#anti tankie action

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

A must read for all of the kiddos getting into organizing rn. Read and print the whole thing here.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

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[a-very-tired-jew]

I know we’ve established that since last year many people have made this entire conflict their personality. They’ve made (((anti-Zionism))) into their everything, believe that they can’t enjoy anything at all, and pressure others to do so.

I just witnessed it in the wild on here because of the algorithm.

It decided to put a 20k post in my feed that had all the hallmarks of “Palestine is everything” activism. So I checked the blog out.

It’s a self described goth music blog.

So I scrolled. I counted the posts as I went and in scrolling back 4 days I counted 45 posts and reblogs.

None of them were about goth music.

36 out of the 45 were reblogging GoFundMe’s, 6 of them were antisemitic conspiracy or hate disguised as anti-Zionism, and the last few linked it all together with using red flag terminology like “amerikkka”.

Going into the archive showed that the theme of the blog hasn’t been a focus since pre-conflict and since then it’s been (((anti-Zionism))), anti-Western, pro-Hamas, and tankie rhetoric.

They linked their numerous other blogs as well, and it’s the same story.

I know I made this blog in response to the antisemitism that I was witnessing, but damn if I don’t talk about other things on here as well. Nor do I, or any other Jew that has experienced/witnessed antisemitic hate, tell others that they can’t enjoy life and their hobbies/interests and that they must entirely be focused on the conflict and the global rise in hate towards us.

And I think that’s telling.

This war and the global rise in antisemitism that were all witnessing and/or experiencing is concerning, but it’s not all consuming. We still have to live our lives and enjoy them. You can’t stay holed up in your room and just consume everything about this stuff else you become a bit of an unhinged radical that sounds like every conspiracy theorist ever.

But I think that’s a big difference in how a lot of people respond to this conflict and other events. It’s either all consuming and they’re offended when others are not as obsessed, or it’s of concern but does not drive every waking moment and action of the individual unless they are directly involved.

So please, take a moment, and breathe. You are still allowed to enjoy your own life and interests. You need rest and to unwind from the constant consumption of tragedy.

[thomasthetankieengine]

The interesting thing about the Tankie love of the term "liberal Zionist" (or its variant here, "I'm not a Zionist but-") is that it seems to encompass a variety of the following positions:

"I live in Israel, but hate Netanyahu and Likud."

"I don't live in Israel and don't ever want to move there, but still hate Netanyahu and Likud."

"I want a two-state solution."

"I don't believe in any states, including Israel, but am against people using anti-Zionism as an excuse for antisemitism."

"Zionism is not a monolithic movement."

"I support the Standing Together movement."

"There's no excuse for how Israel is treating Palestinians, but it's still fucked up to vandalize a synagogue in Europe or the US to protest that."

If your definition of a supposed movement is that broad, then it's really not much of a movement at all, now is it?

The only thing this positions actually seem to have in common is that they're telling some anti-Zionist activists that it's not OK to be antisemitic or blame Jews in general for the actions of the Israeli government.

And if that feels you with a murderous rage, well... maybe it's time to consider why you feel that way.

For someone like archaeocommunologist, though, there's probably no hope. Currently, the vast majority of his blog consists of him picking fighting with Jewish users.

[sugary-sheep]

"luddite" is as useful as term as "tankie" in that its mostly just a smear word for anyone who says anything that goes against bourgeoisie interests. There's better ways to critique the flaws of anti-tech sentiment than falling back on that type of bourgeois terminology

luddite is a synonym for anti-tech sentiment, it's a very specific word for a very specific ideology. I won't cede to the notion that opposing technologies that increase efficiency is a useful, materialist goal for opposing the bourgeoisie; and even if it was, even if addressing the symptom could help alleviate the disease, strengthening the proletariat via organization and action is simply far more feasible than lobbying the DOTB to abandon new technologies that serve bourgeoisie interests (the accumulation of capital). The only active movements against generative AI are based in expanding copyright law, which would be a fucking nightmare for working artists and do nothing to alleviate the concerns of those workers; the corporations that are using this technology to exploit workers will have access to this technology either way.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

It's not my news source of choice, but it's well-known that Amnesty (national and international branches) has been taken over by tankies.

