#and its not about racial struggles

[kvtnisseverdeen]

So here’s to all the writers, the awesome people that are Ben Sherwood, Paul Lee, Peter Nowalk, Shonda Rhimes, people who have redefined what it means to be beautiful, to be sexy, to be a leading woman, to be black. And to the Taraji P. Hensons, the Kerry Washingtons, the Halle Berrys, the Nicole Beharies, the Meagan Goods, to Gabrielle Union. Thank you for taking us over that line.

[angel---eater]

tbh the whitest trolls to me are the zahhaks and the makaras bc of what kind of internet-people equius and gamzee represented at the time. juggalo culture is predominantly white working class folks or white folks on the poverty line, and in the US bc of segregation, that meant a lot more mixing of cultures than you see in middle class and up areas. its the same with canada and the UK. so you see a lotta black influences in there bc of how US class structures have been constructed. its a melting pot made by and for the working class. a lotta irl juggalo stuff is pretty chill from what ive heard? as a movement they want to demolish class heirarchy and build community. ofc theres room for abuse in the lifestyle though, thats not unique to juggalos. gamzee as a rich white boy living a juggalo lifestyle but not getting it right and actually reinforcing what irl juggalos fight against makes perfect sense for his character

equius on the other hand is like belligerently Hegemonic White Cis Dude coded to me. he represents young white cis boys on the precipice of falling into the manosphere pipeline, imo. specifically bc theyre lonely and insecure. his spot on the hemospectrum is perfect for breeding that shit. he's been told his whole life that hes better than most of the ppl he knows. hes higher up caste wise than most of his friends, particularly nepeta, but still feels inferieor to his friends who ARE higher up than he is, which is what sparks that hyperspecfic brand of insecurity in white cis boys. their only real problem is that someone else whos even more priviledged is looking down on them. and gamzee also being white just kind of compounds that bc of the sense of 'competition' between white guys or whatever, to be The Whitest Squarest* Guy who is On Top (haha) Of All Other White Square Guys

everyone else? nah. its so obviously not whats happening. which really just highlights the fact that large swaths of fandom still believe that white is default in terms of character design. and its insane to me how ppl can say w/ their whole chest that the hemospectrum has nothing to do w/ race, its just abt class, when racism and class are intrinsically tied. like theyre horrible twin sisters, man, you cant rlly have one without the other. enforced class models in society dont work unless theres someone up top deeping someone else Deserving of having less bc theyre not the exact same type of person as them

*using the term Square here not to denote any kind of 80s movie nerddom but to try to describe hegemonically cishet (and homogenized white) normies who are toxic abt it and think everyone else should be like them

[fursasaida]

This article is from 2022, but it came up in the context of Palestine:

Here are some striking passages, relevant to all colonial aftermaths but certainly also to the forms we see Zionist reaction taking at the moment:

Over the decade I lived in South Africa, I became fascinated by this white minority [i.e. the whole white population post-apartheid as a minority in the country], particularly its members who considered themselves progressive. They reminded me of my liberal peers in America, who had an apparently self-assured enthusiasm about the coming of a so-called majority-minority nation. As with white South Africans who had celebrated the end of apartheid, their enthusiasm often belied, just beneath the surface, a striking degree of fear, bewilderment, disillusionment, and dread.

[...]

Yet these progressives’ response to the end of apartheid was ambivalent. Contemplating South Africa after apartheid, an Economist correspondent observed that “the lives of many whites exude sadness.” The phenomenon perplexed him. In so many ways, white life remained more or less untouched, or had even improved. Despite apartheid’s horrors—and the regime’s violence against those who worked to dismantle it—the ANC encouraged an attitude of forgiveness. It left statues of Afrikaner heroes standing and helped institute the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which granted amnesty to some perpetrators of apartheid-era political crimes.

But as time wore on, even wealthy white South Africans began to radiate a degree of fear and frustration that did not match any simple economic analysis of their situation. A startling number of formerly anti-apartheid white people began to voice bitter criticisms of post-apartheid society. An Afrikaner poet who did prison time under apartheid for aiding the Black-liberation cause wrote an essay denouncing the new Black-led country as “a sewer of betrayed expectations and thievery, fear and unbridled greed.”

What accounted for this disillusionment? Many white South Africans told me that Black forgiveness felt like a slap on the face. By not acting toward you as you acted toward us, we’re showing you up, white South Africans seemed to hear. You’ll owe us a debt of gratitude forever.

The article goes on to discuss:

"Mau Mau anxiety," or the fear among whites of violent repercussions, and how this shows up in reported vs confirmed crime stats - possibly to the point of false memories of home invasion

A sense of irrelevance and alienation among this white population, leading to another anxiety: "do we still belong here?"

The sublimation of this anxiety into self-identification as a marginalized minority group, featuring such incredible statements as "I wanted to fight for Afrikaners, but I came to think of myself as a ‘liberal internationalist,’ not a white racist...I found such inspiration from the struggles of the Catalonians and the Basques. Even Tibet" and "[Martin Luther] King [Jr.] also fought for a people without much political representation … That’s why I consider him one of my most important forebears and heroes,” from a self-declared liberal environmentalist who also thinks Afrikaaners should take back government control because they are "naturally good" at governance

Some discussion of the dynamics underlying these reactions, particularly the fact that "admitting past sins seem[ed] to become harder even as they receded into history," and US parallels

And finally, in closing:

The Afrikaner journalist Rian Malan, who opposed apartheid, has written that, by most measures, its aftermath went better than almost any white person could have imagined. But, as with most white progressives, his experience of post-1994 South Africa has been complicated. [...]

He just couldn’t forgive Black people for forgiving him. Paradoxically, being left undisturbed served as an ever-present reminder of his guilt, of how wrongly he had treated his maid and other Black people under apartheid. “The Bible was right about a thing or two,” he wrote. “It is infinitely worse to receive than to give, especially if … the gift is mercy.”

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

Hey so like many of you, I saw that article about how people are going into college having read no classic books. And believe it or not, I've been pissed about this for years. Like the article revealed, a good chunk of American Schools don't require students to actually read books, rather they just give them an excerpt and tell them how to feel about it. Which is bullshit.

So like. As a positivity post, let's use this time to recommend actually good classic books that you've actually enjoyed reading! I know that Dracula Daily and Epic the Musical have wonderfully tricked y'all into reading Dracula and The Odyssey, and I've seen a resurgence of Picture of Dorian Gray readership out of spite for N-tflix, so let's keep the ball rolling!

My absolute favorite books of all time are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Classic psychological horror books about unhinged women.

I adore The Bad Seed by William March. It's widely considered to be the first "creepy child" book in American literature, so reading it now you're like "wow that's kinda cliche- oh my god this is what started it. This was ground zero."

I remember the feelings of validation I got when people realized Dracula wasn't actually a love story. For further feelings of validation, please read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. There's a lot the more popular adaptations missed out on.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is an absolute gem of a book. It's a slow-build psychological study so it may not be for everyone, but damn do the plot twists hit. It's a really good book to go into blind, but I will say that its handling of abuse victims is actually insanely good for the time period it was written in.

Moving on from horror, you know people who say "I loved this book so much I couldn't put it down"? That was me as a kid reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Picked it up while bored at the library and was glued to it until I finished it.

Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie was also a childhood favorite of mine. Next time someone bitches about Woke Casting, tell them that the original 1911 Peter Pan novel had canon nonbinary fairies.

Watership Down by Richard Adams is my sister Cori's favorite book period. If you were a Warrior Cats, Guardians of Ga'Hoole or Wings of Fire kid, you owe a metric fuckton to Watership Down and its "little animals on a big adventure" setup.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was a play and not a book first, but damn if it isn't a good fucking read. It was also named after a Langston Hughes poem, who's also an absolutely incredible author.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book I absolutely adore and will defend until the day I die. It's so friggin good, y'all, I love it more than anything. You like people breaking out of fascist brainwashing? You like reading and value knowledge? You wanna see a guy basically predict the future of television back in 1953? Read Fahrenheit.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are considered required reading for a reason: they're both really good books about young white children unlearning the racial biases of their time. Huck Finn specifically has the main character being told that he will go to hell if he frees a slave, and deciding eternal damnation would be worth it.

As a sidenote, another Mark Twain book I was obsessed with as a kid was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Exactly what it says on the tin, incredibly insane read.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a heartbreaking but powerful book and a look at the racism of the time while still centering the love the two black protagonists feel for each other. Giovanni's Room by the same author is one that focuses on a MLM man struggling with his sexuality, and it's really important to see from the perspective of a queer man living in the 50s– as well as Baldwin's autobiographical novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain.

Agatha Christie mysteries are all still absolutely iconic, but Murder on the Orient Express is such a good read whether or not you know the end twist.

Maybe-controversial-maybe-not take: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a good book if you have reading comprehension. No, you're not supposed to like the main character. He pretty much spells that out for you at the end ffs.

Animal Farm by George Orwell was another favorite of mine; it was written as an obvious metaphor for the rise of fascism in Russia at the time and boy does it hit even now.

And finally, please read Shakespeare plays. As soon as you get used to their way of talking, they're not as hard to understand as people will lead you to believe. My absolute favorite is Twelfth Night- crossdressing, bisexual love triangles, yellow stockings... it's all a joy.

and those are just the ones i thought of off the top of my head! What're your guys' favorite classic books? Let's make everyone a reading list!

[cenvast]

Laios, Monsters, & Toshiro: On Racialized Desire and Identification with the Other

Arguably, the most significant part of Laios' character is the societal ostracization he faces because of his non-normative interests and behavior. For the majority of his life, Laios struggles socially, and other humans mistreat him. When he rescues Marcille from the Nightmares, his nightmare dredges up his inability to fit into school and the army. During his early dungeoneering days, he's lied to and exploited by his fellow party members.

