#fascist apologia

[hellyeahheroes]

J.K. Rowling & Holocaust Denial by Caelan Conrad

This situation showcases why intersectionality is so important. bigots will always target multiple marginalized groups at the same time, and they will find strength in trying to deny they're doing it, or have done it. In fact, it is crucial for them to try to separate and isolate the groups they target That's why we must always stand together against them

-Admin

[jedi-enthusiasm-blog]

No small part of Legends seems determined to make the Jedi look bad and the Sith look good. Considering the Sith are inspired by nazis and fascists, it's both funny and deeply concerning.

But I digress.

One of these attempts is the character Darth Vectivus, a human male Dark Lord of the Sith during the time of the Galactic Republic, when the Sith are in hiding. Apparently, he's a man with friends, with a family he loves and who love him back, a regular job… He's a perfectly normal guy, a perfectly mundane dude among thousands of megalomaniacs.

His first appeareance is as a ghost (some funky Dark Side thingy he created, btw), when he's trying to convince a Jedi (don't remember this one, I think it was a girl?) to strike him down. This is because these ghosts are connected to a living being, if the ghost is striken down, the being they're connected to dies. Vectivus is connected to Jacen Solo, who's on the edge of falling to the Dark Side. Apparently, Vectivus does not want a galaxy ruled by the kind of Sith Jacen Solo (or rather Darth Caedus) would become.

But, unlike other attempts at making the Sith look good in the EU, I actually like this guy. Why? Mostly for the funnies, not gonna lie. This Dark Lord of the Sith, the ultimate villain of the SW universe… is a perfectly normal guy with the same problems in his life as the rest of us.

Vectivus didn't know he was Force sensitive until his adulthood when, while doing Business™️, he and his employees came across a Dark Force nexus inside one of the mines they were working in. Fascinated by the power he could feel, he disolved his business, gave compensation to his employees, and went to search for the surviving Sith who could teach him. However, despite his Sith training, he remains a perfectly normal guy who lives a perfectly mundane life until his death, when he dies surrounded by friends and family. It's hilarious, can you imagine his Master's face? The sheer dissapointment?

He has restrain and moral standards. For example, he seems to be a decent boss and doesn't exploit his employees, cares for his friends and family and, just by guessing, isn't a complete asshole to his Apprentice since, whoever they are, they opt not to kill him despite the existance of the Rule of Two.

And yet… we find out he's still economically predatory, he still abuses his powers to harm and profit over rivals, and generally win at business. He isn't causing harm to those close to him, but he's still harnessing the Dark Side to hurt others.

That's the whole point, the Dark Side is always corruptive. Darth Vectivus is just less corrupted than most Sith.

That's it, that's what I like the most about the guy. He seems normal, is normal in a way… and yet he's still an evil bastard, only the regular evil bastard we find in our daily lives instead of the murderous crazy no-sense-of-restrain kind of Evil Bastard™️ we're used to see in a Sith.

It's… a bit of a grim reminder that evil is everywhere, in everyone, including you, and it can take many forms. That even the most kind-seeming people can be evil.

On the other side, the people he's murdered are… zero. Nonexistant, zero, nada. He's killed absolutely nobody. It's actually pretty funny. He's the only non-murderous Sith in existance, literally the only sane man in an Order of fascist megalomaniacs and it's hilarious.

I'm rather glad for his existance, actually, thanks Legends. Mostly because now I can say that I've killed as many people as a Dark Lord of the Sith.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Something I've been considering recently: the big storytelling difference between Hideo Kojima and Yoko Taro.

There's an obvious reason I've been thinking about this, I feel: both these guys are, on the surface, exceedingly similar. They're both well-known Japanese video game creators*, they're both known for their eccentricities, they both tell stories that run the razor-thin line between 'Violence is corrupting and immoral' and 'Okay, but that bit of violence was pretty sick, right?' really well, as well as throwing in some really funny 'Hey, what the fuck did I just watch?' energy, hell they even both had a game in their series directed by Platinum Games, I don't especially think this is an overreach, here.

But they are different creators, and I've been thinking about their differences (specifically in storytelling - obviously one makes Action-RPGs and one makes Stealth Games and Baby Postman Simulators) as I play MGS3 and Nier Replicant, and I think I've come down to this: it's in how they condemn violence, and especially war.

