#against religious extremists

[jhara-ivez]

Done. I hope my bro will like it :3 I at least do.

[george228732]

Vent

Religion (Extremists) ruined my life, ngl

My family is like super christian and conservative and that just made my life Hell, ironically enough, I can't be myself, or else it's considered sinful, I can't get help because "God will help me" etc

It all feels pretty awful sometimes

[marisatomay]

Bit telling that for years and years evangelical religious extremists have been allowed on university campuses with their bullhorns and horrific imagery where they harass students into physical altercations and when students complain to the university’s administration they just shrug their shoulders citing freedom of speech but when those same tuition-paying students start protesting against war and genocide they call SWAT

[wilwheaton]

The GOP wonders why young people (and others) don't want to vote for them. Some wise scribe assembled this list.

1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.

2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.

3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.

4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.

5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.

6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.

7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day

8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.

9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.

10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.

11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.

12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.

13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.

14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.

15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors.

16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age.

17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed.

18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS (sub-thread refuting CJ Roberts criticisms of people attacking SCOTUS' legitimacy).

19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.

20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:—Universal background checks—An assault weapons ban—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act—The ERA & Equality Act—The Climate Action Now Act—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act—SCOTUS expansion.

21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.

22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.

Source: https://imgur.com/gallery/e8DBZLH

[inbabylontheywept]

Would you mind sharing the psalm and why you felt that person was the most humanist Mormon? I'm not religious at all but I find these sort of things very interesting.

In exchange I could offer the reason for my url ?

I'm warning you, this is kind of a mega essay, and it's fucking unhinged. Click at your own risk.

(Alright. You clicked.)

Psalms 137

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept

when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

while in a foreign land?

If I forget you, Jerusalem,

may my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem

my highest joy.

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did

on the day Jerusalem fell.

“Tear it down,” they cried,

“tear it down to its foundations!”

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,

happy is the one who repays you

according to what you have done to us.

Happy is the one who seizes your infants

and dashes them against the rocks.

———

Mormonism has layers. Different cores of believers, cultures within itself. The largest group of Mormons also dominate its image within the larger culture. You know them as the nerdy, cheerful, bubbly dorks on South Park, or the hopelessly naive childlike weirdos from the Book of Mormon musical. Strangely sanitized, "wholesome" people that are, clearly, unwhole. Missing some essential part of the human experience.

(Pain, maybe?)

I think that embracing this image is letting Mormonism view itself as what it wishes it was. A group with all its rough edges sanded off, all its raw and desperate humanity scrubbed away. A clean and godly and slightly unsettling image of joy.

That isn't how it started.

Now, most people know the story of Joseph Smith. Fourteen year old farm boy starts a cult because the whole world if full of idiots, I won't repeat it because you've probably already got it from South Park. But at some point that weirdo cult did become a religion, and I would point to that moment as the Mormon War of 1838.

I don't know how far after the founding that was. Enough that Joseph Smith was a grown man. Enough that the Mormons had around 15-25 thousand members. They'd moved to the Illinois-Missouri area and were establishing settlements.

(They creeped the locals out. Of course they creeped the locals out.)

Eventually, they got pushed out of the county they'd claimed. Jackson County, it was. The state couldn't actually take that county from the people that expelled them, so to try and make the Mormons "whole" for the land they'd bought (ignoring the houses and farms they'd already set up) it gave them a new county.

Next election that came around, that county was sieged. Voting was blocked. Now, the people of the state were terrified that this weirdo voting block was going to take them over. They probably weren't wrong. Some former Mormons had straggled in from the county revealing a frankly corrupt land dealthat the early church had used to transfer resources to itself, and that served as a tipping point. To prevent their state from becoming a religious basketcase, a mob sieged the Mormon county during the next election.

The state tried to return order by sending the militia in to break up the siege, but the militia mutinied. They joined the siegers. A ground of strange, extremist violent Mormons known as the Danites rode out and attacked local settlements that were known to house the families of the militia members.

The Governor at the time - Lilburn Boggs - sent out an executive decree. The Mormons were traitors, and were to be killed on sight. It is the only religion in the US to have ever had such an order made against it.

The Mormons surrendered their county and went to Nauvoo, Illinois. There were again expelled from that city in 1846, and traveled west.

They died in great numbers and they never forgot the homes they lost.

———

I tried to tell the story as sympathetically to the people of Missouri as I could. The Mormons made messes wherever they went, and they unsettled everyone they interacted with. But they were attacked as well, and had a history of violence against them. It should not be totally surprising that they became insular and strange.

Many (most?) Mormons that learn all of their history wind up leaving the religion. It has twists and turns and knots and it is incredibly, overwhelmingly human. I think that's where the facade of Mormon perfectionism comes from - the shame of that. The desire to be something else. But being human is all I've ever wanted. And occasionally, there are people faithful in the church - layers upon layers deep - that know their history.

And they are angry about it.

I think it's more common than people realize. Did you know that until 1930 Mormons swore literal religious oaths of vengeance against the US government for the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith?

I always felt like these were, in some way, the real Mormons. They knew their history, and they loved their church, and they hated what it had suffered all those years ago.

They scared me, those people. But they seemed complete. More complete than the people that had carved out everything that didn't make them smile. They'd walked into the mirror, and touched their shadow, and danced with. Melded with it.

And I knew a few like that. I was taught by one. And he didn't convince me, but he interested me. Gave me some respect for the people I left behind.

———

In the game Fallout: New Vegas, there is a character named Joshua Graham. He's a Mormon. Not like the silly children in adult bodies that they always use on TV. He has gravitas. He has put away his moral compass before, to pursue the dream of one powerful man. Poured his soul into it, helped that man conquer the whole west in piecemeal. He's a somewhat on the nose analogy of the Mormon people themselves, following Joseph Smith. And when he finally failed, when he fought a battle he could not win on the gates of the Old World Hoover Dam, he was lit on fire and thrown into the Grand Canyon to die.

But he did not die.

He says he survived because the fire in him burned brighter than the fire around him. And it seems that way when you speak with him in game. There is something compellingly bright to him. Not shiny like a new toy, or a Utah teenager that hasn't seem just how grim the world can be. He's something blinding, compelling.

But that brightness casts shadows.

He is vicious. He was saved in the canyon by the family he left, the old Mormons of a new world. And he's trying to find that part of him again, regain the soul he lost pursuing someone else's vision. But that old vicious animal part of the covenant is with him. I see Joshua Graham and I see the animal that the Mormons became to survive the West.

And in the game, there is eventually a choice given.

You can lead the tribe Joshua has joined up with out of their Zion. Their Jackson County Missouri. Peacefully and perfectly and inhumnanly transcendant, the way the Mormons wish they actually were about everything. You can give him the chance to be what Mormonism has always wished it could be. Or you can fight with them and help them reclaim their paradise, but get your hands stuck deep in the muck of this world.

