#colonial slavery tools

[reasoningdaily]

This engraving titled A Tread-Mill Scene in Jamaica (also published in a variant version titled An Interior View of Jamaican House of Correction) played an important role in the abolitionist campaign against the apprenticeship system. Apprenticeship — planned as a six-year transitional system and in the end lasting only four years — was introduced in Jamaica in 1834.

It renamed enslaved people as “apprentices” and compelled them to work for those who had formerly been their owners. Although apprenticeship was initially accepted by most British antislavery campaigners as a gradual means of ending slavery, the conflicts and violence that accompanied it eventually convinced these abolitionists to campaign for its end.

Because apprentice-holders, unlike slaveholders, were not legally permitted to use direct physical violence as a means of control, apprenticeship saw an increase in the use of the prison system as a form of labor discipline. Many of the most serious and widely publicized abuses during apprenticeship took place in Jamaican prisons. This abolitionist print, which illustrated a shocking first-person account, A Narrative of Events . . . , by James Williams, a former apprentice, attempts to capture them all.

At the center of the image is a treadmill. Treadmills were introduced into most Jamaican prisons during apprenticeship as a supposedly humane form of punishment. As this abolitionist exposé emphasizes, they soon became sites of torture. Prisoners were supposed to step regularly upward, several inches at a time, turning the wheel as they did so. In practice, the wheel often turned so fast that those “working” it had no chance of maintaining their footing, and so slipped off, hanging by wrists strapped to a bar above the wheel as the wheel turned and its steps repeatedly struck their legs.

Prison drivers flogged those who came off the wheel and sometimes those who had not, in an attempt to force them to continue to step or to refind their footing if they had fallen off. The whip added to the pain inflicted by the punishment.

[communistkenobi]

does anyone have reading recommendations that clarify the difference between liberalism and fascism? I’m having trouble distinguishing what is just like normal levels of imperial/colonial violence conducted by a liberal state and what pushes it over the edge into a fascist state. Is fascism simply mature liberalism? Is it liberalism in crisis? Can we only make historical, reactive judgements about what is fascist, which is to say, can we only know if fascism occurred after it has come and gone? I take the general point that calling all liberal states fascist can let them off the hook for types of violence considered normal or “just doing business,” invisibilising the daily violences they conduct as part of the regular maintenance of a liberal capitalist state. People are calling the US fascist for its direct participation in and funding of the genocide in Palestine - a diagnosis I don't disagree with, but if that’s the case, where do you draw the distinction between the US being merely a liberal state with aggressive global imperial ambitions and the US being a fully fascist state? Perhaps more bluntly, what’s the difference between a liberal drone strike and a fascist one? I’m struggling to understand the value of the fascist label, because everything it describes (ultranationalism, a theory of racial and cultural degeneracy/decline, paranoia about an imminent external threat expressed as violence against internal populations deemed to have insufficient loyalty to the country, a turn towards a mythologised tradition of the past, imperial expansion, genocidal projects against minority populations, etc etc) just seems to me like a description of United States in general lol

[thorough-witness-enjoyer]

anon because im on the wrong blog rn but i wanted to say i really enjoyed your witness analysis post. i havent really seen many comparisons about the colonisation aspect of what the witness does (though to be fair, im not really in touch with fandom). so it was nice to these themes touched on especially so eloquently !

Greetings anon!!!

Thank you so much for the kind message!! I deeply appreciate your words as the Witness is a character that is extremely close to me, quite literally being one of my favorite characters in media ever and someone who revolves in my head like a rotisserie chicken 24/7!!!

I truly believe that if you don’t see the content you desire in the world, you should go out and make it, so when I didn’t see mountains of the most bitter vitriol towards the Witness, I knew I had a job to do!

I’ve been left to pick up the pieces of the Witness’ long legacy of reducing my people and culture to what is “palatable and profitable”, my family has a prophecy (a destiny if you will) that I will form my own Witness in this life to enact an ideology and force that idea on me, I was once a precursor who raged against a silent god by abandoning my self, I’ve met many disciples of the Witness in my life and many more victims of it. This character has been so firmly tied to my life that I just had to share my perspective with the world in an attempt to make people understand just how important the lessons we can learn from it are!! I could talk about the Witness for eons!!!

There has been a lot of Witness works ( fanfiction, memes, art work, etc.) produced and a lot of it has been absolutely phenomenal work!! They are all clearly created by people who have a deep affection for the character that clearly shows in their fantastic pieces and I truly love that, but a lot of what I saw left me feeling restless because none of it (from what I’ve seen) truly tapped into the absolute nightmarish nature of what this entity has brought down on civilizations. I really wanted to bring in another voice on this character because I couldn’t be moved so deeply by its defeat and sit still on it!!

Again, if no one is making the content you would like to see, make it! That’s actually the biggest reason why I started making posts for this blog, I wanted to help others see that there is much more to talk about when it comes to the Witness than its philosophical views on reality and it’s big eyes (as well as not keeping my trillions of thoughts in my head).

To me, characters as awful as it should always have their victims struggles voiced first and foremost and the Witness is much bigger than itself for it has forced its necrotizing fingers into the lives of everyone in the Destiny universe.

The story and focus will never be on the Witness for me, it will always be on its victims and their recovery.

I think about how I struggle to find traditional names for my heritage because everyone has a name from the beliefs of our imperialists instead of the victims they forced to be remembered as necessary casualties on a path to “civilization and salvation” and I am putting the Witness through a million glass tables.

I think about how all I know of my relatives who were born not that long ago was that they were only allowed to be “field workers and strong believers “ and here comes a massive anvil over its head.

Speaking on this matter, I am still working on a small thought dump on how Rhulk is a prime example of someone who sheds their cultural and personal ties to go from victim to perpetrator and it’s been hard!!

In all honesty, it has really taken an emotional and mental toll on me for how deep it cuts and how much of it reminds me of all that could of have been in the lives of so many if they weren’t groomed into believing that the only way to get justice for their lives (lives affected by the conditions the ideological groomers use to be opportunistic) is to take on a position where they are a subjugator, not the subjugated.

