#bundeli Culture

[gholhuio]

Discovering China: My Experience with the 144-Hour Visa-Free Transit Policy

As a traveler always on the lookout for new adventures, I recently embarked on a journey to China that exceeded all my expectations. With the country's 144-hour visa-free transit policy in place, I felt an irresistible urge to explore this vast and vibrant nation without the usual visa hassles. Little did I know that this trip would not only broaden my horizons but also allow me to experience the warmth and hospitality of the Chinese people firsthand.

Arriving in Beijing, I was immediately struck by the city's unique blend of ancient history and modern innovation. As I stood before the Great Wall, marveling at its grandeur, I couldn't help but feel a deep connection to the history that unfolded there. The process of entering the country was seamless; I simply presented my passport, boarding pass, and a carefully crafted itinerary showing my plans for the next six days. The immigration officers were friendly, and I felt a wave of excitement as I stepped into this new world.

With my 144-hour visa-free transit in hand, I decided to explore Beijing and then head to Shanghai. The public transportation system was incredibly efficient, making it easy to navigate from one landmark to another. I hopped on the subway and found myself amidst locals and fellow travelers, all sharing the same sense of wonder.

In Beijing, I was eager to try the renowned Peking Duck. I ventured to Quanjude, a famous restaurant, and indulged in the crispy skin and tender meat, savoring every bite. Wandering through Wangfujing, the bustling shopping street, I tasted local snacks that ranged from candied fruits to exotic street foods. Each encounter with the locals left me with a warm feeling, and their eagerness to help made me feel right at home.

After soaking up the historical sites and cultural experiences in Beijing, I boarded a high-speed train to Shanghai. The ride was smooth and fast—truly a testament to China's advanced infrastructure. As I arrived in Shanghai, the skyline took my breath away. Standing by the Bund, I marveled at the juxtaposition of old and new, where colonial architecture meets futuristic skyscrapers.

In Shanghai, I found myself enchanted by the Yu Garden, where I strolled through beautiful rockeries and tranquil ponds. It was the perfect escape from the city's hustle and bustle. Of course, I couldn’t leave without trying Xiaolongbao—soup dumplings that burst with flavor! Dining at Din Tai Fung was a highlight of my trip, and I can still taste the delightful experience.

Reflecting on my journey, I realized that the 144-hour visa-free transit policy is a fantastic opportunity for travelers to immerse themselves in the beauty of China without the lengthy visa application process. This experience has ignited a passion in me to return and explore more of what this incredible country has to offer.

If you’re contemplating a trip to China, I wholeheartedly encourage you to take advantage of this policy. With a little preparation—such as booking accommodations in advance and having your itinerary ready—you can create unforgettable memories. China awaits with open arms, ready to share its rich history, modern marvels, and the kindness of its people. Trust me; it’s an adventure you won’t want to miss!

[bfpnola]

IMAGE DESCRIPTION ADDED. REBLOG THIS VERSION AND THANK YOU @lab-labrava FOR WRITING IT!

ID: An infographic from the Instagram account @letstalkpalestine consisting of 10 slides. Image 1: The title page of the infographic. The text says: "Let's talk Anti-Zionist Jewish History." A smaller subtitle underneath the title says: "Jewish solidarity with Palestine until today." End ID.

Image 2: The infographic continues to the next panel. The text says, "As long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish resistance to it. While today the majority of Jewish people and communities worldwide still have a Zionist connection, more and more Jewish people, especially from the younger generation, are unlearning Zionism & speaking out. Swipe to learn more about just part of anti-Zionist Jewish history - since there's more than we can fit in 10 slides." A semi-transparent image is overlayed in the background, of someone holding up a sign that reads: Jews for Palestine! #Free Sheik Jarrah. End ID.

Image 3: Icon of a location tag next to the words Eastern Europe. In large, blue text is the word "The Bund" and the subtitle describing what it is, "A Jewish Socialist movement, established in 1987." The following paragraph says, "Opposing Zionism from the start, its 50-year tenure saw hundred of thousands of members across Eastern Europe advocate for workers' rights and cultivate a Yiddish culture." Location tag and the title, "North America." The paragraph says, "After mass immigration to the US in the early 20th century, [American Jewish Labor groups] (highlighted in chalky blue and bold white text) criticized Zionism for its colonial, nationalist, and bourgeois nature." Next to this text, is a circle with women protestors holding up signs. End ID.

Image 4: The title, "Middle East and North Africa." The paragraph states, "In 1945 a group of Iraqi Jews founded the Anti-Zionist League. They recognized Zionism as a form of colonialism linked to Western Interests. They hosted events and published pamphlets throughout the Middle East about the difference between Zionism & Judaism. They warned that Zionism is dangerous to Arab Jews, forcing them to split their Arab and Jewish identities, and urged the UN to create a unified Palestinian state.

Image 5: The panel is titled, "Anti-Zionist Jewish figures." A faded image of Hannah Arendt's visage is in the background. Overlayed on top, the following paragraphs discuss her. "Before 1948, several prominent Jewish leaders and scholars came out in opposition to political Zionism. Writers like Hannah Arendt turned against the Zionist movement and opposed a Jewish state. They correctly predicted a dark future if Zionism continued on the same path in Palestine. End ID.

Image 6: The day after the Deir Yassin Massacre in 1948, when Zionist militants wiped out the Deir Yassin village & its inhabitants, Albert Einstein wrote: "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people." The former paragraphs are imposed against a tan, parchment fragment, in typewriter font, and the letter ends with Sincerely yourn, Albert Einstein, both his signature and typed name. End ID.

