#because they think antisemitism is just about conscious jew-hatred

[hilacopter]

if I see you saying stuff like "jews please call me out and correct me if I ever post something antisemitic!" you better be willing to actually listen and take to heart stuff you might not like hearing

[eroticcannibal]

I get what the other anon is saying/frustrated about, but I can't help but get REAL suspicious when the only two countries people get mad about for currently committing genocide are Russia - which obviously did something in front of the entire world incredibly recently and people essentially started using their hatred of the country to virtue signal - and Israel, the one Jewish country in the entire goddamn world and afaik the only country where the Indigenous people evicted from it have managed to return and gain full independence.

Like, I do not think it is a conscious thing at all in most people's minds, but if the only two genocides someone regularly gets angry about are The Latest Big One and The One Jews Can Be Blamed For it does not come across great. At All. At best, it sounds like they only bother learning about the ones everyone around them is talking about. At worst... Even with the best of intentions, no one is immune to propaganda.

Also agree with this, I've always found it very suspicious that eurovision fans on the whole (im not saying prev anon specifically I mean as a group) only really care about Israel competing and have only cared about Russia competing since last year like. Come on ppl. Its Europe. Its the continent of evil colonial powers. Everyone here dabbles in a bit of genocide and occupying territory. Let's be consistent here. Let's stop singling out just the majority Jewish country and the one country everyone is still frothing over because communists even tho its not the ussr anymore. its glaringly obvious whats going on here. Eurovision *could* be a great platform for bringing attention to such issues against *all* countries involved but the fans is cowards and far too comfortable with what the countries they like are doing

(And *personally* the majority of anti-israel-in-eurovision sentiment I've seen is more on the side of antisemitism than pro-palestinian sentiment)

[arcticdementor]

There’s no nice way to say this: a certain subset of (mostly) white people have lost their minds online. These people wake up to a vast insurrection crossing all racial and national boundaries – and contrive to make this all about themselves. Their affects, their unconsciouses, their moral worthiness. How can I be Not Complicit? How can I be a Better Ally? How do I stop benefiting from white supremacy in my daily life? How do I rid myself of all the bad affects and attitudes? Can I purify my soul in the smelter of a burning police precinct? Occasional ratissages out into mainstream culture (we’re decolonising the Bon Appétit test kitchen!), but mostly what this uprising calls for is an extended bout of navel-gazing. Really get in there, get deep in that clammy lint-filled hole, push one finger into the wound of your separation from the primordial world, and never stop wriggling. Maybe there’s a switch, buried just below the knot, and if you trip it your body will open up like a David Cronenberg nightmare to reveal all its greasy secrets to your eyes. Interrogate yourself! Always yourself, swim deep in the filth of yourself. The world is on fire – but are my hands clean? People are dying – but how can I scrub this ghastly whiteness off my skin?

You could set aside the psychosexual madness of this stuff, maybe, if it actually worked. It does not work. It achieves nothing and helps nobody. Karen and Barbara Fields: ‘Racism is not an emotion or state of mind, such as intolerance, bigotry, hatred, or malevolence. If it were that, it would easily be overwhelmed; most people mean well, most of the time, and in any case are usually busy pursuing other purposes. Racism is first and foremost a social practice.’ Social practices must be confronted on the level of the social. But for people who don’t want to change anything on the level of the social, there’s the Implicit Associations Test. This is the great technological triumph of what passes for anti-racist ideology: sit in front of your computer for a few minutes, click on some buttons, and you can get a number value on exactly how racist you are. Educators and politicians love this thing. Wheel it into offices. Listen up, guys, your boss just wants to take a quick peek into your unconscious mind, just to see how racist you are. How could anyone object to something like that?

…

See, for instance, the form letters: How To Talk To Your Black Friends Right Now. Because I refuse to be told I can’t ever empathise with a black person, I try to imagine what it would be like to receive one of these. Say there’s been a synagogue shooting, or a bunch of swastikas spraypainted in Willesden Jewish Cemetery. Say someone set off a bomb inside Panzer’s in St John’s Wood – and then one of my goy friends sends me something like this:

Hey Sam – I can never understand how you feel right now, but I’m committed to doing the work both personally and in my community to make this world safer for you and for Jewish people everywhere. From the Babylonian Captivity to the Holocaust to today, my people have done reprehensible things to yours – and while my privilege will never let me share your experience, I want you to know that you’re supported right now. I see you. I hear you. I stand with the Jewish community, because you matter. Please give me your PayPal so I can buy you a bagel or some schamltz herring, or some of those little twisty pastries you people like.

How would I respond? I think I would never want to see or hear from this person again. If I saw them in the street, I would spit in their face, covid be damned. I would curse their descendants with an ancient cackling Yiddish curse. These days, I try to choose my actual friends wisely. Most of them tend to engage me with a constant low level of jocular antisemitic micoaggressions, because these things are funny and not particularly serious. But if one of my friends genuinely couldn’t see me past the Jew, and couldn’t see our friendship past the Jewish Question, I would be mortified. Of course, it’s possible that the comparison doesn’t hold. Maybe there are millions of black people I don’t know who love being essentialised and condescended to, who are thrilled by the thought of being nothing more than a shuddering expendable rack for holding up their own skin. But I doubt it. Unless you want me to believe that black people inherently have less dignity than I do, this is an insult.