One of his earliest and most formative negative experiences with people is his village's abuse of Falin as a magic user. He shares that after the villagers discovered that she can use magic, "adults who were just kind yesterday, all began to bully [her]." Instead of protecting Falin, his parent tell her to leave the village. The prejudice Falin faces and his parents' response to it upsets Laios to the point that he leaves home.

While Laios cares about his friends, the Demon points out that Laios understandably does not care for people in general. Laios doesn't disagree with the Demon's assessment and suspects that the Demon "can sense all [his] thoughts." The Demon goes on to say that Laios actually "despise[s] all humans." Laios denies this assessment, but given the Demon's uncanny ability to sniff out people's desires and Laios' ashamed expression, at least part of Laios likely agrees with the Demon. It's not a stretch to assume that he's held onto some hurt and resentment towards humans due to their mistreatment of him and Falin in their youth.

In response to how human society has othered him, Laios distances himself from humans and invests his time and energy into monsters and demi-humans instead. In the DunMeshi world, monsters and demi-humans are the ultimate societal Other. People fear them, exploit them, and even hunt and kill them. As someone who's similarly been mistreated by human society, Laios resonates deeply with monsters.

His desire to become a monster and/or beastman reflects his desire to reclaim agency over how society has ostracized him. If he chooses to become a monster, he gets to place value on what society has deemed despicable. He gets to choose why society hates him and be different on his own terms.

Both textually and thematically, Laios' identification with the Other bleeds into the erotic. More blatantly, he says that he'd have sex with orc women, and his succubus is a monstrous version of Marcille.

The entire story is also steeped in the theme of consumption as carnality. Laios and his party spend the entire manga eating monsters — a taboo physical act which they reap pleasure from; the underlying eroticism isn't difficult to see.

The story also presents consumption as a form of extreme identification. Eating a monster makes the monster part of you through digestion. The line between consuming the monster and becoming the monster — between erotic desire for the monster, demonstrated by eating their flesh, and identifying with the monster — is very blurred. Note that digesting a monster is an act of absorption; it destroys the original creature. Senshi states that consuming a monster erases "its individual identity," and major manga spoilers, but Laios defeats and pacifies the Demon by consuming its desire to eat. We'll come back to this concept later.

As previously mentioned, Laios is disinterested in most humans. The notable exception to this rule is Toshiro and by extension, the Eastern Archipelago. Laios doesn't seem to know much about the Archipelago before speaking to Toshiro, so he isn't drawn to Toshiro because he's an Easterner. Instead, he's drawn to his "odd appearance."

Just like Laios views monsters and demi-humans as a visible Other, Laios views Toshiro as another visible Other. On the Island, Toshiro stands out as a foreigner at first glance. While Laios as a white tallman doesn't appear visibly strange to other people, he's drawn again and again to people and creatures who are immediately visibly "odd." He sees them as understanding what it's like to be different and be mistreated for it, and since he relates to that experience, he wants to learn about them and be closer to them.

Essentially, Laios behaves towards Toshiro and his culture the same way he behaves towards monsters; he wants to know everything about Toshiro's foreign culture — the thing which makes him different. Unintentionally, Laios unintentionally reduces Toshiro to being Japanese; if he wasn't Japanese, Laios would never have approached him.

While Laios doesn't have bad intentions, as Toshiro himself acknowledges during their fight, his behavior towards Toshiro still has negative consequences. Laios' harmless interest in monsters translates to fetishization in the context of Japanese culture. He enacts multiple microaggressions against Toshiro and crossing his boundaries.

Laios goes beyond merely learning about Japanese culture. He takes parts of it for himself when he names his sword a Japanese name. Akin to his consumption of monsters, Laios attempts to participate in Toshiro's culture while failing to respect Toshiro himself. Just as eating monsters destroys them, Laios consuming Toshiro's culture while enacting racism against him causes real harm.

Many people have already written about Laios' microaggressions towards Toshiro, but a couple include Laios telling Toshiro that he looks "odd" and asking where he's from, mispronouncing his name as "Shuro," and assuming his favorite food is rice. Laios' treatment and fetishization of Toshiro is racist and harmful. However, I'd like to dive beyond the surface of Laios' micro-aggressive remarks and examine how his obsession with Toshiro becomes a racialized mode of desire, paralleling real world phenomena.

Though no concrete canonical evidence of Laios' feelings towards Toshiro being romantic and/or sexual exists, his interactions with Toshiro have erotic undertones. Their fight dialogue, in particular, revolves around eating, an act the story consistently shows as carnal. During this fight, Laios places his thumb in Toshiro's mouth and asks him, "What's the point of even having a mouth?" Laios' penetration of Toshiro's body via his mouth and his question's potential as an innuendo lend themselves to an erotic reading of the scene's more obvious conflict. Considering the overlap between consumption and carnality throughout the story, it's not a large jump to read eroticism into Laios demanding Toshiro meet his body's physical needs.

Furthermore, Laios is more enthusiastic about Toshiro than any other human in the series. While he cares deeply about his sister and his friends, Laios repeatedly expresses how much he admires Toshiro. He retains and brings up things like Toshiro's (perceived) favorite food. He wants to go to the East in Falin's place after she rejects Toshiro's marriage proposal, and in the "What-If" extra material, he's adamant about setting up a scenario where Toshiro travels with him through the Dungeon.

Undoubtedly, Laios is drawn to Toshiro. Since he sees non-white-ness and monstrosity as equivalent markers of societal othering, Toshiro's identity as a foreigner is what cultivates and maintains Laios' interest in him. Even if Laios learns to care for Toshiro as a person, his desire for Toshiro, platonically or otherwise, is still filtered heavily through race within the narrative.

Laios' relationship with his masculinity is also fraught. He broke off his engagement with a girl from his village and doesn't express normative interest in female tallmen. Seeing how the nightmare versions of his parents ask him when he's going to give them grandchildren, Laios experiences societal pressure to conform to a normative performance of masculinity through being attracted to and marrying a tallman woman and creating a family with her.

Laios frequently talks about how cool and admirable Toshiro is when he performs masculinity through combat, etc. He might find Toshiro's Asian masculinity more appealing and more accessible to him than the masculinity that's been forced onto him, precisely because Toshiro's Asian masculinity appears non-normative in a Western lens. But co-opting the masculinities of men of color as a white man would only further feed into the white consumption of cultures of color.

Overall, Laios' entitlement to and consumption of Toshiro's culture mirrors the real-life way white people co-opt and fetishize non-white cultures. Laios' fetishistic treatment of Japanese culture, because of his attraction (platonic or otherwise) to Toshiro, parallels white people's treatment of Asian people in the Western diaspora. I can only speak on the Asian American experience, but Laios immediately being drawn to Toshiro's "odd appearance," obsessing over his culture, and primarily treating Toshiro as a conduit for his said culture feels eerily close to how some white anime and/or K-pop fans act towards Japanese and Korean people.

Similarly to Laios, real queer, neurodivergent, and/or otherwise non-normative white people are marginalized by white Western society. They relate to how society others non-white cultures and/or people of color and latch onto them. While forming human connections based on curiosity and shared experiences is wonderful, white people are often unaware of the racial dynamics at play when they engage with non-white cultures and people of color and unintentionally, end up consuming and fetishizing non-white cultures in detrimental ways.

None of this negates the reality that Laios and Toshiro canonically care for each other. For instance, Toshiro's willingness to hug Laios reveals his genuine familiarity with and affection for him. The racial dynamics of their friendship complicate their relationship in fascinating ways and open up a potential path for Laios' growth. With time and effort, Laios could absolutely unlearn his racism and become a much better friend to Toshiro.

In conclusion, Laios' behavior towards Toshiro is a study in a marginalized white person's identification with and racialized desire for a non-white Other and how even a well-intentioned attempt at connection can replicate harmful racist dynamics. Toshiro's experience with Laios closely parallels real Asian people's struggles with racism and fetishization in our world today.

[mywitchyblog]

It has to be said

Let’s cut the bullshit. You can’t sit there and preach about how "wrong" it is for someone to shift into a BIPOC identity while you’re out here shifting into some "fictional" race and acting like it’s all good.

Newsflash, asshole: It’s the same damn thing. Shifting into any race—real or fictional—comes with its own set of cultural, historical, and ethical baggage. If you’re gonna throw shade at someone for exploring a BIPOC identity, then you better be ready to throw shade at yourself for shifting into that elf, Na’vi, or whatever the fuck else you’re fantasizing about.

Here’s the deal: Whether you’re shifting into a BIPOC identity to understand a different version of yourself or diving into some fantasy race that’s basically a watered-down version of real-world cultures, you’re engaging with the same concepts. The only difference is that one makes you uncomfortable because it’s closer to home. But if you think you can hide behind a “pretty pink bow” of fiction to justify your shifts, then you’re just fooling yourself.

You want some examples? Here they are:

1. The Na'vi from "Avatar": The Na'vi are a blatant allegory for Indigenous peoples who have been fucked over by colonization and cultural erasure. Their culture, spirituality, and even physical appearance are deeply inspired by various Indigenous cultures. Shifting into a Na'vi and then having the nerve to criticize someone for shifting into a BIPOC identity is straight-up hypocrisy. You’re enjoying the "noble savage" aesthetic while turning a blind eye to the real-world struggles that inspired this fictional race.

2. X-Men (Mutants): The mutants in the X-Men universe are a metaphor for marginalized groups, particularly racial minorities and the LGBTQ+ community. They experience discrimination, fear, and oppression, just like BIPOC people in the real world. Shifting into a mutant identity and then shitting on someone for exploring a BIPOC identity? That’s some next-level hypocritical bullshit. You’re playing out a power fantasy of fighting against oppression while ignoring the very real struggles that others are trying to explore and understand through their shifts.

