#The annihilation Agenda

[thebuhonerodazorrow]

Venom: Lethal Protector #2 (2023)

Crash course

Marvel

[daveyfvckingjacobs]

psst do you have an otto faceclaim?? 👀

i love him i cannot stop thinking about him and it is Your Fault

FUNNY STORY I ACTUALLY TECHNICALLY DO AS OF YESTERDAY BUT HES JUST SOME GUY WHO HELPED TRAILER MY CAR TO TAKE HER TO ENGLAND WITH MY DADS FRIEND AND DEFO SAW ME STARING AT HIM CAUSE HE WAS JUST EXACTLY HOW I SEE OTTO

I don’t even know his name and cause no one on here knows anything about my location I feel ok sharing this but it’s bad form to take pictures of people you don’t know folks!! slap me on the wrist for this but the autism won I needed to immortalise otto

I also have this unamed pinterest dude I used for his twitter pfp but mystery petrol head is forever otto to me know idk if I could even find a more recognisable face anymore if I tried

[liberatingreality]

The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.

Garry Kasparov

[xxx-theartofsuicide-xxx]

Is there any explanation why Beatlejus was made bisexual/gay in the musical? I remember back in 2018/2019, when I first saw the trailer for the musical, I was confused by the moment where Beetlejuice kisses Adam.

This moment still repels me from watching the musical. That is, there is no reason for his sudden bisexual orientation.

There's no official reason. There's theory. I'm in the camp that Alex Brightman, and maybe a handful of silent investors, had a plot to get the cartoon rebooted starring Alex, and the problematique nature of beetlebabes fucked with that cash cow. So they needed to sanitize it for the public, and how better to do that than with LGBT pandering?

The reason I often repeat that Alex Brightman totes misogyny like a gay man is that he shat on women (beetlebabes) in order to further his own agenda, one of claimed "allyship", in essence placing the wants and needs of gay people (mostly men) ahead of the wants and needs of women/beetlebabes. In this case, women want Betelgeuse's character and they want to project onto Lydia.

Brightman with his words and actions named those women Bad & Incorrect and the gay men people who want BJ Right & Correct.

Hence the Beetlewars.

Edit: annihilating BJ's canonical devotion to Lydia also serves to pander to misogynistic heterosexual men who have contempt for romance.

[supercap2319]

"You're in the Void. Think of it as purgatory. Reed called it a metaphysical junkyard where anything useless goes before it gets annihilated forever. And where the TVA sends people that don't play nice with the rest of the Multiverse." Johnny explained as you both walk through the desert, his blue cloak swishing around him.

"How do I escape?"

Johnny chuckles and shakes his head "Escape the Void? Kid, you're already trapped in a cosmic junkyard - escaping isn't exactly on the agenda. Plus, the TVA tends to keep a pretty tight leash on misfits like us."

"I don't care. I need to get home. My friends need me," You said.

The guy who looked like Steve sighs and runs a hand through his dark hair "Listen, I get it. We all have people waiting for us out there. But trust me, I've tried everything. My powers don't work the same here and the Void has a way of... wearing you down."

"Is there someone who is in charge here?" You asked.

"Oh, there's someone in charge alright. Her name's Cassandra Nova. She's a mutant with some seriously nasty psionic powers. Nova's been running this hellhole like her own personal kingdom."

"Mutant?"

"Yeah, you know - superhuman powers, genetic mutations, that whole nine yards. Nova's got a real knack for manipulating minds and bending people to her will. She's the reason we're all stuck here, doing her bidding." Johnny's expression darkened, and he hesitated before speaking again. "So with Alioth and her running this place, escape is impossible. She's been trying to get me for a while now."

"What's your name?"

"Johnny. Johnny Storm. Member of the Fantastic Four."

[amorphousbl0b]

Arcane does a fun thing with its narrative Darkest Hour.

Or: yet another post about how insanely smart this show is and how absolutely genius its writers are (and how jealous of them I am).

For the uninitiated, the Darkest Hour is the moment just before the climax in which the heroes are at their lowest point. When the Avengers are scattered and Loki opens the portal in NYC, when the Falcon has escaped the Death Star but lost Obi-Wan, when the Fire Nation is set to annihilate the Earth Kingdom, when Frodo fails to destroy the Ring at the Crack of Doom. The heroes must confront their flaws and change for the better for a happy ending.

Arcane’s darkest hour is, of course, in Act 3. One might place it at the very end of episode 9, and that’s certainly where the story is at its most hopeless. But I’d contend it starts as early as the end of episode 8 and carries on through the entirety of episode 9.