…

If you want to find the real secret of this stuff, look for the rules, the dos and don’ts, the Guides To Being A Better Ally that blob up everywhere like mushrooms on a rotting bough. You’ve seen them. And you’ve noticed, even if you don’t want to admit it, that these things are always contradictory:

DO the important work of interrogating your own biases and prejudices. DON’T obsess over your white guilt – this isn’t about you! DO use your white privilege as a shield by standing between black folx and the police. DON’T stand at the front of marches – it’s time for you to take a back seat. DO speak out against racism – never expect activists of colour to always perform the emotional labour. DON’T crowd the conversation with your voice – shut up, stay in your lane, and stick to signal boosting melanated voices. DO educate your white community by providing an example of white allyship. DON’T post selfies from a protest – our struggle isn’t a photo-op for riot tourists.

Žižek points out that the language of proverbial wisdom has no content. ‘If one says, “Forget about the afterlife, about the Elsewhere, seize the day, enjoy life fully here and now, it’s the only life you’ve got!” it sounds deep. If one says exactly the opposite (“Do not get trapped in the illusory and vain pleasures of earthly life; money, power, and passions are all destined to vanish into thin air – think about eternity!”), it also sounds deep.’ The same goes here. Whatever you say, it can still sound woke. Why?

…

This stuff is masochism, pleasure-seeking, full of erotic charge – and as Freud saw, the masochist’s desire is always primary and prior; it’s always the submissive partner who’s in charge of any relationship. Masochism is a technology of power. Setting the limits, defining the punishments they’d like to receive, dehumanising and instrumentalising the sadistic partner throughout. The sadist works to humiliate and degrade their partner, to make them feel something – everything for the other! And meanwhile, the masochist luxuriates in their own degradation – everything for myself! You’re just the robotic hand that hits me. When non-white people get involved in these discourses, they’re always at the mercy of their white audiences, the ones for whom they perform, the ones they titillate and entertain. A system for subjecting liberation movements to the fickle desires of the white bourgeoisie. Call it what it is. This is white supremacy; these scolding lists are white supremacist screeds.

But systems of white supremacy have never been in the interests of most whites (‘Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin when in the black it is branded’), and they have never really fostered any solidarity between whites. Look at the stories. I had a run-in with the police, you announce, and a black person might have died, but I’m fine, because I’m white. No – you’re fine because you’re white and rich. You’re fine because you look like someone who reviews cartoons for a dying online publication called The Daily Muffin, which is exactly what you are. Bald and covered in cat hair. Frameless glasses cutting a red wedge into the bridge of your nose. The white people who get gunned down by police don’t look like you. Their class position is stamped visibly on their face, and so is yours. And you’ve trained yourself to see any suffering they experience as nothing more than ugly Trump voters getting what they deserve.

Why aren’t there protests when a white person is murdered by police? Answer 1: because, as John Berger points out, ‘demonstrations are essentially urban in character.’ Native Americans are killed by cops at an even higher rate than black people, but this too tends to happen very far away from the cities and the cameras; it becomes invisible. Answer 2: because nobody cares about them. Not the right wing, who only pretend to care as a discursive gotcha when there’s a BLM protest. And definitely not you. Sectors of the white intelligentsia have spent the last decade trying to train you out of fellow-feeling. Cooley et al., 2019: learning about white privilege has no positive effect on empathy towards black people, but it is ‘associated with greater punishment/blame and fewer external attributions for a poor white person’s plight.’ A machine for turning nice socially-conscious liberals into callous free-market conservatives.

The rhetoric of privilege is a weapon, but it’s not pointed at actually (ie, financially) privileged white people. We get off lightly. All we have to do is reflect on our privilege, chase our dreamy reflections through an endlessly mirrored habitus – and that was already our favourite game. You might as well decide that the only cure for white privilege is ice cream. Working-class whites get no such luxuries. But as always, the real brunt falls on non-white people. What happens when you present inequality in terms of privileges bestowed on white people, rather than rights and dignity denied to non-white people? The situation of the oppressed becomes a natural base-state. You end up thinking some very strange things. A few years ago, I was once told that I could only think that the film Black Panther isn’t very good because of my white privilege. Apparently, black people are incapable of aesthetic discernment or critical thought. (Do I need to mention that the person who told me this was white as sin?) This framing is as racist as anything in Carlyle. It could only have been invented by a rich white person.

Give them their due; rich white people are great at inventing terrible new concepts. Look at what’s happening right now: they’re telling each other to read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. You should never tell people to read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo – but we live in an evil world, and it’s stormed to the top of the Amazon bestsellers list. You maniacs, you psychopaths, look what you’ve done. I’m not saying people shouldn’t read the book – I read it, and I don’t get any special dispensations – but you should read it like Dianetics, like the doctrine of a strange and stupid cult.

