#erasing colonialism is perpetuating colonialism

[enbycrip]

Okay, I’ve now seen the unaltered version of this cartoon being shared uncritically by too many fucking leftist pages.

The original first image read “You can have these 200 acres for free if you grow some turnips on it or whatever”. I’ve had to alter it (badly) to made it clearer what it actually refers to.

It refers to the US Homesteading Acts, where white settlers were offered legal deeds to 200 acres of land if they kept it under an agreed and attested level of cultivation for 5-10 years (different acts had different provisions).

The *specific* reason this was offered was literally as part of the US’ policy of indigenous American genocide. They were designed *specifically* to get land belonging to and utilised by indigenous Americans into the white, European-designed legal system the US utilised (and still utilises) with a trail of ownership to *white* people so that that could be weaponised to force indigenous American tribes off their land.

It’s not “people had it better in the past”; it’s specifically “a certain group of people were actively privileged over another group and recruited to benefit from the genocide of the second group so they would take part in that genocide”.

Genocides, by and large, don’t simply happen because of baseless ideological hatred. They’re driven by material and economic interests, and the ideology is put in place to cover and legitimise this - whether to the people taking part in it or to the wider world.

In most of the world today, and *certainly* in settler colonial and former colonial powers like the US, Canada, and the UK, any calls for social and economic justice that erase genocide and colonialism, and the material benefit our states today have attained due to them, are *still* taking part in genocide and colonialism, and so are we, as individuals, if we allow this discourse to go by unchallenged.

[6ebe]

I just feel like an interesting aspect of black sails that I haven’t seen people talk about is how flint was raised in cornwall - a region that until around 1700 was seen as a distinct entity and its people were seen as distinctly separate to (and lesser) to Englishmen. Like the flashback scenes in the show are from 1705. It’s just another aspect through which the show highlights that colonial violence comes for everybody and that even those victimised by it often also commit it

[halalchampagnesocialist]

How to spot Liberal Zionist Propaganda 101

This post is by no means exhaustive at all. There are many Liberal Zionist talking points but these are just some of the most common ones. While on the surface they seem a little naive and hopeful at best, they are very much harmful. If you claim to be an ally to Palestinians, this post is primarily for you!

For starters, liberal Zionists will often try to both-sides the issue of Palestine, talk about how it's complicated, they'll claim that the conflict hurts both Israelis and Palestinians, how the only way forward is one where Jews and Arabs "just need to get along," amongst other things. They also often like to centre themselves, even when acknowledging Palestinians as the victims of Israel or this "conflict." From time to time, they also like to engage in tokenising certain Palestinians whose views tend to more or less align with theirs. Here are some common arguments you may hear from them:

1. Any form of justifying Israel's existence or claiming that the only solution is two states

It does not really need to be said why justifying Israel's existence is harmful but justifying its continued existence also means legitimising Israel's land theft, its expulsions of Palestinians, and its ongoing harm to Palestinians and other populations. Reducing any sorts of “solutions” into a binary is unhelpful. Needless to say, a 2ss would not even address any legitimate concerns Palestinian have, such as the right of return, and would only legitimise Israel’s colonialism. Talking about a two-state solution also implies that the root of the conflict lies in Palestinians not having their own state rather than being an occupied people. It is very much also possible to construct a paradigm where Jews and Palestinians both live together on the same land as equal citizens that doesn't involve two separate states, much less an ethnostate.

2. Security for Israel could only come through peace

This is a similar talking point to the one above. Not only does it centre Israeli safety and security above Palestinian liberation but it mistakenly assumes that once Israel makes peace with Palestinians, it'll achieve security. The reality, however, is that Israel's imagined security has quite often come at the expense of peace. In fact, "peace" has just acted as nothing more than a smoke-screen for Israel to carry out its expansionist policies, particularly in the West Bank. When liberal Zionists talk about peace juxtaposed with Israeli security, they're talking about attaining a negative peace rather than a positive one.

3. Israelis are not their government.

This point does nothing to actually help Palestinians. It is also an incredibly tone-deaf thing to say when Israel has targeted many Palestinian civilians by having alleged proximity to Hamas, such as being family members of militants or leaders (inc. children!), civil servants in a Hamas-led government, or even any male above the age of 15 they consider to be a potential combatant! It also deliberately erases Israeli civilians' support of and culpability in Israel's actions towards Palestinians.

4. Netanyahu and/or the Israeli right are the source of conflict.

While it is true that things have gotten inadvertently worse under Israel's various right-wing governments, they are not the source of conflict, but rather a product of extremist nationalism and Jewish supremacy perpetuated by the system. Both the 1967 occupations and settlements were undertaken under centre-left governments in Israel, and Israeli policy under non-right wing governments has been just as harmful towards Palestinians and has paved the way for where we are today. Blaming Netanyahu just also obscures the violent nature of Israel's military occupation over Palestinians which long precede him coming into power.

