#More Hitler parallels

[qqueenofhades]

I don’t have any words right now for what’s happened. Where in the fuck do we go from here?

I don't know. I really, truly don't know. We can't sugarcoat how bad things are going to get, and we can't pre-emptively give into it anyway. This is going to be an unprecedented time in American history (if, sadly, not world history) and the forces conspiring to make you obey will gain much of their power from you doing so in advance, without a struggle. It seems fair to say that America as it has always been historically constituted is over, and may not return in our lifetimes, but we also do not know that for a fact. If nothing else, the fascists will find it very hard to cancel competitive elections, and we cannot sit back, throw up our hands, conclude that voting is clearly meaningless, and let them do that. There are a lot of other things that we need to do, but that's one.

There are various postmortems to be written and nits to pick, but Harris was thrown into an impossible situation and did the best she could in 100 days. Even her critics agree she ran a pretty much flawless campaign. But this country simply decided that a well-qualified black woman could not be preferred over the most manifestly and flagrantly unfit degenerate to ever occupy the office. They decided this for many reasons, not least because large swathes of the country now live in curated misinformation bubbles that, under Government Czar Musk, will only get much, much worse. They were helped by the cowardice and complicity of the "mainstream media" that could have ended Trump's career exactly like they did to Biden after the first debate, but chose to preserve the profits of their billionaire oligarch owners and did not do so, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and normalization at every turn. They also hounded Biden relentlessly over the four years of his presidency, never reported on the good things he did, and drove him to the historically bad approval ratings lows for a president who was by any metric, quite successful (and will quite possibly be our last ordinary American president for a very long time). Along with the searingly ingrained racism and misogyny and misinformation, Harris could not overcome that.

Democrats clearly had a messaging problem, but it's also true that the country, quite simply, does not care about "democracy" when the economy is perceived to be at stake. Not to over-egg the Hitler parallels, but yeah. This is how Hitler returned to power in 1933 -- on the backs of widespread economic collapse of the Weimar Republic; voters decided they just didn't care about the overtly fascist stuff, which he then proceeded to you know, do with genocidal vigor. Except the American economy in this case was actually doing well, which makes it even more baffling and indefensible. Enough people simply memory-holed Trump's crimes (aided at every turn by SCOTUS, Mitch McConnell not convicting him after January 6, Merrick Garland being far too slow and timid, the corporate media), liked the racist fascist behavior or felt that it wasn't a dealbreaker, and decided that in this election, he was the "change" candidate. It's insane by any metric, but that's what happened.

The country is deeply sick. We do not know what will happen. It's going to get bad. Barring a miracle, we will not have federalized abortion rights again in my lifetime, and there will be widespread attacks on public health, women's rights, immigrants, transgender people, and other vulnerable people. Even and especially the ones who voted for Trump. Never Thought Leopard Would Eat My Face, etc. Alito and Thomas will swiftly step down and allow their seats to be replaced by 40-year old wingnuts hand-selected from the worst the Federalist Society has to offer. SCOTUS is gone for the next generation at least. There is very little prospect of it being ever fixed in the foreseeable future.

Trump will never face a scintilla of consequences for his previous crimes; all the open federal cases will be closed as soon as he takes office and fires Jack Smith. The best we can hope for is that he dies in office, but then we get Vance and the cadre of alt-right techno billionaires ruled directly from the Kremlin. Putin is celebrating this morning and with good reason; he's gotten everything he wants. Trump will egg on Netanyahu in Gaza and abandon Ukraine. Democracy across the world will remain even more fragile and badly under threat. Authoritarians will be empowered and American withdrawal from international systems will percolate in very dangerous ways that cannot and will not be fixed in the short run. I really hope all the leftists who celebrate this as the "defeat of the genocide candidate" will enjoy all the genocide and suffering that's about to come. And yes, I do think the Israel-Palestine war fucked us in a large way. Jewish voters perceived the Democrats as insufficiently pro-Israel due to the presence of far-left antisemitism, even as the far left attacked the Democrats relentlessly and never targeted the Republicans. Arab voters abandoned them, possibly deservedly. What would have happened without the war? We don't know. You get the historical period that you get. Netanyahu and Trump can now do anything they want. Hope it was worth it.

As I said, I can't sugarcoat it. We are going to be paying for this in some form for the next decade, and probably longer. I'm not as absolutely shattered as I was in 2016, but I am much, much angrier. We all thought, we all hoped, America was better than this. It isn't. That, however, is something that has also happened before. What we decide to do next will shape how the next chapter unfolds.

This would be a great time to stock up on needed medicines, renew your passport online, and anything else you need to do in preparation for next year. Many of us simply do not have the wherewithal, whether financial or otherwise, to leave the country. I don't know what will happen with me. I don't know what will happen to any of us. This was utterly avoidable and yet, America didn't want to avoid it. At some point, there's nothing else you can do. You can point to media cronyism, Russian influence, etc etc., but the fact that two of the most qualified presidential candidates who happened to be women have now lost to Trump twice makes it unavoidable. The virulent rightward shift of young men (of all races) in particular paints a grim picture as to how the reactionary misogyny of the 21st century is going to essentially undo most of the progress for social and gender equality in the 20th. The patriarchy has been a problem for most of human history. Doesn't really seem like it's going to change.

The end result of this, however grim: we're still here. We are still living within our communities. If (and this is a big if) Democrats can retake the House, they can put some checks on the process for the next two years. At this point, we are in full-out buying-time, trying-to-prevent-the worst mode. We could have continued fixing things, but we won't be doing that. We will only be trying to preserve ourselves and our friends and our smaller spheres of influence. It sounds very trite to say that we have to have courage, but we do. There's not much else.

It's going to be an awful winter. We have two and a half months to see this coming and know how bad it's going to be, and... yeah. I don't know how soon the buyer's remorse will inevitably set in, but it will. Tough luck, people. You voted for him. You get the country that you decide to have. But the rest of us are also here, and what Gandalf says is still true. We wish the Ring had never come to us, we wish none of this had happened, but we still have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.

I don't have a lot more. I'll probably be logging off for a while. I don't need to look at the internet for.... yeah, a long time. (Will I do it anyway? Probably.) I don't know what else to leave you with, aside from again:

Do not obey in advance. Do not act as if everything is foreordained and set in stone. Fascist regimes end. They always do. We are going to have to figure out how, and it will suck shit, but the alternative is worse.

Take care of yourselves. I love you.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

people love to compare trump to hitler and the US to 1930s Germany in the lead-up to WWII, but if we're going to be making comparisons to German history then IMO the far more apt comparison would be to 1890s Germany under Wilhelm II and the shift from Realpolitik to Weltpolitik in the lead-up to WWI. Trump and the modern right wing are engaging in numerous acts of self-sabotage due to their hubris, pushing for colonial expansion while attacking the main allies of the US on the global stage because they view compromise as weakness. the parallels here with Weltpolitik are obvious.

where Trump diverges from Wilhelm, however, is that while Wilhelm moved away from Bismarck's Kulturkampf to promote domestic unity and engaged in labor reforms to appease organized labor and the burgeoning Social Democratic movement, Trump is doubling down on the American culture war and siding firmly with the bourgeoisie against what little there is of organized labor in the US.

one hopes that this will destabilize the government quickly enough to avoid instigating any large-scale conflict between the US and say China. the Democrats are obviously fully in appeasement mode w/r/t the Republicans in order to avoid such destabilizing effects and protect the US empire, but only time will tell how successful their efforts will be.

[blorger]

What do you mean by these? #Draco doesn't have a complex evil ideology of evil based on socioeconomic + geopolitical reasons #Draco probably hasn't thought about the mechanics of blood purity much deeply at all

[the ask is referring to this btw]

Ok so, first of all a disclaimer: what I wrote is merely speculation because I can't read jkr's mind (and also I don't want to), this is just my reading based on how real people work and also how Draco behaves in the books.

With that said, I think that Draco never put much thought into the realities of what the blood supremacist ideology entails until he was hit in the face with them because Draco is a child and a teenager for most of the books.