Joshua Graham knows his history. He knows all the homes his people lost. And whatever brightness he's trying to regain, whatever soul he's trying to win back from the world that takes and takes and takes and takes - he wants to give it all up again to let these people keep their home.

He knows his past and he is angry.

And as the player, you help him make peace with one of two things: Being human by being fallen, or keeping his soul at the cost of reliving the ancestral trauma of losing Zion yet again.

Both were pretty visceral decisions for a Mormon teenage Babylon to make.

(Tagging @boonebignaturals in this because I need a witness to my madness.)

[religious-extremist]

I love that you have to be crazy to be a real Christian, not some cultural Christian, or ethnic Christian, obligatorily Christian. But to truly be Christian, you have to be kinda wacky, you can’t seek the approval of the atheist or the secular man, you have to be a religious extremist.

It’s scary to stand in Noah’s Ark, to be amongst a bunch of other nutty animals, to look out the deck and behold the world in the midst of the storm, and to trust that the ship is cradled in God’s hands and Christ is the Captain. The waves batter against the hull and the winds whistle through the windows, but within the Church is a holy Mystery, a paschal joy. Outside is a tempest unending but within our souls and hearts is a peace only God can give!

Peace I leave with you! My peace I give to you! I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled and do not let it be afraid.

[queer-geordie-dyke]

In response to the truly appalling murder of three little girls and the attempted murder of several other children in Southport by a 17 year old last week, it didn't take long at all for racist arseholes on social media to spread total bollocks about the attacker being an immigrant and Muslim (he was born in Wales and is from a deeply religious Christian family and was a choir boy as it turns out).

Naturally, this whipped the brain dead who believe that some sort of secret Muslim takeover of the country is occurring into a violent frenzy, and there have been riots and "protests" outside mosques up and down the country, led by the charming individuals of the EDL, one just half an hour away from where I live.

To be clear, these people don't actually give a flying fuck about these children or their families or their traumatised community. Like all extremists, they use real human suffering as an excuse to behave in the most abhorrently violent manner against innocent people.

The EDL, for my non UK friends, is an extremist Islamophobic, white supremacist organisation and there has been talks at the highest level of government to officially proscribe it as a terrorist group:

There is light in the dark though. After the riot in Southport, the local community came together to repair damage to the local mosque.

Violent extremists will never represent or care about the communities they purport to. As it always is, it is ordinary people coming together in solidarity and with love that represent the best of what we can be and the festering pustules of the EDL give a shit about nothing and no one but their hatred.

Editing to include a link to a fundraiser for the families of the children and the community in Southport:

[komsomolka]

Julani stated that foreign fighters who entered Syria for HTS to fight against the Syrian government were “part of the movement that led to the downfall of Assad and should be celebrated.” [...]

Thousands of Salafist religious extremists from dozens of countries, including Britain, Belgium, France, China, Chechnya, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia came to fight with Julani against Syria. [...]

The Nusra Front imposed fundamentalist Islamic rule on large areas of Syria under its control and committed numerous sectarian massacres, including the killing of 190 Alawites in villages in Latakia in August 2013.

“Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave” became a common slogan among fighters from Nusra and other armed factions fighting in Damascus.

Nusra later changed names several times and is now known as HTS. [...]

After the Nusra Front captured Idlib Governorate in 2015, Julani's foreign fighters occupied the homes of the Christians and other minorities who the group expelled.

[scouse1g]

Do not allow yourselves to stoop to the level of antisemitism. This harms not only Jewish people, but Palestinians as well. The atrocities committed by the State of Israel are not attributable to all Jewish people. Likewise, violence committed by the religious extremists in Hamas does not reflect on every Palestinian Muslim.

Judaism is not the problem. The problem is the Israeli settler colonialist project, of which not every Jew supports. Zionist Jews are opposed by both secular and religious Jews in Israel and abroad for many reasons. The conflation between Zionism and Judaism only serves the interests of right-wing extremists on either side of the conflict. Do not allow far-right Zionists and antisemites to conflate Zionism with Judaism. Antisemitism is inexcusable.

Antisemitism reinforces Zionist rhetoric, inciting further hatred and violence against the Palestinian people. Oppose racism and bigotry of any kind. Reject antisemitism. Stand against apartheid. Reject Islamophobia. Stand with the oppressed people of Palestine. 🇵🇸

[n-s4kayaky]

𝙼𝚢 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚝 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛 (𝙳𝚎𝚒𝚝𝚢! 𝚂𝚒𝚛 𝙲𝚛𝚘𝚌𝚘𝚍𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚡 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛)

Warnings: NSFW 18+ MDNI, gn afab! Reader, power dynamics, religious themes, praise, creampie, canon typical violence, possessive Crocodile, belly bulge

Notes: Soooo, yeah, it has come to my mind and how I don't have to write something perverted and horny. So enjoy ε(´｡•᎑•`)っ 💕

Water, the beautiful and elusive water which always flows at will, every living being is aware that water in an ecosystem is vital, it gives life to vegetation, which in turn gives fruit and to living beings, specifically humans. Without the precious water you would be nothing, that is why your city is nothing compared to those around you. You lived in a small town, in the middle of an arid and hot desert which dried your mouth and made your eyes hurt, the climate was deathly hot by day and extremely cold by night; But you had already become accustomed to such temperatures, what you were not used to was the lack of water in your village. Although the other neighboring villages had small lagoons and wells, which provided them with rich water, you were the exception. No matter how hard you dug, the water never emerged from the ground, and even if you were in the middle of the desert it still rained from time to time, but not in you. It had been decades since your town had always been short of water, and everything had a crazy explanation for your liking, the culprit of not emerging water was a deity

The story is immersed in years ago, where your people were nothing more than a tribe, they prayed to various deities giving everyone equal treatment, offering them and building temples and statues in devotion to them, everything was perfect, until the image of a new deity appeared; the deity of the sand, the people gave all devotion and worship to this new deity; But from one day to the next it fell into a rage against the people, destroying the other monuments of the deities and carrying away every drop of water that was in your vicinity, leaving them with nothing. Due to the lack of water and the destruction of the monuments, the citizens became enraged, quickly going to complain to the deity what had created their anger towards them and what was the reason why he had frightened the other gods and carried away the water. Due to the response of the villagers, the anger of the deity increased and it is said that one day he returned the water to the village, flooding it and infesting the waters with large and monstrous crocodiles which ended many lives, and as soon as the water appeared it vanished. From that day on, the name of the sand deity was changed to "Crocodile". The people had no choice but to continue worshipping him for fear that he would wipe them all out, and so it continues to this day

From a very young age you had been told the story by father and mother, always asking and instilling in you the worship of the deity that they feared so much and you followed the beliefs; You didn't do it in worship of God and faith in Him, you did it to keep your people alive. As you grew up, a group of faithful believers armed themselves in your people, such that they fell into the extremism of faith before the wonderful god. They made unpleasant and selfish changes towards the people, always asking at the end of each month for half of the little profit you could afford as an offering to the blessed god, saying that he would be more benevolent towards the people. Their injunctions only made the people even weaker for lack of profit, and as if that were not enough for them they began to force them to give their jewels and gold to the deity, punishing those who could not. The town was indeed in a mess, the people were dying and could hardly contradict themselves to the believing extremists for fear that they or the deity himself would punish them and grant them death.

