#for profit preachers

[tehjleck]

I'll leave this here for the other cowardly anon theists in my inbox, because I have real world shit to tend to

If your fictional deity were real and all-knowing- it'd mean it knew which people were pedophiles and it allowed them to become priests anyway

if your fictional deity were real and all-poweful- it'd mean it could've done something to stop them and chose not to.

if your fictional deity were real, it should want to reassure it's followers that they aren't throwing away their lives for a fictional character and the enrichment of a few conman and women

an all-poweful deity could do that by speaking for itself, but it uses deceitful and dishonest humans instead, and wow, have they been enriched by your sheep

Your religion is a scam. Your prophets profit off your gullibility. Happy fucking easter

[nothingbuttrashhere]

That last one is probably 75% of the reason that this conflict has dragged on the way it has when you consider how many evangelical groups are funneling money into US politics and into Netanyahu’s pockets.

my local Jewish antizionist group keeps getting emails from very confused Jews trying to square the circle of how we can be Jewish without professing loyalty to Israel so i made some educational memes

i also made one for the Christians so they wouldn't feel left out :)

[racefortheironthrone]

Warhammer Gaslamp: Introduction

The year is 2725 IC...some two hundred years since the Age of Crisis. The time of Karl Franz I, the "Fourth Deliverer of the Empire," has long past, as has the age of knights and dragons – throughout the Old World, magic itself is a dying art.

The Empire of Man is stronger than ever before, but it is an Empire that runs on coal and iron, held together with roads of steel track, and powered by boiling, thumping hearts that pump steam and gas through the veins of the mightiest industrial power in the world. The forests remain, but they have dwindled in size, cut down to feed the endless hunger of the great metropolises, the mighty smokestacks of Nuln, Talabheim, New Averheim, and greatest of all, the bright gaslights of mighty Altdorf ("The Big Turnip"), and a hundred smaller cities that light the night skies.

The Neüscience of the Imperial Technomancers has increased national prosperity a hundredfold, improved the health and well-being of the common citizens, and helped the Imperial Army, Navy, and Airkorps put the endless hordes of Khaos on the backfoot for generations. In spite of (or because of?) this, Imperial society has become increasingly divided between the elite who profit from the new economy of high finance and heavy industry, and those millions of unskilled and semi-skilled laborers whose endless toil keeps them only ever one step ahead of the breadline and the bailiff. Meanwhile, the mounting toll of industrial pollution, epidemic disease, industrial accidents, and Neüscientific “experiments” running amok raises new questions about the high cost of success.

Politics has become ever more fractious. The Imperial Parliament is divided between the House of the People, where the Farmer-Artisan Party (representing a coalition of the Craft Guilds and their fellow urban workers, and a significant minority of rural laborers and small farmers) holds the plurality, and the House of the Nobles, where the Liberal-Conservative Party (representing both the traditional landed aristocracy and the new monied elite) holds power, and the two clash fiercely over labor rights, taxation, industrial regulation, and social welfare. Holding the uneasy balance of power is Emperor Karl-Franz XIV, his "Iron" Chancellor Ludwig von Ostermark, and their smaller Patriotic Party (largely supported by veterans and members of the civil service), who try to maintain Imperial unity and industrial production in the face of the "Threat from the Black North."

In the streets and on the shop-floors, the captains of industry known as the Great Monopolhauses (allied and often intermarried with the nobility) deploy their legions of spies and private soldiers against the rising strength of the Laborer’s Guild, who are mobilizing in the factories by the hundreds of thousands, and the industrial spies and gunthugs are kept in check only by the still-potent might of the Craft Guilds who fear and resent their industrial upstart rivals but trust the bosses even less.

The religion that once united an Empire today divides it, as Orthodox Volkmarites and Radical Hussites split over matters of class and faith. Although the two factions are still nominally part of the same Sigmarite religion, and the Church of Sigmar is held together by the firm hand of the Emperor, the two factions compete fiercely over theology and dogma, and positions within the Church unto the Grand Theogonacy itself. To the north, the philosophy professor-turned-street preacher Nietzsche von Zarathustein has single-handedly revived the fortunes of the Cult of Ulric with his fiery doctrine of Neo-Ulricism and his best-seller Man unt Wulf-Man. From the great industrial heartland of the south, the radical scholar Mark Karhl preaches the overthrow of the status quo as an inherently exploitative regime, and his pamphlet The Scarlet Platform and his massive three-volume treatise on political economy, Der Gelden (which almost no one has completed), inspire many young radical students and workers to join the revolutionary Scarlet Party and the ranks of the Laborer’s Guild. Are rumors of his secret allegiance to a Tzeenchite secret society true, or mere bourgeois propaganda?

Exacerbating these divisions is the constant threat from Khaos. Up in the "Black North" and their allied territories on the great steppes on the other side of the pole, the forces of evil pervert the laws of science to their mad push for world domination. Khornate breeder-lords select from an unceasing flow of gladiators to produce the perfect warriors; Nurglite bio-priests carefully engineer the next insidious plague to slip past the Imperial Plasmic Survey; Slaaneshi sin-merchants mobilize a world-wide network of Cathayan black tar and warpdust powder (bartered from the Skaven) to corrupt the Empire from within; and Tzeenchite techno-mancers design ever more fiendish mutated F.R.E.A.K.S and the twisted Biomechs.

Inside the Empire, things are scarcely better. Even with the darkness of the forests pushed back to the periphery and the Greenskin hordes banished to the far side of the World's Edge Mountains, the threat of Were-beastmanism and other, more insidious, forces winds its way into every neighborhood in the Empire despite the best efforts of the Imperial Plasmic Survey and the Schwarzmänner. Mutants who cannot conceal their true nature – known as the "Untervolk" - have decamped into the subway tunnels and sewers that form the Undercities of the Empire, waging an unceasing war for survival against “norms” and “ratfolk” alike. From the back alleyways and the salons of the nobility alike, the endless secret societies of Khaos vie to do their masters' bidding, undermining the Empire from within in preparation for the coming war.

It is a time that desperately needs heroes, men and women willing to brave the darkness on the mean streets and the shell-torn battlefields of the Old World alike. Mystery and intrigue, adventure and mad science await!

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Antonio de Pereda y Salgado (Spanish, 1611-1678) Vánitas, ca.1660 Museo de Zaragoza

Baroque painting symbolizing the journey of life and its final destination: death.

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever" (Ecclesiastes 1:2-4). - The Bible

According to rabbinic tradition, Ecclesiastes was written by King Solomon (reigned c.970-931 BC) in his old age.

[fizzzyz]

More Arsentropolis concepts :D

These are pretty simple compared to the first enviroment concept I made, but I mean, they’re concepts…

The top one is of the church of this horrid dystopia, it’s the home of the preachers (nuns, priests, grand bishop, and a few others). It’s highly protected with crucifixs and holy water to ward off demons. But it’s also protected by the unnaturally tall nuns, who keep trespassers out. Even if the church wants the best for the citizens in Arsentropolis, they can’t just let anyone inside. The disease and satanism that lies in this city threatens the church, it’s really unwanted and would be a catastrophe if it got inside. The outside isn’t kept very tidy, not inside either, but it’s cleaner there at least.

The bottom image is inside of the state building where the throne party (rulers of the city) lives. It’s way more clean than the sickening streets and has warmth unlike the rest of the city. The throne party is pretty selfish, they spend all their profits on themselves, rather than the suffering people. All they really do is offer a small amount of shelter and food for a high price, jobs with low pays and high taxes. Under their control the chances of survival are low.

[faestorian]

Since my plush manu continues to be a nuisance, I think I will have to cancel the bigger Gunslinger and Preacher plush projects for good. It simply is too much of an emotional and monetary investment for me, that I am not sure I will really profit from. Once the sample for WW is done (if it will even come to that) I will either use it in a giveaway or hold an auction and use the money collected to finance the Teru Plush samples that I will have made through a different manufacturer. A proper info email about it will go out later this week.

This also means all of my bigger plush projects will be put on ice, at least until I can feasibly self-fund them to a certain extent. I apologise in advance for the disappointment and hope I can figure something out in the future. I still have hope the Teru plushies will be a success, since they are smaller and will feature less detail, though will be designed with no less engagement on my end. Thank you so much for your support up to now, everyone, and apologies for any inconvenience.

