#cw nazi propaganda

[lucien-calore]

to all of you using the upside down triangle "in support of palestine": you are using nazi imagery

[deus3xmachinablog]

incredibly important to bring this back for 2 reasons:

I continue to hear from people who insist that the incoming buffoon in chief isn't competent enough to make good on all his threats which is an INCREDIBLY dangerous assumption to make, and

It is Incalculably Important that we continue to deconstruct the myth that there was anything at all to admire about the Third Reich. There is a history going decades back of putting Nazi leadership on pedestals to further service the US's national mythology of having had (at least) one time had A Worthy Adversary. We have got to cut that shit out. It's propaganda, pure and simple.

Hmm, this sounds familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on why…

[lacewise]

I don’t have the energy to fight people casually spreading Nazism right now, but I should note: if you are spreading Islamophobia or antisemitism… this is the internet. People will have those screenshots forever. When the air clears, you will find all the people you pointed fingers at pointing back at you. And no one, not one person, you were pretending to be an ally of, you were pretending to advocate for, will help you. None of the people who assisted your hatred will help you. They will flee, trying to save themselves. You will be marked. You will cry, but the mark was your own choice. The consequences for this will come.

Do not drag civilians into this. Do not wish harm on civilians. Do not accuse civilians of crimes they didn’t commit. Civilians are not at war (obviously… I shouldn’t have to say this, bigots).

It’s better to stay silent than to spread propaganda.

And I should note that I won’t tolerate antisemitism (Nazis of any kind), islamophobia, transphobia, anti-Indigenous racism (if you think that’s a contradiction with antisemitism, congratulations, you’re a Nazi! Go away!), anti-Black racism, racism in general, eugenicists, fatphobia, transphobia, homophobia, aphobia, ableism, just… bigotry. I’m part of too many marginalized communities and I have too many friends for this nonsense!!! I make lace to relax!!!

I’m also anti-terrorism, anti-war crimes (why do these need to be said? Are you guys planning to volunteer for the Third Reich????), anti-torture, anti-kidnapping.

Sometimes I shout into the night about the failures of intercultural communication education and why I’m so angry people are afraid to say “Police the police!” (You should by the way, they keep murdering community leaders.)

I have difficult cross-cultural conversations, I’m willing to be educated, and I’m willing to be wrong. I have no idea what the rest of you are doing but it’s making me angry and afraid.

I don’t know what this is, but I see you all acting like you’re auditioning for the SS and it’s disgusting. No one will praise your violence as heroism when this ends.

[goodluckdetective]

I also watched the Todd in the Shadows video (I’m not done) and man I have some thoughts. I’m gonna put these below the cut though, due to the content I’m gonna discuss:

CW: Nazis, Nazi Germany and everything that goes with that

Something that struck me about Somerton’s incorrect ideas about the Nazis, was that a lot of his errors were ones that played into Nazi mythos. I’m no scholar of Nazi Germany, but anyone who has even glanced in that direction of history or American history knows the Nazi’s got their ideas about race and “the perfect figure” from America. Not all of it, Europe itself had a eugenics movement, but a it did have an impact: American eugenics had an influence in Nazi Germany.

As said, I’m no expert and you should take this with a grain of salt. Long story short, it’s buckwild to claim America was jealous of the Nazi’s fitness when 1. Large portions of the Nazi army was malnourished teenaged boys and 2. we, sadly, did a lot of that on our own.

The thing that strikes me here is that a lot of Somerton’s ideas about Nazis come from Nazi propaganda itself. I think Dan Olsen of Folding Ideas actually explains this way better than I ever could. If you’re up for it you should watch his video on the Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” https://youtu.be/jJ1Qm1Z_D7w?si=euOSjWW-9v5wusyM. If you’re not up for it or just want the reason why I’m sharing it, Olsen explains that Nazi propaganda influenced how some see the Nazis as powerful and competent and how some of our ideas about Nazi Germany are based in how the Nazis wanted to be perceived (which gross).

The other thing that gets me is the talking about homosexuality in the Nazi military which is an old homophobic myth. Wikipedia has a summary of the origins and use of the myth.

I keep wondering WHERE James got this idea. The first idea I can chalk up to common American misconceptions of Nazi Germany (though the Russian part still confuses me) but the latter isn’t exactly a common perception except in pretty niche circles. Where did he get this idea from? Did he hear this as an insult enough that he decided it was true? Or was he hanging out in alt right circles and never examined it?

I’m not trying to accuse James of anything here (though I will fully agree he’s got racist and misogynist ideas from what we do know). But I do think it’s interesting to wonder WHERE these ideas came from.

At the very least, I think it shows that when you don’t examine claims you hear, you can easily launder ideas contrary to your values or downright reprehensible concepts to a wider audience.

[campgender]

still a practitioner of bibliomancy some days, & my god am i grateful for every voice that reaches back, every fem(me) of the past who senses my openness & honors it.

will be transcribing the passage that’s holding my heart rn asap but for the moment have some more details on the situation i referenced yesterday under the cut. obv expecting to continue to feel a lot of different shit about this but rn i feel impossibly, spiritually held & comforted & i’m just so grateful 😭💓

cw rape culture, violations of consent, nazism, transmisogyny

hello lovers haters & miscellaneous spectators. welcome to another rant about mac’s sex life.

so.

girl i’ve been hooking up with for like 10 months reblogs a “your body my choice” meme.

it’s someone’s tits.

once i calm down enough to deal with it i check the op’s blog. of course it’s a stolen image.

op is a “““pagan traditionalist””” who posts for her future husband, believes women are in general ‘naturally’ submissive to men, in describing her body manages to refer to all women as having uteruses, & encourages people who’ve read to the end of her bio to dm her “Wingardium Leviosa”

if op isn’t making nazi propaganda idk why not bc apparently she’s really good at it.

so i was already triggered as shit,

esp bc i’d just learned that morning i think about that phrase being deployed against middle school kids in peer abuse

which was obv so triggering for my cocsa shit in addition to it being almost my birthday which always makes me a raw nerve

