#bower power

[shayetc]

EYEHATEGOD - Voodoo Belfast. 20/12/24.

[thisisntreaver]

Listen I just KNOW Sparrow was pissing the preexisting nobility off when they became ruler

I mean first off a former poor person raised in a dweller camp after spending over a year living as a street urchin? Someone who has become a champion of the people by being with the people? Who prefers not to be drapped in the beautiful silks and jewels as the rest of them? Who has drastic changes done to the castle and the gardens they all hang out in? If Sparrow supported Belle they probably hate them for that, and Sparrow is also likely how Reaver got any foothold in Bowerstonian society, I can't imagine the other uber wealthy being keen to welcome a pirate into the fold. Imagine being on of them and hearing that he's got an actual title now and is apart of Sparros advisory team. Non of the actual nobility seem to be, because Walter is implied to have also been on their team and he doesn't seem particularly rich. Also Logan an HOBW? I feel either way you go, a married Sparrow, or a Sparrow thats no married but has children, they'd find a reason to be upset. Be it because the spouse isn't one of them, or because they view the kids as bastards.

And they can't even DO anything, because the reason Sparrows in charge is because enough people do like them, ans also they're like a one person army. The rich are fuming and everyon else is straight vibing

[unsettled-nighttime-creatures]

Ancient sun cast your light

Cause there’s no hope in endless winter

When you fall from the sky

My blood runs cold and I feel paralysed

[darlingjmiller]

they’re so fucking pretty

📸 Jess’ IG story, 7th Jan ‘23

[theraiderramble]

Pair Of Raiders Rookies Continue Shining Amid Endless Losing

In a Las Vegas Raiders season that's been highly disappointing, one large bright spot has been the rookie class, which continues shining.

In a Las Vegas Raiders season that’s been highly disappointing, one undeniable bright spot has been the rookie class, which continues shining. Regardless of your opinions about general manager Tom Telesco, he has successfully assembled one of the most impressive rookie classes for the Raiders in recent memory. Yes, Brock Bowers fell on his lap, but how many former GMs would’ve gotten cute and…

[hovergirls]

"Bubbly, blue-haired Kim and deadpan, combative Jalissa are an unlikely pair. But after an unexpected encounter with a supernatural flying anglerfish during a rainstorm results in both girls’ manifesting water-wielding powers—the HoverGirls are born! Working as baristas keeps them busy during the day, but taking on mysterious and menacing sea creatures quickly becomes a frequent after-work activity. Kim uses her creativity and talent as a clothing designer to make superhero costumes for the pair, but Jalissa is reluctant to commit to a life of monster slaying, and friction between the cousins threatens to tear their relationship apart. They’ll need to find common ground to save the city—and themselves—from these aquatic interlopers. Bowers strikes a perfect balance between humor, adventure, and heart, and playful illustrations that are chock-full of details bring the cousins’ exploits to life. Adapted from a popular webcomic into a full-length graphic novel, this volume will delight existing fans while attracting new devotees with imaginative worldbuilding" - Kirkus Reviews

HG releases in almost two months on August 6th in bookstores everywhere. Terrifying, but in a good way...! If you like what you see then suggesting it to your local library is very much appreciated! It can also be preordered on Amazon, B+N, or your local bookstore.

[saucerfulofsins]

Hi! I hope you are having a nice day 😊 I'd like to ask you these for the meme: 💘💫

Let's not talk about my day, lol... I hope yours is better than mine!

💘Is there any posted fic you want to rework/re-edit/re-write?

Yes. Many, actually... If not most. I won't (unless it's to fix a typo or grammatical or semantic issue that bugs me). Generally, I am of the opinion that I wrote those fics when I wrote them and are therefore a reflection of the point I was at as a writer then, and all words I have written since then (whether for fic or not) and all words I have read since then (especially literature & poetry) contribute to me likely making different choices now - which is entirely fine. So although I want to, I won't actually do it. Perhaps I could do a remix of an Early Early Work from a past fandom sometime, that might be fun... but that's not the question asked here :)

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

First: I want to make clear I love all kinds of comment/feedback. Including the one time someone told me to have a really bad day because they hated the fic I wrote for its content - because that, too, means I evoked a powerful emotion (and it was very much about Stiles Stilinski as a serial killer so the commenter could have known not to thread there).