[sophieinwonderland]

I don't want this to come off as rude but why do you view religion as a tool? It's just not for most people. Religion is how people live and breathe and impacts literally everything about people. It's so much more than a tool to get what you want. And I know people have used it as a tool in the past but that doesn't make them right either. So many people (plurals included) have devoted their lives to religion because it impacts them on a much deeper level than that of just a tool to be used. It has quite literally saved so many lives I just don't quite understand why you see it so shallowly. /gen

And just because people have used religion for ultimately heinous purposes doesn't mean any given person is. Most people who follow religion just resonate with it and might spread it to those who want to know about it but they don't intentionally make anyone angry with it ( I know there are some but most just don't). And I was raised christian so I very much understand having qualms and disagreements with the church I just don't quite understand why you see their beliefs so much lighter than they do?

This is all meant under good faith and I don't mean it if this came off rude and if it did I apologize. Have a lovely day/night and more power to you in your fight for acceptance :)

It's a good question. I understand how it can come off as insulting. I don’t want it to be but there isn't a better way to put it.

And I realize most people don't see it that way. I wanted to reply that the people who don't see religion as a tool are those who aren't wielding it but I imagine people who do wield it as a tool don't see it that way either. But the fact still remains.

You go to church and a preacher steps out to deliver their sermon. This preacher is a normal person given a platform by their faith and people's trust in their religion.

At some point, this preacher is going to use their platform to push some type of agenda.

A conservative preacher might give a sermon about how God hates gay people. That you need to defend the sanctity of marriage because it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

A liberal one might come out saying that God loves gay people. That people are born that way and that God would never make an imperfect creation. That love is love, and it needs to be defended at all costs.

Both of these people are wielding religion and their platform to accomplish their goals.

And it's not something that has happened before in the distant past. It's something happening all across the world right now.

And it's not just politics either.

There are some people out there who are going to wield this tool to enrich themselves, gaining huge profits from the Church out of their own greed.

Then there are altruistic people who will wield the faith of their congregation to fund a new children's hospital or homeless shelter and help people.

And while I talk about the preachers as they have the largest platform, plenty of other respected people in a church can wield its influence to a lesser extent.

I don't think this is a bad thing. I just think this is the way it is.

And frankly, I think liberals are too hesitant to use this tool. Many think it's manipulative and feel guilty about it. But in my opinion, good people leaving a tool like that on the table just makes it that much easier for bad people to use against them.

And I'm not saying religion is ONLY a tool either. Just that it is one.

The larger point though is that the religion itself isn't good or evil. The morality of a faith is dictated by its weilders and how they use it. And I believe that even religions which have historically caused great harm can be forces for good with good people at the helm.

[gatheringbones]

[“Many landlords were part-timers: machinists or preachers or police officers who came to own property almost by accident (through inheritance, say) and saw real estate as a side gig. But the last forty years had witnessed the professionalization of property management. Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers had more than quadrupled. As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves primarily as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments. According to the Library of Congress, only three books offering apartment-management advice were published between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215. Even if most landlords in a given city did not consider themselves “professionals,” housing had become a business.

The evening’s speaker was Ken Shields, from the Self Storage Brokers of America. After selling his insurance company, Shields had begun looking for a way to get into real estate. He started out with rooming houses, which meant he started out renting mainly to poor single men. “Very nice cash flow. But I no longer have them.” The room chuckled. “I made some good money, and I mean, I love to get money, but I’m still just as happy not running around and dealing with some of these dregs of society who live in rooming houses.”Sherrena, who owned a couple of rooming houses, laughed along with the room. Then Shields found self-storage. “It’s got the residual incomes of an apartment building, but,” he lowered his voice, squinted, “you don’t have the people. You just got their stuff!…This is the sweetest spot in the whole American economy. A receptacle for an enormous cascade of money.”

The landlords loved Ken Shields, even if he did live in Illinois. When he finished his speech, the room broke into applause. The RING president, a mustached man with a full pouch for a stomach, stood up clapping. When there wasn’t a speaker, he often organized round robins. One such evening, a woman from Lead and Asbestos Information Center, Inc., had started off by announcing, “There is money to be made on lead,” to a room of landlords who more often lost money trying to abate it. One landlord asked whether he would have to report the presence of asbestos to the city or the tenants if he tested for it. “No, you don’t,” the woman had said.

The conversation moved on and someone else had asked about garnishing wages. A lawyer informed the room that a landlord was allowed to garnish a tenant’s bank account and up to 20 percent of his or her income, but the last $1,000 was exempt. And welfare recipients were off-limits.

“How about intercepting their tax refund?” Sherrena had asked.

The lawyer looked a bit stunned. “Noooo, only the government can do that.”

Sherrena already knew that. She had looked into it before. Her question wasn’t a question; it was a message to Eric, Mark, Kathy, and everyone else in the room that she would do almost anything to get the rent. Many white landlords knew money could be made in the inner city, where property was cheap, but the thought of collecting payments on the North Side, let alone passing out eviction notices, made them nervous. Sherrena wanted them to know that she could help.”]

matthew desmond, from evicted: poverty and profit in the american city, 2016

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by Donald MacLean | To preach God’s counsel in these ways requires boldness. Paul was humble, but he was also bold: “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable” (Acts 20:20; see also Acts 20:26–27). The temptation can be to shrink back to maintain popularity, but that was not Paul’s way. Rather he unfolded God’s…

[beba-780]

Western Ninjago - Villains

Villains

Tyrrant Clinton calls himself "Overlord" among many.

Having a lot of money and influence in society, he has had the nerve to cover up all his crimes, such as the slave trade he created for his companies and jobs, corrupt deals and manipulations, the murder of Ray, Maya and the indians who inhabited the town of Ignacia, as well as the taking of a position in Ignacia and turning it into a city that serves as a base for some Tyrrant military members, the attack on the Montgomery family farm, and the attack on the ship in which Garmadon.

Tyrran is feared by everyone for being an extremely manipulative, cold and cruel man towards anyone, even for being an extremely rich and powerful man with many resources. His generation marks the beginning of much slavery and war between his allies and the resistance that Ronin had formed.

He has every intention of reaching Djinjago because he wants to take advantage of his time, that is because the society has begun to create various weapons that can benefit Tyrrant, and if he wants to have control of everything he needed gold and money, it is That's why he wants to find the city at any cost.

He doesn't care what happens to the citizens of all of Ninjago, he doesn't even care about getting rid of all the Indian tribes in all of Ninjago, he only seeks power and doesn't plan to rest until he obtains it.

His only weakness is that he is very proud, and if he gets angry he does not hesitate to take out all his anger on anyone. He doesn't allow any mistakes in his plans, and he can get frustrated quite easily. He has some spies planted in various locations in Ninjago.

It is not difficult for him to convince various authorities to put a reward on Lloyd, the same happens with some members of the resistance, and with Ronin and Kai.

If he discovers a flaw in his plans, he will not hesitate to teach a lesson to those who disappoint him. This is what happened to Vex when Tyrrant discovers that it was his fault that Lloyd escaped from the farm with the amulet, and to remind Vex that he does not accept mistakes, he leaves a great "mark" on her that she will never forget.

Tyrrant hires Morro to bring him Lloyd alive.

Morro is a dangerous outlaw who feels no remorse for murdering anyone. He has killed so many people that he has come to enjoy it.

Morro began his career as an outlaw when he was 18 years old, after murdering his former gang that he worked with he was able to obtain the reward they offered for them. He then began murdering different gangs and important people in order to steal their belongings.

He has even gone so far as to murder members of the resistance, members of the Serpentine gang, Indians and Tyrrant soldiers.

Since he was a child he was already quite arrogant and proud of himself, and he only agreed to join a gang of outlaws because he wanted to obtain protection and wealth. He was sometimes bothered by the fact that the leader of his group shared the profits with other people.

He despised Kai from the first day he saw him, even because of him he would put Kai in dangerous situations just to be able to get rid of him. Seeing that his leader loved Kai more, he began to feel an immense amount of jealousy towards Kai, and that jealousy turned into pure hatred.

After murdering his old gang, Morro tried to find Kai so he could kill him, but he never found him. After people called him "Ghost Green" Morro finally met Kai just two years after they last saw each other. Seeing as Kai also became a famous outlaw called the "Red Shogun", the two began to have a legendary rivalry.

Morro and Kai have had small encounters, but when trying to fight or shoot at each other, Morro never managed to finish off Kai, nor Kai with him.

Despite killing some members of the Serpentine gang, Morro sometimes uses them to get what he wants.

After being hired by Tyrrant Morro does not hesitate to go after Lloyd and Kai.

Vex Hoodoo is a preacher who has been manipulating and tricking people into giving him their belongings and money by using the word of God for his own benefit. He blindly believes that he is a man of God and that the Clinthon family's will is absolute.

He fears Tyrrant too much and knows that if he fails him several times, his fate would be worse than death, and to demonstrate his loyalty he takes charge of supervising the work in the mines and companies that belong to Tyrrant. He would be the second most dangerous man below Pythor. When he is at Shintaro he likes to make Cole and Jay suffer, since they are two of his least favorite people.