It’s very painful to write about and Rhulk as a character makes the very core of my being ache as every time I read Shattered Suns, I have to sit back and clench my fists at the invasive, predatory behavior the Witness displays towards Lubraens. Those same words it coerces Rhulk with are the same ones that resulted in hollow people in my life who were prideful in turning their backs on their cultural ways and community if it meant gaining the security and sense of righteousness the oppressors offered. The Witness preyed on Rhulk and turned him into something truly awful, something I see so often that I cannot stand by and not say anything on it.

I wish to see Rhulk content that does not focus on him just being a devoted disciple of the Witness or some super strong villain who’s cool, I really want to see more content touching on what happened to make him fall so far into the Witness’ clutches and views him as the victim he is! I want to make content that shows how REPUGNANT their relationship is and how Rhulk is an example of the need to provide preventative community and understanding to those vulnerable to ideological grooming, especially in our modern era where harmful beliefs are ever present and looking to find people to sustain them!

This is getting very long, but in essence, thank you! Thank you so much anon for your words!!

I truly believe in the importance of POC voices, especially black voices, in fandom spaces as we have been left out of a lot of discussions that have heavy implicit (and explicit) ties to race and culture when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy settings! We get strength from community and understanding, it is how we can better make fandom spaces comfortable for all!! By giving my views on the Witness and its ills, I wish to help the Destiny fandom understand some of the ties it has to real life issues and hope that it helps people be more conscious of the teachings in media they invest in!

It was so nice to see people contribute to my Witness post with their own connections or point out connections other people have made like with evangelicalism and Polish fascism. I’m very glad many people can unite on the fact that the Witness is abominable and that we can face irl Witnesses by defeating ignorance hand in hand!! My understanding and beliefs are always evolving with new information and I’m always happy to grow alongside others!

Just remember guys, make the content you want to see in life and if you are a POC, voicing your discomfort or offering your perspective on matters discussed in sci-fi and fantasy settings is essential to getting proper representation in media that is done with nuance and respect as well as help both audiences and writers craft better narratives!!!

And trust me, the Witness (especially the behaviors it displays towards Rhulk and it’s other victims) makes me deeply, deeply,

deeply

deeply

Uncomfortable.

I will never forgive the Witness for all it has done and I never want to see it pleased with its work EVER. The only redeeming I want to hear about the Witness is how it can redeem this coupon for my fist in its face, free of charge, guaranteed by me, filled with the force of all my relatives who did not live long enough to see that they could have always mattered in this world.

[pumpumdemsugah]

I don't trust white queer or trans people

What this "woc have higher levels of T" and "Black women don't fit eurocentric hormone levels" ( said by left leaning people ) shows is what many of you take away is WOC, especially Black women are seen as masculine because you think there is a biological basis for this idea and don't see it the same way people see police calling Black men and boys bigger or holding a gun to justify police brutality

White queer people love the " how can you tell someone's hormone levels without a test" until they're presented with a Black woman then they know and they're happy to say whatever unscientific neo-race science shit about Black women they like to prove a point about not making assumptions about peoples bodies but Black women aren't people, we're points, tools and vehicles for credibility so we're whatever your argument needs to work. Tbh i think the only reason many of you even use that line wrt trans people is trans people can be white. If only Black people were trans, many of you would be comfortable pushing ideas you call fascist when conservatives do it. White people always find a way to present themselves as more evolved than the lowly existence Black women occupy because why are you talking about my body and why do i see people claiming stereotypes that DO NOT apply to Black women apply to us like being hairy. At this point many of you view us as an empty vessel to dump and pin any negative idea on. We're literally seen as balded headed. I'm not interchangable with other WOC or other stereotypes

All many of you have taken away is treating Black women like a modern day 3rd gender so OF COURSE we're treated differently, our bodies are problem others need to learn to stomach and taken the focus off the fact we're seen as aggressive because of the legacy of slavery. You can not own people as property and present them as people, you need a justification for enslaving an entire group of people. You lot genuinely think Black women are being targeted because we are different and brutishly made. The blame goes from the people doing this to casting Black women's bodies as a gender conundrum that has yet to be solved. Slave masters were never confused.

Its easier to justify slavery and colonialism when you pretend the people you're doing it to aren't people the way you are as white person, they aren't civilised and many of you have come to this conclusion about us again and don't see the issue of YOU finding a scapegoat to distract from your violent behaviour.

You lot hear " Black women don't fit white femininity" and you think yes, its because they're universally all big Black brutes and you think its leftism because buzzword buzzword and we're meant to see this as solidarity because you got some self loathing Black woman to agree. Black women are seen as masculine as an excuse to abuse and rape us, its not simply some issue of representation or accepting us, its used to justify harm and many of you have taken a discussion of violence against Black women and erased violence against Black women from it. And then have the gall to call it solidarity and not white entitlement when you've ignored our history and suffering

[i-gwarth]

There is a future for "the good ones"

Bastion is such a weird little outlier among X-men characters. He has a damn-near-incomprehensible, mystical-technological-timetravelling nonsense backstory that requires you to read like 30 other comics to understand - exactly the kind of convoluted 1990s comics bullshit that the MCU adaptations have tried to steer clear of for two decades now. I didn't actually expect them to actually adapt him for this season. But ultimately I kind of love how they play him in the series.

He's streamlined - a boring, soft-spoken little middle-manager type who plans out a near-perfect encirclement of mutancy in preparation for a purge.

Here's a bigot who seems both rational and capable of compromise. In stark contrast with shrieking racists like Creed and Gyrich, or conflicted oopsie-I-made-a-genocide-machine concerned citizens like Trask, Bastion employs genocide as a tool rather than an end goal. "If we've accepted that the presence of mutants is inevitable, how much more ground are we willing to cede?" he asks. And then he answers "As little as possible."

Not the extermination of a whole race of people. Simply its management - setting up a system where they can be made into non-threatening, productive members of society. It's enhancing rather than upsetting the status-quo, assuaging the existential fears of polite humans who just have some concerns, and backing up that system with as much genocidal violence as is required to make it work. Very clean, very neat, very Schneizel-pilled.

