#a great solution to this would be to actually learn about antisemitism

[atlas-andromeda]

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[brainscrems]

Making a little pinned post for goyim who stumble across this blog. Nothing in your background, none of your experiences with marginalization, nothing at all makes you exempt from having internalized antisemitism. The best thing you can do is seek out a wide range of all jewish voices with no preconceived notions, hear how different things affect their lives and oppression, and take that into account about what you say and do. Next thing to address. Antisemitism from the left DOES exist and it IS in your movements for palestinian liberation, as ugly a truth as that is. I support a free palestine and an end to genocide. So, when I showed up to my first protest and saw a displayed swastika with hundreds of people around, I was extremely dismayed that not a single one was willing to stand up and say a goddamned thing. This is the state of antisemitism on the left. Most people won’t *openly* spout hateful rhetoric, tho those who will are quite loud. The real problem is that there is no collective willingness to go after the open antisemites in these movements. It’s deemed acceptable because it’s for a good cause. And let me tell you, this shit is quite typical and we jews see it constantly. Just because you aren’t seeing antisemitism doesn’t mean it’s not there. Of course you aren’t seeing it. You’re not jewish. You don’t have the background to notice shit that you’ve been taught is normal and fine. Yet, your silence in the face of these things or even your engagement in them still hurts us. And. You know what they say. If nazi joins 4 people at a table and they do nothing about it you have 5 nazis. So. What can you do? Seek out jewish voices and LEARN!! Don’t tokenize us. Don’t choose ones you already agree with. The first resource I recommend for dealing w antisemitism in leftist spaces is called “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere” by April Rosenblum. This is a jew with a long history of palestinian advocacy and she has done a great job at breaking down where antisemitism happens. Link at the bottom. It was written in 2007 and remains depressingly relevant today. This pamphlet is 24 pages, a bit long, but very thorough. This pamphlet is the barebones details of what’s antisemitic btw. The things listed in there are basic “nearly every jew in the world” would agree things. There is more than just what is contained in there that’s antisemitic and your best resource is gonna be listening to jewish voices. No tokenizing. No dismissing. Just listening and seeing what makes sense. That said, this shit is essential reading because it gives you the tools to start making spaces safe for jews. If you don’t care about that then, well, you probably don’t belong on this blog.

EDIT: In an ideal world I would like a binational one-state solution with a right of return for jews and palestinians as well as massive reparations for palestinians. I don’t identify as a zionist. And. I know jews who identify as zionists who want the exact same things I do. If your rhetoric is calling for violence against those people you can fuck right off. Zionist is a jewish word that has been appropriated by goyim, both by christian “zionists” as well as those who wish to discredit jews wanting to live peacefully with palestinians in our shared homeland. It means whatever the jew using it says it does in the context of their speech. The people who support the ethnic cleansing and genocide of palestinians or the treatment of palestinians as second class citizens are called kahanists and racist assholes, not zionists. Stop misusing our fucking word. Learn what the word means from actual members of our community instead of shouting about it as a fucking outsider and appropriating a term with deep community roots. Yea, Israel has committed so many war crimes and is currently committing genocide. This is not what zionism represents to most zionists so if you’re pushing that narrative just fucking do better and stop putting jewish lives at risk with your irresponsible rhetoric. I once again redirect you to the linked pamphlet. This is not a heavily focused on topic in it, but it gives clear instructions on what not to do, even if it doesn’t give you all the details on the why.

[rebelbrat]

Yo I am SO SORRY I didn’t get to this (or your other 2 asks) earlier--life since the beginning of this year has just been an endless series of misfortunes and it decided to give me one last fuck you on its way out in the form of a stomach illness and a head injury at the same time…But now that I’m officially on vacation, I can finally sit down and give you the answer that I’ve been thinking of giving this whole time! Here we go.

OK SO. Now that you’ve mentioned representation, I just have to lay out my entire story with how this dude came to be Jewish. I was planning to talk about this for a while, but I figured responding to your ask with it would be a great jumping off point. Way back when I first started writing human!Lotor, I made him Jewish for admittedly kind of a racist reason. Basically, I wanted him to have European-like features like he did in canon but didn't want to make him mixed with European. In hindsight this was racist to POC (not to mention highly emblematic of the biases I’m sure I have against white Europeans and which I still try to work on because I don’t want to hate anybody like that but it’s hard). Racist because the solution should have been to just give him POC features unlike in canon then, since Voltron and other cartoons aren't always so great at depicting POC features…But I digress.

So there I was. With the blessing of my one (1) close Jewish friend at the time, I had made what was probably the dumbest choice for representation I’ve ever made and most likely ever will make. Because Lotor is the sneaky, manipulative character, right? And Jews are stereotyped as sneaky and manipulative, right? But I literally just made him Jewish because I fucking hated Europeans but I still wanted him to look a certain way. And so like the past 4 years I've also been dreading someone telling me that making my human interpretation of Lotor Jewish is antisemitic. 

Surprisingly, that has never happened to me even once. Someone actually tried to put me on blast for the unintentional antisemitism in my writing, but even then they never once brought up the fact that I picked literally the worst character to make Jewish. I think the main reason why I’ve been able to write him like this for so long is because Tobias is different enough from Lotor that they don’t entirely feel like the same person--which is only par for the course because with my premise being “this is character X except with at least one decent parent and also an entirely different species,” there’s bound to be a massive change. Tobias can be incredibly toxic based on my own interpretation of Lotor's toxicity and he does have the capacity to be manipulative but he's someone whose first priority is fighting for justice and being loyal to anti-imperialism and other social justice causes, and he's a lot more relatable & personable than Lotor too due to the fact that he can talk and act like a normal person and you’re not constantly questioning whether that’s the real him or just a face he put on to get you to like him better. Granted, my canon divergent Lotor is also very anti-imperialist, but Tobias has the advantage in relatability because his left-leaning stance isn’t authoritarian. I guess in that way the representation turned out a lot better than it could have been--

Now here comes the plot twist.

When I first started writing Tobias as Jewish, I honestly had no idea what I was doing. I made a bunch of mistakes and was like this for about two years and, as I said before, someone actually tried to put me on blast over it. Which I absolutely deserved because past me was an idiot who should have learned a book before writing even a single iota of the shit that I dove headfirst into. I managed to escape from it relatively unscathed in my Internet life because within five minutes of the callout coming up it came down because the person behind it got exposed for only calling me out out of spite--but my real life is another story. I am spiritual and I suspect the amount of antisemitic shit I noticed since committing to a conversion has increased about 5000000000x as some sort of test, midah k’neged midah for my past behavior now coming back to me so I can see how shit like what I did affects Jewish people. But you know how I started wanting to convert in the first place? I actually started doing research on Judaism so I could portray Tobias properly and I was like "oh fuck this is super cool.” It was literally my character research for Tobias that inspired me to convert.

