#every single time i brought up the word antisemitism

[avi-on-jumblr]

it is mind-boggling that the first thing people do after seeing a horrible antisemitic attack, or the firebombing of a synagogue, or a mob going after a jewish teacher, or the assault of a jewish student, is to go out and make a statement condemning "islamophobia and antisemitism and other forms of hate" in that order.

[shittygaypornmagazine]

Maybe atheists from your own religion can talk about it then

https://www.tumblr.com/sophia-epistemia/731237402894581760/avoiding-your-beliefs-real-weak-points

Okay here we go. The pissing on the poor reading comprehension of this website together with the antisemitism is at it again.

First of all, hello! I am a stranger on the internet, who you might know as being Jewish! You don't know shit about my experiences with Judaism, of course, or what kind of Judaism I practice, if I even do, and hence have no understanding of "my own religion", however.

Second, this is the og post:

From its contents you might see that I am requesting ex-christian atheists not to put their religious traumas and biases onto other religions, something which results in nothing but silencing the voices of the people practicing/who practiced said other religions, erasing their unique experiences and trauma, which has nothing to do with Jesus and his followers.

Now, lets examine what you said and the link you sent me.

"Maybe the atheists from your own religion can talk about it then"

You said it. And by it, well... I assume you meant religious trauma in general. Which is, of course, something people who practice/d Judaism can and should talk about. I talk about it! All the time!

But see, the difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying, is that I talk about religious trauma within Judaism. I want to talk about it, but I don't want to hear an ex-christian person's opinions or takes on it. I dont want to hear about how "every religion is a cult actually" from a person who was a part of the religion whose extensive opression and antisemitism shaped mine. They fundamentally will misunderstand me and everything I have to say, as do you. I dont want to have to go through piles of comparisons to Christianity and the trauma it brought people every single time I want to get to the stuff that is relatable to me. Hell, I have trauma from it and I'm not even Christian! So fuck yeah I know about it! What I want to know is my people's stories.

That's where your link comes into play.

It is an amazing post, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. It is a true account and critique of Orthodox Judaism from a person that experienced it first hand and I absolutely support it. I wouldn't have a problem with you sending it to me if it was for purely educational reasons, but there is a sort of gotcha in your tone (which might be coming from the dismissive "your religion" remark that is interestingly close to the wording "your kind").

See, my issue is that you have no idea who I am. You don't know that I had my own shitload of experiences with Orthodox Judaism and that it is the reason I currently I am where I am, faith-wise. You don't know the misogyny, homophobia and transphobia I've experienced. You don't know that I am currently actively looking for a Reform Judaism synagogue in the town I am planning to move to because I want to cleanse my experience of Judaism from all those associations. You think that by virtue of me asking ex-christians to stop putting their hands into every single punch bowl at the party, I dismiss the flaws of my bowl and its recipe. And that, is what I have an issue with.

Every religion and a way of practicing it has flaws. What matters is your experience of them. The way people around you treat those flaws. I want to be able to enjoy being Jewish while acknowledging the shitload of stuff that is wrong with it. Me and my partner are writing a whole book whose main character, Leroy, is all about it! About wanting to be understood by the traditions you were brought up with, and the struggle of them potentially rejecting you. I want to hear Jewish voices when I ask about problems related to practicing Judaism. I want to hear Islamic voices when I ask about issues related to practicing Islam. And yes, I want to hear Christian voices when I ask about the issues with practicing Christianity!

What I don't want, however, is someone else's hands in my punch bowl.

And yes, sometimes cross-referencing is very helpful. Sometimes bringing an outsider perspective is very helpful. But the key-word is sometimes. It should be an option, but it should never be the default.

[germiyahu]

It's the global south who brought Israel to court. You can go on and on about the anti semitic white west. But refusing to see that it is the white west who is funding the genocide of Palestinians. The white west who is funding Israel...every single word of yours fall flat. I don't know what you have against the strike. I have seen someone go as far as to say it is a cult like behavior. The strike has been called by a Palestinian in Gaza. Every time they come online, they plead with people to not stop marching or protesting. How is it that you are miffed at this? You said such stupid things in your post. Wanting Daddy's approval and hence Jews are seen as enemy and Muslims as noble savage. It is absurd that you cooked up all this and left out the simple fact that people want the genocide of Palestinians to end. They want the occupation of Palestinian land to end. I am not from the west. My country had no part in holocaust because while the colonial white west was participating in this ethnic cleansing, my country was busy fighting for its freedom. So to see you not even deign to look at how the east, the global south, the various indegenous groups all over the world, the various oppressed communities all over the world are screaming their lungs out in horror of this west funding genocide, all I can think of is that you have been made blind. How can you on day 111 + 75 years be blind to Palestine. How can you be blind to Israel committing genocide.

It's South Africa specifically, who's had some interesting wire transfers from Hamas lately. It's South Africa, who was also seen graciously hosting the the actual Butcher of Darfur. Not a very principled stance against genocide if you ask me.

I'm not sure what specific strike you're referring to, unless you mean the absurd to the point of comedy strikes against McDonalds and Starbucks. Oh you'll definitely bring down the Zionist Entity by not ordering Big Macs. I also do not understand at all what point you're trying to make by saying the White West funds Israel therefore Palestinian genocide, so my words about the WW's antisemitism fall flat. Yes a large sector of White Western society supports Israel. White Western society is also antisemitic. If this is too hard to grasp just let me know...

And with all due respect, when I'm talking about Westerners and what I suspect is the girding psychological framework for why they're primed to care about this "screaming ones lungs out" from the Global South... I know what I'm talking about. I am Western, I live among these people. You do not.

And I'm not, frankly, very impressed. Firstly that you think the Holocaust is some silly little thing that happened in Europe and not relevant to the rest of the world, and that you think the Global South has had any conniptions about purging their own Jews historically. Granted most of those countries were Arab, but that's part of the Global South.

There is no genocide of Palestinians. There is not. There never has been and hopefully there never will be. If you can't agree that reality is reality you have no business talking to me. So when people deal in blatant falsehoods like that I'm going to dive a little deeper into why people are saying things like that. Because that's what I do. I know "wanting the genocide and occupation to end" is not the full story. I know there's something underneath the surface. When it comes to the White Westerners, who I have experience with, I thereby present my theory. What the Global South or the East or whoever else thinks, is not in the purview of my post. Go make your own.

Also Zionism is older than 75 years so I'm going to give you that one for free. It's actually been almost 150 years of Palestinian genocide 🤓

[rabbiaharon]

I’m not very familiar with Torah so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but in the law it says not to punish a child for the sins of his father and yet during the exodus G-d killed the first born Egyptian children for the sins of their fathers against the Jewish people. even though the law came after the exodus isn’t that a moral inconsistency on G-d’s part? I’ve asked this question many times online and haven’t received an answer, and I’m not jewish so I don’t have anyone to ask irl

I apologize for how long this took, I didn’t mean to deny you your answer, but I’ve had a tenuous relationship at best with Tumblr these days due to rising antisemitism, and I did take a nearly 6 year hiatus. It’s not a dumb question at all, but a question fundamental to jewish theology, and one with ample examples across all of mikrah and mishnah. In fact, the Talmud asks almost this exact question in Tractate Berachos (7a), comparing two verses: the first one “he visits the sins of the fathers on their children, on the third generation, and on the fourth” (פּוקד עון אַבות על הבנים על שלשים ועל רבעים - Shemos 34:7), and the second one “children shall not die by the sins of their fathers, by one’s own sin they will die” (בנים לא ימותו על אבות - Devarim 24:16).

The Talmud observes that these two pesukim appear to contradict each other, and then resolves the contradiction: The former posuk, which states that a person will be punished for the sin of their ancestors up to the 4th generation is if they retain and continue the ways of their forefathers, in other words, doing the same set of sins. The novelty being that they are only held responsible until the 4th generation, rather than forever as long as they maintain the same evils. What’s cool about this, from a comparative theology perspective, is that a proper reading of this posuk entirely eliminates the Xtian idea of Original Sin, being that even if we were following in the ways of Adam and Chava in their decision to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, we are more than 4 generations away from that sin, so we can certainly not be held responsible for it.

The second posuk, which explains that a person is only responsible for their own sin, refers to a situation where the child has not followed the wicked ways of their fathers.

There is an additional aspect to this comparison as well, which is that the first posuk refers to punishment meted out by Hashem, such as in the situation of the Egyptians, whereas the second posuk refers to the punishment meted out by the Rabbinical Courts below.

To address the situation you brought up in your initial question, why were the firstborn killed for the sin of their fathers? They weren’t, per say. Not exclusively. They played a role in their fathers’ sins. They took part in throwing jewish babies into the river. They were the priests of Egyptian idolatry and the greatest opponents towards letting the jews serve G-d, particularly because our method of service often involved the sacrifice of the things they worshipped. In fact, they didn’t “change their minds” about letting the jews go until they saw the jews tying sheep to their bedposts for the Pesach sacrifice, and when they [the first born] asked, the jews said “G-d is going to kill the firstborn and then we’ll be leaving anyway”. In other words, their change of heart wasn’t out of a desire to actually repent, but entirely born out of self-interest.

In addition, one without context can assume, based on this circumstance, that G-d metes out indiscriminate collective punishment, since every single one of the firstborn of Egypt were killed, except Pharaoh himself, and that the entirety of Egypt suffered as a result of all of this. This is also inaccurate, as G-d ensured that all the citizen Mitzrim had an opportunity to take part in the sin, by causing Pharaoh to withhold the straw they needed to make mortar and bricks. Two centuries earlier, in exchange for selling them food during the years of famine, Yosef acquired all the physical land in Egypt on behalf of Pharaoh… In other words, all of Egypt was living on royal land, and when Pharaoh stopped giving the jews pre-cut straw, the assumption was that they would go into the fields of Egyptiants - fields that belonged to the government - and cut the straw needed to complete their requisite service to the king. Instead, civilians who were previously uninvolved would savagely beat jews that came to collect the straw, which gave them a role in the sin which eventually destroyed Egypt. Thus, even if you apply the same rules to the heavenly court and the earthly court, no moral inconsistency is present.

This ties in to the big issue that all the goyim on this website who harbor the mental illness formerly known as judenhass have made their rallying cry to attack innocent jews from all over the world - Gaza. As a teacher, I have very deep sympathy for children in Gaza, as a general rule, who did not sign up to be used as human shields for a terrorist organization. Their parents? As a teacher, even if they were innocent of direct involvement with Hamas, but have not tried to leave Gaza and emigrate to another, safer country, I hate them with a consummate hatred. Why? Because they have endangered their own children, and as a teacher, I cannot abide that. From a torah perspective? Every child who wants to terrorize Jews because it makes their parents proud, wants to kill jews to buy their parents’ favor, and doesn’t once question whether killing innocent people is the correct course of action, will almost undoubtedly share their parents’ fate, as they have a deep desire to share in their sin.

Still, regardless of their “status”, our main focus should be on our own actions. We should strive to discern the innocent from the guilty. Even if we cannot always make that distinction we still have to act for the sake of Heaven. We must strive to work on our own behavior, so that when Rosh Hashanah comes, Hashem will see our efforts and give us his help, as revealed good, as we pass into a new year, may it be a year of redemption.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

I applied to be a resident advisor. I’d worked for UK (University of Kentucky) in res-life in the past and had been preparing for this interview, and I had my RA tell me that she would give me a glowing recommendation. And the first interview went quite well.

My second interview started decently. The interviewer asked me my pronouns, which threw me off a little bit. I now see that as a kind of screening in and of itself, but we proceeded with the interview, and it seemed to go fine until I was asked where I had seen injustice and mistreatment at UK. At the time, the closest I’d come to that was my own work with Pro-Life Wildcats, but back then I knew not to bring up Pro-Life Wildcats with an interview at UK as they didn’t look overly favorably at our club. So, I said nothing. Despite that, the rest of the interview seemed to go quite well, but I was informed I was not being hired on and as an RA. I was in the alternate pool however, and I was offered the chance for a later interview to get feedback on what I'd done and what I'd done poorly.

And we started out the interview well, she was just giving me general feedback about my demeanour, she said I’d aced every part of the interview, the customer service, the quick response times, everything I'd done great on.

Except JEDI, UK’s version of DEI. At this point, I started to record the interview as Kentucky is a single party consent state, and I’m glad I did because the absolute insanity that I would be told for the next 15 minutes, I’m not sure I would believe it if someone had told me I would hear that. I would say no you’re making that up.

I was told that because I am white-presenting, I'd probably not had to think about how I present myself, unlike other non-white students. I had been told that as I didn’t have experience being an "other" - her words, not mine -- I hadn’t proven that I could relate to students who would be considered an "other." She then went on for several minutes to tell me about how she had processed George Floyd's death and how maybe I should’ve said something like that in the interview. And then she told me that maybe I should look at my current service work through the lens of DEI. Because this is the natural endpoint for DEI. Instead of just doing service work and treating everyone equally, you will look at people through the lens of race, ethnicity, sex and then you will have to prove to UK how much you care about those categories instead of how much you care about those people as individuals. You will bend the knee to DEI if you want to work at UK.

My next experience with DEI came from the classroom in my women’s literature course. The syllabus laid out by the TA said that no comments that were homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, antisemitic, sexist, ablest, classist or otherwise offensive, particularly to protected groups, would not be allowed on penalty of removal from the class for that day and loss of participation points.

As someone who believes that there are only two genders and that men cannot become women, this was problematic to me. So I went to speak with the professor and ensure that my First Amendment rights were going to be protected. I was assured as long as I didn’t use slurs in class, I would be fine. I don’t use slurs. This was an easy ask.

The class went on well, I was the lone conservative speaking up as it was a very liberal class, including the professor, but that was fine with me. I’m used to being in the minority on a college campus. Despite this, there did come an issue when the topic of gender was brought up. I again restated that I believe that there are only male and female, as there are, and while I was never pulled aside in class or outside of class, I was then sent email from that professor who told me that I wasn’t recognising the "humanity" of the other students in class. And as such, I had the broken the UK Code of Conduct, which is a serious offence.

And it’s actions like these that are taken at UK to try to force people to bend the knee ideologically and force them to not speak about really believe. I even had a student in that class come up to me and say, "hey, I’m pro-life too. Thank you for speaking up. I can’t speak up because I know what will happen to me."