As was normal, many people fell ill due to the lack of food to be able to afford medicine, and unfortunately many of those sick people were your parents, at that time you were nothing more than a simple child, you left the little study that you had been allowed to start working in the fields with the desperation of being able to afford a simple medicine; But it was too late for your dear parents, and you fell on your deathbed, and left you alone in that dreadful town. During adolescence you barely managed, working for those a little richer in your village, making a living on them and directing your earnings to the extremes. Everything was going moderately well, until today

You were already coming of age and had survived thanks to one of the moderately wealthiest people in the village, working for him while the little income he gave you was destined for offerings. It was the day of the gathering of jewels and goods from the people for the deity, believers went from house to house knocking on doors and taking the jewels while punishing those who gave nothing. There was a knock on the door of your home and you opened it with the small bag of gold in hand, you observed the two men dressed in sand-colored robes waiting in front of your door and one of them stretched out his hand, you quickly handed over the small bag. You watched expectantly as the man opened the bag to see the inside of it, he raised his gaze to his companion and denied him making a shiver run through your body- "It's not enough"- said the second man dryly while looking at you seriously, causing panic to flood your body -"W-what?! That's impossible, it's the amount every month!" - You screamed in panic as you watched the hooded men- "The fee has gone up, we have seen it necessary that our god needs more to have his forgiveness"- Cold sweat ran down your temples as you looked at the two men in astonishment - "More?! Isn't all that we give him enough?" - "Are you questioning the orders and commands that our god gives us?!" - You quickly shook your head as you took a few faint steps backwards, bumping into the half-open door of your home as both men approached you - "No! It's not that, I'd never question it, it's just that it's the only thing I have." - You hurriedly said while you felt how your blood was rushing through your veins, the men looked at each other and then directed their gaze towards you - "Well, in such a case you are lucky that we are making a group of women as an offering to our dear god"- They spoke adoringly at their appointment while touching their cheeks and nose, again a shiver ran through your body, a group of women as an offering?! Before you could reply to ask for a second chance, one of the men grabbed you by the arms tightly, pulling them and pulling a linen rope from his tunic, entangling it around your limbs and pulling them hard, forcing you to walk as if you were a donkey

With an awkward step you followed the men in denial, watching them lead you to the building they had created as a place to pray to the deity. They opened the great gates and forced you in as they walked through the gloomy building, you watched in terror as the large number of men in robes knelt in long lines as they prayed to a statue of a bust with a face barely recognizable due to the damage to the stone. The two men who were carrying you led you to a room, in which there were five other women, untangled the ropes that were in your arms and threw you at the feet of the others, you let out a groan as you watched as they closed the doors. You rose from the ground as you watched the group of women, a few of them sobbing while others simply knelt and prayed. They kept you inside that room for what were hours until they opened the door. Out of it emerged a group of men in tunics, each wearing different things, and they addressed each one of you. They took your garments and snatched them from you, leaving you naked until they gave you a thin white robe, covering your body quickly. A man took care of one of you, dressing you, and then taking small and fine gold necklaces, putting these around your necks, accompanied by a small gold thread that was wrapped around your neck, a white silk veil was placed over your faces, covering half of them, leaving your lips and nose visible, Letting the rest of the material rest on your head, covering your eyes and so on, it covered your view but you could still see vaguely. Gold chains were meticulously placed on your head to hold the veil, and you stripped off your shoes. Once what seemed to be your body already prepared as an offering, a last man entered the room with a bowl full of sand between both hands while reciting a prayer, he approached each of you, taking some of the sand that was in the bowl and rubbing it in a horizontal line from one cheek. Going through the bridge of the nose to the next cheek

The men gathered around you, believing that you would gather among yourselves like a flock of sheep being gathered by the wolves, they began to walk outside the building, forcing them to follow. They walked up the slope which led to the great andesite temple at the top of the village. As you walked, the men prayed and prayed for the deity until they came to the entrance of the great temple. You stared at the dark entrance as you felt a chill run through your body from head to toe. One of the men stood in front of you as he knelt: "Dear sisters, today more than ever you must feel grateful to your worship for the great god of the sand, your body and soul will be more than a gift to our powerful deity, giving us as a reward his forgiveness and the precious water that he wisely snatched from us. Thank you sir, thank you for taking them and giving others a better future!" - The other men thanked as they quickly knelt to the ground, the man who had recited the discourse in front of you stepped aside as he left the entrance to the temple clear, one by one he entered the grand entrance, having no choice but to enter the temple. You walked down the long, cold corridor of the temple until you came to a large chamber. The large room was illuminated by large chandeliers made of gold, the walls were decorated with drawings of what appeared to be crocodiles and other symbols, the floor was littered with gold and precious jewels as well as baskets of different sizes full of fruits and food which were in a deplorable state. You watched the room in astonishment while the other women stood in a horizontal row around the jewels. You were standing and silence filled the place, frightened enough not to say a word. Minutes passed and everything remained the same, without a doubt all this was a waste of time for you, they would keep you locked up here for days thinking that the god you worshipped so much would forgive you and when they see that the water does not come back they will kill you, that is if malnutrition and dehydration have not done it before

You sighed tiredly and closed your eyes, feeling a strong gust of air flood the room, you opened your eyes surprised by the sudden breeze while you checked the other women, who like you seemed strange. A stronger gust of air accompanied by sand flooded the place, turning off the lights of the temple and leaving you in complete darkness, you gasped and looked at the others again with a bad feeling weighing on your lower back. The blast of sand quickly passed around you, engulfing one of the women. In the blink of an eye, that girl lay on the ground with dry skin and looking as if she were a dry corpse, the others began to scream and cry, going quickly to the exit to run in terror; But the blast was quicker, closing the great door as it began to surround each woman. You watched horrified and motionless in your place as women turned before your eyes into mummified and dried corpses, your breathing began to fail as you watched as that gust of sand approached you slowly, you wanted to react, you wanted to run away, scream, cry; But your body just didn't react, it just left your feet buried in the sand as you watched the pile of sand approach you. You closed your eyes, waiting simply for a painful death; But it never came, just a delicate touch on one of your cheeks. You opened your eyes little by little at such a sensation, seeing the pile of sand settle in front of you as it touched your cheek, you blinked incredulously as the sand rose until it touched the veil that covered your eyes and head, removing it little by little until it threw it to the ground and revealed your face. You blinked several times as the candlelight magically lit up again, letting the gold sparkle again and your vision clearer.