NERD CORNER

It's a scientifically observable fact that children learn by imitating the important figures in their lives. Studies on the origin of children's prejudices show that children's political views are more often than not shaped by their parents: This study shows that racist children are often mirroring their parents' bias while this study shows that first time voters' political affiliations closely parallel their parents'. Children's brains are a literal work in progress since the prefrontal cortex (which is in charge of rational thinking) is not finished developing until our mid to late twenties. Teens' decision making is largely influenced by emotions rather than by logic and the teenage years are marked by intense emotional reactions due to higher reactivity in the amygdala.

END OF NERD CORNER

Besides Draco's age, there's also his social class to consider. Draco was raised in a condition of extreme privilege; as someone who sits at the tippy toppy of the wizarding world's hierarchy he has had very little incentive to examine the mechanisms behind his privilege. Draco is happy with the status quo since it benefits him so he has a vested interest in maintaining it, just like his parents do.

Someone coming from this background is not going to stop and think about the complex factors behind blood purism at age 12. The Draco of book 2 is parroting Lucius just like Ron is parroting Arthur, it just so happens that Ron is parroting the person on the right side of history and Draco isn't, though he's not likely to realise this until something momentous happens (like, say, a war you're on the wrong side of).

This is what I meant when I wrote those tags, and it was more or less in response to a tendency in the fandom to treat Draco's actions as if they are equally as severe and/or intentional as those of the adult villains of the hp books. Children can and sometimes are just as prejudiced as adults but they are so for different reasons and they are more likely to change their mind as they grow up.

tl;dr: Draco is not baby hitler, he's just a stupid rich boy

Hopefully this answers your question friend,

xoxo

[lorata]

I feel like the hitler youth vs regular gymnastics thing exactly encapsulates the point of your D2 series. People want to think that only an organisation that’s considered the embodiment of brainwashing and evil could produce child killers whereas it’s far more harrowing to accept that actually the educational tools we already use could be warped and used to turn children into child soldiers without anyone feeling they’re doing anything wrong. The point of the HG and particularly of the careers is how normal people can be warped / how the capital can be fine with the hunger games and careers can be trained to win and everyone forgets who the enemy is and it’s that idea that’s carried in the centre being modelled on institutions that we currently have accept and wouldn’t even consider fundamentally evil sorry for the long ramble but just love the series

🙌🏻

i want to print this out and tape it to my mirror. i want to pin it to the top of this blog. you and i are prancing through the daisy fields our minds are in sync this is exactly my point

i am an educator and i think that's why it's very easy for me to write this angle, not just in the terms of like ...... taking how i do things from a Not Evil POV irl and twisting it to make it Dystopian, but also constantly thinking critically and reflecting and quite often calling out the system that we are actually in right now. like yes lol sometimes when i'm dealing with a kiddo i have the tiny Career Trainer voice in my head like, and this is what i'd do if i wanted to make them a child murderer and i do the opposite of that, and that's kind of funny, but also even in normal every day life i have to be very aware of power dynamics and racism and propaganda and all the harmful stuff that is constantly perpetuated by the system AND CATCH MYSELF AS WELL like this is ongoing work!

a tangential point to this is how many people point to high fashion / couture as being emblematic of the capitol but forget the other very clear parallel which is professional sports -- the panopticon, the sense of ownership over athletes' bodies/lives, the constant escalation of expectations / entertainment to the point where athletes need to do drugs and/or injure themselves in order to consistently innovate and excite audiences, traumatic brain injuries and death, racism, TBI and its links to erratic behaviour / assault / etc

i could write a LOT more about propaganda in education but i'm going to restrain myself, so suffice to say that you're right. the whole point of the hunger games is that it's about us, it's always been about us, we're the victims in the story AND we're the perpetrators and we're meant to examine ourselves and our choices and see how we are complicit and how we can be better

sometimes my careers worldbuilding is about the armed forces recruitment vans that would park behind our school and we had to walk through listening to the spiel every year

sometimes it's about how i did TKD and one time an 8yo boy broke his arm in a bad block and everyone praised him for not crying and when his dad came he said "i'm gonna go to the adult class and then i'll take you to the hospital, okay buddy?"

and sometimes it's a bunch of other things in the general miasma of growing up in a conservative rural town during the gulf war and 9/11

but yeah. it's not about hitler. it doesn't need to be

[flightlogmcu]

Hey so Sam Wilson as a character is flawed (exists only to score the bl*ck points) and one dimentional which is why people don’t resonate with him as opposed to previous captain (not that that one was any… marvel to behold). It doesn’t help that the actor is a trump supporter…. Flop all the way, Capitan Floptina more like it

You goin on about how he’s the new jesus is kinda proving that represnetion for representation sake is enough for those here without any critical thinking skills lol

Since we're talking about critical thinking, let's have an actual critical analysis of Sam Wilson. (That is if you can actually read more than three paragraphs)

First and foremost, no one appreciates representation for representation sake. Including people who advocate for it. That's why thing such as the Bechdel test and The Duvernay Test exists. It comes off as disingenuous and done poorly half the time. Ironically enough, Disney is notorious for this and it bleeds into Marvel Studios on a regular.

However, it is odd to even consider Sam Wilson for quote unquote "black points" (not sure why you had to censor that) when Sam Wilson has existed as a character since the 60s and has been Captain America in the comics since 2015. He's a prominent character within the comics that was then brought to screen. As thus the natural progression of the MCU.

Sam Wilson as a character in the MCU invites discussion on the idea of not only the role of Captain America but the idea of what America is.

The parallels between him and Steve within The Falcon & The Winter Soldier and (somewhat) within Brave New World provide a perspective in which we are to question what America stands for.

Hofstede's cultural onion model (since I have to stop writing my thesis to address this dumbass message, you're gonna get my thesis talk) reflects the manifestation of culture with layers. One of those layers is Heroes.

Heroes are persons, alive or dead, real or imaginary, who possess characteristics which are highly prized in a culture, and who thus serve as models for behavior.

And by all accounts, Sam Wilson should fit that ideal model: he's active duty military, smart, and (if we were to look within the universe itself) an ordinary man capable of following in Steve's footsteps.

The only issue is that he is black. His accolades and character no longer matter because racism and anti-blackness is wrapped within the fabric of America.

This then points to the discourse of Captain America: what (and who) does the hero represent?

Steve Rogers represented the true to form American hero of the 40s and 50s. Blond haired, blue eyed man with super strength that punched Hitler. Questioning authority and being an immovable object. It represents (whether that is who Steve Rogers truly is or not) an old America at the top of it's imperial game. It intends to reflect brute strength and power through said strength. No questions asked.

Contrast that with Sam Wilson in the modern era. A black man from the south serving in the air force. Prioritizing conversational tactics alongside sheer human strength. No serum needed. He represents a post-vietnam, post-globalization America. An America that has changed in it's values since Steve Rogers was in his prime. He is to reflect what America is today; a *trigger warning cause I know the snowflakes hate this word* diverse country that is intended to be a beacon of hope through compassion that will still fight you and persevere out of spite.

Sam Wilson does not exist just to be black. Most black characters aren't and shouldn't be. The existence of black superheroes and any black character in media is to add a different perspective that invites conversation that would not be considered if we went along with the status quo. And that's for any underrepresented group.

[whencyclopedia]

Battle of Smolensk in 1943: Operation Suvorov

The Battle of Smolensk in August to September 1943 was the second time the Soviet Union and the Third Reich fought over the city on the Dnieper during the Second World War (1939-45). By the summer of 1943, the plan by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) to permanently occupy the USSR was in tatters. The Soviet Red Army was relentlessly pushing back and recapturing lost cities. Smolensk was to be next in a prolonged three-phase battle that ended any hopes Hitler might have had of winning the German-Soviet War.

The German-Soviet War

Hitler's decision to invade the USSR in the summer of 1941 with Operation Barbarossa had got off to a good start with massive territorial gains thanks to victories like the Battle of Białystok-Minsk and the Battle of Kiev in 1941. The following year, though, the Soviet Red Army began to fight back, winning the Battle of Moscow in 1941-2, holding out in the siege of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), and resisting Hitler's Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad, eventually winning that particular encounter in February 1943. Another large Soviet victory came at the Battle of Kursk in July and August 1943. The Axis armies simply had neither the men nor the material to face an enemy that was growing ever more powerful in size and ever more confident in ultimate victory in the German-Soviet War.