5. Netanyahu and Hamas are two sides of the same coin

I don't think I've seen any allies give validity to this claim but it's an extremely reductionist claim and is sort of similar to the one above. Groups like Hamas are merely a response to the Israeli occupation while Netanyahu is a byproduct of it. While some Israelis may see Hamas or their actions as an "obstacle to peace," Israel's actions and policies long pre-date Hamas and how Israel is currently responding to Hamas is no different to how Israel has engaged with Palestinian militant groups in the past, regardless of political affiliations or political goals. It is also important to note that Hamas has agreed to the establishment of a state along 1967 borders while Netanyahu aims to prolong the occupation and empower the settler movement (some of whom are part of his coalition government) as much as possible.

6. Israel is not a settler-colonial state.

While it is indisputable that Jews have historical connections to Palestine, that doesn’t automatically make you Indigenous or negate Israeli settler-colonialism. Colonialism in particular describes a relationship of exploitation. There are many cases of this, but we most clearly see this in the West Bank where Israel exploits natural resources on occupied Palestinian territory for its own political and economic gains. In terms of settler-colonialism, it is widely known that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to make way for Jewish refugees and migrants to the new state of Israel, and is still actively facilitating Jewish migration to Israel today while denying Palestinians their right of return.

7. (X) doesn't help Palestinians.

It is not up to anyone to determine whether certain tactics or strategies are helpful or not. This point only seeks to discredit pro-Palestine organising. Only Palestinians get to decide what is actually helpful for the cause or not.

8. Any sort of Hamas-blaming.

On the surface it may seem like there’s nothing wrong with this, but this point is often harmful and usually lends itself to right-wing talking points because its objective is to deflect blame away from Israel. Certain arguments blaming Hamas also aim to minimise Palestinian suffering perpetuated by Israel. It also paints Israeli violence as retaliatory to Palestinian violence which only obfuscates Israel’s (and by extension, the US’) role in its state military apparatus and the differing power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. In other contexts, this point seeks to also legitimise certain opposition, such as the Palestinian Authority. Hamas-blaming also tends to sometimes lead to racist diatribes about Palestinians and their culture.

9. Al-Jazeera is not a credible news source.

Al Jazeera is a news source like any other. It has varying editorial policies and therefore will have equally good reporting on certain issues while having terrible reporting on others. The difference is that Al-Jazeera's news on Palestine is credible because it comes directly from their Palestinian reporters on the ground and first-hand eyewitness accounts. Western news sources are no more or less credible than al-Jazeera. Compare this to CNN, NYT, and any other Western news sources where Palestinian voices are often entirely missing from the narrative.

10. Overemphasis of antisemitism on the left

Antisemitism is a real issue and has the potential to fester in left circles if not directly addressed head on. Combatting antisemitism is extremely important, however, it is not an issue exclusive to the left. There is also a double standard in that no one expects Zionists to call out Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. Certain accusations of "antisemitism" also seek to distract from what's going on in Palestine by making it about Jewish comfort and feelings. Combatting antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism etc is always important as the basis of good politics.

Last but not least, be wary of native collaborators or any sort of normalisers! They are Palestinians or Arabs who try very hard to appeal to Western liberal consensus and can end up perpetuating a lot of harm to the cause and/or other activists. You will know them when you see them.

[feralkwe]

idk how else to explain it to people but it should be pretty fucking obvious why it is absolutely ludicrous to allow the united states fucking government to set the criteria as to who is and is not recognized as native/indigenous/ndn when they spent literal centuries trying to undermine and erase the fact that we exist at all.

it's no coincidence that some of the criteria involved in becoming federally recognized as a tribe requires documentation that the government actively worked to suppress. that they require the tracing of continuous existence back to colonial contact should tell you why it's a bullshit metric. that the fact that you have to have heaps of money to get federal recognition is something that you should take a long, hard look at before calling members of over 400 non-recognized tribes 'pretendians'.

the use of blood quantum as a measurement alone makes their authority null and void.

indigeneity is not about blood quantum or government permission. it is about family, culture, and community. i for one would appreciate it if non-natives fucked all the way off on this topic, and if fellow ndns would stop the infighting over it long enough to realize that all we're doing is perpetuating colonizer violence and genocide by allowing non-natives to set the definition of who we are and what we get to call ourselves.

fuck you. stop doing the colonizer's job for them.

[transmutationisms]

genq what are the actual reasons that plagiarism is bad apart from profit and prestige?

so there are two main angles i usually think of here, which ultimately converge into some related issues in public discourse and knowledge production.