The sand that was on your head came down to your cheek again, you looked at the cluster and opened your eyes to see how it began to materialize in a large hand, its fingers were covered with large gold rings and covered with jewels. Then the hand followed an arm and then the great mass of sand that swirled in front of you became a large muscular and tall body dressed in a sand-colored robe embroidered with gold threads and full of small details in gold and jewels, you fixed your gaze on the free hand, Seeing the lack of this and replacing it was a large hook of pure gold. You had to lift your head to visualize the face of the great man lying in front of you. Beautiful eyes golden like precious metal were staring at your face, the slit-like pupils did not leave your skin, a scar decorated his bronzed face from cheek to cheek, proasting by her nose while a delicate veil of the same color as her robe and embroidered in gold covered her charcoal black hair -"It's you…"- A whisper emerged from her rich lips while her large hand full of rings caressed your cheek with a delicate and trembling touch -"After so long… You're back." - He said incredulously while out of nowhere he was kneeling in front of you, taking you in his strong arms and hugging you with nostalgic affection - "My dear desert flower, I miss you so much.." - You gasped as you stood motionless before his tight embrace, feeling his warm and large body envelop yours smaller - "S-sir… I… I think you're mistaking me for someone else." - You spoke in astonishment and trembling of being able to anger the man you could only recognize as the deity of the sand. His head moved away from the hollow of your neck, lifting his head and piercing those chilling slit-like pupils into your face, examining it for a few seconds, his large hand again moved closer to your face as he touched your skin delicately, being careful not to break your thin skin -"Am I confused? Don't talk nonsense at this point… It's been so long and you tell me such things?.." - He spoke in a thick, harsh tone of voice as he looked down at you from his imposing height - "No! Excuse me, it's just… I am simply an offering to you, I come in the apologetic name of my people so that you, please, give them back the water." - The big man's eyebrow arched as he took a few small steps away from you. His golden eyes swept over your body covered by the robe that had been given to you and shortly after settled on your face, looking at you with what seemed to be slight confusion, a small and serious laugh rumbled from his chest as he shook his head incredulously making it seem as if the ground was shaking - "My dear, you an offering? Don't talk so much nonsense. It's clear you've forgotten our old life, I don't blame you; I'll make you remember everything," he said with the sweet tone dripping from his lips as he took your arm with his big hand and forced your body to stick to his. No, listen, please we need you to give us back the water, there are extremist creinets who are destroying everything and…" - Before you could finish your protests, large lips pressed firmly against yours while the large golden hook gripped its large curve at your hip. His kiss was scorching, full of need and a certain nostalgia as his big tongue went into your mouth, desecrating it and claiming it with possessiveness. His big tongue swirled against yours, starting a dance filled with love and lust. Your senses were quickly overwhelmed by the kiss of the bigger man, having no choice but to reciprocate it awkwardly, opening your mouth while you felt a small trickle of mixed saliva drip down your lips.

His hand swept across your body, running his long fingers over your shoulders, past your collarbones until he reached the valley between your breasts, a shiver ran through your body as your cheeks began to turn red. He broke away from the kiss, watching with delight as a thin thread of saliva connected both lips, quickly his mouth went to your neck, gently kissing it and sticking out his wide tongue, licking a long ditch of your sensitive skin making you gasp. At the pathetic noise that escaped your lips Crocodile couldn't help but growl, licking again that sensitive spot of skin that opened his mouth, revealing his gleaming teeth and four long fangs which quickly pierced the delicate skin of your neck. You let out a groan of pain as your hands quickly reach for his broad shoulders, grabbing and clawing at them as your head moved to the side at the intrusion.Small threads of blood began to run from the bite the man gave you; But they didn't get very far, as his tongue quickly collected the crimson liquid until it left your neck completely full of saliva and with a large teeth mark that was changing from red to purple. Crocodile's head rested in the hollow of your neck, burying his nose in it as he inhaled your sweet scent now mixed with the strong metallic smell of blood, his large hand caressing the section of your breasts, squeezing them through the thin white fabric with his large hand which easily took your entire breast. You gasped with heavy breathing as your eyesight vaguely failed at the sudden small loss of blood—"My sweet wife, I missed your sweet taste so much." - I whisper with that deep voice on your neck, causing a flash of heat to run straight into your core. The huge hook that grabbed your hip rose gently, and in one swift movement you felt the cold air of the room embrace your body, Crocodile had torn off the simple robe with that big hook, leaving you totally naked before the sharp eyes of the great man who hovered in front of you -"Let me see that beautiful body you have, I've missed him so much." -Your nipples quickly erected at the welcome of the room air, the deity's long fingers quickly curled into your sweet erect buds, twisting these as his lips left small hickeys along your neck, slowly going down to your collarbone, toasting it with kisses and small licks, making your body tremble at attention

"Look at you… My little flower is anxious for her god, isn't she, darling? Open those beautiful legs for me so I can see how needy you are darling." - His booming voice made your heart pump hard and blood rush through your body. The hand that was in charge of playing with your sensitive and now lightly red nipples was slowly descending your body, running its large, calloused fingers across your soft belly, caressing it along the way until its large palm hollowed out your already wet pussy. You gasped at the touch as your hand forced your thighs open for it, exposing your wet little pussy and the mount of both thighs already moistened between tiny threads of your fluids. Crocodile's eyes slowly lowered until they landed on your wet pussy already needed by the little attention he had given to your body, he gasped pleased to see your soft folds already wet because of him and couldn't stop his cock from throbbing at the sight. Everything about you was driving him crazy in those moments, he had been longing for your touch, to drink from the sight of your beautiful little needy because of him, he wanted to sink his teeth back into your flesh, to lick your sweet blood that would always surpass any hydromiel they gave him, he wanted to eat you completely, to sink into you in every possible way, he wanted to mark you, that you would never leave his side again, to keep you to himself, to become his sweet little wife, to fill you completely with his cock and his divine cum; I loved you whole. His thick fingers encircled your sensitive clitoris, causing your legs to shake and a moan to escape your throat "Look at you dear, you are soaked, and just for having touched and marked you… I don't blame you my love, I'll take care of you," he whispered on your neck as he gave a long lick to the extension of it, savoring the sweet taste of your skin. His fingers began to circle your clit, fiddling with it as I watched your pussy get wetter and wetter by the minute. You groaned helplessly at him, tremblingly grasping his arm as you tried to look at the man – "N-no… I… Y-you're wro..." - A swift movement of his experimental fingers silenced you with a moan as he lifted his face from the majar of your neck, resting his forehead against yours as he made both noses collide, his large golden eyes fixed on yours as his lizard pupils pierced through your body and soul -"Shhhh, my love don't talk… Let your god take care of this, yes?" - He said in a melodious tone as one of his fingers began to push against your entrance. You moaned choked in lust, trying to speak as Crocodile's big finger pumped your exquisite entrance, you moaned in moaning mode as the man's tongue came out of his mouth, tenderly licking your lips with a slight playful smile – "Just like that honey, do you hear it? Do you hear your wet pussy begging for me?" One of his free fingers began to play with your clitoris again, making you shudder and let out a louder moan, you stared lost in sensations at the man, trying to pronounce some coherent word

