#criticism from a leftist pov.

[snekdood]

forgive me for not taking you seriously on praising a right winger who had to do 1 (one) thing to get the lefts praise vs all of these other leftists you slightly disagree with that apparently can never reach your standards of perfection no matter how hard they try.

[kazzeyy]

As someone who had their feminist and leftist awakening here on tumblr in the early 10s, I have to say that the way online leftism has evolved is really directly correlated- in my opinion - to the rampant antisemitism, lack of critical thinking and reading skills, and straight up support for terrorists that I see across platforms.

I do not regret the way that this site helped me think about certain topics and pov’s for the first time, but the way the internet exists now is very different than even then, and it’s been a change for the worse.

I now, with a more fully formed brain, can even see how some of the things being parroted to me on here at the time were one dimensional takes with no room for nuance or questioning without being labeled a bigot of some kind.

I never thought I’d be thankful for growing up in a very republican town (and family), but now I see that having deeply known a pov so different from mine helps me be even more informed of my own ideas and WHY I believe them. And I also see all humans as nuanced beings with different priorities. Doesn’t mean I like them, but understanding them is so important.

The complete dehumanization of those you refuse to try to understand or listen to and the subsequent infantilization of those you are insistent on supporting…it’s giving no critical thinking skills and a complete lack of moral clarity.

Being from NY, I can’t help but have looked at the “protests” on oct 7 here on the streets, with banners in favor of the very terrorist organizations (or adjacent) who killed my friend’s parents on 9/11, and feel an even deeper kind of sadness and disgust.

If you support people who support terrorists, you support terrorists. If you support people who are ok marching alongside swastikas and hezbollah flags, you have been morally corrupted. If you genuinely feel the greatest evil on this planet is a democratic nation made of mostly Jews the size of NJ that is resisting against Islamic imperialism, you are an antisemite. If you think the Palestinians deserve leadership like Hamas…you must hate them.

Imagine supporting people who are making lists of Jewish practitioners to avoid. Imagine thinking you have the moral high ground when your “side” are the ones mourning a terrorist’s elimination but praising someone committing suicide.

Idk what it will take for some people to wake up, but I fear it will be something so horrific, and it won’t be until it affects them.

[transmutationisms]

is it unfair for me to hold anger at individuals, or criticize individuals, if covid minimization is not the result of individualized choices but mass messaging and systems at work? im not really sure what to say to leftists who ive spoonfed information who have still decided to “move on” from it, including in their activism. on one hand i understand how they got here, on the other it feels like theyre enacting violence, in the same vein as like misgendering or supporting “blue lives matter” but with the added bonus of them maybe also harming someone directly by refusal to do infection control. i really need to shift my perspective away from a heavily trauma-informed one and start living in the real world where i cant expect anyone to advocate for me, and have to find more systems-based ways to advocate for myself, and releasing some of that anger might need to be a part of moving on from that pov, but a lot of that trauma *is* individualized and resulted from the way people have responded to me, which varies from lukewarm apathy to actively telling me my life isnt worth anything to them. at the same time, it’s impossible for me to feel like i’m not the one in the wrong, when it’s very few people left who care about any of this. sorry for dumping this on *you*, im aware you’re some guy online, but the only ppl i see who still talk about covid are ppl in the same situation as me and are too close to it to assess, or think about it purely on an individual level

i don't think there's anything wrong, bad, or unfair about feeling this type of anger or betrayal. i just also think that this is one of those situations where a (completely understandable) emotional reaction does not form the basis of an effective political platform. both of these things can be true at once; your ethical considerations when navigating interpersonal relationships are not the same as the ethical considerations for someone who wants to style themselves a public health communicator. in an epidemiological sense, a person who reluctantly masks because orgs and public spaces have mask mandates is accomplishing the same thing, materially, as a person who happily masks because they care about their disabled comrades. in that sense there's no need for a public health strategy to focus on 'changing minds' and doing so often just makes people dig in their heels more. but, on a personal level, of course it matters to you whether someone actually cares for you and protects you voluntarily! figuring out how to interact with people in your own life is just not the same as figuring out the most effective mass communication and public policy strategies; what irritates me about many of the twitter-sphere covid communicators is the elision between these two things. having said that, if i can just soapbox for a second:

i try to give these people the benefit of the doubt; i do think many of them mean well and think they are doing what's right. however, the strategy that many of them have coalesced around seems to go something like this: assume that others are not covid-cautious because they are insufficiently frightened; assume this is a failure of individual intelligence-slash-awareness; using the same datasets as the applicable public health agency, interpret all data with any number of assumptions, predictions, and modelling heuristics built in; generate very terrifying infographic, post it, and wring hands when doing so doesn't change anyone's behaviour or state policy.

even in the best of cases i simply think this is ineffective; i would say public attitudes about the seriousness of covid are much more a result of state and public health inaction, ambivalence, and denialism than they are a cause. additionally, interpreting data and making predictions based on them is woolly, and a lack of transparency about their methodology, plus the overconfident desire to present themselves as authorities on the internet, means that this strategy can and does end up producing its own distortions. see, for example, recent 'med twitter' claims that "covid is airborne aids", an attempt to scare people into taking it more seriously that relies on poor and overconfident interpretations of current immunological knowledge; that ends up distorting what we do actually know about covid and the immune system (which is already fucking scary! no lies needed!); and which, as far as i can tell, actually started picking up steam in early 2020 as a right-wing conspiracy theory centred around the claims of dr (not an md) leonard g. horowitz, who argues that covid is a laboratory-engineered virus and uses it in his efforts to sell "resonating silver hydrosol" supplements to you (and your pets!) as "an effective alternative to risky vaccinations and deadly antibiotics".

getting into bed with these people is patently dangerous for obvious reasons. i really do not blame people who are trying to find reliable covid information, and are rightfully wary of state and official sources that have been downplaying this virus for its entire existence, for getting sucked in by twitter doctors when those people are often the only ones who seem to be both posting statistics and taking the virus seriously. however, what i have observed leads me to believe that, firstly, many of these people are motivated by a desire for renown and fame as much as by altruism (welcome to social media). secondly, virtually all of them are fundamentally very liberal in their politics, and this shows in the way they interpret the current state of affairs as a result of individual actions and psychological failures, rather than capitalist policy. this is absurd and leads to absolutely pointless (if not often counterproductive) narrativisation of political action as some kind of magical field where everybody just needs to change their minds and believe in the correct things really hard and then things will change: it's the liberal democratic fantasy that aggregated attitudes create policy out of thin air, no organisation or class analysis or principled communism necessary.