However, my favourite kind of comment is the type where someone reads a story I wrote and finds something that I didn't have in mind when I wrote it. Whether that is accidental puns, metaphors or foreshadowing, or a particular feeling or link to a different work (especially literature I haven't read), I love that best... Even if it's something I objectively disagree with, I will never ever tell someone that (ahem Flannery O'Connor), because I think all interpretations are valid and this is as close as possible to seeing my own work through someone else's eyes.

[bella-goths-wife]

What is the nicest thing the Bowers gang has done to ballerina reader?

The nicest things yandere bowers gang have done for ballerina reader

Warnings: physical abuse, mental abuse, verbal abuse, manipulation, violence, sexual abuse, mental illness (unspecified), stick and poke tattooing, pregnancy mentions, self harm, eating disorders

I do not In any way intend to glamourise or romanticise any of the themes mentioned. I write about them purely for entertainment and educational purposes. Please do not see these actions as normalised and seek to replicate the actions or relationships

Henry:

Henry does care about you, in his own sick and twisted way

But he does care about you and in his own way he does love you

He lets it show in the rarest of ways, and only on special occasions

And while he’s an abusive and selfish bastard, he’s also observant to a T

He notices small things about you that he’d never repeat to anyone that he noticed

He notices what your favourite flavour of something is or what your favourite song is when he looks in your eyes and notices them dilate

He may be the one who knows you the most because of how insnared he is in your life

And he will always notice when something is wrong with you, except from the usual reasons

You’re spending longer hours at the ballet studio, even when he warns you and punished you multiple times for it

But you even offered for them to come with you to the ballet studio and watch you if that’s they needed to do

You allowed them into your sanctuary, something you had fought against so vehemently before

You claimed that you had to keep going, that you had to be perfect

Henry assumed that you’d just gone into one of your moods, so he humoured you and spent time in the ballet studio with you instead of forcing you home

He watched as you forced yourself through dances, he watched you sweat and pant and work through your part so aggressively that you were coming off as more of a mad queen then a graceful swan

He watched in curiosity as your feet bled, your legs twisted, your back contorted and your bones creaked like an old cellar door

Blood leaked out of your ballet shoes and caused droplets to gather on the floor beneath you as you pirouetted through the pain

Henry decided it was time to call it quits when he called to you but you ignored him, something you never did as you continue to dance even after he turned off the music

Henry called again and again before walking towards you and grabbing your arms firmly but you fought back desperately, surprising Henry with the wild look in your eyes

Your usually dead eyes and crushed spirit were alive but not in a way that signified life but in a way that showed forced reincarnation

Henry shook you and demanded you to stop but you just screamed and cried that you couldn’t

You hysterically ranted that you had to be perfect, you had to be better than everyone, you had to be the best

You cried over how a girl who had recently moved to Derry had outshined you in your classes, it didn’t matter in your head that she was years older than you, you had always been the best and you can’t be replaced

Ballet was the only thing you had control over, the only thing you held power in by being the best there is, the only escape from the torment of the bowers gang and their cruel antics

And someone had taken over your sanctuary

Henry, confused on how to comfort you, just held you until you had cried yourself into exhaustion

He took you to your home and cared for the wounds on your body as you laid there half asleep, just like you had done for him so many times

He left you to sleep as he thought about what to do next

He couldn’t have you continuing on this path, you’d self destruct before he’d even have a chance for his plans of marrying you and popping out kids

He couldn’t have a mad woman for a wife, he needed his pretty little ballerina back to dance when he turned the music box key

He stalked the girl you had talked about for a few days before finding a good opportunity

He decided it was time to call the other boys, knowing he’d need their help

He ambushed her dressed in a black Halloween mask before tying her to a tree

He grabbed a sledgehammer from belch’s care and brought it down harshly on the girls ankles and knees, ensuring she’d never dance again

He left the girl tied up and he and the bowers gang decided that whatever happens to the girl happens, none of them would lose sleep over it

That night he crawled into your bed with your asleep figure, moving your head to lay on his chest as he caressed your face with a gentleness that was foreign to him

He decided he wouldn’t tell you when he noticed how your spirit had improved since the girl had stopped dancing, knowing the information would only make you believe in silly notions of guilt