After all, that’s when Caitlyn and Vi have separated, lost all hope, and Cait is kidnapped by Jinx. Jinx’s mind is fully gone and throughout the episode everything falls apart around her. Silco is losing control of his chembarons and may well have lost his daughter, the thing most precious to him, and is only barely keeping his powerful façade in line. Zaun has realized how ridiculously outmatched they are in a war with Piltover and the revolutionary cause has become almost impossible. Viktor has manslaughtered his assistant and may never be cured. Jayce has manslaughtered a child and finally realizes how quickly he’s losing his morals. Mel and her mother are fully separating and she is struggling with her warlike destiny. Sevika gets the absolute snot beat out of her and limps to an empty office without a boss.

So yeah. Lot of personal Darkest Hours going on.

“But what’s the interesting thing?” I hear you ask in my ear. I don’t know why I hear you. Shut up. I’m writing. Are you even real?

Excuse me.

Arcane’s interesting twist on the Darkest Hour lies in part of the trope that I didn’t mention. That’s in the villain.

Most stories with a clear-cut villain have a plot structure something like this:

Whether things are going well for one side is inversely proportional to the other. During the Darkest Hour, when the hero is at their weakest, the villain is at their most dominant.

Wait… isn’t Silco the villain of Arcane? Not to be too blunt, but he’s having a shit time. Things are falling apart for him just as badly as for everyone else.

That's the trick. Caitlyn and Vi are suffering. Jinx is suffering. Silco is suffering. Jayce is suffering. Viktor is suffering. Zaun as a whole is suffering. There is only one party in the whole story that isn't suffering, that actually is benefitting from this horrid state of affairs...

EKKO AND HEIMERDINGER

Kidding. They're not really a part of this dance. A big part of Arcane's theming is that acting to help people without an agenda is simply more virtuous than fighting for any invariably-flawed nation that innately perpetuates the cycle of violence.

No, the side that is doing fine is the other that is conspicuously absent from my two prior lists. While the characters that make up its leadership are experiencing personal Darkest Hours, the organization itself is essentially on top of the world, having just scored a huge victory and getting set to bring the war to an end before it even begins. I mentioned how poor the situation for the Undercity looks, but not its counterpart.

Piltover.

Wasn't it so that Piltover started this whole mess? Didn't their oppression cause the revolt that orphaned Vi and Powder's parents? Isn't it their actions that drive Silco to ever greater extremes? Isn't it their normalized political backstabbing that causes Jayce to sacrifice his principles because that's the only way to get ahead? Isn't it their corrupt police force that lets Silco operate his drug empire with impunity?

Silco might look the part. He might be the most personally evil character, might be the one who causes the most misery for our main protagonists Vi and Powder.

But structurally, the shining city of Piltover, its political machine, and its Enforcers are the actual villains of Arcane.

[class1akids]

Did endeavour really cry in the manga when he apologized to touya and the entire todofam?

No, he didn't. It's an anime only addition to make him more sympathetic.

It's very clear that the entire title change was driven by a pro-Endeavor agenda. Someone up high in Bones really wanted to say that it's everyone's "I'M HERE" moment rather than Todoroki Shoto Rising.

When the entire point is that the Todoroki family climax is not only a tragedy, but the way Enji and Rei are scrambling last minute everyone outside also at danger.

Shoto is the only one who can prevent the mass annihilation, because HE WAS THERE - there for Rei to save her from the hospital, there for Iida to save him from Stain and inspire him to become the kind of person who'll carry him at transonic speeds, there to fight Toya in Enji's place, there to train Phosphor so he could counter Touya without harming him.

It's Shoto's "I'M HERE" as he becomes a hero to reassure strangers and bring salvation to the family. It's everything he worked for coming together - that's why it is his RISING.

But Bones management tried to take it away from him and make it a watered down "everyone is here, everyone is cool" kind of moment and many fans sadly bought it.