They openly back Moscow and blame Ukraine for Ukrainian civilians killed by the russians, and are expelling Ukrainian members for challenging them on that position.

This is nothing new. My Ukrainian mother was attacked by them twenty years ago. (For being too "white" to understand refugees—my mother herself was a refugee.)

Please look into the "humanitarian" organisations you donate to.

Ex NSW Labor MP Belinda Neal axed from Amnesty International board

“Amnesty has been captured by a far-Left, hard-Left tankie clique – far-Left people who basically sympathise automatically with anybody who is ostensibly anti-Western, no matter how brutal a regime is,” Mr Pavlou said.

“They’ll be sympathetic to the Russians, they’ll be sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party, they’ll be sympathetic to a wide range of organisations that are massively, massively brutal when it comes to human rights atrocities.”

...

In June, Ukrainian community protest leader Anton Bodganovych was also expelled as a member of Amnesty for breaching its code of conduct.

He believes the official reasons for his removal – like Ms Neale’s and Mr Pavlou’s - were bogus, and his expulsion had more to do with him challenging Amnesty’s position on Russia and Ukraine.

His concerns about Amnesty’s Russian activism began in 2022, when the organisation’s UK branch released a report blaming Ukraine for its own civilian deaths.

“This is just absolutely crazy,” Mr Bogdanovych said. 

“They blamed (Ukrainian) soldiers, that instead of fighting in the nearby forest where they would all be slaughtered because there is no protection for them, they were fighting in a school, forgetting to mention the school was vacated many, many days before.

“It cost hundreds, if not thousands of lives... this report was quoted by Russia to justify the actions and it was widely used in their propaganda.”

On November 20, Amnesty International UK released a statement condemning news US President Joe Biden had authorised the provision of anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine as “reckless” and “deeply disappointing”.

“They are pushing on Ukraine not to use landmines supplied by the US and non-persistent (landmines) in this case means that they are far less harmful to civilians than any other mine that the Russian side would be using or the Ukrainian side would be using (otherwise),” Mr Bogdanovych said.

“I just want Australians to understand that many of these human rights organisations are no longer serving their purpose and Amnesty is a very bright example of that."

[warsofasoiaf]

What's the tea on Sheila Fitzpatrick? Haven't gotten around to any of her work yet

Sheila Fitzpatrick is one of the prominent historians of the "revisionist" school of the Soviet Union, which emerged as a response to the "totalitarian" or "traditionalist" school that was prominent earlier, such as Robert Conquest. Fitzpatrick's most notable contributions to history come from the perspective of the lower classes of the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union was not a singular ideological monolith driven from the top-down and that it had to respond to social forces within its own nation. In many ways, it's actually a welcome revision from the 1950's era of Soviet historiography, and the scholarship produced has increased the overall level of historical understanding.

For herself, Sheila Fitzpatrick is perhaps most notable for her "people's history" of the Soviet Union, one divorced from ideology and focused mostly on social mobility and the experiences of the peasantry and line workers. Perhaps most controversially (and what I was referencing in the earlier post), is that Fitzpatrick contends that the Great Purge and Stalinism was an albeit brutal form of democratic revolution, due to the people that were able to move into the places of those purged and experience social advancement. Stalin secured a way of public buy-in through a newly-empowered cadre of middle-class individuals to achieve legitimacy for his government and secure popular buy-in.

Now, of course, to outside observers, this is nonsense. Murdering people and distributing their stuff to other people is not a viable method of securing popular buy-in or achieving democracy. But because the purged were "class enemies," Fitzpatrick identifies them as "bourgeoise" and "executives," somehow this confers the action a form of legitimacy not seen in other historical or scholarly analysis - it was okay to exterminate them because others were able to benefit, conferring the idea that the people being purged were inherently less worthy than the people who benefitted. Similarly, Fitzpatrick, who took great pains to minimize the effect of ideology within the Soviet Union, is singularly unable to answer the question of why these targets were deemed acceptable in the first place - though ideology provides a very clear outline as to why such "class enemies" would be exterminated. Since such scholarship would be seen as antithetical to the revisionist school, however, it had to be discarded, which undermines the authenticity and accuracy of historical scholarship.