And he didn’t want you to get the wrong idea, he did it for himself and not for you

That’s what he told himself anyway

Vic criss:

Vic had punished you pretty badly one time, he had given you burns up your thigh that had sent you to the doctor for pain killers

This small ‘hiccup’ has made it so you couldn’t dance for two weeks, a prospect that made you sob in the hospital bed and refuse to eat for two days

And that’s when vic noticed that he had unfairly punished, he assumed you had snuck out alone but Patrick later revealed that he had taken you out for the night

That realisation had filled vic with an unfamiliar sense of guilt and remorse as he looked at your sunken in features and the bandages around your thigh

He volunteered to be the one to take care of you after the doctor visit, knowing being on the pain medication would leave you out of it most of the time

He helped you bathe, forced you to eat and drink, helped you change bandages and entertained you with a unique gentleness you hadn’t felt in a while

But even that didn’t stop the constant worried looks you’d give him, wouldn’t stop the fear that you held for him

He wasn’t used to being the most feared, that spot usually reserved for Henry or Patrick, he was used to being one of the ‘better’ ones who you’d reach to to avoid spending time with the ‘worse’ ones

He begged your drugged up state for forgiveness and the state had made you honest as you spewed venom about him never feeling the pain he inflicted on you

That gave victor an idea

He sat you down in your medicated state down beside him one day and showed you his tools

He had confided in you that he had a fear of needles ever since he was a child, but that he wanted to repay you for the pain he caused

He wanted you to stick and poke a tattoo of your choosing onto his shoulder, and he would sit still, endure the pain and never tell the others who had done it to ensure you never received a punishment

Your drugged up mind didn’t even hesitate at a chance to hurt your abuser, picking up the tools you needed

Five long hours victor sat still as a statue and endured his fear and pain while you worked on his shoulder before you finally finished

You had passed out pretty much instantly as you laid back on the couch and victor didn’t have time to look at his newest tattoo before shoving his shirt on and helping you to bed

Part of him even secretly hoped it would become infected so he could show you how much pain he’d endure for your forgiveness

Once you were in bed, victor removed his shirt and readied himself for whatever was on his body forever

He expected something crude or something humiliation but to his surprise he found when he lifted his shirt, a small swan

A darkened thought entered his mind at the sight of it

You had marked him just like he’d marked you

The dark part of Victor liked that

Patrick hockstetter:

Patrick loved your body

Well, loved is a loose term when it comes to a psychopath

A more suitable description would be that your body sexually satisfied Patrick greatly

You had the perfect figure in Patrick’s eyes

And when that figure started changing, it upset Patrick greatly

One of the workers at the ballet studio had made a few crude comments on your figure, and that had sent you into a frenzy

It was a pattern you had followed since you were small, someone makes a comment and your do anything in your power to make it untrue

Someone claims your too big, you’ll do anything to show them your not

Your methods however were extreme to a worrying extent

You wouldn’t eat for days and when you did youd throw it all up or use laxatives to make sure you couldn’t gain anything from it

It had caused extreme changes to your body, your once healthy figure had become malnourished

A change that Patrick did not like, finding you much less attractive

As I’ve stated multiple times, Patrick’s obsession is rooted to his sexual attraction to you and it angers him greatly when someone changes you

You were his plaything and if you weren’t pretty anymore, well that just looks bad for him

He sat with you every mealtime for weeks and forced the food down your throat but he recognised he could only do so much, the minute he stopped youd go back to your destructive ways

So Patrick decided that he’d get rid of the root of the problem

Disposing of a body was easy to him and the others by now, digging a shallow grave in the junkyard for the nameless worker of the ballet studio who had insulted you

Without the insults present you eventually started to eat properly again with ‘encouragement’ from the boys and slowly you gained your figure back

This pleased Patrick greatly and he made sure to make you repay him for his act of kindness, despite never telling you what you were repaying him for

Even Patrick’s acts of kindness revolved because of his selfish desires

What did you expect?