But I think the animation team did a respectable job in 10 mins to try to make sense of the story as much as they could.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Settler colonialism generates conflict between the colonist usurpers and the Indigenous population. No population is willingly displaced. But if a conflict involves two or more “sides” fighting over differing interests or agendas, then a colonial struggle is not a “conflict.” Colonialism is unilateral. One powerful actor invades another people’s territory to either exploit it or take it over. There is no symmetry of power or responsibility. The Natives did not choose the fight. They had no bone to pick with the settlers before they arrived. The Indigenous were not organized or equipped for such a struggle, and they had little chance of winning, of pushing the settlers out of their country. The Natives are the victims, not the other “side.” Nor, to be honest, are they a “side” at all in the eyes of their conquerors. At best they are irrelevant, a nuisance on the path of the settler’s seizure of their country, an expendable population, one that must be “eliminated,” if not physically annihilated then at least reduced to marginal presence in which they are unable to conduct a national life and thus threaten the settler enterprise. Such a process of unilateral, asymmetrical invasion that provokes resistance on the part of Native peoples threatened with displacement and worse can hardly be called a “conflict.” Rather than the “Israeli/Palestinian/Arab Conflict,” we must speak of Zionist settler colonialism.

Jeff Halper, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State

[vidavalor]

Final 15 Temptation Parallel #1: Nina

First in a series of short posts showing parallels between Aziraphale's more innocent tempting of the Whickber Street people to the ball he's told everyone is a meeting and That Coffee-Wielding Villain showing up in The Final 15 to tempt Aziraphale to join him.

Nina's attendance at The Meeting Ball is absolutely crucial for the Aziraphale's plans-- as crucial as that sigh of Our Villain in the elevator in the last moments of S2 indicated that Aziraphale being successfully tempted was for him. If Aziraphale cannot convince Nina to attend, everything is going to fall apart for him.

Just like with Our Villain and Aziraphale in The Final 15, we're on the sidewalk, in view of Crowley, and with The Dirty Donkey in sight, when we see Aziraphale tempt Nina.

What does Nina want? What will get her to go with him?

She wants to talk about the Christmas lights.

Nina wants to talk about those damn Christmas lights so badly that she-- a normally very shrewd person-- completely ignores how incredibly, overtly suspect Aziraphale is when presenting her with an offer to have her heart's desire and do just that:

It's a perfectly ordinary invitation with no hidden agenda of any kind, Nina! 😂 No reason to worry-- it's exactly what it sounds like! It's just a meeting of the street association. It's not going to really secretly be something else entirely when you get there or anything!

Nina normally would think this super-weird behavior from Aziraphale here-- and she probably really does think it super-weird-- but she cannot pass up the opportunity to have her thoughts be recognized.

She has Things To Say. She wants to be heard. She feels unseen and wants to be counted. She wants this group to value her opinion and address her concerns. Her demand for going with Aziraphale is that the group make this happen. What is Nina's wish, really, though? It's to feel seen. To be recognized. It's to feel valued by the group for the unique perspective that she can contribute which they sometimes overlook.

Remember this other scene on the sidewalk that's about that, too?

Right, like Our Villain gives a flying fuck about how things are done on the planet he's five seconds away from annihilating. He just needs Aziraphale in that elevator and our angel was waffling a little so this was the final knife twist. It's we need you and your unique perspective.

But even that might not have been enough so it's we need you and your unique perspective but you're smart enough to hope I'm not lying but heavily suspect that I am so I'll let you hear that I am-- and remind you of what's coming. The Second Coming. The Christmas lights. The unending cycle of depression you can't find a way out of. Just get in the elevator, Aziraphale, and it'll all be better.

Does anybody ever really ask for death? Nina is correct in saying that they do not-- but they do ask for suffering to stop. They can be convinced in the false freedom of death. The coffee might be from the American shop but if it's delivered by metaphorical British Empire? It is not life, though; it's death.

So, Aziraphale when he's tempting Nina, right... he can see that Nina's Christmas lights obsession is the key to getting her to this meeting. Nina is wonderfully direct as a character 😂 and she's just laid it out there: talk about the fucking Jesus lights or I'm out.

Aziraphale, as we well know, has exactly zero intention of discussion of the Christmas lights taking place during his Meeting Ball later that evening. It's not even actually a meeting. It's a ball, in which the Nina is meant to play a starring role... another reason why we shouldn't trust the legitimacy of Our Villain's job offer at all. Aziraphale needs to get Nina to this ball or his entire plan is going to fall apart. This pretty heavily suggests that everything Our Coffee-Wielding Villain is saying to Aziraphale is total bullshit.

Supporting this? Is the fact that Aziraphale just lies his ass off to Nina. 😂

Sure, Nina, we'll talk about the Christmas lights. Whatever gets you into the my shop which is the paralleling elevator, babe. We call it 'The Second Coming'. It's about saving the world, uh huh, come with me, whatever Jesus-y thing you need to hear, honey...

Then, the shot of Aziraphale, feeling guilty about lying as he walks away... the paralleling companion to which is the camera holding on Aziraphale after Our Villain's "go and tell your friend the good news."