& then asserting a boundary is agonizing, my brain in self-defense attempts to make it impossible

& there’s that little voice of “is that gonna be my tits some day”

& i’m blaming myself for having fucked her past the first issue we had or maybe at all

so i’ve just been like. a mess of “maybe it’s fine maybe everything’s fine maybe i couldn’t have gotten over it on an embodied level but i shouldn’t have said anything” etc etc

i start reading my scan of the first half of with a rough tongue: femmes write porn

amber dawn writes that she is exhausted navigating the tensions between feminism & sex radicalism, these two parts of herself & two communities she moves in.

my god, amber, i am exhausted.

she says she was inspired to create this pornography collection because she came across a shot from her own sex work on the internet

over which someone had added a caption

that wasn’t me, she said, so she built a collection that was

& i fucking wept. like obviously it is so horrific that that happened to her, that this happens to so many people, but it was such a profound validation that it is okay to take this sort of shit seriously, that if i’m a pedant & a buzzkill & a killjoy i’m not the only one, that we are exhausted.

that we keep making porn anyway. because it’s important to our lives, because we love it

[controversial-blorbo-bracket]

tbh i think anyone that bothered by her name probably has Harry Potter as large blacklisted already. i know i do. ahh i guess it's too late to retag since polls can't be edited but another option might've been to directly tag her poll with something like "cw racism" or something. but yeah I'd completely get wanting to remove her for that. especially since i wouldn't be surprised if actual hp fans were voting hate for sinophobic reasons instead of voting hate because of the sinophobic portrayal (i.e. feeling her character deserved better or wishing she were cut entirely or something). (i feel like a lot of the controversy ive heard about her character was...not great but that was back in 2015 or something)

either way i don't blame you for including her! and she certainly is controversial!

First, a helpful fact for anyone who makes polls because I know it’s not common knowledge but it’s super useful: you actually CAN add and remove tags from poll posts by using the mass post editor on desktop! It’s a bit of an inconvenient workaround but it’s very helpful. So I could do that

Second, the only problem with the above is that I don’t want to have any polls up that require that, it’s the same reason I disqualified a character for wearing nazi garb or being a school shooter: the triggering aspect would be in the post. Like if a character says bigoted stuff or their media has bad views I’m not gone write “the author said x and y slurs” in their post, but the words “cho chang” are right there

Third, yeah your point about voting hate for sinophobic reasons is also a big point. I’d assumed based on what I remember from the harry potter fandom when I was like 14 and the submitter’s propaganda that fans hated her because she “cries too much” or she rejected Harry or whatever, and non-fans hate her bc of her racist name, but I didn’t even consider the other factors that could be causing her to get a lot of hate votes

So yeah thanks anon, you’ve helped me reason through it and come to the conclusion that she really shouldn’t be here. I’m gonna continue to allow any other Harry potter characters and other problematic medias, but one with racism in the post does not belong

[episodeoftv]

Round 1 of 8, Group 2 of 8

propaganda and summaries are under the cut (May include spoilers)

Daredevil: 2.06 Regrets Only

cw there are some fight scenes and one character is in a hospital bed looking beat up for most of his screen time

A lethal foe returns with a vengeance, Foggy and Murdock risk the firm to ensure justice, and Karen sees a different side of the Punisher.

this is where the tension in the series starts really ramping up. s2 is all about figuring out what the truth/justice means to each character and how they can best get at it, and the way they all go about it is fascinating. also it's the episode where matt and elektra sneak into a fancy dress party and karen talks to frank about his family for the first time

Peep Show: 1.02 The Interview

Mark wants Jeremy to get a job in the same office as him so he can pay his share of the rent, however Jeremy isn't keen on the idea. Mark also worries whether Sophie, a co-worker he fancies, may or may not think he's a Nazi.

There are other later episodes that stand out as fan favourites but this is still one of the funniest and does an excellent job of showing you who these characters are and what the series is going to be. I think about 'socks before or after trousers but never before pants' every single morning.

[toxic-mothers-tourney]

Toxic propaganda: Marisa Coulter (His Dark Materials)

CW: nonconsensual medical experimentation, child death

She sucks!!! She abandoned her daughter after giving birth to her and then showed up twelve years later, didn’t tell her daughter that she was her mother, and hired her as a “personal assistant.” At one point, Mrs. Coulter’s daemon (manifestation/extension of her soul) physically attacked and pinned down her daughter’s daemon, at which point said daughter ran away from her. THEN it turned out that she was cutting away children’s daemons (again, part of the literal souls of these children) because she is in fact straight-up evil. Her gift is being angelic and sweet and fascinating to children but also she’s a liar and a horrible person and a #girlboss and she loves her daughter but she can’t express that in any normal way bc she needs to control her daughter and treat her like a pet and a doll to dress up.

Basically, everything to her is pursuit of power. Because of the patriarchal church that governs her world, she has to rely on her beauty, her knowledge, and her coercion and manipulation to get what she wants. She's very intelligent and very charming and becomes involved with men she knows can get her resources and influence. She spends a lot of time performing "research" on adolescent children, which involves kidnapping them, cutting their souls away, and, almost invariably, their tormented deaths. At first, she only uses her daughter as a means to an end, or as her own trophy, as something she has acquired that she is not supposed to have. At one point she repeatedly drugs her daughter to keep her completely passive and unconscious in order to be with her, or really, to claim ownership of her while also remaining in hiding and manipulating those around her to think she is a holy woman. A glimpse at her inner self, her soul, reveals something sadistic and frightening.

she is intensely manipulative, even managing to leverage some influence over the goddamn church at times. she weaponizes her maternal relationship with her daughter in an effort to control her, and uses “mother’s love” as a way to justify her actions. notable shitty moments include sending magic spy drones after her daughter, torturing enemies for information on the whereabouts of her daughter, drugging her daughter into sleep for weeks to “keep her safe,” and kidnapping/overseeing experiments on other children that involve severing their connection to their souls.