…

The book is a thrill-ride along a well-paved highway – ‘powerful institutions are controlled by white people;’ true, accurate, well-observed – that quickly takes a dive off the nearest cliff – ‘therefore white people as a whole are in control of powerful institutions.’ Speak for yourself, lady! All a are b, DiAngelo brightly informs us, therefore all b must also be a. She doesn’t advocate for her understanding of the world, she simply assumes it. So it’s not a surprise that the real takeaway from White Fragility is that Robin DiAngelo is not very good at her job.

…

Imagine a devoted cultist of Tengrism, who sometimes gets invited by company bosses to harangue the workforce on how the universe is created by a pure snow-white goose flying over an endless ocean, and how if you don’t make the appropriate ritual honks to this cosmic goose you’re failing in your moral duty. But every time she gives this spiel, she always gets the same questions. Exactly how big is this goose? Surely the goose must have to land sometimes? Geese hatch in litters – what happened to the other goslings? Something must be wrong with these people. Why don’t they just accept the doctrine? Why do they hate the goose? We need a name for their sickness. Call it Goose Reluctance, and next time someone doesn’t jump to attention whenever you speak, you’ll know why. Of course, the comparison is unfair; ideas about eternal geese are beautiful, and DiAngelo’s are not. But the structure is the same. Could it be that Robin DiAngelo is a poor communicator selling a heap of worthless abstractions? No, it’s the workers who are wrong.

(By the way, how did you feel about that phrase, racial humility? I didn’t like it, but her book is full of similar formulations – she also wants us to ‘build our racial stamina’ and ‘attain racial knowledge.’ Now, maybe I’m an oversensitive kike, but I can’t encounter phrases like these and not hear others in the background. Racial spirit. Racial consciousness. Racial hygiene. And somewhere, not close but coming closer, the sound of goosestepping feet.)

I didn’t seek out any of the material I talk about here. It came to me. And it’s making me feel insane. The only social media I use these days is Instagram – because if I’m going to be hand-shaping orecchiette all night, and serving it with salsiccia, rapini, and my own home-pickled fennel, it’s not for my own pleasure, and I demand to receive a decent 12 to 15 likes for my efforts. (I will not be accepting your follow request.) A week ago, on the 2nd of June, my feed was suddenly swarming with white people posting blank black squares. People I’d never known to be remotely political, people whose introduction to politics was clearly coming through the deranged machine of social media. Apparently, that was ‘Blackout Tuesday.’ I don’t know whose clever idea this was, and I don’t want to know, but it came with a threat. If all your friends are posting the square, and you’re not, does it mean you simply don’t care enough about black lives? Around the same time, I was helpfully made aware of a viral Instagram album titled Why The Refusal To Post Online Is Often Inherently Racist. I honestly can’t imagine how terrifying it must be to live like this – always on edge, always trying to be Good, always trying to have your Goodness recognised by other people, in a game where the scores are tracked by what you post on the internet, and the rules are always changing.

[aeide-thea]

[antisemitism, anti-black racism cw]

i’m reading a british detective novel from 1938, specifically nicholas blake’s the beast must die, and—i was going to say ‘yikes has it not aged well,’ but i don’t actually think this kind of thinking was any more excusable eighty years ago, so scratch that comment! anyway: we first encounter one of the characters, a Young Ingenue, as she’s going on about a man who won’t leave her alone, and we don’t learn much about him but one infers that he must be jewish, because she goes on to say, “I keep on telling Weinberg he must ring up the Embassy and have the man deported the country’s not big enough to hold both of us either he goes or I but of course all these Jews are in league I must say we could do with a bit of Hitler here though I do rather bar rubber truncheons and sterilisation. Well now, as I was saying…” and at first i thought, god, okay, well, that’s fucked up, guess we’re not supposed to think much of her! but the narrative proceeds blithely onwards after dropping that bombshell, to describe her as “not unattractive” not once but twice, specifically with regard to her personality and not just her physique; and while this portion of the book is someone’s diary, so one might think, all right, so this particular chap hasn’t got much moral sensibility (which would fit with certain other aspects of his narrative), later when we move to a more objective third-person viewpoint, anchored by a narrator we’re supposed to like and respect, she’s still portrayed sympathetically! so that theory’s out, and it’s just that our author (who is also, fun fact, daniel day-lewis’s father) felt this was perfectly acceptable small talk for someone to make, and nothing that would set a reader against a character. and then of course later on someone else is described as having “arrogant, negroid lips,” so, you know, we’re well on our way to -ism bingo! fun for the whole family, as long as they’re all white and don’t care about other people.

i mean, it would be disingenuous of me to be really shocked, antisemitism is everywhere and that was decidedly true in 1938, but part of me is always taken aback to be reading something that’s otherwise quite sensitive in its understanding of people and then suddenly to find it dabbling in this sort of generic bigotry, because it’s such a betrayal of its own intellectual standards! only of course it can’t see that it is, because that’s how this kind of insidious bigotry works, it bypasses conscious thought.

anyway i realize none of this is new or interesting analysis but i feel we have a duty to call these things out where we see them; plus i suppose in theory if someone were to see this post before reading the book in question they’d at least be forewarned and not get blindsided? but obviously this is mostly just a weary sigh at encountering the same old predictable hatreds yet again, in a text that foolishly i’d wanted to trust, because it seemed intelligent and sensitive. and mostly it is! which feels worse than if it had no redeeming qualities.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 114 Review

Zeke Jeager: Origins! Edition

One of the cool things about this series is that Isayama seems to have a passing interest in sociology. He’s written a series that tries to delve into what makes humans tick and how human interactions work.