Image 7: Titled "Anti Zionism Today." Blue sketchy image of someone's hand gripping jail bars breaks up the following paragraphs which say: Jewish solidarity with Palestinians is growing around the world, including even some Israelis who take the basic step of refusing Israeli military service. As punishment, Israel imprisons these conscientious objectors — but unlike Palestininas, they have a fair trial & often severe relatively short sentences of a few months . This is a first step towards solidarity and has the real consequence of depriving the occupation state of its soldiers. End ID.

Image 8: Titled "Israel's Crackdown on Jewish Anti-Zionism" Behind this text are a picture of handcuffs. In the corner is a picture of Jonathan Pollak. The following text says: Jonathan Pollak is a Jewish Israeli and long-time anti-Zionist activist. Israel has detained him several times, most recetly in January as he protested with Palestinians in Beita, (a Palestinian village) for allegedly throwing stones. Jonathan has been violently attacked for his activism. In 2018, Jonathan was slashed across the face by settlers who ambushed him outside his workplace. Earlier, in 2005, Israeli soldiers shot a tear gas canister. directly at him, causing internal bleeding in his brain." End ID.

Image 9: Semi-transparent image of an umbrella behind the title text is "Jewish Anti-Zionism isn’t one ideology. It’s an umbrella movement that encapsulates multiple communities and beliefs towards decolonizing Palestine. Some motivations or Jewish anti-Zionism include: 1. Pursuing millenia of Jewish tradition as a diasporic community 2, Detachibng religious and cultural tradition from political nationalism. 3. Socialist visions of a Jewish Society. 4. Believing in the right to self-determination for Palestinians Standing up to Zionism is: 1. Standing up to apartheid and colonization. 2. Standing up for a liberated, equal, and just Palestine from the river to the sea.

Image 10: An ending quote, and call to action, by the Anti-Zionist League. It says: "Jewish Men! Jewish Women! Zionism wants to throw us into a dangerous & hopeless adventure. Zionism contributes to making Palestine uninhabitable. Zionism wants to isolate us from the Egyptian people. Zionism is the enemy of the Jewish people. Down with Zionism! Long live the brotherhood of Jews and Arabs!" --The Anti-Zionist League. End ID.

[a-very-tired-jew]

Hot Take Incoming The more I read about Neo/New Bundism, the more I'm convinced that it's an ideology that is based on a weird mix of Ashkenazic white guilt, "yearning for the shtetl", and identifying with Yiddish culture over Jewish culture because the former emphasizes secularism while the latter does not (which belies that fact that Judaism has multiple ways to engage with it and you don't need to be religious).

This last part is especially important to understand as in the West, Judaism is emphasized as one of the Big Three religions even though it's one of the smallest in the world. Many of us are taught that Judaism is just proto Xtianity or Islam, and depending on where you live and your community you absorb that. Especially if your family is non-practicing and there isn't much of a Jewish community and culture for you to interact with growing up. Many of our holidays, cultural norms, and so on are associated with Xtianity and framed in regards to a Cultural Xtian society. Hence why I think so many young secular Jews feel that they can't actually connect with Judaism because the narrative they have from Xtian society plus their disconnect from Jewish society means they perceive Judaism through the Xtian religious perspective.

If Cultural, religious, and lax Xtians are this way, then sure Judaism is as well since Xtianity is based on it, right?

That's the mindset I've seen over and over.

This is further exacerbated by the immigrant communities in the North Eastern USA (NY, PA, NJ) that had massive moments of cultural exchange and assimilation. Deli culture in the North East is a mix of Italian and Jewish cultures. Historically, Italian and Jewish communities allied and mixed in the early 20th to the point where it's a stereotype. And if you don't believe me then let me point to Harley Quinn in pop media, any of the organized crime families and the start of Las Vegas, or the fact that you can get a cheesesteak in a Jewish deli in PA.

So it makes sense that Bundism is having a revival of sorts into it's Neo era. It's a socialist ideology that emphasizes progressive ideals that man of us agree with. But Bundism also emphasized secular Judaism by putting Yiddish culture at the forefront. It was a way to be Jewish without being religious, and if you have any hang ups on religious practice then it makes sense as to why this ideology might be attractive. However, there is a failure to acknowledge that the largest Bund, and successor populations/groups, had to give a pound of flesh repeatedly to "prove" that they were loyal because of the old dual loyalty antisemitic conspiracy. And that was never enough as these groups were wiped out after their governments were done with them.

(Note: some of the most ardent anti-communist Jews were ex-Soviet citizens who managed to escape and witnessed all of this firsthand)

Neo/New Bundism comes across, especially since Oct 7th, as an aggressive "yearning for the shtetl" that rehashes the compromises the Old Bund was willing to give the USSR regarding its Judaism by embracing and emphasizing Yiddish culture instead.

For example; look at all the literature and examples regarding JVP. They had the seder plate incident back in the Spring, have had literature that told Jews not to pray and/or speak in Hebrew but in English or Arabic, and have rabbis that denigrate and dismiss Jewish culture and history (as well as so many other incidents and issues). All they need to do is tell Jews that they should actually be secular socialists and speak Yiddish instead and you'd have one of the cornerstones of Bundism.

It didn't work during the early to mid 20th century, and it won't work now.

But nostalgia is a helluva thing.

And so it comes across as this highly aggressive rejection of Israel and everything it stands for, whether true or falsely attributed to it, because it's not about the Jewish connection to Israel but the Jewish connection to a more immediate loss: Yiddish culture, which was decimated and destroyed in the 20th century. This is especially true when talking to Ashkenazic Neo Bundists as their family histories, like mine, start and stop with the Shoah.