Oh she’s terrible and so complicated. No qualms about doing evils to lots of children (luring poor children off the street to be kidnapped for a soul-splitting experiment that was likely to result in their deaths) But when she realizes the same thing is about to happen to her own child she snaps and stops the experiment. Her daughter hates her. She loves her daughter terribly but knows she is (rightly) hated. She’s allied with the evil church, not because of her beliefs but because the church is politically super powerful. Her daughter comes into her care later in the books and she drops everything to go hide away in the mountains with her daughter to keep her safe. But she also keeps her daughter drugged with a sleeping potion because she knows if her daughter wakes up she will run away. She loves her daughter but it’s in such an absolutely toxic way. I think she should win this whole bracket.

I really don't have anything beyond the fact that she only went looking for her daughter after Mrs. Coulter started a religious lobotomy/nazi concentration camp experimentation program/daemon separation where they were stealing children and taking them to a facility where the kids were effectively killed after they began puberty. She went looking for her daughter and took her in as a live in assistant/ward (without telling lyra that she was her mother) and on the same trip she took to meet lyra, she also kidnapped lyra's best friend.

She literally drugged her child and kidnapped her child’s best friend that should be enough

[teknomagic]

Las waifus son literalmente del Instituto División Azul y el título es Girls und Panzer porque si hay una cosa que hace la industria del anime es dar dinero a proyectos profascistas:

Por esta clase de mierda es por lo que hace años que apenas veo anime.

girls what are you wearing 

[titleleaf]

[CW: Nazism, eugenics, severe ableism]

It was as part of their racial education that a group from Freiburg’s Ludendorff secondary school came to tour Emmendingen in January 1938. Afterward, each of the forty-two pupils was asked to write an essay about the visit. The results show how well the propaganda worked and how public allegedly secret Nazi “solutions” for psychiatric patients had become. A few of the Ludendorff students clearly hung on to a vestige of pre-Nazi morality, empathizing with the patients, writing that it was wrong to use the sick as “exhibits,” or asking whether a reasonably healthy person might not go insane in such a place. Several were disappointed that the inmates did not look nearly as “repulsive and disgusting” as they had been led to believe. Most, though, followed their teacher’s lead, describing how they had seen the “high point of horror,” or “human ruins with bestial instincts,” and comparing the inmates with animals. No one in the group questioned the necessity of racial legislation. Most surprising was the fact that a possible “euthanasia” action against the mentally ill was openly discussed, and every single pupil remembered to write that the principal argument for such a policy was to save public funds. One even specified that the money should be used “for the purpose of armament.” Thirty-five of the forty-two pupils clearly supported the sentiment that the German people should be “freed from such evil appendages”—meaning the patients—and anticipated that asylum doctors would not be necessary for much longer. The teacher did have to correct one student, though, who failed to identify the Reich’s preferred psychiatric treatment, writing “Hemlock, according to [WWI-era 'euthanasia' proponents] Hoche-Binding,” on the paper in red ink.

-- The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler's War on Art, Charlie English

[redd956]

Writing Rhetoric: Paradox of Tolerance

Paradox of Tolerance: A society that is tolerant without limit will eventually fail or be ruined by the intolerant.

 The idea of the paradox of tolerance was started by the philosopher Karl Popper, but never received the term we used today until Michael Walzer wrote On Toleration

CW: Historical Bigotry, Nazis, Modern Bigotry

When Popper first created this term the intolerant of his time were the Nazis. To this day nazism is the still the most infamous embodiment of  the intolerant. 

What the paradox means is if a society that strives to be tolerant of others (accepting to differing demographics, safe for all walks of people, etc.), it will need to be intolerant to the intolerant (bigots, genocidal maniacs, etc.). Otherwise the intolerant will threaten too the tolerance of the society.

It is a difficult concept to grasp, but we see it often in modern times and have seen it throughout history too. Since Popper popularized the concept of the paradox, nazis are most used as an example of what this would look like. 

Even in finding this famous infographic about the paradox I also found propaganda. A steady reminder to do careful research, and keep a keen eye.

 Karl Popper doesn’t suggest we should censor or silence them. Instead he advocates to fight them back with reasonable arguments (or physically fight them if they are nazis) which brings us to RHETORIC and Modern Day Bigotry

Rhetoric

Now I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with writing rhetoric. Well rhetoric itself is complicated to explain, but it also includes the arguments and persuasion in writing. Often times when decoding the rhetoric of others unfortunate deep rooted bigotry may form, sometimes even subconsciously. I know I say things I don’t always mean that come from my subconsciousness towards my environment. 

The paradox of tolerance is in itself a rhetoric argument against bigotry. Of course bigotry is illogical, and most you’d ever find yourself debating in such topics simply will not listen to logic. However it is still nice, especially for writing, to have the paradox of tolerance on your side.

Modern Day

Today we see the need for the knowledge on the paradox of tolerance as bigotry levels waiver all across the world. Whether it be TERFs, Racists, Extremists, Anti-Semitics, and more; there is a lot of intolerance right now. It is best to know when setting up a server, forming an online friend group, creating a club, or maybe even running a society; to maintain tolerance we must be intolerant to the intolerant. Otherwise...they may crush us.

[redeyedroid]

CW for war, bombing, and descriptions of horror.

Valentine's night is the anniversary of one of the most controversial events of the Second World War, the bombing of Dresden. The Combined Bombing Offensive itself is profoundly controversial, the morality of it debated and questioned for nearly 80 years now.

Dresden is a lightning rod to both the far left and right, though for different reasons. The left use it to accuse the arch imperialist, Winston Churchill of being a war criminal. Neo-Nazis use it to say that Germany was innocent and German civilians were the real victims of genocide. And there are others beyond these people, who remember because they either know the full story, or don't, because they know something awful happened that should be commemorated and we should do everything we can to prevent anything like it happening again.

This is footage of a raid on Pforzheim that took place shortly after the attack on Dresden. A small town in southwest Germany, very little of pre-war Pforzheim remains, because the RAF destroyed 83% of the town that night, and killed a quarter of it's population in ways identical to what happened in Dresden. The tactics and manner of the raid were the same. But Dresden is widely remembered and Pforzheim is not.