Kojima bases all of his stories in reality - a heightened reality, perhaps, but there's a reason multiple MGS games end with long lists of dates and events, Kojima's made-up ones slipped in-between the actual history. Kojima bases his critiques on things that are real and tangible - MGS3 itself, more than any bee-wielding supervillain or photosynthetic sniper, is about the Cold War, and it's no accident that the Boss' speech at the end isn't about the Philosophers, or Volgin, or Metal Gear (METAL GEAR?) it's about soldiers, their fates and their traumas. Kojima lives in the world of... not exactly reality, but allegory-through-reality, and it makes his games pretty explicit in their messaging - which in my mind is a good thing, because it means that people who fundamentally misunderstand MGS aren't just wrong, they're obviously wrong - show me an MGS fan who thinks they're pro-America and pro-military, and I'll show you someone who did not pay attention to MGS.

Yoko Taro, on the other hand, is entirely a creature of allegory. Yoko himself has said in interviews that he tells stories primarily as a way to get people to feel something, and all other things like connections to the other games or even internal consistency comes as a secondary concern (as someone who's tried multiple times to tie everything Drakenier related together - that's believable.) As an inevitable result of this, his stories aren't really 1:1 parallels to history or the modern day, they're very general conflicts that speak to a wide range of topics.

Put it this way: in MGS4, Kojima describes in great detail a situation that is the natural endpoint of the geo-political situation (especially re: America) during most of the early 21st Century, especially The War on Terror - instead of war being a means of obtaining resources to generate income for big corporations, now war is the means of income, and all the inherent flaws of American late-stage capitalism have been applied to it - to the point that soldiers have to pay extra to use someone else's gun. It's a heightened, at times absurd version of reality, but it focuses on specific issues and flaws with the subject matter - The War on Terror, and through them highlights issues with our current world - hell, Kojima may have predicted some of the issue we currently face with capitalism.

In Nier Automata, however, Yoko doesn't present an exaggeration of a real-world conflict to portray it's flaws and its hopelessness. Instead, he constructs an entirely hopeless war, a war that is literally pointless on every side, and explores how people react to that. As opposed to Kojima's slight exaggeration of the War on Terror, by the end of Automata Yoko has presented a proxy war fought on behalf of two races that died off millennia ago, between two groups that are, at their core, exactly the same, made from the same components, fought on one side because of a poorly worded instruction from their creators that necessitates eternal total war as a basic fact of their evolutionary cycle but also inevitably results in their evolutions being violently purged because any form of passivity is betrayal, and on the other as a grand Machiavellian scheme to kill off their own troops, thereby concealing the deaths of their creators – a scheme, it’s worth noting, conceived of by an android that no longer remembers conceiving it, because his own scheme necessitates his constant assassination by the person he cares about the most to prevent him from discovering his own plan. Kojima's wars in MGS4 are absurd and pointless for us because we know what the results of the War on Terror were, Yoko's war in Automata is kinda like an onion - every layer you peel back on it, you discover a new way that it's pointless, and every time you do, you're crying a little bit more.

So, wrapping this up before people realise I just used the ultimate cliche of poorly-worded food metaphors, if you were to ask me what the big difference between Yoko Taro and Hideo Kojima was... well, I'd still go with the gameplay genres, but I'd also say that it's a slight, but really interesting, difference in how they go about their metaphors. As for which is better... neither, obviously. They're both really talented creators, this is just a style thing. You seriously expect me to choose between a series that includes 'a man pretended to be possessed by the ghost of his crush's son because he grafted his arm onto him and everyone bought it' and a series that includes 'at some point the Earth stopped spinning. This has never been explained in any of the games'? What are you, a cop?

*albeit if Yoko ever heard someone compare him to Kojima he'd probably simultaneously die of embarrassment and make a joke about being a younger, hotter Kojima.

[attila-werther]

there's a whole stack of art that I drew for the themes that will never get posted because I don't want to deal with the 'some themes are Bad' crowd online. like you can't tell them to read a book because they couldn't even handle steven universe. these people couldn't handle supernatural, they literally had to make the Family Is Hell show about Found Family. watch another fucking show.

anyway, when I make a post saying, 'huh. maybe this is a bit much,' understand that I mean 'maybe this is pushing it for posting online.'