firstly, plagiarism should not just be understood as a violation one individual perpetuates against another; it has a larger role in processes of epistemological violence and suppression of certain people's arguments, ideas, and labour. consider the following three examples of plagiarism that is not at all counter to current structures of knowledge production, but rather undergirds them:

in colonial expeditions and encounters from roughly the 14th century onward, a repeated and common practice among european explorer-naturalists was to rely on indigenous people's knowledge of botany, geography, natural history, and so forth, but to then go on to publish this knowledge in their own native tongues (meaning most of the indigenous people they had learned from could not access, read, or respond to such publications), with little, vague, or no attribution to their correspondents, guides, hosts, &c. (many many examples; allison bigelow's 'mining language' discusses this in 16th and 17th century american mining, with a linguistic analysis foregrounded)

throughout the renaissance and early modern period, in contexts where european women were generally not welcome to seek university education, it was nonetheless common practice for men of science to rely on their wives, sisters, and other family members not just to keep house, but also to contribute to their scientific work as research assistants, translators, fund-raisers, &c. attribution practices varied but it is very commonly the case that when (if ever) historians revisit the biographies of famous men of science, they discover women around these men who were actively contributing to their intellectual work, to an extent previously unknown or downplayed (off the top of my head, marie-anne lavoisier; emma darwin; caroline herschel; rosalie lamarck; mileva marić-einstein...)

it is standard practice today for university professors to run labs where their research assistants are grad students and postdocs; to rely on grad students, undergrads, and postdocs to contribute to book projects and papers; and so forth. again, attribution varies, but generally speaking the credit for academic work goes to the faculty member at the head of the project, maybe with a few research assistants credited secondarily, and the rest of the lab / department / project uncredited or vaguely thanked in the acknowledgments.

in all of these cases, you can see how plagiarism is perpetuated by pre-existing inequities and structures of exploitation, and in turn helps perpetuate those structures by continuing to discursively erase the existence of people made socially marginal in the process of knowledge production. so, what's at stake here is more than just the specific individuals whose work has been presented as someone else's discovery (though of course this is unjust already!); it's also the structural factors that make academic and intellectual discourse an élite, exclusive activity that most people are barred from participating in. a critique of plagiarism therefore needs to move beyond the idea that a number of wronged individuals ought to be credited for their ideas (though again, they should be) and instead turn to the structures that create positions of epistemological authority under the aegis of capitalist entities: universities, legacy as well as new media outlets, and so forth. the issue here is the positions of prestige themselves, regardless of who holds them; they are, definitionally, not instruments of justice or open discourse.

secondly, there's the effect plagiarism has on public discourse and the dissemination of knowledge. this is an issue because plagiarism by definition obscures the circulation and origin of ideas, as well as a full understanding of the labour process that produces knowledge. you can see in the above examples how the attribution of other people's ideas as your own works to turn you into a mythologised sort of lone genius figure, whose role is now to spread your brilliance unidirectionally to the masses. as a result, the vast majority of people are now doubly shut out of any public discourse or debate, except as passive recipients of articles, posts, &c. you can't trace claims easily, you don't see the vast number of people who actually contribute to any given idea, and this all works to protect the class and professional interests of the select few who do manage to attain élite intellectual status, by reinforcing and widening the created gap between expert and layperson (a distinction that, again, tracks heavily along lines of race, gender, and so forth).

so you can see how these two issues really are part of one and the same structural problem, which is knowledge production as a tool of power, and one that both follows from and reinforces existing class hierarchies. in truth, knowledge is usually a collaborative affair (who among us has ever had a truly original idea...) and attributions should be a way of both acknowledging our debts to other people, and creating transparency in our efforts to stake claims and develop ideas. but, as long as there are benefits, both economic and social, to be gained from presenting yourself as an originator of knowledge, people will continue to be incentivised to do this. plagiarism is not an exception or an aberration; it's at best a very predictable outcome of the operating logics of this 'knowledge economy', and at worst—as in the examples above—a normal part of how expert knowledge is produced, and its value protected, in a system that is by design inequitable and exclusive.

[quetzalpapalotl]

For my like 10 followers that aren't into Transformers, here is a list of things that are totally canon for the IDW Transformers comics (2005-2018):

Two guys had a meetcute in the morgue of an euthanasia clinic because one guy wanted to kill himself and the other was looking for his dissappeared husband among the corpses. They get married. They seemingly don't talk about what they're going to do once they find the second guy's husband that they're still looking for. The suicidal guy has had other 3 husbands but he erased his memory of that because he's bad at dealing with grief.

The suicidal guy's ex (not one of his dead husbands) is the Autobot second-in-command and had a pet mad scientists that made him war crime machines. They ended up invented the concept of having a child, but then the Autobot SIC had the scientist thrown into the torment nexus because he felt bad about doing war crimes and wahted to stop. He didn't actually stop doing war crimes.

Optimus Prime annexes Earth.

A guy invents time travel to save his unrequited crush's life

God is a real person but he's not actually a deity and is currently a therapist whose license was revoked for getting unprofessionally close to his patients. Everyone who knew his license was revoked died so he just kept on practicing.

Optimus Prime pretends to be havig divinely-inspired visions to get out of situations.

Tumblr exists in-universe.

There's a guy named Centurion who was made to think he's Bumblebee because when his ship crashed a scientist brainwashed them into thinking they were classic Transformers characters to see what happens. Thousands of years later he gets involved in human wars and remembers he's not Bumblebee. He develops a self hatred so great he lets a G.I. Joe villian use him for his schemes. Centurion then has his consciousness fused with a human named Mike Power and lives perpetually with the biggest identity crisis of history.