I’ve been wary of this series and its potential, rightward leaning politics, but the biggest reason to be hopeful has always been that Isayama has clearly exercised due diligence in researching the sociological aspects he’s writing into the story. 

(This sounds hopeful, but what you’re actually reading is the start of a rant about how awful this story is.)

The story has paralleled the Eldians to Jews, and in ways that seem to have gone over people’s heads. Yes, they live in ghettos and wear starred armbands. But it goes much deeper than that.

Racism has its roots in medieval antisemitism. Medieval Christians hated Jews, and do you know why?

Because they thought Jews were children of the devil.

Medieval Europe had a very religious, predominantly Christian, society, and because Jews do not believe in the divinity of Jesus, they were considered suspect. People believed that they were children of the devil. That they did his bidding and were the enemies of God.

And not only that, but a belief took hold in the popular medieval conscious:

That the Jews murdered Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

This charge of deicide was used to justify antisemitic hate; killing Jesus was considered a stain on all Jews for all time. This parallels how Eldians are hated for the past crimes of the Empire.

Isayama has clearly done some homework. He deserves credit for that.

But I fear something sinister may be going on here.

The parallel between Jews and Eldians appears to work, but it actually doesn’t, and that’s because there’s a very important difference.

How much responsibility Jewish authorities have for Jesus’ crucifixion is debated, but in any event, that responsibility would not carry over to future generations. The Catholic Church has explicitly repudiated this notion. (See section 4, para. 6)

Responsibility for the Eldian Empire’s actions, however, as I have repeatedly said before, does in fact carry over. This is not some controversial notion I’m pushing here. It’s political philosophy 101.

The Empire committed its atrocities in the name of the Eldian people. Thus, there is carry over from the imperial era. This doesn’t justify the hate Eldians get, but calling for reparations does not entail hate. Calling for Jews to account for killing Jesus does entail hate because the charge of deicide is a canard; it’s slander.

In any event, the racism Eldians suffer today makes the crimes of the Empire a moot point. But that’s not what the story is saying. The story is saying that the sins of the father should not be visited upon the son. All well and good, but Isayama compares apples to oranges by drawing this Jewish/Eldian parallel.  

Now, let’s add a third component to the mix.

Isayama has also paralleled the Eldians to Japanese people. Paradis is very obviously an analog to Japan. An island nation asserting itself on the world stage, yet dogged by past crimes? That’s Japan, but it’s also Paradis, and the hatred directed against Paradis cannot be viewed as separate from the hatred directed against Eldians in general, because it’s the same.

“You’re ancestors committed heinous atrocities in the past and that is a stain on you!”

“Also you’re satanic!”

My take is that Isayama is making a political statement about Japan and its relation vis a vis East Asia. Any attempt by Japan to play a bigger role on the world stage is decried by countries like China and South Korea. They think Japan’s assertiveness is a slippery slope; they fear any outward movement portends a return to imperialism.

This is like Paradis. They try to engage in diplomatic relations, but are stymied by the Empire’s past actions. It’s even revealed that the world’s nations use hatred of Eldians to promote internal stability, just as China and South Korea do with Japan.

And of course there’s that scene between Kaya and Gabi. Gabi tries to guilt trip Kaya over her ancestor’s actions, just like how Japanese people are sometimes guilt tripped by China and South Korea.

On a descriptive level, this parallel works, the problem is that it’s in service to a bullshit normative claim. The claim is that contemporary Japanese/Eldians should not be held to account for the actions of their ancestors.

What I’ve said about Eldian responsibility is true for the Japanese as well. Their Empire committed its crimes in their name. The burden is carried by the Japanese people.

Again, this does not justify hate, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about reparations or other forms of atonement. It says a lot about Isayama that he refuses to entertain this notion.

But wait! It gets even worse! Brace yourselves, because I’m about to logic bomb your minds.

Try this classic logical set on for size:

A equals B,

B equals C,

Thus, A equals C.

Now try it again with these stand-ins:

A=Jews.

B=Eldians.

C=Japanese people.

If Eldians are meant to parallel Jews, and Eldians are also meant to parallel Japanese people, then that implies a parallel between Jews and Japanese people!

Go ahead, sit back and try to process the implications of this.

Isayama, whether he intends it or not, draws a parallel between antisemitism and modern anti-japanese sentiment by way of the Eldians. Jews are hated for bullshit crimes past and the story seems to be trying to say that Japanese people are in a similar position.