The thing is, The Second Coming and Armageddon are not exactly the same thing. Armageddon is more a thing that includes The Second Coming-- if Armageddon is successful enough to get to that part of it. Jesus showing up to judge people for eternal life only happens if, first, the big battle of Armageddon is fought and won, with Earth destroyed and Heaven emerging victorious. That can't happen in our story. The point of it seems to be never getting that far.

The villains in the story-- The Metatron and Satan-- see The Second Coming as the end goal of what they're trying to get started. The trouble is that they were actually further along with all of that shit back when they tried it the first time in S1. They're epically losing in S2 and getting kind of dangerously desperate about it. They want to get their Armageddon on and destroy Earth and get to The Second Coming part of Jesus' judgment (if that's even a thing and not just something they've made up to explain Armageddon to the angels and demons)... but they can't even get this whole Armageddon thing off the ground this time because our main characters are refusing to fight it.

Our villains are having some big damn problems even getting Armageddon: The Sequel greenlit this time around because of Gabriel telling them that it'd be nice if the studios would spend their money on some less action-oriented, more romantic films for once.

In S2, this is all a second away from turning into Our Villains worst nightmare-- a chain reaction-- and it's almost really too late to stop that from happening but they're definitely going to try.

Crowley & Aziraphale stopped Round One and then, when Round Two came along, suddenly, The Supreme Archangel mutinied. The Commander of Heaven's entire armed forces just kinda fucked off on Monday and The Metatron is tripping over himself to keep that mutiny as under his hat as possible because it's going to cause a revolution. It already is by the end of the season, as we can see starting with Uriel.

What's coming isn't The Second Coming; it's The Second Rebellion.

Our Villains getting their Armageddon on is entirely dependent upon the angels and demons being willing to fight it and The Ineffable Quartet of Crowley, Aziraphale, Beez, & Gabriel are consolidating power and leading by example when it comes to alternate paths. You can't have a war without war and Ineffable Bureaucracy realizing that the kids of The Them were right and that war is a concept that can be defeated with a bit of I believe in peace, bitch is the kind of love train of our villains' worst nightmares.

Our Villains of Satan and The Metatron have one option: they've got to divide and conquer. They've got to take out our main characters.

While Aziraphale's paralleling Meeting Ball temptations are for a plan to win through love-- it's a matchmaking plot designed to help get Maggie and Nina together and to dance with his own love-- Our Villains have the opposite kind of plan in store. Theirs is to separate and kill. They're temporarily not on opposite sides on this one, working together to get rid of our main characters to maintain their own power and get Armageddon started.

Furfur, with the plot: Hell doing Heaven's punishing for them. The Job minisode and the job offer...

Get Aziraphale first, they think, and it'll be easier to pick off the others. Send Aziraphale to Hell and, they think, they'll split up the group and take away their newfound power.

They've overestimated their own influence, though. Demon Aziraphale is going to be a bridge too far for our characters.

There is no Second Coming coming because it's unlikely that Armageddon will ever get that far again-- because of what Aziraphale has already done. It's Crowley and Aziraphale who made the most important secret subversives up in Heaven and down in Hell feel brave enough to love one another and start some rebellious fires of their own. When Gabriel and Beez find out that their friends aren't safe at the start of The Finale, it's Ineffable Bureaucracy that are going to command an army for the heavenly host of that Meeting Ball. It's the last straw-- the fight gets taken to our villains and the bad guys will be outnumbered.

Uriel's basically already in. Muriel will help. Beez can get Furfur & Dagon with ease & how long until red rover red rover send our irritating sibling Michael right over? (Maybe most of the movie lol.)

Jim already told us the plot he'll ensure happens:

[leyenra8]

Can You Handle The Truth And Face The Facts?

A Yugoslavian warns us that the Communists used the “Divide And Conquer” tactic to wipe out her own country, in the meantime, the Democrats are using exactly the same “Divide And Conquer” policy to tear our nation down.   

She also tells us how to annihilate the Democrats.

“Divide And Conquer” in  politics is gaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy.

Save America By Knowing Who Is Destroying Our Country

Must See – “Agenda: Grinding America Down” Is The Most Powerful Documentary Of The Communist, Socialist, Progressive Attempt To Take Over America Produced So Far – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40jUjgNAnQA&list=PLaRplBT1nTYDI24bEDZPGsXVhFNq8rBuo&index=3

[thebuhonerodazorrow]

Venom: Lethal Protector #4 (2023)

By dark reason

Marvel

[mwolf0epsilon]

With Viktor's rework in the making, I am not only losing OG Viktor, but also losing what made Malzahar special as well...