The Axis armies were now fighting a retreat, steadily losing the gains they had made earlier in the war. Smolensk was a case in point. The city, located on the Dnieper (Dnepr/Dnipro) river and the traditional gateway to Moscow, had been captured by Axis forces following the Battle of Smolensk in 1941. Now it was time to get the city back. Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), who had always had the final say on how the war was conducted, began to take an even more direct role. Stalin now prohibited encircling manoeuvres and told his commanders to instead focus on a wide front, utilising multiple direct attacks and employing a massive numerical superiority over the enemy. Stalin's new policy resulted in eight Soviet fronts with 19 parallel thrusts along a frontline over 1,000 km (660 mi) long. One of these thrusts involved the task of liberating Smolensk. This latter offensive was code-named Operation Suvorov, after the great Russian field marshal Alexander Suvorov (1729-1800). The problem for the Soviets was that they greatly underestimated how well dug-in the invaders were at this crucial crossing of the Dnieper.

Read More

⇒ Battle of Smolensk in 1943: Operation Suvorov

[ladybugmania]

The Evolution of Authoritarianism: Why the Old Labels No Longer Apply.

It doesn't matter if you're Left or Right.

In political discourse, it's common to reference historical ideologies, fascism, Nazism, communism, when analyzing current events. These terms are deeply rooted in 20th-century history and carry enormous weight. But while their historical distinctions are accurate in context, clinging to them without recognizing the ideological shifts of our time is not only outdated, it's dangerous.

Yes, Fascism and Nazism were both authoritarian systems. Fascism centered on extreme nationalism and the glorification of the state, while Nazism added a distinct, vicious layer of racial ideology, culminating in genocide and world war. That distinction is meaningful but it belongs to history books, not to the urgent analysis of today’s political climate.

Truth is: Ideological playing field have shifted.

The traditional left-right political spectrum is no longer sufficient to explain what’s unfolding in America and elsewhere. Today, the more critical axis is authoritarianism versus democracy, truth versus manufactured reality, freedom versus submission to a political cult.

This is where Donald Trump, and the movement surrounding him, enters the conversation. What we're seeing is not simply "right-wing conservatism" as many would defend. It is a rebranding of authoritarianism. Trump’s rhetoric and behavior reflect the classic warning signs of fascist governance, even if they aren’t couched in swastikas or brownshirts.

Let’s be clear:

Demonizing minorities and immigrants.

Peddling a mythologized national past (“Make America Great Again”). Really!

Discrediting the media as the “enemy of the people.”

Undermining election results and democratic norms.

Creating a cult of personality immune to criticism or accountability.

These are not isolated incidents of populism or political flavor. These are core tactics of authoritarian regimes. They are designed to erode democratic foundations slowly, while keeping supporters convinced they are defending freedom, even as that very freedom slips away.

And yet, there are people, especially among the Republican base, who still frame Trumpism as just another iteration of traditional conservatism. That is intellectually dishonest and politically irresponsible. If you cannot see the chilling parallels between this movement and historical fascist regimes, then you are not engaging with reality. You are indulging in a dangerous delusion.

Authoritarianism today does not always look like Hitler or Mussolini. It wears suits. It speaks in slogans. It thrives in media echo chambers. It rallies around nationalism while eroding the very institutions that preserve liberty. It weaponizes grievance and division. It is not about right or left anymore. It’s about power. Control. Propaganda. And the slow, strategic dismantling of democracy.

and again.

This is not about left or right anymore. It’s about power, control, and the subtle re-emergence of authoritarian ideology under a different mask. And if you can’t see that Trump’s rhetoric fits that mold with alarming precision, you’re either willfully blind or tragically misled.

If you're still arguing over left versus right, you're fighting yesterday's war while today's battlefield is burning behind you.

It is time to wake up. Especially to those Republicans who are sleeping with their eyes open. And there's many of them.

History is not just repeating, it’s evolving. And if we don’t evolve with it, we risk becoming the very thing we once vowed never to become again.

[alpaca-clouds]

"Why didn't I learn this in history class?"

Lemme talk about something a bit more serious today. Because ever since I started to ramble once more about historical context for Castlevania Nocturne I have gotten asked this one so often:

"Why did I not learn this in school?" Or: "Why did I not learn this in history class?"

And I shall tell you why: Because school sucks.

I do not mean this in some exaggerated way or hyperbolic way or anything. School sucks. And you do not go to school to learn anything useful, you go to school for two reasons: a) So that you are out of the hairs of your parents and they can be exploited at their work place. b) So that you learn to listen to authority from a young age on and get some basic skills that you will ideally be able to leverage for your own exploitation.

I am sorry for sounding so darn Marxist right now, but that it is it.

And here is the thing: Because the entire school system is build towards exploitation, nobody actually wants you to learn about actual history. It could give you ideas, and that would be very tragic, wouldn't it?

Depending on the country you live in, history class mainly is concerned with two things. Teach you a bit about the bad stuff, and then also get some nice patriotic propaganda into your head. The latter stuff is especially strong in the US. I mean, pretty much every kid learns some variation of the entire darn "thanksgiving" bullshit. I just will leave you with the Adam's Family Values scene about this.

I mean, this is especially noticable right now of course, where everyone is crying about kids maybe learning just a little bit of real history in school - and so many people trying to forbid it.

In Germany, our history class basically goes like this: We note everything that has happened until 1900 in about three hours, only doing a very, very rough overview, and then we will talk about the Weimar Republic, First World War, Third Reich and Second World War at nauseum. Which could be good, if we actually talked about how the Nazis came into power. But if you ever talk with any random German who has not studied history, you will notice that most of them are of the opinion that the Nazi party was not elected in the popular vote, and that at least 40% of all people in the Third Reich were in fact against Hitler. Both of those things are not true. Nazis were elected - and they used some trickery to stay in power - and more than 90% of Germans were in full support of Hitler.

And the French Revolution? Obviously you will not learn about that. It might give you ideas. You know. Ideas what to do with unelected people who rule your country. And if you learn about the French Revolution, you might see how there are certain parallels to modern times.

You see, those who do not learn from history, are fated to repeat it.

Which kinda brings me to the even more radical part of this. You know what you can do to really fucking annoy those in power? You can learn about history. And you can teach others about history.

They will often tell you, that history is not as important as STEM. And in some way, sure: History will not cure cancer, and it will only do so much to help with climate change. But... It will teach you about how to recognize tyranny. And how to fight it. And frankly, under tyranny you will most likely not get cured of the cancer, let alone climate change. So yeah, tyranny - and getting rid of it - is important.

And, how did a wise man once say?

[nothoughts-onlywomen]

Pink Floyd’s The Wall

This BTS photo has really piqued my interest. Not just because it’s clearly a hint at something for season 5, but also because it happens to be one of my favorite albums ever. So, I thought I’d do a deep dive into how it might factor into the next season.

Full disclaimer: All these ideas I’m about to verbal vomit will make more sense if you watch the film here and/or listen to the album here. I truly recommend you seek it out. Far and away, it’s one of my favorite films/albums, and it’s stood the test of time. In fact, there are certain sequences that may be a little triggering in our current US political climate (I’m thinking of the “In The Flesh/Run Like Hell/Waiting for the Worms” sequence).

War. The Wall is about war; namely, the bitter uselessness of it. The film has a lot of anti-war imagery. Young soldiers wounded and vulnerable, doves exploding into crows, a bloody cross, etc. The film ends with a culturally diverse group of children picking up rubble from the war. There’s a beautiful image where a child pours out a Molotov cocktail. The meaning there is that children are taught to hate and kill, and once they are, the joy of youth is smothered by it. Now I can think of a few scenarios where this is relevant to our crew. This could have something to do with the war against Vecna, in that our kiddos are so young to be fighting this war, and that it will inevitably chip away parts of them. For some, it may take limbs, or even lives. There may also be an assertion that Henry Creel was taught to hate, rather than it being an inevitable part of him. El suggested this at the end of season 4, when she asserts to Vecna that Papa made him a monster. The nuance within the anti-war message of The Wall is that the main character, Pink, lost his father in World War II. Henry Creel’s father went to war (the exact same war, in fact) which is an interesting similarity, but I think greater parallels should be drawn between Pink and Henry Creel in terms of how their relationship with their father (or lack thereof) led to their emotional erosion. And when I’m referring to Henry’s father, I’m not necessarily talking about Victor, though their relationship may have been complex. I’m referring to Dr. Brenner as well. Now the major difference between Pink and Henry - at least, so far - is that Pink is shown to have a soft, gentle side to him. This gets smothered as his emotional wall grows taller. I don’t know if Vecna ever had anything of the sort, but we know that Will is nothing if not gentle. And if they’re going to draw parallels between Will and Henry next season, I have to think there’s some meaning in there somewhere.

