#history of nazi salute

[sadbicth]

elon musk did a nazi salute twice at the inauguration, and republicans are defending him.

trump revoked executive order 11246, which prohibited discrimination.

trump put all dei employees on leave to be fired.

trump blamed the dc plane crash on dei.

trump banned all lgbtq+ flags from being hung in government buildings.

trump ordered the pentagon to cancel celebration of mlk jr. day, black history month, women's history month, holocaust remembrance day, asian american pacific islander heritage month, lgbtq+ pride month, juneteenth, women's equality day, national hispanic heritage month, national disability employment awarenessmonth, and national american indian heritage month.

trump proposed removing all palestinians from gaza, turning the area into a vacation resort called “riviera of the middle east”.

trump posted an ai generated video showing what he hopes to turn palestine into, with a large golden statue of himself in the middle of it.

trump rolled back biden’s executive order to lower prescription drug costs for people using medicare and medicaid.

trump rescinded the $35 cap on insulin, and prices are expected to rise to $1500 a month.

trump ordered the national institutes of health to cancel their review panels on cancer research.

trump ended the guidelines to prevent ai misuse. the guidelines prevent many things, but notably it prevents production of ai child pornography.

when sean hannity asked trump about the economy, he said “i don’t care”, after campaigning with the economy as his main talking point.

trump has withdrawn the us from the world health organization.

trump is ordering health agencies to stop reporting on bird flu and halt publications of scientific reports.

trump has pardoned over 1500 people who stormed the capitol on january 6th.

trump changed denali back to mount mckinley.

trump signed an executive order to rename the gulf of mexico to gulf of america.

trump shut down cbp one, an app which granted legal entry to 1 million+ immigrants.

trump has discussed introducing a “gold card”, which would allow the wealthiest people to buy us citizenship for $5 million usd.

trump is allowing ice raids at churches and elementary schools.

trump announced plans to declare a national emergency at the us-mexico border.

trump signed an executive order to expand the use of the death penalty.

trump disbanded the school safety board that works to prevent school shootings. it was comprised of survivors, educators, and gun violence prevention advocates and formed after the school shooting in parkland.

trump has threatened to invade panama to claim the panama canal.

trump withdrew from the paris climate act.

trump revoked all protections for transgender troops in the us military.

trump rescinded executive orders made by biden that benefited and protected women, lgbtq+ people, black americans, hispanic americans, asian americans, native hawaiians, and pacific islanders.

trump is attempting to make it legal to refuse to hire or fire pregnant women.

multiple state legislators are drafting bills to allow the punishment for abortion to be the death penalty.

trump pardoned 23 individuals convicted under the freedom of access to clinic entrances (FACE) act for their anti-abortion activism, including oftentimes violent protests at abortion clinics.

trump signed an executive order allowing deportation of foreign students who they believe express support for hamas or hezbollah.

trump announced that the us government will from here on out only recognize male and female as sexes. intersex is not legally recognized anymore.

trump has told all schools and universities that they have two weeks to end all diversity initiatives, or he will cut federal funding. (as of feb 19, 2025)

trump fired the staff of the federal aviation association after a deadly plane crash in dc.

trump has fired the heads of the tsa and coast guard, and gutted a key aviation safety advisory committee.

the supreme court weakened the clean water act's limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water in a 5-4 ruling.

the official white house twitter account posted an “illegal alien deportation” asmr video where they did closeups of chains and the sound of ankle chains hitting the metal stairs of the airplanes deportees were being loaded onto.

on truth social, trump posted, “LONG LIVE THE KING!”.

at CPAC, a republican group called the “third term project” held a rally to support changing the constitution so trump can run for a third term. on their posters, they’re photoshopping his face onto julius caesar’s, seemingly forgetting what happened to julius caesar.

the trump administration paused health communications to prevent the fda from announcing food recalls.

republicans on tiktok are recreating elon’s salute to prove that it “wasn’t a nazi salute”, and they’re either doing it completely wrong because they know if they replicate it then it will actually be a salute, or they’re doing the proper salute and posting it online.

google and apple maps now display the gulf of mexico as “gulf of america”.

rfk jr. wants to ban SSRIs and put everyone on them into labor camps.

andy ogles drafted a constitutional amendment to allow trump to be president for a third term.