What bothers me about Fitzpatrick is that this is not considered a fringe belief of an otherwise respectable historian, but that this is considered a valid interpretation of a period of history with implications delivered further into the present. To Fitzpatrick's scholarship, it's *okay* to murder undesirables provided that they're the correct undesirables (a big problem given the rise in the justification of violence toward groups deemed to be subhuman - just look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine). Now, this is hardly unusual from a Marxist perspective - Orthodox Marxism depends on the categorical extermination of undesirables to achieve its desired societal utopia, but Fitzpatrick is no tankie and is in fact, quite critical of Stalin, otherwise, but has to find ways to mitigate his atrocities so he's not relegated as a monster.

This has been the case for a lot of contemporary historical scholarship with the Soviet Union. There's a significant number of false equivalencies in Soviet scholarship, such as the Great Purges or Khrushchev's forcible medication of dissidents with McCarthyism, in order to mute criticism of the Soviet Union and reject the notion of it as a censorious and ideologically-driven state. Contextually speaking, a lot of history scholars came to prominence as members of the New Left, whose anti-Vietnam War activism sought to portray the Soviet Union as a defensive, anti-imperialist, and progressive power despite all evidence to the contrary, and has similarly translated into hostility against new scholarship that brings sharper criticism of the Soviet Union into the fore. This was the case with Haynes and Klehr, whose translations of the VENONA cipher decrypts and exposure of the CPUSA's role in Soviet espionage was met with abject vituperation from the leaders of history departments - specifically and explicitly because it serves to provide evidence that undermines their core, tribal thesis. Such hostility to new scholarship, particularly that which is based in evidence instead of interpretation, is nothing short of a failure in history departments in their core mission.

Thanks for the question, Hex.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

This is definetly among the "It's cute" level of Grotmas detachments. Like the Nid-Warriors detachment, this seems more ike a neat little gimmic than a truy competitive option, although I would not dismiss it that early. Regaining life on tanky models like big knights every round is definetly nothing to sneeze at, and the small admech units can cover what is usually the factions weakness: backfield holding, actions, and screening.

Definetly worth for big knights who are even tougher than the average big lad: most certainly a place for something like the Knight Castellan with its T13 stat and 2+ armor save it profits of the healing much more than its little siblings. You can even do a neat enhancement combo where you give 4 more points of health, and then let the nearby techie heal even more.

With that level of tankiness I doubt losing Rotate Ion Shields means much in the grand scheme of things. This is definetly the right detachment when you want one big unkillable murder-machine that even dedicated anti-tank armies will struggle to bring down (because if they can shoot at you, that means the Castellan shoots back next turn - and oh boy does that thing have GUNS).

[kick-a-long]

So I looked up what the white house is currently doing in this new school year to combat antisemitism. They sent out a dear colleague letter last year. That is one tangible thing. The problem I have is two fold.

1. The letter in no way helps Jewish teachers and students report hostile environments because the letters are not sent to them. It doesn’t indicate who to contact (I believe) it mostly informs administrators what their liability is.

2. Almost half the examples are of Arab and Muslim discrimination. Including the formation of clubs for Muslim and Arab support but not that those clubs can’t advance a hostile environment for Jews or Israelis. Several of the examples of antisemitism ignore how antizionist rhetoric is used against American Jews. No examples include harassment for wearing a Star of David or a yarmulka while there are explicit warnings about hijabs.

It’s good to combat anti Muslim bias among students but it’s fucked that almost half of the fight antisemitism letter sent out to schools is focused on it. Especially fucked because antisemitism in every metric has increased more and is more widespread than anti Muslim sentiment, harassment, and actions.