So, I would encourage everyone to pass this bill and stop these discriminatory practices that are being snuggled in through DEI.

[ghostofbambifanfiction]

Unfortunately there are certain topics where you need to tread lightly in the fandom because... well, there's a group of young Marauders fans on twitter that are extremely sensitive and think everything serious happens online. Don't know if you are familiar with all the drama they brought to poor Bianca (Blvnk) a month or so ago when they decided that she was problematic for drawing the characters as she imagined them and not as the "inclusive" type they prefer. (continues)

(part 2) They legit accused people of being antisemitic for not stating the opposite on social media. If you don't ship wolfstar you are seen as homophobic. And the list goes on. I used quotation marks for the word inclusive because that term in this context is bullsh*t really, forcing people do as they like by attacking them is not inclusive at all.

Yeah, this doesn't shock me tbh.

I deliberately keep myself a little bit outside the fandom as a whole because I've seen more than my fair share of fandom drama in the last eighteen years and I'm over it (y'all weren't there for the child-grooming Livejournal RPGer of 2009 who neglected her infant daughter and forced her to point to pictures of redheaded women and call them "Mummy," because she was convinced that she was Lily Evans IRL, oh was THAT a trip), so I'm not personally familiar with anything recent, but tbh that kind of behaviour isn't exclusive to Jily. That behaviour is everywhere. That behaviour is Tumblr. That behaviour IS the internet. There are people in every single fandom who feel like they have the right to act as gatekeepers and weigh the worthiness of every offering to said fandom against their own value set, and they do so in error more often than not. I am very sorry that Blvnk was harassed and bullied by some such people, she certainly didn't deserve it.

Without trying to sound in any way puffed up or arrogant, my stance on those people is that I really don't care what they have to say. I'm a grown woman, I know that I'm a decent person with strong values and I've dealt with plenty of bullies in my life, so I will not be treading lightly anywhere in the fear of getting falsely accused of anything by strangers on the internet. If someone wants to assume that I'm homophobic because I don't like Wolfstar as a ship (which I don't and never will, my read on Sirius is that he's aromantic and far too selfish to be one half of a couple) it's their prerogative to make such a stupid assumption and waste their own time. It doesn't change who I am for a second, and my longtime readers—just like Blvnk's longtime fans, I'm sure—know that too.

[imagines4thepeeps]

I want to see the colors of another sky (Rosie Betzler x reader)

For: @tinycashcolorparty

Request: Could you do one were reader and rosie are laying in bed and they reader asks rosie what they will do after this is all over(after the war)and rosie tells reader cute stuff they will do together and then it cuts to reader seeing rosie's body hanging there

A/n: this is my first writing for Rosie and just this request alone was enough to make me cry.

WARNING: mentions of homophobia, death, Holocaust, nazis, antisemitism ——————————————————————

“Good night Jojo” Rosie and you both yelled at the door of your son’s room. Well, he was Rosie's son, yours by proxy.

“Night mum, night aunt (y/n)” the boy yelled back. His nose stuck in Hitler’s newest piece of propaganda. At that confirmation, you and your lover made your way to your shared room hand in hand. As far as Jojo knew his mother had given up all the spare beds to be used in the war effort. That’s why his godmother and mother had to sleep in the same bed.

Both, out of habit, looked all around to ensure none of the curtains had been left ajar. After your mental check, your shoulders relaxed and for the first time that day, you were with each other. Rosie layed down in the modestly uncomfortable bed first, her mischievous grin never wavering. She playfully patted the spot on her chest right above her heart, you knew instantly what that meant. You made your way to her, not before securely locking the door.

You wrapped your arms around Rosie, your head coming to her chest. Your ears were suddenly flooded with your favorite sound in the whole world, Rosie’s ever-steady beating heart. Following it delightfully was your favorite smell in the world. Rosie, in line with her name, always smelled of the rose bushes that lined your childhood home in the country.

“Rosie?” You asked out into the air. It was barely audible and you were certain she hadn’t heard.

“Yes, Meine Blume?” Your breath hitched at the nickname. Suddenly your mind whirled to the days before the war. At the time you and Rosie had met, your father was working for her family as a gardener and you as his apprentice. You both had been so happy in those days, so safe, so much life flowed through the very ground you walked on. It wasn’t that way now, everything was deadly still, and dark. Everything, except your Rosie.

“Where will we go?” You asked, once again basking in her intoxicating scent. She got silent for a moment." After the war I mean." you clarified.

“Mexico." she said excitedly," We will go to Mexico. I love the colors don’t you liebling?”

“Mexico?” You pondered,” Jojo would lose his mind!” You giggled as did Rosie.

“He would deal with it, we would live on the beach, bring Elsa with us too.” When she said the girl's name her voice lowered and took a somber tone. Quickly she went back to your future. “We’d swim every day and it would never get cold.” She sighed

You smiled at the thought,” Yes I think the sun would be good for all of us.” She hummed in agreement.

“You could have a full garden, and Jojo could learn to ride a mule, and I could just ...... dance. We could all dance. How I miss dancing.” She sighed sadly. You hopped up and quickly put a record on.

“Let’s dance right now.” You said holding your hand out to your love. Her eyes scanning you with humor. Nonetheless, she took your hand. You pulled her to you and swayed slowly to the flowing song. Your head went to her shoulder.

“He could finally call me mom.” You whispered. You froze when you realized what you had said. Rosie froze as well. When you pulled back from her shoulder, her eyes met yours. A single tear was running down her beautiful face. You lifted your hand wiping the tear away, you hated when she was sad.

“Yes, that would be amazing meine Blume.” She took your face in her hands,” we will be a family.” She brought your lips together, tears of happiness rolling down both of your cheeks. ——————————————————————— “Jojo?!” You called out. The boy ignored you though, continuing to hold on to ......... no.

Your heart sank and bile rose in your throat as something between a sob and a scream escaped you. Thank god no one cared, “too much loss for anyone to care” Rosie would say.

You felt your knees hit the ground before you knew what was happening. She looked all wrong. The life that once poured out of her snuffed out.  This was it. Nothing could continue for you without Rosie. There was no life outside of her.

Then you thought of poor little Jojo clinging to his mother’s legs. Your son losing the last shred of loyalty to his nation with her death. His light fading with every shaky breath and wretched scream. He needed you.

You thought of Elsa and her dead lover. Oh, how you couldn’t imagine that pain when you had learned of what happened. You didn’t have to imagine now. She was all alone in the heart of a country that hated her. Her only true friend in this world, now eerily silent. She needed you.

You thought of Mexico. Oh, how many nights had that warm sunburnt dream kept you going.

You thought of the garden you would fill. You thought of Jojo sitting atop an animal as stubborn as he is. You thought about Elsa finding her place in this world. You thought about dancing.

You thought about Rosie. Your sweet Rosie, who was stronger than oak but alive as a poppy field. She was warm and steady. She ........ was gone.

 Her last words to you before she left ringing in your ears.

“I’ve bought the tickets, when I get back we will leave this place far behind, and we’ll be a family.”

Family.

Yes.

Family.

That’s what Rosie had always been for you. Now you were that for Jojo and Elsa.

Shooting to your feet with a burst of energy you had no idea you possessed you stumbled to Jojo. The air in your lungs halted when suddenly it came out with a strangled exhale. You could smell her.

Rose bushes.

And death.

“Jojo”, your voice was quiet and barely there. “We need to go.” The boy held on ever tighter. How you wished to be allowed the comfort of a final hug. To put your head on her shoulder one last time.

“We have to go,” you forced out past your tears, but you knew he wasn’t budging. You wrapped your arms around his all too small waist. And lifted him, as he thrashed around, before settling to burry his head in your chest and cry.

 You carried the boy home and packed his things. Though you tried to be strong the tears never stopped falling. You packed a bag for yourself and Elsa.

And one with Rosie’s things as well.

“Where are we going miss (y/l/n)?” Elsa asked glad to be on the move once again. Jojo was silent, you doubted he would ever break free of that silence. You sure hadn’t in the weeks she’d been gone. After the day you found her you went back to give her a proper burial. Jojo had not attended, Elsa had.

“Home.”

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 2

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I'm outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I've missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly.  -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I'm using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what's said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn't matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

It’s time to take a close look at Episode 3, The Runaway Room!

Episode 3: The Runaway Room.

We're skipping the first two cases, as they have no relevance to Barok van Zieks, and starting off here.

So Ryu is tossed into the deep. The Lord Chief Justice tells him that he’s basically the defendant’s only hope; if he doesn’t at least try to fight in court, McGilded will lose the trial and die for sure. (HAH… Good one, Stronghart.) So Ryu falls for this would-be motivational speech and heads for the courthouse where he finds out why McGilded doesn’t have a defense attorney to begin with; it’s because of the prosecution. No one dares to go up against Lord Barok van Zieks, also known as the Reaper of the Old Bailey, because all who he prosecutes are damned. This should sound familiar to anyone who’s played an Ace Attorney game before. ‘The prosecution has never been defeated before’ is the implication, which would initially lead us to believe Van Zieks is another one of those prodigies. Sure enough, Susato points out he must be very talented, to which McGilded replies that Van Zieks is not talented, rather, he’s cursed. This sets the mood even further. With words like “Reaper” and “curse” being tossed around, we’re sooner reminded of a prosecutor like Simon Blackquill, who was a convicted murderer wielding psychological manipulation techniques. Either way, with the grim atmosphere set, Ryu is ushered into the courtroom before he can ask any more questions.

As a sidenote, McGilded really scored some negative points with this remark:

Feels a bit softened compared to how fan translations tackled that line, but a nasty jab all the same.

So anyway, entering the courtroom we get our first look at Van Zieks and if the foreshadowing in the Defendant Antechamber wasn’t already bad enough, he honors his eerie reputation.

So far, he’s meeting the requirements then. He’s intimidating and as a wealthy white man, he’s perfectly juxtaposed to Ryu, the rookie from another country. Meanwhile, the first micro-aggression of this trial is actually uttered by the judge:

Which also makes narrative sense. Ryu’s more practical goal isn’t to win the prosecution’s trust. Heck, he could get through any trial just fine with Van Zieks’s dislike. No, what he needs is to win over the judge and the members of the jury. For them to also hold prejudice but put that aside in order to side with the truth is another important end-game here. So let’s continue. Van Zieks also has something to say here:

Initially, the remark about Ryu’s eyes might read as a typical racist jab towards someone from the East, but he is in fact referring to the way Ryu’s eyes are ‘swimming’ when he’s nervous, as evidenced by the next lines. “They shroud your fear, your doubt, your trepidation… They run wild, clinging to some phantom notion of courage.” Van Zieks is saying that while Ryu puts up a brave front, his swimming eyes betray just how nervous and unsure of his cause he really is. So really, he’s targeting the fact that Ryu is new to the courts. He did, however, make a point of tossing the word “Nipponese” in there when he didn’t need to, drawing attention to Ryu’s race in a derogatory fashion.

After the jurors are introduced, something else of interest happens. The judge points out that Van Zieks hasn’t been seen in the courtroom in a number of years. The judge had assumed that Van Zieks had renounced his fame, to which he replies with the following:

This is a very telling line. We learn several things. Firstly, Van Zieks had retired, and secondly, he doesn’t seem to think too highly of his title of Reaper. If he did, he would have gloated. To describe his reputation as infamy implies negative associations with this ‘curse’ that McGilded spoke of. Putting these two things together, one might conclude he retired because of this curse. When asked why he’s returned to the courts, he says that he’ll leave that to the judge’s imagination. So there’s hints of a backstory already being tossed in before the trial’s even properly kicked off.

Which it does now. So the opening statement happens as always and witnesses are brought in, but once it’s done Ryu interjects to say that he doesn’t understand the circumstances. ‘How could the witnesses have seen the inside of a moving carriage’? It shocks the entire courtroom and Van Zieks is the one to speak:

“-But you’re here in London yourself. Are you really so ignorant about our omnibuses? Tell me, my Nipponese friend… Have you even travelled in an omnibus?”

I have to be honest, I struggled to pinpoint just how I felt about these remarks. Sure, I can overanalyze this, looking at how the words “I’d read-” imply he doesn’t know the following sentiment to be true and therefore doesn’t feel confident enough to say something like “I knew-”... But it doesn’t change that he’s being scummy here. In a roundabout way, he’s still saying Japan is far less civilised than Britain and that Ryu is extra ignorant for not knowing about omnibuses when he’s in London. So basically, he gets scumbag points for this. But then there’s…:

Which is just a basic jab at Ryu’s intelligence. It’s the sort of remark we’d get from every single prosecutor. I think even Klavier would say this sort of line with a smile on his face.

But definitely more scumbag points here, because this was a direct attack in more ways than one. Particularly the word “stray” was uncalled for. CEO of Racism, indeed. Something very interesting happens when the knife gets pulled into the story halfway into the first cross-examination, though. When Ryu asks about it, Van Zieks replies with this:

He’s… actually being civil? (I doublechecked with Scarlet Study, and they are in agreement on the timid nature of this line, translating “yes, Counsel” as “Quite so”.) Instead, Van Zieks turns his attention to the fact that there’s an M on the sheath, directing all his offensive attitude towards McGilded. It gets even more curious when the last juror refuses to cast a guilty verdict, instead talking about what a good man she believes McGilded to be. Van Zieks says:

So he’s not only frustrated with McGilded now, he’s frustrated with the people of London for not knowing what sort of person McGilded really is. Van Zieks reveals he’s a dirty money lender who gained his fortune through corrupt means. He even takes the time to inform Ryu of this with the words “Your client is a shylock, sir!” Edit: I feel a need to address this: shylock is a word with antisemitic roots. It originally came from a Shakespeare play involving a very bad stereotype. It later evolved to have a more broad meaning basically synonymous to loan shark and I think that’s the context the localization means to use it in. There’s absolutely no indication of McGilded’s religious beliefs and even if there were, I highly doubt the localization would use that sort of slur. Still, it’s a very unfortunate choice of words and is sure to accidentally sour Van Zieks even more with some players.