thirdly, a multitude of factors (incl. the paywalling and gatekeeping of knowledge) means that, although state and official interpretations of their datasets are often misleading or outright dishonest because they want to minimise risk, too often the self-styled 'covid communicators' online are not a solution to this and are prone to their own fallacious assumptions, conspiratorial thinking (see again: understanding politics as the product of many individuals believing something really hard, with no analysis of structural factors), poor data analysis, issues with comprehensive data collection in the first place (same as state sources. because they are usually using the same datasets), and a particular rhetorical emphasis on "listening to the science" that often manifests practically as a failure to actually engage with scientific methodology or to questionor improve it where it is lacking, incomplete, or bias-reproducing.

so. these are my issues with the state of covid communication; to me the question of how to navigate interpersonal relationships with people who don't value your life enough to protect it is just very different and the emotional engagement there is also quite different.

[hellsbellschime]

I just wanted to thank you so, so much for standing up for Jews right now. I can't express how much it means to me and the rest of the Jewish community that you're one of the few people who've actually gone to bat for us when everyone else went mask off ❤️

<3 honestly you shouldn't be thanking me because it's just the right thing to do, but the amount of antisemitism I have seen since 10/7 has been APPALLING and it's extremely scary. The people who went mask off REALLY went mask off, but there has also been so much stealth antisemitism in so much of the reaction and reporting that I've seen about the situation that it really threw me off and made me realize that I vastly underestimated how popular antisemitism still is.

Clearly, discussing Zionism in the past has REALLY not gone well for me, but the reaction toward it for me specifically and in general has always set off alarm bells that there was antisemitism baked in there which was trying to be passed off as anti-Zionism or anti-Israeli sentiment. But I feel like 10/7 was such a horrific revelation for Jewish people and allies because, at least for me, it was a revelation that for certain people, basically there is no limit to what you could do to an Israeli. There is no limit to what crimes or atrocities could be committed against someone because of where they lived or where they were born, and there is a really scary number of people who would paint that kind of atrocity as some kind of rebellious act of freedom. If you are calling literal babies colonizers and you are saying that the gang rape and mutilation of people's genitals is somehow an act of decolonization, you are trying to dress up your genocidal antisemitic POV with the veneer of some kind of social justice or moral righteousness.

But there are bigger fish to fry here that I think a lot of people are missing, which again further disturbs and upsets me. Because Jewish people should be able to just exist in the world, but the ebb and flow of antisemitism is also an exceptionally good indicator of when social and political upheaval is about to REALLY start fucking everyone's lives up. So again, people should be concerned about this because it's morally wrong, but they should also be concerned about it because Jewish people are also almost always just the first up to bat. Once we pass that critical point where antisemitism becomes socially acceptable again, it's almost always because we are at the beginning of a really hard downturn that is going to destroy a TON of people's lives. So the fact that so many people on the left and right are now united in the whole "oh wouldn't our lives be so much better if we could just take power away from the Jews" is a REALLY REALLY REALLY scary sign that should not be ignored.

And of course, the fact that the Israeli government actually does horrible shit makes this a much easier sell. There are a ton of very legitimate problems that need to be fixed and should absolutely be called out. But again, it's a very scary mindset to get drawn into, because yes you think you're a leftist and completely unaffected by the antisemitism that has been baked into our culture for literally thousands of years and you're on the right side because WELL THE JEWS ARE ACTUALLY BAD NOW. But what the hell do you think people thought in 1930s Europe? Do you think that they hated Jewish people just to hate them? Or do you think that they also genuinely believed that Jewish people were actually the problem then too?

It's heinous because 10/7 and the invasion of Gaza afterward is a perfect vector to hide antisemitism in, and it really seems to be working well. The overt antisemitism I've seen as well as the way more covert that I've seen has shocked me, and even though I'm not Jewish, I considered myself to be more aware than most that antisemitism is not even remotely a problem that's been relegated to the past.

But I'm sorry that you've had to deal with this because I am just a person who is capable of empathy and understands how fucked up it must be to experience this, while Jewish people actually have to experience it. The lack of pushback against pretty obvious antisemitism is really frightening, and again, the whole progression of what has happened is exceptionally cruel and offensive. You can support a free and democratic Palestine while condemning 10/7 (in fact I'd argue given that Hamas hasn't held elections in decades, it's a REQUIREMENT to condemn 10/7 if you genuinely support a free Palestine). You can acknowledge that Hamas is an outwardly stated and admitted antisemitic terrorist organization and 10/7 was an expressly antisemitic attack and fight for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

But the amount of pressure I've seen put on Jewish people specifically to go along with the complete reframing and minimization of 10/7, because actually if you live in Israel then you had it coming, and because the Palestinians have it worse you can't even take a moment to react emotionally to something truly horrific and traumatizing, and if you don't think exactly what we think you're one of the "bad ones," has been disturbing to watch. Your pain is incredibly valid and I know everything that has happened must be so difficult and isolating, but just know that you do have supporters out there, even if you deserve to have a lot more.

[februairy]

matilah engkau mati, engkau akan lahir berkali-kali.

this book had been on my reading list since forever but, i didn't feel the feeling of urgency to read it immediately until the new indonesian president was elected this year.

our new president is a person who was behind the missing and kidnapped activists back in 1998 (the culmination of the dictatorship in indonesia). with the new president, indonesian media slowly trying to make an erasure of 1998 and pushing the anti-intellectual and anti-criticism. i thought it was finally the right time to pick this book.

this book told a story from the point of view of one of university student activist named biru laut (meaning: ocean blue) in 1991~1998, during that time, even reading a leftist book would lead to a desaparecidos (a person who has been secretly imprisoned or killed during a government's program of political suppression). biru laut himself was a general secretary of a university student movement against the government who was also vocal releasing many articles under many aliases.

the first half of the book was the story of his movement until he was finally kidnapped, tortured, and killed (being drowned in the sea). it was based on a real victim during that time who was released.

the second half was from the pov of his little sister, two years after he was missing. it was heartbreaking, to see laut's closest people, until this day, didn't have any closure of his fate. was he dead? was he still tortured until now? was he being exiled? no body had a clue even in the year of 2024.

it was also heartbreaking to think that laut was killed on march 1998 while the dictator president was demoted in may 1998. it was only two-months away... laut you could have seen a better democracy. rest in power, laut. you will be reborn many times after.