By using Eldians as a stand in for both Jews and Japanese people, he conflates the two. And that’s awful because they’re not comparable. At all. To even entertain the notion that Jews and Japanese people are in the same boat is insulting!

Just what is Isayama trying to imply here? That the plight of modern Japanese people is comparable to f!@#ing antisemitism?

No! Just NO!!

Jews have had pogroms directed against them for centuries. Nothing comparable to that is happening to Japanese people.

The charge that Jews murdered Jesus was based on a single verse in the Gospel of Matthew, which isn’t corroborated by any of the other three gospels.

The charge that the Japanese Empire committed numerous atrocities in the past is supported by voluminous evidence.

The Rape of Nanjing didn’t happen 1,000 years ago. It didn’t happen 500 years ago. It didn’t even happen 100 years ago. 82 years. That’s how long it’s been.

And it isn’t the case that records are unreliable. It’s not even a case of he said, she said.

The New York Times, Reuters, The Associated Press, The Chicago Daily News, and Paramount Pictures all had reporters on the ground and they saw. the whole. thing. This massacre was reported on contemporaneously.

It happened. It was real. It is not a cudgel wielded by bad people to justify oppression.

It speaks volumes that Isayama is happy to have Eldians embody aspects of both antisemitism and anti-Japanese sentiment.

The more I think about this the more awful it becomes!

According to the framework Isayama has constructed, the canards directed at Jews are equivalent to the allegations of war crimes by the Japanese Empire. Does Isayama even understand what he is saying here?

He’s saying the allegation of Japanese war crimes are equivalent to antisemitic slander! That’s bullshit!

We have the receipts.

Japan committed war crimes.

Thank u, next.

The parallel between Jews and Eldians doesn’t work because there is no carryover in culpability for the former. The parallel between Eldians and Japanese people does work on a descriptive level, but it’s in service of a bullshit normative claim.

And the implied parallel between the Jews and the Japanese is despicable.

…You know, I was prompted to think more deeply about this series and racism by that opening sequence, and things kinda got outta hand…

…so, anyway, chapter 114! Yeah, this is supposed to be a review of that. I forgot.

So this is the chapter we finally get Zeke’s backstory. The curtain has lifted. Let’s see what’s behind it.

Grisha truly is a jackass, isn’t he?

He showed no regard for his son. Putting children through military training is abhorrent by itself, but it was obscene of Grisha to pressure Zeke into it.

He pressured a boy to enlist.

It’s incredible that this sentence doesn’t fully capture the repugnancy of what Grisha did. If his plan succeeds, his son’s life will be drastically shortened. In Grisha’s dumbass mind this is a triumph! A ingenious tactic that will redound throughout time!

In every respect, children are not fully developed. Not mentally, nor physically, nor emotionally. Thus, children are dependent on their parents for protection. What Grisha did was an unspeakable dereliction of his parental duty.

He clearly saw Zeke as a tool. Tools wear down and break, but they can be replaced. That is not a mode of thinking you should apply to a human! Grisha didn’t play with him, display any affection outside of Zeke showing progress in his indoctrination.

I mean, FFS, the tool analogy may actually be too kind. There are gearheads who show more affection to their tools than Grisha did to his boy. (Those people are a different kind of weird, though)

But you know what’s especially awful? It’s Grisha’s sheer egomania.

“I know you can become a warrior. […] You’re our boy.”

“You can do it! You’re our child, after all!!”

*Zeke fails* “Dammit! It’s not supposed to be like this!”

Yes! Zeke, you are the product of my loins! You were born from the marriage of your mother’s flesh with my perfect body! *proceeds to explain human reproduction in exquisite detail* So you see, Zeke, you are a slice taken from the golden pie of the Goddess, Ymir! You cannot lose!

Whenever Grisha praises Zeke, he’s not actually praising Zeke. He’s praising himself. Zeke is going to succeed because he has that Jeager DNA in him. What a hypocrite!

If there’s any justice in this world, this will be written on his tombstone:

He pressured his boy to enlist in the military, pursue a goal that would shorten his life, and told him to do it for his race. Grisha cared about the Eldian people over his own flesh and blood. That is what classic nationalism looks like.

But what’s ironic is that the classic example of nationalism run amok belongs to Zeke and Marley. Children ratting out their parents to the secret police is a classic nationalist trope (Warning: disturbing af content) and what Zeke did to his parents is an example of that. Or at least that’s what the Marleyans think.

In reality Zeke did it for self-preservation. It was cold and loveless, but then again, what goes around comes around. Sorry, Grish, (that’s my nickname for him) but what can I say? Life comes at you fast.

But as terrible as Grish is, I don’t think I agree with Mr. Xaver blaming Grish for putting his family in danger. Blame for that belongs with Marley for having such an unjust punishment for treason.

It’s not just you that’s punished. Your whole immediate family goes with you.

I get the point. Targeting the family is meant to discourage would-be rebels. Isayama is probably referencing North Korea with that.

But Grish being so callous in how he rebels is separate from his choice to rebel at all. His family was placed in danger because Marley doesn’t recognize the basic rights that it should, not because of Grish.