Another guy also had his memories messed with and has lived multiple human lives (he may be Gilgamesh) when he's actually a Transformer secret agent. He's overcoming his own identity crisis through the power of sheer vanity. He also owns the in-universe equivalent of Facebook and Apple.

On at least 3 occasions Transformers used another Transformer's corpse as a vehicle. And on 1 occasion they used a corpse as a replacement limb (the guys alternate mode was a leg)

The Transformers on planet Cybertron at some point forgot that gender is a thing. There are lost colonies from before this so gender is still a thing in those.

One of those cybertronian colonies sends a delegate after millennia of absence and her bodyguard hates the place so much she causes a terrorist attack just as an excuse to go home, people die. The delegate was like "that was bad but we can move past this" and forgives her.

The Decepticons rewired their own soldiers into bombs and dropped them on people.

The Decepticons also rewired Autobots into anti-personnel live mines that would explode when they good too stressed and needed to be handled by people that could defuse them while keeping them calm.

Transformers are allergic to magic.

A guy has a fanzine dedicated to the Autobot Black-ops where he writes fanfiction. It's so popular multiple people are on a mailing list to have it downloaded directly to their brains when a new issue comes out.

A Decepticon's plan to deal with population decline is to make a bunch of organic babies, have them grow up and make more babies and then transplant their souls to Transformers bodies. He got as far as growing one (1) baby. Tbh, you could erase this whole plot and the story wouldn't suffer much.

Starscream who is a backstabbing liar who cares only for himself becomes president. He routinely neglects and endangers the population for his own ends. He was the best leader Cybertron ever had at the time.

[aeonianlunartine]

No joke when I first saw this design in a video with Natlan lore, I legitimately thought the video creator was using some random game to represent Natlan.

To say I’m surprised would be a lie considering how I saw this coming even before Sumeru came out; the moment I read in the wiki that Natlan was inspired from precolonial Latin American and some tribes in Africa, I stopped playing Genshin for around a year.

Often, the moment authors start meshing together countries and regions together, it starts to become… murky and harder to execute with proper acknowledgment to the sources of inspiration. Especially since the thing is… these are two continents oceans apart which did not have significant/apparent enough interaction between each other prior to colonialism.

As a mestizo (mixed) Latino, I cannot speak entirely for the various indigenous populations/groups represented within this one region, but the lack of care for skin tone and respect for the cultures it is based off—it’s sad. It’s depressing for me.

This company and many others are using less represented cultures as exotic and fun cosplay.

A fantasy costume party for their pale-skinned, idealized white characters—parading around names which erases real life deities from people’s immediate knowledge and now are replaced with some gacha-ass looking dude with barely a drop of melanin. Now when I search up Ororon, all I get is that dude, which is not fucking good since the name is of a Yoruba deity.

I want people to actually commit to not playing Genshin and other Hoyo games if they really care to boycott. I’ve been discovering the extent of how the other games are just as disgusting as Genshin; it’s not enough to just boycott one game, if you want to get your message across to a company, do it to all their products.

I’ve seen people say to do it, yet go on and still play.

Do it.

Fucking do it if you actually are enraged by the blatant racism in this game and in this fandom.

Those who are bystanders are just as culpable as the ones who perpetuate it.

I will now be changing all my socials if they involve Hoyoverse content; I will no longer interact with Hoyoverse content, whether that be fan-made or official, unless it is discussing this matter or redesigning characters whether that be from Natlan or Sumeru.

I know likely many others won’t do the same; it’s an interest, it’s many people’s favorite game, a comfort. And many people are comfortable—fine—with racism in their interests, as long as it can be sugarcoated and excused, y’know… “it’s not bad because there’s some white people there too in real life!” Yes! But it’s majority brown.

Especially before colonization happened.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The ideology of erasure was written into the founding myth of the State of Israel – the myth that Israel was built on “a land without a people for a people without a land”. A popular slogan among Zionists, it helped both perpetuate the assumption that the “Holy Land” was virgin territory and characterise Palestinians as not “a people” with a distinct identity, and therefore lacking any legitimate claim to the land.

The father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, outlined his utopian vision for a modern Jewish State in his novel Altneuland (The Old-New-Land), where he wrote, “If I wish to substitute a new building for an old one, I must demolish before I construct”. Here too, the insinuation was that Palestinians and any sign of their existence on and connection to the land would inevitably be erased by the settler state.

When Israeli geographers drew up their own map of Palestine, they also based their work on the understanding that the Palestinians are “not a people”. They were convinced of their incontrovertible right to the “ancestral land” and remapped Palestine in a way that entirely erased all evidence of Indigenous Palestinian presence.

Following Hamas’s attack on October 7, we have heard Israeli politicians call Palestinians “human animals”. They have also demanded that Palestinians “go away” from Gaza and be settled elsewhere. Evidently, the settler-colonial ideology of erasure is alive and well today.