Pythor P. Chumsworth is Tyrrant's protégé, this was because before meeting Tyrrant he led the band of bandits known as the "Serpentine", after being removed from the most wanted and erased from the lists of the most wanted criminals of Ninjago, Tyrrant of fered him a better deal by accepting him into his alliance in order to find the city of Djinjago. Also thanks to Tyrrant he became a public servant of the city of Ninjago and became an assistant judge.

Pythor and his gang have tattoos of different snakes, Pythor has a tattoo of an anaconda on his back, while his second-in-command, Skales, has a king cobra on his arm.

He has a great hatred towards Wu, they are both important men in society, but knowing that Wu would also run for the city's new mayor fills him with frustration.

Chen is the mayor of Ouroboros, and together with his assistant Clouse they make the city infamous for allowing access to various outlaws, bandits and Tyrrant soldiers.

He became mayor thanks to his alliance with Tyrrant, since then the city became one of the bases for Tyrrant's soldiers.

It bothers him that several members of the resistance steal his weapons and artillery, he has even imprisoned several and hanged them.

He is upset that his daughter Skylor does not support him in his plans, and he does not know that she has been betraying him to help the resistance.

Samukai is a former general who previously trained recruits in one of the training areas of the Clinthon family property, but due to his bad actions in training he was removed from his commission, but before leaving he took almost an entire battalion with him and when crossing the Long river of Ninjago he built a fort where he now lives.

After creating his fort Samukai came to attack several tribes of Indians in order to enslave them, and every time someone invades his territory he does not hesitate to kill them or turn him into a slave.

Samukai is also an expert in explosions and torture, apart from showing no mercy to his enemies. He hates the Indians too much and he also hates the people who associate with them.

The Maaray tribe are a wild tribe that seeks to eliminate all the things in Ninjago City, as well as its inhabitants. They also do not hesitate to murder other tribes of Indians that mix with the inhabitants of Ninjago.

It is a large tribe, but at the same time divided, and they have been almost a nuisance on Kai and Lloyd's travels.

[koco-coko]

Silent Night, Holy Night - Jean x Vincent, Ikemen Vampire Fic

-> Jean and Vincent spend their first Christmas together, starting with Midnight Mass.

Tags/Warnings: Romantic Fluff, Religious (Catholic) Discussions and Themes, Christmas Fic, Mistletoe Kisses

Word Count: 1,523

A/N <--> I wrote this in the span of 3 hours and in a car. These two have taken over my brain please help

I think they might like this: @natimiles @weirdwriter69 @azulashengrottospiano (if anyone wants to be added/taken off the list let me know)

Midnight Mass had ended a few hours ago. A few others stayed behind with Jean, but at this time of night, Jean was the only one left. Maybe a priest or two wandered by, a nun tended to the dusty floor for a few minutes, then all was silent. A priest with electric green eyes stared at him for a while, but retreated into the cathedral halls after enough examination with a deep chuckle.

Jean could stare at the crucifix for hours on end, only interrupted by the need to fiddle with the rosary in his hands. He’d already been through it three times, but a fourth never hurt. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

The heavy wooden doors creaked open once more, shutting softly seconds later. Jean ignored it, beading through the rosary at a breakneck pace. Then the light and careful steps reached him and there was a soft thump from the old pew when another sat down next to him.

Jean turned to his head, only to find Vincent with him. He smiled softly, though by his tense position, he was a bit nervous about being in such a holy place. Especially considering their relationship. 

Jean often wondered the same thing, but he had to repent somehow. Avoiding judgment only showed true guilt, and Jean already had enough of that on his shoulders. He looked Vincent over a few times before he leaned back onto the seat. “Is everything all right?” Jean whispered, glancing back to make sure all were gone. In such a large and empty hall, even murmurs echoed.

“You said you’d be back an hour ago,” Vincent said, scooting a bit closer, “So I came to check on you. Are you alright, sunshine?”

Sunshine? Jean’s heart went aflutter. That name sounded like a hymn for the angels, too pure to be fit for him. “I suppose,” Jean uttered slowly. 

It was a strange time for Jean. A time to celebrate the Lord, to enjoy the spoils of life and give to the poor… In the past, Jean would stay in his room most of the time, but he’d make donations to the Church with profits made from his shop. Everything else seemed frivolous to him, and the happiness floating about the air missed him completely. He was unworthy of such joy and peace. 

Vincent’s eyes thinned and his smile was pained. “You know, I was a pastor once.”

Jean almost chuckled. It was hard to tell, but Vincent had grown accustomed to the signs. “Truly?” he asked.

Vincent hummed, delighted to tell his story. “Yeah. I was a Christian, and when I was twenty-five I tried to be a preacher for a while,” he said, only to glance away nervously, “I gave up on that pretty quickly. I didn’t even show up to any Bible studies, and I got dismissed soon after.”

“Why’s that?” Jean asked calmly. After being revived, he learned to not be so critical of others and their religious choices. He wasn’t one to judge– love thy neighbor, after all. 

“Not sure. I guess I just didn’t feel a connection anymore, and it wouldn’t be right to preach what I don’t believe,” Vincent explained, resting his arms and head on the pew in front of him. “I liked painting better.”

Jean hummed in response and silence fell over them. God had strange ways of guiding his children on the right path. Often cruel, coldhearted, but ultimately for the better. Of course, now Jean had no path to follow, except the one paved by himself and his sins. There was a deep horror in being separated from the great beyond, separated with all normal functions of life…

But with Vincent here, things felt slightly normal. In the stability and mundanity came comfort. In Vincent came the yearning for more light in his life, without any guilt.

“Merry Christmas,” Vincent whispered sleepily. He grinned drowsily. “Yay.”

“Yay?” Jean asked, his eyebrow raised.

“I got to be the first person to say it to you. I’ve been wanting to do that all year,” Vincent said, digging his head into a more comfortable spot in his arms.

Jean didn’t even realize the faint pink blush growing on his cheek, let alone the soft curve of his lips. How light his chest felt when he saw the innocent wants of his lover. His impulses won over him and in a swift motion, he laid his cape over Vincent’s shoulders. He heard the painter sigh happily, his eyes beginning to close as colored light streamed from the stained glass windows.

“Merry Christmas,” Jean replied, before placing a delicate kiss on his temples. He didn’t mind if he had to carry his lover home. It was dark enough that nobody would see the two, and he was strong enough to make it back to the mansion in one piece. The real question was whether a piggyback ride would be more comfortable than bridal style for the sleepy painter.

Suddenly, Vincent groaned. Jean’s face instantly twisted in concern. He placed his hand on Vincent's back lightly. “Did I do something wrong?”

The sleepy painter grumbled in Dutch, before opening tired eyes. A frown on Vincent’s face made Jean’s heart implode on itself. It wasn’t right! Before Jean could speak, Vincent spoke in a language Jean could understand. Mostly. How late was it? How long did Jean force his boyfriend to stay up? Guilt ate Jean while Grogginess consumed Vincent.

“Ik was bijna vergeten…” Vincent started, moving to sit up, only to fail. Instead, his hand raised above Jean’s head.

He only had to catch a glimpse of green and red to know what it was. He’d seen it all around town, but he never knew what it meant. All he knew was that Arthur often carried it with him to the pub during the holidays. “When two people are under a mistletoe, it’s tradition to kiss each other. I was gonna wait until we got home, but I don’t–” Vincent yawned again, “Ik weet niet of ik zo lang op kan blijven…”

The words and accent were lost on Jean, despite how adorable it was to hear his language of origin. He didn’t need to know the words, though. He knew all he needed to. Vincent and himself were under a mistletoe, and tradition was a time honored thing. The stained glass portrait of the Virgin Mary would understand.

Before Vincent could make another move, Jean took it upon himself, as any knight (in shining armor, at least to Vincent) would do. Jean’s hand wrapped around the back of his head, his other tilting the painter’s chin up just slightly and pushed their lips into each other.

Vincent had to push down a grin. Oh, Jean… He was the true angel here. Even now he was making sure Vincent didn’t have to lift a finger, despite the fact he was holding a mistletoe above their heads. His other arm moved on its own, slowly and gently removing Jean’s eyepatch. The soldier shivered when the cold air hit the other half of his face, but no discomfort came from the fact it was revealed. It was Vincent, after all. He found beauty in everything, and it was starting to rub off on Jean.

It was a short kiss, but Vincent could taste the restrained passion on Jean’s lips. He was always shy about receiving affection, but couldn’t help but pour his passionate soul into each and every display of love he gave. Vincent’s heart swelled at the thought.