Like I said before, I don't mind Arcane Viktor. I think the whole eldritch/otherworldly/corrupted-transcendence-of-the-self fits his overall themes, but only as another Alternate Universe (and considering LOL and Arcane both have the Multiverse's existence as a core part of its overall worldbuilding, it's not even a stretch to insinuate Arcane could live as it's own independent universe outside of the main universe of Runeterra). One where instead of looking to machinery as a means to re-adapt and evolve, magic was his poison of choice (although calling it a choice is a bit of a stretch, considering Viktor has no real agency in what transpired until it was too late).

The thing is... Why was it ever necessary to make Arcane Viktor the base to which all versions of him are built upon?

His original storyline was much more compelling than him being "just another mage". An engineer who's inventions are so fantastically innovative and powerful that some would consider them to be akin to magic? The desire to help his people adapt to an ever declining environment via mechanical augments and other inventions that clean and rebuild infrastructure? A strong moral compass and refusal to override consent because the future he has in mind is not a hivemind but a society run by logic and no conflict? The constant mislabeling as a villainous figure because of a heavily biased account of what he does that was built on lack of context and understanding? The Blitzcrank Legal Debacle? These were features that made him a complex and very intriguing character!

And, the fact of the matter is that the storyline Arcane put upon him is very much just a cheap knockoff of Malzahar's story. Something which personally slights me not only as a Malza fan, but also as an OG Viktor fan due to one very simple detail:

Malzahar is an immoral being through which the unknowable horrors beyond the veil of the fabric of reality acts. A puppet molded to further an agenda that would obliterate the world around him via its consumption by the Void, because he truly believes in its inevitability. He is a cult leader, figurehead, and more than willing to sacrifice everyone and all to the unholy beings he worships, whether he has their consent (and some of his followers do consent to being sacrificed because he charms them into believing his cause) or not (the Kai'Sa incident that turned Malzahar and Kassadin into mortal enemies).

He was, in essence, the opposite of Viktor. An actual villainous monster who at some point was just another victim of circumstance, and who now tries to push the world into annihilation because to him that is not only his purpose but also the perfect outcome for their world... Which sounds terribly familiar right now, doesn't it?

Alas, I know how this is going to end and it's not gonna be fun in the slightest. I'm just happy I recently unlocked Viktor again to give him one last hurrah before he's inevitably changed from what he used to represent.

[hellosweetart]

Can I hear some headcanons for Lilith and Drugia? :>

I'll do my best to explain my headcanons. Quick heads up- I might say something that doesn't make any sense so I apologize in advance 😵‍💫

Drugia

She and her soul-eater husband are one of the first occupants of the Astral Circle building. While she doesn't have any personal hatred towards humans, she likes to mess them up by invading into their dreams and create their worst nightmares for own twisted pleasure. She control the magic orbs that allows her to spy on the victims' activities and once she identified what fears them the most, she will take every opportunity to make their nightmares as hellish as possible. Drugia is part of Yog's circle of allies. He often asked for her alliance in case he needs more blood to consume and more pets/brides to abduct. The vampire pays her with human souls in exchange, much to her husband's delight.

Lilith

She and her twin sister's natural beauty are frequently compared to Yan Luo's but their powers are as level as the common ritualists in Astral Circle markets, so they're not as popular as the Princess of Death. She has practiced witchcraft all her life by making enchanted potions, and any type of incantations. (She charges her clients per one magic spell) Lilith is good friends with most of the ritualists, and has maintained a healthy rivalry with them, (mainly Zoth) and seeks mentorship when needed. While her human counterpart is more of an extrovert, Lilith is the opposite. She prefers to work by herself and is not fond of showing off her talent. She is also more of a neutral one towards humans.

Here is a bonus one:

Teutates

Teutates (or Teu, as he's called by some of his peers) is one of the newest occupants in Astral Circle building. Because of his cold and ruthless demeanor, he earned the title of becoming one of the most feared beings in all of Astral Circle. While he does not hesitate to annihilate any humans (regardless of their race and gender), he does not find any enjoyment of any kind of torture, and prefers to finish the job quickly. (He can commit merciful killing the handicapped if needed.) He is professionally trained both in gun and knife combat, much like his human counterpart Steven, but he is more of an assassin rather than a soldier. Like Drugia, he is also part of Yog's circle of allies. He may have done something controversial that causes Yog to lose his trust towards him, but they've eventually made an agreement to not bring up their personal agenda into their work moving forward.