3. Twi’leks and Other Star Wars Aliens: Twi’leks and other alien species in "Star Wars" often have exaggerated features that mirror ethnic stereotypes, and their treatment in the narrative often reflects colonial attitudes. Shifting into these aliens while criticizing someone for shifting into a different race is absurd. You’re embodying a fictional race that’s a clear stand-in for real-world marginalized groups while trying to police how others choose to explore their own identities.

4. The Fremen from "Dune": The Fremen are depicted as desert dwellers with a deep connection to their land and a fierce resistance to imperialism, drawing heavily from Middle Eastern and North African cultures. Shifting into this race while bashing someone for shifting into a BIPOC identity is a prime example of enjoying the exoticism of another culture without acknowledging its real-world significance.

2. Elves in Fantasy Literature: Elves are depicted with exaggerated European features—tall, slender, sharp, angular faces—basically the "Aryan" beauty ideal cranked up to eleven. The romanticization of these features, while totally ignoring their roots in racist purity movements, is downright disturbing.If you’re shifting into an elf while slamming someone for shifting into a BIPOC identity, you’re perpetuating a fucked-up double standard. You’re engaging in a fantasy that upholds white-centric beauty while denying someone else the right to explore a version of themselves that aligns with a BIPOC identity.

The real issue isn’t about whether it’s right or wrong to shift into a different race; it’s about the double standard you’re applying. If you think it’s okay to shift into some fantasy race but not a BIPOC identity, then you’re the one with the fucked-up priorities. Shifting is all about exploring different versions of yourself, whether that’s through race, species, or whatever. So, stop being a fucking hypocrite and either accept it all or shut the hell up.

Next time you wanna criticize someone for race shifting, take a look at your own damn shifts. If you’re doing the same thing under the guise of “fantasy,” then you’re just as guilty of the shit you’re trying to call out. Stop acting like one is more acceptable than the other. Either own your shit across the board or get off your high horse.

This kind of hypocrisy shows that you’re more comfortable with the idea of exploring different identities when they’re wrapped in a "pretty pink bow" of fiction, but you balk at the idea of someone exploring the full spectrum of human experience, including the struggles and strengths that come with being BIPOC.

No more excuses. It’s time to face the reality of what you’re doing and start thinking critically about the implications of your shifts. Stop hiding behind the fantasy and start acknowledging the real-world context of the identities you’re exploring.

[probablyasocialecologist]

If anything, the 2024 election season in the United States has demonstrated that the multicultural ruling elite—including but especially those of a liberal stripe—have no intention of solving the many crises of its own making. On the contrary, their role is to manage “through brutality,” the contradictions of a global necrocapitalist order. To suggest there are identifiable patterns cyclically reproduced by a colonial capitalist world order is not to encourage a sense of hopelessness but a sense of clarity, a grounding toward what can and cannot be accomplished within the given regimes of liberal redress. The Zionist mass extermination campaign in occupied Palestine, with the open and active participation on the part of the liberal democracies of the West, exemplifies the reality that liberalism need not fascism to carry out its regimes of racialized horror intrinsic to Western civilization. Liberalism, in its own right, efficiently exports perpetual violence and war—through occupations, aerial warfare, and economic terrorism—that is largely proclaimed to be exclusive to twentieth-century, or more recently, Trumpian fascism. And yet, every region on the receiving end of Western liberal democracies’ deadly exports of democracy and freedom is left with mass corpses and new avenues of extraction and accumulation that enrich Euro-American cities.  Despite this, liberalism—due to its strategic attempts to position itself as the benign alternative to far right-wing tyranny—is widely believed to be a benevolent institution, political ideology, and therefore a willing ally to the concerns of and political struggles from below. However, a thorough internationalist investigation of the machinations and material outcomes, specifically as it pertains to the working poor, of liberal democracies paints a vastly different reality while also demonstrating the inefficacy of the ballot towards remedying these outcomes. 

[...]

The baseline, permanent state of U.S. politics, specifically but not exclusively at the national level, is that of right-wing dominance. The broadest understanding of American history only proves this—including the last 40 years of neoliberal hegemony, an explicitly brutal right-wing enterprise. A fruitful question we should all ask, is at what point has the U.S. political and economic system ever worked in accordance with the masses of its people? Think about it. During its Indigenous slaughter campaigns that made way for the creation of the modern nation-state? Or, during the worldmaking and world-breaking regime of racial-chattel slavery—in which stolen African labor was directly pinned against that of the labor of the white working poor? Or maybe the Jim/Jane Crow period which oversaw even more destitution and suffering for Black-African people than that of its predecessor? Or, any period since the early 1900s—sans the short-lived era of the New Deal (which was not only brief but exclusive i.e., neglected much of the racialized and poor in its material output)?  Many well-meaning people have tried to do good work holding political office. But how much does one’s morality matter in a capitalist political system that is beholden to the interests of the finance-corporate sectors of civil society? 

3 November 2024

[kkoffin]

WARNING: you will need the most basic understanding of feminist terminology, literature and concepts to understand the following post, I have not made this uneducated-proof. I have had people get mad at me for this before, so here's the warning.

I think what's happening in Afghanistan right now really shows what feminists mean when they say "women are seen as a sub-category of men, rather than a separate class", and by extension, it shows how on a global scale, women are still seen as property. It also kinda demonstrates what De Beauvoir was talking about when she said women see themselves as the other, rather than the absolute, unlike other groups.

Women do not have as much class consciousness as they should, and are kept isolated from one another, told to divide first by class, race, religion etc, rather than acknowledging they are all women, and they are all treated as property of a man, an obtainable object, a collectable, regardless of class or race. Women have never been separate from men, they have never been independent as racial groups can be. There is no escape from men outside of eventual death for a group of women. This is due to the nature of women and men being reliant on one another for the creation of a group that lasts more than one generation. Women are seen to have no culture of their own, as it's only a sub-culture of men of that group. Men are almost always somehow involved in any female action/culture, because of women's isolation from one another and inability of escape. Women are viewed as property because they are only a part of male life and male culture, men is the whole and women are a part, women's part still belongs to the men. Women are not individual cultures.

The entirely male-run government in Afghanistan can treat the women of that country however they like, because those women belong to them. That is why it wouldn't be the same with another minority or ethnic group. Women, as a subcategory of men, when not considered their own social class, have no individual rights over how to be treated. A man can make rules for how women should behave because women are the property of, or included within men. A part of man. They essentially don't deserve the sovereignty that racial and religious groups are granted.

This is why human rights tend to not act the same way, it's as if there is no group being denied rights at all. To the globe, its just Afghans, the Afghan government and it's property, or it's citizens, rather than men and women. It is just men and women. Male government controlling women who cannot participate in the law, but are victim to it, like animals, or livestock. Not citizens.

I will state as well: I do not mean for any of this to underestimate the struggles of racial/ethnic groups as a minority. I believe the struggles of each oppressed group is different, it's causes and effects, and should be treated as such. Those groups deal with different issues which women, as a sex class may not. I'll also mention, there are other groups which may be treated in this same way, such as disabled people, children etc. also i hope this post makes sense

[robertreich]

5 Crises Republicans Made up to Distract You

Here are five totally made-up “crises” Republicans have invented to distract from the real crises facing Americans today: the growing concentration of wealth, the worsening climate crisis, and the undermining of our democracy.

Fake crisis #1:  Anything they claim is “woke.”

Although Republicans struggle to define what “woke” even means, they’re constantly using it as a weapon to combat anything that seeks to foster tolerance and acceptance.

Pride flags? Woke!

Books about Rosa Parks? Woke!

Green M&M’s? The wokest!

Fortunately, most Americans think being informed and aware of social injustice…which is what being “woke” really means... is a good thing.

Fake crisis #2: The panic over trans people.

Trans people just want the right to exist safely as their true selves, like everyone else. And despite the lies spewed by some Republicans, there’s not a shred of evidence that they are a threat to anyone. But they’ve become easy scapegoats for the GOP, who vilify them and threaten to criminalize their very existence.

Fake crisis #3: Critical race theory

In reality, critical race theory is mostly taught in universities — like quantum physics or philosophy. It's really not taught in K-12, nor is it dangerous.

It’s merely a framework to understand the role that race and racism have played in shaping America’s laws and institutions. But Republicans have deliberately turned this obscure academic phrase into a weapon to silence any discussion of race they don't like.

Unfortunately, this includes teaching many basic historical facts.

Fake crisis #4: “Couch potatoes.”

Republicans are whipping up anger over welfare recipients supposedly abusing the system.

The reality is most people who collect benefits already hold jobs and work exceedingly hard.

Like Ronald Reagan’s claim about so-called “welfare queens”, the “couch potato” myth is a cruel racial dog whistle. In fact, the vast majority of Americans who receive government benefits are white.

We should be asking why so many jobs pay such low wages that workers need government help to get by?

Fake crisis #5: “Out of control government spending.”

Another lie. Apart from mandatory spending like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, government spending has actually fallen more than 30% in the past 50 years as a percentage of our total economy.

[9.6% in 1973  vs. 6.6% in 2022, a decrease of  31.25%]

Yes, the national debt is a problem, but in recent years, among its biggest drivers have been the Bush and Trump tax cuts, which have added nearly $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment.

All five of these so-called crises have been manufactured by the GOP. They’re entirely made up.

Why? To deflect attention from the near record share of the nation’s income and wealth now going to the richest Americans.

As the wealthy pour money into politics — largely into the GOP — they don’t want the rest of America to notice they’re rigging the economy for their own benefit, that their greed is worsening the climate crisis, and they’re undermining our democracy.

So the game of the Republican Party and their major donors is to deflect attention — to use fake crises to disguise what’s really going on.

Don’t let them get away with it.