the us senate confirmed russell vought, one of the main authors of project 2025, will lead the white house budget office.

nancy mace repeatedly used the t-slur during a congressional meeting, three times were out of spite.

andy biggs introduced a bill to abolish osha and completely eliminate federal workplace safety protections.

georgia republican congressman mike collins called for the deportation of new jersey born mariann budde, the bishop who urged trump to “have mercy” on the lgbtq+ community and immigrants during a service at the national cathedral.

florida republican anna paulina luna has introduced a bill to add trump to mount rushmore.

new york republican claudia tenney introduced a bill to make trump’s birthday a federal holiday.

west virginia republican delegate lisa white has introduced house bill 2712, which would remove rape and incest as exceptions for abortion, even for minors. you can call her at (304) 340- 3274 or email her at lisa.white@wvhouse.gov and let her know your opinion on that.

there is a bill named the SAVE act which would require americans to provide their birth certificate, passport, or other citizenship documents every time they vote, and would require the last name on their driver’s license to match that of their birth certificate. this would prevent married women who have changed their last name from voting.

bill h.r.1161, which is available publicly on congress.gov, would authorize trump to enter into negotiations to acquire greenland and to rename it to "red, white, and blueland".

six states (arizona, idaho, iowa, kansas, mississippi, and north dakota) are planning on challenging obergefell v. hodges, which would end same-sex marriage nationwide. about a dozen more states have representatives are also considering filing similar resolutions.

a bill to ban the mRNA vaccine has passed out of the house committee.

amazon revoked protections for lgbtq+ and black employees.

the cdc has removed their hiv prevention page.

the united states state department has officially changed its “travelers with special conditions” page which previously said “lgbtqi+ travelers” to “lgb travelers”, completely getting rid of the tqi+.

every single republican told us we were overreacting. trump swore he had nothing to do with project 2025 yet continues implementing details outlined in it. not a single person has the right to tell us we’re being dramatic anymore.

hope “cheaper eggs and gas” was worth it.

EDIT: i removed the “trump refused to swear on the bible” point because it was being taken as me being an offended christian. i’m not christian, im agnostic. the reason i included it in the first place is because he’s the first president in history to ever refuse to swear on ANYTHING. meanwhile his “conservative christian” followers had no issue with this, and decided to continue to scramble for excuses instead of admitting he may not be as religious as he claims he is. i figured taking that point out entirely is probably better than filling this with an explanation in the middle of the other important issues.

[apricior]

in light of recent events, i am seeing a lot of posts talking about punching nazis and fighting nazis. and that is good and all, but at the end of the day it is worthless if your activism starts and ends at condemning the nazi salute. antisemitism and nazism are more than sieg heiling and spray painting swastikas on a wall.

if you truly care about nazism, learn about its characteristics. learn what it really means. learn how it has affected and still affects jewish people. learn about antisemitism, about dogwhistles, about stereotypes. learn how to identify it when it's hidden, when it's not coming from right-wing white supremacists who openly hate jews, when it's coming from friends, or relatives, or other left-wing groups. identify what antisemitic beliefs you hold. fight antisemitism even when it is directed at jews you don't like or you disagree with.

and, above everything, support the jewish community. learn about their history, their culture, their customs. love jews more than you hate nazis.

international holocaust remembrance day is next week (january 27th). if you truly want to be an ally to the jewish community, condemning elon musk is not enough.

[dejwrld]

coming back on to say fuck donald trump & elon musk. also fuck every single person who voted for trump. fuck ice. fuck jd vance who look like he’s product of fucking incest. fuck trump kids while we at. fuck teslas. fuck cybertrucks. fuck melania trump, idc how many fashion houses style you…fuck you too. fuck all the people who voted for trump cause of tariffs and don’t even know know what a tariffs are. fuck all the people he pardoned for that jan 6th shenanigans (but tbh the way it’s looking like, karma is slowly snatching some of you guys up bit by bit final destination style). fuck the Latinos that voted for trump, baby girl (saying in gn term) trump supporters do not care…they see you speak a lick of spanish…they’re calling ice on you, fuck jill stein for crawling out the hole she be living in every 4 years when election comes around. fuck all the twitch/other platform streamers that are slowly indoctrinating young boys down an alt right pipeline. fuck israel. fuck all politicians that would rather accept a lobby check than being in their political positions for the people. fuck the swole neck man that killed ace in one piece. fuck the coon black man that ruined my morning when i saw a clip of him in 4k live calling donald trump daddy. fuck the republicans who comment under people who are genuinely afraid of what’s to come for the next 4 years with “we won” (as if this is a sporting event :/).