If this sounds familiar it's because it's the same system of thinking that people employ to declare how colonialism is over, while benefitting from the extraction of cheap resources out of former colonized nations; we haven't ended colonialism, we've merely streamlined it and made it more efficient. "It's stupid to waste resources that we can use."

Bastion is the endpoint of genocidal centrism. A little ethnic cleansing is required to make the machine work, and the machine - making it more streamlined, more efficient - is the best we can possibly hope for, so don't raise your voice at me!

Cable describing the future world that Bastion built as a "utopia" is actually a bit of an understated revelation here. It's exactly the kind of thing a centrist with a pang of guilty conscience might use as an excuse to close their eyes to the violence required to build this system. Much like how an abolitionist in the past, being witness to the horrors of slavery and colonial abuse, might view the participation of colonized or enslaved minorities in global capitalism as his end goal.

X-Men '97 can't escape the fact that it's produced under a Disney near-monopoly of modern media. This is the same company that gave us Karli true-leftism-is-killing-civilians Morgenthau and other childish takes on modern political extremes. In that context, Bastion is an improvement.

He might also be a jab from the showrunners at the Disney company itself (give them as little as possible, as late as possible, and they'll be grateful for it; they'll call it a utopia) but I can't prove that.

[girlactionfigure]

Winning the World’s Hearts and Minds

Israel is losing (some even say she has already irrevocably lost) the information war that is being waged in parallel with the kinetic one that she has been engaged in since 1948, but especially since 7 October 2023. The usual suggestions are technical: spend more money, react more quickly to enemy propaganda, utilize social media more effectively, and so on. All of these are worth doing, but there is one factor that is even more important than all of them together, and it is both simpler and more difficult. There are four paradoxes that can be found in our situation that expose it.

The Paradox of 7 October

On that day, Israel was attacked in the most atavistic, brutal and vicious way that can be imagined. Civilians were murdered, raped, sadistically tortured, and carried off to indefinite captivity under subhuman conditions. Their homes were looted and burned. It was war as practiced before the advent of civilization. It was the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.

And yet, although there were many expressions of sympathy, both from people in general and from governments and international organizations, there was also an explosion of hatred for Israel as a nation and for Jews as individuals. Demonstrations were held around the world expressing support for the attackers, and incidents of Jew-hatred – beatings of Jews, anti-Jewish graffiti, attacks on Jewish-owned businesses, and so on spiked. How is this to be understood?

One answer is that people were primed by a decades-long campaign by the Soviet Union, both in the West and the Third World, to use anti-Zionism as a propaganda tool. The Soviets took advantage of the sensitivity that had developed in the West after (ironically) the racist persecution of Jews by the Nazis, and of the general recognition of the evils of the Western colonial empires. At the same time in America, people began to comprehend the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow, and the genocide of Native Americans. The struggle of the Jews for self-determination in their historic homeland was perversely portrayed as racism, colonialism, and now even genocide. The Palestinian Arabs, who were in fact invaders and migrants, were portrayed as an oppressed and colonized indigenous people. This inversion of reality, this “big lie,” was fed with a constant tsunami of propaganda that overwhelmed anemic Israeli attempts to refute or counteract it. The lies have always gone halfway around the world before the truth got its pants on.

Since the fall of the USSR, the campaign has been taken up by the Arabs, Iranians, and international Left who see Israel as an outpost of the hated USA.

The anti-Israel campaign has been disingenuously claimed to be “only anti-Zionist” and not anti-Jewish. But underneath the surface the message has been transmitted clearly and distinctly, and has triggered the closeted anti-Jewish hatreds that have been around at least since the year zero. It is not possible today to go back and undo this.

The way anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda has been deployed in support of the desired genocide of the Jewish people (nothing less) is a triumph of social engineering. Its effectiveness is shown by the combination of murder and defamation that characterized 7 October.

The Paradox of Holocaust Education

In planning a response to anti-Jewish propaganda it’s necessary to consider the attempts to attack the anti-Jewish memes – the prejudices, stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and so on – that were supposed to have caused the Holocaust. One response has been to educate people by presenting the historical facts. Any normal person who knew the true dimensions of the horror perpetrated by the Nazis would reject the patterns of thought that were behind it and shun anyone trying to promulgate them, it was reasoned.

Much money and resources have gone into the building of museums, the development of curricula and materials, and the hiring of experts. And yet this enterprise has failed. It has been met with denial. It has aroused resentment, as Jews are accused of trying to “monopolize oppression,” or of using their own experience as an excuse to persecute others (sometimes at the same time as the Jewish experience is denied). Perversely, the very horror of the Holocaust is titillating to Jew-haters who often admire Hitler, collect Nazi regalia, and so on. Extreme Jew-haters see the Holocaust as something to be repeated rather than condemned.

The Paradox of Sympathy

This gives us a clue to the more general problem of defamation of Israel and Jews. As Jonathan Haidt argues persuasively, humans are primarily motivated by their emotions, even when they believe that they are making decisions on a rational basis. The “reasoning” is really after-the-fact rationalization of choices driven by their feelings. These feelings are often below the surface of consciousness, but they are dominant in a person’s decision-making.

These emotional responses have developed in humans after millennia of biological and cultural evolution. They vary to some extent between cultures (which leads to interesting questions about conflicts between Western and non-Western cultures), but there are also aspects that are universal. One of these is sympathy for an injured person. Paradoxically, there is also an opposite emotion of revulsion. The impulse to despise, to expel, or to flee from a defective or persecuted individual tends to favor survival of an individual or a culture, and so it is strengthened by evolution. We see this tendency among children where a bully that attacks a weak or “different” child is often joined by others.

Thus when a group is mass-murdered, along with sympathy for the victims there is also a tendency to side with the murderers. There is a feeling of safety in the face of horror that comes from the knowledge that one is set apart from the victims, that one is on the other side.