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Youtube keeps reccing me these critical reviews of "booktok recommended" dark romances (as in intentionally dark/unhealthy subject matter) in which the 20-something leftist reviewers seem to be acting as if they are shocked, offended, and surprised that these books exist (some of this looks...very obvious from the cover.)

Is anyone else just...fucking over it? Like...

I admit to being squicked and sometimes disturbed by fantasies and kinks I come across when looking for fiction/fanfic. And yeah, there were conversations we needed to have when it came to certain media's impact on the culture. but like...I feel like I'm really growing out of giving much of a shit what people fantasize about anymore

Like just yesterday I saw a thumbnail of a video which was just...someone spent hours of work pouring obsessively over the Edward POV version of Twilight with about a hundred little sticky notes sticking out of it noting how shitty he is and like...who cares. Who gives a flying fuck, Becky? Your efforts are masochistic but if I say that out loud your tiny little fragile bird heart might explode

[opencommunion]

this is what you said:

backpedaling isn’t cute.

most of the world doesn't have time to waste. the longer privileged "leftists" idle in their comfort, the more people will die in the meatgrinder of capitalism, starting with the most vulnerable — like Gazans, like Congolese, like indigenous Sudanese, like the victims of climate disasters in places this empire has drained of resources, like street homeless migrants in the good old US of A. begging the democratic party for crumbs might keep you alive for longer, but it will only make others die faster. to save not only individual lives but entire cultures, we need to move against the empire, not with it.

you are not talking about taking concrete action that would materially move us closer to liberation for anyone. you're talking about rewarding genociders with promotions. you are talking about making sure the party that orchestrated the extermination phase of the Palestinian genocide still get seats in congress. that's not good. like, idk what else to say at this point. I don't like to rely on the cliche of "the right side of history," because I think we should keep our eyes on what's happening now, and because as a historian I know my field is not immune to genocide denial/minimization. but I can't imagine that decent people in the future will look kindly on those who voted for a genocider and claimed they did it for the sake of the victims. please zoom out from your myopic pov and see how depraved your attitude looks.

"US presidential candidate Kamala Harris has denied she considers Israel's assault on Gaza as a genocide, after she appeared to back this view during a speech over the weekend, leading to a massive Israeli backlash. Harris's campaign responded to Israeli criticism over her perceived backing for a comment made by a pro-Palestine activist over the weekend about the ongoing genocide in Gaza. 'That is not the view of the Biden administration or the Vice President,' a Harris aide told The Jerusalem Post."

that was literally a gaffe that she had to immediately disavow. you're grasping at straws to comfort yourself about your decision to vote for a genocider.

"how on earth is removing trump not the obvious choice"? that's what the op is about.

it's patently absurd to say that Trump would be worse for Palestinians because he wants to eradicate them, when Harris is eradicating them right now. right now. it does not get worse than what's happening in Gaza today, now, as I write this and as you read it.

please listen to what Gazans have to say about this.

when both candidates are genocidal, we must turn to actions other than voting for and ever-so-gently "pushing" these genocidal politicians. it's not credible to me that most Harris voters would take any substantive action to "hold her accountable" after the election, when you failed to even threaten to withhold your votes, which is the most basic and easy way to pressure an elected official. it's our responsibility as human beings to do whatever it takes to stop this as quickly as possible, and I don't understand wtf you're waiting for

looking back on how liberal political analysts talked about donald trump during his 2016 campaign, I notice two very important insights that have vanished from the conversation this time around.

1: the dire warnings about the rise of fascism were really centered on trump's followers, not the man himself. what concerned scholars of fascism in particular was that the already well-established neonazi presence in the US was openly rallying around a presidential candidate. trump's campaign emboldened neonazis, but the neonazis were already there — this is why we saw an astronomical rise in hate crimes against many marginalized groups during trump's campaign, before he was elected. trump himself was understood as an opportunist riding the wave of rising fascist sentiment — the wave itself was a bigger concern than the surfer. trump was replaceable. liberals now seem to have forgotten that trump's followers won't disappear if harris wins. the heritage foundation (originators of 'project 2025,' blue maga's favorite boogeyman) won't disappear if harris wins. extreme right politicians — many of whom I would argue are even further right than trump, and more embedded in the establishment — won't disappear. even if you mistakenly see the republican party as the sole provenance of usamerican fascism, republicans won't disappear if harris is elected.

2: the people centered in the crosshairs of trump's agenda were migrants and asylum seekers; chiefly those from south of the US border and from majority muslim countries. the intensified demonization of these groups led analysts to draw parallels with fascist parties that were on the rise in europe. hatred of migrants and muslims is indisputably the primary driver of 21st century fascism, from the UK to India. so tell me why the conversation in the US has shifted to revolve around white trans people? yes, trump supporters are obviously transphobic, but you have to trace this particular manifestation of transphobia to its source, which still comes down to white supremacy and anti-migrant sentiment. when you actually look at the way fascists talk about trans people, it all comes back to the idea that hostile foreign elements invading the country have degraded white christian values. trans people of color have already been targeted for a long time, because we're seen as a sort of vanguard of non-white perversion; this isn't new to us. white trans people are now experiencing increased persecution because transness is seen as infiltrating white families/communities and corrupting their whiteness. I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about the rise of transphobic policies; of course we should. what disturbs me is that anti-migrant sentiment has been shunted to the sidelines of discussions of 'trumpism,' when it is still very much the center of his platform. and that's the part of his platform that the harris campaign has adopted to try and pull voters from him! that's the part of the republican platform that the biden administration advanced with the excuse of 'reaching across the aisle.' and what more extreme manifestation of an anti-migrant anti-muslim platform is there than committing genocide in gaza and then refusing to let gazan asylum seekers (or even gazans with US citizenship!) into the US?