Consider that the Bund were one of the largest Jewish organizations in the Pale, the resulting Yiddish community in said region were the largest in the world, and they organized and fought the Nazis, then it makes sense as to why the loss would be so poignant for many and grabbing ahold of the ideology to create a connection makes sense. I know for me that if I were to dive into everything Yiddish I would develop a greater appreciation for my family and where I come from even with the loss of knowledge caused by the Shoah.

If you further consider that it's a secular ideology that puts socialism first, then Yiddish, and then Judaism last, then it makes sense as to why you see so many anti-Zionists emphasize the "Israel killed Yiddish" talking point (which I haven't seen in months, but I remember it being a thing up until the Spring). The ideology does not emphasize identifying with Judaism and Israel, but with Yiddish culture and institutions.

There's nothing wrong with this per se, but it isolates an aspect of the Jewish community and says "you're different from the rest of them" while at the same time emphasizing that they should assimilate into the rest of the world. And let's be honest, because it is a European based ideology it was emphasizing assimilation into Western civilizations of European descent.

It therefore makes sense as to why Neo Bundists don't identify with Israel and/or refuse to identify with it. They identify with the European aspect of their history and not with the Middle Eastern. The European connection is immediate and direct, the Middle Eastern is distant and cultural. I understand this position as its Biological Altruism theory in practice, but it does fail to take in the larger "ecological" community that is being Jewish.

Part of the ideology and its adherents also blame Israel for not reviving or reconstituting the Yiddish community and culture, which is ironic because that would be focusing on a very European subculture of Judaism (and anti-Israel activists continuously yell that the country is a White European Colony). Ironically, this "Israel killed Yiddish" point either fails to take into account or lies through omission that the Nazis and USSR killed the largest Yiddish cultural centers and populations in the 20th century and that Yiddish culture in the USA has faded away over time as more and more ethnicities and cultures have assimilated and torn down their metaphorical, and sometimes very real, isolationist walls.

Unfortunately Neo Bundism focuses on the pre-WWII aspects of Bundism. I've personally talked to a bunch of Neo Bundists, and witnessed/read on social media their writings and interactions, and in each instance they emphasize that Bundism has been around since before WWII, was a widely supported ideology, and it stood opposed to Israel and Zionism.

Except they rarely talk about Bundism post WWII. After WWII and with the establishment of Israel it dropped the opposition position. Israel became an extant country and opposition to its existence didn't make sense anymore. It dropped the anti-Zionism, but still emphasized doikayt. It emphasized that Israel should adhere to the progressive Bundist ideologies of economic, social, racial, and political equality and equity. Hell, there was even an Israeli Bundist organization.

Hence why the last extant Old Bundist organization in the world, Melbourne's Jewish Labour Bund, has an issue with New/Neo Bundism. The Melborune JLB is the last existing Old Bund group in the world with all others have closed down in prior years or decades. MJLB acknowledges the October 7th attack by Hamas and the violence imposed on Palestinians by Israel. It acknowledges suffering on both sides. New/Neo Bundist organizations rarely, if ever, do this and instead commit to a Holocaust Universalization like position regarding Gaza while omitting the terrorist attacks.

Furthermore, the Neo/New Bundist organizations do not discuss the issues that define Bundist ideology, such as economic and social issues, but instead emphasizes the anti-Zionist position. This reduces it to a one trick pony that misses the point entirely (paraphrasing Dr. Ringelbaum who is President of JLB here). The focus on pre-WWII Bundist ideology echoes the sentiments of Bundist groups that did not want to change their ideals and positions afterwards, which led to them becoming defunct. The Neo/New movement is repeating the same mistakes that led to the dissolution of the movement at large and resulted in the ideology being relegated to the wings with no real voice.

It is also important to note that the majority of the Neo/New Bundist movement is under 30, with a lot of them being undergrad age. As someone who teaches this age bracket I will say that they're passionate but overconfident. They're informed but also ignorant. They're sympathetic and empathetic, but easily misled. I was too at that age.

And like any movement, Neo/New Bundism is going to have its growing pains. I think if it is to continue past this conflict and does not fizzle out then the movement and associated organizations need to reflect on what they actually mean outside of anti-Zionism. Because as of right now and for the past few years of its inception, and the brand new groups, that is all they've been. That's not fighting for labor, social, racial, political, and economic rights. That's repeating the same mistakes as the Bund in the early 20th century did. It's cutting off your nose to spite your face.

At this point in time myself and others don't trust Neo/New Bundists because why would we? The movement has shown that it's anti-Israel positioning is more important to them than anything else. This means they ally, like the Old Bund did, with antisemites who want to harm all of us. The movement just happens to give them permission to be extremely and violent antisemitic by using "as an anti-Zionist Jew" as a permissible framework. Just like the Old Bund did pre-WWII.

You're not doing anything new or innovative or helping the diaspora. You're following in the footsteps that led to more deaths of our people.

Please re-examine where you stand and what you stand for. It's been done before and we need to learn from history. Not repeat it.

[dcdreamblog]

The All-Star Squadron included heroes who came from a wide array of professions, social/economic classes, regional cultures (which was a much bigger deal back then) and ethnic backgrounds. And while most of them were cishet white men, some of them weren't. Likewise, many of them held religious/philosophical beliefs other than "mainline" Protestantism. Now, they were all heroes, dedicated to the common goal of fighting for justice, and etc. so I have absolutely no doubt that all of them were able to get over any prejudices they may have had and do the job, but we are talking about people who were mostly white cishet American men who were born in the first half of the 20th Century; I cannot imagine that none of them had prejudices, and that these prejudices caused friction. Can we talk about that?