And now I'm here, studying Judaism as my hyperfixation, getting involved in the Jewish community (well as much as I could with my mom being here like 3 of the 4 months I’ve been in law school)…And thinking that when I choose my Hebrew name I want it to be Toviyah because he was what brought me here.

So sometimes I looked back at …wow I can't believe this happened, I made a really bad choice for a really bad reason but it ended up changing my life in an incredibly positive direction. 

As to how other people perceive (or would perceive) Tobias’ representation…Well, I don’t reach out to a lot of people because I’m scared to find out. LOL. My Jewish friends adore Tobias and I love having him to express my learning about Judaism with so I’d like to think he’s good representation (in spite of his canon self being the worst possible choice to write this with), but I’m afraid of having a bigger audience because I’m worried that people will automatically jump to conclusions about me and my work. Maybe there are serious flaws in my portrayal that need fixing, but I’m still scared of people telling me that because usually on the Internet feedback is never given as constructive criticism, it’s usually given in the form of telling people to kill themselves. But I would hope that my representation is good enough (or will become good enough) that, just like you say, the only substantial complainers about it would be dumb people imposing their opinions on others and non-Jewish voices speaking over Jewish people being the loudest.

Thank you so much for this ask <3 Being able to write this all up means a lot.

[sylvielauffeydottir]

Hi I just saw your post about Israel and Palestinian. I don't know if you're the person to ask or if this is a dumb question but I was wondering if anyone has considered starting a second Jewish state? I was wondering because there's a bunch of Christian countries so why not multiple Jewish ones.

Sorry if I'm bothering you and Thanks for your time.

That’s actually a pretty interesting question. I am going to apologize right now, because I essentially can’t give a short answer to save my life.

I’m not a ‘Jewish Scholar,’ so while I can speak with some authority about the history of Zionism, I definitely couldn’t speak about it with as much authority as others. I mentioned in at least one of the posts I have written about the history of plans for a ‘Jewish state’ when Zionism was originally being proposed, and I can kinda of track the history of Zionist thinking for you if you are interested, though essentially it’s just about arguing where to go. But there are better scholars for this than me, so I would recommend Rebecca Kobrin, Deborah Lipstadt, Walter Laqueur … idk. Maybe just read some Theodor Herzl, honestly. With all of that said, I can speak with some authority about the post-war history of this in the Middle East. So let’s go.

In post-war times, there has really only been one serious discussion of an alternative Jewish state, as far as I know. And actually, this is part of why I find it so ironic that people are campaigning so hard to be “anti-Zionist” and to express views like “anti-Zionism” in their activism, because the Jews in Israel who are most anti-Zionist are actually the settlers of Palestinian territories, who want to secede and form a “Gaza-State” called Judeah. There's a great book about this called The Deadly Embrace by Ilana Kass And Bard O'Neill, if anyone is interested. Anyway, most of those people, who are largely Haredim (the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, though some of those settlers are semi Orthodox), have essentially been waging a “culture war” about what it means to have a Jewish state and what the identity of that Jewish state should look like basically since the 1980s.

There is a really good article about this that you can find right here written by Peter Lintl, who is a researcher at the Institution of Political Science for the Friedrich-Alexander Universitat. I’ll summarize it for the lazy people, though, because it’s like 40 pages. Just know that this paragraph won’t be super source heavy, because it is basically the same source. Essentially, the Haredim community has tripled in size from 4% to 12% of the total Israeli population since 1980, and it is probably going to be about 20% by 2040. They only accept the Torah and religious laws as the basis for Jewish life and Jewish identity and they are critical of democratic principles. To them, a societal structure should be hierarchical, patriarchal, and have rabbis at the apex, and they basically believe that Israel isn’t a legitimate state. This is primarily because Israel is (at least technically, so no one come at me in the comments about Palestinian citizens of Israel, so I’ll make a little ** and address this there) a ‘liberal’ democracy. Rights of Israeli citizens include, according to Freedom House, free and fair elections (they rank higher on that criteria here than the United States, by the way), political choice, political rights and electoral opportunities for women, a free and independent media, and academic freedom. It is also, I should add (as a lesbian), the only country in the Middle East that has anything close to LGBT+ rights.

[**to the point about Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel: I have a few things to say. First, I have recommended this book twice now and it is Michael Oren’s Six Days of War, which absolutely fantastically talks about the ways in which the entire structure of the Palestinian ‘citizenship’ movement, Palestinian rights, and who was responsible for governing Palestinians changed after the Six Days War. If you are at all interested in the modern Middle East or modern Middle East politics, I highly recommend you read this, because a huge tenant of this book is that it was 1967, not 1947, that caused huge parts of our current situation (and that, surprisingly, a huge issue that quote-on-quote “started it” was actually water, but that’s sort of the primary secondary issue, not the Actual Issue at play here). Anyway, I’ve talked about the fact that Israel hugely abuses its authority in the West Bank and Gaza and that there are going to be current members of the Israeli Government who face action at the ICC, so please don’t litigate this again with me. I also should add that the 2018 law which said it was only Jews who had the natural-born right to “self-determine” in Israel was passed by the Lekkud Government, and I really hate them anyway. I know they’re bad. It’s not the point I’m making. I’m making a broader point about the Constitution vis-a-vis what the Haredim are proposing, which is way worse].

To get back to the Haredim, basically there is this entire movement of actual settlers in territories that have been determined to belong to the Palestinian people as of, you know, the modern founding of Israel (and not the pre-Israel ‘colonial settler’ narrative you’ll see on instagram in direct conflict with the history of centuries of aliyah) who want to secede and form a separate Jewish state. They aren’t like, the only settlers, but I point this out because they are basically ‘anti-Zionist’ in the sense that they think that modern Zionism isn’t adhering to the laws of Judaism — that the state of Israel is too free, too radical, too open. And scarily enough, these are the sort of the people from whom Netanyahu draws a huge part of his political support. Which is true of the right wing in general. Netanyahu can’t actually govern without a coalition government. Like I have said, the Knesset is huge, often with 11-13 political parties at once, and so to ‘govern’ Netanyahu often needs to recruit increasingly right wing, conservative, basically insane political parties to maintain his coalition. It’s why he has been so supportive of the settlements, particularly in the last five years (since he is, as I have also said, facing corruption charges, and he really can’t leave office). It would really suck for him if a huge chunk of his voters seceded, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, that is the only ‘second Jewish State’ I know about, and I don’t think that is necessarily much of a solution. I really don’t have the solutions to the Middle East crisis. I am just a girl with some history degrees and some time on her hands to devote to tumblr, and I want people to learn more so they can form their own opinions. With that said, I think there are two more things worth saying and then I will close out for the night.