Now it makes sense why Zeke cares so much about Mr. Xaver. His father was cold and callous. Zeke walks home and sees the life he doesn’t have: a fun one. One where he plays with his dad. Then this stranger comes into his life and starts giving Zeke just that: play time. Fun. Affection.

Affection! Mr. Xaver compliments him on his talents. He compliments him as talented in his own right; not as a Jeager, but as Zeke Jeager. Did Grisha ever do that?

I don’t think he ever has. In the entire series.

Xaver was the father Zeke never had. And Zeke was the son Xaver never had. Is it hard to imagine Mr. Xaver looking at that same father and son Zeke saw, and feeling the same way?

Of course not. They completed each other. They may as well have been family.

Actually, no, they were family. Zeke trusted him enough to tell him about his parent’s secret. And Mr. Xaver helped Zeke instead of turning him in. This is what unconditional love looks like.

I love the imagery of Mr. Xaver picking up the baseball and it has the blood of his family on it. It was such a poignant and even brilliant metaphor. Mr. Xaver playing catch with Zeke was not as innocent a game as it seemed. It was (metaphorically) a blood-stained affair.

So now we’re at the big reveal.

Zeke’s plan the whole time: kill everyone.

I don’t like it.

Not only that, but this plan is sooo played out at this point.

The first villains of the series were the titans. Their goal? Kill everyone.

Next it was the titan shifters. Their goal (as far as we knew)? Kill Everyone.

Then it was the First King. His goal? Kill everyone.

Then it was Marley. Their goal? Kill all the Eldians.

And now Zeke? It’s to fucking kill all the Eldians!

Why does every villain just want to kill a lot of people?

This is very bad.

It is a travesty that this series has made Zeke a genocidal lunatic because now the door is wide open for this series to make an endorsement of right-wing nationalism. One of the biggest reasons to be hopeful that wouldn’t happen was that it seemed the right-wing nationalists, led by Zeke, would be the final enemy.

That’s gone now.

Now Eren Jeager, right-wing nationalist asshole supreme, is poised to be cast as the hero.

I’ve said before that Isayama uses Eldians, and especially Paradis, as a stand-in for Japan. Well, if that’s true, then the debate that’s been ongoing on Paradis over the Wall Titans can only be read one way: as an analog to the debate, such that it is, over whether Japan should obtain nuclear weapons.

My read on the Wall Titans is that they are an analog to the atomic bomb. They’re described in-story as being a weapon of mass destruction whose power will never be topped. Just as it is with nuclear weapons, once the Wall Titans are deployed, you cannot stop them.

You can only pray that you live.

Colossal Titans in general are associated images of nuclear explosions and their aftermath. Whenever we see what the aftermath of the Wall Titans coming through looks like, we see a flattened terrain. It is eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Japan has been able to build atomic bombs for decades now, but has chosen to forego this. Unsurprisingly, obtaining a weapon whose destructive power is popularly measure in Hiroshimas and Nagasakis is not something the Japanese people are keen on.

The Japanese people overwhelmingly oppose the nuclearization of their country. Supporting this is a fringe position that only right-wing nationalists support.

Which is why I say this:

If the final conflict comes down to Eren vs. Zeke, with Eren wanting to use the Wall Titans to defend the Eldians and Zeke wanting to use the Founding Titan to wipe them all out, and the story endorses the former, then that unambiguously places the series on the fringes of Japanese political opinion.

Hell, it would place the series outside the bounds of reasonable debate. Japan nuclearizing would be disastrously stupid. It would enflame regional tensions and could even lead to a nuclear arms race. It would be a travesty for Isayama to endorse that even by accident.

Just as the right-wing nationalists want Japan to nuclearize so they have a deterrent against enemies, it may be the case that SNK ends with Eren using the Wall Titans as a deterrent against Marley. In doing so, the series will be demonstrating the benefits of having weapons of mass destruction.

Except, ya know, WMDs have no benefits.

It wouldn’t surprise me if using the Wall Titans in this way is Eren’s position. While it is true I’ve been assuming Zeke’s plan is to use the Wall Titans, in hindsight, Zeke never actually indicated that.

But you know who was the first one to propose using the Wall Titans?

Eren.

He did it while explaining what he thought Zeke’s plan was, but I bet money that in that moment he was projecting. He wants to use the Wall Titans and he projected his own preferences onto the tabula rasa that was Zeke’s plan.

So that’s the political implications out of the way, but this is to say nothing of the dearth of creativity this is. The villains have been people who want to kill Eldians. How much more of a twist would it have been if the final villain wanted to kill everyone but the Eldians? That would’ve been different.

Zeke’s plan is pure evil. The lives of Eldians is so awful they’re better off dead? Who the fuck is he to decide that!

He has no right. He’s just like his father. Taking people’s destinies for himself and making decisions for them. He tried to avoid becoming like his father, but now he’s essentially Grisha 2.0. He claims to be doing this out of love, but he doesn’t really love the Eldians. This is not a kindness. This is him demonstrating super-Grish levels of egomania.  