And this is because Josef Goebbels intended for Dresden to be.

The Nazi propaganda apparatus made Dresden world famous, inflating the death toll and it's effects, to portray Germany as the victim of Allied aggression. Holocaust denier, anti-semite and goat-fucking piece of shit, David Irving repeated Nazi lies (and added a few of his own) when he wrote about the raid in the 60s. Kurt Vonnegut, who was in the city that night and survived the raid, used Irving's account as source material when writing Slaughterhouse Five.

The myths have taken root while the truth is as horrific, if not worse.

Dresden and Pforzheim were stops on a long line that began with Zeppelins in 1915 and went through towns and cities including Guernica, Rotterdam, Coventry, Hamburg and Tokyo before ending at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Airpower was a novel concept in The Great War, the technology undeveloped. The Germans bombed the UK, killing 1,414 civilians, and - less well known - the British dropped 660 tons of bombs on Germany. Bombing was largely ineffective, in strategic terms, achieving little, but heralded an era where the aeroplane would dominate.

Between the wars, influential theorists like Giulio Douhet predict the destruction of civilisations, entire wars decided by countries being bombed into dust, their populations giving up en masse under a rain of bombs. These ideas are very seductive to interwar generals and air marshals, starved for funding and relevance, and give rise to a generation of proponents eager, when they get the chance, to win a war with air power alone.

The Germans try and, their air force not designed, equipped or led for the task, fail. The Blitz will kill thousands of British civilians and cause great suffering, but does not bring about the collapse of the UK's economy, nor break the morale and will to resist of it's people.

(This gives rise to a strange and awful exceptionalism. When it is pointed out that bombing had not broken Britain's population, and expecting it to do so to Germany's was a shaky idea, this will be dismissed. The British are made of sterner stuff than the German, you see; and, if it hasn't worked so far, this is merely a case of not enough bombs having been dropped and shows the need for vast numbers more to be dropped.)

It will be the British and Americans that truly attempt to bomb their enemies into submission.

The strategies differ. The Americans prefer to fight in daylight, concentrating attacks against industrial and transportation targets, claiming a precision to their attacks that doesn't exist in practice. They use close formation as defence, their bombers equipped with large numbers of machine guns to fight back against German interceptors. Later, they use escort fighters to engage the Germans and, in huge air battles in late 1943 and early 1944, they break the Luftwaffe's ability to contest the air.

The RAF operates differently. Bomber Command flies by night, and targets population centres. Navigating to target is a problem. They struggle to drop bombs within 5 miles of the target and it is only with the coming of large, four-engined bombers and a new leader in Arthur Harris that the campaign coheres in 1942 and 1943.

Harris is a demagogue, steadfastly refusing to allocate his aircraft to tasks he sees as distractions from the main effort of destroying German cities. He will fight the navy, who want him to bomb German U-Boat bases and who need long-range aircraft to patrol the Atlantic. He will argue against bombing the U-Boat's bases in France. His crews will call him 'Butch'. Not out of affection, but for his seeming indifference to the appalling losses they suffer. It is short for 'Butcher'. But he is a very effective administrator and moulds a new, highly destructive force that will lay waste to Germany.

They study the construction of German buildings, calculate the correct mix of high explosive and incendiary bombs and determine how best to make cities burn. Their bombers carry 4,000lb blast bombs nicknamed cookies and small incendiary bombs. The cookies devastate buildings and roads, creating craters, rubble and huge obstacles that hinder rescue and fire-fighting. But that is not their main purpose. The shock wave from their explosions blow out doors and windows in a large area, creating airflow for fires. The RAF drop 68,000 cookies on Germany and 3 million phosphorous incendiaries, because phosphorous cannot be extinguished by water. Bullet-shaped, they punch through roofs, into attics, offices, shops and homes, setting fire to whatever they can, wherever they land.

In the footage of the Pforzheim raid, you can see the flashes of high explosive bombs detonating, the fires caused by incendiaries, and 55 seconds in you can see clusters of target indicators falling slowly into the inferno.

The British employ fireworks companies to develop slow-burning flares of different colours and intensities. They use these target indicators to mark where bombers are to drop bombs. They identify a phenomenon known as creepback - the natural tendancy of bomber crews to drop bombs slightly short so they can get the hell out and go home - and factor it into their planning, setting aiming points beyond the part of a city they want bombed, allowing creepback to sweep the whole city instead. Mass destruction becomes a scientific pursuit.

Master Bombers are introduced, senior airmen who orbit cities at altitudes above the bomber stream and direct the bombing. At Dresden, the Master Bomber will see the primary target overwhelmed with flame and direct bombers onto new parts of the city to burn as much of the city as possible.

The RAF fly diversions, spoofing attacks against cities far away from the real targets. They fly nuisance raids on nights when the main force is resting. They fly precision attacks against specific targets - famously on a night in May 1943 two dams in the Ruhr valley are breached by bouncing bombs. Harris does not like such missions and lends them little support, though he will take credit.

It is euphemistically called area bombing, the attacks against cities a campaign of 'dehousing' when what it is is an attempt to kill German civilians, the workers that keep the economy functioning and their families.

A thousand bombers are sent to Cologne in May 1942, but it is Operation Gomorrah, a week-long campaign against Hamburg a year later that realises the potential of area bombing.

Atmospheric conditions are good, the deployment of a new invention called window - strips of aluminium foil that disrupts radar - renders German defences ineffective, and the introduction of H2S - the world's first ground-mapping radar, and which picks up Hamburg's geography very well - means that bombing is very accurate. Gomorrah is a great success for Bomber Command.

The fourth raid of the week, on 27th July 1943, will see fires combine and burn so intensely a column of superheated air will rush skywards. This sucks in air at ground level, feeding the flames. Winds reach 150mph. Fires burn at 800 degrees celsius and reach 300m into the heavens. 8 square miles of Hamburg is devastated in one of the first documented firestorms of the war. It will become the aim of the RAF to do this on every raid to every city they attack. What happens to Dresden and Pforzheim will not be accidental.