But fuck me right? I hope antizionists, leftists, and tankies know they are perfectly in line with the feds.

If you are experiencing antisemitism at school, contact the ADL and google/contact Jewish legal advocate groups in your area which will do a hell of a lot more than a goy controlled government. (See it’s funny because Zog but Gog is the provable reality! Funny!)

[rotzaprachim]

let’s talk genocide denial!!! I’ve been seeing a Lot of it and it’s very infuriating on all fronts, especially when we are facing situations with multiple genocides at play! For ref, I am not indigenous to turtle island, I am a Tagalog Jew! 1) people refusing to recognize the nakba and the state of Israel’s long-form treatment of Palestine as a form of genocide because “there are more of them now!!!” Genocide is not solely a matter of “numbers” of people alive but also the purposeful destruction of peoples and cultures, as has been enacted against Palestine. 2) this is a complex one but…. Importation of discourses of originalism and indigeneity to middle eastern and Eastern European cultural contexts where they don’t belong. While pretty straightforward on turtle island, the constant flow of people into and out of these regions has meant many groups of people have lived in the same places for hundreds or thousands of years. The claim of “certain” groups of people as being invaders or recent “imports” has been a central aspect of the justification of deportation and genocide across EE and SWANA regions. This includes Jews across Eastern Europe (middle eastern invaders!!!) Palestinians in Palestine (Arab or greek invaders!!!) Armenians everywhere (Christian invaders!!!!) Greeks in Turkey and Egypt, Bosnians in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Turkish invaders!!!) and so forth. Don’t adopt these discourses. 3) point blank labeling of antisemitism as something *fake* the Jews control. *antisemitism*

4) refusal to reckon with the extent of the Shoah and intergenerational traumas and realities of the Shoah (like other genocides.) a genocide affects not only the survivors but their descendants. I’m seeing a lot of people acting like Zionism is a particularly evil ideology the Jews cooked up and then brainwashed other Jews into believing and then everyone chose to move to Israel instead of continue living in their nice cosy Yiddish bund homeland, and that removes the goysiche agency from the story. The Shoah outright obliterated the Jewish homelands and cultural areas Jews had been living in across Europe, and any genuine antizionism or diasporism NEEDS TO LOOK that history right in the face rather than sweeping it under the rug. It NEEDS to reckon with why so many Jews came to believe that they could no longer live outside of their own state because the goyishe world told them with blood that they could no longer live outside of their own state. It also needs to deal with the fact mass numbers of Jews were pretty unceremoniously dumped from DP camps to the state of Israel after the war was over. Genocides affect the survivors for generations, including where they live. 4) refusal to recognize antisemitism in the Arab world or the contexts which forced middle eastern Jews from their homelands and into the state of Israel. Oh it must be /their fault./ see above, no effective antizionism without reckoning with these histories.

5) tankies. There’s just been a mass platforming of tankies recently and many of them engage in genocide apologism or outright denial, especially of the holodomor. Others whitewash the policies of forced cultural assimilation or land dislocation undertaken by the USSR as “necessary anti-conservative revolutionary action against reactionaries.” I don’t care what their *good stances* are, we should not platform outright genocide deniers even if they can *justify* mass killings by means of political ideologies. These ideas include the idea that any discussion of governmental violence or genocide by a non U.S.-aligned state is a western psyop invented by the U.S., and they include not only historic genocides (although as discussed, genocides are not solely “historic” in the sense they continue to affect survivors and their children for generations) but current and ongoing violence against Uighur, Kurdish, Ukrainian, and Tibetan people.

5) anti indigenous racism in turtle island. Also a complex one as I don’t want to engage in whataboutism, but a lotttt of the jokes about *just send the Israelis to New Jersey/New York/Florida* ignore the fact that New Jersey, New York, and Florida are also settler colonies and indigenous homelands. A lot of the discussion of IL by white settlers has revealed the extent that they do not view themselves as white settlers, nor do they really understand native peoples and First Nations continue to exist. “I’d let Native American Hamas kill me and it would be awesome!!!!” Well there is no Native American Hamas, but there might be a tribe in your area that needs money for new kindergarten chairs or support for landback, so you shouldn’t treat them as a vaguely existent hypothetical.