[fleshwerks]

there's also the issue of how for three games tevinter has been this absolute monster of an empire that is entirely built on magocracy and slavery, active conflict with the qunari, and its conflict with the south based not on just its previous occupation of the now sovereign nations of the Marches, Ferelden and Orlais, but also a schism in Andrastianism.

Even in Inquisition when the Venatori war bands came at you, their melee units were dressed in gladiatorial garb and wearing padlocked collars around their necks, indicating slavery.

Don't tell me that Dorian Pavus and friends not just managed to abolish slavery in scant 10 years, but somehow turned the place around to a point where an elfie can freely traipse around with nary a jab at their big ears, and a qunari skulking about doesn't get as much as a lazily raised eyebrow.

Here on earth at least in America, slavery's been abolished for more than a century, yet racial tensions and grievances still run near the boiling point.

On one hand it is relaxing for I guess new players but also old elven enthusiasts for finally getting to play as an elfie and not having to defend your very existence as an elf at all times. On the other hand, it also entirely robs dedicated elf players and the in-game elves of the catharsis of emerging as an independent faction and set of traditions and beliefs and feeling like the millennium long bloodied and bruised fight for it bore fruit.

A part of introducing such great injustices into the narrative is fighting against it and succeeding. The catharsis lies in being able to courageously look into your oppressor's eye and see them impotently gnashing their teeth, or seeing contriteness and acknowledgment of this past fight against injustice. And for players specifically, especially those who are discriminated against in real life on the basis of their race or class status, a part of what makes elves and freedom fighters as a PC appealing is the shared struggle, and the joy of being able to spit your oppressor in the eyeball.

Having now watched full playthroughs, none of it is there anymore in any significant capacity. The joy and pain of being the ferocious underdog fighting for justice for the oppressed is gone.

There's an argument to be made that this new threat has unified people against it and all old squabbles are put on hold until the threat's been dealt with, but in real life, again and again, times like these would sow even greater chaos and discord among people, because they want to take their fear out on someone, they want to maintain a sense of control and power in the face of the untouchable, insurmountable beast of total war and gods coming to delete the earth, and they reach for the targets they actually can touch: their fellow people, the outgroups.

I get that Veilguard wanted to strictly focus on a smaller scale and chose 'power of personal friendship' as their focus, but it comes at a cost of lore. And it comes at a cost of the catharsis of actually addressing this chaos and fear among different groups of people, and telling convincing them that if for nothing else, then we need mutual respect and equality and united overarching goals right now to show this talking toilet seat, the human centipede and their pet dragons what's what so that we'd even have an earth to oppress each other on.

Intergroup issues don't cease to exist in the face of a greater threat, they actually tend to increase. Where are the massive slave armies of Tevinter? And where is the protagonist's chance to tell the oppressors that 'you know, you'd have a much better chance at fighting this threat effectively if you allowed your slave army to fight for their future, not just yours?

I remember when we were still all speculating about Tevinter, I'd expressed unhappiness about ditching Southern Thedas, but I had ceded that politically, Tevinter is a setting that is absolutely rife with political and social intrigue, given that Tevinter is responsible for so much of what we as players dealt with in Southern Thedas, from the Blight to the anti-mage sentiment, to even the faith schism, and of course Tevinter sourcing slaves from Orlais and Ferelden. Not to mention its occupation of Southern regions. Kirkwall alone was a pitch black crowning jewel and a hotspot of Tevinter's terror and scars coupled with the fact that the location most likely sits on top of a possibly corrupted titan, and something besides human error and greed is driving Kirkwall insane. But now Kirkwall's been destroyed and all the plot hooks and intrigue along with it.

And Tevinter? Tevinter is a kitten compared to the rotten, roaring dragon it was made out to be in the past lore.

Not to mention that Tevinter isn't the destroyer of the Elvhen empire, it's its inheritor, it scavenged all its evils from the ruins of an Elvhen empire that collapsed on itself thanks to Chin Gigachad with shiny new veneers, and his equally deranged buddies. You'd think that this would cause insane strife among elves and the rest of the races, and that the dwarves especially would have some words to say. And you'd think that elves in Thedas could retaliate with 'and you humans especially learned fucking nothing from it so you're no better than our ancestors, and also, I, an elf, wasn't even alive and neither were 99.8% of my fellow elves back then so your issue is not with us, get the hell off our backs, you humans just continued what the worst of our own kind did to us, shut your flat tooth mouths, you wanted Elvhenan's power for yourselves, well, now it's come knocking, it looks ugly, and it looks a lot like YOU'.

But no. All of that depth, the terror, and the player's chance to stand up to that terror, all but gone.

I reiterate, I see the merit in allowing elves and qunari to finally be unapologetically themselves, it must be relaxing. But that's not why people by and large play elves and qunari. They play them because the two races in Thedas struggle against something that they can unfairly and sadly have to struggle with in real life. Except in real life, winning against oppression is damned difficult, but in a video game, like I said, you have the ability to actually do something against the oppression you face, and do it effectively.

And the Venatori don't count. Because they're a cult, but in real life there aren't many convenient cults to rail against, in real life, it's a problem that infests the society as a whole. And it's infinitely more cathartic to be able to take your suffering and address the entire society on your own terms than just delete a few cults and it's all peaches and cream after that.

Fantasy worlds hinge on suspension of disbelief: You can have fantastic elements, but it needs to be relatable. And Tevinter especially being sanitised of its historically absolutely rotten elements for... what? Ain't it.

Contrast the entirety of Veilguard to waltzing into Halamshiral's Winter Palace, being treated with derision and suspicion for who you are, and acing it so well the masked morons can't help but bow in deference because you the player took their prejudice and completely unmasked it (heh), and rubbed their noses in it. That was nice, right? Halamshiral is, after all, one of the best-regarded parts of the Inquisition BECAUSE of the intrigue, the prejudice, and for the underdog to not just confront it, but force feed their own prejudice to them while remaining if not magnanimous and better than them, then at least being given the joyous opportunity to be just as petty and reclaim equality based on shared traits like pettiness, gossip and prejudice. To show them, they can throw what they like at you, but you'll match them step for step, and they can just deal with it.

Where is all of that in stinkin' Tevinter?? The mother of all of Thedas' societal ills. I say 'mother' because the daughters in the south inherited a lot from mother, but went on to be awful in their own independent ways, too.

Disclaimer: I have seen one playthrough, so of course I have missed details and nuances, but that's the problem, you know? Most players only play it once. You need to get out as much info and lore as possible on the first time, because most people will not be returning for seconds. It's on par with the other thing BioWare does, hiding a metric ton of lore in supplementary material, books and comics. No. That shit needs to be in the game, and it needs to be visible.

And Tevinter... You could sell Fenris back to slavery. You could rescure an elven slave and take her in. You had an entire alienage being sold to Tevinter magisters. You had Calpernia. What even happened to Calpernia? Did she ever even matter? You had the rebel mages stumble into Tevinter indentured servitude in Redcliffe. Why is Tevinter suddenly done a 180 in just ten years due to a few upstart magisters' impassioned speeches? We know what happens to real life freedom fighting activists in real life. They get shot. On government's orders. They get shot even more when times are tough and a government is trying to maintain the status quo in the face of an even greater threat.

And if it was all some kind of commentary on Donald Trump and his crazies... and what's going on right now with hybrid warfare waged by Russia against all of the Western world, you would assume that all of the Northern nations of Thedas would be hotspots of even greater oppression, internal strife and division, suspicion and distrust, hostility between various civilian groups and so on.

How satisfying would it have been to be able to witness that, confront it, and had the opportunity to address it all with extreme prejudice instead of bickering at the dinner table about bringing too many books on an expedition with a companion whose race is currently in active, extremely oppressive conflict with damn near all of Northern Thedas, like who Taash or possibly Rook is beyond their gender identity wouldn't get absolutely brutalised by being, you know, not just Qunari by philosophy, but an actual member of the race driving an active war in all of Northern Thedas. We got an one-two punch in reputation for daring to be a secular Qunari mage in Halamshiral ball, but the North's response to a Qunari is 'oh look, a Qunari.'

Where is the established lore and established struggles? What happened to all those hooks?

[mariacallous]

The New York Times once dubbed the Princeton professor Robert George, who has guided Republican elites for decades, “the reigning brain of the Christian right.” Last year, he issued a stark warning to his ideological allies. “Each time we think the horrific virus of anti-Semitism has been extirpated, it reappears,” he wrote in May 2023. “A plea to my fellow Catholics—especially Catholic young people: Stay a million miles from this evil. Do not let it infect your thinking.” When I spoke with George that summer, he likened his sense of foreboding to that of Heinrich Heine, the 19th-century German poet who prophesied the rise of Nazism in 1834.

Some 15 months later, the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson welcomed a man named Darryl Cooper onto his web-based show and introduced him to millions of followers as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” The two proceeded to discuss how Adolf Hitler might have gotten a bad rap and why British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the chief villain of the Second World War.”

Hitler tried “to broadcast a call for peace directly to the British people” and wanted to “work with the other powers to reach an acceptable solution to the Jewish problem,” Cooper elaborated in a social-media post. “He was ignored.” Why the Jews should have been considered a “problem” in the first place—and what a satisfactory “solution” to their inconvenient existence might be—was not addressed.

Some Republican politicians spoke out against Carlson’s conversation with Cooper, and many historians, including conservative ones, debunked its Holocaust revisionism. But Carlson is no fringe figure. His show ranks as one of the top podcasts in the United States; videos of its episodes rack up millions of views. He has the ear of Donald Trump and spoke during prime time at the 2024 Republican National Convention. His anti-Jewish provocations are not a personal idiosyncrasy but the latest expression of an insurgent force on the American right—one that began to swell when Trump first declared his candidacy for president and that has come to challenge the identity of the conservative movement itself.