You're right and I wish I had better answers to give you. But a few factors keep me from offering up a lot of clear or worthwhile examples.

The Squadron's members were really opaque, and their actual thoughts came AFTER the war through Tarantula's book "Altered Egos". He's one of the few heroes where we have a distinct and purposefully kept war journal of his thoughts and the thoughts of some of his comrades during and after the war. Most of the other heroes were really concerned with their secret identities and didn't write these things down for posterity, especially not their own bigotries and stumbling blocks.

The War gave everybody an incentive to face front and close ranks. Public schisms in the Squadron's membership basically didn't happen and arguments that occurred behind closed doors stayed there.

The Squadron was, for its age, a deeply, RADICALLY liberal organization.

(A propaganda poster of Will Everett Sr, The Amazing Man, punching Hitler in the face. Circa 1943)

It accepted a black man into its ranks without a single public disagreement. From its FOUNDATION a large chunk of its membership were women. The Squadron even intervened in the Detroit Race Riots in 1943 where Amazing Man publically eviscerated an android supervillain calling himself "The Real American".

I could sit here until the sun came up rattling off all the times that Squadron teams or its individual members smashed pockets of the Klan or the American Nazi Party, or the German American Bund and then dragged their ass in front of the papers to call bigotry and intolerance UnAmerican and damaging to the war effort. The Young All Stars publically celebrated a Japanese American member during the era of internment.

Any bigotry in the organization was imposed upon it from the outside. The biggest example I can think of is that Wonder Woman spent the war years officially listed as the JSA's "secretary" because the Society's membership was more heavily scrutinized and it wasn't possible for her to take what was technically a military position in what was technically a combat role.

What stumbling we do have evidence for is very, VERY slight. The Sandman voices some homophobic opinions during a case that lead up to his confrontation with the Phantom of the Fair. But by the end of that case file we read about Dodds going through an active epiphany about homosexuality because of that case.

The widest spread "bigotry" that seemed to be present in the Squadron was patriarchal language directed at its female members who were always in a position to safely and openly give as good as they got. We have a collection here at the Perisphere that is JUST photos of Liberty Belle elbowing Johnny Quick in the ribs!

It sounds absurd. It sounds too good to be true. It SOUNDS like a lot of things. But there it is, in black and white.

If you want me to undercut your heroes from the past, I would for the sake of intellectual honesty. But I can't.

The JSA are the superhero community's North Star.

Not just because they were the first. But because they have always been like that.

The only time I have ever even heard a RUMOR of UNCLE SAM cursing is a couple years ago when the modern Ray came out as gay and people started talking bad about him online.

The modern Shining Knight started identifying as Bigender and Sir Justin has gotten into fist fights over it.

Please just. For your own sake. Believe in them, they are maybe the only figures I can't bring myself to mistrust these days.

[pattern-recognition]

Take a concrete example. Can a Great-Russian Marxist accept the slogan of national, Great-Russian, culture? No, he cannot. Anyone who does that should stand in the ranks of the nationalists, not of the Marxists. Our task is to fight the dominant, Black-Hundred and bourgeois national culture of the Great Russians, and to develop, exclusively in the internationalist spirit and in the closest alliance with the workers of other countries, the rudiments also existing in the history of our democratic and working-class movement. Fight your own Great-Russian landlords and bourgeoisie, fight their ‘culture’ in the name of internationalism, and, in so fighting, ‘adapt’ yourself to the special features of the Purishkeviches and Struves – that is your task, not preaching or tolerating the Slogan of national culture.

The same applies to the most oppressed and persecuted nation – the Jews. Jewish national culture is the slogan of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie, the slogan of our enemies. But there are other elements in Jewish culture and in Jewish history as a whole. Of the ten and a half million Jews in the world, somewhat over a half live in Galicia and Russia, backward and semi-barbarous countries, where the Jews are forcibly kept in the status of a caste. The other half lives in the civilised world, and there the Jews do not live as a segregated caste. There the great world-progressive features of Jewish culture stand clearly revealed: its internationalism, its identification with the advanced movements of the epoch (the percentage of Jews in the democratic and proletarian movements is everywhere higher than the percentage of Jews among the population).

Whoever, directly or indirectly, puts forward the slogan of Jewish ‘national culture’ is (whatever his good intentions may be) an enemy of the proletariat, a supporter of all that is outmoded and connected with caste among the Jewish people; he is an accomplice of the rabbis and the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, those Jewish Marxists who mingle with the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and other workers in international Marxist organisations, and make their contribution (both in Russian and in Yiddish) towards creating the international culture of the working-class movement – those Jews, despite the separatism of the Bund, uphold the best traditions of Jewry by fighting the slogan of ‘national culture’.

Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism – these are the two irreconcilably hostile slogans that correspond to the two great class camps throughout the capitalist world, and express the two policies (nay, the two world outlooks) in the national question. In advocating the slogan of national culture and building up on it an entire plan and practical programme of what they call ‘cultural-national autonomy’, the Bundists are in effect instruments of bourgeois nationalism among the workers.

Lenin, V. I., Critical Remarks on the National Question (1913)

[jewgender]

🌈✡️ : JEWGENDER

This flag is DIRECTLY referenced/inspired by @gendertreyf 's flags for the Jewish cultural genders/sexes, please also support his lovely original work!

Image IDs in alt text!