Do you guys like these type of headcanons? Feel free to leave a comment 🙂

[dragoneyes618]

The Left in the West is also almost uniformly hostile to Jews and Judaism, and the further Left one is on the political spectrum the more intense is the antisemitism. In the United States, for example, the Socialist Workers Party argued that "the major task confronting American revolutionaries [as regards the Middle East] remains that of educating the radicalizing youth...for destruction of the state of Israel. In 1972, the party's paper, the Militant, criticized the Palestinian terrorists' murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, but only on the grounds that it made "the criminal look like the victim." The Communist Party USA differed from the Socialist Workers Party in that it conceded Israel's right to exist. But typical of its view of Zionism is this statement in the party's journal by Hyman Lumer, the party's theoretician on the Middle East: "Zionism is...in its very essence a racist ideology. It sets the Jewish people apart as a special people, a 'chosen' people - if you will, a superior people. In Israel, the Zionist rulers have created a racist state."

Similar denunciations of Jewish nationalism were made by other Communist parties in the West. Individuals on the revolutionary Left were even more aggressive. Vanessa Redgrave, for example, the Academy Award-winning actress and a member of the Central Committee of the British Workers' Revolutionary Party (a Trotskyite Communist organization) made a propaganda film for the PLO in the late 1970s, at a time when the PLO was officially committed to Israel's destruction. In it, Redgrave performed a sensuous dance with a PLO machine gun. Under the guise of only attacking Zionists and Zionism (the film uses the Arabic word for Jew, Yahud, but the English subtitles speak of "Zionists"), the movie utilizes some classic Jew-hating images. In one scene Redgrave asks a young Arab girl, "What would you do if he [a Jewish soldier] tried to kill you?" Marie Syrkin, in a critique of the film, wrote: "At this point my mind wandered to the prioress of The Canterbury Tales who devoutly recounts a medieval tale of a Christian child murdered by the Jews. the killing of children: the hoariest of antisemitic libels."

The non-Communist far Left was similarly single-minded in its attacks on Israel and the Jews who identify with it. For example, during the 1970s the left-wing National Lawyers Guild sent a delegation to only one country in the world to examine human rights - Israel. The delegation met with PLO representatives, heard their story, and returned with a report denouncing Israel. A Jewish lawyer in the group wrote a dissenting report, but the National Lawyers Guild suppressed it.

At the Harvard Law School in 1979, leftist Third World students sponsored a conference on "Human Rights in the Third World." Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz reported that, "At that time, there were massacres in the Central African Republic, the blood of people killed by Idi Amin was still fresh in people's minds, and the atrocious record of Libya on human rights could well have been discussed. But only one item concerning human rights as placed on the agenda: 'The So-Called Nation of Israel's Terrorism and Genocide.'"

The title of the Harvard leftists' program on Israel exemplifies two characteristics of contemporary left-wing antisemitism: (1) the denial of Jewish nationhood, hence the appellation "the so-called nation of Israel," and (2) the constant accusation of genocide against the Jewish state. The charges are related in an Orwellian manner. The denial of Jewish nationhood legitimates all efforts at annihilating the Jewish state and Zionists, what may truly be called genocide. But this genocidal attempt against Israel is then inverted and projected from the enemies of Israel onto Israel itself.

Thus it is not coincidental that on one issue, the annihilation of Israel, the far Left, and neo-Nazis agree. On April 14, 1970, the New York Times reported that the radical Black power leader Stokely Carmichael declared, "I have never admired a White man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler." In Chicago in October 1970, a speech by Israel's foreign minister, Abba Eban, was picketed by the far Left Youth Against War and Fascism and by the American Nazi Party.

Leftist antisemitism has also deeply infected left-wing Christians. Among Protestant groups, the World Council of Churches and affiliates such as teh (US) National Council of Churches were among the ajor advocates of recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization, even though at the time the PLO was committed to the destruction of Israel and was the world's leading supporter of terrorism against Western democracies. Siilar support was offered by the American JFriends Services Committe, which represents American Quakers.

In 1976, the Christian Science Monitor was the only one of the fifty major newspapers in the United States to condemn Israel's raid on Entebbe, Uganda's main airport, where PLO terrorists were preparing to murder Jewish passengers on a hijacked plane.