“I guess, I’ll say it again,” Vincent said, his face flushed, “Merry Christmas.”

Jean giggled softly, barely audible even to Vincent, whose nose was currently touching his. “And to you as well, mon ange. May I ask you a question?”

Vincent put his head back in his crossed arms, though after such a loving kiss, he was much more awake. “Of course, sunshine.”

“Where did you get this?” Jean asked, holding Vincent’s wrist and bringing the painter’s hand into both of their sights. The red and green plant was intertwined within his fingers.

“You’ll laugh when I tell you,” Vincent chuckled. “When I said I was waiting for you to come home, Arthur took it out of his pocket and gave it to me. He said something like: ‘Make sure you give’em a real Christmas miracle…’ or something like that.”

Jean blinked for a moment. Of course it was Arthur, but… Arthur of all people? Never in a million years did he think Arthur would want any hand in Vincent’s romantic affairs. 

Well, now that he said that, Arthur absolutely would.

“He gave me a wink, too. I think he was trying to be dirty or something.”

Ah, there it was. Jean sighed.

Vincent then chuckled at Jean’s obvious dismay at Arthur’s actions. “He had good intentions,” he said, a slight pause in-between his words. A yawn came to him once again. Jean watched his lover’s sleepiness with loving eyes. Vincent could only reciprocate for a moment, before sleep came to embrace him. “... But I think I like this ending more.”

[dk-thrive]

My own version of romance not to say magical thinking lets me down routinely. I played briefly in a church band where the preacher’s main thrust was “making things manifest,” chiefly things like influence, a sturdy profit margin, sanctified carnal happiness and, for farmers, helpful weather patterns. His delivery was thrilling but then people and money and rain clouds are going to do as they please.

— Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse: A Novel (Grove Press, April 2, 2024)

[collegetennisoriginstory]

Asker of the question that led to merchant Rayyan. It inspired me. Here’s a drabble of merchant Rayyan as told through the eyes of a college student. I know that the IF is set in NY, but merchants and haggling always remind me of Korea, so imagine this is set in Nowon-gu, Seoul instead lol.

It’s a typical August afternoon: hot and humid. The streets near your college campus are filled to the brim with people, mainly students but also some tourists and others unfortunate enough to have to be out in the wet season. The congestion is made worse by the market nearby. And the proselytizing soapbox speaker. Those always draw crowds.

The market is where you are now. A mix of mall with flea market, it’s just a little ways off from the train station, and has a mix of just about everything. Haggling is permitted here, although the recent influx of international attention means that some sellers are operating on fixed prices.

You’re not the best at haggling. There’s an art to it that you just can’t get right. You always feel slightly awkward about it, especially in the mornings when the sellers are first setting up. You’d heard that the first sale of the day is really important to the merchants, and how it goes is supposed to influence the rest of the day’s sales. Even as an adult, aware that this is a superstition, you can’t shake the idea that, by haggling with a merchant, you might be forcing them into a day of no profits.

It’s why you go to the market in the afternoon. Hopefully by then, all the little kiosks will have made sales.

There’s a kiosk right across from where you’re sitting. It’d first attracted your attention because, well, because the person manning it was hot. Damn what that street preacher had to say; God gave you eyes for a reason!

The second thing you’d noticed is that they’re intense. Blunt speech, piercing gaze, fiery energy intense. It should be a little ridiculous juxtaposed as it is against the background of handmade, 100% organic, cruelty-free cat toys, but somehow it’s doing things to you.

As you watch, idly eating and not drooling, a potential customer goes over. Peruses the wares. Points to a scratching post.

It’s far too noisy to hear anything, but from the hand gestures, you can tell that the customer is trying to haggle.

The merchant’s face, already quite somber, twitches downwards into a glower.

Some people are able to command a room through the eloquence of their words. This merchant could do so through stance alone. If used as a source of energy, the auntie manning this food stall could save on propane for the rest of the day.

The potential customer gesticulates less and less until finally stopping all together, as though pinned under the ferocity of the merchant’s glare. Fumbling, the customer takes out a wallet, pulls out some bills and hands them over to the merchant before leaving, sans scratching post.

HAHAHAHAHHAHA

This is so funny and amazing.

God now I need a pt 2!!!! Rayyan as a little organic cat toy kiosk owner who robs poor unsuspecting customers of their money thru sheer force of will is everything I never knew I needed.

[fishpeanits]

「 ✦ Welcome to the waters! Let me get everything together… ✦ 」

「 ✦ … Perfect! Please enjoy your stay! ✦ 」

this blog will be a sanctuary to be unabashedly silly and enjoy the beauty of the internet’s vast connectivity. wasting time chastising “cringe” behavior or arguing over petty discourse isn’t something fishpeanits tolerates. the internet has become a cesspool of hate, and fishpeanits will not let that infection spread to this blog.

* . + What things does fishpeanits like?

› ACTIVE INTERESTS: FORTNITEEEEE, Stardew Valley, Baldur’s Gate 3, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Princess Peach, Super Mario Galaxy I & II, Bungo Stray Dogs, My Little Pony, Jujutsu Kaisen, Preacher’s Daughter / Ethel Cain, the MILGRAM Project, Fortnite, Ichthyology,

› INACTIVE YET SPECIAL: Tomodachi Life, Soulsborne (Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, Sekiro), Splatoon (I, II,III), Apex Legends, Boku no Hero Academia, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Ruby Gloom, Genshin Impact, Soul Eater, Earthbound, Fran Bow, Sally Face, OMORI, Ensemble!! Stars, Project Sekai, Banjo Kazooie, Botany, Kingdom Hearts, Sonic the Hedgehog,

fishpeanits can be quite forgetful. this list is subject to change. - . *

* . + What kind of content will fishpeanits post?

› #.fshits will be a collection of miscellaneous textposts and such that have no real category!

› #.fshart will be the tag used on any and all art!

› #.fshfic will be used for literary pieces! this will probably be fanfiction in most cases.

› … a special fourth item will be posted here! how invigorating!

do you trust the strangers you glimpse through a screen? fishpeanits wouldn’t. - . *

* . + What kind of people should NOT expect to be welcomed here?

「 ✦ Some of these things should be common sense, really, but they will be listed regardless. Blocking people is a blessing! ✦ 」

› PEDOPHILES { This INCLUDES: DDLG, DDLB, MDLB, MDLG, MAPs, Proshippers, etc. } and any defenders of lolicon/shotacon/pedophilia in media.

› RAPISTS and any defenders of: “Consensual-Nonconsensual”, rape “jokes”, or victim blaming. Anyone who forgives rapists.

› ZOOPHILES and any defenders of zoophilic behavior.

› Anyone who villainizes mental illness or, conversely, romanticizes/idolizes it.

› Supporters of the United States government, the Israel government, etc.

› Anyone who glorifies serial killers. Anyone who glorifies stalkers and/or yandere tropes.

› People who focus their “activism” on pretty discourse (pronouns, slurs, etc.) OR use “activism” as a means for social media fame/profit

› NFT community

› … More to come as items are remembered.

to bring it to a close, a final note . . . remember to be skeptical. do research. being well-informed is crucial in the modern world. - . *

[sirfrogsworth]

I was bored in the hospital last night and for some reason I decided to debate some Matt Walsh transphobe jerks in a Twitter thread. Like here and here and here. I was holding my own but then the discussions turned into a "Study Off" as I like to call them. They post a link to a study saying medical transitions or puberty blockers are the worst. And then I have to counter with a newer better study that says they have decent positive outcomes. Then they say that study is bad. Then I have to find a different study. And it is just a tiring form of debate that never goes anywhere.

One study they referenced was a Swedish study that assessed how transgender surgeries from as far back as the 70s turned out. I was all, "You know they improved the surgeries a tiny bit from the frickin' 70s, right?" But also, it is really hard to gauge how effective transitioning can be when you can't factor out societal attitudes.

"They transitioned and for some reason they are still depressed! Clearly it doesn't work!"

Meanwhile, every red state in the country is basically trying to outlaw being trans.

The depression is a real mystery.

I never know how to pivot from a Study Off. I want to tell them I have friends and many many followers that have gone through medical transitions or done the puberty blockers and affirming care and it basically saved their lives. But the response to that will be "anecdotal evidence." Though I might have enough trans followers for a decent sample size.

But my point is, they don't ever talk to trans people to see how they feel about all this. When I ask, these people never actually know any trans people. They might debate a few online, but they don't *know* or befriend actual trans people.

I don't think you can truly understand the reality of something unless you talk to the people affected. I mean, *really* talk to them... without a character limit and barrier of anonymity.

I asked this guy if he knew any trans people or had any trans friends.