the entire US government, red and blue, is unified around the anti-migrant, white supremacist crux of so-called 'trumpism.' large swathes of the american public, whether they vote red or blue, are enthusiastic about genocidal foreign and domestic policies. none of this stops when trump is gone

[everything-is-crab]

ok i am not an american (though i do live in a western country) and am not a rightwinger either, i'm fairly centrist, and definitely i am anti-interventionist and far more isolationist than the average progressive. 9/11 was an act of US gov against its own citizens to justify further aggressive action abroad with the consequences we both know. the civilians in the twin towers were just as innocent as anyone in the middle east.

progs loooove to say peoples are more similar together than to their governments, and vice versa, and this everyone loves to cite when it benefits them (let me come to your country! i am like you!) however as soon as americans are killed and subjected to police state by their own gov (a fact of 9/11 and its later policy) then it's open season.. i find it inconsistent. in the end, everyone - EVERYONE - even bleeding heart liberals, cares more about those close to them. it's normal, and they are entitled to, as long as they do not denigrate others.

Bro what are you getting mad at? Did I even argue that those people were not innocent? What are you arguing against?

And if you're a centrist then idc. Ik progressives today want more foreign intervention (totally unaware of imperialism), I told you to even the check that survey. And that's why my criticism was and is directed at mainly liberals and leftists. You can leave.

Idgaf about arguing with "centrists" or anyone close to the right wing. I left that a long time ago cause it's a waste of time, as you're proving to be. No offense but our core beliefs differ. I get where you're coming from but you're thinking from an individual pov and I am not individualist (but you are cause you're a centrist and that's why idc about taking this further).

"Everyone cares more about those close to them" ok so in this context, it's nationalism. Caring more for your own people than others. What did I say wrong then in my og post? I just shortened what they do and believe in one word.

"As long as it's not denigrating" that's literally what I said in og post. You should find it inconsistent on how the Internet memeified another country's tragedy as I pointed out in the og post and then expected sympathy for themselves from the same people in return. And in your previous ask too (by providing link to a post where people are saying shit like "they had it coming to them" and yada yada).

So what's your point? I don't think it's worth arguing cause clearly your politics are much different than mine at the core. I care about other minorities. That's why I am anti Hindu nationalist and am with Muslims in other countries as well even though I am a Hindu myself. Do you think the whole GS is just one place and we don't have our own complex relations with each other? If you don't care about others then okay. Good for you

And you clearly are not ready to own up American civilians weren't innocent in supporting the war (do not even lie about that, all of you swallowed propaganda like candies) which killed more people in other countries than Americans killed in 9/11. That's why it's "open season". You were hurt? Fine you have our condolences. You use that to hurt others? You're gonna get shit on for it and don't expect any sympathy after that in return especially when your regrets and apologies aren't sincere.

[ultraericthered]

The sympathy does extend to Toga and Dabi, and to Twice and Spinner too for that matter. Shigaraki is rightly viewed as the worst of the lot and is in fact the one violetlunette settled on naming their least favorite. The idea that villainy and victimhood could co-exist was not refuted either. The problem in the writing of the LoV that some fans have taken issue with isn't that the narrative gave them tragic backstories in order to properly motivate their villainy, sympathetic PoVs and redeeming qualities, and has had them all victimized at various points, but that these characters in-universe play the victim card and cry out for acceptance and understanding rather than persecution and penalization as consequences for their actions even while they commit or are complict in acts of terrorism, destruction and mass murder. With the exception of Dabi, who fully intends to face the worst consequences but wants to burn the world down and take his family and as many other people as possible with him. That's just not as sympathetic to people as their stans would like to believe, and a lot of deflection with "But society is to blame! The League are ONLY victims, while the systems, people, and heroes of this world are the REAL villains here!" just comes off as ultra leftist terrorist sympathizing and denial of personal responsibility. Again, it was really Shigaraki who was the worst at this for a while, so him deciding to embrace the role of Symbol of Destruction was arguably good on him and would've gone over better had Deku not remained insistent on "saving him" because he saw him as a crying child once.

Toga being depicted as your typical gleeful psychopathic killer who gets a sexual thrill from killing others has been criticized before as laying on the cartoonish Yandere stereotype so thick that it makes her mental illness and the tragedy in her character harder to feel for or take seriously. And Dabi gets flak from fans who would've been totally on his side if he'd only been going for revenge on his father yet becaue he harms, kills, and threatens so many people who had nothing to do with his past, it loses them and makes them see him only as a repugnantly evil bastard who needs to be taken out for the good of all. I love both characters but understand these critiques. And as for the others, Horikoshi never wrote them as questioning Shigaraki's lead and second-guessing their actions even when they can clearly see all the dead bodies and destroyed cities right before their very eyes, and never wrote them seeing the error of their ways and embarking on a redemption arc. He had all the power and all the reason in the world to do so given the villains popularity, the themes his narrative was being built up, and the ideas being set up. Yet he didn't. The same writer who had Endeavor see his errors and strive to atone while still being plagued by the consequences of his Moral Event Horizon-crossing sins at every turn wrote these sympathetic villains just run a whole marathon across the Moral Event Horizon without looking back. I would've rather the LoV all been "saved" in whatever ways they could be, but it's on Hori for making that look way too unfeasible and on Hori for being unable to write his way out of the corner he pushed his story into in a way that was satisfying.

And as for Marik, he actually mostly didn't do anything too heinous or express maniacal glee in doing so except for the Yugi VS Joey duel. At all other times he was just the typical smug smirking and evil laughing villain like Kaiba, Bakura, and Pegasus. His vilest moments were eventually explained away as a byproduct of having his dark and psychotic split personality locked inside him, which is precisely where the "save him from himself" plot point even arose from since beforehand Ishizu was convinced her brother could not be saved.

So you’ve made it clear why you don’t like the LoV

I’d just like to add something to that

In canon they aren’t shown to have limits to what they’ll do

Like they’ve been shown to be willing to let children die, people who had nothing to do with what happened to them in the past

They don’t have morals and it makes it hard to feel sympathy for them despite their tragic backstories

A villain without some sort of morals, isn’t one that can truly be redeemed

Anti League of villains elements below, you’ve been warned.