Belch Huggins:

Belch had always been the sweetest to you, always treating you gently unless commanded otherwise

That’s why you had felt comfortable enough to confide in him that you had done something very bad

You had hurt someone, very badly

A girl from your school who had harassed you daily whenever the boys weren’t around you

She had followed you on your trek down to the lake, calling you all sorts of names and pushing you around

As if you didn’t face enough abuse in your life, she added to it with her cruelty and something snapped in you

She had gotten in your face, eerily similar to how Henry had many times

When she had gone to grab you, it brought back memories of Henry’s abuse and fear filled your body

In an act of fight or flight, you had given her a firm push

She had fallen down the hill and hit her head on a rock, laying unconscious as you stared in horror

You had called belch in a frenzy, rambling on about what you had done and how much trouble it would get you in, there’s no one who would let a criminal be a ballerina

Belch drove to you immediately and held you once he saw you, listening to your explanation of what happened

He checked the girls pulse and found out she was still alive, and in that moment he made a decision

He couldn’t have you going away, his little ballerina who had such high hopes for her future wouldn’t survive in a juvenile facility, they’d eat you alive without a second thought

Him on the other hand? He was built to survive with his large build and strength, and who would the police believe is more likely to have committed a crime

A pretty little ballerina with no previous record, or the big brute with many accusations and charged on his record?

He commanded you to go home and gave you a final kiss on the forehead before sending you off

He ran to the pay phone and called for an ambulance who took the girl off to hospital, and when the police questioned him on who did it he admitted false guilt to spare you the blame

The girl had a slight concussion and her memory of the crime was distorted, so she couldn’t deny his presence which was enough for him to be arrested

His father found him a good lawyer with his copious amount of money and the lawyer managed to get belch away with only three month of juvie and six months probation

He went down for your crimes and he did it happily

When the other boys asked him why he did it, he simply told them that the girl had pushed him too far and shot you a look

He came out of juvie just fine and fit into his routine quite happily when he saw you at his side again

He never told anyone about what really happened, not even the others

He knew they would blame you for his temporary imprisonment but why should they? You were his goddess, why shouldn’t he make sure no one could besmirch your name and defend your honour

He kept your secret happily as he held you close to him in your bed

What’s one more secret between him and his goddess?

Thoughts? :)

[tughrul]

A woman in power goes against nature itself. Men will never willingly bower to the weaker sex. And they will suffer greatly for it. REIGN — 04x16: All It Cost Her

[dirty-little-mind33]

Dave, while being very inexperienced, makes that up with enthusiasm and obedience. When you teach him to go down on you, he'll look up with big nervous eyes and trembling lips. You guide him with a soft voice and gentle hand on the back of his head. Once Dave gets his first taste of you, he's a goner. He'll keep going until you push him away, far too lost in your taste to ever think about stopping. After that, he won't stop asking if he can do it again. He'll ask with a blush and stutter that you can hardly say no to. He's so needy that sometimes he won't even wait for you to sit or lie down, he'll drop to his knees to devour you! -🍒 anon

🍒 anon!!!! (assuming it's the same person as on my other blog but if not, welcome my love!!!!) i went a little overboard…

warnings: sub!dave, mention of a mommy kink, humiliation, degradation, punishment

dave lizewski being obsessed with eating pussy is so so canon (age him up please!). once he has a taste, all he asks for is more. he's so so greedy.

he'll eat you out in a heartbeat anytime you ask. prefers that to penetration sometimes and he can come just from tasting you on his tongue, his hips rolling into the mattress or humping whatever he can find.

he lives for overstimulating you and as you said, sometimes you'll have to pull him away by his hair (which only turns him on more 😔) and he'll look up at you from wherever he is, eyes wide and pleading.

"please, miss/mommy, please. i wanna taste you more. please."

he's so desperate it's almost pathetic.

you love the power you have over him and how wrecked he becomes for your cunt.

"you want me, baby? wanna taste me that badly?"

"y-yes, yes please,"

he'll beg so pretty on his knees, his curls a mess as his cheeks burn crimson. his neck is flushed as he sits shirtless and in only his bowers, the front leaking pre-cum.

"such a good slut for me. now be a god boy and kiss my pussy for a bit. no licking. not yet. and if you disobey me you won't come for a week, understand?"

[robertreich]

How Trump is Following Hitler's Playbook

You’ve heard Trump’s promise:

TRUMP: I’m going to be a dictator for one day.

History shows there are no “one-day” dictatorships. When democracies fall, they typically fall completely.