The same situation holds for the Catholic Church, wherein Leftist theologians, clergy, and lay leaders with Third World Orientations have combined traditional church resentment of the "old Israel" with the Left's resentment of the new Israel. One such leader was Archbishop Hilarian Capucci, formerly of Jerusalem. On August 18, 1974, Israeli police caught Capucci, smuggling weapons and explosives for terrorists to kill Israeli civilians. Though Israel sentences him to twelve years in prison, it released him after fewer than three years at the personal request of Pope Paul VI.

Upon his release, Capuci declared, "Jesus Christ was the first fedayeen [Arab freedom fighter]. I am just following his example." A short time thereafter, he celebrated a Mass "in protest against the genocide perpetrated against the Arab people." A Catholic journal, Resumen, responded to Capucci's activities with a denunciation of his "propaganda pamphlets which revive the myths which make Capucci a Jesus and the Israelis deicidal mercenaries." In January 1979 Archbishop Capucci attended meetings in Damascus of the Palestine National Council, the supreme authority of the PLO, which had earlier made him an honorary member. Twenty-three years later, in 2002, Capucci repeatedly and publicly spoke up in favor of Palestinian suicide bombings directed against Israeli civilians.

Whereas in the past, Christian attitudes toward Jews were almost uniformly hostile, today such hostility emanates almost exclusively from Christianity's far Right and Left. On the other hand, moderate and conservative Christians in the United States are among the most aggressive supporters of Jewry and Israel's right to exist.

The Left has opposed Jews both for their religion and for their nationality. The Jewish fusion of religion and nationality is anathema to both the secularism and the universalism of the Left. This partially explains why the Left, though so hospitable and supportive of the national liberation movements of almost all other peoples, is so antagonistic to the nationalism of the Jews. It was regarding this Leftist hatred of the Jews that Social Democrat Irving Howe wrote, "In the warmest of hearts there is a cold spot for the Jews."

From Marx and the French socialists to to the Soviets, the Third World, and Western leftists today, an intense Jew-hatred has prevailed. As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "Antisemitism has become a unifying global ideology of the totalitarian Left." And many on the nontotalitarian Left have been compromised by their "no enemies on the Left" attitude. Thus a movement founded, established, and supported in large part by Jews has come to constitute, along with the Arab/Muslim world, the Jews' greatest enemy at this time.

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, pages 133-136

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre Harvard University has awarded most of the degrees it withheld from pro-Hamas protesters as punishment for their participating in an unlawful demonstration at Harvard Yard, further feeding an impression that its tough talk about discipline and restoring order was contrived to temper negative publicity prompted by its alleged refusal to address antisemitism on the campus. According to The Washington Free Beacon, which first reported the story, Harvard conferred degrees to 11 of the 13 protesters whose behavior during the final weeks of the semester prompted several warnings from the university. Responding to the university’s amnestying him and other protesters, one graduate reviled Harvard on social media anyway, denouncing the institution as cynical and rapacious. “What does it mean to be conferred a degree from a university that holds millions of investments in illegal occupation, bankrolls the annihilation of Palestinians, and mistreats its students for a political agenda,” Asmer Asrar Safi said in comments quoted by the Free Beacon. “While we know our fellow organizers … will continue to mobilize, please remember that every student, faculty, and staff member at the university has a responsibility to challenge the status quo.” Harvard later said in statements to the Free Beacon and The Harvard Crimson, the school’s official campus newspaper, that nothing about its decision is amiss. “Consistent with its May 22 statement, the Harvard Corporation has voted to confer degrees to 11 eligible candidates who have been restored to good standing following the completion of Faculty of Arts and Sciences processes,” a university spokesman said. “The university continues to work to strengthen and improve disciplinary processes, such as the recently announced procedures to enable the work of the University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities to enhance the consistency of investigation and factfinding [sic] processes in cases involving more than one school.” This latest news follows earlier reporting that Harvard “downgraded” disciplinary sanctions it levied against several pro-Hamas demonstrators who participated in occupying Harvard Yard. The shocking development likely erased the good will Harvard regained by appearing to embrace an approach to discipline that would deter future unruly behavior as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate incidents the protesters perpetrated throughout the school year, which damaged the reputation of the institution and prompted a slew of lawsuits and federal investigations.