Hard agree on all of this, like super hard. I’m not going to say too much for now, as when I go after these assholes I want to have solid evidence and what not to back up my claims. (When I go to war, I don’t go unarmed, and I have a feeling that when I make my arguments I had better be prepared.) But yeah, these jerks only care about themselves, minus Twice but even he was perfectly fine with killing children and other innocent people to get what he wanted. Worse of all? Not one of them feels guilt for what they did, or any regrets. (At this point in the manga. I’m waiting till the end to see if that changes.) Say what you will about Hawks, but at least he shows remorse for what he did and tries to do better. Also, note how no one uses his own backstory—in the narrative—to casually wave off what he did. Now, I don’t mind amoral villains. Hell, I like them more than “tragic villains” myself as they’re more fun. But in this case, we’re supposed to sympathize with them, and the narrative cheats to do this. (This is one of the topics I’ll get to when the manga is finished.) At least with villains like Cruella (1961), the movie never tried to make you feel bad for the puppy killer.

Anyway, I hate the LoV, and while I'm waiting for the manga to finish before I make my big arguments feel free to send in your rants as they're cathartic for me.

[strawberrymillks]

anyway it’s very, VERY telling that y’all will ignore the panels upon panels we got this chapter of endeavor being abusive, of literally objectively being framed as a demon/monster (and this is from a neutral pov, so none of that biased shit will work), of literally hitting his wife as his 5 year old son desperately tries to defend her and instead choose to attack an abused, neglected, mentally ill 13 year old who is quite literally mimicking his father’s actions and words when he says “the women IN THIS FAMILY are weak.” note “in this family.” not “all.”

and it’s very telling that even now we have people arguing that endeavor was a good father, that touya was a spoiled, bratty kid even though that is very clearly not the case. it’s disgusting to see how much people have fallen for horikoshi’s propaganda. this is not horikoshi not knowing how to frame. it’s become clear that he still knows how to frame endeavor as an abuser. this is horikoshi intentionally setting up sympathy for a child and wife abuser, making people feel for him now that he’s changing and diverting focus from his victims and their feelings to the abuser. this is horikoshi creating a mentality of abuse apologism in the fandom because “the abuser cried and feels bad now so it’s all okay!!” and then purposefully making a kid act out as much as possible in order to demonize the child. 

yes, it’s understandable the way he acts. but the damage has been done, because fandom doesn’t care. the fandom thinks this kid is in the wrong. there are people calling a literal 3 year old kid toxic and obsessive because he internalized everything that he was groomed for from birth and then proceeding to spiral as a result of suddenly having his identity torn away from him and given to someone else. this is propaganda, and you’re all falling for it because people are incapable of dissecting this series critically and realizing the amount of propaganda for the privileged, for the elite, for literal cops flooding this series, because you think “fiction doesn’t affect reality” despite the countless evidence to the contrary. for the love of god, if you can’t read this series with a leftist lens and realize the amount of propaganda in this series then don’t comment on situations like this at all.

[samueldays]

Remarks against Liberalism

(in large part open letter to @mitigatedchaos​ and his ideas of liberalism)

Abstract: 

A while back I posted “and there is another systemic complication that classical liberalism rests on a knife-edge between "let the underclass suffer" right-libertarianism on one side and "needs more social programs" left-liberalism on the other” in a chat, which miti took as a good criticism, and I made a note to expand it later. This is my expansion, presented as three main theses.

Liberalism is unstable. It is particularly vulnerable to wokism.

Liberalism is tiny. It exists in a narrow band between sweatshop libertarianism and welfare leftism.

Liberalism is in part a mirage, resulting from projections of a superstructure without its fundament.

These are interlocked theses, but I will try to set each of them out on its own.

Liberalism is unstable.

One of the liberal ideas is a sort of market competition. Products, goods, services, arguments, ideas, professionals and so forth should have to compete on their simple merits. Not on their bloodlines, not on their credentials, not on their personal traits, not on government subsidies, not on regulating competitors out of existence, and absolutely never on violence. The market, including the famous ‘marketplace of ideas’, is a public space where everyone gets to offer their goods and everyone gets to make their own purchases.

A first source of instability in this idea is second-order markets. The Apple App Store, for example, banned Gab. In theory consumers could choose to buy a non-Apple device if they wanted Gab; in practice there’s lock-in and transaction costs and transfer friction.

Second is various degrees of monopoly power. Partly, this is second-order markets but worse. Imagine if Apple could effectively ban apps or sites from most of the Internet. Partly, it allows for cross-market influences as well, to deny important services to people transacting with disfavored outlets.

The intuitive fix is “Regulate the megacorporations into not doing that” but then you’re quickly off into regulatory leftism, and this sort of regulation is one hell of a drug. Alternatively, authoritarian rightism, if you come at it from a punitive more than contractual angle.

Racial discrimination is another example of instability. The original arguments for affirmative action were very moving when they said that a level playing field was hardly “fair competition” to a group that had to start the race so far behind, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. The development of affirmative action gradually turned into increasing degrees of wokism and racial quotas and black privilege, with no clear dividing line.

(Personally, I think the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. How far back do you want to repeal?)

Liberalism seeks to have equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

But the moment one man seizes opportunity better than the next, by whatever that man will almost certainly start trying to pass on some of his superior outcome to his children, giving them superior opportunities! A trivial example, perhaps, but one that compounds and repeats a million times.

(Again, these theses are interlocked; I will address inheritance in both the other points from different angles.)

To maintain liberalism against inheritance, then, one slides easily into State-funded schools and State-managed curricula and State-guaranteed opportunities, thereby ceding a different part of liberalism. Nor is there a strict delineation between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. If one man is born 30 IQ points smarter than the next, in what sense can they be said to have equal opportunity? The law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, etc.

Wokist claims find purchase on liberalism in part because wokism is not conjured from thin air, it is aggressively expanding liberal precedents. Laws against voter intimidation lead to “Silence him, he’s triggering me”, alternate exam formats for the blind lead to educational videos being taken down because they’re not captioned, laws against overt racial discrimination lead to laws against thinly veiled racial discrimination lead to laws against disparate impact.