6) reimposition of the colonial notion of one land for one ethnic group with one language and only one language that can be applied to place names. Even if this is in a *decolonial* sense for one area it’s still very dangerous logic to play with, especially with the ethnic diversity of much of the world. The idea of inherent primacy of one ethnic group over another in the post colonial era has been at the root of many mass killings.

7) labeling a language as “evil” or “untrustworthy”

8) I shouldn’t have to tell you why the idea that “there are no civilians” is very bad in literally any case

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Nearly as soon as the Bolsheviks took power, they began to execute anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries, most of whom had fought alongside the Bolsheviks in the Revolution. They also purged elements of their own party deemed "anti-Soviet" or "counter-revolutionary." This state repression was well documented by the Soviet government, but here we have chosen to use journals and letters of those affected. Lithuanian-American Jewish anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman describe the Bolshevik betrayal: The systematic man-hunt of anarchists [...] with the result that every prison and jail in Soviet Russia filled with our comrades, fully coincided in time and spirit with Lenin's speech at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party. On that occasion Lenin announced that the most merciless war must be declared against what he termed "the petty bourgeois anarchist elements" which, according to him, are developing even within the Communist Party [...] On the very day that Lenin made the above statement, numbers of anarchists were arrested all over the country, without the least cause or explanation. The conditions of their imprisonment are exceptionally vile and brutal. (Boni, 253)

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Critical Role Plays Lancer (hypothetical)

What if the core cast of Critical Role played the table top Mecha role playing game Lancer? Here are the CR cast members paired with the most entertaining mechs for their style of play:

Travis Willingham in a HORUS Balor

In the major D&D campaigns Travis has shown a preference for melee combatants who engage with dark unsavory powers. The Balor is a huge mech that eats other mechs using nanite swarms. Those same nanites probably contain the consciousness of freedom fighters-turned-terrorists-turned-into-a-hive mind. It's a perfect match! If the Balor is equipped with an A.I. called a Non-Human Person then there is a possibility that Travis's pilot-character could get eaten by his own mech!

Laura Bailey in a Harrison Armory Barbarossa

Laura apparently likes long-range damage dealers and typically those are very delicate and agile characters. It would be intriguing to see how she'd handle the Barbarossa. The Barbarossa is a tanky behemoth armed with the APOCALYPSE RAIL, an anti-warship weapon that requires the user to stay still in order to charge. It would be very interesting to see if the pilot that Laura creates would fire into a melee scrum and potentially kill her allies to achieve victory. She could play around with the anxiety her pilot would experience while screaming "Get Clear of the Blast! Firing!" Or she could role play as someone totally ruthless who justifies friendly fire with the fact that dead pilots can be flash-cloned and mechs can be salvaged.

Marisha Ray in an IPS-N Tortuga

Marisha Ray is from Kentucky. The Tortuga has Shotguns. The synergy is naturally there, you guys. Joking aside, the Tortuga would give Marisha a lot of role flexibility, she'd be able to defend her friends from enemy advance or she could push into the fray headfirst. If her pilot is tech-savvy, she could even engage in some cyberwarfare which the Tortuga is kind-of good at. Plus the Tortuga comes with a really boring A.I. that could act as the straight man for whatever jokes Marisha's character would come up with.

Talesin Jaffey in an SSC Mourning Cloak

Mr. Jaffey would probably go with a homebrewed mech if given the choice. Since I cannot imagine the Eldritch Mechanism he would craft, I am forced to prescribe him a Mourning Cloak. It is one of the few mechs capable of teleporting, which it doesn't do very precisely. There is a slight chance that Talesin might roll poorly while determining teleport distance, causing his pilot and mech to go... someplace else... and only reappear after the scene is over. He and the game master could have a lot of fun with that.