Not only is Zeke worse than Grish, he’s worse then King Fritz! Fritz thought Eldians were better off dead, but at least he didn’t actually try to kill them all. Even though he could have. In a very twisted act of kindness, he even took some to live in relative peace on Paradis.

Zeke isn’t having any of that. He’s not interested in singing kumbaya around a campfire, he wants to skip straight to the killing.

Zeke is just done. Fuck that. Dying would be the easy way out. If living in this world is hell for him, then by God, he should be forced to live as long as possible. I’m sure that’ll be eminently possible once someone actually deals with the issue here.

Speaking of death, I wonder if Levi is dead.

Even if he wasn’t mortally wounded by the explosion, he’s not going to be in good shape.

And look at his trajectory. He’s going to land in the river.

The raging river.

The ice cold, raging river.

With open wounds!

And he’ll be disoriented from the explosion on top of being thrown about by the current and the shock from the cold.

This may be too much for him.

…

COMMENCE PRAYER CIRCLE!

[jewishstarks]

I've just found your Jewish Starks theories and headcanons and omfg. I was thinking about how they'd be treated in a modern AU and I can totally see Littlefinger's anger at Cat and his hatred and disgust at Brandon and Ned coming from the fact that they're Big Bad Jews(tm). It adds a whole lot of stuff to the interactions between certain characters, honestly. I can totally see the Lannisters being Catholics and it's another reason Joffrey treats Sansa so bad. I'm super into this.

Honestly I hadn’t thought about that yet but you’re totally right - especially because of how Jewish women in particular face a very special brand of antisemisogyny. And any Jew on the internet can tell you that certain factions of dudebros blame the Jewish Conspiracy ™ for their inability to form romantic relationships with women. 

Littlefinger himself also embodies a ton of antisemitic tropes (he’s the vaguely effeminate man who isn’t loyal to anyone but himself but controls most of the money in the Seven Kingdoms, come on), although I think this is a reflection of how villains are characterized in Western literature more than any sort of conscious effort on GRRM’s part.

The Riverlands, Westerlands, etc are definitely heavily Catholic and I have a lot of feelings about convert!Cat who was raised religious Catholic and converts when she marries Ned in order to raise their children Jewish.

Anyway I’m literally always down to talk about Jewish Starks and this message made my day!

[bethevenyc]

Tamika Mallory and is a fan of Louis Farrakhan and people are outraged

Women’s March co-founder Tamika Mallory, who is under fire this week. (Photo: Getty Images)

The Women’s March organization — decried from the start for being non-inclusive by a variety of critics, including some trans women, women of color, sex workers, and even and anti-abortion activists — can now add another rapidly growing rank to that list: Jewish feminists. Or, more broadly, those who oppose anti-Semitism. The latest controversy stems from Women’s March cofounder Tamika Mallory and her recent attendance at a speech given by incendiary National of Islam leader and noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. “Satan is going down. Farrakhan has pulled the cover off the eyes of the Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through. You good Jews better separate because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them because that’s where they are headed,” the controversial leader said in what was reportedly a three-hour speech given in Chicago on Feb. 26 in honor of Saviour’s Day, a Nation of Islam holiday celebrating the birth of its founder. Mallory posted a quick Instagram video from the event, plus photos, and received a shout-out from the stage by Farrakhan, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League. “He even mentioned the Women’s March, saying that while he thought the event was a good thing, women need to learn how to cook so their husbands don’t become obese,” the ADL reported. “Tamika Mallory, one of the March organizers, was in the audience, and got a special shout-out from Farrakhan. Mallory posted two Instagram photos from the event, which Carmen Perez, another Women’s March organizer, commented on with ‘raise the roof’ emojis.”

Louis Farrakhan. (Photo: Getty Images)

This is far from the first public calling-out of Mallory’s association with Farrakhan (not to mention repeated charges of anti-Semitism aimed at cofounder Linda Sarsour), but this one — stoked by Jake Tapper of CNN — appears to be a churning storm that just keeps gaining power, and from which there may not be any turning back for many. “Tamika Mallory has not just gone to see a man oozing of such hatred speak. She has publicly endorsed him,” noted Elad Nehorai in an opinion piece for the Forward. “She has refused to back down for her attendance. She has refused to denounce his words. She has composed her own anti-Semitic dog-whistling comment. And she has thanked others for supporting her attendance.” Much of the increasing blowback has indeed been related to Mallory’s response tweets (in lieu of her releasing an official statement), and to the official Women’s March response, being called too little, too late by many critics. https://twitter.com/TamikaDMallory/status/970487355856576512 The statement, provided to Yahoo Lifestyle and posted on social media by the Women’s March, reads in part: “Anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and white supremacy are and always will be indefensible. Women’s March is committed to fighting all forms of oppression as outlined in our Unity Principles. We will not tolerate anti-Semitism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia  and we condemn these expressions of hatred in all forms. “Women’s March is an intersectional movement made up of organizers with different backgrounds, who work in different communities. Within the Women’s March movement, we are very conscious of the conversations that must be had across the intersections of race, religion and gender. We love and value our sister and co-President Tamika Mallory, who has played a key role in shaping these conversations. Neither we nor she shy away from the fact that intersectional movement building is difficult and often painful.