With that, the last juror votes, the scale tips towards Guilty and Van Zieks assumes the trial to be over. He thanks the jurors for their work. Unfortunately, once Susato brings up the Summation Examination, Van Zieks gets very frustrated again. This happens:

IIII don’t know what to do with this line. On first glance, I didn’t think much of it and was even willing to consider it was a compliment. Then I thought it must’ve been passive aggressive somehow; that it’s the sort of thing he wouldn’t believe until he’d seen it with his own eyes. A friend directed me to the notion that it might be referencing a stereotype that ‘Eastern women are fierce’ because they were associated with, well, certain ‘paid services’. I don’t think I need to explain, I’m sure you understand what I mean. And if indeed that’s what Barok is insinuating, that’s a new low I never thought he’d reach. However, when you’ve finished the games and know that Barok was friends with a married Japanese man, it’s entirely possible that he’s remembering a story once told to him by Genshin Asogi. So this is either a bittersweet reminiscence or the most scumbag association he ever could’ve made, but I’m not sure we can ever prove which it is. Edit: As another option, it’s possible he’s referring to the Yamato Nadeshiko stereotype, if indeed it already held the ‘touch of iron’ aspect to it back in 1900. He proceeds to toast his hallowed chalice to “the enigmatic East” and to be honest, I’ve once again got nothing. All I know is that he once again drew attention to the defense’s race when he didn’t need to, so… Scumbag point. As a sidenote, in regards to the wine… I don’t count this as a humanizing trait. The same applies to the leg slam. These are animations meant to add some more lighthearted air and breathe more life into Van Zieks, so he doesn’t just stand there like a statue. They’re just quirks meant to have him stand out from other characters. So yeah, fun as the wine and leg slam animations are, they don’t count in the redemption requirements. Anyway, Van Zieks mocks the age of Susato’s book, saying that judging by its bindings it must be fifty years old. Considering the context of the conversation, this isn’t out of bounds. The defense is using ‘outdated’ information on the law, so he points that out. Any prosecutor would’ve done it like this. Simon Blackquill likely would’ve offered to shred that outdated tome to bits for Susato. Van Zieks does toss in a “Hmph, typical Nipponese” later though, which earns him one more scumbag point. Van Zieks continues to dismiss the Summation Examination, but the judge overrules him and allows it. Law is law, after all! And this is what I meant in my previous post when I said it’s satisfying to see Ryu use actual British law against Van Zieks. Ryu is using a perfectly legitimate technique to win the jurors over, and as Susato tells him, he can only do it by turning the jurors against one another with facts. He can’t appeal to them, he can only have them see sense. Which is difficult, because some jurors are more prejudiced than others:

… Yeah. Uh. Calling Ryu a “Dark Jinx” is pretty awful. Scumbag points for Juror No. 1! Meanwhile, Juror No. 4 keeps us updated on Barok’s actions throughout this trial:

Wow. Typical prosecutor behavior, though. Regardless, Ryu manages to win them all over in the end. With enough of the scales set back to not-guilty, the trial is allowed to continue, which leads to this:

Bye, hallowed chalice. A fun animation to keep things fresh and show us that the trial is about to take a turn. Once again, nothing new. We’ve seen prosecutors lose their patience before. What does interest me, though, is that Barok doesn’t direct physical frustration towards the defense. Remember: Franziska snaps a whip at Phoenix, Godot throws coffee at his head, Blackquill sends a hawk to attack the defense or uses that aijutsu slicing move, Nahyuta throws restricting beads… These were all direct physical attacks. Van Zieks, much like Edgeworth and Klavier, directs his frustration more inward and as a result he destroys his own property.

He succeeds in intimidating Ryu, though. Van Zieks explains that he kept silent, as is the norm during Examination Summation, but makes it clear that he considers it a charade all the same.

Van Zieks has been a pretty good gentleman towards the jury up until now, speaking to them politely despite that one remark about having their head in the clouds. Now that he’s seeing them ‘buy into Ryu’s stories’, as one might describe it, he’s getting frustrated with them. Maybe he’s even frustrated they’re choosing the defense’s side over his own.

He removes his cloak, entering what he says to be the next round of their ‘battle’. More typical prosecutor behavior, this. I’m not sure there’s an underlying thought to this, other than to indicate to the audience that ‘things have gotten serious’. When the next bit of testimony is going on, I noticed something odd. Both Fairplay and Furst testify to having seen blood on McGilded’s hands, to which Van Zieks says:

“... Reported that there was no trace of blood on Mr. McGilded’s gloved hands.” So in a way, by establishing this fact, he’s helping the defense and going against what the witnesses are saying. It doesn’t help the prosecution in any way at all.

The trial continues on, with Van Zieks uttering things like “My Nipponese friend” and “my learned friend from the East” and lord knows what else… I suppose to soften the harshness of the original wording a bit and make Van Zieks just a bit less dislikable? Edit: Tumblr user @beevean​ has pointed out that “my learned friend” is an actual term used in courts of law. There’s a tradition (also employed in British courts of law) that when addressing either the court or the judge, a barrister refers to the opposing counsel using the respectful term, "my learned friend". Of course, it can be said with an air of passive aggression and pretending to be respectful to the court while shamelessly disrespecting it is something Barok has always done, so the addition of “my learned friend” to the localization text is amazingly in-character. Then of course we have:

This is both a scumbag remark and foreshadowing. Naturally, those playing the game for the first time won’t recognize it as the latter and therefore take it as nothing more than a harsh blow. Things spiral even further out of control when he starts talking about how people who claim the island nations of the Far East have a learning and culture of their own use those terms ill-advisedly. He also uses the words “artless backwater” and really, this is the low point of the trial right here when it comes to prejudice. Van Zieks is just plain lashing out with these sort of jabs.

Eventually, McGilded is dragged onto the witness stand to testify about whether or not there was another passenger aboard the omnibus. McGilded admits that there was, and Van Zieks snaps at him some more for using convenient excuses. Ryu is forgotten here for a moment. The whole smoke bomb thing happens, Van Zieks confers with McGilded and Gina in his own chambers, then the trial resumes. McGilded testifies, then Gina testifies… The jury votes not-guilty, buying into McGilded’s story about protecting a poor young pickpocket and Van Zieks loses it. He slams his heel down on the bench, pointing out that this is why he doesn’t like the jury system; because emotions are ruling where evidence and facts ought to be paramount. He points out while the cubbyhole Gina had been hiding in was empty now, it had been full of the coachman’s belongings during the police investigation. Someone tampered with the omnibus. This is where things get interesting, because Van Zieks addresses Ryu:

He’s giving Ryu the benefit of the doubt here. He’s offering an option for Ryu to be truthful about this matter. And that’s curious, because any defense attorney would naturally say what’s best for his client- or so it’s assumed. It puts Ryu in a difficult position for sure, but for some reason Van Zieks put the question forward anyway. The game responds as follows:

For the sake of argument, I attempted all three options. So when Ryu says he didn’t look, Van Zieks says: “Hm… Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence.”

So when feigning ignorance, Van Zieks is kind of a scumbag about it. He is correct in his expectation that any attorney worth his badge would thoroughly examine the details of the evidence, but he didn’t need to be such a jerk about it. Now, when outright lying and saying it was empty, Van Zieks instead says:

The lines are very similar, which is an interesting note. It adds a feel of these responses being 'rehearsed', in a way. Just a default for him to fall back to. But the real kicker comes when Ryu tells the truth and says it wasn’t empty. Van Zieks is actually speechless at first with no more than a “...!” Clearly, he wasn’t expecting Ryu to respond like this. Everyone in court is baffled, McGilded gets angry… Van Zieks is a bit rattled now.

“Your task is to defend the man in the stand. Why would you say something to compromise his position?”

So really, it seems as if Van Zieks had only ever offered the question to Ryu with pessimistic intentions. He too had assumed there was only one answer the defense could give and was prepared for just that with his silly little wine analogies, only to be shocked when Ryu defies his expectations. Ryu confesses that he’s not entirely sure on where he stands in the matter, to which Van Zieks replies with “... Interesting.” 

So now the jury members are doubting themselves again, with some offering guilty verdicts. Van Zieks decides to honor the ‘Scales of Justice’ once more now that they’re back in his favor, like the hypocrite he is. Gina testifies, Ryu points out an inconsistency, Van Zieks takes that opportunity to turn the tables back in his favor by implying Gina is a liar… He passive aggressively thanks Ryu for saving him considerable trouble and whatnot with some more “my learned Nipponese friend” remarks in there… Ryu turns the tables once more by insisting the victim came into the omnibus through the skylight, Van Zieks demands evidence and points out that furthermore, if indeed such a thing had happened, the witnesses on the roof would’ve seen it. McGilded hops into the conversation to imply that the witnesses themselves were the killers, which sends the court into a frenzy. Both Van Zieks and the judge shift the responsibility of the accusation towards Ryu, even though he never said a word to directly accuse the witnesses. Kind of a douchey move. Barok even states that Ryu’s ‘command of the English tongue must be wanting’, since

Yeahhh, that's pretty unfair. McGilded was the one who dropped that implication. However, since the judge basically accuses Ryu of the same thing, it’s a narrative choice to warn Ryu he needs to anticipate where his reasoning will lead him. Fairplay and Furst testify, pandemonium ensues. McGilded eventually gets what he wants when it’s revealed the skylight can open and there’s blood in there. Van Zieks once again turns his attention to McGilded:

He knows McGilded is at the root of all this tomfoolery and evidence manipulation. McGilded is the real enemy here, in Van Zieks’s eyes. The conversation shows this by having Van Zieks point out that he’s well aware of McGilded’s involvement in dubious matters and that evidence is often ‘adapted’ to suit this guy’s stories. And now, once again, he turns his attention to Ryu. Once again, he’s giving the defense the benefit of the doubt:

The game gives you the illusion of choice here. If you choose to say it’s ‘out of the question’ that the evidence was tampered with, Ryu will refuse to say it out loud. If you say it’s entirely possible, Ryu will admit to that.

This is probably baffling to Van Zieks. It would’ve been so easy for Ryu to insist the tampering couldn’t have happened, but he doesn’t. The game won’t even let him. No matter what you choose, Van Zieks is clued in on the fact that Ryu doesn’t condone the deceit that McGilded is resorting to. But it gets even better, because a short time later, we get:

Another option to either draw attention to forgery, or to feign ignorance. Once again, I chose both options for argument’s sake, but having Ryu say he has no idea doesn’t get us anywhere. Susato will instead object to say it for him. With “I have an inkling”, Ryu says it himself. Van Zieks once again confesses, in his own words, that he’s caught off guard.

Ryu clarifies that he thinks the blood stain inside the omnibus is decisive evidence, but he can’t say for certain whether it’s genuine. McGilded loses it and by this point, is outright branding Van Zieks an enemy. Since the player at this point doesn't know whether McGilded is guilty or not, it leaves Van Zieks in a bit of narrative limbo. One might think: 'if the prosecutor is so intent on taking down a murderer, shouldn't we be on his side? Is he perhaps not as bad as he seems?' Unfortunately, McGilded points out that recollection and memories don’t matter, only evidence does. And… Well.

Which means they can’t rule on a guilty verdict and will have to let McGilded go. Van Zieks admits that he has no more witnesses or evidence to present. He’s out of options. As a formality, the judge asks the defense’s closing statement and we get one last option. Do we believe him to be guilty or not-guilty? When claiming he’s innocent, Van Zieks says:

It seems he means “abject” in the sense of “without pride/respect/dignity for oneself”, which… You know, is fair. By this point it’s very clear that McGilded is guilty, and since Ryu has already admitted that the evidence may be forged, insisting otherwise is indeed pretty spineless. Scumbag points to Van Zieks for continuing to draw attention to the fact that Ryu is from Japan, though.

Let’s instead just admit that we can’t say for certain McGilded is innocent. Unfortunately, we don’t see Van Zieks react to this, which is a bummer because this could’ve been very telling. The judge questions Ryu’s sanity (no joke) and McGilded laughs because it doesn’t matter; it was just a formality anyway. The judge scolds Van Zieks, saying that his case was flawed and it was his job to keep the evidence secure. Instead of objecting, Van Zieks just outright takes the blame for this and apologizes. Very interesting reaction, here. He stops pointing the finger to McGilded, he doesn’t attempt to accuse anyone else… He just admits his performance was flawed. Ryu tries to interject here:

(A badly-timed screenshot if I’ve ever seen one.) Ryu is making an attempt here to defend Van Zieks, the guy who has built up like 20 scumbag points by now. Ryu sincerely doesn’t hold a grudge against him. That’s very interesting. It doesn’t matter, though. The judge won’t hear of it, Ryu thinks it’s unfair, Van Zieks warns McGilded that this isn’t over and then we get the not-guilty verdict.

Hurray??? Profit??? It’s a victory that’s bound to leave the player feeling conflicted and jarred.

But after all’s said and done, we get one last cutscene to establish just how ominous Van Zieks really is. The omnibus is on fire, someone is inside and we know McGilded went into the courtroom earlier to investigate the omnibus in question. So really, by putting two and two together we can already guess what’s going on here. Van Zieks approaches the scene and watches silently.

It’s a good reminder to us that every defendant he prosecutes is ‘damned’ and he’s called the Reaper for a reason. Really puts the finishing touch on the eerie undertones of his character.

All in all, a pretty typical first time against a new prosecutor. Now I just want to draw attention to the fact that the first time we face Van Zieks in court… he’s actually on the right side of the courtroom and Ryu is not. Van Zieks presumably specifically returned to the court after those five years to target McGilded, as he knows about this guy’s shady reputation when it comes to ‘adapting’ evidence. Barok is 'cursed' in such a way that every defendant he faces is damned. So long as he stands as the prosecutor, McGilded can’t get away with his crimes. No matter how much forgery is done, the Reaper will go after McGilded and it seems Van Zieks was banking on this happening.

He likely also expected Ryu to have been bought off by McGilded; to say whatever’s convenient for his case. Turns out, Ryu is actually a man of integrity who’s invested in the truth and near the end of the trial, Barok has seen evidence of this. So what will happen next? We’ll have to play The Clouded Kokoro and find out! Stay tuned!

[akari-hope]

Citing Lindsay Ellis isn’t a good idea, just fyi. She’s all but single-handedly responsible for popularizing the “Each & every criticism of Twilight is misogyny & born of the idea that ppl love to hate on teen girls!” stance. She’s dismissed native ppl’s criticisms of the bastardized portrayal of the Quileute tribe w/ “But I know some native ppl who like it so I don’t feel comfortable speaking on that!” (She then failed to provide examples of native ppl she knew who liked it, & went on to make

2/3   a video about Pocahontas comprised entirely of talking points already put forth by poc, w/ no credit.) She has made tasteless jokes about Harriet Tubman & her “twink” master & defended ContraPoints, a known antisemite who only caters to white feminists & has dismissed ppl who point said antisemitism out, claiming that she was only joking & that ppl were just “too sensitive.” I just thought you’d want to know.