In a previous video, I laid out the defining traits of fascism and how MAGA Republicans embody them. But how could Trump — or someone like him — actually turn America into a fascist state? Here’s how in five steps.

Step 1: Use threats of violence to gain power

Hitler and Mussolini relied on their vigilante militias to intimidate voters and local officials. We watched Trump try to do the same in 2020.

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

Republican election officials testified to the threats they faced when they refused Trump’s demands to falsify the election results.

RAFFENSPERGER: My email, my cell phone was doxxed.

RUSTY BOWERS: They have had video panel trucks with videos of me proclaiming me to be a pedophile.

GABRIEL STERLING: A 20-something tech in Gwinnett County today has death threats and a noose put out saying he should be hung for treason.

If the next election is close, threats to voters and election officials could be enough to sabotage it.

Step 2: Consolidate power

After taking office, a would-be fascist must turn every arm of government into a tool of the party. One of Hitler’s first steps was to take over the civil service, purging it of non-Nazis.

In October of 2020, Trump issued his own executive order that would have enabled him to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. He never got to act on it, but he’s now promising to apply it to the entire civil service.

That’s become the centerpiece of something called Project 2025, a presidential agenda assembled by MAGA Republicans, that would, as the AP put it, “dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision.”

Step 3: Establish a police state

Hitler used the imaginary threat of “the poison of foreign races” to justify taking control of the military and police, placing both under his top general, and granting law-enforcement powers to his civilian militias.

Now Trump is using the same language to claim he needs similar powers to deal with immigrants.

Trump plans to deploy troops within the U.S. to conduct immigration raids and round up what he estimates to be 18 million people who would be placed in mass-detention camps while their fate is decided.

And even though crime is actually down across the nation, Trump is citing an imaginary crime wave to justify sending troops into blue cities and states against the will of governors and mayors.

Trump insiders say he plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to have the military crush civilian protests. We saw a glimpse of that in 2020, when Trump deployed the National Guard against peaceful protesters outside the White House.

And with promises to pardon January 6 criminals and stop prosecutions of right-wing domestic terrorists, Trump would empower groups like the Proud Boys to act as MAGA enforcers.

Step 4: Jail the opposition

In classic dictatorial fashion, Trump is now openly threatening to prosecute his opponents.

TRUMP: if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business.

And he’s looking to remake the Justice Department into a tool for his personal vendettas.

TRUMP: As we completely overhaul the federal Department of Justice and FBI, we will also launch sweeping civil rights investigations into Marxist local district attorneys.

In the model of Hitler and Mussolini, Trump describes his opponents as subhuman.

TRUMP: …the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country…

Step 5: Undermine the free press

As Hitler well understood, a fascist needs to control the flow of information. Trump has been attacking the press for years.

And he’s threatening to punish news outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

He has helped to reduce trust in the media to such a historic low that his supporters now view him as their most trusted source of information.

Within a democracy, we may often have leaders we don’t like. But we have the power to change them — at the ballot box and through public pressure. Once fascism takes hold, those freedoms are gone and can’t easily be won back.

We must recognize the threat of fascism when it appears, and do everything in our power to stop it.

[jacensolodjo]

Tomorrow, October 27th, marks the 5th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting. For any of those who may not remember or forgot a few details, especially outside of the US: in 2018, a man named Robert Bowers went into the Tree of Life Synagogue during their Shabbat morning services and opened fire. 11 Jews lost their lives. On August 3, 2023, Robert Bowers was sentenced to death for this antisemitic crime. This was the worst mass shooting of Jews in the US to date.

Yesterday, October 25th, Jewish students at Cooper Union, a college in New York had to barricade themselves in the library while 'protestors' banged on the doors and shouted 'Free Palestine'. Note that the students had done absolutely nothing to cause this and have absolutely no power to do anything about the situation in the Middle East. This was an antisemitic attack, not a protest. You don't trap people for a protest. That's basic protesting rules. Disrupting is NOT the same as trapping. Peaceful protesting is defined as not blocking doors. Even if the students had opened the doors the demonstrators were right there and threatening. Not peaceful. It took over 40 minutes for the students to be safely escorted out of the building.