but i love you to the people who are sharing and expressing empathy to their friends and family as y’all are trying to navigate through this. i love you to the people who are posting pics and videos of ice sightings. i love you to the people sharing resources like gardening tips. i love you to the people who are buying banned books. i love you to the people who are still teaching their kids about black history. i love you to the people who never stopped talking about palestine, congo, sudan, etc. i love you to the people who are still being hopeful that america won’t continue to be pushed further and further into the grasp of billionaires like elon. i love you to the people who are standing up against bigotry. i love you to the people who are standing against elon doing a nazi salute (twice). i love you to the people sharing information that seemed to be not being shared on mainstream media. i love you all (except trump supporters).

[gloomygloworm]

I open Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I play the game, and I think to myself ‘weird I thought this was a choices and politics game ft metaphors from real history like slavery’ 

My friends go “you’re right that’s what it’s supposed to be but this game is lacking those things”

I go “oh bummer that sucks, I like moral quandaries.”

I see a post that publicly wonders why people are upset that one of the main metaphors (slavery) is missing from the game.

I respond saying yeah its weird that people are complaining that a Big Metaphor is missing from the Big Metaphor Game

I get asked what part of the game matches the Main Metaphor, and I respond with “well, the elves are second class citizens.” I am doing research specifically on the elves. I read in the wiki, with sources, that yeah, no, I’m right, the Church said “if you kiss an elf that’s basically the same thing as kissing a dog.” Elves don’t have rights in most of the countries that the other games are in. One of these places in the North is the Big Metaphor Place where they looooove the Big Metaphor and using the Big Metaphor, but I get called weird for wondering why it’s mostly absent from the game.

I open my blinds and find out that National Holocaust Remembrance Day is no longer a federal holiday. I also find out that my government is trying to "deport" the native citizens of said country. I go back online and find a thread from 2009 where one of the writers explicitly states “Yeah the Dalish started as a metaphor for the Roma but evolved into more like the Native Americans, and the Andrastean Elves are like the Jewish during Nazi Occupied Germany.”

I say “oh okay so Tevinter is like Nazi Occupied Germany. Yeah it’s weird that they’ve kind of sanitized this place and I can’t find the evidence of this anywhere.”

Someone calls me weird again and tells me to read the Codex. Someone else mentions the very beginning of the game, where you see shackles on the ground and there is mention of an elf who is freeing slaves, none of which I witness. I wonder if the slaves are in the room with me. 

Someone else mentions that this is the first time we see Tevinter without any biases, mentioning two characters, Dorian and Fenris.

My friends, horrified, tell me Fenris is an ex-slave (who can be given BACK to his slave owner) and Dorian’s family are Slave Owners. I think to myself huh that’s kind of a weird thing to say considering the biases are “I was a slave” and “Yeah my family owns slaves but that’s kinda bad huh” cause that’s the same exact concept. 

I say “well elves don’t have rights, that sucks, but I wish we got to see more of their day to day. I hear about these alienages that in other games we’ve been able to see, it’s weird there isn’t one in the very poor part of the Capital of the Big Metaphor Place, where there would be a high number of these people.”

Someone says “why do you want to see them suffering? That’s weird.”

I say “yeah but there’s beauty in adversity and I didn’t write the game, I want to see this big tree the alienages supposedly have as a sort of last hope for the city elves to cling to their lost culture.” 

Someone calls me weird.

I open my blinds and politicians and big public figures are giving Nazi salutes in public rallies. 

I boot up Veilguard.

I boot up Origins and get called a slur within the first five minutes of the game. 

I picked a circle elven mage, but I use youtube to look up the city elf origin and go “oh holy fuck wow they just put it right out there huh? That’s the world state, now I know.”

Someone tells me that I should play the game because I would enjoy being sexually assaulted and violated.

I literally don’t have a response to that in any comprehensive way because that is a wild thing to say to a stranger. It is, in fact, two subjects I have intimate knowledge of as a victim of both domestic abuse and sexual assault. 