Look for more Harvard campus pogroms this next school year, thanks to Harvard administration's obvious disdain for their Jewish students. Campus (and off-campus) Hamas supporters will take advantage.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Pure Negation

The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too! —Mikhail Bakunin

It is ridiculous to even contemplate co-existing with this fascist apparatus. It all has to be destroyed to start afresh. We will taste the fruits from the trees we’ve grown ourselves in the ashes of their empire. —Anonymous, Incitement to Burn

The call from Bakunin to embrace the destructive urge forms the backbone of both anarchist and anarcho-nihilist thought. The latter takes this axiom and runs with it, arguing that in the face of global systems of domination our sole aim should be to destroy all that constitutes those systems. This stands in direct contrast to other anarchist tendencies that place at least some emphasis on “positive programs” — aspirations to construct something ideal in the present world or to craft plans in preparation for the downfall of the current system. Anarcho-nihilism understands the positive program as “one that confuses desire with reality and extends that confusion into the future” by either making promises about what a revolutionary future might hold, or attempting to bring those conditions about from within the existing order.[99] Such positive aspirations offer nothing more than a dangling carrot for us to pursue in a situation in which the stick, string, and prize all need to be destroyed. The example of those living under Nazi rule illustrates a situation in which, for those deemed Ballastexistenzen, positive visions were unfathomable: establishing long-term projects or alternative infrastructure would be ludicrous, except to the extent that they facilitated the destruction of the existing order. So long as Hitler reigned, no Jewish commune would be tolerated, no anarchist child-care collective could ever hope to thrive. To be immersed in a social order as violent and controlling as Nazi Germany warranted a reaction of absolute hostility, attacks aimed at every level of society — pure negation. So too does anarcho-nihilism understand the existing order of today as without potential for a positive agenda. Whatever we build within its bounds will be co-opted, destroyed, or turned against us: “We understand that only when all that remains of the dominant techno-industrial-capitalist system is smouldering ruins, is it feasible to ask what next?”[100] According to this line of thought, our situation today is similar to the Lagers to the extent that positive projects, attempts to create a new world in the shell of the old, are simply out of place. Aragorn! writes: “Nihilism states that it is not useful to talk about the society you ‘hold in your stomach’, the things you would do ‘if only you got power’...What is useful is the negation of the existing world.”[101] Similarly, imprisoned members of the CCF write:

We anarcho-nihilists ...don’t talk about ‘transformation of social relations’ towards a more liberated view, we promulgate their total destruction and absolute annihilation. Only through total destruction of the current world of power... will it be possible to build something new. The deeper we destroy, the more freely will we be able to build.[102]

The visions that rebels tend to entertain about what life will be like After The Revolution are not only unproductive, they are dangerous because they presume that a unified vision of life is desirable. Such forward-looking conversations attempt to herd an infinite spectrum of possibilities onto an ideal anarchist path. The CCF write:

Very often, even in anarchist circles, the future organization of ‘anarchist’ society is discussed along with the role of work, self-management of the means of production, direct democracy, etc. According to us, this kind of debate and proposal looks like the construction of a dam that tries to control the impetus of the abundant stream of Anarchy.[103]

Even resisters in the concentration camps sometimes concerned themselves with this kind of political fantasizing: In Buchenwald, for instance, three underground political organizations banded together in 1944 to plan out the future governance of Germany, at a time when other organizations in the camp were focused on saving lives and staging coordinated resistance.[104] Nihilism urges us to consider the fact that such forward planning is simply unnecessary and that it obfuscates our more urgent goal of negation: “There’s no need to know what’s happening tomorrow to destroy a today that makes you bleed.”[105]

From the foundation of this critique, nihilism identifies a common trap experienced by anarchists: the magnetic compulsion to identify ourselves positively within society even though we strive for its destruction. In my local context, this often looks like anarchists responding to critics of property destruction with reminders of all that we contribute to society (when we are not rioting, we are community organizers, Food Not Bombs chefs, musicians, etc.).

Negation, however, is justified by the existence of a ruling order, not by our credentials as activists. Our riots are justified not because we contribute, but because we exist under the heel of a monstrous society. Positive projects are the means of surviving within that order; negation is the project of destroying it completely. As Alejandro de Acosta reminds us, we must not be tempted to “frame destructive action as having any particular goal beyond destruction of the existent.”[106] Bæden too rails against this tendency, insisting that we have nothing to gain from hiding our true intentions:

We understand destruction to be necessary and we desire it in abundance. We have nothing to gain through shame or lack of confidence in these desires. This world... must be annihilated in every instance, all at once. To shy away from this task, to assure our enemies of our good intentions, is the most crass dishonesty.[107]

When we call ourselves anarchists, or even “anti-capitalists,” we are implying a commitment to the destruction of systems of domination — why do we so often shy away from this? Nihilism unabashedly embraces negation as being at the core of such positions.