#cw; swastika

[elierlick]

90 years ago today: On May 6th, 1933, Nazis stormed, looted, and burned Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science, Europe's center of queer and trans culture. I colorized these gruesome photos to point out this wasn't that long ago. People alive today can remember these events. We will not go back.

[madamepestilence]

losing my fucking mind

[venndaai]

Madeleine trying to play it cool but turning to watch her walk away like three times... Claudia's got game

[todaysdocument]

Women’s Army Corps Cpl. Barbara Fenster (left) and Cpl. Genevieve E. Guethlein secure information from German prisoner of war Pvt. Frederick Bonk, captured in Tunisia. September 7, 1943, at Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation.

Record Group 336: Records of the Office of the Chief of Transportation

Series: Photographic Albums of Prints of Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation

Image description: Inside a tent, a young man in a German uniform with “AFRIKAKORPS” on his sleeve stands to the side of a desk. Seated at the desk are two women in Women’s Army Corps uniforms, who are writing. In the background are more desks and more German prisoners of war. 

[e350tb]

Photos from the War Memorial, 27 May 2023.

[wolrith]

its very upsetting to me that nazis ruined such an aesthetically pleasing symbol forever. could've been a cool peace symbol but noo

[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.

[storm-of-feathers]

I forgot to show you guys something absolutely fucking vile I found.

Under a readmore bc its a swastika and ik not everyone loves seeing that out of the blue

[jheselbraum]

Birth of a Nation revitalized the KKK in America and is perhaps the only piece of "irredeemable media" I can think of that's actually like. You know, a story, and I don't know of anything else off the top of my head that had that kind of lasting, palpably harmful impact that isn't like, direct state mandated propaganda like Mein Kampf. In 1915 the KKK was effectively dead, they'd slowly dissolved around the 1870s (particularly after the introduction of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871) and Birth of a Nation led to the most notorious American terrorist group reforming. As far as I'm concerned, DW Griffith has actual blood on his hands, for murders committed at the very least through the 40s (they disbanded temporarily in 1944 after America's most effective violent crime task force, the IRS, got involved, though it could be argued he's only responsible for murders committed by the KKK through the 20s, as membership declined rapidly after that once people saw that being part of a terrorist organization wasn't like how it was in the movie).

And like, look I generally don't think the word "irredeemable" can really be applied to art in any form, but there is something viscerally reprehensible about Birth of a Nation that makes us not want to watch it. Like it (arguably) pioneered a lot of film techniques but that's more of the science side of film than the art side, I'm completely certain that people would have figured out that contrasting long shots with close-ups made movies more interesting if Birth of a Nation was left on the cutting room floor. (In fact, several of the techniques 'pioneered' by Birth of a Nation were actually from earlier films, it's just that DW Griffith was more popular and his films are the ones that were remembered). But like we don't screen this movie publicly, we don't like it, we don't like the what DW Griffith had to say. Birth of a Nation just... repels people away from it. Its in person screenings are relegated to a few film classes and maybe some klan meetings, though I'm certain there are some racists on 4chan who've downloaded a copy. If you ask normal people to pick one movie to stop existing, there's no way out of it you have to pick one, chances are they'll pick Birth of a Nation, assuming they've even heard of it (my first exposure to it was in high school, some people might not get to it until college, or even later, that's just kind of what happens with something like this. It's not like you can learn about something through cultural osmosis when the culture is trying like hell to osmosis that thing out of itself). It's an acceptable loss.

Meanwhile, from what I've read, I'd say the decision to use A Serbian Film alongside Birth of a Nation is actually a reasonable one, not because of the graphic nature of it's content, but rather its themes and message and how flat it can feel because of who's saying it (DISCLAIMER: I haven't watched it, I'm not going to watch it, take this with a grain of salt). It's about a man who's forced to commit horrific crimes to survive (economically, though he may be directly threatened with death I'm not sure, he's doing it as a job basically). If you'll recall, Serbia committed genocide during the Bosnian War in the 90s, the targets being primarily Bosniaks but also including anyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina that wasn't Serbian.

The director of the film, Srđan Spasojević, had this to say when asked if the acts depicted in the film were related in any way to crimes committed during the Yugoslav Wars:

A Serbian Film does not touch upon war themes, but in a metaphorical way deals with the consequences of post-war society and a man that is exploited to the extreme in the name of securing the survival of his family.