The Paradox of Strength

Another evolutionary trait is an attraction to the stronger side in any conflict. Everybody loves a winner, or as Osama bin Laden said, the “strong horse.” It’s also true that people despise a loser. And before a contest is decided, people choose whom to support based on the perceived strength of each opponent.

Yet in Western cultures people think this feeling should be suppressed. There is a belief that rational considerations and morality should override brute strength in determining the outcome of a confrontation, which results in conflicting emotions (this is one of the reasons they do so poorly when negotiating with Middle Easterners, who see “rational” willingness to compromise as weakness). Strength and honor are of primary concern in the Middle East, but even toward the West, we gain allies by demonstrating strength.

How to Win the Information War

What are the practical lessons for Israel in all this? How can she use the consequences of human and societal evolution to help her overcome the massive propaganda assault, both in the West and in the Middle East? I will offer some suggestions for how she can behave for the best psychological effect. Note that I said “behave,” and not just talk. Actions speak louder than words, especially in the Middle East. And these actions will help bring success in the physical arena as well.

1. Win the War in Gaza

We were humiliated and wounded – from a psychological point of view, critically – on 7 October. We cannot allow Hamas to remain in power and its leaders to remain alive. If we do, we will be marked as victims, in other words, targets. In the Middle East, deterrence comes from honor. If we lose our honor, everything we have is open for the taking.

2. Win the War in the North

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been forced to vacate their homes in fear of bombardment and invasion by Hezbollah. In effect we have allowed our land to become occupied. Again this is a massive loss of honor and must be corrected.

3. Our Lives are More Important Than Theirs

Israel lives in fear of the US and the hostile “international community” of anti-Israel NGOs and institutions, and goes to extreme lengths to warn civilians before attacking military targets, and to allow humanitarian aid to be provided to enemy populations. These policies have made it possible for Egypt to refuse to accept refugees from Gaza, and for Hamas to prolong the conflict, arguably resulting in more civilian suffering than less. Either way, they signify weakness. Get it over with.

4. Return to an Offensive Strategy

Israeli strategy, as propounded by David Ben Gurion, was to take the war to the enemy, fight on his territory, and finish wars quickly. But since Israel has allowed the US to dominate its military policy, she has moved to adopting a defensive posture. Huge amounts of money are spent on weapons like Iron Dome to bat away enemy rockets. This is economically unsustainable, since offensive weapons are much cheaper. It invites the enemy to learn lessons and try again. And from a psychological standpoint, it normalizes shooting at Jews. How can we permit that to become acceptable?

5. Responses Should Always be Disproportionate

Israel’s response should always be several times stronger than our enemies’ provocations. The fact that we responded to an attack from Iran by hundreds of missiles and drones by bombing a radar station was embarrassing, even if it was a demonstration of our capabilities. We may wish to demonstrate capabilities, but we must also demonstrate the will to fight. Deterrence means making them afraid to attack us. Power means hitting back at bullies, not trying to push them away or running from them.

6. Treat the Conflict as Zero-Sum (it is)

Do not look for win-win situations; there aren’t any. Either the Land of Israel will be ruled and populated by Jews, or by Arabs. Americans love the idea that Hamas or the PLO can put aside their desire to destroy Israel if only given an opportunity to develop a prosperous state. Nothing could be more wrong. This is a tribal conflict over land, and tribalism is another evolutionary “built-in.” When Israel goes along with these fantasies, she broadcasts weakness.

7. Get Revenge When Appropriate

Implement the death penalty for terrorist murder. This has the practical benefit of removing a motive for hostage-taking. The modern position is that revenge is atavistic and wrong. But it satisfies a deep need as well as sending a necessary message.

Conclusion

Acting according to the post-WWII Western conception of moral national behavior exposes Israel to depredations by its enemies who do not care about Western morality. At the same time, the climate of opinion that has developed over decades is such that the mechanisms and institutions that might protect a Western state don’t apply to Israel. She has little to lose by changing her behavior to become more aggressive, and aspiring to respect and even fear. Overall this will improve her potential to gain allies and deter enemies.

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 27 December 1831, the Christmas rebellion in Jamaica escalated as 60,000 of the country's 300,000 enslaved people went on strike and rose up against slavery. It is known as the Christmas rebellion as it began with a strike on Christmas day, demanding wages and more free time. The plantation owners rejected the demands, and so on December 27, enslaved people on the Kensington estate downed tools and set their sugarcane fields on fire. The rebels organised their own military units, and travelled through other estates, burning buildings and crops and recruiting others to join them. Lasting 11 days, it was the biggest revolt of enslaved people in the British Caribbean colonies, and cost over £50 million damages in current money. While only 14 whites were killed, over 500 Black people were killed or executed in the aftermath. But as a result slavery across the British Caribbean was largely abolished two years later. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/2172448246273647/?type=3

[djuvlipen]

Wanna learn about women history and WWII? Here is a non-exhaustive list to get you started

German women and the Nazi regime

Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics, Claudia Koonz

Female SS Guards and Workaday Violence: The Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942-1944, Elissa Mailänder

Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik, Gisela Bock

Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, Wendy Lower

"Backlash against Prostitutes' Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies," in Journal of the History of Sexuality Julia Roos

"German Women and the Holocaust in the Nazi East," Wendy Lower, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Frausein im Dritten Reich, Rita Thalmann

Women as victims or perpetrators of the Holocaust (general)

"Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research," in Signs, Joan Ringelheim

Women in the Holocaust, Dalia Ofer & Lenore J. Weitzman

Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern, Robert Sommer

SS-Bordelle und Oral History. Problematische Quellen und die Existenz von Bordellen für die SS in Konzentrationslagern, Christa Paul & Robert Sommer

Sexual Violence during the Holocaust—The Case of Forced Prostitution in the Warsaw Ghetto, in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Katarzyna Person

"Gender: A Crucial Tool in Holocaust Research," Marion Kaplan, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Different Voices: Women and the Holocaust, Carol Rittner & John K. Roth

Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust, Nechema Tec

« Reframing Sexual Violence as a Weapon and Strategy of War: The Case of the German Wehrmacht during the War and Genocide in the Soviet Union, 1941–1944 », in Journal of the History of Sexuality, Regina Mühlhäuser