40,000 people die in Hamburg that week. Most are buried in mass graves, their bodies unidentified, testament to the horrific ways they are killed.

Some will die in explosions, their bodies torn to pieces, or are left seemingly untouched, their internal organs pulverised. Others are trapped or crushed under collapsing buildings. They are gassed by the fumes caused by detonations, or suffocated as fires suck the air from their shelters. They burn alive, their bodies reduced to ash. They boil and roast as the firestorm takes hold. Oil and fuel from storage tanks spreads across the harbour and waterways and ignites, preventing escape. The charred corpses of adults shrink to the size of small children. The tar on the streets melts, trapping fleeing civilians who then die, stuck to roads as the city burns around them.

Later in the year, the Allies, thinking forward to the invasion of Normandy and seeing air supremacy as a prerequisite to success, will issue the POINTBLANK directive, aiming their airforces at German aircraft manufacture and industry. The USAAF lose 585 men in a single raid on the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt and Regensburg in August 1943.

Harris pays lip service to POINTBLANK, continuing to bomb German cities. He embarks on a long campaign against Berlin that winter, deviating occasionally to attack other targets. Berlin, modern, with wide streets, massive ferroconcrete flak towers and sophisticated air defences, resists the assault and doesn't burn. On 31st March 1944, the RAF suffers it's worst day of the war, losing 96 bombers and 691 men on a raid against Nuremberg.

Bombing switches to targets in support of the invasion, both before and after D-Day. Harris will be brought in line and reluctantly sends Bomber Command against targets throughout France. Thousands of French civilians perish under American and British bombs.

Later, as the war in Europe enters it's final phases, the bombers switch back to attacking targets in Germany. They destroy what remains of the German oil industry, and then do the same to it's transport network, crippling it's economy beyond salvage. The intensity and scale of the attacks defy imagination. The Allies drop more bombs on German-occupied Europe in 1945 than they do from 1939 to 1943.

And they attack Dresden.

The Red Army is closing in on Germany's borders and Dresden is a transport hub, shuttling troops and supplies from west to east. It's industries are critical. And it is untouched. It has not been bombed. The rumour is that Winston Churchill has family living there and has ordered the RAF to leave it alone. It's leadership is incompetent and has not prepared for a raid or built large public shelters. It's defences have been stripped, anti-aircraft guns sent to the front or other cities. The RAF only lose 6 bombers, 3 of which are hit by bombs from other aircraft.

The RAF hit neither Dresden's rail yards, nor it's industries, which are concentrated in the suburbs. It targets the old town, densely packed with narrow streets, and it burns. A firestorm rapidly overwhelms it's emergency services and consumes the city. Maybe 25,000 die. Maybe more. USAAF bombers attack the city the following day, hampering rescue efforts. Some of the Americans get lost and bomb Prague instead.

10 days later, the RAF bomb Pforzheim, killing 17,600 people.

In March, the USAAF creates a firestorm in Tokyo. At least 90,000 Japanese die. High-level attacks over Japan are ineffective because the jetstream prevents accurate formation bombing. So the Americans use low-level attacks using napalm incendiary bombs. Bombers return from Tokyo with their aluminium fuselages blackened by smoke. Some bombers, caught in turbulence created by the firestorm, crash.

Japanese cities, their housing traditionally made of wood, are turned to ash and cinder. US bombers drop so many incendiaries on Japan that operations are temporarily suspended because they run out of supplies. Then, in August, they drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Later, one of the justifications offered for the nuclear strikes - and one that dismisses the long-term effects of radiation - will be that they were much less bad than what was already being done to Japan's cities.

55,573 Bomber Command aircrew and around 600,000 German civilians were killed in the campaign to destroy Germany from the air. It was undoubtedly effective. The German economy was dealt massive, decisive blows from which it could not survive and prosper. The lost production, the resources devoted to repairing and restructuring industry, and to defending Germany from the bombers marked a definitive success for the Allies. 30% of German artillery production was devoted to anti-aircraft weaponry. It's aircraft production became so decentralised that the wings, fuselages and cockpits of aircraft would be constructed in different locations and brought to another to be assembled. Complexes were built into tunnels under mountains to protect from attack. Large detachments of workers were organised to repair factories and help industry recover from raids.

But while the bomber's contribution went a long way to winning the war, it remains a war-winning failure. Just like the British before them, German morale did not break. Armies had to conquer the Nazi realm. The navy had to maintain control of the oceans. Air power did not win the war alone.

The bombing campaign can be argued from a position of necessity. Britain had no other way of engaging with Nazi Germany on mainland Europe from May 1940 until mid-1943. This was intolerable to those running the war, both in Britain and abroad. For political, military and economic reasons, Germany had to be bombed.

The morality and ethics of it is a much harder thing grapple with. Wars escalate and radicalise and warp the worldviews of those involved. They are snowglobes of horror and atrocity. Choices that seemed unthinkable at the beginning became obvious and logical the longer the war went on. The lives of enemy civilians mattered far less than the lives of Allied servicemen and women, and amid the escalating evils and devastation perpetrated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan the arguments of ruthless men like Harris and the USAAF's Curtis LeMay appeared reasonable. The scale of death and destruction got exponentially larger as technology developed and militaries learnt and became more efficient. Pre-war moralities were abandoned in favour of a victory that had to be total. Bombing shortened the war. It is unknowable if that led to fewer people dying. Or, even if it did, whether that made it the right thing to do in the circumstances.

It is a terrible and grotesque thing to deliberately go out night after night to kill as many civilians as possible in the unproven belief that it will bring about victory. Had the RAF concentrated against industrial and transportation targets, it would likely have had a greater effect on the course of the war and killed far fewer civilians. What was done sits very uneasily with me.

To my mind any moral justification rests on one thing. When, twelve weeks after Dresden, Germany surrendered, the bombing stopped. If the Allies had lost, the killing would have only just started.

Further reading:

[standardquip]

Relationship with my parents

This is about me rationalizing my relationship with my parents, who voted trump. They are (sincerely) nice people.