Anti-Semitism has always existed on the political extremes, but it began to migrate into the mainstream of the Republican coalition during the Trump administration. At first, the prejudice took the guise of protest.

In 2019, hecklers pursued the Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw—a popular former Navy SEAL from Texas—across a tour of college campuses, posing leading questions to him about Jews and Israel, and insinuating that the Jewish state was behind the 9/11 attacks. The activists called themselves “Groypers” and were led by a young white supremacist named Nick Fuentes, an internet personality who had defended racial segregation, denied the Holocaust, and participated in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where marchers chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

The slogan referred to a far-right fantasy known as the “Great Replacement,” according to which Jews are plotting to flood the country with Black and brown migrants in order to displace the white race. That belief animated Robert Bowers, who perpetrated the largest massacre of Jews on American soil at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 after sharing rants about the Great Replacement on social media. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the gunman wrote in his final post, “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people … Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Less than three years later, Carlson sanitized that same conspiracy theory on his top-rated cable-news show. “They’re trying to change the population of the United States,” the Fox host declared, “and they hate it when you say that because it’s true, but that’s exactly what they’re doing.” Like many before him, Carlson maintained plausible deniability by affirming an anti-Semitic accusation without explicitly naming Jews as culprits. He could rely on members of his audience to fill in the blanks.

Carlson and Fuentes weren’t the only ones who recognized the rising appeal of anti-Semitism on the right. On January 6, 2021, an influencer named Elijah Schaffer joined thousands of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, posting live from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Eighteen months later, Schaffer publicly polled his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers: “Do you believe Jews disproportionately control the world institutions, banks, & are waging war on white, western society?” Social-media polls are not scientific, so the fact that more than 70 percent of respondents said some version of “yes” matters less than the fact that 94,000 people participated in the survey. Schaffer correctly gauged that this subject was something that his audience wanted to discuss, and certainly not something that would hurt his career.

With little fanfare, the tide had turned in favor of those advancing anti-Semitic arguments. In 2019, Fuentes and his faction were disrupting Republican politicians like Crenshaw. By 2022, Fuentes was shaking hands onstage with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. In 2019, the Groyper activists were picketing events held by Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization founded by the activist Charlie Kirk. By 2024, Turning Point was employing—and periodically firing and denouncing—anti-Semitic influencers who appeared at conventions run by Fuentes. “The Zionist Jews controlling our planet are all pedophiles who have no regard for the sanctity of human life and purity,” one of the organization’s ambassadors posted before she was dismissed.

In 2020, Carlson’s lead writer, Blake Neff, was compelled to resign after he was exposed as a regular contributor to a racist internet forum. Today, he produces Kirk’s podcast and recently reported alongside him at the Republican National Convention. “Why does Turning Point USA keep pushing anti-Semitism?” asked Erick Erickson, the longtime conservative radio host and activist, last October. The answer: Because that’s what a growing portion of the audience wants.

“When I began my career in 2017,” Fuentes wrote in May 2023, “I was considered radioactive in the American Right for my White Identitarian, race realist, ‘Jewish aware,’ counter-Zionist, authoritarian, traditional Catholic views … In 2023, on almost every count, our previously radioactive views are pounding on the door of the political mainstream.” Fuentes is a congenital liar, but a year after this triumphalist pronouncement, his basic point is hard to dispute. Little by little, the extreme has become mainstream—especially since October 7.

Last December, Tucker Carlson joined the popular anti-establishment podcast Breaking Points to discuss the Gaza conflict and accused a prominent Jewish political personality of disloyalty to the nation. “They don’t care about the country at all,” he told the host, “but I do … because I’m from here, my family’s been here hundreds of years, I plan to stay here. Like, I’m shocked by how little they care about the country, including the person you mentioned. And I can’t imagine how someone like that could get an audience of people who claim to care about America, because he doesn’t, obviously.”

The twist: “He” was not some far-left activist who had called America an irredeemably racist regime. Carlson was referring to Ben Shapiro, arguably the most visible Jewish conservative in America, and insinuating that despite his decades of paeans to American exceptionalism, Shapiro was a foreign implant secretly serving Israeli interests. The podcast host did not object to Carlson’s remarks.

The war in Gaza has placed Jews and their role in American politics under a microscope. Much has been written about how the conflict has divided the left and led to a spike in anti-Semitism in progressive spaces, but less attention has been paid to the similar shake-up on the right, where events in the Middle East have forced previously subterranean tensions to the surface. Today, the Republican Party’s establishment says that it stands with Israel and against anti-Semitism, but that stance is under attack by a new wave of insurgents with a very different agenda.

Since October 7, in addition to slurring Shapiro, Carlson has hosted a parade of anti-Jewish guests on his show. One was Candace Owens, the far-right podcaster known for her defenses of another anti-Jewish agitator, Kanye “Ye” West. Owens had already clashed with her employer—the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, co-founded by Shapiro—over her seeming indifference to anti-Semitism. But after the Hamas assault, she began making explicit what had previously been implicit—including liking a social-media post that accused a rabbi of being “drunk on Christian blood,” a reference to the medieval blood libel. The Daily Wire severed ties with her soon after. But this did not remotely curb her appeal.

Today, Owens can be found fulminating on her YouTube channel (2.4 million subscribers) or X feed (5.6 million followers) about how a devil-worshipping Jewish cult controls the world, and how Israel was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and killed President John F. Kennedy. Owens has also jumped aboard the Reich-Rehabilitation Express. “What is it about Hitler? Why is he the most evil?” she asked in July. “The first thing people would say is: ‘Well, an ethnic cleansing almost took place.’ And now I offer back: ‘You mean like we actually did to the Germans.’”

“Many Americans are learning that WW2 history is not as black and white as we were taught and some details were purposefully omitted from our textbooks,” she wrote after Carlson’s Holocaust conversation came under fire. The post received 15,000 likes.

Donald Trump’s entry into Republican politics intensified several forces that have contributed to the rise of anti-Semitism on the American right. One was populism, which pits the common people against a corrupt elite. Populists play on discontents that reflect genuine failures of the establishment, but their approach also readily maps onto the ancient anti-Semitic canard that clandestine string-pulling Jews are the source of society’s problems. Once people become convinced that the world is oppressed by an invisible hand, they often conclude that the hand belongs to an invisible Jew.

Another such force is isolationism, or the desire to extricate the United States from foreign entanglements, following decades of debacles in the Middle East. But like the original America First Committee, which sought to keep the country out of World War II, today’s isolationists often conceive of Jews as either rootless cosmopolitans undermining national cohesion or dual loyalists subverting the national interest in service of their own. In this regard, the Tucker Carlsons of 2024 resemble the reactionary activists of the 1930s, such as the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who infamously accused Jewish leaders of acting “for reasons which are not American,” and warned of “their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”

Populism and isolationism have legitimate expressions, but preventing them from descending into anti-Semitism requires leaders willing to restrain their movement’s worst instincts. Today’s right has fewer by the day. Trump fundamentally refuses to repudiate anyone who supports him, and by devolving power from traditional Republican elites and institutions to a diffuse array of online influencers, the former president has ensured that no one is in a position to corral the right’s excesses, even if someone wanted to.

As one conservative columnist put it to me in August 2023, “What you’re actually worried about is not Trump being Hitler. What you’re worried about is Trump incentivizing anti-Semites,” to the point where “a generation from now, you’ve got Karl Lueger,” the anti-Jewish mayor of Vienna who inspired Hitler, “and two generations from now, you do have something like that.” The accelerant that is social-media discourse, together with a war that brings Jews to the center of political attention, could shorten that timeline.

For now, the biggest obstacle to anti-Semitism’s ascent on the right is the Republican rank and file’s general commitment to Israel, which causes them to recoil when people like Owens rant about how the Jewish state is run by a cabal of satanic pedophiles. Even conservatives like Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, a neo-isolationist who opposes foreign aid to Ukraine, are careful to affirm their continued support for Israel, in deference to the party base.

But this residual Zionism shields only Israeli Jews from abuse, not American ones—and it certainly does not protect the large majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats. This is why Trump suffers no consequences in his own coalition when he rails against “liberal Jews” who “voted to destroy America.” But such vilification won’t end there. As hard-core anti-Israel activists who have engaged in anti-Semitism against American Jews have demonstrated, most people who hate one swath of the world’s Jews eventually turn on the rest. “If I don’t win this election,” Trump said last week, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”

More than populism and isolationism, the force that unites the right’s anti-Semites and explains why they have been slowly winning the war for the future of conservatism is conspiracism. To see its power in practice, one need only examine the social-media posts of Elon Musk, which serve as a window into the mindset of the insurgent right and its receptivity to anti-Semitism.

Over the past year, the world’s richest man has repeatedly shared anti-Jewish propaganda on X, only to walk it back following criticism from more traditional conservative quarters. In November, Musk affirmed the Great Replacement theory, replying to a white nationalist who expressed it with these words: “You have said the actual truth.” After a furious backlash, the magnate recanted, saying, “It might be literally the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done.” Musk subsequently met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and accompanied Ben Shapiro on a trip to Auschwitz, but the lesson didn’t quite take. Earlier this month, he shared Carlson’s discussion of Holocaust revisionism with the approbation: “Very interesting. Worth watching.” Once again under fire, he deleted the tweet and apologized, saying he’d listened to only part of the interview.

But this lesson is also unlikely to stick, because like many on the new right, Musk is in thrall to a worldview that makes him particularly susceptible to anti-Jewish ideas. Last September, not long before Musk declared the “actual truth” of the Great Replacement, he participated in a public exchange with a group of rabbis, activists, and Jewish conservatives. The discussion was intended as an intervention to inoculate Musk against anti-Semitism, but early on, he said something that showed why the cause was likely lost before the conversation even began. “I think,” Musk cracked, “we’re running out of conspiracy theories that didn’t turn out to be true.”