But settler colonialism is not just an ideological force. This ideology of erasure often motivates efforts to materially upend all pillars of Indigenous life and existence.

[...]

In the end, it is important to think about settler colonialism as a tool for better understanding what is happening in Gaza and across Palestine today. In part, it tells that what we are witnessing is structural, in that it is the deeply entrenched structures and institutions of a settler-colonial state that justify and rationalise the assorted forms of erasure we are currently witnessing in Gaza. But equally it helps connect Palestine to a global history of settler colonialism – a history that might explain why Indigenous communities from around the world have stood in solidarity with Palestinians, while settler states like the United States, Canada and Australia seem to perpetually waver in their support for Palestinian rights.

[irithnova]

Notes on Empire of Care by Catherine Ceniza Choy

The scapegoating of Filipino nurse immigrants: Filipina Narciso and Lenora Perez are examples of two nurses who were scapegoated.

Filipino nurses with temporary work visas, H-1 visas, were exploited

Mass murder cases involving Filipino nurses included the 1996 Richard Speck massacre. Some of his victims were Filipino nurses and the only survivor was one of these Filipino nurses

The only survivor - Luisa Silverio

The victims

The 1975 Veterans administration hospital murders that happened in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and involved the previously mentioned nurses Narciso and Perez, bering initially convicted and then later acquitted. They were accused of poisoning and conspiracy

These cases reflect how US imperialism shaped the treatment that was levelled at Filipino nurses

During the late 1970s, Filipino nurse organisations emerged in order to combat the exploitation and discrimination that Filipino nurses faced

There is still a huge gap in the study of Filipino Americans. Quoted from Sucheng Chan's essay on Asian American historiography

"Despite the steady progress in Asian American historical scholarship, significant gaps remain. The most glaring is the absence of book-length studies on Filipino Americans"

American imperialism still shapes the way in which Filipinos - especially Filipino women are perceived

Jesse Ventura, an American politician in his autobiography "I ain't got no time to bleed" reminisces on his days as a Navy Seal stationed in the Philippines.

He talks about being young with a large libido, and how the abundance of Filipino women for him and his comrades to take home relieved that.

He spoke of going through less hurdles when he came to getting a Filipina to sleep with him compared to American women back home. In other words - Filipinas were easy.

This is a reflection of how US imperialism has shaped how the Philippines is viewed.

Filipino women are used in order to portray the Philippines as a feminised, hypersexual, always-willing paradise for the pleasure of Western men.

This depiction of so called "love" between Filipinos and Americans erases the long history of US violence, US domination, the colonial relationship between the US and the Philippines and the history of sexual violence perpetuated against Filipino women. Not to mention the destruction of the environment and spread of disease

US military presence in the Philippines also helped in influencing migration patterns.

By 1970, there were more Filipino men in the US navy than the Philippine navy. This was due to the active recruitment of Filipino men into the US military

Yet another example of how the US imperialist narrative erases truths about history and the lived experiences of Filipinos:

Filipino American organisations had to convince Minnesota legislature to correct a plaque commemorating the Spanish-American war.

The plaque stated that it was honouring the fact that the war was fought to free the Philippines from the tyrannical Spanish

This is unequivocally untrue and rings back to the concepts of American exceptionalism - The US being far more "benevolent" to it's colonies than their European counterparts.

The war was fought in order to defeat the Spanish - not to liberate the Philippines.

The Philippines then fought against the US for independence thereafter

America's so called "forgetfulness" when it comes to Filipino-American history continues to hurt Filipinos.

In particular, Filipino American war Veterans who struggle to fight for their access to veterans benefits.

[akajustmerry]

hot take rant but i am honestly getting pretty exhausted with takes about the Kardashians' Blackfishing that don't acknowledge the initial orientalist exotification Kim experienced in the public eye as a result of her Armenian heritage and her sex tape. Kim Kardashian isn't white and she never looked white and that's a huge part of *why* and *how* she was able to skew her racial ambiguity (which isn't that ambiguous to SWANA folks) toward Blackness and Black features. her natural features weren't white in the first place. Missing from every discussion about how the Kardashians were able to Blackfish and profit off racial ambiguity is because they came up in a period when SWANA people were ostensibly erased in post-9/11 culture and this low visibility (apart from harmful stereotypes) led to a collective ignorance over what ppl from the region actually looked like which placed the Kardashians in a position where their features were fetishised, but their identity erased - creating the perfect "blank canvas" condition for them treat their bodies as racially malleable. People who perpetuate racism can also be victims of it. Antiblackness is not exclusive to white people, and the Kardashians are not white people. I'm not in any way saying that makes their appropriation of Black bodies okay, but you cannot talk about how they got away with it without discussing the simultaneous cultural erasure and fetishisation of SWANA and Armenian identities in the wake of the Armenian genocide and 9/11, AND the colonial whitewashing of SWANA peoples in the US.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Don't you think there's better ways of showing support for Palestinians/Israeli Christians than by perpetuating the "Jesus was Palestinian" myth that people constantly try and use to deny Jewish indigeneity. Allegory or not, it's not a great look for someone who purports to be against that kind of erasure and supercessionism. Also, having 1 line about how his death was the Empire's fault so don't blame the Jews is meaningless when in this allegory, the Empire (Israeli government) *is* Jewish

(anyone curious about what anon's referring to, I believe it's my poem here)

Hey there anon, thank you for your feedback. In this situation where various marginalized peoples are being pitted against each other (and/or conflated with political groups), I've been struggling to make sure my words don't add to the misinformation and harm. So whenever someone takes the time to remind me of that danger, I'll take the time to re-examine my words — even if I end up standing by them, as I mostly do in this case.