(quote from below) "It's been really hard to rationalize my relationship with my parents (and their relationship with trump) when I'm largely in far left echo chambers who loudly proclaim that anyone who supports trump is a racist, fascist, asshole, nazi, etc. When that's blatantly false, simply put.

But I also don't want to make some wide sweep about how they're uneducated morons who don't fully understand what they're voting for, or are victims of propaganda, because I don't think that's true either. At least not for my dad, anyway."

---- cw suicide mentions, transphobia

My relationship with my parents has not been great. For most of my life, I hated them and was actively trying to get away. My life got better once I finally did. I ex-communicated them after they refused to accept me as their son (I am AFAB).

To illustrate how bad it got, I was in the US Navy and I tried to kill myself and was separated due to those actions. I got one phone call and I didn't call my parents. They had to figure out I was no longer in the Navy from someone else. How awful for them.

After only a few months of them finally leaving me the fuck alone (honestly probably due to the shock of the Navy thing), they started trying to have a relationship with me again, and the only reason we ended up reconnecting was because I gave up trying to fight them. Also they used the correct pronouns finally. Our relationship was pretty transactional from then on. They wanted a relationship and I needed money. I mostly forgave them (or at least accepted that they did the best with the knowledge they had at the time) and after a lot of therapy, I didn't hate them anymore. I don't know if I have ever loved them, but I reached a point where interacting with them didn't ruin my mood so there was a mostly peaceful co-existence.

By the time I finally got financial independence (which involved getting VA disability and buying my own house), I wasn't treating my parents like ATMs anymore but I wouldn't say my view of our relationship was anything more than platonic.

All of the relationship effort came from their end. They wanted to visit me, I never volunteered to visit them. They want to call me, I almost never call them, etc., etc. I'm a loner, the only reason I talk to anybody really is if they call me.

Anyway. I had a breakdown in 2018 which involved getting real with my mom about my mental health, something I'd never really done before. Ever since that day, my mom called me every friday and my dad called me every monday. I saw it as they were just making sure I was still alive and maybe it was partly that but I think they mostly just wanted a reason to talk to me more often.

They also started visiting me every year and we would do big house construction projects. My house would probably still be unlivable if it were not for their help.

It should also be stated that they live about 1000 miles away from me and they drove to visit. So visiting me, to work, involves considerable time (and energy) on their parts. And they did it every year.

They also volunteer a lot in their home state. So they are, genuinely, good people.

They are not racist. But they are christian, (mostly) white, and affluent (probably the lowest tier above "upper middle class" ), so basically insulated from most of the world's problems.

They both had troubled childhoods with families that were poor. They both worked their asses off to get what they have now. They both worked full-time for basically their entire lives, even while they had kids (me and my brother).

So, naturally, they are fiscally conservative.

They're both retired now. My mom is now basically a tradwife and she doesn't really think for herself, politically. She says sometimes she doesn't vote at all but when she does, she votes for whoever my dad tells her to vote for.

She was a nurse, but she's against universal healthcare. She believes abortion "shouldn't be used as birth control" so that makes her pro-life somehow. They believe being queer is fine as long as you don't "participate in the lifestyle" so they don't believe in gay marriage.

They love sinners such as myself, but they don't want to participate in a system that enables those sinners, essentially.

My dad's views boil down to fiscal conservatism only; he's basically a single-issue voter. He believes that the rich will always find a way out of paying taxes so we should give up on the whole thing. The middle class (him) always ends up paying so he needs to look out for himself now and he'll vote for whoever will lower taxes and whoever makes his stock market portfolio look good.

He doesn't understand why people get so heated about political topics. Why can't we just have a rational discussion? Why does everyone get so angry?

He didn't outright say it, but I think he believes that all of the identity politics (if it even goes into law) simply won't be enforced. So it shouldn't be such a high priority to think about.

My dad is constantly watching the news and trying to get "both sides" of the issues. He actually does watch both sides of the news, too. That being said, I don't think he's ever voted for a democrat in his lifetime? So I'm not sure what kind of things he's actually learning.

Either way, I would consider my dad "well informed" on politics.

They both voted early for trump this year. They've been voting for him since 2016.

With all this background in mind, it's hard to say I should disown my parents over politics.

It's been really hard to rationalize my relationship with my parents (and their relationship with trump) when I'm largely in far left echo chambers who loudly proclaim that anyone who supports trump is a racist, fascist, asshole, nazi, etc. When that's blatantly false, simply put.

But I also don't want to make some wide sweep about how they're uneducated morons who don't fully understand what they're voting for, or are victims of propaganda, because I don't think that's true either. At least not for my dad, anyway.

It is completely understandable why two people who got shitty hands and worked their lives to get out of those situations would be bitter that their incomes are going to people who did not work as hard.

It's not morally right, but it's understandable.

Earlier this year, as the red states were ramping up the efforts to make all the leftists move out, my dad asked me if I would visit them in their home state of georgia. (For reference, I live in a northeastern blue state.)

I said no, because in case he had forgotten, I am transgender. And I don't want to go where I am unwanted.

And he said "So what? Ignore them."

This was over a phone call. That pissed me off royally but I am not very verbally "with it" so I didn't response directly until later, via text.

Where I wrote:

(begin quote) Regarding the anti lgbt laws It doesn't matter if they're 'not that bad' or 'won't be enforced'

It doesn't matter that they may not arrest me because I don't look trans or have all my legal documents matching.

What matters is that red states have made it their mission to pass (or try to pass) laws and policies that actively hurt lgbt people, OF WHICH I AM ONE, making it clear they do not want those people in their state(s).

And it would be one thing if you guys did not actively vote for the party pushing those views (I still would be reluctant to visit but maybe I would anyway) but you don't. You vote republican. You are probably voting for trump. You actively disproved of my entire transition and you said you thought it was a mistake and my scars made you sick.

To this day I don't know if you actually think of me as your son or if you're just paying lip service to your kid's mental illness to avoid drama so I'd talk and have a relationship with you again. This goes for both you specifically and mom.