The popularity of such sentiments among contemporary conservatives explains why the likes of Carlson and Owens have been gaining ground and old-guard conservatives such as Shapiro and Erickson have been losing it. Simply put, as Trump and his allies have coopted the conservative movement, it has become defined by a fundamental distrust of authority and institutions, and a concurrent embrace of conspiracy theories about elite cabals. And the more conspiratorial thinking becomes commonplace on the right, the more inevitable that its partisans will land on one of the oldest conspiracies of them all.

Conspiratorial thinking is neither new to American politics nor confined to one end of the ideological spectrum. But Trump has made foundational what was once marginal. Beginning with birtherism and culminating in election denialism, he turned anti-establishment conspiracism into a litmus test for attaining political power, compelling Republicans to either sign on to his claims of 2020 fraud or be exiled to irrelevance.

The fundamental fault line in the conservative coalition became whether someone was willing to buy into ever more elaborate fantasies. The result was to elevate those with flexible approaches to facts, such as Carlson and Owens, who were predisposed to say and do anything—no matter how hypocritical or absurd—to obtain influence. Once opened, this conspiratorial box could not be closed. After all, a movement that legitimizes crackpot schemes about rigged voting machines and microchipped vaccines cannot simply turn around and draw the line at the Jews.

For mercenary opportunists like Carlson, this moment holds incredible promise. But for Republicans with principles—those who know who won the 2020 election, or who was the bad guy in World War II, and can’t bring themselves to say otherwise—it’s a time of profound peril. And for Jews, the targets of one of the world’s deadliest conspiracy theories, such developments are even more forboding.

“It is now incumbent on all decent people, and especially those on the right, to demand that Carlson no longer be treated as a mainstream figure,” Jonathan Tobin, the pro-Trump conservative editor of the Jewish News Syndicate, wrote after Carlson’s World War II episode. “He must be put in his place, and condemned by Trump and Vance.”

Anti-Semitism’s ultimate victory in GOP politics is not assured. Musk did delete his tweets, Owens was fired, and some Republicans did condemn Carlson’s Holocaust segment. But beseeching Trump and his camp to intervene here mistakes the cause for the cure.

Three days after Carlson posted his Hitler apologetics, Vance shrugged off the controversy and recorded an interview with him, and this past Saturday, the two men yukked it up onstage at a political event in Pennsylvania before an audience of thousands. Such coziness should not surprise, given that Carlson was reportedly instrumental in securing the VP slot for the Ohio senator. Asked earlier if he took issue with Carlson’s decision to air the Holocaust revisionism, Vance retorted, “The fundamental idea here is Republicans believe not in censorship; we believe in free speech and debate.” He conveniently declined to use his own speech to debate Carlson’s.

[youremyheaven]

Ashlesha & Toxic Relationships

Tw: abuse, incest, rape, death, domestic violence

I feel like Ashlesha's mommy issues have been covered by others before but I really wanted to explore how Ashlesha nakshatra natives often find themselves in toxic relationships, be it in their own homes or in romantic relationships. I think many of the patterns many people repeat in adult relationships has its roots in their childhood relationships with their family and I see this very evident with many Ashlesha natives. They're often abused at home and later suffer abuse at the hands of partners.

Halle Berry Ashlesha Sun

Halle's father was a violent man who abused her mother repeatedly. He abandoned them when she was 4 and she's been estranged from him since.

She moved with her mother and sister to an all-white neighbourhood where she was exposed to racial discrimination while attending school. Halle admits that these struggles motivated her to succeed. Later in the ’90s, when she moved to New York to pursue her acting career, she was forced to stay in a homeless shelter for a while because she couldn’t afford accommodations.

In 2011, Halle said: "It was only when I was in an abusive relationship and blood squirted on the ceiling of my apartment and I lost 80% of my hearing in my ear that I realised, I have to break the cycle."

Halle is divorced from Gabriel Aubry (in photo with her above) who, she accused of being a racist (he used racial slurs towards her and their daughter), refused to acknowledge their daughter as biracial and court documents revealed that Berry accused him of having been in an incestuous relationship with a family member, abusing their daughter and even revealed the couple only had sex three times a year, with Aubry struggling with the effects of his incestuous relationship.

Charlize Theron- Ashlesha Sun, Moon & Mercury

One night, when her verbally abusive alcoholic father came home with his brother after drinking heavily, he threatened her mother with a gun. He began shooting and Theron's mother grabbed her gun and shot back, killing Theron's father and wounding his brother. Police later determined it was self-defence. They later moved to America so Charlize could pursue an acting career.

Lily Collins, Ashlesha Moon

Lily Collins says she was once in a toxic relationship where she faced "verbal and emotional abuse" that made her feel "very small." Looking back, Lily says her then-boyfriend silenced her feelings and even fuelled emotions of "panic" and "anxiety" -- and it's something that still affects her even though she’s now in a healthy relationship.

"He would call me 'Little Lily'…and he'd use awful words about me in terms of what I was wearing and would call me a whore and all these things," she said on the "We Can Do Hard Things" podcast. "There were awful words and then there were belittling words. I became quite silent and comfortable in silence and feeling like I had to make myself small to feel super safe."

Tina Turner, Ashlesha Rising

Tina’s violent marriage with Ike Turner is well known, largely thanks to the film based on her life, What’s Love Got To Do With It. In the film the singer suffered severe beatings, was raped and had cigarettes stubbed out on her body. Her husband Ike is portrayed as a violent, controlling sociopath, and when Tina’s autobiography was published Ike actually admitted that the book was largely accurate. The pair were married for 16 years before Tina had the courage to leave. Ike is now dead.

I found something she said in an interview to closely correlate to Ashlesha:

"Part of my spiritual practice is to “change poison into medicine,” to take negative situations or roadblocks and transform or remove them through positivity. The force of my positivity pushed all the discriminatory “isms” standing in my way right out the window."

Whitney Houston- Ashlesha Sun & Venus

Their turbulent relationship is well documented, but even though the rumors were that Bobby used to hit Whitney, she actually claimed it was the other way round. In an interview with the Associated Press over 10 years ago, the singing star said: “Contrary to belief, I do the hitting, he doesn’t. He has never put his hands on me. We are crazy for one another. I mean crazy in love, love, love, love, love. When we’re fighting, it’s like that’s love for us. We’re fighting for our love.” Brown, however, was later arrested in 2003 for misdemeanour battery, several years after Whitney said this. The pair eventually divorced after 15 years of marriage in 2007.

Unfortunately, Whitney passed away in 2012 and I firmly believe Bobby did it. Her daughter, Bobbi Brown also passed away in the exact same way in 2015 and there's just no way those 2 deaths were a coincidence. Anytime I hear news of anybody dying in their bathtub after overdosing on a cocktail of drugs, I just know they were murdered. Its very easy to write off deaths as suicide or to make it look like one. Its all the more convincing if the person has a history of drug abuse.

Sridevi, Ashlesha Sun & Rising

Sridevi was forced into acting by her mother (who aspired to be an actress and had failed in her pursuit) when she was 2-3yrs old. Sridevi never received formal education and appeared in 200 films by the time she was 25 years old (she did 300 films total). Her mother and stepfather had another daughter whom they favoured. Sridevi was the cash cow of the household. It was once reported that Sridevi would come home from a long day of filming and spend many hours massaging her mother's feet at night instead of sleeping. Her mother once locked up Sridevi in a dark room and starved her as a 5-year-old because she was too scared to do a scene that involved fire. She became a heroine at the age of 11 years and was paired opposite men who had played her grandad onscreen when she was a child star🤮🤮🤮she was sexually assaulted by many of these men as a child and teenager. Sridevi's mother managed all her finances and did not permit her to go out or meet others and she did not even know how to do virtually anything by herself as her mother kept her under lock and key.

Her husband Boney Kapoor is a movie producer who was married to another woman and had 2 kids when he first met Sridevi. He creepily wooed her for 10 years but Sridevi paid him no mind. In 1995, Sridevi's mother passed away and Boney took full advantage of her vulnerability because even though she was 32, she was basically a child due to the way her mother forced her to live. Sridevi had no one to rely on (her stepfather had died many years prior and her sister sued her for properties and since she was so isolated, she had no friends despite being such a huge star) and Boney took her in. She lived with Boney and his wife and kids but before you knew it, Sridevi was impregnated by him and he soon divorced his wife and married her. In 2018, Sridevi was found dead in a bathtub in Dubai under suspicious circumstances. The case was wrapped up pretty quickly and no one really knows what happened. She allegedly "drowned" but like I said, I dont think all these celebs drowning in their bathtubs is a coincidence.

Zsa Zsa Gabor- Ashlesha Moon

She was married 9 times and many of those marriages were hella toxic. She was married to Conrad Hilton (Paris Hilton's great-grandfather)

She said of the marriage:

"Conrad's decision to change my name from Zsa Zsa to Georgia symbolized everything my marriage to him would eventually become. My Hungarian roots were to be ripped out and my background ignored. ... I soon discovered that my marriage to Conrad meant the end of my freedom. My own needs were completely ignored: I belonged to Conrad."

Gabor's only child, daughter Constance Francesca Hilton, was born in 1947. According to Gabor's 1991 autobiography, One Lifetime Is Not Enough, her pregnancy resulted from rape by then-husband Conrad Hilton.

Marilyn Monroe- Ashlesha Rising

Marilyn had a very difficult life. She grew up in foster homes, her mother was schizophrenic and her father was an alcoholic. Her marriages were unhappy and she was treated like shit by the industry. I don't want to elaborate too much because I feel like everyone already knows about her life story but its truly tragic how things were for her :((

Lucille Ball- Ashlesha Sun

She was married to her onscreen husband Desi Arnaz and they had a horrible toxic marriage where he cheated on her repeatedly and emotionally abused her. He was also an alcoholic.