Sex and the Nazi soldier. Violent, commercial and consensual encounters during the war in the Soviet Union, 1941-45, Regina Mülhäuser

Romani women during the Holocaust

« Krieg im Frieden im Krieg: Reading the Romani Holocaust in terms of race, gender and colonialism », Eve Rosenhaft

« Hidden Lives : Sinti and Roma Women », Sybil Milton

« Romani women and the Holocaust Testimonies of Sexual Violence in Transnistria », Michelle Kelso

"No Shelter to Cry In: Romani Girls and Responsibility during the Holocaust," Michelle Kelso, in Women and Genocide, Elissa Bemporad & Joyce W. Warren

Jewish women during the Holocaust

Jewish women's sexual behaviour and sexualized abuse during the Nazi era, in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, Beverley Chalmers

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, Sonja M. Hedgepeth & Rochelle G. Saidel

Persecution of lesbians by the Nazis

Days of Masquerade: Life Stories of Lesbians during the Third Reich, Claudia Schoppmann

Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität, Claudia Schoppmann

“This Kind of Love”: Descriptions of Lesbian Behaviour in Nazi Concentration Camps, from Nationalsozialistische Sexualpolitik und weibliche Homosexualität, Claudia Schoppmann

Queer in Europe during the Second World War, Regis Schlagdenhauffen

Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück. Everyday Life in a Woman’s Concentration Camp 1939-45, Jack G. Morrison

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sarah Helm

Women and the Memory of WWII

Women, Genocide, and Memory: The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research, in Gender & Society, Janet Jacobs

Lessons Learned from Gentle Heroism: Women's Holocaust Narratives, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Myrna Goldenberg

« An Austrian Roma Family Remembers: Trauma and Gender in Autobiographies by Ceija, Karl, and Mongo Stojka », Lorely French

Beyond Survival: Navigating Women's Personal Narratives of Sexual Violence in the Holocaust, Roy Schwartzman

Comfort Women and imperial Japan

Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, Yoshimi Yoshiaki

The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, George Hicks

The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, Caroline Norma

Lola's House: Filipino Women Living With War, Evelina Galang

Soviet Women during WWII

« “Girls” and “Women”. Love, Sex, Duty and Sexual Harassment in the Ranks of the Red Army 1941-1945 », in The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, Brandon M. Schechter

Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War, Roger D. Markwick & Euridice Charon Cardona

Soviet Women in Combat. A History of Violence on the Eastern Front, Anna Krylova

[dailyanarchistposts]

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.

—Brian Massumi[8]

Personally, I want to be nurturing life when I go down in struggle. I want nurturing life to BE my struggle.

—Zainab Amadahy[9]

Resistance and joy are everywhere

Anyone who has been transformed through a struggle can attest to its power to open up more capacities for resistance, creativity, action, and vision. This sense of collective power—the sense that things are different, that we are different, that a more capable “we” is forming that didn’t exist before—is what we mean by joyful transformation. Joyful transformation entails a new conception of militancy, which is already emerging in many movements today. To be militant about joy means being attuned to situations or relationships, and learning how to participate in and support the transformation, rather than directing or controlling it.

Everywhere, people are recovering, sustaining, and reinventing worlds that are more intense and alive than the form of life offered up by Empire. The web of control that exploits and administers life—ranging from the most brutal forms of domination to the subtlest inculcation of anxiety and isolation—is what we call Empire. It includes the interlocking systems of settler colonialism, white supremacy, the state, capitalism, ableism, ageism, and heteropatriarchy. Using one word to encapsulate all of this is risky because it can end up turning Empire into a static thing, when in fact it is a complex set of processes. These processes separate people from their power, their creativity, and their ability to connect with each other and their worlds.

We say worlds, in the plural, because part of Empire’s power is to bring us all into the same world, with one morality, one history, and one direction, and to convert differences into hierarchical, violent divisions. As other worlds emerge through resistance and transformation, they reveal more of the violence of Empire. Insurrections and revolts on the street reveal that the police are an armed gang and that “keeping the peace” is war by other means. Pushing back against sexualized violence reveals the ways that rape culture continues to structure daily life. Indigenous resurgence reveals the persistent concreteness of settler colonial occupation and the charade of apologizing for genocide and dispossession as if they were only part of the past. Holding assemblies where people can formulate problems together, make decisions collectively, and care for one another reveals the profound alienation and individualism of life under Empire. Trying to raise kids (or even share space with them) without controlling them reveals the ways that ageism and schooling stifle young people and segregate generations. Struggles against anti-Black racism and white supremacy reveal the continuities between slavery, apartheid, and mass incarceration, in which slave catchers have evolved into police and plantations have shaped prisons. The movements of migrants reveal the interconnected violence of borders, imperialism, and citizenship. And the constant resistance to capitalism, even when fleeting, reveals the subordination, humiliation, and exploitation required by capital. As these struggles connect and resonate, Empire’s precarity is being revealed everywhere, even if it continues to be pervasive and devastating.

There is no doubt that we live in a world of intertwined horrors. Borders tighten around bodies as capital flows ever more freely; corporations suck lakes dry to sell bottled water; debt proliferates as a tool of control and dispossession; governments and corporations attack Indigenous lands and bodies while announcing state-controlled recognition and reconciliation initiatives; surveillance is increasingly ubiquitous; addiction, depression and anxiety proliferate along with new drugs to keep bodies working; gentrification tears apart neighborhoods to make way for glassy condos; people remain tethered to jobs they hate; the whole world is becoming toxic; bombs are dropped by drones controlled by soldiers at a distant computer console; a coded discourse of criminality constructs Black bodies as threats, targeting them with murder and imprisonment; climatic and ecological catastrophes intensify as world leaders debate emissions targets; more of us depend on food and gadgets made half a world away under brutal conditions; we are encouraged to spend more time touching our screens than the people we love; it is easier for many of us to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism.[10]

We suspect that anyone reading this already knows and feels this horror in one way or another. When we say that struggles reveal the violence of Empire, it’s not that everyone was unaware of it before. However, upwellings of resistance and insurrection make this knowing palpable in ways that compel responses. In this sense, it is not that people first figure out how oppression works, then are able to organize or resist. Rather it is resistance, struggle, and lived transformation that make it possible to feel collective power and carve out new paths.