So no, I'm sorry, I never plan on visiting you in georgia. I never plan on going to georgia again for any reason (even the [anime] conventions) unless the political landscape totally changes.

I'm not going somewhere where "my kind" isn't wanted and I'm CERTAINLY not going there to visit parents that support (either directly or indirectly) the laws that actively hurt lgbt people, which, again, I need to remind you I AM AN LGBT PERSON WHO IS ACTIVELY BEING HURT BY THESE POLICIES and was and currently am being hurt by the culture these policies represent.

"So what? ignore them" is MASSIVELY IGNORANT and it pissed me the fuck off.

As a side note, this is the thing I was talking about with Florida [on the phone]. License can be revoked and you can be charged with fraud. Partway down the article it does say that if taken at face value it could also apply to tourists. https://www.newsweek.com/transgender-people-florida-face-drivers-licenses-revoked-1865187 And again Georgia is definitely nowhere near as bad as what desantis has been doing in florida but the public sentiment down there about trans people certainly seems the same to me right now

This is a blog but it's more clearly written. Where the news article mostly focuses on people attempting to newly change their license, this blog talks more about what it means for trans people in general who could be charged with "misrepresenting" their identity (by having a license that says their sex is not their birth sex -- this is me. I am a person who has M on their license and wasn't born male.) https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/florida-misrepresenting-gender-on

Same person also made a risk assessment map, which is useful if you want to read more context about what states have been doing in relation to anti-trans bills (I do not use this map to influence where I travel; I found it today to help illustrate the current state of affairs.) https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/erins-anti-trans-risk-map-early-legislative

This article is to ground my comments about public sentiment and the "political situation down there." Even if this is just one extremist saying this, it's not like the republican party is doing anything to separate themselves from this guy's opinions. It just adds fuel to the fire and the growing anti-trans public sentiment. The article does a pretty good job explaining how those comments have impacted society. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cpac-speaker-transgender-people-eradicated-1234690924/

You might be wondering why I have suddenly come out of nowhere about this stuff. The answer is because all of this crap only started happening in the last 2 years! Yeah there was some arguing about bathrooms and sports once in a blue moon years back, but nobody really cared that much. Then suddenly in 2023 there were 589!!! anti-trans bills crafted.

The worst part is, I don't even actively seek out this information! The florida memo was something I accidentally found! I actually try to stay away from the news because (especially for trans people) it is SO BLEAK.

Here's an article that illustrates the rise in the crafting of these bills: https://translegislation.com/learn

And, I'm not even touching on whether you personally agree with the bills. That's not a debate I want to have. I don't really care if you personally agree the bills should be passed or if the wording in them seems logical (I feel like it should go without saying, but just to be clear: I don't agree with any of these bills, including the ones about preventing medical care for trans kids).

What I AM trying to impart on you is that the mere fact the bills exist, the mere fact there are SO MANY of them, especially so suddenly, is cause to believe that there is anti-trans sentiment and is very clearly indicative that the states making those bills, by extensions republicans, by extension YOU, MY PARENTS, would prefer that trans people do not exist (I AM A TRANS PERSON), and I do not feel safe in a state that holds a majority of people who who hold those views. I also do not feel safe in a state that borders florida, THE WORST state for these bills and sentiments.

Anyway I don't expect any sort of response from you so don't feel pressured to come up with something. But at least now I can say you have been informed.

(end quote)

He never responded or directly referred to these texts in future conversations, which I expected. These texts were sent in early April. Since then, my parents visited me twice this year, where we decidedly did not talk about politics at all.

However, my relationship with my dad was pretty much gone after these texts. I really did not see a future for our relationship. We were never that close anyway, had never reconciled as much as my mom and I had, and since this conversation (and knowing their voting pattern) I had mostly written off any future relationship with him.

But I resolved to not ACTUALLY do anything about it until the election. I was (perhaps foolishly) thinking they either would vote Harris, or not vote at all, or Harris would win and I could just keep ignoring political discourse with them.

I really did try to see it from their point of view. Did trump have decent economic policies? Maybe there was too much bloat and some branches of government could be drained.

But the people who spoke badly of Trump were vast and kept coming out. Trump's ideas come off as "I'm 14 and this is deep" and while on the surface some of the ideas seemed ok, the people he was appointing to "replace the swamp" seemed, on the whole, absolutely the wrong picks and would definitely make things worse. Not to mention how pretty much the entire world's country leaders ALSO spoke out against Trump, too.

I certainly was no fan of Harris, I thought some of her plans were BS (I consider myself fiscally conservative too, for the record!) but I thought she was certainly better than Trump so I voted for her anyway.

Trump really felt like he had no redeeming factors and all of his cabinet picks that I know about seem just as bad, if not worse, than him. I don't understand what my dad was seeing in them (or hoping for). He said he didn't like trump as a person but he thought Trump would be better than Biden/Harris.

I was hoping that, if trump's policies really weren't that great anyway, maybe... just maybe... he wouldn't vote for trump for me. Because he supposedly loved me. A person who happens to be lgbtq. And his child.

[insert Red Hood monologue about Joker here (specifically 1:53 - 2:09)]

While I do mostly live in a left bubble online, I am in a very red area of a blue state and the lefties I personally interact with are more centrist imo. So I had no illusion about this election. I knew it was going to be very close.

Still heart-breaking to see Trump win, though. Now I actually had to deal with what I'd been putting off for so long: my relationship with my parents.

Emotionally, it would hurt them far more than me. But in every other aspect, it would hurt me more than them.

After 2 days of essentially shock, I decided to ask for my uncle's opinion. My entire family is left except for my parents.

I said (heavily summarized) I'm thinking about excommunicating my parents. Do you have any opinions or advice? He said (heavily summarized) my dad is a lost cause but my mom (his sister) is all he has left and he wants to have a relationship with her. He is angry they voted the way they did but he doesn't think politics are worth sacrificing that relationship. They will continue to have a relationship and continue to not talk about politics with each other.

I said, but how do you expect people to learn if there aren't any consequences specifically to those people? He didn't have a good answer.