A second finger was inserted inside you, making you stand on tiptoe at the sensation of how you were stretched, Crocodile snorted while his forehead remained close to yours, aware of your adorable reactions as I felt his cock tremble against his robe and form a small spot of moisture, he wanted so much to bury himself in your extrexho hole; But I wanted to prepare you enough for him. The speed of his hand increased, making the hand that was gripping his forearm tighter, your legs failed; But the grip of the hook on your waist prevented you from collapsing against it. Her two fingers were already quite overwhelming inside you, they were so big that you felt full to the brim, they kept moving up and down your rubbery walls, opening them up and down while making you shudder at the constant touch on that sensitive point. Crocodile's lips began to kiss tenderly all over your face, giving you encouraging words as his fingers scissored inside you—"My precious girl, you are doing so well. You can't wait for me to fill you with my cock, aren't you?" - He spoke in a honeyed tone while a third finger was slowly inserted along with the others. You arched your back as a high-pitched moan escaped your lungs, Crocodile's lips closed against yours, giving you a loving, lustful kiss as his three fingers quickly boomed your moist inside. Everything was too much at that moment, Crocodile's lips against yours, his tongue tangling against yours, the heat his body gave off against yours and how his big fingers opened your insides to him.

A second finger was inserted inside you, making you stand on tiptoe at the sensation of how you were stretched, Crocodile snorted while his forehead remained close to yours, aware of your adorable reactions as I felt his cock tremble against his robe and form a small spot of moisture, he wanted so much to bury himself in your extrexho hole; But I wanted to prepare you enough for him. The speed of his hand increased, making the hand that was gripping his forearm tighter, your legs failed; But the grip of the hook on your waist prevented you from collapsing against it. Her two fingers were already quite overwhelming inside you, they were so big that you felt full to the brim, they kept moving up and down your rubbery walls, opening them up and down while making you shudder at the constant touch on that sensitive point. Crocodile's lips began to kiss tenderly all over your face, giving you encouraging words as his fingers scissored inside you—"My precious girl, you are doing so well. You can't wait for me to fill you with my cock, aren't you?" - He spoke in a honeyed tone while a third finger was slowly inserted along with the others. You arched your back as a high-pitched moan escaped your lungs, Crocodile's lips closed against yours, giving you a loving, lustful kiss as his three fingers quickly boomed your moist inside. Everything was too much at that moment, Crocodile's lips against yours, his tongue tangling against yours, the heat his body gave off against yours and how his big fingers opened your insides to him.

Crocodile's lips parted from yours, directing them to your forehead and giving her an affectionate kiss - "That's my girl, cumming for me.." - He spoke with delight as he slowly withdrew his fingers from you, feeling strangely empty as you squeezed into nothingness. Crocodile's wet fingers went up to his face, opening them slightly, being able to blur the threads of your arousal by creating small rows – "Look at this darling. Look how wet you are now, without a doubt you will be able to take me without any problem my love" - she said lovingly while she brought her fingers to her lips, opening them and starting to lick your sweet nectar as if it were the most luxurious drink. A growl escaped his lips at your taste and he slowly pulled his fingers out of his mouth, watching you with a gaze laden with lust and pleasure. Her body gently separated from yours, starting to remove her luxurious robe to reveal her naked body, your eyes wandered over her ample pecs to her chiseled belly until you opened your eyes at the sight of the monstrous erection standing proudly against her belly, dripping from a semi-transparent liquid. A chill ran down your spine at the sight of the man's big cock, was that going to fit inside you? You weren't entirely sure. Crocodile seeing your hesitation and slight fear in his eyes took you in his arms, pressing your back against the nearest column while his glans pricked your entrance and moistened it with his pre-cum -"My love, don't be scared, you're ready, you're going to take me very well"- I whisper with love in your ear while you felt how little by little I was entering your moist interior. You let out a moan of a mixture of pleasure and pain at the great intrusion into your body, you could only feel his big cock slowly splitting you in two. Crocodile grunted at the embrace of your tight walls, slowly sheathing into you until he hit rock bottom, making them both gasp. The man closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, controlling himself so as not to hit you hard against that column before your exquisite interior, his hand snaked to your belly caressing it and smiling proudly when he felt the lump that was peeking out, starting to caress it while his lips kissed your neck -"You get along with me so well my love. Do you feel me? You feel my big cock sticking out of you, huh honey?"Again everything was overwhelming, the sound of both skins touching, Crocodile's grunts against your neck, his big cock pounding inside you. The hand on your belly began to quickly brush against your clitoris, causing you to lose your composure as your small hands gripped the man's shoulders tightly. An experimental swipe of his cock along with his fingers moving against your clit made your body give way, cumming around Crocodile's cock, making you arch your back and throw your head back

Your body fell limp against hers as you listened to Crocodile's grunts and as if cock trembled inside you – "Honey you feel so good around me… Now let me finish, love." With that said, his hips began to move rapidly against yours, leaving you halfway out and re-entering all at once. Your head fell backwards as you groaned at their hard thrusts and overstimulation, you could feel your back scraping against the great column and how it could drift into any momentum on you; but it seemed that didn't matter in the slightest to the man, slamming you flawlessly against the stone – "That's honey… Just a little longer and I'll fill you with my seed, you'll be mine… My wife, you want that right love, say it, say it."- Her bright golden eyes landed on your trembling body, still moving her hips quickly. His hand gripped your cheeks, forcing you to stare at him as his cock pounded your cervix – "Say it my love, say you want to be my wife, say you want me to fill you with my seed" – "And-I… Please make me yours… Fill me, make me your wife," you said between babblings as you stared lost in lust in the man. He let out a low growl and his teeth sank back into the soft skin of your neck, giving one last push to his hips and filling your insides completely with his abundant cum. You gasped at the amount and the bite, Crocodile's lips absorbing your skin while thick strings of cum continued to shoot inside you, filling your uterus to the full.