Jewgender is a Jewish culturally-exclusive xenogender, meaning you may only use this term/flag if you are Jewish (inclusive of patrilineal Jews, secular, converts, etc - a Jew is a Jew!). Credit for use of the flag in pfps, banners, etc is appreciated but not necessary. Please credit back to this post if you make edits of or take inspiration from this flag! Goyim/non-Jews may interact and share, but please do not use or clown in the reblogs/replies. Someone who identifies as Jewgender may do so for any number of reasons, Including but not limited to:

Feeling connected to one or more of the eight genders/sexes listed in the Talmud, including both adam and hamah. Someone who identifies with multiple of the listed sexes/genders may do so due to gender fluidity, intersex identity, or other personal experiences.

Feeling connected to Jewishness itself: be it culture, religion and/or secularism, social justice, history, etc. This gender indicates a deep tie to Jewishness at your core, inherently intertwining itself with your gender and the way you carry yourself through the world.

As a punk/alternative gender - to piss off transphobes, goyim, etc.

All of the above, or another reason entirely. Again, a Jew is a Jew!

Versions of the flag listed above include the standard blank flag, the stripes and their meanings (again - these were directly referenced from the aforementioned flags!), an alternative flag that include "b'tzelem elohim" and "tzedek tirdof", and a Bundist /Jewish Labor Bund Jewgender flag.

[jadeseadragon]

@jewishvoiceforpeace

"We’re proud anti-Zionists at JVP. But what is Zionism and why are we opposed to it?

Zionism, in the words of its founders, is an explicitly “colonial” ideology.

Zionism is a 19th century political ideology that claimed Jewish safety required a Jewish-only nation-state. The Zionist movement emphasized their ideology as a response to centuries of antisemitic persecution against Jews across Europe.

In 1948, Zionist militias established a Jewish state on Palestinian land, instituted a military occupation over Palestinians, and mandated a system of Jewish legal supremacy — apartheid.

For 75 years, Zionism has been used to justify massacres of Palestinians by the Israeli military, the destruction of villages and olive groves, and a military occupation that separates families with checkpoints and walls.

The Israeli government, and the US Jewish institutions that defend Zionism and the state of Israel, want us to think Zionism was inevitable, and that to be Jewish is to be Zionist.

As anti-Zionists, we know our history of oppression, but we reject Zionism as the answer. We know our safety is — and always has been — in solidarity and a shared future.

Don’t be fooled by claims that Zionism is a movement for Jewish self determination — it never was. Despite hardship, diaspora Jews created thriving communities, cultural practices, and histories.

As long as Zionism has existed, there were Jews standing in opposition to it. From the Jewish Labor Bund, to Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt; from Hajo Meyer to Judith Butler. In 2019, Tzedek Chicago became the first anti-Zionist synagogue in the US.

Not only did these Jews oppose Zionism because of its required dispossession of Palestinian people, they saw Zionism as a false promise. They rejected the idea that Jewish freedom from antisemitism must be confined to finding power in a militarized state. Seeking refuge from oppression through militarism while subjugating others closes all avenues of safety through solidarity.

Anti-Zionism is anti-colonial and anti-imperialist. We must lead with this framing if we wish to dismantle Zionism.

Only by seeing Zionism for what it is can we claim any solidarity with others."

[rotzaprachim]

they certainly WERE radical and often socialist in many ways but I don’t think people who want to hold up bundists really get that there was a lot about the bund that was pretty normie too. Like one of the big arguments was about the language for Jewish public elementary schools and how to run Jewish public elementary schools, how to run libraries. Their thing was about living in a multiethnic socialist state - that’s politically and economically leftist but socially liberal. If we want to find a modern equivalent I think it’s in groups like omdim byachad and hand in hand schooling and whatever the local polticial organizations are in the places Jews already live. The whole society and politics are inherently fallen we need to go leave capitalist destination for a socialist agricultural commune? We need to build a new unfallen culture from scratch? THAT WAS THE ZIONISTS.

[opencommunion]

Wherever we live is our homeland (Yiddish) – from a Ukrainian Bundist poster (Kiev, 1918). The image was revived by the band Black Ox Orkestar around 2003/4. The image was posterized with an English translation added by Aharon Varady.

The Jewish Labor Bund, founded in Vilna in 1897, reached its prime in Poland between WWI and WWII as the representative of the Jewish working class, supported by other elements of the Jewish community as well, because it was seen as a champion of Jewish rights. ... Their principle was doykayt — here-ness. “Here” being the Diaspora. For the Bund, Jews were primarily a people whose roots were in Eastern Europe, with Yiddish as their language and Yiddish as the basis of their culture. They should preserve their language and culture by struggling for cultural autonomy within Eastern Europe. ... To immigrate to Palestine was to betray the cause of socialist revolution and Jewish cultural autonomy. It was to surrender to anti-Semites who wanted to rid Europe of Jews. Bundists and Zionists were like oil and water because Zionists considered the Diaspora experience to be a disaster and Diaspora Jews to be pathetic, if not suicidal. Bundists and Zionists also clashed on the language issue. The Bund were partisans of Yiddish, the Zionists of Hebrew — and the Zionists took their fervor for Hebrew so far that they sought to stamp out Yiddish in Palestine and in the early years of Israel.

Bennett Muraskin, Jewish Alternatives to Zionism

[omgthatdress]

The history of summer camps is pretty interesting. They started out as part of the whole anti-urban back-to-nature movement of the 1870s and 1880s, as a way for boys to get out of the city and re-connect with nature. Soon girls’ camps also appeared. More comfortable and luxurious camps became a way to escape the hot city and relax in cooler climes.