Conformity. It should be noted that the film takes place during World War II, so the conformity themes were especially prevalent in those days - the days of Hitler and the Nazi regime. Pink attends a school where the children all wear masks and stand on an assembly line, eventually to be thrown into a meat grinder. All very heavy-handed symbolism, I know. But the idea is that society attempts to suppress individuality and corner the youth into becoming part of the mindless whole. Blessedly, toward the end of the school sequence, the kids all rip off their masks and rebel. Now, in reference to our friends in Hawkins, this could be a nod to how the group has never been afraid to be the “freaks,” and that conformity is meaningless to them. Stranger Things has always reveled in the beauty of being yourself in the face of societal labels. The Wall also utilizes hammers in much of its imagery, which is supposed to symbolize the hammer pounding a nail into submission. With the individual being the nail, and the oppressive whole being the hammer. To me, this hearkens back to the “hive mind” idea. The Mind Flayer operates from this hive mind, and so any deviation from this would be quickly and mightily suppressed. I also addressed the idea of the “hive mind” in my theory about the Wrinkle in Time Easter egg, and how the planet Camazotz adopts this same concept (read here if you feel so inclined). Will Vecna be this deviation? If not, who will? One of the kids? Will Dart break away from an army of demogorgons to save Dustin? I can’t see the Mind Flayer being thrilled about it regardless of how it manifests.

Emotional isolation. Pink undergoes a descent into emotional isolation. The wall itself is symbolic of the emotional wall he builds around his heart, insofar each negative event in his life is “another brick in the wall.” Once his emotional isolation is complete, he becomes callous and disconnected with others. He fantasizes about committing atrocities, even becoming a Hitler-like figure in his imaginings. Such emotional isolation is likely present within Vecna as well, as only someone with a real disconnection from their emotions could kill people in the ways that Vecna has. That scary face on the poster, in fact, is emotion, trying to break free of the wall. A scream of agony from within. Perhaps the Duffers will explore this within Vecna. Perhaps Vecna has some small shred of humanity left that the group will try to capitalize upon. At the climax of The Wall, Pink puts himself on trial in his mind with a judge that is a literal asshole (yes, it’s as batshit as it sounds), and the wall is torn down within him. The album ends with a spoken message that loops into the beginning track, suggesting that the conundrum of emotional wall-building will never end. Perhaps the group will attempt to tear down Vecna’s emotional walls. The Duffers are good enough writers to make us feel at least some empathy for Vecna, if we hadn’t already, and this might just be a continuation of this. There is also the possibility that one of our other kiddos starts to emotionally isolate. It could be any of them: Mike, Will, Lucas, Dustin, El, or Max. I’m less inclined to believe it would be one of the older kids, though they’ve all certainly got their own demons. None of them will become as twisted as Vecna, of course, but I could see them struggling against their own emotional walls. We’ve seen Max do a bit of this already. It would be a real shot to the heart if the Duffers utilized a deeply sad track like “Nobody’s Home” or a wistful, melancholic tune like “Comfortably Numb” to describe Max’s consciousness literally being absent from her at the moment. I think Will is also an ideal candidate for this concept, especially if (as I suggested earlier), we are going to draw similarities between him and Henry Creel. The ending song on the album, “Outside the Wall,” postulates that those who truly love you will walk up and down outside your emotional wall, banging on it, trying to tear it down and thus forge deeper connection. We’ve seen this happen with Max a bit, and I could certainly see it happening with Will, too.

Mental illness. Pink is suggested to have a mental illness. He’s not particularly easy to slap a diagnosis on (though based on the information we do have, I might have put him in the schizoid/schizotypal/schizoaffective territory. Depression with psychotic features at the very least). Mental illness isn’t a topic that heavily explored in Stranger Things, though season 4 definitely had some poignant things to say about depression. But I’m wondering - if they do decide to touch on this somewhat - if this will hint at a deeper dive into Vecna’s psyche. Killing small animals is generally a precursor to actual murder, and this was certainly the case when it came to Henry Creel, but we have yet to really unpack all of this. We’ve gotten hints. Vecna noting that he “never forgets a kill” and “they are always with me” is a very interesting concept I will be curious to learn more about.

I would love to hear any additional thoughts on this.

[beifong-brainrot]

I have a question what do you like of final of the Legend of Korra and What do you not like it ? ( S4)

Ah, B4. My favourite season and the season I hate the most at the same time. I have such mixed feelings about it and I think most of it stems from the utilisation of Nazi and Soviet imagery and inspirations in the Earth Empire.

Because it disrupts any sympathy, I could have towards the good Kuvira had done for the Earth Kingdom because of the IRL historical context behind those same pros in the regimes Kuvira was based on.

Technological advancements and modernisation? Made possible by essentially slave labour of the people of the country, particularly the prisoners of gulags, who were in huge part political prisoners (known as biełoruczki, if I remember correctly). I use the term 'political' very loosely because because many of the 'crimes' were just... really stupid. For example having rented a French book from a library.

Kuvira's attack on Republic City is also heavily recontextualised due to this context. Because, in a void, a woman of a county that has been heavily affected by a war trying to regain a former colonised region of her country that hadn't been returned after the end of the war is not a terribly immoral thing. You could even describe it as justified.

But with the context of Kuvira's inspirations it takes on a darker meaning as one of the Soviet and Nazi excuses for invading Poland in 1939. In the words of Timothy Snyder, historian and author:

Hitler saw Poland as the ‘unreal creation’ of the Treaty of Versailles, Molotov as its ‘ugly offspring.

Furthermore, even post-Soviet Russia has a similar pattern of dismissing the legitimacy countries that fall victim to their campaigns. For example, Putin justifying the current genocide and war crimes in Ukraine by claiming Ukraine to be historically Russian lands and that Ukrainians and Russians are 'one Nation'. I have spoken at length on Kuvira's parallels to Putin and length, I believe.

Connecting Kuvira's claim on Repubmic City to these ideologies is counterproductive to any sympathy I could have to her goals. Because, in a void, decolonisation. With the influences assigned to her, it's rather giving 'imperial nostalgia'.

And I know that you could easily make the argument that we should look at the Earth Empire as it's own thing, that it isn't defined by its historical infulences. But I do believe it does. Kuvira's inspirations are glaring, obvious and hard to ignore. Especially the Nazi ones.

Kuvira's Soviet inspirations, which in my opinion, are a far bigger part of the show, are, however, more insidious. Mainly because a Western Audience isn't primed to see the danger and sordid history in the ideologies she presents here.

Because a lot of younger First World citizens seem to have this weird hard on for Soviet Russia, ignoring that it was just as horrific as the 3rd Reich.

Now, I actually really liked Kuvira as an antagonist in the first half of the season. I'd even classify her as my favourite main villain (my fave antagoinst in general being Aiwei's gayass).

I really enjoyed the mix of Nazi and Soviet inspirations behind her character, because while these ideologies may seem different at first, they aren't actually that dissimilar, even being referred to as 'Totalitarian Twins'.

Which is why I mildly push back against people claiming that Kuvira represented simply fascism. I believe Kuvira could've been an almost perfect 'human' commentary on totalitarianism.

I belive that Kuvira is an amalgamation of multiple totalitarian dictators, not just Stalin and Hitler, combining their common traits and behaviours.

We are very quickly shown how charismatic Kuvira is and how she is skilled at social engineering by, for example manipulating Bolin and Korra, as well as strategically putting on displays of power and strength to intimidate opponents and endear allies.