I can't promise to say and do all the perfect things, because there isn't time to waste getting my words just right before saying something — people are dying right now (and yes, anon, that includes those Israelis who are still hostages of Hamas, who are also endangered by Israel's continued attacks.)

I have been spending much of my free time these past few months learning more about Israel and Palestine, and I still don't feel I'm even close to knowing enough! But I've listened to those who are actually in the midst of the violence who say that all of us across the world must join their cry now, not letting our ignorance be an excuse. That means there have been a few things I've said that I then had to re-consider after learning more.

...

Just a few days ago, I was actually trying to look into the origins of the statement that "Jesus was a Palestinian Jew." (Btw if anyone knows the origins of this statement, please hit me up!)

Arguments against it note that the term "Palestinian" didn't exist in Jesus' day. Looking into the accuracy of that statement is still on my to-do list; I did skim over this article calling it a myth but yeah, still digging. Regardless, sure, I don't think Jesus called himself a Palestinian in his lifetime.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the statement is useless, however. I do very much believe that if Jesus were born today, in the same place, he'd be born to a Jewish Palestinian family, not an Israeli one.

That does not erase his Jewishness; it confirms God's "preferential option for the poor," God's choice to side with and become one with the most oppressed and discarded. It also does not assert that Jewish persons don't "belong" in the region — only that the modern nation/colony Israel isn't necessary for them to live and thrive there.

All that said, if anyone has more info on the statement that "Jesus was a Palestinian" — its origins, how it's been used over the years — I would absolutely like to examine it further. For now, I stand by the phrase, with an openness to re-considering that with further education.

...

I feel more confident in talking about Empire — how I used it in my poem, versus how you've interpreted it. I'm genuinely grateful to you for bringing your reading of it to my attention, because it's shown me that my words weren't clear enough there!

In these verses from my poem:

"...And now, as then, some may blame Jesus’s death on his own Jewish people — but resist this lie! Now as then the crime is Empire’s and those of us who would cast stones should ponder first what our nations gain from genocide. ..."

You interpret Empire as being Israel.

My intention was that Empire with a capital E is a much larger network of all imperial forces on earth. Israel is entangled in that, and directly backed and funded by those forces. My own country, the United States, is one of the nations at the helm of Empire.

So when I talk of Empire being to blame, I'm not saying just Israel — honestly, I'm personally more concerned with the US's complicity, because I feel as a US citizen I can help demand they stop.

So I'm going to rework that bit to better express what I mean by Empire, so it doesn't sound like I'm focusing only on Israel. Empire is so much bigger than any one state, colony, or government.

...

Okay, I'm out of steam. I'm going to link a few pieces that have been helping me frame all that's going on right now to resist pitting marginalized groups against each other:

This art piece naming "contradicting truths"

This article by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg also naming seemingly contradictory truths

Since I didn't really get deep into this part of your ask, I also appreciate this article discussing the question of indigeneity. It discards the "need" to figure out "who was there first" in favor of exploring intersecting histories.

Oh also, because you claim that the Israeli government "is Jewish," I think discussions on how Israel isn't actually a safe haven for all Jews, only those that fit into their goals, are vital.

[bloghrexach]

🇵🇸 … the world is watching the effects of the impunity given to IsraHell, I hope in HORROR!!

By: LaillaB, founder of ‘Reclaim the Narrative’, from LinkedIn …

“The West's historical amnesia and condoning of Israel's colonial settler project have only served to perpetuate the cycle of violence and injustice in the Middle East.

The world is now witnessing the bitter fruit of the impunity that has been afforded to Israel, leading to continued suffering and instability.

The colonisation of Palestine by Israel and the displacement of its indigenous population has been a long-standing issue that has been largely ignored or downplayed by the international community.

This has led to a situation where the people of Palestine are denied their basic rights and live under constant threat of violence and oppression.

The root cause can be traced back to the colonial policies of the early 20th century, when European powers sought to carve up the Middle East for their own interests. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was a direct result of this colonial legacy, leading to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral homes. Skyes-Picot Agreement.

At the heart of the question of Palestine, is ownership of the land that both Palestinians and Zionists claim as their own.

While Israel asserts its right to the land as a “Jewish” state for “the chosen people”, there’s a stark contradiction however between Israel's claims and the destruction it causes to the holy land.

Israel's claim to religious authority is often used to justify its impunity and whitewash its crimes in the region.