3/3  Ellis has also dismissed criticisms put forth by poc of Daenerys Targaryen being a prime example of a colonizing white savior (which she quite literally is written to be) as baseless hate. She’s just a generally racist & ignorant person who knowingly monetizes the arguments of poc & deflects any criticism w/ blanket claims of misogyny.

gonna be 100% with you here. idk any of what you’re talking about. i’m not saying it’s not true, or that you don’t have sources, but i am saying that my knowledge of her work is...basically limited to those video essays i linked. i mean i’ll publish this ask so other people are aware i suppose? but i don’t follow youtubers (idek who the other person you brought up IS). i’m not really involved with any of that. and i’m not saying that you’re wrong, or that i couldn’t look this up. what i AM saying is that i need some sources bc i can’t just take word of mouth as fact, and that i am really just not in the headspace to be doing that research. i’m out of spoons today, and even if i wasn’t i don’t have the time or energy to dig through hours of videos or tweets to find this stuff. if you have it on hand and wanna send to me, sure, go for it. just...please don’t send me stuff like this without at least a link or the specific name of a video i can reference.

for transparency, i still think those videos i linked on death of the author have good points and are unrelated to the issues you listed, so i’m going to keep them up for now. if it comes to my knowledge that lindsay ellis is concretely a terrible person i’ll consider unlinking them.

[themiscyra1983]

The Elephant In The Room

Let me preface all this by saying I do not have time for assholes. If you come at me with insults and contempt, I will block you.

The other day on Twitter I said the Harry Potter books aren’t good. I said this to a friend but I guess some people just keep an eye out for whatever Harry Potter shit pops up on Twitter and/or the algorithm just likes to spit in people’s eyes because hoooo boy people saw and lost their minds. I blocked two people over it because they decided to be assholes, and had a somewhat terse conversation with someone who was more politely insistent before going, finally, “I’m glad you find joy in something I no longer care for” and putting an end to the conversation.

It’s no particular secret that I’m in the fandom, and prior to J.K. Rowling going full, ‘no plausible deniability here’ transphobe, I’d bought my share of official merch. Frankly I should have stopped that sooner, but it took getting figuratively slapped in the face multiple times before I finally admitted Rowling’s ignorance carried a distinct air of willfulness and malice. Anyway I still HAVE the stuff I bought before, the Ravenclaw crap, the wands I was collecting (no more of that, I fear, though I’d hoped to pick up Tonks and Ginny’s wands at least before I brought an end to it), the Ravenclaw goblet I was gifted from a friend who bought it before JKR passed the plausibly just clueless horizon. There is still much in the world that I love, but much of that love comes now from the creations of others, and I cannot in good conscience spend money in ways that directly benefit Rowling’s financial empire.

And the Harry Potter books are not, in my view, good books. I’ve felt that for a while now. I’ll go a step further: I think they’re dangerous stories to tell children; I think I would be uncomfortable reading them to any children I might have. They are not stories that should be viewed without a critical eye. I loved them as a teenager. I’ve grown more uncomfortable with them - and, as with Twilight, far more comfortable with how critically thinking fans have transformed the work - as time has passed.

This actually has very little to do with the fact that, well...Rowling is not the best writer. Listen. I’m a Power Rangers fan. I’ve watched every incarnation of Star Trek, and every single movie. I have no problem with trashy fiction. You will find me rooting around in the garbage with the finest raccoons. But that is part of it, yes; there are flaws in the craft of it, and I don’t feel that, inherently, we needn’t judge children’s fiction by adult standards. I would argue that the very BEST children’s fiction is also excellent by adult standards. But this is the least of my concerns.

Here are my actual concerns.

Rowling wants credit for declaring Dumbledore gay after the fact, for saying Hogwarts is a safe space for all students in ways not reinforced (and in fact actively contradicted) by the text, for cheering the fan-created same-sex marriage of Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnegan, but she doesn’t want to take the creative risks that go along with that. When she had the opportunity, with the Fantastic Beasts movies, to make that subtext text, she and her cronies outright declined it. At every opportunity she has shied away from actually putting her high-minded ideas to the page. This is a cowardly choice at best.

Further, Dumbledore’s only canonical love interest (and it is not clear whether the love was requited) was a pretty fascist with whom he fell in, politically, for a time. I get it, we’ve all had crushes on terrible people. But this is literally his one and only love, requited or not, and after he defeats Grindelwald he is left to pine away for the remainder of his days. The one gay love story in the books - if you tilt your head, and squint, and accept Rowling’s word for it - is a tragic one that leaves one man in prison and another celibate and alone and, increasingly, a manipulative bastard who upholds the status quo.

There’s nothing wrong with a tragic love story. I’ve enjoyed quite a few. But when this - THIS - is what you hold up as a triumph of representation, in the absence of ANYTHING else...no. No cookies for you.

Let’s also talk about how I don’t feel Rowling wrote Dumbledore or approaches him with a critical eye. There is NO excuse for leaving a child in an abusive home. No, fuck your blood wards. You’re telling me that Albus Dumbledore - ALBUS DUMBLEDORE - could not devise protections better than leaving Harry with abusive relatives who despised him and everything he stood for? Then, too, when Dumbledore did intervene in Harry’s life, he did so with full knowledge that he was setting Harry up to be a sacrificial lamb, AND WITH THIS SPECIFIC END IN MIND. None of this is acceptable. Dumbledore is a fucking manipulative, abusive bastard who uses people and throws them away, and the fact that it WORKED OUT for Harry does not absolve him of his crimes.

Moving on, and bear in mind I’m still getting my steam up on this whole rant: Seamus Finnegan. Seamus Finnegan is the one canonically, obviously Irish character in the books, named quite stereotypically, but more importantly, in the books and movies, is shown to be interested in (a) liquor and (b) making things explode. He’s REALLY GOOD at making things explode. Do I need to explain why it’s problematic for the one Irish character to blow things up all the time? He also does this in defense of UK wizardry’s status quo, so, you know, even if you were all IRISH FREEDOM FIGHTER YEAH, I assure you he is not that guy.

There is an entire species of sapient magical creatures who exist solely to serve witches and wizards. Hogwarts is run on slave labor and most of the finest wizard families hold slaves. But it’s all right! Only one of them has ever, in the context of the books, wished to be emancipated, and everyone else views Dobby as a weirdo for wishing to be free, and paid for his labor. Dobby, incidentally, later lays down his life for the wizarding savior who tricked his master into freeing him. The only other emancipated house elf we see in the books, Winky, spends her time in a state of drunken depression, rendering her useless and scarcely capable even of caring for herself. She wished to remain enslaved, do you see, and was helpless without the benevolent guidance of her master.

There’s fan work that has tried to address this by exploring a mystically symbiotic relationship between house elves and wizards and witches, and yes, yes, J.K. Rowling is drawing on European folklore here, but let’s not give her credit, okay?

Goblins. Goblins! Goblins have a long history of being antisemitic stereotypes to begin with (hence why I have seen multiple Jews on Tumblr push back HARD on ‘goblincore’), but J.K. Rowling just...right. They’re short, ugly, have hooked noses, generally look like antisemitic cartoon figures. They are locked out of power but control all the wizarding world’s banking, and do so in very usurious ways, for example charging wizards to hold their money, etc. Now this might be an interesting commentary on how Jews have historically been oppressed and forced into fields that goyim felt themselves too ‘pure’ to work in, were it not for the fact that Rowling’s fantasy Jews LITERALLY AREN’T HUMAN, and more, ARE ACTUALLY GREEDY, CONNIVING, AND WILLING TO BETRAY YOU AGAINST THEIR OWN SELF-INTEREST FOR PERSONAL GAIN. FUCKING GOBLINS, MAN.

Then there’s the travesty of Magic in North America, which disrespected the intelligence of Native Americans (none of them figured out you could point a stick at something to make the magic go until white people showed up to help, apparently, but don’t worry, they’re really CLOSE TO NATURE and GOOD AT NATURAL MAGIC), disrespected the beliefs of specific peoples (no, skinwalkers aren’t just misunderstood shapechanging wizards and witches smeared by the greedy and ignorant, you’re whitesplaining actual mythology to the people who hold it sacred), made the ONE wizarding school in America white with an appropriated Native veneer, and generally just...Did Not Get America. As bad as the UK Wizarding World is, Rowling demonstrated complete IGNORANCE regarding the long history of what we now call North America, ignorance of even modern American culture (there’s a reason why American fans particularly tend to ignore the idea that wizardry is locked down tight behind a wall of secrecy here), ignorance and disrespect toward Native populations, and an unwillingness to do the research necessary to do this shit right.

There’s more. There’s blood purity, and gender politics, and Severus Snape’s portrayal, and all kinds of shit that grates, and I’m just tired.

Writers make mistakes. it happens. But Rowling does not recognize her mistakes. She does not seek to make amends. She just barrels on with her shitty opinions, regardless of who she hurts.

it is at the point where I am no longer even willing to thank her for graciously allowing us to play in her sandbox. We don’t need her blessing; the OTW has done far more for fanfic than she has. And it is, indeed, beginning to grate on me that people constantly try to apply Harry Potter metaphors to real life and real politics. As my friend Doc often says, find another book.

I love butterbeer (or at least the knockoffs available outside the Universal parks), I still read fanfic sometimes, I still like to play with ideas like the Harry Potter movies as performed by Muppets, with Dan Radcliffe as Snape and Tom Felton as Lucius. I’m glad the movies brought us a generation of actors, mentored by performers like Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith and so many others, who have gone on to bigger and better things. Much of my merch is packed away, but I still hold on to some of it because it has new meaning for me in light of fanwork, or because (in the case of my Ravenclaw hat and scarf) it’s warm, winters here are cold, I don’t want to buy new shit, leave me alone.

I am accustomed to seeing fans turn trash into treasure. I’ve tried to do it myself. But I feel, quite strongly, that the original text in this case is trash. it is radioactive, stinky trash. You won’t persuade me otherwise, and I’m done apologizing for it. If Rowling wants me to respect her and her work again, she’ll have to earn it, but I’m very trans and she low-key hates my kind, so even if I weren’t a random reader I wouldn’t be holding my breath.

And I really, really need to emphasize to you all that it is okay if people don’t like a given work of fiction. It is okay if people HATE that piece of fiction. You don’t need to change the minds of everyone around you. You absolutely will not succeed in doing so. Please, I’m begging you, make peace with that - and please, I’m begging you, even if you like something, try to consider it critically.

[keyofjetwolf]

Elisabeth: Hate

Poking around at this one is a bit off-script, and I hope @iatheia won’t mind too terribly much that I’m being self-indulgent by going here. I think the sequence for “Hate” though is intensely well done, historically honest, and tonally vital to Rudolf’s character as we enter what is, essentially, his arc in the musical. It’s entirely missing from the Takarazuka version, and I think there’s a conversation to be had in its exclusion, and what responsibilities lie in an adaptation grounded in history. But that’s a conversation not for this post, so for now I’ll simply say that while I understand the Takarazuka version shying away from going here, I think it’s the strongest single example of hollowing itself out. When I was liveblogging it, and so lacking any other version knowledge to compare it to, I found Rudolf a paper thin character whose motivations I could never really wrap myself around. Now, having added the Essen version to my experience, OF COURSE I didn’t get him, I was never given the chance.

Which isn’t to say, of course, that the Takarazuka brought us nothing.

BECAUSE OH DID IT FRIENDS

For Essen Rudolf, however, we’re shown what he sees coming, we know what he knows will happen if he does nothing, and we do it all with the perspective of knowing he was absolutely correct. His struggle and eventual suicide becomes so much more sympathetic AND infuriating, complicating our feelings toward him and making him so more complicated in the process.

So yeah, let’s take a second for a little hate, shall we?

I really love how this is staged, I have to say first up. The chorus emerges from the mist on Rudolf’s repeating echo of “HATE!” They quickly consume the stage, and yet Franz Joseph doesn’t notice them, doesn’t hear, never sees. And that’s incredibly intentional. He doesn’t hurry off stage as this portion begins, he lingers, thoughtful on Rudolf’s words, then walks away, taking the full length of the stage, walking with purpose but very calmly. This serves to contrast in a really fantastic way with Rudolf at the end of the song, so keep this in mind as I’ll touch back on it in a bit.

There is, I have no doubt, a metric fuckton of historical significance and nuance here that I’m not getting. WIKIPEDIA CAN ONLY FILL IN SO MANY GAPS. World War I is a spotty and sketchy thing for most Americans. It’s a complicated clusterfuck that’s not so easily put into “good guys” versus “bad guys”. IT’S A LOT EASIER TO KNOW YOU’RE THE GOOD GUYS WHEN YOU’RE SHOOTING NAZIS. (Though let’s stand in awe of how that’s becoming a more controversial statement every day.) (WOW I’M DEPRESSING MYSELF OKAY BACK TO THE MUSICAL)

My mother and her side are all English, so I’d heard stories about WWI in ways that it impacted my family. I did a bit of reading, because sometimes I like to know things. And I’ve tried to refresh myself and build more knowledge after having watched the Takarazuka, so I’d have more context. But still, I feel I know basically fuck all, so I’m pretty sure lots of details will fly over me. There’s a lot to get here though, even in the broad strokes.

The space left by Franz Joseph as he exits the stage is quickly filled with demonstrators calling for a stronger leader. I SEE YOU MUSICAL. It quickly gets worse.

Hate and violence to those who aren’t with us and those who spread here we will chase off!

NATIONALISM IS A HELL OF A DRUG KIDS. If you aren’t INSERT COUNTRY HERE, GTFO, and  then it gets better!

With socialists and pacifists we won’t waste time anymore!

The Jewish writers and the Jewish women will be our ruin!

If you aren’t the right KIND of countryman, a “real” citizen with the “correct” thoughts and values, we’re coming for you, too. And what’s that? Ahh, the delicate fragrance of rampant antisemitism wafting on the breeze! I’M SURE THAT WON’T HAVE ANY PLAY IN FUTURE EUROPE.