Soon Crocodile lay next to you, taking your hips and sticking his body to yours, hugging you lovingly as his eyes looked at you with pure adoration. His hand moved up to your cheek, touching it and putting a strand of your hair behind your ear as he kissed your forehead lovingly

"My desert flower, I am so happy to have you back in my arms… You are my wife now and there will be nothing to separate you from me, I promise my dear." -

[fang-toothed]

I feel like we need to talk about how increasingly poor reading literacy (in America, ofc) is causing subtle negative effects that affect daily lives and make it extremely difficult to understand arguments, analysis, data, and other content, and it is undoubtedly affecting the political sphere.

Over half of Americans 16-74 have a reading comprehension lower than 6th-grade level (source linked below). This is honestly a crisis, yet we already have so many other critical emergencies going on that it’s put on the back-burner. Many people are looking at headlines referencing studies and assuming that whatever’s put in the headline is the truth (they’re often directly against findings or based on deeply flawed studies/surveys). Many don’t understand speeches and debates from politicians (and definitely not the implications they house). In this confusing, heavily biased and illicitly-funded era of endless headlines and content, many don’t even have a 6th-grade level of reading comprehension - how the hell are they going to understand even the basics that are already from unreliable sources?

I can’t help but to think that this may be part of the reason extremist ideologies (MAGA, anti-vaxxers, cultists, TRAs) are becoming increasingly popular. Now, people need to be told what an article or survey or study means - usually by the same people who are trying to get them on their side. Every single TRA I’ve encountered has had massive misunderstandings in the very basics of radfem ideology: they believe we want to kill all gender-nonconforming people, that we think trans-identified people should kill themselves, that we are all conservatives, that JKR has outright advocated for the murder of trans-identified people.

What scares me is that we have one side with all of the anti-vaxxers, MAGA-enthusiasts, and creepy religious cults, and on the other we have the TRA movement absolutely screaming we need for trans people to be catered for in every possible public setting or we’ll “have blood on our hands.” I think anti-vaxxers and the Bible-enthusiasts are more dangerous than TRAs, but at least they are recognised as dangerous. Both sides are controlled by at least one extremist ideology. What the hell are we to do in the 2024 election?

PLEASE take a college reading comprehension course if possible. Many community colleges offer courses cheap, and if it still isn’t feasible, there are plenty of sources online to help improve your reading comprehension.

[thrashkink-coven]

Hi! I saw your post about the appropriation of religious imagery by extremest hate groups (a good post, I share your feelings of frustration) at the end you made a vague statement about the satanic temple and was wondering if you could elaborate on what happened there? They are a group I admittedly only have passing knowledge of, but what I have seen has usually been pro LGBTQ advocacy or similar things. Not that I don't believe you- I don't really interact with large institutions because they tend to become inevitably corrupt and have inherent gatekeeping, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind explaining what exactly or which extremist propaganda they have been aligning with recently? Or is it just because they are generally anti-theistic?

(I have, in fact, been almost literally living under a rock the past few years so I apologize if the answer is something obvious, but I couldn't seem to find anything with cursory searches so thought asking someone in the community would be a better source)

I couldn’t even begin to outline all of the terrible shit the leaders and founders of The Satanic Temple have done over the years. They are a group of alt white scammers using progressive ideology and leftist sympathy to fill their pockets. They use their image to pray on young women at sex parties and employ real cult tactics to isolate and abuse them. They are a company comprised of sexual abusers, manipulators, and fascists parading the name of Satan to manipulate actual Satanists and Luciferians into giving them money, despite never showing any real respect to those philosophies or religions. We all already know they’re not theistic satanists and they don’t really worship Satan, but they also have absolutely no relationship with Satanism or Luciferian gnosis. You cannot be a Luciferian or a Satanist and be friends with Nazis. Idgaf call me a gatekeeper. They just like to use the image of Satan for publicity stunts to ruffle the feathers of a few Christians. They do not embody the Luciferian spirit or the values of Satanism.

I have a deep hatred in my soul for Douglas Mesner and how much damage he has done to the image of Luciferianism and Satanism, not to mention the real world damage they have done to abortion advocacy groups. The strategic moves of opposing institutions that oppose LGBT rights has actually given a bad name to good faith organizations who already have enough negative stigma around them. Abortion advocacy groups don’t need the narrative that they’re sacrificing babies to Satan by being supported by the Temple of Satan on top of all the backlash they already receive by Christo-fascists.

They DO NOT use the money donated for abortion advocacy to help young mothers or to fight real cases of human rights abuse, they have never actually helped a real woman obtain healthcare. The leader himself openly admitted to taking money donated to the Satanic Temple to pay his personal bills.

Asides from the plethora of real accusations of sexual assault and violence against female members of the church itself, the leader Douglas Mesner has actively supported abusers and suppressed victims from WITHIN THE CHURCH!! (kicking them out, harassing them, threatening them lawsuits etc) from obtaining justice. They have never made any actual strides in the fight towards liberation and have actively supported real fascists for years now. Douglas Mesner has advocated for eugenics and made horrible anti semitic and racist comments in the past and continues to support alt right nationalists who actively spread hateful rhetoric. The lie they promote of wanting to protect women’s and LGBT rights is a well crafted marketing scheme to give them a good image while they abuse and manipulate their own members behind the scenes.

This is a fantastic video essay that dives deep into the history of the members and their controversies:

Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart,

FUCK THE SATANIC TEMPLE

There are of course members who are great people who truly take the philosophy to heart, who have seriously fought for liberation and have sadly had their empathy hijacked. But I don’t like cops and I don’t like people who support Douglas Mesner and his band of freaks. They cannot be trusted and they have done far more harm than good. Actions speak louder than words.

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

[gveret-fic]

Sorry but all you Americans actively campaigning against Kamala Harris right now are insane.

Republicans have passed a bill to compel the shipment of weapons to Israel.

Ben Gvir has endorsed Trump.

Miriam Adelson, who donated $20 million to Trump in exchange for moving the US embassy to Jerusalem (which he did), wants him to help annex the West Bank.

Meanwhile Trump himself says he'd give Israel the support it needs to win and Netanyahu seems to be deliberately delaying a ceasefire deal for a Trump win.

Let me tell you what four years of a right-wing extremist religiously fundamentalist anti-democratic government can do. Actually, I don't need to tell you, you've all been watching intently for months now. And it didn't even take four years. It took one.

You think your country is a fascist imperialist mass murdering theocracy now? You haven't developed the political imagination necessary to conceptualize how much worse it can get. But Trump can certainly help you with that.