[windupaidoneus]

now some people may not like to hear it but even the worst people who exist are still people & there is no human being who has More right than others to decide whether others deserve to live or die (does not mean i personally condemn murder in self defense or anything of the sort or killing fascists or whatever i'm just saying as a baseline This Is How it Is) & this is why the death penalty is not a good thing no matter how good & trustworthy the people in any government might be. people on average also deserve the chance to learn to do better. & no, someone who's been forcefed propaganda their entire life will not let go of that deeply entrenched mindset so easily, it's not particularly unrealistic & it absolutely sucks to deal with but in the context of tangibly working toward world peace it's also not an issue to try & help such people both in material ways & in helping them learn better rather than cut them down or abandon them to a grim fate. all this to say that's why i don't think garlemald is written badly, as unpleasant as the experience might be. walks off the stage

[saturatedsinset]

unfortunately the descendants films did in fact make me mentally ill so I will be thinking about them for the rest of the day. why did mal and evie have that gay song in the second movie

[harrowscore]

SO close to strangling my dad for what he's saying about berluconi... what a deeply ignorant little man he is at heart

[storm-sys]

🌹 There's been this trend in media lately to have heroes completely write off the moral conflict associated with killing their villains that's really uncomfortable to me, especially given the backlash towards media that dares to try and redeem their villains or end things peacefully. It feels like people have increasingly become comfortable with the idea that villains deserve death, and that dispensing that punishment isn't a moral failing at all - it's Justice™.

And to make matters worse, a lot of people have decided that if you try to stop a villain without violence - if you try to talk to them, de-escelate conflict, defeat them without killing them (or locking them in prison forever, which is seen as a mercy for some fucking reason) - then you're either a fool, a coward, or an apologist.

[transfaguette]

it is crazy how “if this childrens show doesn’t kill their villain at the end it’s irredeemable media” became such a popular opinion here. like people were calling steven universe fascist apologia. and to be clear I don’t even think that would be the case for non childrens media, either. perhaps holding every single story up to the same standard of “does it follow the acceptable narrative path or is it evil propaganda” isn’t the most anti-fascist thing, either. maybe.

[sunset-synthetica]

we need to line Czech liberals up against the wall and start shooting and this is only partly a joke

[hussyknee]

Y'all need to stop reblogging from this mess of a blog. They've been posting sympathetically about Gaza while obsessively posting about how the GOP is evil and you have to vote for the Dems to fight them. I was like "okay how are they bending backwards to sniff their own butthole" and now we know. The GOP is supporting Putin to support Hamas to attack Israel to support Netanyahu destablize the democracy of the 75-year-old ethnosupremacist military state and attack Gaza so Biden has to support it and alienate his Democratic voter base for the GOP.

I know political pundits wearing clown hats made of tinfoil are funny but these blogs are genocide apologists that's using the plight of Palestinians to push their own favourite war criminal. It's depraved in every sense of the word. Never forget that tinhats given a platform are extremely dangerous. The fact that Will Wheaton reblogged this should tell you how much influence they already have.

Guess who backs Putin? MAGA.

Our terrorists listen to FOX and regurgitate 'stop the steal'/election denial Russian playbook.

The antisemitism that runs throughout the Right Wing [see: globalists] runs straight to Hamas and Putin.

Putin wants to eliminate Israel, Hamas wants to eliminate Israel. See the pattern?

When US and Israeli democracy is under attack, look to Putin, Hamas, and MAGA as the same hateful team.

[death-rebirth-senshi]

I forget that a lot of the rage around Steven Universe was partially affected by Trump presidency

[catgirltoes]

One thing I find annoying is people who describe their ideology using a literal definitions of the words which doesn't have anything to do with their actual beliefs. The example that prompted this was radfems defining their ideology as "the root of feminism" and acting like that carried so much meaning. I can't think of any other examples, but I've noticed other ideologies do this too. Actually, I can: Catholicism means universal so that means that they're the universal church. It's nowhere near as pronounced as the radical = root of radfems, but I got some of it at Catholic school.

It's nowhere near the same level as the Westboro Baptist Church biblically justifying their motto by defining each word individually, but I think it's the same phenomenon.

[apas-95]

I think the 'problematic media' issue is composed of two principle parts, one superceding the other.

Firstly, and the most important to address to cut the discourse off at the head; yes, media is a vector by which social systems reinforce themselves. This is the purpose of propaganda, and this dynamic is completely intelligible to us if we consider the cases of 'person whose sole source of online interaction was 4chan, and who exclusively watched History Channel hagiography about fascist war machines', or 'person who developed inappropriate ideas about sex through watching misogynistic media'. It is plainly clear that it is both possible and common for media to influence people ideologically, as an apparatus of a given social system. Material reality dictates which social systems are given ideological hegemony in media, but media is in fact an effective tool of those systems.