[jedimaesteryoda]

Do you find the Ironborn an interesting part of GRRMs story and/or world building?

The Ironborn are clearly inspired by the Vikings with the revanchist Confederate sympathizers. The tradition of the kingsmoot where they elected kings is a unique development, but only lords and men with enough property (a ship) get a vote. It's a society effectively controlled by pirates. They also have slavery in the form of thralls, and yet refuse to call it slavery with an attitude of "yeah, but it's not like those people" despite it still involving kidnapping people, and forcing them into a life of unpaid, forced labor and sexual violence for women.

As someone who supports anti-colonial movements in real-life, I find them interesting. They are the westernmost kingdom with a history of using their technological advantages in the form of iron when the mainland used bronze, as well as longships, to colonize and plunder the mainland and enslave the greenlanders under a Manifest Destiny doctrine. After they lost those advantages and lost their independence, they kept the Old Way going by appealing to an imagined past. This effectively makes them the most easily despised society in Westeros with a steady mix of the worst impulses: racism, misogyny, hypermasculinity and slavery and liable to turn on each other.

The Old Way is represented by the Greyjoys, a family with systemic abuse, few real relationships with one another other than with Balon, and a lot of infighting living in a literally crumbling castle falling into the sea. Balon launches a rebellion, fails, suffering big personal losses and is then "don't worry, it'll totally work this time." He is an old man clinging to the past, brooding alone in his tower as his house figuratively and literally crumbles around him. Victarion personifies the Old Way as is: an unhappy, hypermasculine dumbass warrior with his imagination constrained by the limits of his ideology, making him a tool easily manipulated. Euron is the Old Way as it appeals to the Ironborn: appealing on the surface but a predatory monster beneath who promises an impossible dream destined for disaster. The Ironborn take it given he is offering them emotion, and Ironborn are deeply unhappy as a people. The Old Way doesn't give them the happiness it promises, but plenty of disaster when their victims inevitably fight back.

The Old Way is riddled with hypocrisy with Victarion saying the Shield Island ships fleeing battle ceased to be men when they retreated when he did the same thing at Fair Isle. Aeron disdains maesters for choosing a life of service when he did as a Drowned Man. They begrudge Robert's forces' invasion and destruction of the Iron Isles when they glorify doing the same to others.

There are however those who support a New Way like The Reader and the three Harmunds before him.

There is clearly a struggle between the Old Way and the New Way within Ironborn society going on for centuries. The three Harmunds encouraged friendly relations with the greenlands and trade as well as literacy with Harmund III trying to outlaw the Old Way. The Shrike led a rebellion against Harmund III and it resulted in an invasion of the Iron Isles and the Famine Winter after that starved, impoverished and depopulated the Iron Isles with the New Way rebuilding the Iron Isles.

Quellon Greyjoy tried similarly until he died and Balon reversed his reforms. The Reader himself is an intellectual in a society that frowns upon literacy and scholarship, yet it's what allows him to effectively challenge Euron by pulling back the curtain on his tricks. He knows the dreams of reviving the Old Way is a pipe dream.

The attempts to revive the Old Way keep ending in disaster, taking more Old Way ideologues with them. And even without that, reaving had been on decline for a while and replaced with trade with men "returning with treasures their forebears had never dreamed of." Rather than driving them forward, the Old Way holds them back and has been slowly dying.

The current generation of Greyjoys just may be the last gasp of the Old Way.

[laelior]

Home

(cw: heavy themes including slavery, implied torture, and trauma)

Someone should check on the commander, Ashley had said to him after something had happened on the docks. Someone, meaning Kaidan, he’d understood. As for the something….

No one could tell him exactly what had happened, just that Shepard had told the crew to take the rest of the day as shore leave before disappearing into the bowels of the Citadel.

And somehow, he knew just where she’d be. 

Chora’s Den was, as always, a headache waiting to happen. The too-loud music, the dull red lights, and the crush of people filtering around the dingy club had already settled in behind his eyes, causing a dull throb to form in his head by the time he found Shepard.

She was sitting at a corner table, staring straight past the asari dancer writhing on the platform in front of her. Two drinks, a pint glass and a shot glass, sat on her table, both completely full. Condensation gathered and dripped down the side of the pint glass, puddling on the table, suggesting it had been sitting there untouched for some time. 

He approached cautiously, not sure how to even greet her like this, but she saved him the trouble.

“Williams sent you to check up on me?” She asked, before he even realized she’d seen him. She just continued staring straight ahead. He settled in next to an empty chair at her table.

“You had her pretty rattled. Figured I should just check to see you’re alright.” And he could see exactly what had Ashley so concerned. For all that Shepard was in the midst of a lively sea of people, she might as well have been alone on a frozen lake in the middle of nowhere. And Kaidan couldn’t shake the sense that something dark stirred restlessly just beneath that thin ice.

“You mean you drew the short straw.” She didn’t even look at him, just mechanically picked up the pint glass, brought it up to her lips, and set it back down without actually taking a sip. 

“Something like that.” Kaidan hovered near the empty chair. Sitting felt too comfortable, too informal for whatever Shepard was wrestling with. The asari dancer looked over her shoulder at him, expectantly, and cleared her throat pointedly, prompting him to take the chair anyway. Shepard’s eyes flicked over to him, dull and uninterested in either the dancer or him. She brought up her omni-tool and sent a tip to the dancer, who nodded and continued her rhythmic undulations in an entirely business-like manner.

Shepard was silent for a long time. Kaidan simply waited. Waited for her to say something. To tell him to fuck off. To something.

Then, finally, she spoke.

“There was a girl on the docks. Talitha. Talitha Abbott.” 

“Who was she?” Kaidan asked, quietly, gently. Her eyes flicked over to him again, this time seeming to actually notice him.