Additionally, he described the film as "a diary of our own molestation by the Serbian government ... It's about the monolithic power of leaders who hypnotize you to do things you don't want to do. You have to feel the violence to know what it's about."

A Serbian Film is an exploitation film that's apparently considered one of the most disturbing of all time, but the film is not a snuff film as many people have claimed. A snuff film is the filming of actual gruesome crimes like murder, torture, and rape, committed for the purpose of selling the resulting film and making money. It's not "a movie that depicts gruesome crimes like murder, torture, and rape through the use of special or practical effects."

Based on the quick read-through of the Wikipedia article I did, it seems like most of what the film is trying to say is through the lens of the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars, or at least that's how the audience largely interpreted it. The script writer, Aleksandar Radivojević, said this about the process of securing funding for the film and the state of the Serbian film industry in general.

you had this EU arts council funded production using Serbia for EU's political agitprop agenda of 'promoting tolerance and reconciliation in the post-war Balkans' by boosting sappy local projects of no aesthetic value whose sole reason for receiving EU financing was their respective authors' willingness to amplify the EU-approved message, i.e. to express 'Serb contrition over what happened in the Yugoslav Wars' via essentially making victim porn, showing small miserable Serb people who are struggling mightily while nevertheless simultaneously 'doing their part in search of collective redemption' by being extremely remorseful

Now, I'm a white American who does not experience racism of any kind, let alone the violently dehumanizing prejudice necessary to convince a group of people to commit an ethnic cleansing, but if my people had been the victims of a genocide, and I heard someone from the group of people that committed that genocide complain about media depicting his people's remorse, and saw that that guy also wrote a movie where the plot is a man is forced to commit gruesome rapes, and again, my people were gruesomely raped as a part of that guy's country's plan to wipe my people from existence, I'd be fucking pissed. Like again, I haven't seen A Serbian Film, and Radivojević wasn't the only person in the writer's room, so maybe in practice it reads less as "our government was controlling us we did nothing wrong" and more "our government is controlling us and we're monsters for listening." And we can argue the merits of the latter another time, but at least the latter acknowledges that genocide doesn't happen in a vacuum because some schmucks at the top said so, that the people bear as much responsibility as their government.

Now, is A Serbian Film actually trying to say anything about the Yugoslav Wars at all? I don't know. I haven't seen it. Maybe it isn't about the Bosnian genocide at all. But then what is it saying about Serbia? Serbian actor Dragan Bjelogrlić said this about the film and its director, a year after its release:

I have a problem with A Serbian Film. Its director in particular. I've got a serious problem with this boy whose father got wealthy during the 1990s—nothing against making money, but I know how money was made [in Serbia] during the '90s—and then pays for his son's education abroad and eventually the kid comes back to Serbia to film his view of the country using his dad's money and even calls the whole thing A Serbian Film. To me that's a metaphor for something unacceptable. The second generation comes back to the country and using the money that had been robbed from the people of Serbia, smears the very same people by portraying them as the worst scum of the earth.

OP was right, it's fucking insane that this site only uses words like irredeemable media to talk about cartoons for children. Like, no, Steven Universe or The Owl House or My Hero Academia or whatever TV-Y7 cartoon you're hyper focused on that week isn't irredeemable media. Your bar for even discussing it as a possibility is "did this story's public existence revitalize a terrorist organization and lead to several murders," a qualification which A Serbian Film, despite its content, themes, and possible interpretations, does not meet. It's offensive, and disturbing, it possibly excuses genocide, but as far as I've read, no one has gotten physically hurt because it exists.

A Serbian Film is more violently graphic than Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation did more to physically harm real people than A Serbian Film ever could.