First, Judaism is an ethno-religion. Our ethnicities have become mixed with the places that we have inhabited over the years in diaspora, which is how you have gotten Sephardi, Mizrahi, Ashkenazi, and even Ethiopian Jews. But if you do actual DNA testing on almost all of the Jews in diaspora, the testing shows that we come from the same place: the Levant. No matter how pale or dark, Jews are still fundamentally one people, something we should never forget (and anyone who tries to put racial hierarchy into paleness of Jews: legit, screw you. One people). Anyway, unlike other religious communities, we have an indigenous homeland because we have an ethnic homeland. It’s small, and there are many Jews in diaspora who choose not to return to it, like myself. But that homeland is ours (just as much as it is rightfully Palestinians, because we are both indigenous to the region. For everyone who hasn’t read my other posts on the issue, I’m not explaining this again. Just see: one, two, and three, the post that prompted this ask). This is different from Christians, for example, who basically just conquered all of Europe and whose religion is not dependent on your race or background. You can be a lapsed Christian and you are still white, latinx, black, etc right? I am a lapsed Jew, religiously speaking, and will still never escape that I am ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish.

Second, I think you raise a really good point about other religious states. There are many other religious majority states in the world (all of these countries have an official state religion), and a lot of them are committing a lot of atrocities right now (don't even get me started on Saudi Arabia). I have seen other posts and other authors write about this better than I ever could, but I am going to do my best to articulate why, because of this, criticism of Israel as a state, versus criticism of the Israeli Government, is about ... 9 times out of 10 inherently antisemitic.

We should all be able to criticize governments. That is a healthy part of the democratic process and it is a healthy part of being part of the world community. But there are 140 dictatorships in the world, and the UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel 45 times since 2013. Since the creation of the UN Human Rights Council, it has has received more resolutions concerning Israel than on the rest of the world combined. This is compared to like … 1 for Myanmar, 1 for South Sudan, and 1 for North Korea.

Israel is the world’s only Jewish majority state. You want to talk about “ethnic cleansing” and “repressive governments”? I can give you about five other governments and world situations right now, off the top of my head, that are very stark, very brutal, very (in some cases) simple examples of either or both. If a person is ‘using their platform’ to Israel-bash, but they are not currently speaking about the atrocities in Myanmar, Kashmir, Azerbaijan, South Sudan, or even, dare I say, the ethnonationalism of the Hindu Nationalist Party in India, then, at the very least, their activism is a little bit performative. They are chasing the most recent ‘hot button’ issue they saw in an instagraphic, and they probably want to be woke and maybe want to do the right thing. And no one come at me and say it is because you don’t “know anything about Myanmar.” Most people know next to nothing about the Middle East crisis as well. At best, people are inconsistent, they may be a hypocrite, and, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not, they are either unintentionally or intentionally buying into antisemitic narratives. They might even be an antisemite.

I like to think (hope, maybe) that most people don’t hate Jews. If anything, they just follow what they’ve been told, and they tend to digest what everyone is taking about. But there is a reason this is the global narrative that has gained traction, and I guarantee it has at least something to do with the star on the Israeli flag.

I know that was a very long answer to your question, but I hope that gave you some insight.

As a sidenote: I keep recommending books, so I am going to just put a master list of every book I have ever recommended at the bottom of anything I do now, because the list keeps growing. So, let’s go in author alphabetical order from now on.

One Country by Ali Abunimah Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Noam Chayut If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State by Daniel Gordis Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis The Deadly Embrace by Ilana Kass And Bard O'Neill Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi Antisemitism by Deborah Lipstadt Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate by Tom Segev Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman

[diamondorloj]

You are so smart and well educated, especially regarding Israel and Jewish history, so I hope you don't mind if I ask you to help me, an uneducated (and to be honest mostly ignorant towards politics because of personal issues) person, to graps what the fuss is about all the political statements during ESC this year? I'm really confused and used google but I understand like maybe half of what's going on. Sorry to bother you.

Hey, thank you for coming to me. First off, I have studied and learned a lot abut the topics, but they’re very complex and full of details beyond my grasp. I’ll try to make this short, but your ask was a little broad and calls for a couple of explanations.

First off, there are rules against political statements and activism in every Eurovision song contest. For example, the only flags allowed in the arenas are the flags of UN states and of the EU, as well as unpolitical flags like the rainbow or the trans flag. In 2016, there was a conflict because the Armenian delegation held up a flag of Bergkarabach, which is debatable territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Now, here’s the EBU statement: “In the live broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final, Hatari, the Icelandic act, briefly displayed small Palestinian banners whilst sat in the Green Room. The Eurovision Song Contest is a non-political event and this directly contradicts the contest’s rules. The banners were quickly removed and the consequences of this action will be discussed by the Reference Group (the contest’s executive board) after the contest.”

Determining a course of action on legal grounds based on the flag rule is going to be a little difficult because as of 29th November 2012, Palestine was granted the status of an observer state in the UN. However, showing the Palestine flag in Israel, on an Israelian stage, is considered political activism (and just generally…bad).

To briefly touch on the history of the Palestinian and Israelian conflict is almost impossible. The area of today’s Israel and Palestine used to belong to the Osmanian Empire, which shattered in 1922 officially and for a huge number of reasons. Great Britain took over mandate control for the area they then called Palestine, until it was possible to establish its own state. This was a common idea of the time for colonies that were supposed to be supported on their way to independency. Jews had fled to this area for centuries, but especially so during the 19th century because of rising antisemitism in Europe. While it wasn’t exactly pleasant to live as dimmi, people of the books and second-class citizens, it was relatively safe and peaceful, and Arab people happily sold their land to Jewish immigrants.

The idea of safety for the Jewish people led to the idea of a Jewish state, which is zionism. However, there were many options discussed as to where this Jewish state should be installed – among them were Uganda and Argentina. In the end, it probably was a mixture of many factors, like the Jewish connection to the land of Israel and Jerusalem, the fact that many Jewish people had bought land in Palestine for a relatively good price and that a lot of Jewish communities already lived there. Great Britain agreed to install a Jewish state, however they also installed the Great Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, and he incited violence and pogroms against the Jewish people. He vehemently opposed the existence of any Jewish state and also collaborated with the Nazis, organised a Muslim garnison in the SS, and is responsible for many people dying in the Holocaust because he prevented them from fleeing to Palestine.