Showmanship is a huge part of a lot of totalitarian dictatorships, particularly as many of them rely on cult of personality, which certainly rings true for the Earth Empire.

We're also quickly shown how fond Kuvira is of ultimatums and total control. This 'all or nothing' mentality is a common theme in totalitarian countries. You're either with the ruling part 100%, or you're an enemy of the state. See my above description of political prisoners in gułags. Kuvira's weaponisation of the context of historical necessity is also a trademark of Soviet regime.

Kuvira's characteristation as manipulative, intimidating and calculating behind her more charismatic and virtuous veneer is a perfect mirror into how irl totalitarian regimes often hide behind friendly faces and utilise sound ideologies to obscure their true insidious intents.

And then the show ruins this excellent villain with a poorly executed sympathy scene and later a shitty redemption arc.

That's not to say I'm fully opposed to Kuvira having a sob backstory and being marginally sympathetic. But I would rather this be used to show off how totalitarianism is inherently a self destructive system. Leaning into Kuvira being an insecure, compensating control freak rather than presenting her as a misguided heroine who lost her way would be a much better use of her character imo.

I liked seeing her cry like a little bitch tho that was cathartic and also sexy.

But you know who actually deserved the sympathy and empathy we were encouraged to give Kuvira? The Beifong family, especially the Zaofu crew! And if you follow me you've probably heard me ramble about this already but they really were the only real ones that season.

They were the literal only ones actively warning everyone about Kuvira and seeing through her bullshit. And it's no surprise, since they know Kuvira. Sure, their grudge against her probably influenced their opinions, but the comics show that there were symptoms of the person Kuvira would eventually become even as a child, like in her anger issues and her destroying Opal's dollhouse as punishment for Opal setting a very rational boundary.

I truly think the Beifong family deserved more screentime and we desrved to hear more out of all of them. As for example, Huan could easily illustrate the irl censorship and control totalitarian governments. Like, there's a reason Polish writer and painter Stanisław Witkiewicz overdosed and slit his wrists after hearing about the Soviets. One of his books also practically predicted the totalitarian control of Nazis and Soviets on Polish art and self expression. But the talk of Huan's wasted potential can wait for another time.

I also liked Wei calling Kuvira out after she was describing herself as a peaceful negotiator by going: You call bringing an army to threaten our city peaceful? After which the conversation was immediately redirected because really Kuvira couldn't maintain her flimsy moral ambiguity if the was answered.

This was his only line in the season and he ATE.

I frankly didn't care much for Toph's inclusion in the season? It felt rather contrived and existing purely for the viewers to get excited and recreate the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at screen meme. This is the same feeling I had about Zuko in B3. Katara is the only cool Gaang octogenarian to me.

I didn't really have an opinion on Lin thsi season. She's.... there? I thought it was sweet that she went to rescue Suyin and that she seemed to have fixed her relationship with her to some extent. But honestly after 4 books her combative nature was overstaying its welcome. Being mean to traumatised teenagers as a middle aged cop is only funny the first few times.

I guess I enjoyed the relationship drama between Toph and Lin and it was nice to see them begin to reconcile. Though, once again it feels repetitive, like a mommy issues reskin of Lin and Suyin's conflict in B3.

Speaking of estranged Beifongs, I particularly liked Baatar Jr's storyline and think he would've made for a much better antag to sympathise with than Kuvira. I like the implications of his inferiority complex and his redeeming moments of trying to stop the spirit canon when Opal was in range of getting hit and the implication that he loved Kuvira much more than he did for the Earth Empire. It's not much, and he's certainly not a good person, but he had more grounds for a redemption than Kuvira.

And I loved Opal's storyline of opposing Kuvira so staunchly and being positioned as Kuvira's primary detractor. I love seeing how Opal had evolved between B3 and B4. How she's visibly more confident and sure in herself and willing to stand up for not only herself but those in need. Her hair growing messy after B3 is also so important to me and wonderful visual storytelling.

I do, however, have a few gripes with the treatment of her character, particularly the minimisation of her concern around Kuvira. Like the rest of the Beifongs, Opal is presented as irrational in her hostility towards Kuvira, which isn't the case at all. She is berated by established characters like Jinora and Korra for her stance, especially after the attempt on Kuvira's life. Actually, I think that: well Su and the twins were the aggressors in this situation, after Kuvira actively threatened military action on your peaceful city could constitute for gaslighting.

Even after Kuvira is proven multiple times to be dangerous and a threat, Opal's despaur over having her family captured and home conquered is treated as inconsequential grumpiness and is pushed aside in order to make room for the plot. Hell, Opal even tags along with Korra and Jinora to help investigate the Spirit Wilds.

(Opal is a better woman than me if someone pulled that shit on me I'd like. Not talk to them for at least a month.)

...And the second half of the season where she gets booted back into the love interest zone is fucking painful. The moment Bolin arrives in Republic City, Opal's very valid frustration and anger is reduced to a lovers' spat and focus is redirected to Bolin "winning her back". And after all is well in obligatory comphet world, I don't think Opal even speaks. It's like after she forgave Bolin and their relationship returned to status quo, she immediately just became an NPC.

Despite my hatred for how Bolin impacts Opal's storyline, I actually adored Bolin's being part of Kuvira's army, and how that was handled.

I liked seeing the continuation of Bolin being easily manipulated by those he looks up to due to his childhood. I liked the portrayal of Bolin's good intentions being used by Kuvira, since it once again parallels the irl inspirations behind Earth Empire .A huge chunk of the Soviets' detractors were actually disillusioned communists, who had joined and given their support, only to be betrayed by the system that they hoped would bring about a positive change.

Sadly, after Bolin deserted from Kuvira, this excellent set up isn't followed up on properly. Instead of any teaching moment or character development, we get Bolin moping for an episode, a few apologies and essentially a fetch quest. And after that, Bolin's honour is restored and he essentially goes back to how he was before B4. Which is dissapointing as hell.

I really enjoyed Korra's recovery arc, it wa svery moving but not to the point of making me too uncomfortable. However, I don't like the notion that she had to suffer to learn compassion and 'become a better person', which is the implication. Because that's an extremely harmful idea and just false. Seeing Korra be constantly beaten down and hurt in the name of "learning compassion" or some bullshit is honestly unsettling.

I also think that Korra's personal arc was ill placed and messed with the main storyline. I think that showcasing Korra's new "compassionate" worldview on Kuvira is the main reason behind the downfall of Kuvira as a character for me. Trying to justify Kuvira's abhorrent actions in service of Korra's personal development is... a bit problematic to say the least

I actually despised Republic City being in the focus of this season. Like, so much is probably going on in the Earth Kingdom but we have to be stuck outside of the Iron Curtain. And meanwhile we have to sit through contrived plots in New York City but make it Oriental. It kinda reeks of USA self-centeredness. And it makes our main characters seem kinda like assholes because they're people with infuence and yet they're just chilling while people die in Concentration Camps so um.

I think the reason I hate B4 is because it's I also love it so much. I love it for the groundwork it set and for what it could've been. It could've been brilliant, but it ended up convoluting its messages and playing into harmful tropes, probably unintentionally.

The worst part of B4 is how good it started off. The begining was excellent and the second half drove it into the ground for me.

....and of course the best thing to come out of B4 was ✨️the weilin face pat✨️. Absolutely iconic scene, best ship in the show, hands down. Though I love that every single Krew Member was given a queer love interest.

Slay. A gaggle of wild bisexuals.

[brazilspill]

Latinos: What's going on at the US border is comparable to Holocaust concentration camps.

White people: You're being melodramatic and lose the argument because you brought up Hitler, haha.

Some Jewish (!) people on this hellsite: You're being melodramatic and are cheapening the struggles of Jewish people by crying wolf. Shame on you.

Concentration camp experts: The US is running concentration camps at the border. Things can be concentration camps without being Dachau or Auschwitz.

More concentration camp experts: “This is not just a debate over semantics. How we categorize what is happening on the Southern border has everything to do with how the public and lawmakers will respond.“

A Holocaust survivor: “It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Mr Jacobs, who said he sees a “direct parallel” between 2018 America and the nascent days of Nazi Germany, said.