With the dawn of the 20th century, summer camps with an ideological bent emerged. Jewish camps began to teach children in socialism and Zionism, as well as Yiddish and Jewish culture.

In particular, the Nazi party built camps as extensions of their Hitler Jugend and Bund Deutscher Mädchen, which put an emphasis on military order, athletics, and physical labor. “German” camps which outwardly existed to teach children German language and culture but inwardly existed for Nazi indoctrination popped up all over the US. I’m not gonna put up any pictures of them because I don’t need any of that on my dash.

While most summer camps in the US remained segregated, in the 1930s, progressively-minded organizations began opening racially integrated summer camps where kids could come together an make friends of different races.

[tanadrin]

re: “Remember when saying ‘Nazis are bad’ wasn’t a political statement?”

I have bad news about WW2 and something the US seems to have memory-holed as a culture: fascism was extremely popular in the run-up to WW2. Charles Coughlin’s Nazi-supporting anti-semitic radio program peaked at around ~20 million by some estimates, which is ~15% of the entire country at the time, the German-American Bund (an openly Nazi organization) had a rally at Madison Square Gardn in 1939, the Nazi government used members of the U.S. congress to distribute Nazi propaganda, and after the war, some conservative politicians opposed the Nuremberg trials as being too harsh a treatment for the Nazi leadership.

Pearl Harbor and the subsequent defeat of Germany definitely took some of the shine of fascism generally and Nazism specifically, but there has always been a fascist strain in American politics. Which shouldn’t be surprising; the strategy of the South after its defeat in the Civil War was to run an insurrection aimed at establishing a proto-fascist political order, and after the Compromise of 1877, this strategy was basically successful: white southerners maintained Jim Crow through terror and apartheid, while conducting foreign policy with the rest of the country through the Democratic Party. It’s not a coincidence that Hitler was inspired openly by American racial apartheid, nor that the U.S. was using concentration camps in Cuba decades before WW2.

The U.S. didn’t invent racial apartheid, or concentration camps, or any of the political tactics that would get canonized under the label “fascism” in the lead-up to WW2; this isn’t a “the U.S. is the source of all human evil” kind of post. But there are a lot of very bleak chapters in U.S. history, and we impose an artificial kind of moral clarity on some of them in retrospect. I think WW2 and the period immediately prior is just such a chapter. American fascism has never been a fringe phenomenon, and I don’t think Americans can really understand the danger it represents if they think of it as arising from currents entirely alien to the political mainstream.

[misfitwashere]

Rallies at Madison Square Garden

Quotations from October 27th, 2024, and February 20th, 1939

Timothy Snyder

Nov 01, 2024

The following are quotations from Donald Trump’s closing campaign rally last week and the Nazi rally of the American German Bund in 1939.

Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country

To attempt to thwart the will of nature by indiscriminately mixing the races of the world to produce some artificial standard human race is madness

'You know what? Kamala Harris, she got 85 million votes because she’s just so impressive.' As the first Samoan, Malaysian, low IQ, former California prosecutor ever to be elected president, it was just a groundswell of popular support and anyone who thinks otherwise is just a freak or a criminal.

There never has been and there can be no 'international' or 'interracial' culture

We carved watermelons together

Everyone knows she is a very low IQ individual

The Democrat party has forgotten about Americans. Rather than cater to Americans, they decided: 'You know what? It would just be easier to replace them with people who will be reliable voters'

I will stop the invasion of criminals coming into our country

They’re eating the pets up there

The United States is now an occupied country, but it will soon be an occupied country no longer

And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.

The Gentile American worker is being sold down the river by international Jewish interests

But the fucking illegals, they get whatever they want, don’t they?

Jews have a hard time throwing that paper.

The Jew is most concerned with maintaining his stranglehold on the financial systems

They are indeed the enemy from within, but this is who we’re fighting.

They are now full-on to Marxism and socialism.

The menace of anti-national, God-hating Jewish-Bolshevism is deliberately minimized

Radical left Marxist rated even worse than crazy Bernie Sanders

The most sinister and corrupt forces on Earth

There’s only one person alive today that can fix all of it

If you like, see if you can tell which is which.

Once you have sorted it out, see if that makes anything better.

Donald Trump is working within a tradition, and he knows it.

Please share this post.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Publications like Die Freundin (The Girlfriend); Frauenliebe (Women Love, which later became Garçonne); and Das 3. Geschlecht (The Third Sex, which included writers who might identify as transgender today), found dedicated audiences who read their takes on culture and nightlife as well as the social and political issues of the day. The relaxed censorship rules under the Weimar Republic enabled gay women writers to establish themselves professionally while also giving them an opportunity to legitimize an identity that only a few years later would be under threat.

[...]

There were some twenty-five to thirty queer publications in Berlin between 1919 and 1933, most of which published around eight pages of articles on a bi-weekly basis. Of these, at least six were specifically oriented toward lesbians. What made them unique is the space they made for queer women, who had traditionally been marginalized on account of both gender and sexuality, to grapple with their role in a rapidly changing society. (The concept of the “new,” albeit straight, woman in the Weimar Republic has been researched broadly, including by��Rüdiger Graf in Central European History, who writes that it reflected a crisis of masculinity following defeat in the First World War as well fears over the country’s future when women were putting off getting married and having children.) In these interwar years in Germany, queer and transgender identity became more accepted, in large part thanks to the work of Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish doctor whose Institut für Sexualwissenschaft focused on issues of gender, sex, and sexuality. At the same time, women in Germany were making strides toward greater independence and equity; they gained the right to vote in 1918, and feminist organizations like Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine cultivated space for women in public spheres, encouraging their advancement in politics. As Sara Ann Sewell writes in the journal Central European History, the German Communist Party created the Red Women and Girls’ League in 1925 to attract more women and working-class people, particularly through organizing factory workers. More generally, German women were becoming increasingly empowered. Queer people—including women—rallied around the abolishment of contemporary sodomy laws. This struggle “created a wider climate of publication, activism, and social organization that was much more embracing of different types of queer and trans lives,” according to Katie Sutton, an associate professor of German and gender studies at the Australian National University.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … October 30