So, after the Holocaust, the calls for a Jewish state for the Jewish people got louder because it had been made abundantly clear that no other state would guarantee their safety and survival. The UN was very newly installed and kinda improvised a new solution for the territorial conflict: There should be both a Jewish state, called Israel, and an Arab state, called Palestine. Jerusalem should stay under UN control. It was a hasty, imperfect plan, however the Jews accepted while the Arabs declined and the Arab nations surrounding Israel declared war on the same day Israel was founded. Against all odds, Israel won the wars and exists to this day. During the war, there were many refugees on both sides. Israel advertised for Arab people to stay and granted them full citizen rights. The Arab states called for Arabs to leave the places of war and conflict and were promised they could return to their homes when the war was over aka Israel destroyed. Well, guess what. Many refugees of these days and their decendants fled to Syria, Jordan, Egypt but were not taken in and instead were used against Israel. To this day, there are refugee camps in Jordan which does not grant any of their decendents who were born there city rights. Jewish people were dispelled from their homes and found a new home in Israel.

So, Israel as a state is the only guarantee in the world for safety and survival for the Jewish people. If you know any Jewish people in Europe, you will often hear their discussions and plans of going to Israel. The state exists, and it will continue to exist and thrive. To debate its right to an existence is politically pointless because it was granted by the UN and other leading political organisations, and antisemitic because it’s a direct call against the safety of Jews everywhere. Palestine wasn’t a state in the beginning at first and to this day has a special political status. In the 1940-1960s, a lot of Palestinians didn’t even want to be called Palestinians and the leading politicians in fact called for Palestine to be reunited with Syria, calling them Syrians. In 2005, Israel granted Gaza’s wishes and completely unrooted all Jewish life in the Gaza strip, making it free of living Jews for the first time in millenias. Unsurprisingly, peace did not follow.

Phew. I left out about a thousand details around here, so please use these points as a starting point for your research and take it with a grain of salt.

The conflict between Israel and Palestine to this day exists because Palestine does not acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and uses acts of terrorism and war against the state. Beginning of May, Gaza fired way over 600 rockets on Israel, aiming at schools and civilian buildings, killing 4 and injuring over 300 people. Their leading political organisation, Hamas, calls for the complete destruction of Israel and their people. They also refer to Israel as an oppressing state and an occupation of their territory.

One of the organisations that also believes Israel to be an occupator is the BDS organisation, which is a Boycott against Israel. It claims to be peaceful and harmless, but aims to completely isolate Israel in every way, culturally, economically, politically, from the rest of the world. They also want Palestinian refugees in Gaza and Westbank to have a right to return to Israel. However, given that Israel has a population of about 15 million people, and 20% of them are not Jewish, integrating about 8 million people of non-jewish Arabs into Israel would make Jews a minority in Israel and effectively end the existence of the only Jewish state in the world. (also good luck boycotting Israeli technology like the world's most efficient field hospital, the USB stick, and just about every smartphone works with Israeli technology.)

BDS called for a boycott of the ESC in Israel, Roger Waters himself foamed at the mouth when Madonna was announced to perform in Tel Aviv. One band that is at least close to the BDS is Hatari, the Icelandic group. They announced their intentions to use their performance to criticise Israel for the way they treat Palestinians.There was debate in Israel apparently whether they should be allowed to come to Tel Aviv, in the end they were allowed. They returned the favour by showing the flag of their biggest aggressor and threat to safety.

Funnily enough, homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment and death in Gaza. So I can’t help but wonder how well their support was received in Palestine… It’s a typically European knee-jerk reaction. They want to show solidarity with what they think is the underdog in that conflict, and they’re cowardly showing their protest in a democractic, safe country.

Madonna’s performance is problematic because she agreed to do a non-political act and proceeded to slap the flags on their dancers at the very last second, betraying the trust and rules of the hosts. Her act shows a big, scary man dressed like a soldier in a black uniform as Israel and a tiny woman in a white dress as Palestine, and in the beginning she talks about supposedly hidden crimes that ‘we all know of’ wink-wonk. It’s a tired provocatin and villainification of Israel imo. The reactions all over social media show that it was not actually perceived as a message of peace and love, but as a message of pro-Palestinian interests, painting them the victims and only the victims of the conflict.

There was probably more going on with political statements in the ESC, but you referred to Jewish history and Israel, so I hope your questions are covered with this response!

[dizzymoods]

I said they are falling for the israeli framing of the situation, which they are. Many such cases btw. I wrote about one way here.

Kyle put a video out 9 october going over the issue. This post was published on 11 october.

It's clear Kyle has no understanding of colonialism. When talking about Najma Sharif tweet, he invokes the crazy left/political sectarianism narrative. He speaks of Israel and Palestine as sports teams who overlook war crimes when their team does it. That morals fly out of the window.

There is nothing moral about settler colonialism. It's about power. As I stated above, hamas would not exist if israel wasn't a settler colonial state. 20th century zionists understood this.

To condemn the violence of a colonized people is to concede ground to the colonizers.

Every single anti-colonial movement has used violence. And many of them have targeted civilian populations. This is essentially what the FLN did to get France out of Algeria.

Throughout the video Kyle maintains that hamas deliberately targeted israeli citizens. Haaretz reported on 18 november that hamas likely didn't know about the nova music fest. Meaning it wasn't a deliberate target but an impromptu one.

We later learned that the iof killed israeli citizens in the crossfire which was confirmed by survivors on 15 Oct. israel actually lowered the death count as well.

Now, nobody knew this at the time. But the point of my original post was that these people are parroting israeli talking points during the fog of war. And this reveals their character.

israel wants people to emphasize the horrors of 7 october to justify its genocide of Gaza & the West Bank. These people participated in that hasbara by condeming hamas. They're manufacturing consent for the genocide. "Even the left is against hamas". We know the zionists and the west understand all Palestinians to be hamas.

Kyle is literally both sides-ing the issue in that video. His whole schtick about appealing to voters. He's a slogan guy. Hence his opposition to Defund the police. If it's not popular, he doesn't believe in it. The abolition of slavery wasn't popular. The Civil Rights Movement wasn't popular. It makes me wonder where he would stand on those issues were he alive then. Malcolm X had a line about these kinds of people. Something about a wolf in sheep's clothing.

So yes he is pro Palestinian. but up until a point. He wants a peaceful solution. Which israel has undermined time and again. Remember when Netanyahu said he duped the West during the Oslo accords? Remember that BDS, a peaceful solution that worked to bring an end to Apartheid South Africa, is antisemitic and illegal. Remember the Great March of Return, a peaceful protest, where israel said every shot was accurate? Where children, pregnant women, and journalists were shot?

If you call for only peaceful solutions which fail time and again (Read: Concerning Violence). And you condemn violence then you call for the maintenance of the status quo. Which is pro-israel.

Here is a thread on the goals of Al-Asqa Flood. They're trying to demonstrate that israel as a paper tiger. to show the world israel's depravity and what it costs to maintain the apartheid. To break the illusion of safety in israel. As the rotting corpse Kissinger once said: The conventional army loses if they do not win. The guerillas win as long as they don't lose.