I do think it’s interesting though, in like a desperately efficient and terrifying way, how they very specifically drill down that antisemitism to Jewish writers (the spread of ideas) and Jewish women (the spread of people). It encapsulates the utter blinding hatred of Jews so well that I both admire the writing skill and feel sick at the same time. Kudos? I guess??

The demonstration continues. The hate builds. More and more people join on-stage. The lighting gradually increases, the chanting grows louder. No longer whispers in the shadow, but heart-felt declarations made public.

It’s legitimizing. It’s spreading.

Now not just “demonstrators”, but government leaders, reporters informing the public, educators teaching the next generation. So that’s awesome!

Someone wanders through all this and wonders what’s going on. Lucheni joins him and answers, and I’ve spent a bit of time on why Lucheni, and why now. To this point, he’s been lingering on the fringes. As our guide and narrator, he’s outside of time, with the unique perspective of how all the pieces fit together. I think he’s coming in now as a critic, with his usual mix of irreverent anger, to very directly condemn what we see building. Which may seem like a no-brainer, but I’ll point out again how fucking relevant every second of this is to the world right now on this beautiful day in May 2019.

ANYWHO, the passerby wonders what’s going on. “A demonstration, signore,” Lucheni explains. “Nationalists, antisemites, supporters of Schönerer.”

(“Who’s Schönerer?” I innocently asked Wikipedia. “HITLER’S INSPIRATION.” Wikipedia replies.  “oh.”)

“Outrageous!” the passerby says, visibly startled by this news.

“The 20th century. It’s approaching!” And with this, Lucheni walks off-stage, paying no mind as the passerby is viciously beaten with his own cane by the demonstrators.

Those demonstrators once again swarm the stage, spitting at the beaten passerby and reiterating their core mantra: “Hate and violence to those who aren’t like us! And those that spread here, we will chase off!” Question them? Express the slightest hint of disagreement? Hate and violence!

More chilling, the demonstrators are no longer just a gathering of individuals. They’re beginning to march in formation, literally falling in step together.

They’re organizing.

Lucheni takes center stage again, but this time it’s just him. The demonstrators are still present, their voices responding to him from the darkness, but otherwise, he stands alone.

AND BRINGS ELISABETH BACK INTO IT

Again, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why the show uses Lucheni here and now. Setting aside my massive ignorance YET AGAIN, I’m not finding anything that indicates Lucheni was particularly antisemitic (the “problem” with Heinrich Heine? I’LL GIVE YOU ONE GUESS.). Lucheni may well have been, but, you know, in a low-key chill sort of way. By which I mean, his deal seems to have been first and foremost about anarchy, not antisemitism or racism. So why have Lucheni be this voice? Why this protest?

And my thought is that we’re dipping for the moment into the “real” Lucheni, rather than the version who’s been taking us on this journey. Or, perhaps another way to look at it is that he represents the growing anti-imperial anarchist movement of the time. He/They may not have specifically been antisemitic, but they were more than happy to wield antisemitism as a tool for their own ends. Fan those flames, and give zero shits about who gets burned.

I think this may be the strongest indictment of Lucheni/anarchists in the musical. Throughout, I feel it mostly comes down on the side of ... if not sympathy, exactly, then of understanding. Elisabeth is complicated, and so, too, would be the feelings about her, particularly for the common people who, as a group, both adore her and suffer at her whims. But Lucheni taking voice here, whatever his motivation, is siding with and inciting those who embody hate and violence, who we know will perpetrate unthinkable atrocities in that name of that hate. The musical doesn’t turn away from the culpability that Lucheni, and those like him, have in not just allowing this but enabling it, ENCOURAGING it.

His piece said, Lucheni runs off-stage, back into the shadows as the demonstration reaches fever pitch.

They march toward the front of the stage, furious but orderly, chaos but contained. The chanting continues, but the marching changes. It becomes a goose-step. There are elaborate hand gestures, and still they all move as one. Finally, it concludes as it must.

The lights slam up, then drop, leaving only one figure on stage.

Rudolf, alone. Not walking past all this like his father, but staring at it directly, unable to look away.

This is what Rudolf sees in their future. Not just the fall of the Hapsburgs, but house after house throughout Europe, the suffering of people in the wake of those conflicts and power vacuums, setting the world stage for even more horrors to come. He KNOWS it’s coming, he can hear it, and the burden of what to do about it falls squarely on his shoulders.

“Hate” is so crucial, I feel, to understanding Rudolf’s thoughts and actions to come in the musical. Without knowing what he sees (things which we know to be true), his motivations against his father make no sense, his longing for some kind of understanding and comfort from his mother make him seem emotionally undeveloped, his desperation lacks weight, and his suicide is reduced to a plot point for Elisabeth rather than the final surrender of hope that we could avoid the inevitable.

And it’s so well done! Really, the way the whole sequence just builds and builds, before abruptly cutting off at this evocative moment, leaving Rudolf its only witness. Just fantastic, I loved it.

IT TOOK ME LIKE A MONTH TO GET MY THOUGHTS TOGETHER TO WRITE THIS POST. One that wasn’t even requested, but again, I hope no one minds too terribly much that I took us down this detour. For as much as I carried on about it, it’s just under two minutes, and if you have those two minutes to spare, I would encourage you to put them here.

[wyattvsmusic]

Westside Gunn - 10 ALBUM REVIEW

Around this time year, Westside Gunn vowed that his Hitler Wears Hermes mixtape/album series would end with two albums billed as one album: Side A (Sincerely Adolf) and Side B, both of which were some of the best of the entire series, especially Side B which I think is the best. 8 (technically 9) albums in one album series is a rarely done and especially at this level where every single one is great and memorable. Fast forward to this year, Westside appeared to have pivoted to new projects such as the Peace “Fly” God album with Stove God Cooks and Estee Nack and his upcoming Michelle Records album that he’s been teasing forever. A lot of the song snippets from the Michelle Records rollout are songs that appear on his latest album, 10, which he cut off the HWH part because of all this Kanye bullshit. As a Jew, I never took offense to the HWH title as it is clearly a twist on The Devil Wears Prada, which likens Hitler to the devil which is not antisemitic and Westside has never even rapped about Hitler on any of these 10 albums so it’s quite different than the bullshit that Kanye has been saying. Regardless, I don’t mind that he decided to end it at 10 even though he technically skipped 9 even though HWH8 was two separate albums. The way I see it, it’s called 10 because it’s been ten years since the first HWH and there was never an iPhone 9. While I do love this album, it does start off kind of shaky. I haven’t written my thoughts about AA Rashid in my previous Westside Gunn reviews but the man who speaks on most Westside Gunn album intros really got to me on this album intro and not in a bad way but just a simply funny way because this man makes zero fucking sense when he talks and it’s hilarious. He sounds like what dumb people think smart people sound like when they use big words and have no idea what they mean. He said “Not to be overtly ostentatious or express large abundance of sophistry / I will add my true sentiment regarding this sound / And I will express to you that this is, this is the enlightenment.” I’m not mad at it because he sounds great, he makes me laugh, and he always talks over great production but I really had to say something about it here. The first actual song is the song Flygod Jr, which is produced by Westside’s son and it’s a trap beat which heavily deviates from the Griselda sound. I think Conway and Benny sound great over trap beats but it doesn’t really work on this song. I think the production is pretty weak and Westside’s flow isn’t that great, not to mention the Doe Boy feature is pretty mediocre. Though it’s a rough start, he comes right back with Super Kick Party over a filthy Conductor Williams beat. Like many Westside albums, 10 has a very impressive list of guest features who all show up to rap as WSG brings the best out of the rappers he gets on his songs. He’s got A$AP Rocky who sounds good over some smooth boom bap production. The song Peppas is an instant favorite as it features incredible verses from Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli, who rap over a beautiful yet grimy Conductor Williams beat who channels the No Fear Of Time sound. In my review of that album, I talked about how Talib really stepped it up in comparison to past albums and he really went in on Peppas. I loved the way he was rhyming and he had some killer bars like “Claimin' La Costra Nostra, we in love with the coca / They hit n****s with the R.I.C.O., AP comported in cola.” The song Science Class is another standout track as Westside recruits Busta Rhymes, Raekwon, and Ghostface Killah over a pretty awesome sample. All three sound amazing over the repeating “we used to be good friends a long time ago” loop.  In addition to Black Star, Westside Gunn gets another duo, Run The Jewels on the song Switches On Everything. El-P sets things off with a pretty awesome verse but Killer Mike took things to another level with an aggressive double-time flow over the drumless beat which brought even more excitement into the song. The only thing I didn’t like was the hook. Stove God Cooks, who is also on the song also flowed over the song in a way I’ve never heard him rap before. Stove God Cooks is featured on most tracks and has been all over the past 3 WSG releases too and has proven that he and Westside never miss when they link. He ended his verse with the killer line “Last shit I cooked would've got five Pyrexes in the Source.” I also loved on Shootouts In Soho when Stove casually sang “I can't answer the phone right now, I'm cookin' dope.” He also appears on the absolutely filthy BDP with features Rome Streetz, whose music I don’t love but he always comes through with a great verse. Both Stove God and Rome Streetz join Westside and many other Griselda members and affiliates for the 10-minute finale, Red Death. The beat is slow, menacing, and epic and works for every single rapper on the song. While everyone had a great verse, Benny set the bar very high and the only one to best him was Conway who finishes the song strong with his verse. Some verses are much better than others but Armani Caesar really came through. She doesn’t just stand out because she’s the only woman on the song but because she has a good rap voice, came with the right amount of aggression, her flow was great and she had some good bars. I loved her Top Boy reference in her verse. Jay Worthy’s verse was fine but he didn’t totally fit. I would’ve loved to hear Mach-Hommy and Boldy James on the song because they are on the label and they would’ve fit better. DJ Drama, who hosted the mixtape/album similar to HWH7 brought the correct energy to it and did a good job wrapping things up on Red Death and likening the HWH series to other iconic series. He said stuff like “We came Back to the Future to be the Terminators of the Matrix” and “No Mission is Impossible when you this Fast and Furious.” 10 is a very strong way to end the decade long annual series that propelled Westside Gunn to where he is now.

Fav Tracks: Peppas, BDP, Science Class, Switches On Everything, Red Death

[xtruss]

Jewish Americans are at a Turning Point With an “Illegal Regime of Zionist Cunts: Isra-Hell”

I felt alone as a Jew attending a Palestine solidarity rally in 2014. I don’t feel alone any more

— Arielle Angel | Guardian USA | May 22, 2021

On Nakba Day, 15 May, amid the outbreak of war in Israel/Palestine, I attended a rally in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from the new Israeli state in 1948, and to protest against the oppression of the Palestinian people in the land between the river and the sea. From the signs I saw as part of that crowd – “This Jew will not stand by” or “Another Jew for a Free Palestine” – and from monitoring my social media feeds, it was clear that there were thousands of Jews taking part in these protests in cities all over the country.

For me, the conspicuous presence of larger numbers of Jews – many, but not all of them young – at every major Nakba Day protest was significant. During the 2014 assault on Gaza, I ventured out to a Palestine solidarity rally in Columbus Circle in Manhattan by myself. An ardent Zionist until that point, my worldview had been profoundly shaken by the images in the papers – Palestinian children bombed to pieces on a beach; Israelis in the rattled buffer town of Sderot gathered on hilltops overlooking the Strip, cheering as the bombs fell.

I didn’t know a single person that might accompany me to such a protest. To go at all felt like a betrayal of everything I’d ever known and loved. And yet even stronger was my anguish at doing nothing. I felt alienated by the march itself, unprepared to face the righteous anger at the Israeli state from the perspective of its victims. My heart raced when chants broke out of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a popular protest slogan calling for equality in a single democratic state, which Jews have long been told amounts to their expulsion. I stayed another 30 minutes, then ducked into Central Park, collapsing on a bench in sobs. I’d never felt more alone.

I don’t feel alone any more. Though the years since 2014 have seen the growth of a small but committed Jewish anti-occupation movement, the last week and a half have brought an even larger circle of the community to a place of reckoning. We’ve seen Jewish politicians, celebrities, rabbinical students and others speak up loudly for Palestine. We’ve seen a powerful display of solidarity from Jewish Google employees, asking their company to sever ties with the IDF. At Jewish Currents, the leftwing magazine where I am now editor-in-chief, we asked for questions from readers struggling to understand the recent violence. We’ve been deluged.

These questions taken in aggregate paint a striking portrait of a community at a turning point. Though many queries aim to understand specific aspects of the recent round of violence – the circumstances surrounding the expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, for instance, or the affiliations of the Jewish revelers dancing ecstatically opposite a fire on the Temple Mount – many more are simply expressions of confusion, and a newfound willingness to confront it head on.

“These questions taken in aggregate paint a striking portrait of a community at a turning point”

“I know what’s happening is wrong, but does supporting Palestinian liberation mean supporting Hamas?” asks one reader. “How do I talk to my family about this?” asks another. There are people struggling with new terminology (“Is apartheid an accurate word for what is happening in Israel/Palestine? What about ethnic cleansing?”) and with the foundational events that shaped the current situation on the ground (“Was there really an expulsion of Palestinians in 1948?”). Though many of our Jewish readers are anxious about antisemitism and about Jewish safety in Israel, there are strong indications that they are beginning to separate these feelings from the moral reality on the ground. On the whole, their questions represent a genuine outpouring of curiosity and compassion about the plight of Palestinians.

What has changed? The Black Lives Matter movement can claim credit for helping masses of people understand the mechanisms of structural racism and oppression, and for consistently linking the Black struggle to the Palestinian one. White people, including white Jews, who spent last summer confronting their own complicity in anti-Blackness or their discomfort with the force of abolitionist demands like “defund the police”, are perhaps finding themselves prepared to face similar complicities and discomforts in relation to Palestinian liberation. Jewish groups in solidarity with Palestine like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow in the United States and Na’amod in the UK, some of which were formed following the 2014 assault on Gaza, have steadily moved the intra-communal conversation around Israel/Palestine, creating more space for Jews to speak their conscience without having to abandon their identities. These groups all enjoyed periods of growth during the Trump-era, when Donald Trump’s close relationship with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, heightened the contradictions for a largely liberal Jewish populace. Young Jews becoming politically conscious for the first time saw a powerful, rightwing Israel intent on entrenching a decades-long occupation – a story that contrasted sharply with the one many of their elders had told them.