How can you judge something as "horrific" if you never actually talk to the people you are making wild speculations about?

He just created something in his head of what a trans person is and has no interest in seeking the reality of a trans existence. Apparently all trans people have been duped into a medical money making scheme. So none of them have the agency or self awareness to want transition?

I bet he purposely avoids getting to know any trans people because he doesn't want to lose this idea of them he has manufactured in his mind.

Manipulated and taken advantage of for profit, eh?

What do they think being transgender is? Organized religion?

I keep seeing conservative Christians call trans people delusional and living in a fantasy all while they believe in a magic man that walked on water. They see people speaking in tongues and think that is normal. They watch faith healers scam people and praise the Holy Ghost. They are told if they tithe all their money they will be rewarded with prosperity instead of just incurring more debt. They see their megachurch preacher owning 20 supercars and a private jet and don't question the money they gave. They see Rhianna in a red outfit at the Superbowl and are convinced she is in league with Satan. They think being queer can create disastrous storms.

Maybe they aren't the ones who should be policing delusion.

They are the ones that have been duped into a money making scheme. Matt Walsh and the like are profiting off this hatred and everyone that buys into that hatred, they are the ones being manipulated. They are being told they are "saving children" from mutilation and castration and you can learn more after buying the Matt Walsh movie and his book of the movie. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and buy merch too.

It's all to save the kids! (Until they become 18 and then they are adult trans and thus, the enemy.)

"How can we help the least amount of kids that don't actually want or need our help?"

[cynon777]

Lawrence Dennis: The Deracinated Man -- A Review of "The Color of Fascism"

The following was written by Twitter user Midnight_Dasher and reposted with permission. Please share this around if you found this review interesting.

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America today is gripped in the throes of a late capitalist crisis. As profitability becomes harder to realize many Americans are resorting to fascist ideas, albeit removed from their original context and without the full awareness of them, to try and resolve a crisis of liberalism's own making. The social panic this invites has created a confusing spectacle of contradictory claims & assertions, overblown fears of a fascist takeover, and the threat of a thousand years of vulgar hedonistic darkness. What's most perplexing about the present moment is how "fascism" gets treated a lot like the concept of pornography. Most people can't define it but they know it when they see it. This is primarily because people receive fascism as a pop cultural concept, with all of its complicating philosophies and ideology occluded to the historical layman.

Lawrence Dennis also received fascism second hand, although he read the actual material without the spectacle of historical revision, and would go on to redefine it in American terms as "America's fascist brain."

In "The Color of Fascism," Dr. Gerald Horne dives deep into the figure of Lawrence Dennis: a man now almost completely forgotten to American history and who Dr. Horne was reluctant to engage with in the first place. Why give a fascist his due? Surely there is nothing new under the Sun in this regard. As Horne and his readers discover though, Lawrence Dennis is in fact one of the most compelling American figures to ever live. A living breathing mass of contradictions, animated by resentment at being denied his rightful dues as a capable genius. Yet the greatest contradiction of all for this American fascist genius, was the fact that he was a white passing black man.

Before getting into the spoilery details about Dennis's life and his relevance, I should give a cursory review of the book: It's absolutely phenomenal. Dr. Horne was the perfect man to write on the subject of Lawrence Dennis. This book is an easy & breezy read, which is a real accomplishment for how dense it is with historical material. Horne's commentary is also always insightful, and often laugh out loud funny. It's absolutely criminal that such a brilliant book published in 2006 is still mostly unacknowledged, although when diving deep into the figure of Lawrence Dennis it's clear to see why. Buy & read this book RIGHT NOW!

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The Life of Lonnie

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Lawrence Dennis first came on to America's public stage as young Lonnie, a precocious "negro" child preacher being managed by his freed slave mother, and a white father who died early in Lonnie's childhood. Dennis's white father remains unknown to history. FBI investigations could conclusively demonstrate that Dennis's father was white, but they could never identify his actual person. This mixed race background likely afforded the Dennis family the extraordinary opportunity to purchase the services of a tutor, and give Lonnie an advanced education. Lonnie had a preternatural genius which chewed up & spit out his studies with an uncanny eloquence. This eerie gift made Lonnie a popular child preacher, spitting out the truth of God at demonstrations across the country. Dennis's mother proved to be a capable manager, and would constantly hector congregations for donations to Lonnie's ministry. Dennis was so famous that he and his mother were able to tour Europe to do ministries & collect donations in the old world. Traveling Europe also expanded Lonnie's linguistic skills while his brain was still plastic enough to absorb it all in record pace. His skill in speaking French & German would be an asset later in life.

Despite how successful Lawrence & his mother were in his ministries, he hit the hard ceiling of America's racist nadir. Although he had light skin and long curly hair that reporters commented on making him look like a girl, Dennis was unambiguously "black." No matter how many ministries he gave to both blacks & whites, or even to powerful American officials, the door to real fame & power was viciously slammed in his face. Child preachers were also a common phenomenon during the turn of the century, and as Dennis aged into pubescence he retired from this confidence game.

Dennis's experience as a child way too smart for his own good gave him a complex that would afflict him for the rest of his life. Dennis got a full taste of both fame & power, and the discrimination of white supremacy. He would spend the rest of his life trying to insinuate his way back into elite social circles. As a man whose African features were mostly muted, Dennis saw an opportunity for himself to "pass" in white society. To do this he abandoned his beloved mother and the rest of his extended family to live an alienated life making direct appeals to the masters of America. Despite being exposed as a black man during his trial in 1944-45, Dennis kept his racial secrets and carried them to the grave, never admitting even to his own kids that he was a black man.

Lawrence Dennis would resurface in the public posing as a white man while attending Exeter Academy. Most Exeter students came from wealthy backgrounds and could spend a small fortune just to dress themselves, but Dennis kept a healthy distance from his classmates to maintain the fiction of his whiteness. When the US joined in on WW1 Dennis joined the army, and passed as white into an MP unit that gave him a measure of authority even over white officers. Dennis got a full view of the social & sexual hypocrisy of upper class whites, and helped cover up their indiscretions to ease tensions and maintain his cover. The army was also where Dennis would begin networking with members of elite American families like the Roosevelts and Coolidges, and Dennis would continue namedropping his elite associations throughout his life. After the war Dennis transferred from Exeter to Harvard where his networking with white elites truly took off. Students thought Dennis was intelligent and capable but also aloof, socially distant, and arrogant.

After graduating from Harvard, Dennis joined the US State Department and was sent on a mission to Romania. Dennis enjoyed his time in Romania associating with everyone he could, both Jewish and antisemitic, but was shortly dispatched to Haiti to help manage the occupation there. After Smedley Butler's US marines had carried out a legislative coup, agents from the State Department were dispatched to help facilitate the looting of the country by American business interests. Dennis said that he enjoyed "crossing the color line" in Haiti between the black laboring classes and the mulatto elite who the Americans had selected to be their intermediaries. Dennis could cross this line where most Haitians could not, thanks to segregation enforced by the American-made Gendarmerie. Dennis's performance in Haiti impressed his superiors, who selected him for more dangerous missions in Honduras & Nicaragua. Dennis acted there as the point-man of American imperialism, and acting as the chargé d’affaires in Nicaragua proudly "brought the marines in." Dennis took pride in his achievements and enjoyed the adventure of being an economic hitman, but felt that he was being passed up for more privileged elite muckety-mucks like the man Washington had selected to be ambassador to Nicaragua. Dennis did all the hard work while a rich white man would claim the glory.

Dennis reacted to this perceived snubbing by publicly declaring his actions in Nicaragua, which the US State Department wanted to keep a secret to maintain the fiction that they weren't colonialist. He testified publicly that American claims of Sandino's followers representing a threat to America was nonsense. Dennis himself witnessed a firefight between guerillas and government security forces without any sense of himself being in personal danger, even as he was leading the American mission. Dennis was then thrown out of the corps. His experiences working on behalf of the US government would be the basis of his anti-imperialist critique, but there is also the very real possibility that if Dennis had received his just rewards he would have continued pursuing a career as an American viceroy.

Dennis transitioned from the State Department into being a different kind of economic hitman as an agent of J. & W. Seligman, a Jewish owned Wall Street firm. Dennis was their agent in Peru, and after witnessing the conditions there advised them that Peru was a bad country for further speculation. His bosses didn't like hearing this because they were already invested too much in the country and didn't want to take a hit. Therefore his bosses ignored him, taking a massive financial loss when the Peruvian economy declined as Dennis predicted.