News agencies: ICE agents have been separating parents and kids by telling them they’re going to “take a shower” and come back.

Trump: Quotes Mussolini.

Trump: Calls Latinos an “infestation”, a term employed by Goebbels ahead of the Final Solution.

Conservatives: *say that Latinos are "full of filth" and should be gunned down.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum: “One of the film Der ewige Jude’s most notorious sequences compares Jews to rats that carry contagion, flood the continent, and devour precious resources.”

 International NGOs: Dehumanizing speech is one of the precursors to genocide.

Dehumanization involves redefining the targets of prejudice and violence by making them seem less human (that is, less civilized or less sentient) than other people.  The classic strategy for this is to use terms like “animals” and “vermin.”  Referring to people as “illegals” is also dehumanizing. You’ll see dehumanization at work in most large-scale atrocities or genocides committed by governments, armies, or terrorists. […]

[mariacallous]

When a phalanx of the top Silicon Valley executives—Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai—aligned behind President Trump during the Inauguration in January, many observers saw an allegiance based on corporate interests. The ultra-wealthy C.E.O.s were turning out to support a fellow-magnate, hoping perhaps for an era of deregulation, tax breaks, and anti-“woke” cultural shifts. The historian Janis Mimura saw something more ominous: a new, proactive union of industry and governmental power, wherein the state would drive aggressive industrial policy at the expense of liberal norms. In the second Trump Administration, a class of Silicon Valley leaders was insinuating itself into politics in a way that recalled one of Mimura’s primary subjects of study: the élite bureaucrats who seized political power and drove Japan into the Second World War. “These are experts with a technological mind-set and background, often engineers, who now have a special role in the government,” Mimura told me. The result is what, in her book “Planning for Empire” (2011), she labelled “techno-fascism”: authoritarianism driven by technocrats. Technology “is considered the driving force” of such a regime, Mimura said. “There’s a sort of technicization of all aspects of government and society.”

In the nineteen-thirties, Japan colonized Manchuria, in northeastern China, and the region became a test ground for techno-fascism. Nobusuke Kishi, a Japanese commerce-ministry bureaucrat, was appointed to head the industrial program in Manchuria, in 1936, and, with the collaboration of a new crop of the Japanese conglomerates known as zaibatsu, he instituted a policy of forced industrial development based on the exploitation of the local population. When Kishi returned to national politics in Japan, in 1939, along with a clique of other Japanese technocrats who had worked in Manchuria, he pursued similar strategies of state-dictated industrialization, at the expense of private interests and labor rights. This fascistic regime would not be structured the same way as Mussolini’s or Hitler’s, with power concentrated in the hands of a single charismatic leader, although Kishi had travelled to Germany in the nineteen-twenties, as the Nazi movement expanded, and drew inspiration from German industrialization for his Manchurian project. Instead, Mimura said, Japan “kind of slid into fascism” as bureaucrats exercised their authority behind the scenes, under the aegis of the Japanese emperor. As she explained, techno-fascist officials “acquire power by creating these supra-ministerial organs and agencies, subgroups within the bureaucracy that are unaccountable.” Today, Elon Musk’s DOGE is the Trumpian equivalent.

American corporations of the twentieth century flirted with a merging of state and industrial power. The entrepreneur Henry Ford promoted a system of industrial organization that came to be known as “Fordism,” whereby the state would intervene in the economy to guarantee mass production and consumption. In the nineteen-thirties, I.B.M. did business with the Nazi government through a German subsidiary, lending its technology to projects like the 1933 census, which helped identify Jews in the country. As a recent feature in the Guardian by Becca Lewis laid out, Silicon Valley itself has exhibited right-wing tendencies for decades, embracing misogynist and hierarchical attitudes about achievement. The journalist Michael S. Malone was issuing warnings about emerging “technofascism” way back in the late nineties, when he warned about “IQ bigotry” in the tech industry and the willingness of people to push forward digital revolution while “tossing out the weak and wounded along the way.” But our current moment marks a new conjunction of Internet entrepreneurs and day-to-day government operations. American techno-fascism is no longer a philosophical abstraction for Silicon Valley to tinker with, in the vein of intermittent fasting or therapeutic ketamine doses. It is a policy program whose constitutional limits are being tested right now as DOGE, staffed with inexperienced engineers linked to Musk’s own companies, rampages through the federal government.

Musk has slashed the ranks of federal employees, shut down agencies whose authority challenges his own, and leveraged artificial intelligence to decide where to cut, promising a government executed by chatbots such as Grok, from Musk’s own A.I. company. DOGE has gained access to Americans’ private data and developed tools to e-mail the entire federal government at once, a digital megaphone that Musk recently used to demand that employees send in a list of their weekly accomplishments. As Mimura put it, “You try to apply technical concepts and rationality to human beings and human society, and then you’re getting into something almost totalitarian.” The techno-fascist opportunism goes beyond Musk; one can sense other tech entrepreneurs and investors slavering to exploit the alliance between Trumpism and Silicon Valley capitalism, building infrastructure on a national scale. Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, has arranged his own deals with Trump’s government, including Stargate, a heavily hyped data-center project worth a potential five hundred billion dollars. Apple recently announced its own five-hundred-billion-dollar investment campaign in the U.S. over the next four years, including a plan to begin building A.I. servers in Texas. However nebulous, these extravagant plans signal a spirit of collaboration. On Truth Social, Trump posted approvingly that Apple’s plans demonstrated “FAITH IN WHAT WE ARE DOING.”

Erin McElroy, a geographer at the University of Washington who studies Silicon Valley, has used the term “siliconization” to describe the way that places such as San Francisco or Cluj-Napoca, Romania, to which many western tech companies have outsourced I.T. services, have been remade in the image and ideology of Silicon Valley. According to McElroy, the first signs of Washington’s current siliconization can be traced back, in part, to the Administration of Barack Obama, who embraced social-media platforms such as Facebook as a vector of government communication. For a time, digital platforms seemed to support democratic government as a kind of communal megaphone; but now, a decade later, technology seems to be supplanting the established authority of the government. “There is a crisis of the state,” McElroy said, and Silicon Valley may be “trying to corrode state power” in order to more quickly replace it.

Silicon Valley is premised on the idea that its founders and engineers know better than anyone else: they can do better at disseminating information, at designing an office, at developing satellites and advancing space travel. By the same logic, they must be able to govern better than politicians and federal employees. Voguish concepts in Silicon Valley such as seasteading and “network states” feature independent, self-contained societies running on tech principles. Efforts to create such entities have either failed or remained confined to the realm of brand-building, as in the startup Praxis, a hypothetical plan for a new tech-driven city on the Mediterranean. Under the new Trump White House, though, the U.S. government is being offered up as a guinea pig, McElroy said. “Now that we’ve got Musk running the state, I don’t know if they need their little offshore bubbles as much as they thought they did before.”

Such visions of a technologized society represent a break from the Make America Great Again populism that drove the first Trump Administration. MAGA reactionaries such as Steve Bannon tend to be skeptical of technological progress; as the journalist James Pogue has explained, their goal is to reclaim an American culture “thought to be lost after decades of what they see as globalist technocracy.” Bannon has denounced Silicon Valley’s ideology as “technofeudalism” and declared war on Musk. He sees it as antihuman, with U.S. citizens turned into “digital serfs” whose freedom is delimited by tech companies. In a January interview with Ross Douthat, of the Times, Bannon said, “They have to be stopped. If we don’t stop it, and we don’t stop it now, it’s going to destroy not just this country, it’s going to destroy the world.” Whereas the MAGA right wants to restore things as they were (or as they imagine things were), the tech right wants to, in Mark Zuckerberg’s phrasing, break things. In the Times interview, Bannon called Musk “one of the top accelerationists,” referencing another technology-inflected political ideology that treats chaos as an inevitability.