Also yesterday, a 6-person family in LA was woken up at approximately 520am by a man who kicked in their door and was wielding a knife. Blessedly (somewhat) he had entered the master bedroom first where he confronted the husband and his pregnant wife (at 9 months which means any amount of stress could put her into labor and put her baby at risk). All four children were also at home. By the grace of Hashem, the husband was able to fend off the knife-wielding antisemite. Multiple reasons he knew they were Jewish range from the mezuzah on their door to the fact he is apparently a neighbor and had talked to them before a few months previous where he found out they are Israeli. He apparently was drunk but had the wherewithal to state his intentions: he was going to kill them because they are Jews.

October has not been kind to Jews in the past few years and especially not this week in particular. Please, we are not okay. We are very tired and hurt and scared.

[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.

[ranticore]

So do tiercels just straight up get abducted to be in a harem? Can they say no? Was Cuinn abused by his king?

Kinda, Yes, and Depends On What You Mean By That

the degree of choice a tiercel has in the matter is culturally-dependent. in the eastern Ama plains region (where Cuinn is from) the 'abduction' itself is also slightly romanticised and has its own weird rituals and subconversations; someone who really wants to be a tiercel (very common thing to want tbh) can never just ask for it. they need to do a little "who, me??" coy act at times, and then wait and see how the king behaves - if he fulfils the ideal standards of kingship he should then """kidnap""" them and bring them to his bower which, if he is a good king, should be so impressive and full of treasures that nobody should ever WANT to leave. that's the fantasy of it - a tiercel is another piece of treasure for a king to decorate his nest with. if the king's offer sucks or isn't up to standard, the tiercel can just be like no thanks and fly away again and in this culture it is considered crass for a king to continue to pursue them. the tiercel point of view is "how are YOU going to serve ME". they're birds and their courtship rituals are very elaborate, and even though the tiercel is the one supposedly chosen for their beauty, the king is the equivalent of male birds of paradise doing a funky dance for a visibly bored dull-coloured potential mate.

tiercels in this scenario can leave at any time and they often do. greediness, ambition, and pride are valuable and romanticised traits in a harpy and they are quite accustomed to taking the 'if it sucks hit da bricks' method of combating the sunk cost fallacy. it's not uncommon for a very new or inexperienced king to not have a lot on offer, so a tiercel may choose to join him based on his future potential rather than his current standing, and if he doesn't live up to that potential he's as good as useless.

Cuinn was a fringe case. he was so unusual in appearance that he was basically earmarked to be chosen by a king from the moment of his hatching (should he survive infancy - he almost didn't). it was also known that unpigmented feathers are trash and lose condition easily, and his eyesight was bad, so his future hunting ability was in question. ppl were like ah he's lucky he'll never have to work a day in his life, he's the ultimate tiercel, etc etc. With his story i never wanted his king, Thunder Strike On The Ama, to come across as malicious or mean - he thinks he's doing everything right. he never sexually assaulted Cuinn if that's what you're asking but I think the power dynamic of not just Thunder Strike but the entire flock vs Cuinn was an abusive scenario for him to be in. it didn't matter how well he was treated within that cage. one might even say Cuinn was coercively gendered tiercel from birth (catab if u will)

in truth tiercels and kings get trapped in bad dynamics all the time. the fantasy rarely works out exactly as planned; often enough for it to be a cultural touchstone but look underneath and you'll often find tiercels and kings threatened, held against their will, or indeed assaulted. in much the same way u can't be like "and marriage is a great experience for everyone because it's about love!"

[theraiderramble]

Three Things That Stand Out On Las Vegas Raiders' First Depth Chart Of Regular Season

The Las Vegas Raiders announced their first depth chart of the 2024 regular season on Tuesday. Here are three things that stand out...

Although the Las Vegas Raiders finished their preseason with a 0-2-1 record, it was still a successful period for the Silver and Black. Head coach Antonio Pierce was given the time he needed to see what he had in his two quarterbacks before eventually naming Gardner Minshew QB1 in Sin City. Pierce also had the chance to see his rookie class play in a scrimmage game for the first time. Stars…

[bebx]

Jamie Campbell Bowers as Henry Creel on set of Stranger Things 5

is it a flashback to when he was still human? does this mean Henry got to go outside in normal clothing when he was an orderly at the lab? or does he become human again after Vecna? or is he just using his power to appear human again? so many possibilities