

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Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-five essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion and literature. The combination of grammar lessons and cultural essays allows users to not only read hieroglyphic texts but also to understand them, providing readers with the foundation to understand texts on monuments and to read great works of ancient Egyptian literature in the original text. This second edition contains revised exercises and essays, providing an up to date account of current research and discoveries. New illustrations enhance discussions and examples. These additions combine with the previous edition to create a complete grammatical description of the classical language of ancient Egypt for specialists in linguistics and other fields.

James P. Allen Middle Egyptian. An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, Cambridge University Press 2014 (3d edition)

I think I will order it next month.

#egyptian hieroglyphs #middle egyptian #ancient egypt #egyptology #james p. allen

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aboutanancientenquiry · 11 days ago

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Hieroglyphs were far more than a language. They were an omnipresent and all-powerful force in communicating the messages of ancient Egyptian culture for over three thousand years. This ancient form of expression was used as art, as a means of identifying Egyptian-ness, even for communication with the gods. In this exciting new study, Penelope Wilson explores the cultural significance of hieroglyphs with an emphasis on previously neglected areas such as cryptography and the continuing deciphering of the script in modern times. She covers topics like the origins of writing in Egypt, hieroglyphic script and the Egyptian language, hieroglyphs and art, scribes and everyday writing. She also examines the powerful fascination hieroglyphs still hold for us today.

This book is the ideal reference for anyone with an interest in the fascinating civilization of Ancient Egypt.

Penelope Wilson Hieroglyphs-A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press 2005

#egyptian hieroglyphs #ancient egypt #egyptology #penelope wilson

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aboutanancientenquiry · 11 days ago

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If I understand well what the OP says, the people protesting in the US, but also around the world against the Israeli campaign of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and very probably genocide in Gaza would be just "pro-terrorists" and "Hamas supporters" and they should be deprived of the protection of free speech. But this is exactly the MAGA logic on this subject! It seems that the idea of repression of the pro-Palestinian mobilization in the West unites Trumpers and many American liberals.

More generally I don't see much difference between MAGA and pro-Israeli US liberals concerning Gaza. Trump brazenly declares that his goal is the expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza, obviously through use of murderous violence and starvation, so that he, his family and his American and Israeli associates may appropriate the deserted land and make money out of it. The pro-Israeli American liberals are more hypocritical, but they have paved the way for the final stage of the ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of the population of Gaza, fulfilling all the wishes of the far right, "maximalist zionist", racist and genocidal gang currently in power in Tel Aviv.

Watching people use the same rhetoric as far right MAGA and QAnon types to defend protestors using rhetoric from recognized terrorist groups, justifying said terrorists’ actions, and distributing their materials has been something else.

Y’all do realize you’re using the same goalposting, sealioning, gymnastics that the far right has used and continues to use to justify their bigotry and actions, right?

The same cries of “First Amendment rights!” have been used to justify right wing transphobic rhetoric on college campuses just as its being used to justify and defend college protestors and rhetoric from terrorist groups.

In the former situation many people will point to the harm that said rhetoric does, how i has (and continues to) contribute and/or influence stochastic against trans individuals and people (as a whole). We recognize the actors that contribute to this and object to their presence and actions.

Conversely, an individual and group actively handing out terrorist approved and produced materials is a form of support according to USA Law (especially when it comes to foreign nationals on visas and green cards). When you endorse these groups, use their same rhetoric, and distribute their materials then your speech is no longer protected.

Defending it as such is the same as the MAGA and QAnon folk defending the rhetoric of people causing stochastic terrorism, but with even more legal precedent and standing.

Objecting to one but not the other indicates that you do not understand the law as much as you claim, hold double standards, and want “laws for thee, but not for me” standards that are hypocritical.

We can object to ICE, the Trump Admin, and everything all we want. But if you want to claim rule of law and the laws surrounding certain Rights, then it is paramount that you understand them else you just sound ignorant.

#gaza #palestine #israeli ethnic cleansing in gaza #trump #maga #us liberals

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