Someone tells me to just read the Codex.

Someone tells me to just read the Diary of Anne Frank.

I buy the art book for Veilguard and see that some of the major players they nixed were ex-slaves. I look at Reva and I say “oh hey cool concept” 

Someone calls me an idiot online and I laugh while closing my blinds, because purity culture is once more making a comeback and if I licked a single rock in Arlathan all I’d taste was bleach.

[waytootiredstudent]

Why the CDU/CSU can go fuck itself

Time for another one of these. a quick(ish) summary for all the non-german speakers about why we're freaking out and the state of our democracy.

Spoiler. its not...good. Not catastrophic (yet). But the alarm bells are very, very loud.

Tl;dr: The CDU, party currently prognosed to win the election, has basically worked together with the afd to get a migrationbill to pass that is very strict. The afd are the nazi party that is getting backed by Musk. This might forshadow a cooperation between AFD and CDU. That would put the far right in power. The current response from the general public are demonstrations against that. Like. there are a LOT of protests currently.

Alright grab a drink and lets go.

First, groundwork: Who are parties and who is the guy we currently all want to punch in the face?

on top: Careful, risk of confusion. on the left: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. Real. On the right: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. comic figure.

This guy here is Friedrich Merz. no, not the guy on the right. the guy on the left. I know. Easy mistake to make.

He's an asshole. He's also the current boss of the CDU and their chancellor candidate. He's very likely to win according to recent polls.

The CDU has a complicated history, but to simplify it: They were in charge for sixteen years before the now broken apart Traffic-light goverment and are responsible for a lot of shit that we're currently dealing with. Like crumbling infrastructure for example. They were more interested, as a party, to preserve the status quo at all costs, than to invest anything. You could argue that a lot of the enviromental issues we are facing and the reason why Germany is currently pretty stagnant, can be traced back to the one and a half decade the CDU was in charge. They are conservative, not a fan of migration and like to throw around 'tradtional values'.

They are, generally speaking, or better were, center right. More on that later.

The other party that is going to be a major pain in the ass to outright fucking dangerous, is the AFD, short for 'Alternative for Germany'.

this is Alice Weidel, she's the current chancellor candidate for the afd. here is her wikipedia article and lets just say her 'controversies' part is longer than her 'political positions' part.

Those are the, to put it bluntly, Nazis. They are dangerous but also a fucking mess. Like, to just list a few of their hits: They've been getting money from dictators (different ones btw, not just one), infigthing is a sport to them, they try to glorify the nazi-regime, the german intelligence agency is watching them because they are officially considered radical right-wing and a threat to democracy, there is a petition to ban the afd and that is a high bar to cross, the demonize immigrants, hate queer people, you know, the usual. Also of course political correctness has gone too far and climate change isn't real and we need to leave the EU. Elon Musk, you know the rich guy who did the Nazi-salute, also has been appearing and is actively supporting them. Just in case we were unclear before on where they all stand.

(btw the whole 'elon is supporting them' thing is pretty scary bc you could argue the reason that the afd is able to win so many votes is bc, frankly, they're good at social media. Do i need to elaborate why that is a dangerous combination.)

to put them into perspective: The afd is too right for the other alt-right parties in the EU parlament. There is a coalition in the EU Parlament for the right, made up of all the right wing parties from other nations and the afd is too right for them. So. yeeeeaaah.

that should do it as background information.

Now. back to current events. where both of these parties are getting more and more support.

For a short history of why we currently have a non-functioning goverment, i made a post about that. Be aware that it was made as a product of its time and doesn't have all the information. For example back then we didn't know that FDP had actively engineered that break up and wanted it to happen for a while. Yes. They wanted to topple the goverment they were in. on purpose. It's been a fun time over here in Germany as well.

anyways, lets get to the meat of things. Since we don't have a functional goverment currently, Merz has introduced a harsh migration bill. This has been in the wake of an attack with two murders, where the current suspect is a migrant. while this is a tragedy, its getting brutally misused by all out rightwing parties to scream about how we need stricter migration laws and that migrants are a danger. Which to be so fucking clear about this, is such bullshit. It's been proven so many times how that is bullshit. I'm gonna be real and not even bother. They're just the newest scapegoats everything can be blamed on.