Peisistratus rides into Athens with Athene

605 BC – On this date the Athenian benevolent tyrant Peisistratus was born (d.527 BC). Peisistratos was the son of a philosopher and teacher called Hippocrates, and was named for the Peisistratos in the Odyssey. He lowered taxes and increased Athens' economy.

According to Plutarch he was the eromenos (Greek for "young lover") of the Athenian lawgiver Solon. He assisted Solon in his endeavors, and fought bravely in the battle of Salamis.

When Solon left Athens, Peisistratos became leader of the party of the Highlands (poor, rural people) in 565 BC. Peisistratos used a clever scheme, calling for bodyguards after he pretended to be attacked. Those bodyguards were composed of the people of the Highlands who had entered Athens. In 561 BC he seized the Acropolis with this group of bodyguards, becoming ruler. His rule did not last - he was driven out by Lycurgis, Megacles and others from the party of the Coast within the year. He returned 10 years later (in legend, with Athene at his side), regained power and reigned for 23 years until his death in 527 BC.

During his reign, many temples were built and he encouraged poets and artists by welcoming them into his court. According to a story first mentioned by the Latin author Cicero, Peisistratus ordered the writing down of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, which had previously been transmitted orally.

1882 – Johannes Holzmann (d.1914) was a German anarchist writer and activist who generally went by the pseudonym Senna Hoy.

Holzmann, born in Tuchel, Prussia (now Tuchola, Poland), hailed from a bourgeois Jewish family. Moving to Berlin, he became a teacher of religion at first. Like many intellectuals around the turn of the century, he felt oppressed by the restrictive morals then reigning German society. He quit teaching in 1902 and founded the League for Human Rights (Bund für Menschenrecht, in German) in 1903.

In 1904, he published a booklet entitled "Das dritte Geschlecht" ("The Third Gender"). In it, he attacked homophobia, laying most of the blame on religion. Above all, the text was intended to be educational and covered evolution, biology and issues then facing homosexuals.

From 1904 to 1905, Holzmann edited the journal Der Kampf: Zeitschrift für gesunden Menschenverstand (The Struggle: Journal for Common Sense). Though it was not published by any particular organization, the journal was anarchist in outlook. In addition to fictional stories, Der Kampf published articles on various topics, including many about homosexuality. Among its writers were Else Lasker-Schüler, Peter Hille, and Erich Mühsam and, at its best, it had a circulation of up to 10,000.

During this time, Holzmann wrote an article entitled "Die Homosexualität als Kulturbewegung" ("Homosexuality as a Cultural Movement"). He argued that the right to privacy entailed that "no one has the right to intrude in the private matters of another, to meddle in another's personal views and orientations, and that ultimately it is no one's business what two freely consenting adults do in their homes." He attacked Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code which criminalized homosexual acts.

To him, the struggle against the prohibition of homosexual acts was part of a larger struggle for emancipation. He disagreed with the mainstream socialist movement, namely the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), that viewed the repeal of Paragraph 175 as a minor issue. He also opposed the SPD's tactic of forcefully outing gays, such as the steel magnate Friedrich Alfred Krupp, in order to bring about the repeal of Paragraph 175. He called this tactic an "indecent weapon", saying that anyone who practices it "is willing to remove ground under his own feet by practicing the very injustice that he opposes". He also disagreed with many other German gay rights activists such as Adolf Brand who did not see their struggle as part of a wider movement.

He views caused him to be monitored by the police. Annoyed by this, he wrote a letter to the chief of the Berlin police, threatening to punch the next person he caught spying on him in the face. For this, he was sentenced to four months in prison, but he decided to flee rather than serve the sentence.

Once in Zurich, he worked for a newspaper called Der Weckruf (The Wake-up Call). He was arrested once more and deported. He sneaked back into Switzerland. He tried to stay in hiding by faking his own death. He wrote an obituary for himself claiming that he had been killed in the course of a prisoners' escape. After this was exposed, he was disgraced, even within the anarchist scene. Therefore, he decided to leave Zurich. After spending a couple of months in Paris, he decided to move to Russia.

He opted for Russia, having reported on the 1905 Russian Revolution in Der Kampf, because he thought Europe's future depended on the outcome of revolutionary developments in that country. He joined an anarchist federation in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. He assisted that organization for several weeks, robbing rich merchants to fund the group's activities. In June 1907, he was caught and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. Having struggled for his release for years, his supporters finally managed to convince the Russian authorities to let him go. However, the German authorities refused to let him back into the country, so he was forced to remain incarcerated in Russia. Meanwhile, Holzmann's health deteriorated. He suffered from malnutrition and typhus and died on April 28, 1914.

1930 – The Oscar-winning Spanish-born Cuban cinematographer Néstor Almendros, was born on this date (d.1992). Born in Barcelona, Spain, Almendros moved to Cuba at age 18 to join his exiled anti-Franco father. In Havana, he founded a cinema club and wrote film reviews. Then he went on to study in Rome at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. He directed six shorts in Cuba and two in New York. After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, he returned and made several documentaries for the Castro regime. But after two of his shorts (Gente En La Playa and La Tumba Francesa) were banned, he moved to Paris. There he became the favorite of Éric Rohmer and François Truffaut. In 1978, he started his Hollywood career, and won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for the film Days of Heaven. Four years later he was nominated again by the Academy for his work on Sophie's Choice.