So, once again: these are losers and charlatans.

The radlibs and demsocs (kyle kulinski, bausch, david pakman, naomi klein, cornel fucking west) are pushing anti-communist and pro-israeli narratives.

They are missing the point by calling leftists blood thirsty demons over hamas’ action which killed israeli civilians.

First, haaretz blames netanyahu for the attack bc earlier this year shin bet, the israeli intelligence agency, warned him that escalating violence will lead to a violent response from the Palestinians. and look where we are now. the times of israel reported that netanyahu has bolstered hamas in order to delegitimize the PLO and to use hamas’ actions as a cover to continue the genocide of Palestinians.

They are falling for israeli framing of the situation even tho israeli media is blaming the government for the attack! These are losers and charlatans.

But fundamentally. In order for israel to exist in the first place, Palestinians had to be displaced and murdered. We know this as the Nakba.

And the settlers of the west bank continue to displace Palestinians. Some of those fuckers are born and bred in brooklyn or miami, whose families escaped europe during the holocaust. no ties to the land but displacing families who have lived there before 1948 and some before 1918.

And the hell on earth known as gaza is essentially a concentration camp with 4 hours of electricity a day, 90% toxic water, israeli-calculated calories per day, no bomb shelters, perhaps the most densely populated and heavily surveilled place on the planet with no way out. In 2018 during the Great March of Return, israeli snipers shot at anyone, including children, peacefully marching to the border to end the occupation.

This violence is necessary to maintain a settler colonial state. And the Palestinians, who wish to neither be displaced nor killed, are going to violently resist, especially since israel and the us has made it illegal to support peaceful measures like BDS.

That is the situation. Anything that doesn’t stem from that analysis supports the legitimacy of israeli’s colonial regime.

It doesn’t matter if Palestinian violence is justified or not. It is inevitable. We know this from Haiti, Vietnam, Congo, Algeria, and… and… and…

It doesn’t matter if hamas is a terrorist organization. It wouldn’t exist if israel didn’t exist.

Running to denounce that hamas isn’t a revolutionary anticolonial front misses the point that the fence was breached. Liberation is possible.

[silvokrent]

This isn’t nearly as in-depth as I’d like it to be, but here’s my reaction to firearms legislation, mass shootings, who or what’s “to blame,” and what we should be doing about it.

At this point, honestly, I don’t care what your political stance is, whether or not you think gun legislation will or won’t stop “criminals” (whatever the fuck that actually means) from still getting access to firearms illegally. At this point, all that I care about is that we do something instead of debating every single hypothetical pro and con to any degree of restrictive firearms access. Yes, gun violence is a multifaceted issue, and the motives behind each individual instance of a shooting are going to vary. So if we’re not going to talk about making it more difficult for anyone to buy firearms, let’s talk about the sociopolitical motivations behind mass shootings, and what sort of solutions we as a society are willing to commit to.

The shooter was [insert minority here] that was motivated by [vague generalization of an aspect of their culture]. Okay. So if the attack was done by a perpetrator who had biased, bigoted beliefs that they inherited from their family/immediate cultural influence at home, then maybe we should implement more effective and comprehensive policies in schools that enforce ideological acceptance. Say, for example, that the shooter held misogynistic, antisemitic, anti-black, and anti-LGBT+ beliefs. Here’s a potential solution: legally mandate that schools — colleges, universities, and K-12 private, public, and charter schools — teach their students that women, Jews, non-white Americans, and LGBT+ people have the same human rights as anyone else, and that verbally/mentally/emotionally/physically abusing them in any social environment/setting (work, school, the gym, the bus stop, etc.) is unequivocally wrong. Start teaching children as young as pre-K that these toxic beliefs are not acceptable, no matter what that child’s parents are teaching them at home. Undermine hatred that the child is inheriting from their family. Teach children earlier about privilege and the centuries’ worth of oppression that marginalized groups have experienced and continue to experience, and teach them how to be allies to marginalized groups, like non-neurotypical individuals, or people that are physically disabled. Teach students comprehensive, scientifically-accurate sex ed, that illustrates the differences between biological sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and that these differences do not get to be treated as “abnormal” or “subhuman” just because they’re not as prevalent or as widely-represented as heteronormativity or cisgendered folks. We should also take the time to educate people that just because you meet a person of a certain demographic with a hateful belief, doesn’t mean they represent their entire group. If rampant Islamophobia has taught us anything, it’s that society likes to create “the great other” to have as a relevant foil for our own values, and as a readily-identifiable enemy, while ignoring the hypocrisies and flaws we deny are a part of our own cultures.

But teaching children/students to accept people of other walks of life goes against my personal beliefs! If the government meddles too much in education, they could easily co-opt learning in the future to push certain agendas. Besides, you don’t have the right to indoctrinate my children with your radical liberal ideas! I wasn’t aware that teaching children to not be dickheads to other people was a radical liberal notion, but fine. Have it your way. And yes, I agree, too much government intervention can have its own problems, in a sense of who’s watching the watchman and making sure they don’t overstep certain boundaries. But having no standardized code that teaches students to accept people from other cultural/religious/ethnic/genetic backgrounds isn’t a solution, either. And frankly, there should be no reason why anyone would argue against teaching our kids that diversity is worthy of acceptance and celebration, not shunning and discrimination. If you’re not willing to enact a solution to fix the motivation behind mass shootings, then we need to make it harder for people with radicalized hateful beliefs to acquire firearms. Either present another plausible solution to reduce mass shootings, or pick one of the aforementioned solutions.

The shooter was a [insert person with a mental illness]. Sane people don’t commit terrorist acts! Ah, yes. The old “let’s scapegoat people with mental illnesses as the perpetrators as these attacks, rather than as the overwhelming victims, in order to avoid talking about gun control.” Very well. If we’re going to continue assigning sole culpability to individuals with anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and other psychopathologies, then that means we need to make medical treatment easier to acquire and less stigmatized. If you have a diagnosed mental illness, then you should be able to access free — or at the very least, cheap and affordable — healthcare to treat your condition long-term, through medication, one-on-one patient-psychologist/psychiatrist therapy, and accommodations in the workplace, school, and so on. People with mental illness should have greater access to resources that protect them from housing and workplace discrimination. We must, as a collective society, learn to not ridicule or make disparaging jokes at their expense, often to the effect of exacerbating their mental illness. We need to learn to not sneer at coping mechanisms, or ridicule someone that has a service animal for emotional and otherwise support. Because if mentally ill people are responsible for these attacks, then that means we should be treating their psychopathologies in order to prevent mass shootings, right?