Bella Hadid, Mars in Ashlesha atmakaraka

"I constantly went back to men -- and also, women -- that had abused me, and that's where the people-pleasing came in," Hadid said on the Victoria's Secret podcast, "VS Voices."  "I started to not have boundaries, not only sexually, physically, emotionally, but then it went into my workspace….I began to be a people-pleaser with my job and it was everyone else's opinion of me that mattered except for my own, because I essentially was putting my worth into the hands of everyone else and that was the detriment of it."

Everybody already knows that Yolanda is toxic as hell, made Bella get a nose job at 14yrs of age and in Bella's own words she was made to feel like the "uglier sister".

Viola Davis, Ashlesha Sun

She and her sisters were sexually abused by their brother. "Sexual abuse back in the day didn't have a name. The abusers were called 'dirty old men' and the abused were called 'fast' or 'heifers,'" she wrote in her memoir.

Davis wrote about the volatile relationship between her empathetic mother and her violent, alcoholic father. With brutal candidness, she channels the unrelenting terror of living in a household of domestic abuse: “There are not enough pages to mention the fights, the constantly being awakened in the middle of the night or coming home after school to my dad’s rages and praying he wouldn’t lose so much control that he would kill my mom.”

Lil Kim, Ashlesha Moon

When she sat down for a candid interview with Newsweek back in 2000, the rapper revealed that she developed a complex about her appearance thanks to a string of unsavory suitors. "All my life men have told me I wasn't pretty enough — even the men I was dating," she revealed. "I'd be like, 'Well, why are you with me, then? I have low self-esteem and I always have," she admitted. "Guys always cheated on me with women who were European-looking. You know, the long-hair type. Really beautiful women. That left me thinking, 'How can I compete with that?' Being a regular black girl wasn't good enough."

It wasn't just the men she dated in her early days that messed with Lil Kim's head — according to the rapper, her own father added to her issues. Her parents divorced when she was 8 and, despite the fact that she wanted to remain with her mother, her dad won custody. When she spoke to Newsweek ahead of the release of her second studio album, The Notorious K.I.M, she revealed that her father would regularly make her feel as though she wasn't good enough. "It was like I could do nothing right," she recalled. "Everything about me was wrong — my hair, my clothes, just me."

Ella Fitzgerald, Ashlesha Rising

At a young 15 years old, Fitzgerald was left motherless and fatherless. To make matters worse, she began being abused by her stepfather. The beatings were physical, but they scared her emotionally as well. She was a beaten and battered child. Her grades fell to be nearly unrecoverable, and she began skipping school regularly. It was an era of racial segregation and Ella is also believed to have been physically abused by her teachers along with some other black students.

Ella and Marilyn were good friends and are said to have bonded over their similarly traumatic lives.

Katie Holmes, Ashlesha Moon & Rising

She escaped an abusive marriage with the sociopathic Tom Cruise and his cult??? need I say more?? I am so happy she is alive and well and that she has managed to protect her daughter as well. Scientologists are insane people who absolutely destroy the lives of anybody who tries to leave their system so its a miracle that Katie is alive and doing well.

Glenn Close, Ashlesha Rising

I don't know what it is about Ashleshas and being trapped/escaping a cult but I've noticed several Ashlesha natives all have this experience

Oscar-nominated actress Glenn Close, for example, was part of a cult called the Moral Re-Armament, from the young age of 7 all the way up to 22. “If you talk to anybody who was in a group that basically dictates how you’re supposed to live and what you’re supposed to say and how you’re supposed to feel, from the time you’re 7 till the time you’re 22, it has a profound impact on you,” she once told The Hollywood Reporter.

Patricia Arquette- Ashlesha Moon

Oscar winner Patricia Arquette wasn’t just raised in Virginia’s Skymont Subud cult, but her parents were the founders of it. The so-called “spiritual movement” was known for not allowing access to bathrooms, electricity, or running water in the name of “inner guidance.” 

While still living with her family, she and her family left the commune to return to a more conventional life. Per ABC, however, the Arquette family wasn’t any better at that time either. “There was a lot of drama in the house,” Arquette said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. “There were a lot of chairs flying around.”

Brie Larson- Ketu in Ashlesha

Brie starred in two movies, The Glass Castle & The Room that both deal with abusive relationships (she is the one stuck in them)

Our Ketu placement is where we draw our creativity from, so its interesting that Brie has played so many characters who have to deal with toxicity.

According to Hindu mythology, Ashlesha nakshatra is associated with the story of the Naga King Vasuki. It is said that Vasuki and his wife were cursed by a sage to become snakes. In order to lift the curse, they sought the help of Lord Vishnu, who advised them to perform a penance in the ashram of a sage named Jaratkaru. After performing the penance, the sage granted their wish and they were able to regain their human form. Since then, Ashlesha nakshatra has been associated with transformation and the power of penance.

In the list of celebrities I have mentioned, many of them survived their abuse and went on to live good lives but many others met with tragic ends. Being "cursed" is part of Ashlesha's mythology, which is why they receive an unfair share of bad experiences and abuse but to perform penance is very very important and something not many are going to be able to do. When so many terrible things happen to you, you're bound to think "why me? I'm a good person, I don't deserve this" and that's absolutely true, no one deserves abuse but the ones who can outlive these negative circumstances are the ones who can in Tina Turner's words "turn poison into medicine". Penance literally means inflicting punishment upon oneself but what it actually means in this context is to turn all your negative experiences that feel like you're being punished into something you can rise up above against. Poison is also part of Ashlesha's lore and while this does make Ashlesha natives rather malicious and manipulative towards others, they need to be able to use this poison as medicine to heal themselves. Otherwise, they end up succumbing to it.

[dimetrodone]

Guardians of Ga'Hoole?

I loved that book series as a kid but I'm also shocked that it got a movie before Warrior Cats did cause I think I've only seen one other person reference Ga'Hoole

I already expressed my feelings on this one a bit. I have never read the books so im purely judging it as a movie itself.

As a movie on its own, it felt like one of the many forgettable early 2010s YA dystopian movies coming out that just happened to be about owls. VERY pretty well crafted animated owls mind you. The characters and pacing felt very truncated like they struggled to include everything they needed into the movie.

Me being extremely nitpicky warning, I dont know if this is how I'd feel about the books to or if something was lost in adaption but the worldbuilding as it was in the movie feels too weak for the sorta genre and tone this story is aiming for. It feels like it has one foot in one foot out bwtween wanting it to be like Silverwing or Watership Down in terms of being about x regular animal but with intelligence, and wanting it to be more worldbuildy or Redwall-ish in nature. There is no humans, and the owls have metalwork and racial supremacy movements and government, but they are still kinda just..owls i guess. Maybe the books are just kinda like that to, but in book form it leaves more to imagination or lets you focus more on all the characters.

I liked the little blind snake maid.

[stackslip]

I'm curious, at the point where you're at in FMA 03, have you met Dante yet? I'm curious at what you think of her.

late but now that i'm done: i adore her. like, she could have benefited from a few more episodes' worth of development (like envy, really, and many other aspects of the ending that were clearly VERY rushed for time), but i fucking *love* what we got of her. i find her a thousand times more compelling and thematically appropriate an antagonist than father is.

the first thing i enjoy about her is that she is, fundamentally, a human. she claims to have surpassed humanity and looks down on them, but she is a real human person who just happens to have used alchemy to extend her own life, and the process costs not only her but everyone! she isn't a supernatural being, and in fact her bodies are all extremely fragile even outside of the whole rotting thing. what she is is really the ultimate alchemist: someone who really does see the world and everyone within it as material to be analysed, decomposed, and recomposed to her will. someone who dehumanizes others so profoundly they are just tools to her, things to be manipulated or destroyed or remodeled at her will, and who's fundamentally baffled when they react as people. but outside of being that good an alchemist, she's also just....... human. she's scared, and petty, and honestly a bit cringe and old-fashioned. she's cunning and used to manipulating people and movements, but she's good in that human, predatory and slimy way rather than as an inhuman force of evil. her motives too are human! she wants to keep living. she claims to be above it all but she is really just another human, among many MANY in the show, who struggle with the concept of dying and letting go of an idealized life. she isn't special among them! she isn't particularly unique in her motivation! she's one of a dozen characters of fma 03 who cannot cope with death as a part of life.

the second thing i enjoy is, how despite her manipulations and how she is, in essence, responsible for everything the brothers have been through (they wear her mark without knowing it for most of their life for fuck's sake!) she is not actually the only one with agency in the world, and while she pushes amestrian towards its genocidal policies the show makes it very very clear clear that she is not solely responsible for them, and that excising her does not suddenly make everything better or end racism or all that fucking nonsense lmfao, it's so clear that really, dante has been taking advantage of existing prejudices and amestris's own imperialist ambitions for her own gain. amestrians support the genocides and wars! it brings them resources, and national pride, and racial superiority! it strengthens the might of state alchemists! again what dante is is first and foremost a manipulator. the homonculi are all lost, and hollow, and desperate OR they are her own creations from past lovers and children she views as her property and lies to. they are inhuman and yet genuinely intimidated by her. she knows what buttons to press. dante doesn't implant or create things in others, she takes advantage of what is there and remolds it to her desire! equivalent exchange if you will :)))

third reason is: again. she is slimy. she is cringe. she is predatory but in a weird flailing way. she is so obviously a predator, and a very much older woman who knows nothing about the times and thinks she's still hot shit. she is sloppy at times in her handiwork. she is deeply, unbelievably petty. she is so awful it becomes campy. she throws a baby in the air for fun and experiments. she is so mad hoheinheim got himself a wife she uses the wife's homonculus for fun. she is EXCEEDINGLY creepy about rose and sexualizes and exoticizes her openly in a way that feels.... genuinely real and pathetic and racist (she is racist tbc, the narrative is v clear about it and isn't doing this for fun points). i think there need to be more evil girlfailure villains who aren't like just, hot sex machines but are this kind of realistic kind of everyday awful and evil.