His experiences as a Wall Street agent gave Dennis a paradoxically realistic view of American finance, in contrast to his fascist colleagues. Where most American fascists like Francis Parker Yockey identified Finance as a "Jewish institution" that parasitically drained the good capitalists in industry, Dennis recognized that financial elites were overwhelmingly white and (at the time) of Anglo descent. His Jewish bosses were not part of some secret ruling class, but rather represented the interests of their white investors. Moreover, Dennis identified these internationally connected financial interests as the real drivers of imperialist adventure. It was the interests of Wall Street and other powerful American businesses which had dispatched Dennis to the Caribbean & Central America.

Dennis correctly predicted the coming financial crash in 1929, and was praised as a kind of prophet. Dennis would continue milking this perception, making shockingly accurate predictions on the near future in many affairs, and using his predictive power to deny he was a fascist. To skeptical liberals and leftists, Dennis claimed he was merely a "predictor" of events guaranteed to happen. As any man with an overinflated ego eventually finds out though, nobody can prefigure the future.

Dennis became a vicious critic of American finance, and his book "Is Capitalism Doomed?" received praise from the Left. Dennis was one of many developing fascist thinkers who at the time were praised by leftists for their insightful anti-bourgeois critiques, but Dennis's critique was based more on his personal resentments than a commitment to human liberation. Despite his insightful critiques, Dennis's prescriptions were fanciful and impractical. In "Is Capitalism Doomed?" Dennis advocated for a fully isolationist America that would redistribute its way into a vision of Jeffersonian agriculturalism. In "The Coming American Fascism" Dennis proposed that a Fascist political economy would have to be debtless, and had many unrealistic proposals for achieving it.

Nonetheless, Dennis WAS seriously thinking about how a fascist political economy COULD work, which distinguished him as a genuine fascist intellectual in contrast to the demagogues who dominated the movement. Dennis would go on to engage with communist and leftist thinkers at publicly broadcasted debates in a strange kind of national dialogue that's unthinkable today. For reasons likely stemming from his need to maintain social distance for racial cover, Dennis was remarkably discursive compared to the vast majority of fascists who declared that the time for talk was over. In addition to all of his reactionary ties, Dennis also maintained friendships or at least healthy acquaintance with some communists and prominent Liberals. Despite his fascist sympathies, Dennis was not above drawing inspiration from anyone who seemed to have a good idea.

Dennis transitioned out of the Neo-Jeffersonianism of Is Capitalism Doomed to embrace fascism as a vehicle for revolutionary change. Dennis became a contributor to several fascist magazines, and published his own newsletter which had hundreds of subscriptions from elite whites. Dennis praised Marx as a modern prophet who was the first to seriously attempt to comprehend the current system and its injustices, but rejected the prescription of communism as being unrealistic. According to Dennis a classless society was impossible, and even socialist societies had "bosses." Despite this, Dennis also claimed that if he had been born in the Soviet Union he would have been a Bolshevik, and maintained a strange respect for the Soviets. Dennis was most likely thinking cynically, viewing communism as a movement that had no chance of purchase in a white supremacist nation like America. Therefore Fascism, which did not threaten but rather appealed to the bourgeois to let them rationalize the market, seemed to be the perfect vehicle for Dennis's technocratic ambitions.

Dennis's transition into Fascism was the boost to his profile he had always been seeking. With Fascism, Dennis was finally telling powerful White interests what they wanted to hear, and if they liked what they heard he could draw them into considering other, more unthinkable, ideas. Dennis's social skills enabled his meteoric rise to public notoriety. He maintained ties to almost every reactionary American movement that walked beneath the Sun. From the German American Bund, to William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts, to the Christian Identitarians – no reactionary movement was too big or too small or too wacky for Dennis to not have direct ties to. Dennis thus acted as an intermediary between different elements of American reaction, almost all of them White Nationalist in some form or another. Dennis was also directly engaged with America First, and its pilot celebrity leader Charles Lindbergh as his idea man and confidante. Lindbergh, like many other members of America's fascist or Nazi sympathizing political movements, could perceive that something was off about Dennis's racial presentation. Lindbergh himself supposed that Dennis might be Maltese, but ultimately did not dwell on it. It was these elite fascist & Nazi connections that got Dennis in touch with the Italians and Germans, who invited him on a tour of both states. To maintain the cover of his whiteness, Dennis would never allow anyone to get too close to him on a personal level. Only his white girlfriends and wives were allowed to know him intimately by any sense of the word.

Being America's leading fascist intellectual was a boon for the Dennis family. He and his wife possessed residencies across the country, as Dennis was earning a significant income from his book sales, investments, magazine contributions, and newsletter subscriptions. Dennis also received income from elite interests as many other fascists did and still do – through non-taxable cash-in-hand transfers. Dennis's receipt of undocumented donations from rich friends & sympathizers would be the subject of later FBI investigations into his links to the Nazis & Italian Fascists. The Dennises enjoyed the pleasurable company of influential people frequently. Dennis did not mince facts about what a fascist takeover of the United States would mean. To a crowded cocktail party in New York, Dennis described how the process would go. “You'd need only 15,000 men!” A generous increase from the 5,000 marines Dennis brought into Nicaragua. He then made machine gun sounds to the horrified faces of a rich white class, terrified at the thought of Dennis doing to Washington DC what he had already done on their behalf in the Caribbean & Central America.

Dennis was an enthusiastic fan of Mussolini and Hitler, although he admitted to being disappointed after meeting them in person (though he liked Goering and Goebbels as conversationalists). He was impressed by his tours of Italy and Germany, convinced that fascism had genuine transformative & modernizing power that could break the rut of American liberal malaise. Dennis was even photographed attending the Nazi rally at Nuremberg in 1936, which caused him a lot of trouble in the press.

Dennis's greatest admiration for the burgeoning Axis powers was that they were a foil to Anglo-dominated global imperialism. How could the established imperial powers criticize the fascists for merely attempting to do what they had already done? The Western powers had after all accumulated vast wealth and industrial power through a centuries long process of grand theft on a global scale. What right do Americans and Britishers have to criticize Hitler for following in their footsteps? Dennis made this same argument for the Japanese, who were merely following the European model of empire building. Moreover, the Japanese were an objective foil to white supremacy, after having defeated the European empire of Russia and engaging in direct imperial competition with Western powers. Dennis, like many Fascists, correctly identified the hypocrisy & criminality of the Western world, but leaned in to that logic of violence & force to resolve the Liberal crisis of the 30s. Dennis did however have reservations for Italian fascism & Nazism. Dennis advised against the pursuit of imperial adventure, and tried to advise the Nazis to go easy on the antisemitism. If the Nazis could simply be as hypocritical in their race laws as the Americans, then it would ease over tensions for Americans who were wary of Hitler's totalitarian hatred of Jews. The Nazis did not take his advice to heart. Dennis would rationalize Hitler's antisemitism to his readers as a ploy to the masses to get them on board the revolutionary ticket.

The outbreak of World War 2 would permanently disrupt the success and bourgeois lifestyle Dennis enjoyed during the 30s. Although Dennis openly declared his support for America to win the war, he maintained a critique of America's war goals. Continuing to speak out against the US drew the attention of the authorities down on his head. The American public no longer had any tolerance for fascists and Nazi sympathizers like Dennis, and many were demanding that the government punish these political criminals. The FBI began to more thoroughly investigate Dennis's associations and finances, trying to link him in some provable way to Nazi intelligence. It was FBI investigators who discovered most of what we know about Dennis's personal and early life. Although they discovered that Dennis was in fact half black and not the white man he presented as, the FBI chose not to reveal these compromising secrets. Some commentators recalled Dennis's past as a negro child preacher, but this historical memory ultimately did not stick. Dennis's value to the movement was too great for anyone to make it an issue.

Dennis was lumped in with several other fascist co-defendants, in a “Trial of the Century” that quickly degenerated into a procedural circus. The other defendants on the bench were not the sort of characters Dennis liked associating with. He commented on them all being killers, psychopaths, or too old and senile to even defend themselves. The FBI had intentionally chosen to prosecute the most unsympathetic freaks and weirdos in the American far right to put on a display of performative justice. Almost all of them to a man white nationalists. What marked Dennis as a weirdo worthy of prosecution, was his own curious stance on race. Dennis noted himself in public after the trial that the government had intentionally only gone after publicly known demagogues, agitators, and collaborators, because if they seriously investigated the finances of these men the FBI would find themselves investigating some of the most powerful capitalists in America. All critical contributors to America's war effort. Dennis and his co-defendants pursued a strategy of dragging out the proceedings to the end of the war, and they succeeded when the Roosevelt-appointed judge died of a heart attack due to stress and poor health. Although an effort was made to continue pursuing a trial, it ultimately wasn't followed through on for the simple reason that the war was already over and the government didn't want to implicate any influential people. Dennis would later remark that the McCarthyite show-trials were persecuting communists the same way he had been at the end of the war.