“What do you know about Mindoir?” She asked after another uncomfortably long silence.

“Mindoir? It’s one of the frontier colonies, out near the Terminus systems.” He racked his brain, trying to remember what he knew of it. “It got hit by a batarian raid pretty hard a while back, I think. Early 70’s?” There was something else, something that stood just outside his recollection. The dull ache in his head was making it hard to think.

“April 17, 2170,” she said, her voice completely devoid of inflection. “She was a survivor of the raid, if you can call it survival. Watched her parents die right in front of her eyes, along with everyone she ever knew or loved. They took her and kept her as a slave for thirteen years.”

Shepard remained entirely expressionless, but Kaidan couldn’t help wincing. Protecting frontier colonies from dangers like batarian slave raids was one of the core duties of the Alliance. He’d seen the aftermath of such raids before. It was never pretty.

And after thirteen years….

“How’d she get here on the Citadel?”

“Rescued. Then she escaped from her rescuers. She…dissociated. Couldn’t deal with what happened to her.” There was a catch in Shepard’s voice. A slight stumble, the tiniest hint of vulnerability. Kaidan started to reach for her, unthinkingly, but forced his hand back down to his side once he realized what he was doing.

“Shepard, what happened on the docks?” He asked quietly. The throbbing in the back of his head was growing. The longer he stayed in Chora’s Den the worse the ensuing migraine would be, he knew, but he had to stay. Had to know what had sent a hardened soldier like Shepard fleeing like this.

“She’s…sedated. Safe. But….” Shepard reached for the shot glass in front of her, her hand shaking ever so slightly, and quickly downed the amber liquid in it in one gulp. “Mindoir was my home, too.”

She set the shot glass upside down on the table, got up, and left, leaving Kaidan alone in stunned silence.

[marxism-transgenderism]

74– you can choose one only!

74. What is your favorite book?

This ask is torturous thank you for sending it and fuck you for making me pick only one. I'm probably gonna go with Black Marxism by Cedric J Robinson. This behemoth of a book is amazing and I think literally every needs to read at least the first chapter which coined the term racial capitalism but if you do please read the rest it's so good.

There's three sections to the book. The first traces the history of capitalism to show that the tool of racialization predates capitalism and emerged in feudalism, and that when capitalism did emerge it used this tool so much even prior to colonialism and slavery that to speak of capitalism without racism is incomplete. He goes on the critique Marx and much of Marxism generally for ignoring this fact beyond a few throw away lines in the manifesto showing how integral racial divisions were to early capitalism.

The second section traces a historical outline of what he terms the Black Radical Tradition, being the loose ideology which emerged from Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved in the Americas and their decendents. How marronage emerged among different groups from southern Brazil to new England and how it evolved into the ideologies expressed in uprisings like the Haitian revolution.

The last section focuses in on three Black communists—W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, and Richard Wright—and how they came to Marxism in their early years but later on came to identify more with the Black Radical Tradition as a more accurate and liberatory tradition than the European radicalism which dominated (and still dominates) left wing discussions.

It's fucking incredible. Read it.

[transmutationisms]

wait go on about the theoretical point of departure

ugh well it's 'phenomenology of spirit', because in the lord-bondsman dialectic hegel argued that while both lord and bondsman develop self-consciousness through their mutual encounter, the bondsman does so first, both through recognition of the threat of death and through his direct encounter with nature through his labour; the lord, on the other hand, is dependent on the bondsman as a mediator because the lord doesn't have this direct relationship to the external world, instead expropriating the products of the bondman's labour. hegel wrote as though these were abstracted, theoretical figures, and it's true he was talking about world-historical consciousness, but he was also directly theorising in response to the newspaper coverage he was reading on the haitian revolution. so when he talked about bondsmen developing self-consciousness and no longer needing the lords, he didn't mean this in an abstract sense; he meant the literal revolution in which slaves overthrew masters and haiti gained independence.

so, when marx 'turned hegel on his head' (ie, made the analysis material), one thing that came through was this underlying understanding of alienation as something that affects both labourer (whose products are expropriated from him) and capitalist (who is not directly producing and thus not encountering the outside world except by mediation). you can see this especially in marx's earlier work, like the 1844 manuscripts, which is why i always say this is an interesting text through which to consider some of succession's premises. marx was more interested in proletarian alienation in the sense that he saw this as eventually birthing revolutionary consciousness and class solidarity, and later in his career much of the 'alienation' theorising was subsumed into his analysis of the 'commodity fetish'. 'succession', on the other hand, is a piece of psychological fiction but starts, i would argue, from sort of the other side of this theoretical point, where the interest is in the alienation of the capitalist, using of course a 21st-century media conglomerate and not the figure of the factory owner or whatever.

later in his career hegel was far less sympathetic to the bondsman and to the position of enslaved people generally. this was a shift that happened for numerous reasons, but one was that he continued to read european newspaper coverage about haiti following the revolution, a situation that involved grappling with the continued effects of french colonialism, from internal social tensions to the difficulty of shifting away from the monocrop economy the french had imposed. make no mistake that this was not how haiti was covered in the papers hegel read, and instead, by 'philosophy of right' he had settled into a very different reading of slavery, which he justified in part by what he perceived as the despotism of king henri christophe, and in which he argued that enslaved africans were in fact not capable of gaining true self-consciousness and spiritual freedom. this was absolutely part of a broader trend by which europeans pointed to any 'failings' of independent haiti and, instead of seeing the legacy of pre-revolution french colonialism as well as ongoing us and french imperialism and intervention, used it as a rhetorical tool against anti-slavery, anti-colonialist, or black humanist arguments. additionally, marx had his own reasons for talking about slavery as either a bygone practice or an example of labourers being 'lazy' in contrast to the european proletariat—namely, he had specific class and racial interests in defending european labourers and using the denigration of enslaved africans in order to do so.

(my sources here are primarily 'baron de vastey and the origins of black atlantic humanism' by marlene daut; 'the fetish revisited: marx, freud, and the gods black people make' by j lorand matory; and 'hegel, haiti, and universal history' by susan buck-morss)

[rainhadaenerys]

Daenerys Meta Masterpost Part 4c - ASOIAF

This is a continuation of my Daenerys Meta Masterpost Part 4 and Part 4b.