Liberalism is tiny.

I struggle to think of better terminology for this. Being tiny is not by itself a mark against an idea; there may well be a short sweet spot on a long spectrum of policy.

But there seems to me to be something about liberalism that is historically contingent as well as small; it’s a moving target as well as a hard target; it’s in some respects like being a “moderate” between leftists and libertarians when last century’s moderate is by now an extreme libertarian. To quote Moldbug,

Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the State, etc., etc.—well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn’t call themselves “moderates,” and nor would anyone else.

The center is tiny, the fringes are endless.

Again I come to the matter of inheritance. What is the liberal position on the acceptable degree of hereditary privilege? Why is this the position that gets called ‘liberal’? How many millions of dollars can I leave to my son, at what tax rate? What if I put them in a NGO? How many millions can I spend preparing the way for him before I die? Will you respect contracts that people swore to my as-yet-unborn-son?

It’s not that I think you haven’t thought about this. It’s that I have a hard time seeing your surely carefully considered opinions on this subject as something that can be turned into a mindset or an idea separate from you. Do you have a Liberalism separate from Mitigatedism that other people can hope to converge on? Convergence is harder for things that are tiny, which is a reason why I use that word.

Liberalism is in part a mirage.

Liberalism (as historically read) for nobles, or for another well-to-do class, is fine and good. Underperforming or misbehaving class members can be kicked out. Overperforming non-members can be inducted. Liberalism for everyone seems to me to have some generalization difficulty.

Similarly, the idea of a free and open market, competitive without the pressures of mafias or megacorporations, was often the result of an imperial writ or royal guarantee. Having a monarch in charge is fairly illiberal, but abstracting away the king for a sort of ideal liberalism easily results in the entrance of other illiberal factors that the monarch was suppressing because it benefited the monarch to have a liberally run subdomain.

(If I were king, I would absolutely have liberal subdomains. They’re profitable.)

Liberalism is unstable, as argued above, and an obvious stabilizer is a king with some degree a liberal vision saying “Keep it liberal in here”, but then it’s anchored on an illiberal fundament. The king can’t fully liberalize the kingdom without giving up his own power... indeed, I would expect he can’t even half liberalize the kingdom before people start demanding he yield the rest of his powers, whether by becoming a figurehead or becoming beheaded.

And again with the inheritance question. From the mirage POV: liberalism (historically) worked between relatively similar class members who were not too far apart to begin with, or in homogenous outbred countries. But if you try to universalize it, what liberalism is there if I can buy my son such great advantages he might as well have hereditary privilege, and what liberalism is there if I can’t spend my own money on my own son? What liberalism is there if a tightly bloodbound clan refuses to play by the rules, and what liberal means exist to break up clans?

(I am not in principle opposed to breaking up clans. But I question how this would be handled in a way that is meaningfully the way of Liberalism, rather than the instrumental goal of some other ideology.)

[hagravenholm]

Before anything, leftists still need to learn how to unify and work together, like it’s essential. Sure we all may have wonderful ideas and goals that are absolutely worth reaching for but the fact of the matter that I don’t see anyone ever REALLY talk about in seriousness is the fact that leftists go after fellow leftists sometimes based on really just details, things that don’t matter as much in the pragmatic and larger scope, with the same vigor as they would go after the right wing and honestly that’s the issue. That’s probably a big reason why the right wing (I’m speaking from an American pov) is as strong as it is. There isn’t as much room for critical thought and differing ideas but, overall, from what I’ve observed, when that does happen, it’s usually really easy to still be super friendly and not be anywhere near as divisive with their fellow conservatives as leftists are with other leftists. We need leftist unity if we ever hope to achieve ANY of the things we need/want

[a-very-tired-jew]

We got a part 3! Why am I writing a part 3? Well, there has been a massive rule change to the Dropout channel that I have talked about before and in their new rules they have a section about anti-Zionism and antisemitism. It takes you to a document that has a points on antisemitism vs anti-Zionism, and a list of readings for you to "decolonize and de-Zionize" yourself with. Within the antisemitism vs anti-Zionism it states Malcolm X fought antisemitism while fighting for Palestinian rights, when in reality Malcolm spoke at neo-nazi rallies, believed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, trivialized the Holocaust, and called Jewish people evil. Regardless of his role in the Civil Rights movement, Malcolm X was an antisemite and a member of the Nation of Islam, whose leader to this day expresses antisemitic views. I also went through a bunch of the listed articles and found that a good portion are written by tankies providing an ahistorical account of Jews in the USSR. These tankies are Jews themselves, but the tankie ideology supersedes their ethnic identity apparently and nowhere in their articles do they mention the pogroms that were committed by the USSR and how it drove Leftist anti-Zionist Jews into becoming Zionists themselves due to the betrayal of their allies. They simply portray Jews as living peacefully within the Soviet countries and not experiencing any form of antisemitism. There is an almost idealist fantasy to the articles to try and convince the reader that antisemitism simply didn't exist in the USSR throughout, but when you go and search outside of what they state you find it's the opposite. In my own personal interactions with tankies I've found that this is always the case and the denial is strong. Other writings that they list are from JVP, JVP members, or associated groups/persons. We don't have to go over the issues with JVP do we? Lastly, a good majority of stuff is from pre 10/7, often many years ago, and relies upon Jews being able to safely discuss their personal issues with Zionism in online public spaces and their ability to criticize Israel. The document uses these moments to bolster its point that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing. Personally, I view this as using something like the Talmud against the Jewish people. We often debate and discuss amongst ourselves the various ideologies we associate with, and to have goys use these discussions against us is disingenuous. But hey, they found the token Jews that agree with their POV in the channel and that's what matters right?