My mom calls me every friday. Today is friday. After the talk with my uncle, I decided to just split it up. Compromise.

I texted my mom:

(quote) I'm really upset with the election and your part in it and I'd prefer you didn't call me for a while. If you need to come up for your dad I'll still let you stay here but otherwise I need space. (end quote) [Her dad (who I don't have a relationship with) is currently in the hospital.]

And then, an hour later, I texted my dad: (quote) I'm not going to go out of my way to avoid you in person if you visit again, but I'm not interested in having a relationship with you at all.

I've taken you off my schwab accounts as POA (might not go through until tuesday) and I won't answer any future calls from you.

The only reason mom is not being cut off is because unlike you, I don't think she fully understood what she was voting for. (end quote) Today has hurt a lot, actually. More than I expected. I guess I had reconciled with them a lot more than I thought I Had previously.

I hope I made the right choice.

----

This entry is about me rationalizing my relationship with my parents. Realistically, I personally will likely be unaffected by a Trump presidency. But as I stated in my long text to my dad, it's really not about that. It's about the sentiment that it's acceptable to believe people like me shouldn't exist.

That being said, Trump's policies are absolutely horrid anyway. More specifically I am not looking forward to distrusting my food quality even more than I do currently, nor whatever they're doing with the EPA. Can't wait for our water and air quality to go to shit. Fun times! /s

I think that anti-lgbtq policies are pretty low on the priority list and I'm hoping we'll be mostly forgotten about while they dismantle everything else.

I will personally be insulated from a lot of harm, being in a blue state, passing, post-transition, and a military veteran. At this point I can really only worry about myself, because if I try to worry about other people now I'll lose it.

For everyone else, try to take it one day at a time. Trump doesn't get into office until late January, so you still have time to figure out what you want to do.

Hugs for everyone.

[newnitz]

October 7th Evidence

GENERAL CONTENT WARNING FOR V******E & D**TH. DON'T READ THE SPECIFIC CWS IF YOU'RE TRIGGERED BY MENTIONS RELATED TO THESE. CONTENT WARNING FOR ALL ISRAELI AND JEWISH VIEWERS, WE'VE SEEN THESE TOO MANY TIMES ALREADY.

IF YOU'RE TRIGGERED BUT DOUBT ISRAELI CLAIMS, YOU'VE LOST THE RIGHT TO. SORRY NOT SORRY. WE'VE BEEN TRIGGERED HERE FOR A MONTH STRAIGHT, HAVE WAKING NIGHTMARES AND CAN'T FUNCTION, SO IF YOU CAN'T SO MUCH AS CHECK OUR CLAIMS BEFORE DISMISSING THEM, SHUT UP.

SPECIFIC CONTENT WARNING FOR EXTREME SEXUAL ABUSE(SA), DEATH OF CHILDREN, MUTILATION AND MUTILATION OF CHILDREN AND MASS MURDER.

I'm sick of hearing about the "disinformation". I'm sick of people bringing up the decapitated babies over and over as if it's a lie.

So here are links, all of them to NEUTRAL sources, because you'll all call me a propaganda mouthpiece if I link even a single Israeli article, though honestly, you'll probably call me that anyway, because for most of you, the humanity of Israelis and Jews doesn't exist outside of propaganda.

Source(noted: in light of recent discoveries, Reuters might have pro-Palestinian bias, keep it in mind when reading the news).

FORENSIC EVIDENCE FOR THE DECAPITATED AND BURNT ALIVE BABIES, HERE YOU FUCKING GO.

As for 40? The source of the "rumor" stands by her words, and has something to say.

So it's not just Israeli "propaganda" sources that can confirm the babies were decapitated.

The article goes into depth about what sort of evidence for rape and mutilation they found. TheMediaLine source posted above corroborates these claims in grisly detail, so dismissal is no longer an option.

The video I won't screenshot, as I don't want to push Tumblr's TOS too far, but suffice to say it shows clear evidence of a hostage having survived rape.

And if you doubt more claims on sexual torture and infanticide, here's your proof.

If they were aiming to end the "occupation army", why did they ambush a rave?(title below)

Oh! And as for your claim that it was all the IDF making a false flag operation? Boy, do I have news for you!

Not only did they also hurt Muslim Arabs in Israel, many who qualify as Palestinian themselves, but they also committed another war crime.

I'm sure that once this is all over, there will be plenty of evidence catalogued and available to anyone with a strong enough stomach. We've been using the evidence of our murderers - just as we did with the Holocaust. The Nazis wrote down everything and Hamas filmed themselves, both equally proud of their actions. And just like the Holocaust, you cannot bury it for long. Not in the current information age. We won't let you bury it.

So if you walk away from this, if you ignore this post's existence, whether you merely stumbled upon it or got it linked, you are no better than a Holocaust denier. And yes, I am calling you a Nazi, and I am doing so shamelessly. Because you are using their tactics, their dehumanization, their effort to silence Jewish voices lest people realize we're human beings who were subjected to a crime against humanity.

Oh, and one last parting gift:

Think of that when you demand a unilateral ceasefire.

[theunintentionallyawesomeone]

Vent post

CW:

Bad current event stuff

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I am so mad rn

I am mad about all the attacks on transpeople. I'm at the bill my state is trying to pass about queer people. I'm mad about losing my rights to choose. I'm mad about nazis taking over my country. I'm mad about my insurance's card and website being confusing. I'm mad I have to call and get 'pre approved'' to get a therapist. I'm mad I know my state reps supported Jan 6 and won't listen if I call. I'm mad my parents are going down the newsmax rabbit hole and I can't stop them. I'm mad that fox news and all those kind of propaganda bullshit factories exist.

I'm mad I can't lie down and cry bc I'm at work.

I'm mad that I can't do ANYTHING.

I'm mad and it's making me very tired.

[youshouldseemeinadeerstalker]

It is clearly inspired by the 1736 engraving

But the NOSE. What the fuck. Why did they change the nose to THAT

am I the only one who gets antisemitic vibes off of the blackbeard wanted poster.

wtf is up with that picture.