Secondly, while acknowledging the first point, it is not the dominating factor, here. While media can and does influence people ideologically, often commandingly so, it is not some sort of cognitohazard. It is plainly possible to watch, even repeatedly over an extended timetrame, some given piece of fascist propaganda, or abuse apologia, or what have you, without becoming any more beholden to its ideas - if anything, becoming more opposed. The crucial thing, here, is that doing so requires some level of understanding and defence against the ideas presented. Someone with no rebuttal to fascist positions, with no even kneejerk dismissal that what they're taking in is fascist, is unlikely not to internalise something if they're surrounded by fascist media. On the other hand, someone who has been innoculated with opposing political theory, who is capable of recognising the social systems being reinforced by a given communicative work and reasonably countermand them, can watch a thousand misogynist movies, read a thousand racist books, peruse a thousand transphobic news articles, and leave with only stronger convictions to oppose these systems. Clearly, the dominating factor here is not the content of the media itself, but the content of the audience - whether the audience is able to sufficiently recognise, interrogate, and oppose the messaging in a given work.

All this is to say - yes, media can and does influence beliefs, but that that influence is completely subordinate to the question of whether the audience has any level of political theory or critical analysis. A liberal reading fascist literature, not holding any real theoretical opposition to the content of fascism, is safe so long as they can recognise and reject basic fascist signifiers. A feminist is able to recognise misogynistic logic in a given work. A communist can recognise and countermand reactionary spin in a news article or wikipedia page. While the politically-unconscious man will not recognise that his favourite sitcom is instilling him with absurdly sexist views on marriage, the issue here is not the media itself. Fundamentally - the issue of 'problematic media' is one best and principally solved by the development of political theory and political education, not by any suppression of the media itself, which is cumbersome.

[dorkycreature-89]

i'm gonna let it go. i'm gonna let it go. i'm gonna let- NOPE

it's rich. it is fucking RICH that lily orchard of all people would like hazbin hotel. even though she tried to come after steven universe for "redeeming" the diamonds (and tried to paint the show as fascist apologia), she's thinks a show about LITERALLY REDEEMING SINNERS is neat

wow. that's not hypocritical at all, lilz. i guess it gets a pass cuz lesbian couple :/

oh, and her trying to compare herself to angel dust? while she's also comparing her sibling to valentino? no, not on my watch

am i gatekeeping? yes, absolutely. i'm a spiteful bitch that rejects her review

we do not accept

-a hazbin fan that's running on a cup of tea

[hussyknee]

Tfw your racist noble savage brainrot makes it unthinkable that the voting populations in other countries are as inclined to hate minorities and love fascists as the USA and all dissent within the benevolent hive mind the result of western brainwashing. We're enlightened and empowered but also infantile and brainwashed, and our governments are successful and powerful except when the big meanie western propaganda machine makes them fail.

Do they think that nobody living under an authoritarian government would support it for any reason...

What does tankie mean?

Marxist-Leninists. When Soviet Russia sent tanks into Hungary to crush the uprising there in 1956, a significant pro-Stalin communist faction sided with the Soviet government. Tankie therefore means Marxists that side with totalitarian governments like the Communist Party of China, Russia even under Putin, and North Korea (tf is the communism even?). They think just because the US is a shitty imperialist, all the human rights abuses and fascism of communist governments throughout history is propaganda manufactured by the US government, that Hannah Arendt who coined the term "totalitarianism" was a neoliberal shill, that genocides from Holodomor to the Cambodian killing fields to the Uyghurs are hoaxes. They call any Global South uprisings against socialist and communist governments "colour revolutions" funded by the US, swallow Putin's line that he's trying to invade Ukraine for legitimate reasons, that Ukraine is full of Nazis and the war is only going on this long because NATO is deliberately prolonging it as a proxy war against Russia (that's not what proxy war even means). The motherfuckers actually cheered when Putin attacked Ukraine, not unlike the Israelis watching the IOF. Pretty sure they even support Assad, possibly an even greater monster than Netanyahu, because he's Putin's ally against the US.

Basically they think the world revolves around the US, will subject people to terrible harrassment when their victimization by fascist governments is inconvenient for their narrative, and jump on any Global South trauma they can use like white on rice. They're currently exploiting the fuck out of Palestine for clout and speaking over actual Palestinians instead of boosting them. They're the scum of the earth and the white and western userbase on this site won't take them seriously because their main targets are Global South people, same as they didn't care about Zionists until now.