We have to talk about Leftist Antisemitism

One of the things I have been grappling with since Oct 7th is the rise of antisemitism in Leftist spaces. Often we find ourselves falling into the same old position of blaming the Right for these issues. However, over the past few decades minority voices have pointed out that the Left has issues with bigotry in its own way. For myself, and likely many other Jews, growing up in Leftist spaces I heard antisemitic jokes and lines all the time. However, they were never the overt hate fueled rhetoric I would hear from the Right. Conspiracies were relegated to "The Rothschilds control the world" rather than "The Jews control the world." Regardless of how you feel about the rich, the Rothschilds are a dog whistle for Jews. Hell, my own family members would say this same line because the majority of us are on the Left. So obviously we take a position regarding the ultra rich. However, this Rothschilds line isn't the only dog whistle. Often there were jokes at your expense from outside your in-group. Common refrains that *insert Jewish dog whistle* couldn't be trusted due to *insert conspiracy coded in Leftist language*. That's the issue... The antisemitism on the Left is coded in a language that makes it more subtle than overt rightwing antisemitism. But how did we get here? It definitely predates Oct 7th. We can partly lay blame at this at the feet of something that feels like an old and tired trope at this point: Russia. In particular, the good ole USSR. You see, dear reader, regardless of how you describe your sociopolitical and economics leanings, and regardless of whether or not you reject USSR style Communism, their style and impact still influence you and the rest of the world. As Leftists we often stand opposed to many aspects of Western capitalist ideals, which in turn exposes us to many of the anti-Western writings, philosophies, beliefs, etc... The issue is that the USSR has a very sordid history with antisemitism. Some of you may be saying "but wait! There were Jewish Bolsheviks! Stalin even supported Israel!", don't you worry. We'll get there. While there may have been Jewish Bolsheviks and members of the party post revolution, it does not change the policies and actions that preceded and followed. Robert Weinberg, Dara Horn, David Nirenberg, and other historians have all written extensively at some point or another about this very issue. I highly recommend Dara Horn's latest piece for the Atlantic "Why The Most Educated People in America Fall for Antisemitic Lies". She briefly covers this topic. If you can't access it, well here we go. Zionism as a concept had already been around for a few decades by the time the Communist Revolution occurred, having been solidified by the Dreyfuss Affair in the late 1800s. Zionism is/was also considered Jewish nationalism. While a Jew could be a Russian Jew, German Jew, or any other "nation" Jew, they were still considered an other and thus they could never truly be a nationalist for that country. Only for Israel/Zion. As such, Jews in the USSR were not trusted as it was argued they could not be truly devoted to the Party. Jews were then labeled as Zionists. Zionism was considered anti-Communist, and racist due to the Party purposefully putting out that the "chosen people" line meant that Jews were supremacists and believed themselves to be better than others (The chosen people line actually refers to us choosing to adhere to certain laws). As such, Zionist activities were shut down as they were an act of treason and betrayal. This means that synagogues, shuls, business, and more were shut down as a means to disrupt the "Jewish conspirators". It did not matter that Jews were involved in the revolution, if you were Jewish you were an other and could not be trusted. pt 1.

[jaggedwolf]

Reading Update

Time for a rapid-fire round.

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman

A study of the effects of killing on the human psyche and how armies override the instinctive resistance to killing. (Left to instincts, the author argues, fights end up involving more posturing than actual combat.) First chunk was a good overview of the factors that armies utilize to great effect, whether or not they know it: physical/mechanical/cultural distance from the enemy, moral superiority, a feeling of accountability to the buddy next to you. Last bit of the books gets very wild with the author more concerned about video games eroding civilians' instincts against killing than say, civilians getting desensitized via the actual violence the experience/see/commit. After that, the author's current job is distressingly unsurprising. Book's still worth reading.

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

On an Earth where corporations are nation-states, there's a war against the Martian rebels and Dietz has enlisted. But Dietz doesn't seem to be seeing missions the same way. Super fun timey-wimey stuff with military sci-fi trappings, a fitting overlap with the previous read. I enjoyed the temporary ambiguity of Dietz's gender. Unfortunately, I want more details on the timey-wimey stuff and Mars near the end, and instead I got a speech and unexplained power-ups.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

Whole-ass one thing instead of half-assing many things. I agree, but could have spent more time on how than why. Meh.

Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America by Vivek Bald

A fascinating study of the many Muslim peddlers and seamen from British India (mostly Bengal) who came through the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a small subset of whom stayed permanently. Silk peddlers peaked in 1880s-1910s, capitalizing on a new fever for the ~oriental aesthetic~. The seamen showed up in the early 1900s, ditching working conditions on British ships for (slightly) better ones on American ships or for new lives altogether. Many of the ones who stayed married and integrated into black neighborhoods - hence the title - and were thus easy to miss outside of records like ship manifests and census records.

Lion City by Ng Yi-Sheng

Fun speculative fiction short-story collection set in Singapore, or about it. My favorites were The Little Emperor, Garden (time-travel CYOA), and "The Boy, The Swordfish and The Bleeding Island". I had entirely forgotten about that swordfish story explanation for the red soil.

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum

Collection of the author's TV criticism and profiles. Weirdly enjoyed reading about shows I've never seen - there's only so many hours I want to spend on TV. Favorites were probably the love letter to Jane The Virgin, and the profile of Ryan Murphy.

State of Emergency by Jeremy Tiang

Six sections, with six perspectives, cover decades of leftist movements and detentions without trail in Singapore and Malaysia, starting with the 1940s. Felt more informed while reading it, as opposed to being carried away with the story. Likely revealing of my biases that I was most invested in the last three POVs.

[spoonass69]

so often. i see people being like heh nonody on this website has reading comprehension. everyone on twitter is so defensive. everyone reads things in bad faith. but then you go on their page and they call themselves leftists but theyve completely looped around and their ironic satire posts are literally just doing the same thing they think theyre making fun of. like ok these arent very coherent words but like. i keep seeing people making more and more jokes about people calling everything a trauma response, about people saying their neurodivergent and a minor, about people asking op to clarify weather they meant something super offensive in their post. like at first when ut was just a few jokes abt some specific and ridiculous situations it was like yeah funny. but its feeling very much just like a “leftist” version of those conservatives making fun of people for being too sensitive or boys making fun of girls for saying they have a boyfriend.

like ive seen so many people on tik tok using that “that is a scarecrow” bo burnham sound to belittle actual trauma responses because they do sound silly and like normal things when you don’t understand it.

and the whole thing about making fun of people fpr saying theyre neurodivergent and a minor is just. so blatantly weird. like yes its very funny to laugh at the like. 3 times someone has actually said that in a funny situation. but come on guys. you have to be careful about these topics.