But because nobody has a majority, all attempts at governing so far have been pretty stalled.

(our goverment currently)

Quick information from the past:

in 2018 the CDU basically stated they wouldn't, in any sort of way, cooperate with the AFD, declaring basically a Brandmauer (fire wall). This basically means that yes, the afd had been given seats in the parlament, but nobody would give them any power whatsoever.

This has been the position of the cdu. It is why people still considered them center-right.

Merz has repeatedly said he didn't care who voted with him. now with a slight majority, 348 to 344, the cdu has won, with the support of the afd. Many see this as the fall of the Brandmauer. It's not good. Merz has more and more talking points that sound exactly like the afd and that is SCARY. There is still a vivid memory alive here about why having a far-right goverment is dangerous. There is a reason why there are currently a lot of massive protests all over the country loudly proclaiming that 'never again is now'.

This also puts for many the cdu from 'center right' to 'right'. There are calls from inside the cdu to 'stop demonizing the afd'. This is scary. This could mean that we get not just a conservative goverment in a few weeks, but a rightwing one. One who is comfortable cooperating with radical right wingers if it suits their needs. To cooperate with a party that even our own intelligence agencies consider a threat to our democrazy.

So. that is why your german mutuals sit there like

Now. To another part. What exactly is that migration bill merz had wanted to pass so desperateldy?

Well first of all it calls for a national emergency, using the beforementioned murder as reasoning, for the danger of immigration. It calls for closing and controls at the borders permanently, not temporary as is curently the case. They want for people without valid ID to be refused entry, even when they are searching safety. People that are already in Germany but need to leave should be thrown in jail until they actually leave.

Which. just to be clear about this. this what the bill they had, that had the support of the afd, says. This is not a wish list. This what they want to be law.

But to be also clear, lots of this is against our current law, against Basic EU law and principle and also a pretty big violation of our constituation.

Which is what makes this situation so fatal. This bill is going to be fought. In court, in politics, with demonstrations on the streets. this bill is controversial. Merz knew that. he knew that a lot of this wouldn't pass. This is a publicly stunt. This is testing the waters. How much will the public allow? how far can he push? Is cooperation with the afd possible for him? How does everyone react?

It was never about immigration or that bill. All the people this is going to impact, all the lives that are going to be lost because of this shit they are pulling - this is to them all just collateral. Its testing how much is possible, tolerated even. The chances of this bill making it law is slim. It needs to pass again in a different body of the goverment with a two thirds majority and that is nowhere in sight.

Also, lets take a look at who voted what:

it was about four votes. So my german friends who also read this - look at this and be aware of who voted what. Who abstained to vote and gave up the four votes it would have taken to stop this. who accepted that to get what they want they would need to get the support of the afd, no matter how much Merz now claims that he still doesn't cooperate with the afd and that there were no talks between them. Look at the numbers. Look how and with who they voted.

To be frank, i am pretty pissed off. I don't think much about wallowing in self-pity and despair. i am pissed off about what is happening. i am pissed off that these people don't have a spine, i am pissed off at the FDP for enabling this in the first place, i am pissed off that we have Nazis in out goverment, i am pissed off that we have people who are willing to cooperate with them. I am pissed off that i need to settle for damage control instead of being able to see something finally move forward.

Now here we come to the less depressing part of this whole thing. And i want you to pay attention to it.

People are protesting. loudly. And in the thousands. There have been ten to a hundred thousands of people all over the country in the last week, protesting against the rise of faschism and the far right. Its all over the country, in different cities. Where the afd appears to talk, so do the protesters. There are 35 afd people to 1300 protesters. People loudly say 'never again is now'. And they show up to back that claim up.

This shit is vile, yes, but it's not going to be unopposed.

I know this all reads as depressing as fuck but do not give into the temptation of falling into despair. This is far from over. Yes those are the alarm bells and they are ringing loudly. But there is still things that can be done. Don't let the afd lure you into thinking this all pointless anyways. It's not. This is all not good, yes, but no reason to fall into blind panic. The bill isn't law yet. Merz is facing massive backlash for his little stunt. This is not a hopeless situation. It's just a shitty one.