But I don’t want my tax dollars to go toward the mentally ill! I shouldn’t have to pay to fix their problems. Skirting around the fact that people with mental illnesses didn’t ask to have those “problems” in the first place, what you’re saying is that “here’s a potential solution that could save human lives, but I’m not willing to spend money on it.” If allocating our government tax dollars means that people suffering from mental illnesses get help, and people aren’t as likely to die in mass shootings, then isn’t that worth the expenditure? Either present another plausible solution to reduce mass shootings, or pick one of the aforementioned solutions. 

Look. Lax gun laws are not the sole culprit behind mass shootings. The United States is a petri dish of centuries’ worth of culture clash, and the subsequent internalized hatred that comes with over-representation of privileged demographics, and erasure of marginalized people that’ve been stigmatized by the media. The problem is a combination of factors: compassion fatigue, apathy, complacency, a status quo that solely benefits certain groups at others’ expense, and an unwillingness to examine or relinquish our own biases because we don’t want to change. Radicalized violence and terrorism are multifaceted issues, influenced by factors I haven’t even touched on, because it’s late, I’m tired, and frankly I’m not the best person qualified to educate others on a complex topic I’ve only just begun to unravel myself. But I do know that we need to find a solution. We needed a solution yesterday. We needed a solution months ago. We needed a solution decades ago. Every time we are bombarded by senseless bloodshed and death, we go through the ritual of “sending our thoughts and prayers,” and then patting ourselves on the back and congratulating ourselves for doing what we think counts as the bare minimum.

It’s not enough. It’s never been enough.

Whenever someone tries to foster a discussion on gun violence and the underlying issues, the loudest voices in the room (typically our elected politicians) default to the cliché red herrings of “mental illness” and “[person of a certain minority group] committed the act, therefore [their demographic] as a whole is to blame.” And while there have been instances in the past of shootings being linked to specific groups, these generalizations are correlation, not causation. Clearly, pinning blame to any one group — a tactic we’ve been using for years — hasn’t fixed the issue, so we need to come up with a different answer. Revising our education and healthcare systems have the potential to fix so many issues in our country, but arguments are always made for why “it can’t be done.”

“Can’t” means “won’t.” Meaning that people have the capacity to try, but aren’t willing to.

Which brings us back to firearms. Because until we, as a country, are willing to sit down and find a solution for hate crimes and mental illness (the alleged culprits), then we need to make it harder for people to buy military-grade firearms and go on killing sprees at schools, nightclubs, and concerts. Our “right” to buy and stockpile thirty fucking assault rifles without a comprehensive system to account for the whereabouts of those weapons, and the identity of the wielder does not supersede a person’s right to not be shot and killed.

People are dying nearly every other day in our country at a rate not seen in other nations. At the very least, we should at least be willing to ask other countries for help, and try implementing their tactics just to find out whether or not they’d be a viable option for our country. Not wanting people dead as a result of gun violence isn’t a fucking political opinion. It’s not even a contentious ethical debate. It’s doing the right fucking thing. And if you don’t like any of the proposed solutions, then instead of telling me why mine are inherently wrong, offer up one of your own.

[half-sassed]

It’s that time again.

Springtime. The Paschal season. Aviv.

The season of rebirth, renewal, and too much bleeping rain.

The time of flowers blooming, bears waking, trees budding, eggs hatching, and Jews frantically cleaning their homes and screaming this crucial message into the void:

No, Christians, you should not have Passover seders.

"But why?” comes the eternal reply. “The Old Testament is part of our tradition too! Jesus celebrated Passover! Why can’t we?”

Read on, and I’ll tell you.

Well, for starters, there was no such thing as a seder in Jesus’s day, because the Second Temple was still standing. In those days, Jewish Passovers followed the guidelines set forth in the “Old Testament”, which mostly focused on 1) avoiding leavened foods for seven days, 2) slaughtering, roasting, and eating a sacrificial lamb at a first-night-of-Passover ceremonial meal that also included bitter herbs and unleavened matzah bread, and 3) seven days of additional animal sacrifices. That’s it. No fancy prayer service around the family table. No seder plate. No Four Questions, four cups, four sons, or...well, anything with the number four, actually. Rabbi Hillel liked to make his ceremonial lamb dinner into pita wraps, because he was generally full of great ideas, but that was the closest to the modern-day seder anybody got back then. For Jesus and his buddies, Passover was just flat bread, bitter herbs, and a literal heap of dead animals--with the dead animals being the primary focus of ritual and prayer.

So why did those customs change?

Necessity. The only place those sacrifices (or any sacrifices) were allowed to take place was at the Temple in Jerusalem, which worked out great while there was a Temple in Jerusalem. It did, however, pose a slight problem to Jews trying to follow God’s commandments after the Romans destroyed that Temple and kicked almost all the Jews out of their homeland in 70 C.E., about forty years after they crucified Jesus. (Long story short, the Zealots launched a military revolt that failed so hard, it’s still screwing the Jews over two millennia later. And then we tried to fight the Romans two other times, and failed even harder. Good times.) Most of the major sects of Judaism that existed at the time were completely centered on Temple sacrifices and Temple worship, and they died out fairly quickly. The exception was a certain sect mentioned repeatedly in the New Testament, which not only survived but blossomed, becoming the root of the Rabbinic Judaism practiced by more than 99% of Jews today:

The Pharisees.

That’s right: the recurring villains of the New Testament, the very Jewish group Christians usually deride as an obsolete example of inflexible religiosity disconnected from true faith, were in fact the group that managed to adapt to a Temple-less existence by shifting the focus from sacrificial rituals to prayer and study. (Admittedly, the Jews had already done this once during their 70-year exile to Babylonia following the destruction of the First Temple in 587 B.C.E., which is how the Pharisee sect came to exist in the first place. This time around, though, the problem was a lot more permanent.) This deviation from the written Law was justified by a belief that, along with the written Law, God had also given Moses an Oral Law, which was passed down, expounded on, and added to by generations of Jewish scholars. Between 200-500 C.E., those centuries of oral tradition and rabbinic rulings were written down, debated, and codified into the Talmud, the basis of most modern-day Jewish rituals. Among the many rituals prescribed by the Talmud was a replacement ritual for the first-night-of-Passover roast lamb sacrifice of old: the unique prayer service/Torah study/ceremonial meal known as the Passover seder.

The budding sect of Christianity, on the other hand, found its own solution to the “no more Temple” problem by claiming that Jesus’s death was the ultimate sacrifice rendering all further sacrifices unnecessary. This solution required Christianity to break completely with Judaism (human sacrifices and God having human avatars are both very big no-nos in Jewish thought), but it freed Christians to develop their own distinct religion with non-Jewish attributes, rituals, and values, rather than remain the minor sect of Judaism they’d begun as. In the decades after the destruction of the Temple, Christian leaders began preaching the doctrine of supersessionism, which claimed that Jesus had rendered Jewish law null and void (and continued Jewish practice, by extension, rebellion against God). That idea became foundational doctrine in both the Western and the Eastern Church, to the point of excommunicating Christians who promoted observance of “Old Testament” festivals and traditions and even going so far as to move the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday to avoid any hint of “Judaizing.”