It remains to be seen whether this new visibility of Jewish dissenters on Israel/Palestine will have a meaningful effect on conditions on the ground. Many Jewish communal institutions rely on mega-donors to keep the lights on, and many of those mega-donors are conservative – meaning that our institutions are not particularly responsive to constituent pressure. For another, much of the American support for Israel comes from evangelical Christian Zionists, who, despite stirrings of dissent in their own communities, remain wedded to an apocalyptic Second Coming predicated on a warlike Jewish state. In Israel/Palestine itself, the single most important factor in Palestinian liberation is unified Palestinian resistance, which has taken inspiring new forms this week.

But there’s no question that Jewish support for the status quo in Israel/Palestine provides a powerful justification for Israeli government support globally. More Jews speaking up against Israeli apartheid weakens that justification, leaving politicians, lobbyists and others to account for what their support is really about.

On Thursday, a ceasefire took hold between the Israeli government and Hamas, ending an 11-day engagement that has left 12 Israelis and 232 Palestinians dead. The announcement was a genuine relief, but it does not change the reality in Israel/Palestine, where Palestinians across the land live under various forms of Israeli subjugation – the crushing blockade in Gaza; the military occupation in the West Bank; and second-class status in East Jerusalem and within the Green Line. Just as 2014 produced new infrastructure in the Jewish community to encourage dissent, I am certain that this moment will prove pivotal in a changing Jewish American conversation about Israel/Palestine.

— Arielle Angel is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents

[usamyzonians]

Seven Years Ago

We’re coming up on what would have been  the seventh anniversary of me and Tal’s relationship, so I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

One thing I’ve figured out from talking about the smoldering wreckage of my former relationship with my therapist is....

I should have seen this coming.

It’s one of those things you don’t really think about in the heat of the moment, or even necessarily when you’re living with a pattern.  But I started talking about how I couldn’t understand how Tal suddenly became so chill about sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and it kind of smacked me in the facer.

When I met Tal, they were firmly identified as a woman.  They were strongly identified as an atheist.  The kind who complained about religion even when I didn’t think it was particularly relevant.  “I could never be in a relationship with a theist,” Tal would proclaim to me, who had been in several relationships with theists and didn’t care until they started saying things like “God hates....”

Then, they went strong into feminism and turned on atheism.  How dare they claim atheism is just a single position on a single issue? they would proclaim.  And it was and it is, and I was (and still am) an atheist, but I didn’t bother fighting this because it wasn’t really central to my identity.

Then they were a lesbian, but still definitely cis.  Or maybe bisexual, but definitely cis.  And they were outraged at the way feminists treated lesbians (and in a broader aspect, LGBT individuals).  Kind of ironic, because at this point, they were upset that their girlfriend (me) was being excluded.  Also, asexual at some point.  This was fine by me, because we weren’t really having sex anyway. I didn’t care.  And then there was the intersex thing.  At some point, it feels like you’re just co-opting literally every identity around you.

Then they were definitely trans, but maybe a guy, maybe not.  I don’t mind the identity shifts so much.  I get that not everyone has had so easy a time figuring out what they are as I am and so I’m sympathetic.  But with this came belligerence towards lesbians, because so many lesbians were trans-exclusive and OH MY GOD DON’T CALL ME A GIRL.

Then, of course,. Tal did an about-face here.  Not a girl, but girl-aligned.  Nan0girl.  Demi-girl.  So many different identities (most of which I had to read off their blog, because fuck telling your partner shit) that I eventually stopped tracking.

When the thing where Jewish slavery is okay and you’re an antisemite if you disagree, and Jewish sexism is okay and you’re an antisemite if you disagree and Jewish homophobia is okay and you’re an atnisemite if you disagree and Jewish transphobia is okay and you’re an antisemite if you disagree, it really should have been clear to me that Tal was just doing what they usually do: turning on their past beliefs to embrace their current beliefs.  I don’t know why they didn’t just dump me, either.  Not only did they (I say they, I kind of wonder if they’ve gone back to identifying as a woman yet) still not value enough to discuss things like kids with me (oh, they saved those discussions for Charlotte), but they didn’t value me enough as a person to even stop and understand why I might be uncomfortable when they and Charlotte started saying sexist things.

And. of course, the only reason their bisexual, transgender girlfriend would be horrified by any of this?  Antisemitism.  I’d be totally cool with this treatment if it came from Christians,. Muslims or atheists!

Especially since I’ve spent so much of my time railing against the bigoted little shits of the online atheist community.  And I still do.

Tal would start on one side of me on issues and end up on the other.  From the extreme that religion is poison!!!!!! to joining them.  From “fucking cishets” to “maybe transphobia is okay if we people do it.” From “no children ever!” to “when I have kids....” and in terms of gender identity I don’t think there’s a single position they didn’t hold, from totally cis to a transman.

It doesn’t stop with self-identity, either.  Dozens of life plans.  Doesn’t os fiscal plans.  Dozens of ways to make money.  Dozens of names, to the point I’m now paranoid about who’s following me because Tal’s got so many usernames from multiple genders I could never keep track.  I thought it was quirky.  I was okay with the fact that Tal would one day want togo back to school and the next day want to open up a business.  The more I look at it, though, the more it’s another piece of the puzzle.

I’m honestly used to being the more moderate partner.  There are very few lines that are absolutes for me, and Tal managed to cross pretty much all of them in one fell swoop.  My problem wasn’t that Tal had brought religion into our relationship--which they had talked about months before--but started as they and Charlotte became more emboldened and started saying things that made me more and more uncomfortable.  You know, things that hurt me as a transwoman who had thought they were safely in a relationship where those things at least would be respected.

But given my partner was a cis/trans/nonbinary gay/bi/ace/straight man/woman/neither antitheist/theist, maybe I shouldn’t have been.  To be honest, in the nearly seven years we’d been together, the only constant had been...well, me.  I took that for granted, that they would keep loving me. Maybe I shouldn’t have.  If everything else can change, maybe it was always a matter of time.

I didn’t even really speak up at first in part because I expected this, too, to pass.  Surely, Tal respected and loved me enough to follow my discomfort at reading and hearing sexist and homophobic things.  It was only when it looked like this one was going to stick that I freaked out.

And hey, maybe you’re better at this, reader.  Maybe when someone tells you you don’t matter, when an intimate partner is cool with your gender identity and sexuality being treated as inferior or worthy of scorn, you can just brush that off.

I can’t.

And part of the irony there is that Tal helped me get there.  I’d literally never had another partner who would respect me the way they used to.  Other partners would reuse to acknowledge I was trans or to call me by my name, and I dealt with that because that was just the way things were, right?  So when someone comes along and listens to my problems, acknowledges my gender, calls me by my name, and even ostensibly understands some of what I’m going through, that’s a pretty big deal.  It’s also something I can’t undo.  I’m done letting people treat me like a cishet dude, and I’m done putting up with sexism and transphobia because that’s just “the way things are.”  I’ve seen things can be better than that, and I’m not going to give it up.

The problem is, when those close to you knife you in the back, it becomes harder.  And it’s probably my fault for attaching so much value to the person instead of the idea, but when someone you care about deeply no longer views you as an equal human being worthy of respect and basic dignity, it’s easy to want to retreat.  This is how I ended up back in the closet around fifteen years ago: not because of a single person, but because things had become so horrible, so dangerous, that I had no hope.  And that’s how it feels now.

I don’t fall in love often.  Like, it’s been over 20 years since I’ve been in a relationship that hit me this hard.  Maybe another relationship, I would have walked away, but I was still head-over-heels in love with someone who apparently no longer loved or respected me.  And that really hurts, but mostly confuses me.  If I’m not worthy of respect as a human being, why keep me around?  If not wanting my gender identity or sexuality mocked makes me such a dirty antisemite, why bother with me at all?  Did they really think  it was okay to devalue me?  Were they hoping to convince me that being denigrated was okay when they did it?  I don’t understand, and that’s actually what cuts the most.

Because it is all in the timing and the placement of words//I can chase it, I can beat it, I know it’s absurd//but I just can’t face it, can’t face it, because all that we see...

Is a mass-

ive

Blur.

[petescholtes-blog-blog]

You send me: Why Minneapolis elected Ilhan Omar for this moment

(Mural by Mohammed "Aerosol" Ali in Birmingham, England, July 2019, painted in "solidarity" with her; photographed by the artist for BBC News.)

Why is my freshman congresswoman being "primaried" in the August 11 election, by a political newcomer who raised six times as much money between April and June, including half a million dollars from big donors favoring conservative policies toward Israel?

You probably already answered that question as near to your satisfaction as you can, if you live in the Fifth District of Minnesota and can vote, or mailed your ballot in anticipation of alleged presidentially-induced delays at the post office.

But if the suspicions raised by this race about either leading candidate remain, like piles of un-recycled mailers, I have a theory as to why: A politics based on the presumption of guilt came to town. It lost, or won, but affected us either way. Because suspicion poisons everything. Without the ability to really test the null hypothesis — the default truth that what you see is a coincidence — belief can be a light out of the darkness, a north star into a black hole, or the sparkle in the eye of a face at the bottom of a well.

So let's talk about what we know. As Rachel Cohen reports in Jewish Currents, the contest here for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nomination for Congress doesn't seem to be about actual policy differences between the candidates regarding Israel or the Palestinians. Omar and her lead challenger, Antone Melton-Meaux, have the same position on the Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS) movement, for example, which is really more of a BD movement at this point. Both candidates defend the right to boycott, as Omar did last year with a resolution co-sponsored by John Lewis, a right most federal courts have also upheld, overturning recent anti-BDS laws in three states (though not Minnesota, where Omar argued against the law that passed). Both candidates also oppose BDS strategies, reasoning that they're counterproductive to encouraging negotiations toward a two-state solution. To the same end, they join most Americans in opposing Israel's plan to annex much of the West Bank, though Omar would condition aid against it, and Melton-Meaux would not.

Beyond that consensus, Omar has expressed approval of BDS itself, via a single text message from a campaign aid to the website Muslim Girl in 2018, stating that Omar "supports" the "movement." That message, along with her refusal (on expressly articulated principle) to join the House in condemning BDS, gave reporters license to call her and Lewis's resolution "pro-BDS," and Omar the "face of the movement." On the same narrow basis, Melton-Meaux claimed in April that the congresswoman "supports sanctions on Israel."

People are what they do, and I'm not here to attack Melton-Meaux, who seems to have done good things before writing that astoundingly disingenuous op-ed. But his campaign is about Omar, not him, or rather about someone who isn't really Omar at all, which is the problem. Omar never called for sanctions against Israel or any other country. To the contrary, she has consistently and vocally opposed sanctions, sometimes to a political fault: Her "present" vote on the Armenian genocide was a stand against sanctions on Turkey. Her argument in every case is that sanctions harm people, not governments — which appears to be right, to take the example of Iran. Even her bill to sanction Brunei, for stoning people to death for being LGBTQ, targets the travel and assets of officials, not civilians.

Whatever you think of that position, it's integral with Omar's opposition to arbitrary force or punitive retribution of any kind. She's called for an end to the "cycle of violence" everywhere, whether from undeclared war, terrorism, riots, repression, or criminal justice that metes out more harm, as she sees it. Nine months after being smeared as a coddler of terrorists for writing a judge to ask for leniency in the sentencing of a young man who had not yet taken up arms with Isis, Omar did the same for the middle-aged man convicted of threatening her life. In both cases she asked for a "restorative" approach that would help the person repair himself, not just the community.

With similar trueness, after she and Lewis introduced their "right to participate in boycotts" resolution, Omar spoke of "support" only for "efforts to end the [Israeli] occupation and achieve [a] two-state solution," and argued against condemning BDS on the grounds that "if we are going to condemn violent means of resisting the occupation, we cannot also condemn nonviolent means."

A Somali-born refugee and the first Muslim to wear an hijab in Congress, Omar may recognize better than most how essentialist judgments can thwart a person's autonomy. That she became the media "face" of BDS, while her identically-voting white colleagues of Christian or Jewish heritage did not, is one of many such ironies not lost on her, I imagine. But acting as if some double standards are too contemptible to dignify with an answer, or even an acknowledgment, seems to be part of her armor against them.

(Hugging John Lewis in 2018, in an uncredited photograph posted by the congresswoman this year on his 80th birthday.)

Of all the falsehoods sent sailing like stones at Omar, none bothers me more than the idea that the personal attacks against her didn't happen — that a massive, dangerous smear campaign was just "Twitter fights" with the president, or criticism of her "record." The torrent of Omar fictions began in August of 2018, a week after her primary win, and by July 2019 reached a crescendo of six fake stories per month debunked by Snopes. In the first month of her term, she was accused of defending Isis, based on that letter to a judge, a claim pandering to "sharia" conspiracists like her would-be assassin. In February came unfounded and increasingly dishonest charges of antisemitism, based on Omar's seemingly unwitting use of two antisemitic tropes (hypnotism and money), for which she apologized unequivocally, followed by a third one (dual loyalty), for which she did not, by that point apparently not wishing to enable those seizing on her words to keep changing the subject from what she'd been talking about: the Palestinians, and how any discussion of their treatment is policed out of existence. This time, the charges against her pandered to Christian evangelicals, with the apparent hopeful side-goal of alienating some Jewish voters from her or her party's base. But the criticism of her words was roundly picked up by Democrats, whom Omar joined in the House to vote for a resolution condemning antisemitic language. Only Republicans voted against it.

Then came the video in April shared by the president of the United States, a montage of Omar and 9/11 that aimed far beyond the earlier audiences, this time to falsely link the congresswoman with the worst attack on U.S. soil in history. If the videographer thought Democrats wouldn't defend her, they were wrong. But death threats against Omar increased. April also brought a disinformation campaign about Omar and U.S. and Somali casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu, this time aimed at veterans, whose benefits the congresswoman has consistently voted to keep and expand.

In July came the apotheosis: the president's serial fabrications about Omar on camera and at rallies. He riffed on much of the above, but added the lie that she had expressed "love" for al-Qaeda, that she said al-Qaeda made her "proud," an appalling implicit incitement to violence that Republican leaders mostly played along with. It was, I wrote at the time, "the break with reality that a more fundamental break with humanity requires," in a month of detention center atrocity stories in the news, and with growing numbers of young Jewish activists arrested in front of ICE offices across the country chanting "Never again is now," including here. Trumpists were plugging their ears and going "na-na-na-na-na-na-na" to all this. Which was scary, because a reality war could go anywhere — and that's exactly what it did. The president’s tweet of a video with a September 13 timestamp claiming to show Omar celebrating 9/11 was the same basic impulse that would kill 150,000 Americans in a viral pandemic due to denial, inaction, and corruption.