[bijoumikhawal]

I mentioned this in the tags of a post the other day, but since NK is high profile and getting a lot of videos shared, and I saw someone today decry a short speech one of their rabbis gave as "extremist", I guess I'll make a post too

Neturei Karta is a Litvish Ultra-Orthodox/Haredi antizionist group. In my experience, they are the most high profile antizionist group that ties that stance to their religious practice within Judaism, but they are not the only group (the Satmar are also generally antizionist, and they're a larger group, but they don't like NK).

As I mentioned yesterday, there was an incident with Iran- one of two, actually, but this one gets brought up more- where NK sent speakers to a conference specifically for the purposes of defending the existence of the Holocaust, as several Holocaust deniers were in attendance. The speaker specifically chosen had his grandparents die in the Holocaust. However, he also was blunt in stating his opinion that Zionists used the Holocaust to oppress others, Zionists had been collaborators and thwarted efforts to save Jewish lives. This prompted the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi to call for their excommunication, essentially, and for the Satmar and broader Haredi movement to tell people to stay away from them. These remarks are complicated; many incidents one could classify as collaboration were Zionists trying to move Jews out of Europe, to save lives. However, when the speaker said the third statement, I'm fairly certain he was genuinely expressing his own intergenerational trauma. Early Zionists did indeed, have a fair amount of animosity towards Orthodox Jews. At one point Theodore Herzl (a founder of the modern Zionist movement) did express the opinion that Jews should convert en masse to Christianity, and the feeling was that the Orthodox who refused should be left to their fate. This accusation is a response to a very real tension among Jews that existed at the time. And the collaborationism was not always about saving lives; the Lehi gang, which committed the Deir Yassin massacre, sought out an alliance with the Nazis on several occasions, and expressed a desire for a totalitarian nationalist state.

Another incident was one where NK met with heads of state in early 2006, particularly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after criticizing other Jews for referring to remarks he made as antisemitic, and did an interview with Iranian press where they stated the Holocaust was used as a political tool by Zionists, that Zionism is "not Jewish, but political", and that not all Jews are Zionists. They also clearly stated that when they say they are not Zionists, they do not mean withdrawal to 67 borders, but a full dissolution of state, where Jews still can live with Palestinians. Later on in 2006, Ahmadinejad made comments about the reality of the Holocaust that prompted Haroun Yashayaei, one of the most prominent members of the Iranian Jewish community, to publicly speak put against him (and no, he didn't get arrested over that. He actually is also a movie producer and got an award in 2008).

It should be noted that in West Asia and North Africa, Iran is one of only a few countries that still has a significant Jewish population. The others are Turkey (14,500), Azerbaijan (7,200), Morocco (2,100), and Tunisia (1,000). For those unaware, this is significant because during the 1920s and 30s, many colonial governments stripped WANA Jews of citizenship, and in the 40s-60s, many post colonial WANA countries forcibly expelled local Jews. As a result, the centuries long presence of Jews in countries such as Egypt or Syria is down a hundred or fewer individuals in many cases. Ideologically, I do not support Iran's government because it's a theocratic state that treats Kurds like shit, but all of NK's interactions with Iran must be contextualized in light of this. This is not me using WANA Jews as a rhetorical device either: my paternal country, Egypt, which I wish I could so much as visit, is such a country. The 2016 Iranian census puts the country's Jewish population at 9,826. That's a number that I would weep to see reported in Egypt, and the second highest of any West Asia or North African country.

Personally while I hold no serious ideological disagreement with NK over antizionism, I do not wholly support them for other reasons (gender/sexuality politics reasons primarily). I bring up these incidents with Iran because in the past I've seen people claim they are Holocaust deniers, or that they think Jewish people brought the Holocaust on themselves. I have never seen a NK member say ANYTHING of that sort, and the idea that Jews bring antisemitism in any form on themselves is in fact an actual belief Herzl held. The closest I've heard is when NK distributed leaflets after a Chabad was attacked in Mumbai where they criticized Chabad for being in bed with Zionists. I'll be linking some articles in the replies of this post about this, including the text of the actual speech given at the Tehran conference so it can be read in full.

[mariacallous]

In March, a little-known volunteer organization dedicated to “reviving the religious and secular unity of the Russian people” escorted agents from the Internal Affairs Ministry and the Russian National Guard on a raid in the remote city of Orenburg, a city of 500,000 near the Kazakh border.

Their target was a bar called Pose, which was locally famous for its drag shows. The volunteer organization, called Russian Community Orenburg, posted videos of the raid online, highlighting people in skimpy outfits, asking attendees why they were in a “faggot bar,” and showing clubgoers cowering on the floor as agents conducted their search.

“This is not [a scene from] the decaying West, this is from within the ranks of a country that is at war for a third year,” the group lamented when it posted the video online.

Conservatives in Orenburg had been outraged about Pose since it opened in 2021, according to the Russian outlet Mediazona, and a local media outlet published a sensationalist article about the club, complaining that laws like Russia’s longstanding “gay propaganda ban” did not give local law enforcement the tools to shut it down. That law, enacted in 2013, only bans materials made available to minors and carries light penalties.

The agents in Pose that night were armed with a major new weapon in Russia’s long crusade against its queer citizens. Last November, in a secret proceeding sealed to observers, Russia’s Supreme Court decreed the “international LGBT movement” to be an “extremist” organization, adding it to a list of banned entities that includes terrorist groups and the political operation of the late opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The decision is so broad that it can potentially be used against anyone who has—or simply “promotes”—a “nontraditional sexual orientation,” including people who are not LGBTQ but support queer people’s rights. People convicted under the law face up to 10 years in some of Russia’s harshest prisons, where queer people fear sexual violence or worse.

“This is not a decision to punish you for a few years. This is the death penalty, and it’s clear for everybody,” one longtime activist said, referring to the harsh conditions in Russian prisons. (The activist asked not to be named due to security concerns.) “We will not have a chance to survive there.”

Pose’s owner and two of its employees are now awaiting trial. A court announcement on Telegram notes they are accused of “being persons with nontraditional sexual orientation … who also support the views and activities of the international public LGBT association banned in our country.”

Others close to the bar are now living in fear. Only one regular Pose patron would agree to speak with me, and he said his friends had mostly stopped communicating with one another, afraid they could be discovered. Several had left the city or the country. He thinks he should maybe leave the country, too, but doesn’t have a passport or the money to go into exile, nor a safe place to flee to.

Pose, the patron said, “was my whole life. It was the only place where they accepted me.”

Homophobia became a major part of President Vladimir Putin’s political strategy in 2013. That’s when the Duma passed a national version of the “gay propaganda law.” The legislation was domestically useful to Putin, who was seeking to reinforce his political support by cozying up to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The law, which went into effect just before Russia was due to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, provoked an international outcry, and Putin detected homophobia could also be a tool of foreign policy. His government leaned into the controversy, portraying Russia as a defender of traditional values against a degenerate West that had lost its way. Kremlin allies also began using it in a more targeted way in Ukraine, where an oligarch close to Putin ran an ad campaign warning closer ties to the European Union would force the recognition of same-sex marriages. His decade-long strategy has used homophobia to try to drive a wedge between Eastern Europeans and the West, as well as to delegitimize fundamental notions of human rights and democracy.