The Talmud, needless to say, was never part of Christian tradition. In fact, Christian leaders repeatedly censored the Talmud because they considered parts of it to be blasphemous against Jesus and Mary--the earliest known incidence of this being in 521 C.E., only a few decades after the Talmud was finalized, though the heyday of Talmud censorship, bannings, and outright Talmud book-burnings at the hands of the Church was from 1239-1775 C.E.--and claims that the Talmud allowed Jews to treat Christians as subhuman were commonly used to incite Christian populations to attack Jewish communities. (Sadly, this particular antisemitic canard is still around today.) Christian leaders also spread lies about Passover rituals in particular, most notably that the unleavened matzah bread eaten on Passover--the one part of the original tradition Jews could still observe without the Temple--was made by mixing flour with the blood of Christian children the Jews kidnapped and murdered for that purpose. (Yes, that one is still around, too.) Jews in Christian countries managed to uphold their rituals and to preserve copies of the Talmud only at great personal risk and in defiance of Christian persecution.

So, tl;dr, what exactly is the problem with Christian seders?

The seder ritual was a replacement for the rituals of Jesus’s time. It was not part of his religious practice, nor of any of his followers. As such, the common claim by Christians that they hold Passover seders because “the Last Supper was a seder” is bogus. If you want to recreate the Last Supper, you’d better start learning how to ritually slaughter sheep.

The rabbis who devised the seder ritual represented the very same sect of Judaism Jesus repeatedly feuded with. Not wanting Jesus’s followers to take part in Pharisaic rituals is probably one of the very few things those rabbis and Jesus would both have agreed on.

Literally the only historical connection Christians have to the seder ritual is that your ancestors repeatedly tried to stamp it out, which is absolutely not grounds for you to claim it as part of your tradition. If it were up to Christianity, the seder tradition wouldn’t have survived long enough for modern-day Christians to appropriate.

The seder ritual is the Jewish solution to a specific theological problem (no Temple = no sacrifices) that Christianity has already solved in an entirely different way. Divorced from that background, the seder has no meaning. Easter is your seder, Christians. Jesus is your seder. That’s why your ancestors stopped celebrating Passover in the first place!

Stripping a Jewish ritual Christians had no part in creating--but a big part in suppressing--of its Jewish content and making it about Jesus instead is outright telling Jews that we’re doing our own religion wrong and our faith has no value beyond being a prelude to yours (even when, as here, the ritual in question DIDN’T PREDATE CHRISTIANITY). Which is something Christianity has been claiming for millennia, true, but taking it to this extreme is blatantly antisemitic and we’re tired of it.

Now that you know better, what can you do?

Reblog this post. Share it on other sites too, if you’d like. It won’t do much good if only Jews ever see it.

If your church, family, or other Christian gathering is hosting a so-called “seder,” don’t go! Better yet, explain to them why what they’re doing is antisemitic and appropriative. Christians who appropriate Jewish rituals are far more likely to listen to other Christian voices than they are to listen to Jews.

However, if a Jew invites you to their Passover seder, go! It’s part of the seder tradition to open your doors to guests, and being invited to take part is an entirely different animal than taking without permission. Plus, legit seders are awesome.

Have a happy Easter!

[antisemitism-eu]

Spain: Pro-Israel German author disinvited by Catalan National Movement Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (CUP)

Via Jutta Ditfurth:

Jutta Ditfurth

The main concern of the anti-Semitic BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) is not to criticize Israel’s policies or racism in Israeli society, but to destroy the existence of Israel. In reality, it is not just about boycotting products from the occupied territories, as many people still believe. But: The only Jewish state in the world is to be demonised and delegitimised for as long as it takes to attain that actual goal: its annihilation. The BDS does not want a two-state solution, but just one state called Palestine. Only “non-Zionist” Jews will be allowed to remain in the new state; but as practically all Jews are Zionists in the eyes of the BDS, only very few Jews would be able to stay in Israel – only those who bow to the BDS and the organisations affiliated with it like FOR Palestine etc. Not only should the Palestinians who were really expelled return to the new state, but also their descendants, even if they have never lived in Israel. That would mean 5 to 6.5 million people. But Israel is only the size of the German state of Hesse and has 8.3 million inhabitants, of which 6.1 million are Jews. Israel would no longer exist. Even international law does not have an inheritable right of return. 

Current conflict: The Catalan party Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP) [1] invited me to Barcelona in March 2017 to speak at their conference “International Conference: Sovereignty and Self-Determination. Political Change in the Euro-Mediterranean Region”. On 20 May I was to hold a talk at the conference and take part in a round table discussion; on 22 May I was to speak at a conference of the Fundacio Tia Salellas in the city of Girona. 

The invitation stated: We would like you as a “feminist, radical ecologist and anti-nuclear activist, and as co-founded of the Green Party and of the Ecological Left … to elucidate your experiences and positions regarding civil disobedience as a non-violent tool of social change …. We would like to combine theory, analysis and practice … It would be a great honour for us if you would take part in our international conference.” The CUP is “non homogeneous” and wishes to “learn from other people’s experiences”. 

Now I have been disinvited by email. The reasons:

1. We knew nothing about your “political positions and activities against the BDS.” … We strongly support the BDS because it opposes colonialist and racist policies. … We are against colonialism, occupation and discrimination, and the Palestinian struggle for liberation is a central and decisive issue.”This means: Whoever criticises the BDS – i.e., does not contest Israel’s right to exist – cannot be against either racism, colonialism or discrimination. No other form of solidarity with Palestinians is possible than the adaptation of the strategy and interests of the BDS. 

2. Furthermore, the CUP wrote, a representative of the BDS campaign was invited to the round table discussion and it was not considered appropriate that an anti-BDS activist should be included. 

Obviously, one’s relationship to Israel is a dominant question for the Candidatur d’Unitat Popular. The supposed theme of discussion, my “experiences and positions as a tool of civil disobedience and non-violent social change” (invitation) combining “theory, analysis and practice (ibid.), has become subjection to the concept of the BDS. The feminist, radical-ecological and anti-nuclear positions are of no value to the CUP as soon as someone criticises the BDS. So much for the CUP’s claim to be “non-homogeneous” and to want to “learn from the experiences of others”.