The warning of a year ago also came after the Poway synagogue shooting in April, which brought home, as Omar and Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky were early to note, how much antisemitism and Islamophobia had merged on the extremist right. Muslims and Jews had already been grappling with their entangled oppressions for years, partnering on issues like gun violence, as a local group of women did here starting in 2016. Particularly in the wake of the El Paso shooting, the ongoing lying about Omar's immigrant community had a uniting effect outside the president's cult.

(Volunteers sweeping and painting names at the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis, June 12, 2020; photographed by me with the subjects' permission.)

None of those lies will wash here, where the George Floyd street memorial is a garden of flowers and art six miles north from the Bloomington mosque that was bombed three years ago, in the neighboring Congressional Third District. Contrary to Islamophobic fantasy, the Fifth is 63% white, with an active Jewish left and center, of which many are also on record in support of Omar, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Given the math of her 2018 landslide, Omar could have won her seat without a single Somali American vote. Her current campaign's internal polling shows an approval rating of 74%.

To supporters I know across demographic categories, Omar is someone there for everyone — and a threat exactly because she challenges leaders who aren't. Like the largest protest movement in American history, which began in her district on May 25 — she puts the moral dilemma of American exclusion, of all exclusion, at the center of politics. Her "radical love" is the inverse of John Lewis's "good trouble," because left humanists have a parent's love of country, not a child's. They hold the world to something better. A month ago, Omar called on reporters to ask state and U.S. senators who were blocking meaningful police reform these questions: "How come you are not listening to the cries of the mothers and the fathers in our communities? How come you are not listening to the people who are telling you that we don't feel like our lives matter equally in this country?'"

I have never seen a U.S. representative host so many town hall meetings on issues important to her poorest and least powerful constituents — two events per month, from one spring to the next. At one, on Black mental health, I watched an audience member literally seek help for herself and her family from the experts onstage. Observing such events, New Hope city councilman Cedrick Frazier wrote that at every meeting with Omar he saw, she "stayed long after the event ended to talk with and answer questions from the people in attendance."

She has also consistently shown up at important protests, not necessarily to speak, but just to be there, as when she went unrecognized in her mask and headscarf at the first, overwhelmingly nonviolent George Floyd protests. She meets regularly with important local activist groups, like MN350 and MIRAC, whose memberships spiked last summer. That increase, beyond our physical proximity to Floyd's life and death, suggests why the movement and unrest happened here as it did. Fifth District residents who took to the streets in response to his killing — (again) overwhelmingly with nonviolence, often numbering in the tens of thousands, and protesting every weekend day for six weeks after the last fires from three nights of riots were out — built on already record-high levels of left activism and organization before the pandemic: for immigrant rights, the climate, and Black lives. It was protesters — medics but also ordinary participants — who used their bodies to shield and rescue all but two souls in the uprising.

This outcome reflected a culture as well as an infrastructure, and it touches everyone. Omar's teenage daughter, Isra Hirsi, helped lead the U.S. chapter and St. Paul march of the global Youth Climate Strike on September 20 — one of the largest international protests before the Floyd marches. Young MN350 volunteers poured into presidential primary campaigns, especially for Omar's friend Bernie Sanders, whose local appeal to voters was headquartered out of her own campaign office. MIRAC's Mari Mansfield painted the long list of names on the street at the George Floyd memorial on 38th and Chicago, of unarmed people of color killed by police. "It's all civil disobedience now," she said, when I lamented missing a MIRAC training on it before the pandemic. The Black Lives Matter protests in every corner of Minnesota will have similar ripple effects going forward.

Omar herself turned her office into a food distribution center after the unrest, and raised hundred of thousands of dollars for local organizations seeking to transform policing. “I saw Ilhan in the streets nearly every single day," wrote Minneapolis city council vice president Andrea Jenkins. “Unbeknown to most of us at the time, Ilhan’s father was in the hospital with COVID-19.” Nur Omar Mohamed’s death was announced on June 16.

(”Close the camps” protesters blocking traffic outside the ICE office at Fort Snelling on July 30, 2019; Youth climate strikers in St. Paul, September 20, 2019; both photographed by me.)

My point is not that Omar is a leader for this moment, but that this moment already elected her two years ago. The congresswoman speaks to both left and humanist values because both of those things are resurgent in mirror opposition to Trump. Like so many of her constituents, but also American leftists more generally, she draws no distinction between appealing to the best in everyone and defending like a sister those left out of that "everyone." "We need to jettison the zero-sum idea that one person's gain is another's loss," she wrote in the Washington Post earlier last month. "I want your gain to be my gain; your loss to be mine, too."

At her police reform press conference, with the Minnesota Legislature's People of Color and Indigenous Caucus, Omar set off another extremist conservative firestorm when she announced that, "We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system. We are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in healthcare, in employment, in the air we breathe." But that statement is threatening only if you believe, as some Americans apparently do, that "systems of oppression" benefit you.

In her first 19 months in the 116th U.S. Congress, Omar introduced 39 bills, four of which have passed, all amendments. She also succeeded in getting her MEALS Act — providing kids school lunches regardless of whether schools are open in the pandemic — included as part of the CARES Act. You can read the other 34 bills and judge for yourself if there's a wasted effort among them. (She's made a case for each, which is for you to weigh.) But there's something self-fulfilling about claiming a lawmaker doesn't get anything done when you're blocking or ignoring their legislation. Much as the burden of proof is always on the accuser — because you can't prove a negative — I'll leave it to Omar's opponents to make the argument that any of these laws would be bad for the United States: that, no, we should not eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, keep corporations convicted of fraud out of politics, cancel student debt, award grants to zero-waste projects, stop stigmatizing kids unable to pay for school meals, make school lunches free, cut off military aid to human rights abusers, or join the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Similarly, in a pandemic, I'll let them explain why we should not aid small businesses, cancel rent and mortgages, cancel school lunch debt, or move food stamps fully online.

Omar co-sponsored 601 other pieces of legislation, 72 of which passed the House, nine the Senate, and seven into law by the grace of the president's signature. Those dramatically dwindling numbers suggest a political problem that is not Ilhan Omar. She has addressed that problem, whether you agree or disagree with her, by endorsing progressive candidates nationwide, including here in her own district, where she campaigned for Richfield mayor Maria Regan Gonzalez and Crystal city councilperson Brendan Banks. She's also built her Democratic coalition. After the censure from Democrats and the president's attacks on her last year, she made a public show of unity with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has now endorsed her.

Omar is not the Mother of Dragons some imagine. She's just been through the worst fires of war and politics, and has come out the other side a congresswoman from Minneapolis. Most likely, that's what she'll remain next term.

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The Truth About Islam

I hated history when I was a little girl but today I appreciate it. Now I understand why they say those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In order to understand why the Islamic world is entirely different and in many ways incompatible with Western civilizations, at least until they are ready to reform as all other religions have done, you need to understand the history of Islam. By understanding its history, you will better understand the current crisis and events happening in the world today.

When Muhammad supposedly revealed his revelation from the angel Gabriel that he was supposed to be the last of the Prophets in the early six hundreds, he started preaching his claim in his own city of Mecca, he tried to recruit friends and followers so they could help spread his newly formed religion. He tried for 12 years and failed. After 12 years he was only able to recruit his immediate family and friends, so he decided to go to Medina, which was the Jewish hub of Arabia. He figured if he went there and preached his religion to them, they would accept him and that would buy him respect and stature and his religion would be accepted too.

In order for his religion to interest the Jews, Muhammad started borrowing a lot from the Old Testament to make his religion more palatable to them. This is why you see a lot of similarities between Judaism and Islam. For example, Jews don’t eat pigs so Muslims don’t eat pigs, Jews practice Kosher so Muslims practice Halal, Jews pray several times a day so Muslims pray several times a day, Jews fast on Yom Kippur so Muslims fast on Ramadan. He made things up as he went to attract the Jews.

This is also why there are a lot of good scriptures at the beginning of the Quran, when Muhammad was saying all the good things about the people of the book and talking about how similar they are, he was trying to recruit the Jews and make it easy for them to convert. Except the Jews still refused to accept him and follow him so this is when he turned against them, he started killing them and started expelling them. This is the moment Islam went from a spiritual movement to a political movement disguised as a religion, this transition into vengeful, violent jihadism is clear as the Quran goes on.

Muhammad quickly became a military warlord and declared war on the Jews that refused to accept him. Jews and Christians became Dhimmi, second class citizens, and they were only allowed to be kept alive by paying the Jizya, a tax paid to Muslims. So Jews and Christians had a choice: convert to Islam, pay to be kept alive or be killed. Jews and Christians weren’t allowed to blow the Shofar or ring church bells, they could not pray publicly or too loudly, they could not gather together or build new churches or new temples. They were humiliated, often having rocks thrown at them by children and to pay their Jizya they would be forced to kneel during ceremonies and hand over their goods to the Mullah.

In many areas, Jews and Christians were given necklaces to wear as a receipt for their Jizya. They were considered Najis under Islam, equivalent to bodily fluid or garbage, something so dirty and disposable. If a Jew walked on the same side of the street as a Muslim, the Jew had to cross to the other side so the Muslim would not feel dirty by the filth of the Jew. Today it continues, none of us infidels can step foot in Mecca because as far as they're concerned, we are still Najis under Islam, equivalent to dirt or garbage. It’s also why sixteen Muslim countries ban Jews from entering their borders (but hey let’s all close our eyes again and call Donald Trump a bigot and antisemite.)

As Islam continued to grow, the more Jews and Christians were forced to submit and become Dhimmi. Jews and Christians were given identifiable clothing to wear, the yellow star which most people think is a German invention was actually an Islamic invention in the ninth century, it marked Jews and Christians with a badge of shame. Furthermore, the infidels each were forced to hang a piece of lead around their neck with the word Dhimmi on it and the infidel women were forced to wear one red and one black shoe and wear a bell around their necks like cows.

Islam continued to grow as more people became fearful they too would suffer if they did not submit to Muhammad and convert. The Muslims went all the way to Jerusalem, they conquered it and claimed it as their own, either killing, converting or enslaving the local Christians. The Pope in Rome asked his men how they could they sit idly by and allow their brethren to suffer in the Holy Land. He pleaded for them to go liberate the Christians, to go save the Christians, that's why the Crusaders were launched. The Crusaders were able to liberate Jerusalem before Saladin took it back and Jerusalem remained under Islamic control until 1967 when it was freed by the State of Israel.

The Crusaders continued fighting Islam and for 300 years they tried and failed. By the 1300s the Crusaders disappeared because they could not win against Islam, leaving Islam to continue their expansion. They went all the way to Central Europe, they went all the way to China, they went to India, they conquered Spain and as they conquered more nations, more people were forced to pay the Jizya and were forced into slavery. This is how the Islamic Empire became so dominant. They were preparing to overtake the rest of the nations and wipe out Christianity altogether until they were stopped at the gates of Vienna and they were pushed out in defeat.

By the 1600s, Islam had covered more of the Earth's surface than the Roman Empire did at its peak. Between the 1600s and the 1800s, the Europeans were experiencing their industrial revolution where they were able to invent products on factory lines and they were able to sell products which gave them the money to build a strong army in order to fight the Muslims. That's the only way they were able to stop them in Vienna. The Europeans started the pushback against Islam, they pushed them out of Europe and pushed them all the way to the Middle East and North Africa. By 1924 the Islamic Empire ended.

It ended in Turkey by President Ataturk who was a secularist. He ended the Islamic Empire and he gave women a right to an education, the right to work, a right to choose a husband, he stopped making women wear the hijab and Muslims hated him so much that they considered him a Jewish agent. By the time the Islamic Empire or the Islamic State had ended in 1924, they had existed for fourteen hundred years and it ended less than 100 years ago. This is why Islam still appears to linger in the stone ages by modern Western standards, the world’s biggest and most brutal empire driven by this ideology has only just ended when put into perspective. We look back in history and condemn every single empire or supremacy movement but the moment we reach Islam, we close our eyes and convince ourselves that none of that really happened, Islam is the religion of peace.

We have failed to educate our students about history, we have failed to educate our population about history. Take any 17 or 18 year old kid and ask them about World War II and most won’t be able to tell you what happened while we still have over half a million of our American World War II veterans walking around, and it’s these same kids who demand with such conviction for us to believe that Islam is the religion of peace, that there is no link or history of violence, death, supremacy or oppression? They wonder why they are called gullible idiots.

When the Islamic Caliphate ended in 1924, the people thought the Caliphate will never be resurrected, it will never come back. But two things happened in the Middle East in the last century that made the Islamists be able to resurrect it. The first was the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia and the second was Ayatollah Khomeini coming to power in 1979. This gave the Islamists the money and also the spiritual covering in order to explode back onto the world stage. This is where we welcome modern day terrorists, better known as Islamic traditionalists. These modern terror groups are not a different sect of Islam, they haven’t perverted the scriptures, they follow the authentic preachings of Muhammad, exactly the way Muhammad lived and practiced his religion. They brought back the Islamic State long before the West went to war after 9/11.

ISIS is not a new invention. All they have done is simply resurrected the Caliphate that ended less than a hundred years ago and they are trying to finish what Muhammad and the Islamic Empire started and almost finished. Except we are too naive and scared to offend to understand why the Islamic State are doing what they are doing and why they are succeeding. We are quick to ask the question, “What would drive someone to do this?” but then the very answer is shot down and dismissed and we instead choose to just sing John Lennon covers in blissful ignorance. The concerted efforts to dismiss it as “just a few random nutjobs that have nothing to do with Islam” is exactly why we remain as weak, naive and vulnerable to Islamic terrorism as we are today.

There are two things you need to understand about Islam and the principles of war in Islam. One is the law of Taqiyya, which means lying and deception is allowed to gain the trust of non-believers. A Muslim man can lay his hand on the Quran and swear that he is telling the truth, knowing that he is lying but also knowing that the Quran will forgive him because he is advancing the cause of Islam.