Although the case was dismissed, Dennis's reputation was permanently tarnished. After the war, when Dennis was justifiably hounded by Jewish organizations for his support of Hitler and Holocaust denial, and living with the objective failure of the Axis & Fascism, developed an even stronger anti-imperialist critique. The Axis experience was objective demonstration that imperialism was a trap that baits a polity into a self-destructive cycle of reactionary violence, until either the metropole or the colonies themselves are destroyed. Dennis correctly perceived that the Soviets weren't a threat, and post-war anticommunism was hysterical. The Soviets, after losing tens of millions of people to the war, had given up on world revolution and wanted peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world. The capitalist powers rejected this, of course, and Dennis would remain a vocal critic of the Cold War for the rest of his life, opposing both the "police action" in Korea and the American invasion of Vietnam.

By the time of his death in 1977 Dennis was relegated to relative obscurity. Although he had multiple divorces and struggled to make ends meet after the war, he was able to provide his daughters an elite education that enabled them to become accomplished women in their own right. Though Dennis never received a permanent residency in the culture's highest halls or the ear of power as a fascist vizier, he accomplished his ambition through his daughters, who were accepted into elite society in his stead.

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The Coming American Fascism

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It's worth taking a deeper overview of Dennis's “great” fascist work. Although Dennis often claimed he was merely making predictions about the future, a cursory reading of his book shows that he was not making mere predictions but was in fact giving his readers a crash course on political economy, and proposals for how a fascist society would actually work. He made the reasonable gamble that most people wouldn't read his book in order to call him on it. When Dennis was writing the book in 1935, he was fully invested into the fascist project at a time when it was still popular with American opinion makers. So although Dennis's positions would be moderated and revised over the years, “The Coming American Fascism” reveals the most about his core fascist beliefs.

After a general overview in his intro, Dennis's earliest chapters are an illustration of why the time of liberal market expansion is over. Here, Dennis is addressing what might be charitably called “liberal reactionaries,” who want a return to 19th century adventurism and the forceful opening up of new markets. Dennis explains to his readers that this period of time has already passed and there's no going back. The unsettled frontier which drew Europeans to pursue adventure & pillage for centuries had long since been colonized. Liberal capitalism could only function and guarantee the return of profit on investments for such a long time because it was filling in a void where capitalism did not exist. Rather than place the ultimate blame on his white readers and their thieving ancestors, Dennis uses dispassionate economic terminology to illustrate the problem. Dennis identifies the function of capitalism to be its realization of profit, and if profitability is not possible then capitalism has stopped working. He draws the reader's attention to population figures showing that European populations have begun to plateau, in a reversal of the exponential growth trend of the past two hundred years. Moreover, wages could only increase in this period so long as there was an abundance of new lands and resources to exploit, creating excesses which benefited working men. But not only was there no new land to discover, capitalism was also losing the constantly expanding labor force it required to maintain profitable returns. Dennis credits Mussolini, Hitler, and even Lenin for exposing the illusion of infinite growth. In contemporary terms, Dennis might call liberal capitalism a period of “exponential growth” capitalism, whereas Fascism would be a form of “de-growth” capitalism. In a period of objective market decline, it would be necessary to manage society's productive forces with the rationalizing power of central planning and state direction over the economy.

Dennis moves on to dismiss all liberal alternatives to Fascism. Can we continue financing consumption on credit? No, because the interest payments demanded will eventually overburden the economy and cause an even worse crisis. Can the system maintain the current depression? Not without declassing millions more of the middle class, and accelerating the demise of this skilled labor. The only way out of the depression would be a war (which Dennis wanted to avoid), and the demands of such a war would require a “military dictatorship” over the factors of production comparable to “communist Russia.” Dennis could not anticipate from the perspective of 1935 that the liberals under the Roosevelt administration would end up doing exactly that within the Liberal framework. Wartime demands necessitated central planning, wage and price controls, rationing, and state direction of production targets to provide the necessary materiel for a war in Europe. So long as there was an existential demand for these measures liberal and conservative doubters would not refuse them, and the rationalization of the wartime economy ultimately resolved the Depression. Dennis did not consider this a possibility because of the next question: can we reorganize under the current system? No, because the courts and other political interests will interfere with the necessary correctives by declaring them “unconstitutional” or blocking them in the legislature. This was why Dennis lost his enchantment with Roosevelt after the early period of the New Deal. Therefore fascism is the only alternative.

Dennis then moves on to outline his economic plan, which is largely lifted from Mussolini and other Italian fascist pitches for fascist political economy. A necessary reduction of debt would be followed up by the elimination of debt entirely, with finance being controlled by the fascist state. It would require central planning of the economy, with the implementation of a corporatist management model, directed by a popular “National Plan.” It's worth noting here that nowhere does Dennis make mention of “syndicates” or “corporations” in the Fascist corporatist sense, and only refers to bourgeois corporations. Although Dennis clearly advocates a corporatist model, he cannot use the socialist-inspired terminology of the Italian Fascists, many of whom including Mussolini himself, had backgrounds in socialism or national syndicalism and a familiarity with Marxism. The white capitalists who Dennis was making his appeal to, had an allergic reaction to all things “socialist” and “communist.” Although Dennis gives a lot of credit to Marx and other communists, he assures his readers that while Marxist critiques of capitalism are certainly valid their prescriptions will never work. A classless society would be impossible, and even a socialist society still has “bosses.” Why bother then with the pretensions of messianic thinking and communist utopia when one could be a fascistic realist?

To guarantee the reproduction of the fascist state would require the forging of “good” citizens with “right” values. It's at this point that Dennis leans in fully to the organizing logic of force & violence behind fascist social engineering. Despite all of his materialist and rationalist arguments, Dennis like most other fascists also makes naturalistic appeals. Many of his arguments are rooted in a notion of human “nature,” especially in regards to his sexist view of women and their proper gender roles, which Dennis declares to be necessitated by the realities of economy and reproduction. It's ironic then that this sexist pig would afford his daughters every means by which they could pursue their own interests, independent of men even if they so liked.

It's towards the end of the book though, where Dennis makes his most radical departure with European fascism. Not even Dennis's racial views, to be covered soon, would have made him seem odd to Italian fascists. Dennis's anti-imperialism and distaste for war, distinguishes him from all other fascists in his day. In the chapter on foreign policy objectives, Dennis says that the Monroe Doctrine is a convenient fiction meant to secure markets in the Americas for exploitation by US business interests. In contrast Dennis says that America should provide for a large army and navy, on the one hand to dissuade any foreign interventions into the US, but on the other to keep European powers out of the western hemisphere. Rather than using this navy to forcefully open up markets in Latin America & the Caribbean, Dennis imagined it as anti-colonialist and non-interventionist. If American interests would continue exploiting markets in its hemisphere, it would have to be on the terms of the locals. Even if a Latin American country went socialist, Dennis says that the United States should leave them alone. Even in the kind of fascist international anarchy Dennis advocates, nations have the right to self determination. Dennis was trying to thread an impossibly small needle by balancing the assertion that “might makes right” with the notion that imposing one's own national interests over others is folly, and that everyone should procure their own defense against that kind of foreign ambition. Dennis was a Realist in the terms of Cold War foreign policy, but where Realists applied their consequentialist thinking to advance American imperialism, Dennis wanted an American retreat from colonialism.

Dennis closes the chapter by saying that liberal states like France and the UK need to make colonial concessions to Italy and Germany in order to avoid a war. Dennis could not have known that this is exactly what they would do. Although there were protests in the League of Nations against Italian adventures in Africa, nothing was done to stop them. Though words of sympathy were issued to the Spanish Republic, France and the UK let them die of neglect, withdrawing financial and military support from a Republican cause that desperately needed them. While Nationalists enjoyed unlimited support from Italy and Nazi Germany, the Republicans were left to do what they could with Soviet support and their own internal divisions. While the Soviets were trying to organize an anti-Nazi alliance in defense of Czechoslovakia, the Western powers appeased Hitler's irredentism to avoid a war. They could live with the Anschluss and Sudetenland as concessions to German national injury. So long as Germany remained a potential core for an anti-communist alliance it was best to avoid war.

Dennis supposed that it would be a liberal allied intervention that triggered a war with Italy & Germany. He could not even imagine that not only would the Western imperial powers pursue his idea, it would be Nazi Germany's settler colonial ambitions that triggered another world war. Dennis was a lifelong opportunist and cynic. He supposed that the Nazis were just as cynical as he was. Dennis could not imagine that Hitler actually meant it. That anti-Bolshevism was anti-JUDEO Bolshevism. That the Nazis wouldn't just stop at reversing the impositions of Versailles, they were waging white race war on Jews and Slavs.