Accelerationism has been popularized in the past decade by the British philosopher Nick Land, who is part of the so-called neo-reactionary or Dark Enlightenment movement populated by figures including Curtis Yarvin, a former programmer and blogger whose proposals for an American monarchy have enjoyed renewed relevance during Trump 2.0. The accelerationist attitude is, as Andrea Molle, a professor of political science at Chapman University who studies accelerationism, put it to me, “This collapse is going to come anyway—let’s rip the Band-Aid.” Accelerationism emerged from Karl Marx’s idea that, if the contradictions of capitalism become exaggerated enough, they will inspire proletarian revolution and a more egalitarian society will emerge. But Molle identifies what he calls Muskian “techno-accelerationism” as having a different end: destroying the existing order to create a technologized, hierarchical one with engineers at the top. Musk “has to completely break any kind of preëxisting government architecture to impose his own,” Molle said. He added that a government thoroughly overhauled by Musk might run a bit like the wireless system that operates Teslas, enabling the company to theoretically update how your car works at any moment: “You’re allowed some agency, but they are still in control, and they can still intervene if the course is not going in the direction that it is supposed to go to maximize efficiency.”

Techno-fascism’s cold-blooded pursuit of efficiency quickly results in a state of alienation that may not be appealing to either side of the political spectrum. If Japan is any example, the collaboration between technocrats and right-wing politicians is unlikely to last forever. In 1940, the Japanese Prime Minister announced the New Order movement, which sought to overhaul the government’s structure to create a single-party state with absolute power. Mimura, the historian, said, “It reminds you a little bit of now: everything needs to be fixed, all at once. It is a little eerie to draw that historical comparison: this is the New Order in America.” Yet the power of Japan’s technocrats began to wane. When the country started faring poorly in the war, the military pushed to continue the campaign past the point that technocrats considered feasible. Kishi, the architect of technocratic Manchuria, left the government in 1944. Still, as Mimura explained, the bureaucrats had no political constituency or party to hold them accountable for their techno-fascistic program. When the U.S. sought to rebuild Japan, in part as a counterbalance to Soviet power in the region, Kishi and his colleagues were the ones who set about industrializing the nation once more. Their status as unelected officials meant, ironically, that they could stage a return to politics without “any blood on their hands,” Mimura said. In 1955, Kishi helped establish a new political party, and a few years later he became Prime Minister. ♦

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Adam Gabbatt and Ed Pilkington at The Guardian:

Anger and vitriol took center stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, as Donald Trump and a cabal of campaign surrogates held a rally marked by racist comments, coarse insults, and dangerous threats about immigrants. Nine days out from the election, Trump used the rally in New York to repeat his claim that he is fighting “the enemy within” and again promised to launch “the largest deportation program in American history”, amid incoherent ramblings about ending a phone call with a “very, very important person” so he could watch one of Elon Musk’s rockets land. The event at Madison Square Garden, in the center of Manhattan, had drawn comparisons to an infamous Nazi rally held at the arena in 1939. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ running mate, said there was a “direct parallel” between the two events, and the Democratic National Committee projected images on the outside of the building on Sunday repeating claims from Trump’s former chief-of-staff that Trump had “praised Hitler”.

There was certainly a dark tone throughout the hours-long rally, with one speaker describing Puerto Rico, home to 3.2m US citizens, as an “island of garbage”; Tucker Carlson mocking Harris’ racial identity; a radio host describing Hillary Clinton as a “sick bastard”; and a crucifix-wielding childhood friend of Trump’s declaring that Harris is “the antichrist”. The Puerto Rico comments, made by Tony Hinchliffe, a podcaster with a history of racist remarks, were immediately criticized by the Harris-Walz campaign. Ricky Martin, the Puerto Rican popstar who has more than 18m followers on Instagram, wrote in a post: “This is what they think of us. Vote for @kamalaharris.” Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez in a statement said “this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”

But that could prove problematic in Pennsylvania, where the majority of the swing state’s 580,000 eligible Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. Both campaigns have been trying to appeal to Latino voters in the final weeks of the campaign, and Harris had visited a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia earlier on Sunday, where she outlined plans to introduce an “economic opportunity taskforce” for Puerto Rico. The pugnacious mood didn’t change once Trump began speaking, as the former president quickly repeated his pledge to “launch the largest deportation program in American history”.

Trump continued his frequent rants about immigration and claimed that a “savage Venezuelan prison gang” had “taken over Times Square”, which will come as a surprise to anyone who has recently visited the New York landmark. The former president also stated, wrongly, that the Biden administration did not have money to respond to a recent hurricane in North Carolina because “they spent all of their money bringing in illegal immigrants, flying them in by beautiful jet planes”. Trump’s usual dystopian threats were on offer, as the 78-year-old expanded on his claims about “the enemy within” – a group of political opponents that he has said he will set the military on if elected. “We’re just not running against Kamala. I think a lot of our politicians here tonight know this. She means nothing, she’s purely a vessel that’s all she is,” Trump said. “We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious radical-left machine that runs today’s Democrat party. They’re just vessels.”

[...] “There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden. And don’t think that he doesn’t know for one second exactly what they’re doing there.” The Trump campaign reacted furiously to the accusations, describing Clinton’s comments as “disgusting”. One of the few people to reference the 1939 rally on Sunday was Hulk Hogan, who emerged to wrestling music, spent several seconds struggling to rip off his shirt, then claimed: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here”. After a night of fire and fury, it will be up to the American voters to decide.

The MSG Trump Rally in NYC on Sunday was nothing more than a modern-day Nazi rally for the brainwashed MAGA cultists, as Donald Trump and various MAGA hacks launched hateful racist, unhinged, and bigoted tirades.

See Also:

The Guardian: Racist remarks and playing to the base: key takeaways from Trump’s MSG rally

HuffPost: Fascist At The Garden

[shamanicnoise]

The cringe story was in the news today..

Some stupid idiot from the USA decided to become a "hippie" in 2023, went to Europe for a hippie festival, then to Turkey, and then to ruzzia, ​​where he decided to help the orcs, kill, rob, rape, and enslave my people… because he doesn't like "capitalism" and the USA. This idiot fell under the influence of conspiracy theory, communism, and other crap fashionable among naive fools…

The Orcs deceived the useful idiot as usual, and sent the degenerate to the famous classic russian suicide meat attack, where fortunately he died in 2024…

Also, this scum was going to relax and enjoy the sea and festivals in Crimea, from where missiles and kamikaze drones also fly… also every day they blow up houses with sleeping people, children, the elderly, in hospitals, churches and schools in Ukraine.

The dramatic nature of the story about hippies and Crimea is that the occupation of Crimea and the war and genocide of Ukrainians became possible only because Ukraine voluntarily gave up one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world and a huge number of weapons because they saw no point in war and believed that pacifism works...

Most people don't know what the occupation of Crimea meant for Ukrainian hippies… I'll explain.. Until 2014 it was something like San Francisco… like in that song about flowers in your hair… you could find your people there.. but then the orcs attacked and occupied everything..

Imagine a parallel reality where in 1967 a huge armada of cannibal neo-Nazis lands on the shores of California, from where they expel, kill or put in concentration camps everyone who doesn't welcome Hitler, who is in any way different from an "Aryan". And the whole world, looking at this, simply said: "it's a pity, but what can you do... Sorry, but we have business with the Reich. And you are pacifist, you have no money, you have no cards, just say thanks.."

.… and then such "hippies" as that dead stupid bastard are going to come there, he is going to enjoy the sea that was stolen.. He even joins the ranks of the Reich.. But what's sadder is that it's 1979 when neo-Nazis occupy even more states and launch terrorist missiles at other states, and it's been clear to everyone for a long time that they are real neo-Nazis.

Once again confirms the horseshoe theory, which claims that the far-left are just as scum as the far-right.

There's a lot I want to say, but I'm too emotional…

It's good that that scum is dead.. sometimes I think again that karma exists..

I want to say that if you have friends who love conspiracy theories, or are passionate about left-wing ideas, you should understand that the Kremlin finances not only the right but also the left… they know how to brainwash, especially via the Internet. Don't let your friends go fight for the orcs and do evil…

What a disgrace.. for the entire counterculture, for all alternative humanity, for the entire psychedelic wave, that this is even possible, and that someone needs to explain it.