The second is the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, which is an Islamic principle of war and a model on how to deceive the enemy when you call for peace. It is based on when Muhammad was attacking the Meccans. He attacked them, he robbed them and spread the goodies among his men, this is how he was able to recruit. Though he realized he didn’t have enough men yet to defeat the Meccans so he signed a ten-year peace treaty with them. He said he will not attack them, he will have peace with them, he will not declare war on them. Muhammad used this treaty for two years to silently build his military, to strengthen his army and when he realized he was strong enough to attack his enemies, he waged war when they least expected, they thought they had a peace treaty with him and Mecca fell within 24 hours.

This became a principle of war in Islam that has continued on through the ages. Iran is a perfect example of how it’s been practiced in recent times. Yasser Arafat met with the Israelis and signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, it was all over the news, the handshaking on the lawn of the White House, Bill Clinton proudly congratulating, Arafat was even handed the Noble Peace Prize.

When the Egyptian press would interview Yasser Arafat and asked him how could he sign a peace treaty with the devil, how could he sign a peace treaty with the Jews, Arafat would tell them to remember Hudaybiyyah. That's all he would have to say and of course the whole Muslim world knew exactly what that meant but everyone in the West and all the Jews in Israel, it went over their heads, nobody understood what he was referring to. The peace treaty was used to make Israel give him his territory, to finance his military, to train his police and give his police the weapons. Like Muhammad, they later broke the peace treaty once they had the power and declared the Second Intifada in 2000. This is the type of deception that we are dealing with still today. They are using us as useful idiots.

Everything terrorists are doing today, is no different to what Muhammad and the Islamic Empire did for over a thousand years. Tell me one thing that terrorists do today that is unIslamic or isn’t in Islamic scriptures. In the Quran, it promises paradise to those Muslims who kill for Allah and condemns those Muslims who do not engage in fighting (4:95) and (9:38-39) It calls for you to kill even if you don’t like it as it’s what Allah has prescribed to Muslims and he knows what’s best for them (2:216) It calls to “cast terror into the hearts of non-believers” (3:151) - sound familiar? Those who reject their faith will be punished with terrible agony (3:56) It tells to cut the hands and the feet off anyone who attacks Allah (5:33)

It calls to behead and cut the fingers and toes off non-believers (8:12) and another call to tie up and behead non-believers, though you must first try get ransom money from them or convert them to Islam to avoid hell (47:3-4) - sound familiar? And calls for his followers to never stop fighting the non-believers until everyone worships Allah - sound familar? It warns that Islam will be offered to people in towns they wish to destroy, if they refuse then there will be “utter destruction.” (17:16) - sound familiar? Remember when Osama Bin Laden sent a letter to America offering them to submit to his demands or face total destruction just before 9/11? He didn’t just come up with this out of nowhere. It also demands to cut the hands off thieves (5:38) and to lash a man or woman one hundred times if they commit wrongful sexual intercourse (24:2)

Muhammad permits children and women being exposed to terrorism as they are the children of the enemy (52:256) Muhammad says, “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him" (52:177) Mummamad gloats, “I have been made victorious with terror!” (52:220) Muhammad says: “I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (1:33) Muhammad says, “I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: “None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.” (8:387)

Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 990 decalres “Cutting off someone’s head while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ is a tradition of Islam that began with Muhammad.” Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 992 says Muhammad would instruct his military to "Fight everyone in the way of Allah and kill those who disbelieve in Allah” before each one of their raids. Tabari 7:97 talks about Muhammad declaring to,“Kill any Jew who falls under your power.” He instructs to strike a disobedient wife (4:34), he took a 6 year old little girl away from her family to marry her and use her for sex (8:3309), he speaks of it being mostly women in hell as they are disobedient, they are worth only half that of a man, that they are unintelligent and they cannot be efficiently religious as they have periods and their presence makes a prayer invalid (6:301) and he passes around captured female slaves to his men (Tabari VIII:117). Where did we get the idea that this is a man of peace and a religion of peace? Oh I know, to say otherwise is blasphemy and you can be killed or arrested. This is how Islam worked then and it’s how it works today.

The problem we have is deliberately keeping ourselves ignorant to what is happening, to what today’s Islamist groups are trying to do, they are reviving Muhammad’s Caliphate and are hellbent on finishing off his plan. They tell us this over and over, they make it clear attack after attack, yet we still close our eyes and pretend like it has nothing to do with Islam. It’s authentic Islam and it’s not just 0.0001% of Muslims who share their views.

Only 57% of Muslims worldwide disapprove of al-Qaeda. Only 51% disapprove of the Taliban. 81% of Muslims on Al Jazeera approved of regional conquests by ISIS. 2 in 3 Muslims in Britain would not report a terror plot to police. 40% of British Muslims want British law replaced with Sharia law. 1 in 4 British Muslims say 7/7 bombings were justified, 12% of young Muslims in Britain believe that suicide attacks against civilians in Britain can be justified. 1 in 4 support suicide attacks against British troops. 36% of young British Muslims believe that those converting to another religion should be executed.

78% of British Muslims support punishing the publishers of Muhammad cartoons, 24% of Muslim-Americans say that violence is justified against those who "offend Islam", extreme Islamists comprise 9% of Britain's Muslim population, another 29% would "aggressively defend" Islam. 11% of British Muslims find violence for religious or political ends acceptable. 51% of mosques in the U.S. have texts on site rated as severely advocating violence, 80% of young Dutch Muslims see nothing wrong with Holy War against non-believers. Most verbalized support for pro-Islamic State fighters. 28% of British Muslims want Britain to be an Islamic state, 68% of British Muslims support the arrest and prosecution of anyone who insults Islam, 62% of Muslims want Sharia in Canada (15% say make it mandatory).

82% of Egyptian Muslims favor stoning adulterers, 70% of Jordanian Muslims favor stoning adulterers, 77% of Egyptian Muslims favor floggings and amputation, 82% of Pakistanis favor floggings and amputation, 78% of Pakistanis support killing apostates,  81% of South Asian Muslims and 57% of Egyptians suport amputating limbs for theft. 65% of Muslims in Europe say Sharia is more important than the law of the country they live in, 43% of Islamic teachers in Austria openly advocate Sharia law over democracy. 33% of Muslim-Americans say that Sharia should be supreme to the US Constitution. 21% of British Muslims decline to condemn stoning adulterers and more than half want gays to be outlawed. 23% of Turks living in Germany say that a Muslim should not shake the hand of the opposite sex. 33% say that a woman should wear the veil. 73% say that books and movies which offend their religion should be banned. 29% of French Muslims believe Sharia is "more important than the laws of France." Muslims comprise less than 1% of the population in the United States but 9% of prison inmates.  Muslims in France comprise 12% of the population, but 70% of prisoners, Muslims in the Netherlands comprise 4% of the population but 20% of prisoners and Muslims comprise 5% of population in Britain but are over half of the highest security inmates.

1 in 3 British strongly agree that a wife should be forced to obey her husband's bidding. 1 in 10 British Muslims support killing a family member over "dishonor". 91% of honor killings are committed by Muslims worldwide. 95% of honor killings in the West are perpetrated by Muslim fathers and brothers or their proxies. 90% of child sex abuse by gangs in Britain are committed by Muslims. 1 in 5 young British Muslims agree that 'honor' violence is acceptable. Honor killing the woman for sex outside of marriage is favored over honor killing the man in almost every Islamic country. 51% of British Muslims believe a woman cannot marry a non-Muslim and only 51% believe a Muslim woman may marry without a guardian's consent, 62% of British Muslims do not believe in the protection of free speech. Only 6% of Muslim men and 2% of Muslim women would "have no problem" marrying someone from a different religion. 60% of men in Morocco say that if a woman is raped, she should marry her rapist. Just take a moment to think what the reaction would be if this were white Christian American men saying or believing any of these horrific things. Yet we don’t bat an eyelid because it’s coming from Muslims. These are just our average moderate Muslims by the way. Remember that. Let’s continue.

81% of British Muslims refer to themselves only as Muslim, not British. 49% of Muslim Americans say they are Muslim, not American. 74% of young Muslims prefer women wear the veil. 46% of Muslims in Germany want there to be more Muslims than Christians in Germany. Muslim-Americans are four times more likely to say that women should not work outside the home. 26% of Muslim-Americans refuse to assimilate. 26% of young Muslims in America believe suicide bombings are justified, 35% of young Muslims in Britain, 42% of young Muslims in France, 22% of young Muslims in Germany and 29% of young Muslims in Spain believe suicide bombings are justified. Muslim-Americans who identify more strongly with their religion are three times more likely to feel that suicide bombings are justified. 19% of Muslim-Americans say that violence is justified in order to make Sharia the law in the United States. 38% of Muslim-Americans say Islamic State beliefs are Islamic or correct. 25% of Muslim-Americans say that violence against Americans in the United States is justified as part of the "global Jihad”.

45% of British Muslims agree that clerics preaching violence against the West represent "mainstream Islam". We have British mosques literally beating Muhammad’s teachings into Muslim children, teaching them “the disbelievers are the worst creatures,“ “they face torture in the afterlife if they adopt western customs” and to ���never trust a person who has less than a fistful of beard.” British Islamic private schools are teaching pupils that British customs are anti-Muslim, intent on “poisoning the thinking and minds“ of Muslims and calls on their students to “expend even life to create a world organized according to Allah’s just order.” We have police who have become too scared to investigate Muslim human trafficking and child rape rings, they have become too afraid to make public the mass sexual, violent attacks and the details of massacres committed by Muslims across Europe, they have even become afraid to report their fellow officers who express radical Muslim beliefs. Teachers are afraid to alert authorities when their Muslim students show warning signs of becoming radicalized.

The problem we have today in the West is being forced to believe that terrorism or even extremism has nothing to do with Islam, that extremists are only 0.00001% of the Muslim population, that this is a religion of peace and it has no links to violence or jihad, all of history on Islam and Muhammad and the Islamic Empire, none of that’s real, none of that happened and anyone who says otherwise is a racist islamophobic bigot who wants to kill and expel all Muslims. Could we be any more naive? Any more stupid? Could we make ourselves any more weak and vulnerable? Nobody is blaming all Muslims, we just want there to be a glimmer of honesty for once and identify what is actually happening in the world, be truthful about what it is that the Islamic State want and what their end goal is. Remember, their Islamic Empire only ceased less than 100 years ago, Islam is only learning to walk in terms of progressiveness, human rights, equality and assimilation and many followers just aren’t ready to give up on Muhammad’s dream of Islamic domination. Not all, but many.

We have slowly began to have the courage to discuss it more openly and it’s been met with a lot of resistance from Muslims and apologetic activists, such as the introduction of Canada’s blasphemy bill, the ban against Britain’s only prevention strategy, Britain’s latest hate crime policy where it’s easier to be arrested for saying a mean thing about Islam online than it is if you’ve been fighting for ISIS overseas or planning a terror plot. Still, people are slowly waking up. The British Prime Minister recently said we're going to have to start having more embarrassing conversations about what is really going on, but there’s really nothing embarrassing about being honest. We should have been having these conversations for many years now. If there is only one good thing that can come from each of these endless attacks and that is learning from them, yet we are refusing to even do that.

We should have far more faith in the people than we currently do to talk about this honestly with each other without resorting to violence. We are told that we cannot talk about Islam because if we do, then it will incite masses of hate crimes against innocent Muslims, it will make moderate Muslims turn to terrorism and when they kill us it will be our own fault for talking about Islam. Really? Is this not the greatest example in modern history of blatant fear mongering drivel to protect the only ideology in the world which you can die for simply criticizing? Well I don't think that we are a lynch mob in waiting, I certainly don't think we are a rabble who have to be lied to, who can't hear the truth or can't handle facts, that’s not who we are, we are not them. We are reasonable, civilized, liberal people who have a right to be very worried, we have a right to feel frustrated about being deceived and silenced, we have a right to expect honesty and action to be taken against the greatest threat of our time.

We are kidding ourselves if we believe that by changing nothing and moving on with our lives will stop the threat or will stop the attacks on us. We have to stop seeing terrorism as just a few nutjobs who we can defeat only if we hold hands and show them that killing our children and loved ones doesn’t effect us. Thank god the Viennese didn’t take this approach when the Islamic State came to their door. We know that today’s Islamic State is the minority of Muslims, obviously, but to tackle them we also have to tackled the far larger number of people who are basically providing the mood music for the extremists and opening the door wide open for them, these are the moderate Muslims who I’ve mentioned above, the sympathetic social justice activists who would rather die than be seen as problematic and the politicians of all parties who think that they can condemn an attack and then spend all their efforts trying to stop their country from having any effective counterterrorism policy and it’s about time these people were called out. Their biggest concern has become taking action against those who are pointing to the problem rather than the problem itself.

These are people who are actively trying to undermine everything in our country to stop the terror from getting any worse than it already is. We are told to just live with it. It’s part of our lives now. What? That’s it? We just accept being killed? At least if we don’t fight Islamic extremism that will spare our Muslim neighbor’s feelings I suppose. In a recent interview with former police chief and Britain’s most prominent Muslim lawyer, he told of many British Islamic community groups who are undermining the fight against terrorism by peddling myths about the government’s key anti-radicalization policy. Mr Afzal condemned the self-appointed community leaders, who he says have an agenda of presenting Muslims “as victims and not as those who are potentially becoming radicals”. He also hit out at the Muslim Council of Britain, saying he was staggered that its agenda for last year’s annual general meeting including “absolutely nothing about radicalization and nothing about the threat of people going to Syria”. “We all have a responsibility to stand up for British values and the rule of law. When they do decide to come to the party, it’s always reluctantly, rather than routinely doing so because it’s the right thing.” Afzal said. These community groups and these Islamic leaders have to be called out as well. Groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to be held accountable for their fear mongering and the stigma they have forced on anyone talking honestly about the problem.

We have to put the pressure on all of us to understand the reasons and history of Islamic terrorism, to identify what their end goal is and we have to put the pressure on these Islamic groups and leaders to admit this is just as much their problem and they have to sort it out. The message has to be made so clear to stop playing the victim, stop pretending the greatest threat is coming from people telling the truth and let’s start doing all that we can humanly do to fight this very real threat from finishing the job that Muhammad began 1,400 years ago. We have to remove the fear of reporting, police have to stop being afraid to investigate and the media have to stop being afraid of being honest and transparent. The more time we put into protecting ourselves and the less time we spend creating phobias and illnesses to describe the people who identify the problem, the sooner we can all solve it.