Women’s March co-founders Tamika Mallory, right, and Linda Sarsour, at the Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas. (Photo: Getty Images)

“Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer, and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles, which were created by women of color leaders and are grounded in Kingian Nonviolence. Women’s March is holding conversations with queer, trans, Jewish and Black members of both our team and larger movement to create space for understanding and healing.” Mallory addressed questions regarding her support of Farrakhan (already known by many who have been following the issue) in a Canada public television interview on Feb. 16, before she spoke at a NDP (New Democratic Party) Convention in Ottawa. “I think people have to ask Mr. Farrakhan about his views. I’m not responsible for Mr. Farrakhan nor am I a spokesperson for him,” Mallory said. “What I do know is that I’ve worked with him for many years to address some of the ills in the black community where we’ve transformed lives. Under his guidance, there have been many people who have turned away from drugs, away from crime, to get themselves cleaned up. Many black men have reentered their homes to take care of their families. In those areas, we’ve been able to work together.” When further pressed by the interviewer about how her support could be troubling to many Women’s March supporters, she said, “I would be afraid to go into your families and check to see that all the people that you have dinner with and break bread with during holidays… So when we start this moral purity question, it really is a pretty dangerous road to travel.” Mallory then attempted to shift attention to her own activism. “If we just look at the Women’s March, the most recent action that I was involved with, and something that I led, it was truly intersectional… that’s the work that we need to be focused on.” As part of that work, at the Women’s March Power to the Polls event in Las Vegas on Jan. 21, Mallory gave a rousing speech, calling out many of the white women in the audience. “Don’t come to this rally today and sit here with your pink hat on, saying that you’re with us and you’re nowhere to be found when black people ask you to show up in the streets and defend our lives… Stand up for me, white woman. Come to my aid.” She spoke with Yahoo Lifestyle about that powerful moment recently. “It is always very uncomfortable to be the one or to be among the few who are willing to speak truth to power — even when you happen to be speaking to people who are considered to be friends — and no one wants to be that girl, if you will,” Mallory said. “That you’re the one who is constantly removing the veil from some of these really deep, hurtful, and confrontational discussions is not a popular position… But I’m able to sleep better at night with myself, knowing that I am not just sort of existing within the space without being a part of the voices that actually transform the space.” But now the fact that Mallory has not personally denounced Farrakhan’s bigoted beliefs has put many other women in that same “removing the veil” position, with some believing that her specific silence in this instance makes her — and the other individual March cofounders — complicit. https://twitter.com/jcinthelibrary/status/970093524027957249

A short thread on the Women's March leaders & their support for Farrakhan. 1) Three out of the four co-Presidents of the Women's March have expressed their support for Farrakhan, one of the most vile antisemites in America. Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarour and Carmen Perez.

— Daniel Sugarman (@Daniel_Sugarman) March 6, 2018

https://twitter.com/x0x0x00x0x0/status/970538744481804288 Some Jewish feminists, in particular, expressed feelings of abandonment and disappointment. https://twitter.com/erintothemax/status/970864852808978432 https://twitter.com/jaclynf/status/970728629855404036 Mallory still has plenty of prominent activists in her corner, including Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and writer and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, who both tweeted support. https://twitter.com/JustAskDonna/status/970322013901467648 https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/969705132421197825 But a pointed essay in the Medium, “An Open Letter to Tamika Mallory,” takes the activist to task over a particular phrase — “enemies of Jesus” — used in one of Mallory’s tweets. “Perhaps you truly do not know that the phrase ‘enemies of Jesus’ is an anti-Semitic dog whistle,” writes Ariela Bee, “that goes back to when the Romans converted to Christianity and they needed a religious narrative that would suit the political demands of the empire.” But in any case, she continues, she is “hurt.” “Let me be very clear: I am not hurt because you are a black woman who is tweeting these words… I am hurt because you are a leader who is tweeting these words. You have influence. You have visibility. You do not force anyone involved in the Women’s March to follow you. People follow you because you have power. Because you have power, your words have the power to hurt.” Adding to that growing chorus this week was Lily Herman, writing for Refinery 29 and laying out not only the recent Farrakhan situation but past evidence of anti-Semitism on the part of Sarsour and cofounder Carmen Perez. “Understandably, the Jewish community — particularly people who have supported the Women’s March and other social justice causes — wanted answers. We also wanted something that most thought would be pretty simple for a bunch of women who spend their days parading around their intersectionality: We wanted them to denounce anti-Semitism and the words Farrakhan said against Jews. This isn’t a new thing; after all, we ask public figures to denounce awful people and hate speech all the time,” she wrote. “To say we didn’t get that is an understatement.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

The reason was simple — Trump won: Why 9 women decided to run for political office

Trump-loving conservative women protest the Women’s March: ‘A feminist is someone who is kind of hateful’

Faces of Power to the Polls, the Las Vegas Women’s March: ‘Our voices are finally being heard’

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