The destruction and devastation caused by illegal settlers and Israeli military on occupied Palestinian territories and beyond, paint a crystal clear discrepancy to the reverence and respect typically shown towards sacred land.

Palestinians have proved, since 1948, that they won’t easily give up their indigenous claim to and sovereignty over the land stolen from them.

The use of the term “sovereignty” here, is not to mean “the authority to govern a land” in the narrow Euro-centric sense.

Rather, of an authority to govern that stems from the deep, non-utilitarian connection between a people and their ancestral land – a connection that renders meaningless all other political impositions.

That deep connection between Palestinians and Palestine is exactly what the Israeli state has long been seeking to erase.

Indigenous peoples have a deep spiritual and cultural connection to their land, viewing it as more than just a commodity but as an integral part of their identity and heritage.

Settlers, on the other hand, often view the land as a resource to be exploited for their own benefit, leading to its degradation and destruction.

The willingness of Palestinians to endure hardship and sacrifice in defence of their land demonstrates a level of attachment and commitment that is rarely seen in settler communities hailing from Europe Poland.

“Land you have to kill for is not yours. Land you have to die for is.” — 🍉

#reclaimthenarrative —🕊— #FreePalestine …

@hrexach

[padawan-historian]

I feel almost numb trying to wrap my head around the fact that a state is deliberately threatening to murder over 1 million people who Israel's defense minister called "human animals" (the same term Heinrich Himmler once used to reference Jewish people).

To those of you preparing to angrily text your miseducated thoughts in the comments, Israel is an apartheid state that has committed Zionist-saturated genocides of Muslim, Jewish, Christian, queer, poor, and (dis)placed Palestinians going back to the 1940s. My head and my soul hurt from thinking about the mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance of folks trying to justify the fact that Israel's government is perpetuating the same fascist tactics and settler-colonialism that saw their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents suffer, starve, and fight for their lives inside ghettos and concentration camps.

And let's be VERY clear: Gaza is a ghetto.

Rather than changing your profile pictures to reflect the flag of state that is preparing their public justification for genocide, consider how you are priveleging (and legitimizing) their efforts to erase and eradicate the lives of over 1 million people. . . half of them children.

(Pro Life people being real quiet rn 👀)

⭐️ PSA: Zionism is NOT the same thing as Judaism. Zionism is a political movement rooted in religious imperialism and apartheid. Judaism is an ancestral faith that has ripples and rhythms stretching across North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. Spot the difference.

[realjaysumlin]

A correlation exists between colonized nations and Christianity on a global scale, extending beyond the African continent. It is readily apparent that Christianity has not been beneficial for Black Indigenous People, yet so many Black People believe in a Christian god.

The doctrine of discovery unambiguously asserts that individuals who do not adhere to the Christian faith are not considered human and, therefore, are not entitled to land ownership rights. Furthermore, it advocates for the perpetual enslavement or death of such individuals, effectively erasing their history.

This brings to question, Black People why are most of you Christians?

[blackvahana]

eldritch notes, pt1

understanding what eldritch energy means to me. upg disclaimer blah blah dont care

note: not interested in lovecraftian spiritual stuff or anything involving fiction, as much as i do follow a few LC folk for curiosity's sake. dont necessarily believe or disbelieve LC channelled these types of beings into his work, similarities could fully, in my worldview, be coincidence and similarities aren't really deeper than surface level in my opinion, given that everything I've seen could be describing literally any spirits and nature folk through the lens of someone terrified of them as much as he is of fellow humans. Still, what folks call "eldritch" and seem to associate with LC I have found to be intrinsic to my existence, so I'm using the term until I move to va'alasre.

Written while bilocating (in the astral)

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4/2/24

“Eldritch”, yes, but what is it.

Here in the connective substance with Ahi in the outskirts of existence as known on Earth, not alien to humans, but alien to the beings humans call aliens. Alien to alienhood. Sweet-bitter, rain-dry. Last I looked - last I was translatable to human sight - I looked like something akin to a massive, elongated eel colony under a thousand rags of feather-esque drapings like organic paper tags, a siphonophore of shifting eyes with strange, sea-animal irises, undefined pupils if any. Eyes more like canvases than what humans think of them. It would be wrong to call myself “shifting”, too, does a human need to call itself “flowing” because its heart beats blood through it continuously?

But anyone could be this in appearance… No, that’s my first mistake, but not the first thing I’ll talk on. People can be this without having the energy inherent to them to back it up. I let this form come out of me organically, organically farming the seeds dropped in the soil that is my existence without first vetting what they were. What does it mean to be eldritch…

A synonimity of microcosm-macrocosm, the infinitely large and the infinitely small:

I am in amongst stars weaving with Ahi, the Leviathan, double-helix. I am in-between atoms, tiny, like a little tardigrade. Either way, eyes mean nothing physically, it is soul eyes that matter. Either way, I am within every cell of mine - or more so every cell of mine is me. Parasites, they say. No, instances. Tiny little self-perpetuating things. Static on a TV screen, the screen is the body, the static is instances. Cells are just bodies repeated endlessly. When you understand the nature of fractalisation - described in tendrils and non-Euclidean masses - to the point of being it, you open the doorways to… Being it.