Liam O'Brien in a HORUS Goblin (warning: robo-codpiece, or maybe you like that kind of thing, IDK)

In tactical table top action, Liam shows a propensity for complexity. And nothing is more complex than the little Goblin which contains more electronics within it than is physically possible. The Goblin can hack allies to make their systems better, hack enemy systems to make them much worse, and even hack reality to make Things happen. Liam could reprise some of his favorite shticks like "I'm just a little guy, give me uppies," and "This goblin is named Nott and is my best friend."

Ashley Johnson in a Harrison Armory Genghis

In the first two major D&D campaigns Ashley played melee damage dealers and then branched out into a wildfire druid in the third. So a striker type mech that plays with fire would be consistent with her previous choices. Enter the Genghis, the carefree pyromaniacs choice of mechanized chassis. The mech builds up heat from weapons like it's Krakatoa flamethrower or a GMS Thermal Lance and then releases it in a blistering-blinding heat cloud. Incendiary damage continues burning victims until they douse themselves so Ashley can just set and forget. Finally I'd love to see what kind of pilot Ashley would come up with who would use a mech that's just as terrifying as the Balor.

Sam Riegel in an SSC Swallowtail (oh gods... please excuse the terrible mspaint job... hopefully this looks funny in a good way)

In D&D, Sam seems to like playing as unconventional back-line characters. He's been a tricky bard, a sneaky goblin/halfling rogue, and most recently a literal healbot with rage issues. So I think the Swallowtail would be a good fit for him. It's less of a mech and more of a high quality holographic movie studio on legs. It can make simulated stunt doubles of allies, use it's cameras to focus in such excruciating detail that invisible subjects are revealed, and even turn itself and everyone nearby invisible so they don't mess up the film shoot. Sam's pilot character could be some kind of propagandist or movie set manager who is infuriated by how messy actual warfare is.

Finally, Last but not least:

Mathew Mercer in an IPS-N Lancaster

I would be automatically fascinated by Mr. Mercer's interpretation of galactic human society in the year 5016u and the journey he would take his players on. But if he was a player then it would be interesting to see him controlling a Lancaster, the apex of mobile field repair platforms. Anything bad that can happen to a mech (damage, burning, hacked, immobilized) can be undone by the reliable Lancaster and it's limited pool of resources. I'm confident Mercer would be able to manage those resources wisely although it would be funny if he didn't. Role playing as his pilot, we'd get to see Matt do his best futuristic tow truck operator impression, which I think would be a very gratifying experience.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Columbia University's Joint Anti-Israel Groups Go Mask Off

Hey, remember how Columbia University had students in encampments protesting for months? Remember how their SJP, BDS movement, and associated groups endorsed terrorism, violence, and "resistance by any means"?

I remember. Well their joint SJP and BDS group called CU Apartheid Divest just posted something to their Instagram that shows it has never been about Palestine or Palestinians.

Fig. 1. CU Apartheid Divest group, made of SJP, BDS, and other groups openly admits that they are anti-Western Civilization

Read that again.

"We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization."

That's a wild statement to make.

So what are they posting about suddenly that has them revealing their intent for their actions since October?

Bangladesh.

The CU Activists are attempting to liken October 7th attack by Hamas with the Bangladesh student protests. Bangladesh had a quota based employment system that students were protesting, the government responded violently, and everything escalated from there due to years of government corruption, violence, and economic turmoil. This was a protest turned revolution within a country by its own people. This was not a government run by a recognized terrorist group attacking another country, killing civilians, and taking them hostage.

However, the differences and reasons between Hamas's actions and the actions of the students in Bangladesh do not matter to the anti-Zionist Activist.

We've seen this repeatedly from these activists that they will try to liken their movement and/or attach it to other conflicts around the world. Many of these conflicts differ greatly from the Israel/Hamas war as they are internal issues with internal actors being involved.

Bangladesh is students protesting against their government.

Sudan is going through a civil war between various factions.

The Congo has been experiencing decades long violence as various militias fight each other for control.

Yet I've see anti-Israel protestors tag their posts with Free Bangladesh, Free Congo, Free Sudan even though these conflicts differ in origin and parties involved.