fourth reason is that she's an excellent foil to a number of characters, starting with hoheinheim obviously and his own fucked up actions, and his own predatory nature towards younger women (and btw just like.... the little we get of their relationship and interactions has my head spinning, it's so good and juicy) and refusal to accept death until he does. but also edward--she isn't just trying to convince him bc he's hoheinheim's son and she's a fucking creepy, but bc again and again the narrative has shown that ed IS teethering on the edge of morality with his alchemy, that his curiosity and drive to prove he CAN do these incredible things deemed impossible, that he IS no ordinary alchemist and his love for al can lead him to dark places. he isn't dante, not yet! he turns away from her values! but had dante played her cards a bit better, maybe he could have been. and of course there's the izumi parallel too: izumi, dante's student who flees her master because there's something wrong with that woman; who grieves her son and tries to bring him back and is stuck with the homonculus that resulted--where dante tried to resurrect her son and used him as a tool. and all those who committed human transmutation in the name of bringing back lost loved ones, when pride and greed are said to be based on dante's former lovers she killed and controlled. did she ever really love them? was her first transmutation genuinely out of grief? when did she lose sight of the common humanity at the core of these other people? was it from the start, or did she lose it gradually as her soul rotted with her bodies?

i think that's also one of the most fascinating aspects of dante. she is, for all intents and purposes, a living corpse who refuses to die and move on. a zombie. in a show full of ghosts and people who are unable to die or move on, in a show about how idealizing the past and trying to freeze it or recreate a pitch perfect version of it stops you from seeing the love and possibilities right in front of your nose. and nowhere is that seen more than in dante: whose bodies rot faster and faster and yet she keeps believing she can fix it. she can use a thousand more lives to let her use a body for a few more months. why should she have to die and move on? why can't the world just stop for her? it should. everyone in fma 2003 keeps trying to repeat the past, to start up the same old cycles, to drag the long dead and buried kicking and screaming into the present. dante literally lives in a city so old and forgotten people have forgotten its existence and that it is the foundation on which central is built. she drags the bones of the homonculi's former selves to threaten them. she tries to immediately start up a relationship with her ex's son, believing she can remodel him to her liking. she takes and she takes and she takes. she has forgotten that one is all and all is one and that all struggles are connected, that the old must give to the new, that you cannot make the same mistakes over and over and get what you want whenever. she is rotten inside and out. i think it's fitting then, that she isn't killed by ed or al's hand, but that she simply storms off mad when things don't go according to plan (because she is just that petty) and that she is killed by the rebound of her own actions of untethering gluttony. she has so thoroughly dehumanized others, literally and figuratively, that she gets swallowed by the results of it, and dies the same pathetic death that the priest did in episode 2, and marcoh did, and many others that she sent gluttony to clean up.

like gd i do wish we could have gotten another full ten eps of her. but i'm also fine with her as she is. she sucks so bad. she's so delicious to dive into, the layers of her fucked up ness.

[amateurvoltaire]

I went to Puy du Fou (1) and watched  'Le Dernier Panache' (2), and needless to say, I've got a few things on my mind. But before I gather my thoughts into something coherent, there’s one pressing issue I need to address: there was NO “extermination” policy in the Vendée.

Is it clear enough for everyone? I sincerely hope so because yesterday, I was among an audience of about 5000 who were shown a scene depicting Robespierre (in yellow), Saint-Just (in turquoise), and Barère (in purple) arguing for the complete destruction of the Vendée… for reasons…

In plain terms, were they advocating for genocide (3)  in the Vendée.

This didn’t happen. In 1793, the idea of a distinct Vendéen identity wasn’t a real thing. The Vendéens were not recognized as a specific regional or ethnic group, not by themselves or anyone else.

Do you know what was real? Brigands rebelling against the first French Republic. What were the policies of extermination targeted towards? Those Brigands. What do you call that? Civil War.

On 1st August 1793, Barère delivered an inflamatory speech (4) that many use to argue the Committee of Public Safety's alleged genocidal intent. His words were indeed unhinged, typical of the era’s rhetoric.

Barère did say, "No more Vendée, no more royalty; no more Vendée, no more aristocracy; no more Vendée, and the enemies of the republic have disappeared," but this infamous line follows a crucial preamble: "We will have peace the day the interior is peaceful, that the rebels are subdued, that the brigands are exterminated. (5)" It’s disingenuous to interpret this as a call to wipe out an entire region (6).

Moreover, this speech was followed by the "Décret relatif aux mesures à prendre contre les rebelles de Vendée", which includes an article (the 8th) stating: "Women, children, and the elderly will be taken inland. Provisions will be made for their subsistence and safety, with all the consideration due to humanity" This directive was actually enforced as evidenced by the 20,000 to 40,000 refugees who the government supported in cities like Poitiers, Orléans, and La Rochelle.

The conservative right in France has been peddling this genocide narrative since the mid-1980s, but no amount of dramatic cursive text with melancholic violin strains will convert fiction into fact.

What happened in the Vendée was horrific. Were there war crimes? Numerous. Was the region scarred by the violence? Undoubtedly. Should we acknowledge that? Of course!  But pushing a theory that is not true detracts from recognising the violence, learning from it and ensuring it will never happen again.

It also cheapens the heroic acts and sacrifices of those who fought not for the narrow political agendas of the 21st century but for causes they truly believed in. The counter-revolutionaries in the Vendée and throughout France were driven by a deep commitment to protect their communities, faith, and way of life. They were not merely victims of a systematic extermination effort but active participants in a struggle to defend their political and religious beliefs (7). Admittedly, I'm not an expert on Charette, but I suspect he would be disturbed to see his legacy so grossly misrepresented…

Notes

(1) Puy du Fou is a historical theme park in the Vendée known for its elaborate live shows that recreate historical events. It has faced criticism for potentially exploiting history and is managed by the Puy du Fou Foundation, linked to its founder, Philippe de Villiers, a French politician noted for his conservative and nationalist views.

(2) This particular show focuses on François Athanase Charette de La Contrie, a Vendean general.

(3) Genocide is defined by the United Nations in the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide", adopted on December 9, 1948, as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

(4) The conflict in the Vendée began in March 1793, prior to Robespierre's association with the Committee of Public Safety. Danton was the one who was instrumental in shaping the initial response to the uprising and was the president of the Convention during Barère’s speech. Weirdly enough, Danton is nowhere on that stage…

(5) The full qoute is "Nous aurons la paix le jour que l'intérieur sera paisible, que les rebelles seront soumis, que les brigands seront exterminés. Les conquêtes et les perfidies des puissances étrangères seront nulles le jour que le département de la Vendée aura perdu son infâme dénomination et sa population parricide et coupable. Plus de Vendée, plus de royauté ; plus de Vendée, plus d'aristocratie ; plus de Vendée, et les ennemis de la république ont disparu. "

(6) This type of rhetoric was not unique to the Vendée but was also directed at other counter-revolutionary hotspots across France like Brittany, Lyon, Marseille, Avignon, etc.

(7) I'm not a particular fan of those beliefs but I can respect the courage to stand up in defence of a lost cause.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Since the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip started, I have been reviewing British media and its everyday items, such as the newspaper, phone, posters, and TV channels that seep into the public’s consciousness. Without the critical tools and education to puncture through their framing, we become complicit and easily intimidated. Some media outlets have gone as far as spreading misinformation, which surely would have been considered a hate crime in other contexts. Both the Daily Telegraph and The Times chose this misinformation as the headline for their October 11th issues. Although some (not all!) of those newspapers have already retracted their original false claims, the damage has already been done.   The Guardian chose to adorn its main headline for October 12th with the words ‘Israelis suspended between fear, grief and foreboding.’ The Daily Mail selected ‘The King Calls Them Terrorists, Why Can’t the BBC?’ Marching to the same beat, the Daily Telegraph opted to plaster the Royals’ condemnation of Hamas on its front pages. Survey the pages of the newspapers, and the stories eliciting support and empathy for Israel abound, making it clear who the perpetrators are and that vengeance against them is justified. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are only evoked through the register of terrorism and violence. Even those headlines, which are shy in their coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, intentionally omit the perpetrators: the Israeli army and state. They are designed to neglect the root and cause of the violence: Israeli settler colonialism. By settler colonialism, we mean the gradual transfer of European Jews to the land of Palestine, the coercive displacement and dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population, and the imposition of a coordinated and sustainable system that turns this displacement into a continuous process.  Western media relies on racial, gendered, and colonial tropes to describe the atrocities in Palestine. It instrumentalizes white female faces to elicit support for Israel. Such a tactic simultaneously serves racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. It relies on notions of white female ‘innocence’ and ‘victimhood’ to justify the continuous erasure of Palestine. In a headline by the Daily Telegraph about a British IDF female soldier, below, we are shown a smiling white female soldier wearing military attire and a keffiyeh on her head. Neither the photograph nor the article questions why a British citizen is justified in enlisting in a settler army elsewhere, let alone the same army that is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. To the contrary, the article frames such enlisting as voluntary and dignified. These strategies bring to mind 9/11, Laura Bush, and the weaponization of white feminism in the service of imperialist and colonial expansion. Black and Brown feminist scholars and activists, including Lila Abu Lughod, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Audre Lorde amongst others, have long debunked and punctured through such strategies. It is this same white feminism that has been utilized by the media and governments to justify the intensification of Israeli brutality against the Palestinian residents of Gaza.