In his later years, Almendros co-directed two documentaries about the human rights situation in Cuba: Mauvaise Conduite (about the persecution of Gay people) and Nobody Listened (about the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of former comrades of Fidel Castro). He shot several prestigious advertisements for Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein.

In 1992, Néstor Almendros died of AIDS in New York at age 61. Human Rights Watch International has named an award after him, given every year at the HRWI film festival.

1931 – Hubert Kennedy is an American author and mathematician.

Kennedy was born in Florida and studied mathematics at several universities. From 1961 he was professor of mathematics, with research interest in the history of mathematics, at Providence College (Rhode Island), He spent three sabbatical years doing research in Italy and Germany.

Kennedy came out as gay on the cover of the magazine The Cowl, and, along with Eric Gordon, was part of the first Gay Pride parade in Providence, Rhode Island, which was held on June 26, 1976.

In 1986 Kennedy moved to San Francisco, where he continued his historical research on the beginnings of the gay movement in Germany. Since 2003 he has been in a home for assisted living in Concord, California.He has over 200 publications in several languages, from an analysis of the mathematical manuscripts of Karl Marx and a revelation of Marx's homophobia, to theoretical genetics and a proof of the impossibility of an organism that requires more than two sexes in order to reproduce. In addition, Dr. Kennedy has written biographies of the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano and the German homosexual emancipationist/theorist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and has edited the collected writings of Ulrichs. His translations of the boy-love novels of the German anarchist writer John Henry Mackay and his investigations of the writings of Mackay have helped establish Mackay's place in the gay canon.

Hysén speaks at Stockholm Pride

1959 – Glenn Hysén, born in Gothenburg, Sweden, is a football manager and former player who played for leading Dutch, Italian and English clubs and won 68 caps for Sweden. He is also a reality television star, coach, and football commentator.

Hysén is the father of Tobias Hysén of IFK Göteborg, Alexander Hysén of GIF Sundsvall, and Anton Hysén of Utsiktens BK.

At Frankfurt Airport in 2001, Hysén attacked a man who had groped him while in the public restroom. In 2007, Hysén spoke at Stockholm Pride, the largest gay pride festival in the Nordic region. Many people from the gay community were surprised due to the earlier incident. At the Stockholm Pride, he delivered a speech denouncing sports homophobia and laid to rest his 2001 airport incident.

He stated that,

"I know that many LGBT people have been the victims of assaults and hate crimes. I can therefore understand if some people have been upset by the airport incident, so I want to be clear: I think that it is completely unacceptable that anybody should be subjected to assaults, insults or hate crimes due to their sexual orientation or gender identity ...The incident had been blown out of proportion in the media...In order to finally flush the Frankfurt Airport punch down the toilet: it is not the case that I beat up a gay person. I categorically deny that ...I'm not proud that I took a swing at him, but I am proud that I have integrity and that I reacted."

In the same speech he asked "How easy would it be for a sixteen-year-old boy who plays football to come out as gay to his team mates?" In March 2011, his youngest son, Anton Hysén, a professional footballer himself, came out of the closet to the media.

1991 – Danell Leyva is a Cuban-American former gymnast who competed for the United States. He is the 2012 Olympic individual all-around bronze medalist and 2016 Olympic parallel bars and horizontal bar silver medalist. He is also the 2011 US national all-around gold medalist and the 2011 world champion on the parallel bars.

In gymnastics, Leyva was a specialist on parallel bars and horizontal bar, having his own signature move (jam-dislocate-hop to undergrips) on the latter.

In 2013, Leyva signed a multi-year sponsorship agreement with Adidas Gymnastics. Fellow US Olympic Team members Jake Dalton, McKayla Maroney and Jordyn Wieber were also sponsored by Adidas.

After ending his career in gymnastics, Leyva began to pursue an acting and media career. Soon after the 2016 Olympics, he moved from Miami to Los Angeles to pursue this career and enrolled in acting classes. By mid-2017, Leyva had already filmed two television advertisements, appeared on a Nickelodeon show, and worked as a choreography consultant on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He had also purchased a production company, which he named "Parallel Entertainment".

Leyva competed on American Ninja Warrior in 2019.

On October 11, 2020, for National Coming Out Day, Leyva revealed via Twitter that he identifies as bisexual and pansexual.

1992 – New Ways Ministry, a Mt. Rainier, Maryland group led by three Roman Catholic bishops, announced it would release a statement of disagreement with the Vatican's call for Gays and Lesbians to be barred from becoming adoptive or foster parents, teachers, coaches, or military personnel. 1,500 lay persons signed the statement.

[k0sher]

this is a sideblog dedicated to collecting jewish art, judaica, photos, books, etc from around the world - it runs on a queue that posts randomly 2x daily, with occasional extra posts for things that I want to save immediately

i am a queer, trans, ashkenazi reconstructionist jew with a particular interest in Yiddish

this blog is explicitly pro-palestine, and will share art and information from pro-palestine jews, the jewish labor bund, and jewish history & cultures pre-israel (not exclusively, but still) - I make an effort not to reblog anything that is explicitly zionist or anti-palestine

most of my tags are self-explainatory, but I've tagged this post with the tags I use most often to make navigation easier

be kind & best wishes 💖