It's fucking wild that the above reaction to A Serbian Film mentions next to nothing about what it's trying to say, how well it works, who's saying it and in what context, but focuses purely on the graphic and violent scenes depicted in the film. It's probably why they slapped Salo on at the end even though a cursory glance through Wikipedia (I don't care enough to read thoroughly on the plot and themes you get the point graphic exploitation films aren't inherently evil for depicting murder or rape or whatever I don't want to read about more graphic shit it's not something I personally enjoy doing) reveals that that film is strictly antifascist, though several actors were actually injured during filming. Notably, the director of Salo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, was gruesomely abducted, tortured, and murdered in 1975 shortly before Salo's release at the Paris Film Festival. He was openly gay, and a Marxist, and while his death was initially contributed to one Giuseppe Pelosi (17 at the time of the murder) after he confessed, he later retracted his confession claiming that he made it under the threat of violence to his family (which unfortunately tracks, Americans may recall the more recent case of Amanda Knox, who was arrested in 2007 for the murder of her friend and forced by Italian police to confess to a crime she didn't commit and was later exonerated from). The case was reopened after Giuseppe's retraction in 2005 and other evidence that had come to light, and as of 2023 the Italian authorities are looking at the far right group Banda della Magliana as possible suspects. While I agree that "I hear it's kind of. nasty" is frankly an understatement when attempting to discuss the graphic content of Salo, and really fucking hilarious in the context of trying to argue that Salo shouldn't exist at all, I don't know that that's really a fair criticism to make, considering the other two examples are if not directly far right (using the term because of the changing political landscape between 1915 and 2010, like I can't really call Birth of a Nation fascist because it was made before fascism was a fully congealed political ideology, even if it upholds the ideology of fascism) then at least debatably so. As previously established, the actual content of the film, as in, the acts depicted, don't immediately make a work reprehensible. Remember, A Serbian Film is more graphic and disturbing to watch than Birth of a Nation, but Birth of a Nation is worse than A Serbian Film.

Tldr; op is right, and the person whose tags have been drowned is exactly the kind of person op was talking about

'Irredeemable media' is such a funny concept to me because it's never used for stuff like Birth of a Nation or A Serbian Film. It's always The Owl House or My Hero Academia because these people only watch things for children and can't stand any conflict more complex than Super Mario Brothers.

[elierlick]

This weekend, neo-Nazis threw flyers featuring some of my colleagues and me onto doorsteps around San Jose. As much as I hate giving them more attention, we must stay vigilant of the growing antisemitic and anti-queer movement in the U.S. These flyers truly show that our struggles have always been connected.

[brunito812]

Quilmes Nazi?

Revista Billiken N°463 - 1 de Octubre de 1928

Revista Billiken N°517 - 14 de Octubre de 1929

[theosophy-expat]

Heads up, there may occasionally be images of swastikas on this blog, as they are extremely common in the iconography of Theosophy. The association of Theosophy with swastikas predates it's use by Nazi Germany, but the use of the swastika by Nazi's has fairly direct Theosophical roots.

The owner of this blog is Theosophy & Occult critical as well as anti-nazi and anti-facist

Feel free to block the "swastika cw" tag

[oudenonoma]

OK can we talk about Iron Crosses being used for The Aesthetic like this?  I get that there’s a punk tradition of appropriating Nazi imagery as shock imagery, but this feels way less intentional or coherent.  And I have to tell you, as a Jewish person, if I saw someone wearing that I would be deeply uncomfortable.  

Victorian Gentleman's Vest With Class by ShrineofHollywood Available here : ETSY

[fractalcabbage]

[eternityservedcold]

an extremely thorough list of content warnings for jojos bizarre adventure

because the old one was made by a deleted blog so it isnt easily accessible any more (and i dont think it was good enough to begin with)

btw if you say anything to the effect of "why do people like jojo when it has x" or "you guys really excuse y?" on this post im just gonna block you. people who get angry about me saying to skip parts/episodes will also get blocked.

feel free to reply/send an ask with anything i missed, preferably with a chapter or episode number. parts 7 and 8 wont be on here in full until i finish reading them but feel free to send me cws for them and ill add them. also the warnings are just in the order they appear, and more specifically when they appear in the anime, so as to not have weird "x is more important than y" nonsense

general warnings

these are things that…. basically if youre triggered by these i think you should just sit this out tbh. its an amazing series but its not worth repeatedly triggering yourself. this ones just ordered alphabetically bc its throughout (read: in at least 3 parts)

blood, violence, body horror, gore, and death -amputation -animal abuse and death (especially of dogs) -decapitation -eye, nail, and mouth horror -impalement -parental and sibling death -police brutality -suicide and self harm

child abuse -child abandonment -corporal punishment -leering shots of minors bodies -pedophilia (still gets a warning every time) -physical abuse

christian themes and symbolism

drug use -alcohol -tobacco -underage drug use -unspecified white powder

fire and explosions

gambling

misogyny, both in-universe and on the part of the author

racism (gets specific warnings every time)

sexual misconduct -catcalling -rape (still gets a warning every time) -sexual assault -sexual harassment