To some Russian LGBTQ activists, it was inevitable that the Russian government would double down on going after queer people following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Swiftly, the Russian government made a broad effort to dismantle the last spaces for opposition to his regime. Other steps have included shuttering Russia’s remaining independent media outlets and effectively banning any speech critical of the war or of Putin.

The organization Coming Out, which held an eight-day annual public event in St. Petersburg as recently as 2021, decided to move its whole team outside the country almost as soon as Russian tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders.

“A few weeks after the war started, I understood that things were not going according to the plan,” said Aleksandr Voronov, Coming Out’s former director, who led its relocation to Lithuania. “I understood that they were going to start looking for new enemies.”

Putin also justified the war partly as a crusade against the LGBTQ movement, which he initially derided in a speech announcing the full-scale invasion as part of a Western plot to “destroy” Russia’s traditional values. Then, in September 2022, he referred to the movement as “satanic” in a speech illegally annexing four Ukrainian regions.

As the war continued, the regime’s propaganda machine pushed outlandish stories, rushing a state television crew to an LGBTQ center in decimated Mariupol that it claimed was “practically under the direct patronage” of U.S. President Joe Biden. Russian lawmakers also responded, expanding the gay propaganda ban in November 2022 and enacting a draconian anti-trans bill in 2023 that would outlaw gender confirming medical treatment, prohibit people from changing their gender on legal documents, and prohibit trans people from adopting children.

“A special military operation is taking place not only on the battlefields, but also in the consciousness, in the minds and souls of people,” said Aleksander Khinshtein, a member of the Russian parliament and an author of the updated gay propaganda law, in a speech to the Duma in October 2022. “LGBT today is a tool of hybrid warfare. And in this hybrid warfare, we must protect our values. We must protect our society and we must protect our children.”

Despite many threats to Russia’s queer movement—the original gay propaganda law, a state requirement that forced many LGBTQ organizations to register as “foreign agents,” growing vigilante violence—Russia’s queer movement had remained vital throughout most of Russia for most of the past decade. (A notable exception is Chechnya, where local officials have detained, tortured, or murdered dozens of queer people.) Queer organizations continued to work and even hold major public events like St. Petersburg’s long-running QueerFest, a multiday festival of LGBTQ-themed talks and exhibitions ending with a large public concert. But the extremism designation is far more dangerous than any previous threat.

Part of the danger comes from the court’s secrecy around the ruling. It not only closed the proceedings, but also barred LGBTQ organizations from participating when they tried to challenge the Ministry of Justice’s petition. Technically, any group the government seeks to declare extremist has a right to respond to the allegations against it, but the Ministry of Justice brought its petition against the “international LGBT movement,” which meant no specific organization would have standing to respond. And even when a group of LGBTQ activists formed an organization called the International LGBT Movement in an effort to intervene, the court refused to allow them to participate.

In fact, the Supreme Court never officially made the order public. It only reached LGBTQ activists in their lawyers when prosecutors in the city of Nizhny Novgorod attached it to their filings in a case against a woman who was arrested for wearing rainbow-colored earrings. (The six-color pride flag and other LGBTQ symbols were banned by the order, and the court sentenced the woman to administrative detention, despite the fact that the woman’s earrings were not discernible pride symbols—they had seven colors and were shaped like frogs.)

Olga Baranova, who has been executive director of an LGBTQ community center in Moscow since 2015, told me that the movement is now backpedaling after years of encouraging people to come out. They used to believe visibility would gradually make Russian society more supportive of LGBTQ people. Now it’s just dangerous.

“We’ve worked all these years just to be [out] and to be in the mainstream. And now we just say, ‘Okay, stop, stop, stop!’” Baranova said. Most people she knows who were visibly out have left the country, Baranova said—as has she—and she and other activists now advise people living in Russia to stay in the closet for their own safety.

Natalia Soloviova, chair of the Russian LGBT Network, a federation of more than 20 queer organizations from across the country, called the decision “absolutely horrifying,” but said that even despite it, the reality is that most queer people are not able or don’t want to flee Russia. The war has made it harder for LGBTQ people to reach countries that promise the most safety to LGBTQ refugees—like the United States or members of the European Union—because those countries have radically restricted visas for Russians. Georgia, which allows Russians to enter without visas, has become an important haven for Russian dissidents of many kinds in the past two years. But Georgia’s ruling party has advanced its own laws attacking LGBTQ people, one of many initiatives to bring the country closer to Moscow’s orbit.

Still, Soloviova estimates a significant exodus, with “hundreds” going abroad. Almost 40 percent of the Russian LGBT Network’s member organizations have relocated at least some members of their team abroad, generally visible activists or people in senior management. And many other queer people have been displaced internally, fleeing threats in their hometowns for larger cities where their pursuers are less likely to find them. Baranova acknowledged that if queer people all either leave the country or live in the closet, as she and others counsel them to do, “the movement will expire.”

Soloviova is one of those who’ve left the country. She first spoke to me in April from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, but has since left Georgia. (She feared that country’s new propaganda law and also knew of three queer Russians who were attacked on the street.) She is from the Siberian city of Novosibirsk—Russia’s third-largest city—and said she’d never thought she’d live outside Russia until the extremism designation.

Even today, key details about the Supreme Court order remain secret. For example, the order refers to a list of 281 individuals and 40 organizations considered part of the outlawed movement, but no one knows who is on those lists.

“The hardest thing here is that you have no opportunities to protect yourself,” Soloviova said. “You never know if you’re going to be prosecuted or not, and you will know only when the police come to your house directly and get you to prison directly.”

The charges in Orenburg are the first to reach court, but police appear to be flexing their new muscles across the country. In February alone, Mediazona reported several raids on “private parties” and a night club. LGBTQ activists told me they knew about several other similar incidents but didn’t want to share details, fearing publicity would put those involved in greater danger.

The arrests in Orenburg are just the beginning, worries Stanislav Seleznev, a lawyer with the Russian human rights organization Net Freedoms Project. Regional security officials generally have quotas for making significant arrests, and now LGBTQ people are an untapped pool of so-called “extremists” that can help them reach their goals.

“I’m compelled to assume that we are currently witnessing a model process that will be spread as much as possible all over the Russian regions,” Seleznev said. “Many more people are in a very dangerous situation now.”

Additional reporting contributed by a Russian reporter who asked not to be named, fearing that this article could lead to their arrest under the extremism law.