[1] According to information published by the CUP, it has 10 parliamentarians in the Catalan Parliament and about 381 local councillors in Catalonia.

read more

The New Antisemite: http://ift.tt/2rSK0SS

[greylagwriting]

Review: Redlaw, and how NOT to do Fantastic Racism

James Lovegrove is an author whose books I really enjoy — well, at his Sherlock Holmes books. His original stuff, as Redlaw demonstrates, is junk.

The book starts out with a young boy hopping a fence and running from unseen pursuers through a part of the city he's not supposed to be in. Shortly afterwards, we learn this boy is a vampire (called Sunless, with a capital S, in this book), and is running from people who believe him to be a threat. We also learn that Sunless are segregated from human society.

Now, I was really into this concept when I read the first bit of the first chapter, and I would have loved to see a story were vampires were unjustly discriminated against. Sadly, what I actually got was... not good.

Our protagonist is Actually James Redlaw, a tough-talking officer of the Sunless Housing And Something-or-Other called SHADE. Basically, the vampire police. Not as in “police who are vampires”, but “people who police vampires”. He is the tired old gruff cop who never gets along with anybody, and the one partner that could actually stand him was a lady officer who died long before the book began, thanks to Redlaw not being strong enough to protect her or some bull. Despite being talked about so much that I expected her to show up again as a Sunless, lady officer (who I can’t remember the name of) never actually has an impact on the plot, except for the very end.

The actual plot is that half of Parliment (the story is set in London) is trying to eradicate all vampires, as they deem them too dangerous to be among humans, while the other half simply wants to relocate or contain them. The Sunless, I might mention, have absolutely no say in any of this. There is also an organization called PETS; People for the Ethical Treatment of Sunless, a group of young goths that campaign for vampire rights (though they aren’t as bad as the real-life group they’re named after).

Personally, I don’t find it great that humans are campaigning for the rights of vampires, considering that, unlike animals that can’t speak for themselves, they’re sentient and perfectly capable of protesting on their own. Generally, marginalized people are the ones to lead protests for their own rights; humans protesting for vampires is like white people protesting for Civil Rights.

Parliment end up by spiking the cattle blood that they ship in to the Sunless with artificial hormones, making them more violent in order to justify creating Solardome One, a large domed city with an opaque glass roof that all the Sunless are going to be contained in. The dome, however, has the ability to have its opaque roof turned clear, to let in sunlight and incinerate every Sunless. Redlaw catches onto the plan chases down the big bads in time to stop the dome from going opaque, and... literally just leaves all the Sunless inside. He claims to be pro-vampire, but doesn’t spare them a single thought, or even think of asking them, you know, what they want?

The Sunless are discriminated against in this book, because they are inherently dangerous, and can and will kill humans, though most drink cattle blood. I gotta say that this is... not how you do fantasy discrimination.

See, the Sunless are clearly a stand-in for immigrants, particularly ones that are PoC, and the author falls into the pitfall of trying to justify the discrimination.

Sunless are discriminated against because they are undead creatures that leave feces all over their dwelling places, have no regard for their living conditions, and are nearly indistinguishable from feral animals. They drink blood, and often do so from innocent humans, including children, and regularly turn them into Sunless. They are often aggressive, and attack ad kill people who get too close.

Immigrants are discriminated against because they come from countries that are perceived as being “lesser”. 

PoC are discriminated against because their skin tones and physical features are different from white people.

Sunless are seen as deserving of life because they used to be people and didn’t ask to be vampires.

PoC are seen as deserving of life because they’re @#$%ing people that have, as a group, done nothing @#$%ing wrong!

Whenever you do racism allegories in fiction, it is doomed from the very start if you say “X group is oppressed because they did something bad at one point/are all an active danger to others”. Racism isn’t logical. It can’t be justified. It boils down to a group in power going “these people are different from me, so they’re inferior.”

Another thing: the Sunless themselves are perfectly fine with living they way they do. None of them, besides the boy at the start, express distaste with their current situation and, subsequently, do nothing to change it. Rather, it’s the humans who decide what’s best for the Sunless, by which they really mean “what’s best for us”, and that is destroying or corralling them in ghettos (yes, the book does call them ghettos).

The one and only good Sunless is Illyria, who joins Redlaw and helps him combat the Parliment. She’s not just any vampire, mind you, but a shtriga - as smart, strong, and beautiful as a vampire from Twilight, with minor powers of hypnosis over “lesser” Sunless and the self-restraint to not drink from humans. Thankfully, there’s no romantic bull between her and Redlaw.  All the other Sunless, I must note, are treated as little more than barely-sentient animals, and get very few lines. 

Additionally, I want to add that, in addition to the mess above, Redlaw is also rather homphobic and Islamophobic, with a nice dash of antisemitism thrown in. For the Islamophobia, one of the SHADE officers is a Muslim man named Khalid, whom Redlaw openly hates (and the feeling is mutual). Said officer is also misogynistic, with an entire paragraph of the book being about Khalid thinking about how he hates General MacArthur because she wears pants and doesn’t cover her hair, unlike his good Muslim wife. This is stated explicitly and almost word-for-word.

As for the homophobia, it comes in the form of the last few chapters when it’s revealed that MacArthur actually really, REALLY hates the Sunless (which has not been so much as hinted at before this), because they killed the lady officer Redlaw keeps wangsting over. Why? Surprise surprise, MacArthur and the lady officer were in love! Then MacArthur is killed while trying to destroy all the Sunless in Solardome One. So of the two gay characters, one died before the book started, and the other one turns out to be evil (and also gay) at the very end, shortly before dying.

Ugh.

Now. The antisemitism. It comes up only in one line, but the implications of that one line are positively hideous. 

After the proceedings for Solardome One are in effect, the pro-Sunless political figure commits suicide, because, as a Jewish person, he feels as though he’s greenlighted a “Final Solution” for the Sunless. I can’t stress how much that is explicitly stated. The author just compared the Sunless - undead monsters who can and will kill humans at the drop of a hat - to Jewish people, who were killed in the millions for simply existing.

In short, Jewish people are being compared to vampires, which is beyond vile for so, so many ways, and all I can do is link this informative little essay that explains why drawing this comparison is so awful (X).

Now, I’m sure this probably wasn’t intentional on the author’s part, but that does not make it any better. In fact, it might make it worse, because Lovegrove clearly did not consider the implications of comparing Jewish people to bloodsucking monsters!

All in all, Redlaw is garbage. The characters aren’t exceptional, have fewer dimensions than a Mobius strip, and almost of them die anyways (except our tough-cop hero title guy). There’s very little to salvage from this book, though I can think about ways to fix the story and the world. Apparently there’s a sequel to it, but, to quote the old meme, I’ve frankly had enough of that guy.

I give Redlaw a 1 out of 5, for having a vaguely okay premise but flushing it down the toilet.