unsanitary -eating/drinking gross things —being forced to eat/drink gross things -pee -poop -snot -vomit

vehicle accidents -car accidents -plane crashes

part 1: phantom blood

(manga only) ritual sacrifice

restricted eating

non-consensual kissing

(manga only) a dog is shown on fire

poisoning

chinese ethnic stereotypes

a baby gets eaten

part 2: battle tendency

okay im gonna rip the bandaid off now. there are nazis in this one, and its significantly worse than youd expect just reading that. im gonna quote the old list here: "there are so many nazis in this part and they’re not condemned like at all tbh". i would almost say its glorified, one of the main allies is a nazi and another main ally directly praises a different nazi. in the manga, hitler and swastikas are explicitly shown as well as nazis being called by name, but in the anime, they are removed and simply called german soldiers.

almost nothing from this part comes back in the future and what does come back is explained as it comes up or is understandable from context. so please. if you need to skip this part, just do it. i even understand if you skip the whole series because of this.

its possible some may find the mesoamerican aesthetic of the villains in this part to be insensitive or offensive. im mexican and i personally dont, but i could see why someone would

racism toward: -black people -mexican people —slavery and degradation of mexican women is explicitly shown -japanese people

hostage situation

kidnapping

human experimentation

ritual sacrifice

"man in a dress" gag and subsequent transmisogyny

unintentional incest. there are only two scenes of this, which are: -a character spying on someone (later revealed to be their mother) in the bath -going through said mothers belongings and talking about her panties

animal cannibalism

part 3: stardust crusaders

since fights in this part are much more self-contained than the other parts, its possible to skip some of these if youre triggered by them. those will be marked with chapter and episode numbers

a woman gets spontaneously undressed in the middle of a fight (only her bra shows but it happens against her will)

jotaro, a 17 year old, kisses an adult woman to save her from possession. i wouldnt really say this is pedophilia and it lasts for 1 panel/less than 10 seconds but i found it uncomfortable

while incapacitated from sickness, holly will randomly be shown naked with weird leering camera angles. this happens many more times in the anime than the manga

pedophilia (depicted as a bad thing and the victim is saved before anything happens) (skip chapters 17-19/episode 7)

native american stereotypes (skip chapters 20-22/episode 8)

"person gets replaced" trope (skip chapters 23-6/episode 9; chapters 76-79/episode 27)

infection

suffocation

drowning

"child acting like a pervert" trope (skip chapters 92-96/episodes 32-33) -in the same episodes, the child spends the entire fight naked which might be uncomfortable for some

stardust crusaders ova

this gets its own subsection due to being so different that i was having to say "this doesnt apply to the ova" for a lot of the warnings. unlike the main sdc section, since this ova is extremely pared down, there wont be skippable warnings. also note that this is in "manga order", so its 2000 ova then 1993 ova

the english voice actor for avdol (a black/egyptian character) is a white guy doing a vaguely "ethnic" accent

the non-consensual kissing thing above, here its with a girl jotaros age though

infection

suffocation

ritual sacrifice (used as the intro animation for the 1993 portion)

drowning

part 4: diamond is unbreakable

rape, pedophilia, and kidnapping mentions

physical abuse

electrocution

blackmail

yandere trope -emotional abuse -isolation -stalking -kidnapping

restricted eating

skin picking

(anime only) jumpscare

invasion of privacy (skip this part if this bothers you because one of the main allies power is just, doing this, and its constant)

"child acting like a pervert" trope

bodysnatching/"person gets replaced" trope

theres an uncomfortable scene where a child gets attacked in the bath (non-sexually). both the child and the attacker are naked for the duration of the scene

part 5: vento aureo/golden wind

gang violence/the mafia (main crux of the plot)

bullying

(anime only) racism toward japanese people

reckless driving

torture

rape (not shown just heavily implied)

terminal illness/infection/disease

(anime only) pedophilia

forced childbirth (its like, magical childbirth and the mother doesnt register it)

possibly offensive depiction of systems (systems, feel free to correct me on this)

medical malpractice

a guy gets swapped into a girls body and gropes it

part 6: stone ocean

(anime only) heavy use of chromatic aberration, which may be eye straining for some

this part is really horny, comparatively speaking. this isnt really a bad thing but depending on your level of comfort with that you may want to skip