I’ve compiled more than 2000 metas about Daenerys, both about the books and the show, and I intend to constantly update this post with more metas. The metas listed here will be linked to their reblogs in my blog, (since many people tend to change their usernames, and I don’t want the links to stop working in this case). Of the metas linked here, the ones that I wrote are in bold text. It’s also important to note that the metas here reflect my own opinions about the characters, I don’t claim to be listing every meta that was ever written about Daenerys.

Tumblr has a limit of 250 links that can be put in a single post. Once you reach that limit, your links will no longer appear. Which is why I am making this continuation of my previous Masterpost, because Part 4b is very close to reaching this limit of links, since I constantly update it with new metas as I reblog them in this blog.

The topics of this part will be the same as part 4 and part 4b:

POLITICS

SLAVERY

RACISM, COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM

GENDER IN ASOIAF

Please check both part 4, part 4b and part 4c if you’re looking for meta about any of these topics.

This is a list about the books, but there might be a few metas that mix books and show if I think they bring up interesting points about the books.

Link to the complete Masterpost: HERE

Last update: July 7 2024

POLITICS

Dany has experience with almost everything a ruler could experience

Dany has learned enough to leave Essos and its people behind with the tools to rebuild their society

Dany's people feel free to give her their opinions, even the lowliest cupbearers

About Dany's choice of throne and its symbolism

The point of ASOIAF is not that "feudalism is bad" and "no one can save Westeros"

The idea that "no one can save Westeros because feudalism is bad" goes against GRRM's belief in individual choice

Reducing the themes of ASOIAF to simply "feudalism is bad" is dismissive and reductive

SLAVERY

The parallels between the Unsullied and Theon and Jeyne

RACISM, COLONIALISM, IMPERIALISM

On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom

Dany is not a colonizer or imperialist

Another post on why Dany is not a colonizer or imperialist

GENDER IN ASOIAF

Dany subverting gender expectations from the beginning

About Dany becoming queen in her own right after being in other female subservient positions

The Amethyst Empress and Rhaenyra being cheated of their birthrights and their connection to Dany

Proto-feminism in “A Song of Ice and Fire”

ADWD / Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power

[anabolicbombers]

F4 thougts: Minuteman

The Minuteman are the faction than most of the players of fallout 4 encounter firs. Ignoring the infamous memes about Preston Garvey, they are often considered the best fraction of fallout 4, or at least, the most morally clean and overall good for the Commonwealth. Part of it stems from the lackluster game design of their main questline which mostly consist of the repeatable radiant quests, and also them being "Yes man" faction, meaning that in the base game it was impossible to fail their questline. They are also nicely slide into any of the other faction ending, without contributing anything to their questlines (they are involved in one Institute quest, the game "villian option" for faction ending).

But when talking about the Minuteman people rarely discuss the fact that the faction is based on a real existing organization, which played a great role in the creation of the United States. And the function of the Minuteman in the game is quiet similar to their real life historical counterparts. So let me take you to a improvised history lesson:

Real life Minuteman were best known for their contribution to the American war for independence and were main part of the Boston militia. The game call attention to this part of Minuteman history quet often, with their starting location being the museam of freedom, the main location the player retake is fort Independence, it's not wery subtle.

But the history of the Minuteman goes way further back, to the times of the last wars for colonies in America. Created by the colonial government, Minuteman were rapid-deployment units of the Massachusetts Bay militia, a "first response" to any threat that might befall settlements. The "treats" the Minuteman were deployed against were the military units of other colonial powers, gangs or, most often, indigenous tribes. The first offensive deployment of Minuteman was in Pequot war, when in august 1636 fourth companies were deployed under orders of Jong Endecott with the task of killing Pequot Indians. Despite the first failures of the raids conducted by the Minuteman, the war itself ended with complete destruction of the Pequot tribe, with remaining survivors being sold into slavery or given as captives to the other tribes that were then loyal to the British colonies. After that the Minuteman were involved with the subjugation of Narragansett and Wampanoag tribes, with the practice of issueing bounties for scalps of Indians during the Second indian war. tactical advancements of Minuteman during the war for independence were the direct result of their role as force of the colonial expansion. After the war of independence they were absorbed into the future national guardguard, becoming key parts in iconography of American imperialism. Both anti-communism organization during Cold War and modern anti-immigration groups name themselves after organization.

Taken all this in consideration, I find it wery disturbing that the majority of the Minuteman quests in game consist of you helping settlements or even securing a place for new ones by the following process:

Find settlement.

Talk about their request for help.

They mark an area on the map that either troubles them, or could be used as a new settlement.

You go there and kill everyone you meet.

Inform the settlers about accompanying mission.

Rince and repeat.

The game of course justify suck tasks with the fact that locals you exterminating are all universally hostile feral ghouls, super mutants or gangs of generic raiders, the groups you could kill on sight without any moral reprocussions. The aesthetic of the faction as "freedom fighters" clashes greatly with the gameplay that is more remiscent of their role as imperialist tool, but fallout 4 never calls attention to that fact. Which I find especially glaring considering the fact that the faction is portrayed as a force of universal good. For the series that supposedly satirize American emperialism and it's nostalgia cult, fallout 4 sure does a lot to whitewash Minuteman of the role they played in said emperialis.

[violottie]

"WHITE PRIVILEGE FOR DUMMIES" spoken word by Kyla Jenée Lacey, video by African Stream, 25/Apr/2024: caption under reel

Some people actually still think that White privilege is a myth - created by ‘angry’ people of colour as a tool to bash Whites.

They believe, for example, that poverty rates are higher among Africans because they make the racist assumption that we are somehow lazy. Never do they entertain the possibility that we are, in fact, hindered every step of the way by systemic political and economic oppression rooted in slavery, colonialism and neo-colonalism.

In this clip, spoken-word artist Kyla Jenée Lacey breaks down the concept of White privilege for those who still do not get it or believe in its existence.