If you continue through the IG post you'll see very little information as to the cause of the protest/revolution in Bangladesh and continued attempts to coopt the actions for their movement.

Fig. 2. CU Apartheid Divest group tries to liken its student movements to the student protests in Bangladesh and calls to escalate.

I can't help but think that the CU student activists yearn to be oppressed in a way that would allow them to respond like revolutions and protests around the world. The way they speak and write exudes a yearning for violence. In Fig. 2. they detail the actions taken by students against an authoritarian government that has actively shot and killed protestors. Whereas here in the USA the students were forcibly removed from campuses, experienced some police violence, were arrested, and then released. No curfews with a shoot on sight policy were imposed here in the USA in response to college campus protests.

Fig. 3. CU Apartheid Divest classifies this as an Intifada and likens it to Hamas's attack.

Notice in Fig. 3. that they're trying to call the actions in Bangladesh an Intifada. Not an intifada, but an Intifada which is a proper noun with its own connotation. I know I may be a stickler here, but if I see that word capitalized then I know it's referencing the First and Second Intifadas, and I know that these student groups have been calling for a Third one under the guise of "Global Intifada". They also say that Westerners need to escalate and are "obligated" to do so.

Fig. 4. CU Apartheid Divest uses tankie terminology, refers to Bangladeshis as martyrs, and calls this part of the Global Intifada.

The terminology in Fig. 4. also shows how much the Free Palestine student movement in the USA is not actually about Palestine, Palestinians, or any other movement it tries to attach itself to. These are tankies as indicated by the use of "comrades" and they are wholly opposed to Western Civilization. They genuinely state that their movement should violently escalate here in the USA and that they should be prepared for "sacrifices". This language when coupled with the use of Intifada is alarming as it appears that these student activists are preparing to follow in the footsteps of the Second Intifada, or at the very least calling for others to do so.

These students, whom call themselves the Militants of Hind's Hall (seen in the IG post, but not pictured here), are coopting, or attempting to coopt, movements and conflicts from around the world for their own ideals. As these are students in the USA who are arguably experiencing the least amount of oppression when compared to these other conflicts, and are actively attending Ivy League or R1 universities, it can only be assumed that they're yearning to live out their Glorious Revolution fantasy.

I am under no illusion that I understand their reasoning. Are things perfect here in the USA? Of course not, but when compared to the countries that these student protestors are attaching themselves to, we are leaps and bounds better. And if you disagree, then I have to ask, when was the last time we had a curfew with a shoot on sight policy?

Anyone attempting to call this movement and group "peaceful" is naive. They've been telling you for months that they're not peaceful, that their goals are not peaceful, and that the only peace they want is after they commit violence.

The IG link for reference

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

this is the nonrebloggable post. Anyway. I went to a Jewish school in the 90s to early 2000s (through middle school; it did not have a high school and I went to a public high school) and this particular combination of things was formative in the following ways:

about a quarter of my (small) class were Soviet refugees who had moved here in the early 90s. I have known Georgia is a country since 2nd grade because I had a classmate whose family moved from there. I was pretty aware that the Soviet Union had pretty big issues from a very young age. Obviously I was born in the US to parents born here, so I will not speak over people who were born in the USSR or immediately post-USSR but yeah tankies are objectively wrong and always will be and I will not give them the time of day. This also informs why, however, I've seen no shortage older FSU immigrants in the US have an absolute knee-jerk opposition to any whiff of the word "socialism" (and explains why no shortage of South Americans and Cubans feel similarly).

There was very much a push in that era towards Holocaust education in Jewish schools since it was quite apparent that survivors were getting old. I do not recall a time when I did not know about the Holocaust and about fascism and genocide.