[dostoyevsky-official]

not only did the NYT propagate anti-trans stories feeding today's EO ban and refuse to acknowledge elon's nazi salute, they went vichy-media mode by banning paul krugman from the op-eds:

Last month I retired from my position as an opinion writer at the New York Times—a job I had done for 25 years. Despite the encomiums issued by the Times, it was not a happy departure. [...] I believe that the story of why I left says something important about the current state of legacy journalism.

[...] During my first 24 years at the Times, from 2000 to 2024, I faced very few editorial constraints on how and what I wrote. For most of that period my draft would go straight to a copy editor, who would sometimes suggest that I make some changes — for example, softening an assertion that arguably went beyond provable facts, or redrafting a passage the editor didn’t quite understand, and which readers probably wouldn’t either. But the editing was very light; over the years several copy editors jokingly complained that I wasn’t giving them anything to do, because I came in at length, with clean writing and with back-up for all factual assertions.

This light-touch editing prevailed even when I took positions that made Times leadership very nervous. My early and repeated criticisms of Bush’s push to invade Iraq led to several tense meetings with management. In those meetings, I was urged to tone it down. Yet the columns themselves were published as I wrote them. And in the end, I believe the Times — which eventually apologized for its role in promoting the war — was glad that I had taken an anti-invasion stand. I believe that it was my finest hour.

So I was dismayed to find out this past year, when the current Times editors and I began to discuss our differences, that current management and top editors appear to have been completely unaware of this important bit of the paper’s history and my role in it.

[...] In 2024, the editing of my regular columns went from light touch to extremely intrusive. I went from one level of editing to three, with an immediate editor and his superior both weighing in on the column, and sometimes doing substantial rewrites before it went to copy. These rewrites almost invariably involved toning down, introducing unnecessary qualifiers, and, as I saw it, false equivalence. I would rewrite the rewrites to restore the essence of my original argument. But as I told Charles Kaiser, I began to feel that I was putting more effort—especially emotional energy—into fixing editorial damage than I was into writing the original articles. And the end result of the back and forth often felt flat and colorless.

One more thing: I faced attempts from others to dictate what I could (and could not) write about, usually in the form, “You’ve already written about that,” as if it never takes more than one column to effectively cover a subject. If that had been the rule during my earlier tenure, I never would have been able to press the case for Obamacare, or against Social Security privatization, and—most alarmingly—against the Iraq invasion. Moreover, all Times opinion writers were banned from engaging in any kind of media criticism. Hardly the kind of rule that would allow an opinion writer to state, “we are being lied into war.”

I felt that my byline was being used to create a storyline that was no longer mine. So I left.

That’s my story. What are the broader implications?

[...] What I felt during my final year at the Times was a push toward blandness, toward avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some people (particularly on the right) riled up. I guess my question is, if those are the ground rules, why even bother having an opinion section?

[...] On a somewhat different issue, it became clear to me that the management I was dealing with didn’t understand the difference between having an opinion and having an informed, factually sourced opinion. When the newsletter was canceled, I tried to point out that I was almost the only regular opinion writer doing policy. Their response was to point to other writers who often expressed views about policy, economic and otherwise. I tried in vain to explain that there’s a difference between having opinions about economics and knowing how to read C.B.O. analyses and recent research papers. It all fell on deaf ears.

[sayruq]

Statement: Student organizations in the Gaza Strip in solidarity with the Student Intifada in the United States