and that whole thing about bad faith it just. i get where people are coming from. but the internet is a wild place and i really dont think we should be making fun of people for making sure that when you say vague things its nog coming from a bigoted pov, because its super common for someone to say vague normal things but from a bigoted pov.

it really just feels like a bunch of kids wanted ro be seen as morally good and stuff, so they called themselves leftists and such but then they didn’t actually bother to learn anything or think critically. then they made jokes where the basis for the joke to be funny are some very ingrained and very harmful views and ideas abt the world. and if you point this out at all then youre gonna get roasted bc its not that deep and its just jokes. which yk i get. its also the same thing the conservatives say tho. i just really dont like all the similarities im seeing and i really really dont like how many other seemingly normal and safe and educated people arent seeing it at all and are participating in it

[petty-crush]

“Fahrenheit 11/9”

-the purpose of a director (and a film) is be clear on “what am I communicating?”

+ if Michael Moore wanted to communicate shock, anger, bewilderment, hope and (slowly but surely, switching from background to foreground) empowerment and recovery —with regards to US election 2016–he wildly succeeded

-the pre title sequence plays like a horror film

-I have no idea how it will look to future generations, but for someone who lived through that moment of unexpected presidency, it rippled the entire lake

-it is fucking accurate; I’ve never seen such a parade of glum and sore winners

-here is what I love about Moore, he surprises with unexpected moments; the Gwen Stefani bit really made me laugh

-this is emotionally true, every behavior of trump plays as a man who would be mad anyone (let alone woman or “lesser” in his eyes) gets more candy than him

-Moore is setting up an effective transition, micro to macro, small to big; trump’s the symptom, not the disease. The hate crowds were hungry.

-Moore himself got swept away in the sand grains; he went easy on trump when they were both on a talk show, pebble by pebble the beach got contaminated

-I honestly feel he is far more critical of himself here than anyone else who slipped up

-I enjoy a POV that makes me think and dig deeper (rather than nod absent mindlessly); he is really giving me that when he spotlights the blow up between Bernie and Hillary

-my bias is that Sanders is a good bugle boy for change, but not a general. He has ideas but not the human touch to get them done. His supporters were loudly cheering but numbers not on their side.

-did the democratic party really shove Sanders out of the way? I thought no before but now I’m unsure, I’ll dive in more

-oh, Flint

-what kind of scumbag poisons people’s water? Goes out of the way to make things worse.

-I’m going to jump ahead a bit; intro aside, the most deflating moment is Obama’s (in)actions.

Of calling for a glass of water, saying that maybe he ate lead chips as a kid (who fucking cares) and gives no government support to the state or protestors.

-I like him, but this behavior is pathetic. I can’t blame anyone who feels he is no longer their president or let down.

-Moore, from “Bowling” to “Capitalism” has always spotlighted and put faith behind people banding together.

-He really covers a lot of groups here, from the woman who refused to cook the books on lead levels for flint kids, to teens who want themselves to stop getting shot, to people living paycheck to paycheck digging their foot into the earth for a better life and daring others to move them

-I think he was absolutely even-keel with these people. A fellow viewer felt Moore puffed up those shooting survivors to idols, but I disagree. He mostly observed, cracked a few jokes, and witnesses people imperfectly moving forward. He’s deliberate in silently filming an open wound being treated.

-my strongest disagreement with Moore is the notion that the Democrats are prone to surrender, and that they have moved too far to appease the republicans.

+He doesn’t say they are the same, a ludicrous lie others have shouted

+ I do agree that these people are playing by the rules when the other side sure isn’t, and going high when the opponent goes low isn’t going to dispel the toxic energy the other goes for

+so what am I suggesting? Punch em in the fucking nose, in every sense

-sidebar; is it true that republicans respect democrats going unabashedly to leftist ideas (as opposed to timidly), or is that just buttering them up to kick their legs out later? I think the latter, overall

+ I don’t think taking money from banks is proof of lack of courage; it’s the lack of standing firm when the banks want back rubs that bothers me. Like these people don’t know how to barter

+ I also strongly suspect that most people in US don’t want to vote. It’s a irritation. It’s a sense of self (sabotage) at the expense of the community. It takes a fuck load of money to win when most people are apathetic

+ that said, I do agree that the party overall is being too cautious. Being “perfect”(everyone agrees!) at the expense of being good (these rights, in bits, starting now).

Look at LBJ, that pushy fucker got stuff done. He was rabid and people’s lives got better. That’s a rare quality in US, but stand behind those people once seen (and they are out there).

-I do like getting this much in the political mud. Which is exactly (I think) what got more people into Bernie. The persistence. Now get people more like that and who don’t grovel for the gun lobby.

-yes, sometimes we fight (and feel strangely nostalgic for) for things that never existed in the first place, and are of more of how it could be, not is. I very much agree with Moore there.

-I too, it seems more and more, am a (late) 60’s revolution lover. I’m tired of suffering and seeing others pushed to the ground for no reason. Government, to me, is going to exist whether people hate it or not. No alternative has been found. So can we accept that and make it take care of us and give us a hand up when we fall down?

-yeah, and fuck the electoral college too.

+ who cares if state 2-5 go y when state 1 has three times the people and goes x? State 1 is still the “real” US, you fart catchers. And more of them.

-it’s been a while since I’ve felt this vividly about turning to change. It’s been there, but covered in debris from the million tweets and spinning plates the Trump administration has being throwing in the air. This rise in rambunctiousness I am grateful for. Thanks, Mr. Moore.

-Are we sliding away from democracy, towards despotism (as a world)? I really hope fucking not. But, Moore is right, hope can numb.

I.... think it is very probable. But, clearly, as Trump winning proves, weird results can happen. US getting healthcare (push) under Obama after mass white collar crime under Bush, pretty wild.

A person can get Kmart to phase out ammo sales. A teacher’s union can get what they want (and need) after others have surrendered.

I’m not ready to count anything out. Especially the positive.

We want something. We fall. Nevertheless, we persist. Over difficulties. Just help them kids. Their vote counts. Dare I say, most of all.

Go on, little seeds. I got your back.