Related to the above, at the time, my school was very good about consistently covering that Roma people were also a target of genocide, but used a term that we would consider a slur today. This has absolutely informed my willingness to listen to people who don't use the precise right terms but are clearly well-intentioned.

a couple classmates had (white) parents from South Africa. In middle school we covered African history; it was necessarily broad and geared towards that age but my friend's father, who had been strongly encouraged to leave South Africa for anti-apartheid activism, was brutally honest that his parents were pretty noncommital. He and my teacher were fairly unflinching in teaching us at age 13 or so that most white Jewish families in South Africa had fled deeply antisemitic Europe and found themselves in a position of relative safety and power and that many were unwilling to challenge a clearly racist system, often for fear that doing so would repaint the target on their backs but sometimes just because it was easier and because it was kind of nice to have some measure of power.

anyway I think these are all just illustrative of some of the points I made. You cannot treat groups as a monolith, you do need to be cognizant of both global and national factors in why people may hold the political opinions they do, you should not nitpick well-intentioned but imperfect actions (especially in terms of terminology) and you cannot assume that being part of a minority group automatically will make people the good guys, especially if they feel they can either gain acceptance or avoid retribution by allying with the oppressors.

The reason this is nonrebloggable is because antisemitism fundamentally is a system of oppression that does assume the last is true but only for Jews, and because this post is extremely about being Jewish I do want to control its distribution and keep it out of the hands of people who will further that narrative. This is incorrect. It's true of all minority groups, and it's extremely true for men in minority groups going after women.

[reasonandempathy]

"I find it telling that people say there should be a ceasefire, because the on going war will just make Palestinians hate Israelis more, leading to more groups like Hamas being established, but I saw no one denouncing Hamas' massacre on Oct 7, or the decades of Palestinian terrorism that preceded it, being denounced because of the hatred for Palestinians that would plant in the hearts of Israelis."

It's takes like these that only serve to help convince me that people exist on entirely different planes of existence, and that's sincerely and seriously concerning.

Different lived experiences, to be sure, but I couldn't find any mainstream conversation that didn't include condemnations of the crimes of Hamas, and didn't center the pain experienced by Israelis and Jewish people until 2024 rolled around.

Maybe on the most extremely-online circles, or tankie circles, that was more common (or maybe Twitch?), but "Palestinian terrorism [like Hamas' actions] is counter-productive" has been arguably the main leftist and anti-Zionist point against Hamas the entire time. There is some steel-manning of Hamas in the "they're resisting occupation" thought, but I haven't seen anyone seriously advocating that Hamas' actions are productive/"good". The best defense I've ever seen, even in passing, of Hamas is either vague Tankie bullshit or that one MLK quote, which itself has a condemnation of the acts built into it.

There are a long list of reasons why Hamas is abhorrent, so maybe this person only noted reasons 4-27 and missed 1-3 and 28-96, but...

Palestinian terrorism [and Hamas specifically] fostering fear and hatred in the hearts of Israelis is the central political machination of the Netanyahu Government's support for Hamas in the first place. Granted there was also the "we need to keep palestinian political life separate to make resistance weaker," but there was also very much a "Hamas is horrible, it will not be a reasonable partner for Israel, and its abhorrent beliefs will ensure Netanyahu has a stable base of hatred of Palestinians to use as political fuel."

Where do they think the "The Palestinian/Israeli Conflict is so long and so complicated and we can't expect [Israelis and Palestinians] to stop fighting, because how could Israelis not hate Palestinians/Hamas" concept come from?

It's like saying U.S. Society never really spoke about Slavery because it's only passingly referenced in the 2024 Constitution.

[kolibrieren]

If your reaction to anti-GDR and PRC art is to call it "anticommunist" then you're not actually thinking, you're just worshipping the idea of communism.

The GDR and PRC (and USSR) were/are soulless totalitarian states that abused their citizens and committed genocide, while wearing the flayed skin of communism to try and justify their actions as being in service of the proleriat they were stomping on.

The Eusean Nation is a direct commentary on these states, particularly the GDR, and just because Signalis shits on a millitary dictatorship justifying its' oppression with revolutionary rhetoric doesn't mean it's some sort of fascist screed.

The workers of S23 are kept in cages and tortured for confessions. Use some fucking braincells and stop mindlessly consuming tankie propaganda, goddamn.