(manga only) misgendering a trans man

hallucinations

memory loss

abuse of religious authority

(manga only, only in some translations) homophobic slur

grooming

gang violence

"disposable sex worker" trope

creepy stalker-ish behavior (the person who does it becomes a main ally & never stops or eases up)

cult

drowning

electrocution

unintentional incest

the kkk (in the anime its a generic racist mob) -lynching

part 7: steel ball run

possibly offensive depiction of native americans (feel free to correct me if youre native)

a 14 year old girl: -is a child bride and im pretty sure this isnt condemned at all -gets hit on by adults -experiences a rape attempt? -gets pregnant?

the entire plot is about curing a disability

medical malpractice

capital punishment

(only in some translations) r slur variant

homophobic slur

attempted pedophilia/rape?

"bisexual sex pest" trope (grown woman making advances toward a minor/trying to rape her)?

part 8: jojolion

ableism?

rape?

part 9: the jojolands

"unsettling gender reveal" trope

pedophilia

[onlyymirknows]

Lost in an Instant

Cw: Modern college AU, reibert angst, the briefest mention of Nazis while describing the Marleyan warrior uniform.

Not really proofread. Idk what this is honestly

WC: 687

~~~~~~~~~~~

He sat down in his usual spot, a bench facing the main lawn of his college campus. While everyone else rushed off to eat dinner, party, or maybe even study, he sat there and watched them pass.

It was relaxing for some reason to see the same familiar strangers day after day. He wondered about their lives without actually needing to be a part of them, shielding himself from the messiness of actual human interaction. There wasn’t a need to socialize outside of class, not for him.

So it was surprising when he suddenly heard his own name spoken as a question. As if they weren’t sure they had the right person. Did that mean this mystery person, a man by the sounds of it, recognized him? The thought worried him for a moment but he shook it off.

Probably a classmate looking for notes.

He stood up and retreated into the crowd, cutting his usual people watching short. If the guy needed something he could send a message through the classroom portal like a normal person. Or better yet, email the teacher.

With long strides he headed towards his dormitory under the assumption that mystery man would take the hint. But then he heard his name again, closer this time. Startled, he started running, pushing past people in an attempt to shake off his pursuer.

“Wait!” The mystery man called after him with a certain desperation that sent a real chill down his spine. Nobody on campus cared about him enough to give chase and yet the voice never got further away. Clearly chasing and also pushing through people if the annoyed exclamations of several students behind him was any indication.

Is it the police or something?

The thought gave him pause and he ultimately decided to slow down. By now he was through the crowd and standing outside of an administrative building. Sure enough a man in uniform approached him with a concerted expression.

Except this was a weird uniform that looked straight out of an old war movie. The officer wore an obscenely long khaki coat with a belt fastened around the waist. Beneath it was a fairly regular looking white collared shirt and some olive green slacks tucked into knee high boots.

What wasn’t regular, however, was the red armband around the man’s left bicep. It looked like Nazi shit except instead of a swastika there was a… leaf?

He frowned at the mystery man. “Do you need something?”

The man just stared at him, eyes suddenly wide in disbelief. “It’s… it’s really you…”

“What are you talking about? Did we go to middle school together or something?” His father had to move for work during his freshman year of high school so it was possible he knew this guy but didn’t recognize him post puberty.

“N-no, I don’t even know what that is...” The man began shedding tears, hands trembling, “Bertholdt, please. I need you to remember.”

“Remember wh-”

“Me! Remember me… us… everything we went through together…” The man stared up at him with pleading eyes that glinted gold in the newly activated streetlights. “I’ve searched so long a-and I finally found you. I have so much I need to tell you but I… I can’t do that until you remember.”

He could only stare back, suddenly struck with feelings of both guilt and, oddly, resentment. Like this stranger had failed him somehow. Yet he didn’t understand how they even knew each other. Quietly he asked, “What’s your name?”

Mystery man answered weakly with a hint of hope in his expression, “My name is…”

Bertholdt blinked his eyes open before getting an answer. Looking around he realized he’d fallen asleep on the bench at some point. The sky was dark and only the occasional student passed by, illuminated by the streetlights.

The same streetlights that lit up the stranger’s hazel eyes with specks of gold. It made his blond hair practically glow, too, unlike Bertholdt’s black hair which mostly absorbed the light.

He rubbed his eyes before standing up. The dream already felt hazy except for those words.

It’s really you.