Bodies are eyes, therefore eyes are bodies:

”Soul eyes”… Every cell of the body is an instance of intaking. It is a book that is written and erased as it witnesses, it is the point of information, the thing which entertains and educates the consciousness, the atman. Everything is an instant of understanding, everything is eyes. Eyes are useless, therefore we see with things beyond them. When you become greater than the sources of light themselves, the stars, then you need to see in a different way. I see myself in my forest right now, I see myself in my human physical body and all its cells sing with me as eyes. This is, for me, an extension of the Choir, something personal to myself as a sky spirit, but the idea repeats in various languages.

Information is experience:

We know what we know, and we don’t know what we don’t know, and we don’t know what we know, and we know what we don’t know. To experience is to know, which is to be. The border between us and the world is of knowing. To exist in the macrocosmic is to exist in the microcosmic. For the eldritch that means… When I exist in your eye, I exist in your eye, just like I exist between atoms and molecules and microorganisms. I exist in two spaces, the self and the mirror. You are the mirror. An image is an idol, an idol is inhabitable, analogic, a gift from God to be used and seen through. “Static on a TV screen, the screen is the body, the static is instances.” And if you turn the viewpoint from the TV to the viewer, you’ll find the static on the eyes of the viewer. And if you understand how to look, you will know that even if you cannot perceive it, that static is on the retina, and the image is entirely in the viewer’s head. It’s one thing to know, another thing to do. Another thing to know what you do. Another thing entirely to be what you know and do what you be.

Shifting, there and not there. The nature of information as knowing and being. The eldritch is in your eye as much as it is in front of you.

There is illusions: One can easily play with how they’re perceived by the onlooker, they edit and rearrange subjectivity, they play with their informational expression; basically, they edit the words of their book. Instead of “a human male” without illusions, they express themselves with them as “a handsome human male” - or, instead of being “a handsome human male” without illusions, they become “a beautiful human male” with them. Twisting, altering the understanding and digestion of the self in the onlookers.

This? What I’m talking about it something different. This is inhabiting the impression to the point of being it. Thinking now of Nataraja, of course; there is no “Nataraja” separate from “Shiva” except in the act of being the lord of dance, the dance itself, the imprint of six (plus one) Cosmic Laws on the expression, the knowledge of influence equating in complex mathematical forms the outcome. He becomes Nataraja as the Black Hole and its singing and its dancing, he dances through what he makes dance, he is the dance.

One may exist in the past, the present. One may exist in the future. One must understand not just the act of being all three places, but the act of getting them there in such a way not of embodying one’s actions, but embodying the act as a fourth space, the action as a body.

-----

To talk on some other time:

The severity and imperativeness of the act of understanding-being, not just understanding, not just being

Why I'm wrong to say "anyone could be this in appearance" in terms of presuming anyone can front in an "eldritch appearance", why it's more difficult than that statement suggests

Madness, why it occurs (the key: understanding-being)

Synonymity of Ocean and depths of space

Siphonophore

Gravitation to eyes and tentacles as a specific breed of the concept, a specific language

Consumption as possession and extending the self.

Idk ill think of it when i feel like it

[tieflingkisser]

Hamas is a Figment of Your Imagination

What is Hamas? Fuck if you know.

How can we separate image from reality? Doing so is nearly impossible from the outside in part because outsiders are apt to misapprehend resistance groups.  This is especially true of Palestine.  Because it supplies the main rationale for Israel’s war on civilians, Hamas is a perpetual cipher and simulation.  People outside of Palestine know Hamas mainly through layers of discourse appended to Israeli points of view.  Palestinian liberation rarely figures into the process.  Palestinian society is completely abstracted.  Journalists and intellectuals of the imperial core mediate discourse according to age-old prejudices about swarthy creatures of the Islamic world, operating from the assumption that Hamas exemplifies a peculiar and unknowable Palestinian savagery.  Hamas is one of the most complex formations of the past few decades. We know it exists by the rockets streaking through the nighttime sky, the soldiers adorned with green headbands, the theatrical destruction of Merkava tanks. It has a leadership, a command structure, a stash of weapons, a rank-and-file. It offers policy proposals and position papers. It negotiates with various state actors. Yet popular understanding of Hamas largely derives from its apocryphal position in the colonial imagination. The settler has transformed Hamas into a manifestation of his own paranoia and violence.

[...]

Yet it is the Palestinian people onto whom the Zionist displaces this obsession. All Palestinians are Hamas. Therefore, no Palestinian has a right to live. The conflation deracinates Palestinians and erases Palestine’s long and distinguished history. The process also grants to Zionists a type of rhetorical control in the public sphere: they get to determine the culture of the native; they get to prescribe (and proscribe) the contours of resistance; they get to adjudicate the work of national liberation. Palestinians are entrapped by the crude and self-serving imagination of the oppressor.