Dennis's experience of Europe as a child was a stark contrast to his life in America. In Europe the white people were chauvinist sure, racist yes, but to each other as much as any colored person in the world. Compared to the deprivations of Jim Crow, in Europe nothing was denied him. By comparison it was a revelation of rationality and tolerance. It was easy then for Dennis to accept Italian national chauvinism at face value. At least, he could suppose, it was not racist. Dennis did not know the wartime experiences of Germany and Italy, he could not understand the national injuries which motivated their irredentism. Dennis's ideological blindness masked him to the realities of the Atlantic interchange. The Nazis were influenced by the United States just as much as the Americans had inherited their racist and imperialist chauvinism from the English. By pursuing Fascism as an avenue for his ideas, Dennis was investing himself into the goriest conflagration of European race war the world has ever seen. This fact was not lost on Dennis. Although he took narcissistic injury from his Jewish critics and their demands for justice, Dennis was self aware enough to admit it was his fault for associating with antisemites. Dennis's genius and cunning were ultimately weapons deployed against the peoples he sympathized with the most, while advancing his own oppressors. He had betrayed the oppressed peoples of the world.

It is impossible to say what Dennis believed in his heart of hearts. Fascists often lie as a praxis. They omit inconvenient truths if they think it will advance their agendas. Yet Dennis does have consistencies. Although he never sold out his antiracist and anti-imperialist convictions, he made common cause with the vilest of racial colonialists. As a lifelong confidence man, he casts a ton of doubt on his ideological work. As a Fascist book Dennis's work is almost bereft of the vulgar chauvinism which characterized European & American fascism. His focus was almost solely on the technocratic problems of managing a capitalism in decline. Dennis was not an obligate anticommunist either. Where every other fascist takes on a genocidal conviction against communism in all its forms, Dennis was willing to co-exist with a communist world which he did not even see as an existential threat. Was Dennis a Technocrat or a Futurist who claimed the mantle of fascism to market his ideas directly to the American bourgeois? The problem with this question is that it doesn't change the material and political consequences of Dennis's activities. Whatever intellectual confidence game Dennis was playing, at extreme danger to himself should he ever be exposed, in the end he was an instrument of the white man's imperialism. Although liberal capitalists made concessions to the Soviets in eastern Europe, they would not give up the colonialist ambitions which they had just defeated in their Axis antagonists. The world's greatest inter-imperialist war heralded the dawn of an age of colonialism in anticommunist form. Dennis would die in a United States which was still committed to the global empire of capitalist finance.

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The Deracinated Man

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A concept that Horne doesn't touch upon but could have been edifying, is the concept of "Deracination." To be deracinated means to remove oneself from their natural element, whether by will or by force. Every aspect of Dennis's life was deracinated both by force and his own initiative. Both family backgrounds were removed from their original context - the one fleeing Europe for opportunities in the New World, and the other stolen from their home in Africa to serve cruel masters. Dennis abandoned both his Christianity and racial presentation to become a public intellectual. He left his family to maintain his white presentation, which he likely resented for his entire life. Dennis received fascism second hand, without any personal experience with the Italian or German context. Dennis did not truly understand what Fascists actually wanted, because he couldn't comprehend the national injuries that motivated Fascist irredentism.

Fully removed from his original context, but never forgetting his essential blackness, Dennis stood outside of American society and was able to take an objective measure of it, in contrast to all other American fascists who were to a man White Nationalist imbeciles. It was that blackness that formed the basis of Dennis's most significant contributions: his antiracist critique.

Dennis was obviously not unique in his antiracism, but what was remarkable was the audience he delivered it to. Dennis expressed his imperial and race skepticism to groups like the Council on Foreign Relations, and the German American Bund. Dennis's vision of fascism was a truly, uniquely American one, in which racial resentments would be overcome through a national reconciliation and fascist political economy. Dennis would even propose the formation of an African republic in the Black Belt, where blacks could develop within their own means free of Jim Crow persecutions.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Dennis's racial critique fell on deaf ears. Dennis's sympathizers valued him for his eloquence and technocratic acumen, but selectively dispensed with his more meaningful critiques of White America. Pat Buchanan credits Dennis as being the main inspiration for Paleoconservative isolation. Barry Goldwater told Dennis personally that he was an "inspiration," despite the fact that Goldwater ran on a maximalist anti-communist platform that pushed for a "winnable" nuclear war. In contrast to being a "useful idiot," Dennis was a useful brain to American fascism. A font of good ideas that could be cherry picked to suit the interests of his white clientele, while his critique of whiteness and imperialism was left on the table. Dennis's readers valued his financial critiques because it informed them on how to manipulate markets, and his antiracist critique helped them conceal their true sentiments behind false propriety. Even his anti-imperialism was surely weaponized against the victims of imperialism, recast as the “political slaves” of a Soviet empire.

Horne goes the extra mile in emphasizing that this occlusion of Dennis's anti-imperialism and antiracism was not just done by his fellow travelers. Everyone has occluded these inconvenient facts of Dennis's ideology, both liberal and leftist alike. When liberal and leftist scholars engage with Dennis, it's often to highlight his fascism while ignoring his anti-Americanism. Are Dennis's critiques of White America so dangerous that nobody will admit to them? It's remarkable that these critiques are still relevant today, despite the liberal pretension that America is a "colorblind" society which only needs to wrap up the vestiges of institutional racism. They do not even comprehend that they dispensed with racism to substitute it with a twisted form of race realism. It's for this antiracist critique primarily that Dennis was prosecuted by the federal government, and eventually conveniently forgotten to American historical memory.

Dennis led one of the most quintessentially American lives ever lived. He was a confidence man par excellence, and an ideological hustler. His opportunistic instincts led him into the halls of power, where his true face could only be suspected. He afflicted his radical views on a horrified white elite with enthusiastic gusto, never revealing to their skeptical faces his true identity. Dennis's ideas gave an intellectual backbone to the American fascist movement, and many of those ideas persist today without attribution to Dennis. Dennis is the linchpin for American fascism, concealed so that we cannot uncouple those wretched cars from our train. The continued occlusion of Dennis from our historical memory weakens our understanding of American racism & imperialism. An intentional occlusion of both the liberal and conservative white bourgeois, who have perpetuated fascism materially if not rhetorically.

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The Deracinated Fascism of the Present

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The ceremonies at the 2024 Olympics in Paris opened up with a beheaded Marie Antoinette introducing Gojira performing a metal version of La Cira, a French revolutionary song praising the massacre of aristocrats. The ceremonies then leaned in to stereotypical depictions of French culture, including portrayals of French philosophy, sexuality, and queerness. According to the creative director, this was an embodiment of France's republican and liberal values. The message was clear: in France we have completed the Liberal revolutionary cycle. In France we are truly free to pursue the promise of human happiness & liberty.

To put on this display of liberal triumphalism, Paris had its streets emptied of the homeless, and Muslim athletes were banned from wearing the hijab to enforce France's sense of European modernity. These unsolvable contradictions of liberal hegemony are the seedbed from which fascism grows. If undesirable elements can be repressed in the name of our "free" expression, why not lean in to the hypocrisy? Why not rip the mask off to expose the unvarnished barbarism? We face this crisis now as Israel, a nominally liberal and gay-loving Jewish nation state, carries out a genocide in Gaza where the western-supported IDF is targeting children. At the reveal of systemic torture and rape of Palestinians at the Sde Temain prison camp, Israeli police attempted to arrest those accused to perform an investigation. In response, the most reactionary elements of Israeli politics rioted to free them, and succeeded. All in the defense of rape committed against alleged “Nukhbas.” The liberal response to this crisis is not to demand its immediate halt, but to accommodate the genocide in their electoralism or even deny that it's happening. What's truly "overblown" about the fears of a fascist takeover, is that the fascism is already here. It's always been here. It's within everyone who passively accepts the assumptions of liberal ideology and the European “enlightenment” which birthed it.

It's partly because we ignore men like Lawrence Dennis that we perpetuate the tragedies of history as a gory farce. Because we do not take Fascism seriously and comprehend all of its failures, and in this case Dennis's personal failures, we reproduce it unwittingly as the "common sense" of an aggrieved class. Chances are that we will continue not seriously engaging with the occluded past. This is likely because the only probable solution to the unsolvable crisis of Liberalism, is a communist one. We live in a time for the Lawrence Dennises of the world. Political adventurism is at an all time high, just as it was 100 years ago in Dennis's time; when a revolutionary moment gripped the world in the wake of inter-imperialist war. Now that I've read Dr. Horne, I see Lawrence Dennis everywhere.

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