That stupid guy, judging by everything, was essentially a left-wing normie and didn't communicate with the hippies for long, unfortunately they didn't have time or brains or energy to explain anything to him, didn't have time to teach him anything, didn't have time to show him anything. But the orc propaganda did have time and managed to put into his head what the "sponsor" paid for, and the fool went to help the orcs kill me and my people, after which he died.

Stupid and scary story, dude should have read Timothy Leary instead of communist bastards.

Rest in piss, moron.

[too-antigonish]

Churchill in Moscow: A Very Belated Review...

I had a thoroughly enjoyable time watching Churchill in Moscow. I heartily second what @phoenixflames12 said in her review and @jessieren said in hers about the excellence of the cast and the production itself. I especially enjoyed the rapport between Roger Allam and Peter Forbes.

I saw the production streamed and not live. As with Here In America, the filming was very well done—something that is not always easy with theater in the round, even more so in a space as small as the Orange Tree. 

It's all spoilers below...

The play itself had interesting things to say about the nature of power and extremely powerful men and did so with a surprising amount of humor. Even more so, it deftly explored the nature of communication across cultural divides when the stakes are very high—when the fate of the world is literally hanging in the balance.

The play gives a set-up of three pairs: the two men in power (Churchill and Stalin), their two advisors (Ambassador Archibald Clark Kerr and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov), and their two translators (Sally Powell and Olga Dovzhenko).  Churchill and Stalin are the focus with the other two pairs serving to add a running commentary to the main action.

The setting is Churchill's August 1942 trip to Moscow. He made the journey to personally break the news to Stalin that Britain would not be opening a second front in Europe and that they would instead be starting against the Axis with Operation Torch in Africa with the goal of then eventually moving up through Italy.

The two great leaders are initially set up as opposites in every way. You have Churchill the intellectual capitalist aristocrat and Stalin the "simple" uneducated communist peasant. Each despises everything the other stands for and their only common ground  is their mutual hatred of Hitler and desire to defeat him at almost any cost.

It doesn't take long, however, for the similarities to surface. Both men are larger than life with egos the size of continents. They are both passionately patriotic and ridiculously sentimental at times. They are men of huge appetites and crude senses of humor. Both are extremely vain and entitled. Both live in constant fear of potential betrayal. Most of all, both men wield power over life and death with a terrifyingly casual ease.

We know from the outset that both sides share the same fear—that the other will make a deal with Hitler—and is there for the same goal—to ensure that doesn't happen. The problem is one of trust. Both sides have numerous reasons to suspect the other of being less than honest—to in fact know that they have been less than honest on many occasions. How then, do you convince each other that in this particular instance you are being genuine?

It all becomes a matter of communication, of each man saying, "This is what I truly mean and this is why you should believe this time that I truly mean it." However, neither speaks the other's language and neither knows the other's culture. The rest of the play is then an exploration of how they come to an understanding nevertheless.

The translators, of course, serve a crucial role. We hear that their role is to serve as "windows"—clear windows, not coloring or changing what is said in any way as they interpret the other language. The political advisors are to serve a parallel role, translating and distilling the nature of the greater political environment for their bosses.

But of course it's not as simple as "just translating." Various attempts at communication are stymied  by misunderstandings both personal and cultural as well as by ego. Brenton shows the realities and difficulties of this by regularly changing the way speech is delivered and heard by the actors.  We also get a sense through Churchill and Stalin's direct commentary—each knowing the other cannot understand him when he speaks aloud—on what they are actually "hearing" at any given time. 

As the situation becomes more and more desperate, we see the translators dutifully stick to translating the exact words they hear up until a crucial point where the ambassadors convince the two women to make a leap. They then begin instead to give each leader the words they think Stalin and Churchill want and need to hear—the words that will get them to an accord. It would seem to be the advance that's needed, but ironically it's not. They still do not fundamentally trust one another.

What does the trick in the end is getting rid of all of the middlemen. In a round of late night debauchery involving copious amounts of alcohol and a suckling pig, the two finally communicate directly via sign language and what is basically an elaborate game of charades. And in what is perhaps the most absurd twist, it is bonding via their shared sense of crude humor that leads to the final breakthrough. You wouldn't subtitle this play "Saving the World Via the Universal Humor of Drunken Farting," but you could make a case for it.

There is a final epilogue given by the only character in the production I haven't yet mentioned, Stalin's daughter Svetlana. She briefly describes her life—one that was lived very much in the shadow of decisions made about the world by her father and Churchill.  There is a great deal of tragedy in her younger years but also, as she grows older, there is the chance to make choices might lead to a happier life. This, it is implied, is the legacy these men left—not a perfect world, but at least one in which there was still the opportunity for people to change and improve—to ultimately have their own shot at making things better.

[poorrichardjr]

Conspiracies Abound

If you ever spend any time around MAGA individuals you will quickly run into at least three different conspiracy theories before the first twenty minutes of conversation, and even more if you start speaking about politics. The country is doing terribly because of a loss of God, satanic democrats drinking the blood of raped babies they murdered just after they were born, or because of the Illuminati, deep state, or UN. Pick your poison and a MAGA has a conspiracy theory that explains everything. Covid was a Chinese hoax designed to get Biden elected. There is no limit to their madness.

No offense to any of these people. I understand the need to explain things that seem "unusual." The thing is, almost none of these people understand Occam's Razor, which states that the simplest explanation for any situation is often correct. America sucks because we elect bad leaders and don't take the time or effort to do the work to determine who really would be a better politician for us. Instead we descend into tribalism that has determined our entire view of the world.

The thing is, conspiracy theories have a place. It just depends upon why you are using them. Believe it or not, but conspiracy theories can be used to make yourself more aware of things that you should be paying attention to. If a conspiracy theory makes you suspicious of the election process, you "could" spend more time learning about it and trying to understand it. We know that almost never happens, but it is always a way to combat the craziness of some more outlandish conspiracy theories.

Another plus of conspiratorial thinking, not necessarily the theory spinning so popular in America today, is to posit future possibilities. Depending upon how far you take it the "theories" become more and more conspiratorial. However, there is a good reason to sometimes spin these yarns, especially when it comes to dictatorially minded politicians. I am not saying you should take all of these theories so seriously that you see the possibilities of the thinking everywhere, but it can make you aware of situations that are definitely questionable at best.

For instance here is a conspiracy theory to be aware of, simply because it has happened in history and considering our current situation could be a factor in our future. Complain all you want about how many people are drawing parallels between Hitlerian Germany and modern America, but any historian worth their salt will tell you there are many similarities. Hitler complained about Jews and undesirables, Trump complains about immigrants and undesirables. Each divided the people of their nations. Each came to power through election where they did not receive the plurality of the vote.

Here are some similarities that haven't yet come to pass. Hitler placed people into positions of power who had no experience in those jobs but who had a lot of disdain for the functions of those departments. Trump is nominating people to lead departments who fit that mold, though the Senate "might" keep them from those positions (though I doubt it). Hitler deported people, made life so uncomfortable that many "undesirables" left, and eventually put people into camps. We know how that ended. Trump is promising mass deportations for legal and illegal immigrants, removal of citizenship, and massive camps. We can go on, but you get the picture.

So, here is where I will give you a conspiracy theory to ponder. Hitler had power when he got his Chancellorship, but that wasn't enough. Similar to how Trump being president isn't quite enough to turn him into a dictator. What really gave Hitler power was the moment he was able to remove his oppositions ability to interfere with his plans. Enter the Reichstag fire, the pretext the Nazi's used to seize total power and jail and make illegal opposition parties.

Yesterday all I heard from some people was that the people Trump was nominating for power were being targeted with bombings and swatting threats. I expect tons of protests when Trump takes office, especially if he gets his way and starts deploying the military and police to go through cities. Here is where the conspiracy comes into play. Some event is going to happen in the future that causes the right wing talking heads to demand Trump crack down on the opposition. Whether that is the death of a possible head (even if it isn't caused by liberals or immigrants) or a riot by the "liberals."

Where that goes is anybody's guess, but if history repeats itself it will be the fundamental issue that gives Trump the power he needs and craves to do everything he wants. As I said, it is a conspiracy theory, but one based in some semblance of reality. As reactionary as our republican "friends" are, I wouldn't put it too far past them to try something like this. Care to take bets now?