In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful… We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising up in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist-U.S. genocide against our people in Gaza. As we remain under the bombs of occupation, resisting Nazi genocide, grieving for our martyred colleagues and faculty, and witnessing the destruction of our universities, we welcome the examples of solidarity offered by students facing arrest, police violence, suspension, eviction, and expulsion in order to demand that their universities end their complicity in the Zionist-U.S. genocide and renounce their support for the occupation and the war profiteers that arm it. We have seen hundreds of students arrested across the United States as they work to transform their universities into “Popular Universities for Gaza.” Students, faculty, and staff are disrupting university operations and making clear that while universities in Gaza are being bombed, university business cannot continue as usual in the United States. These actions come as university administrations collaborate with members of Congress to discredit conscientious student activists and faculty, expel students, ban events, shut down student organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine, and condemn activists working to end the Nazi genocide. At the same time, these same universities invest in the same companies that profit from the continued sale of weapons to the Zionist regime to continue its genocidal offensive. Our students – and our educational system as a whole – in occupied Palestine are subjected to ongoing genocidal aggression: our universities destroyed and bombed, our student organizations banned, and our student leaders subjected to torture, assassination and mass imprisonment. However, in Palestine and around the world, the student movement has always been a driving force of our struggle for liberation. When we see videos and images from American universities today, we are reminded of our history of student struggle as well as the student uprisings of 1968, which challenged imperialism from Vietnam to Palestine and reshaped the face of Europe and the United States. Now, in 2024, the student movement is once again leading the way. From here in Gaza, we see you and salute you. Your actions and activism matter, especially in the heart of the empire, in the United States. As members of Congress agree to provide $26 billion in additional weapons to bomb our people and continue the Zionist-U.S. genocide, you are taking meaningful action to shut down the war machine on your campuses. It is clear that a new generation is rising that will no longer accept Zionism, racism and genocide, and that stands with Palestine and our liberation from the river to the sea. Your global student solidarity is breaking boundaries, and it is time to smash the US imperialist war machine. From Gaza to Columbia, to Ann Arbor and Berkeley, our hands are joined to end Nazi genocide and achieve our collective liberation.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Dublin resident Justine Zapin’s two sons, ages 8 and 10, arrived at their public elementary school earlier this month to find Irish lawmaker Chris Andrews outside handing out “Free Palestine” bracelets to pupils. The bracelets caused discomfort for the brothers and some of their Israeli classmates. When they asked a third classmate if he would be willing to remove his, he became upset and reported them to the teacher. The 8-year-old later said he “felt like he got in trouble” with his teacher for expressing his unease, while his older sibling faced peers questioning his objection with remarks like, “But Israel started the war,” and “Israel’s killing babies.” After the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, a classroom discussion implied that “the Jews deserved this,” Zapin said, with objections receiving minimal response from school officials.

More recently, the school — part of the Educate Together network, which, according to its website promotes equality-based and inclusive education — dismissed a pupil’s Nazi salute as “boys being boys.”

In one example highlighted in the report, a religious studies textbook cited Islam as being “in favor of peace and against violence,” while Judaism “believes violence and war are sometimes necessary to promote justice.” The New Testament parable of the “Good Samaritan” is illustrated with an image of a boy wearing a Palestinian scarf protesting against Israel. A history textbook refers to Auschwitz — the Nazi concentration camp in Poland where over 1 million Jews were murdered — as a “prisoner of war camp.” In a children’s textbook retelling the story of Jesus, a comic strip contains the line, “Some people did not like Jesus,” with disapproving figures depicted in distinctly Jewish attire, including tallits and kippahs. In another instance, Jesus is described as having lived in “Palestine.”

The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, the main body of representation for the Irish Jewish community, told the London-based Jewish Chronicle that young Jews felt “under siege” in the classroom, forcing a number of them to change schools due to antisemitism. JRCI chair Maurice Cohen said his efforts to discuss concerns with Irish Education Minister Norma Foley were repeatedly denied. Her department told the newspaper, “There is no evidence of antisemitism being taught in Irish schools.”

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

The absolute irony of protestors who claim to be ‘anti genocide’ throwing Nazi salutes and yelling “Heil Hitler” at Israeli athletes, deliberately invoking the worst case of industrialised genocide in recorded history at people it will hurt the most.

This is not activism. It’s not big or clever or funny. It’s rancid. It’s deep and inhumane cruelty. It’s antisemitism at its basic, most distilled level and it is yet more proof (if any more was needed) that the Free Palestine movement’s protestations of “antizionism not antisemitism” are, and always have been, a load of shit.

There has been absolutely no concerted effort to condemn or remove these elements from the movement and this kind of behaviour has been getting worse and more frequent, so I must conclude that the Jew hate is, in fact, the whole point.

[worlds-worst-ships]

Do you seriously, actually ship it?

Okay. Lets talk. Because apparently some of you are defending... well... "that" (under the cut)

"He's autistic! It was a stim!"

If you genuinely think that this has ANYTHING to do with autism, you are an objectively stupid person. Like, your brain is so fucking smooth, it puts the surface of freshly tempered glass to shame. You're a barely functional reprobate with subhuman intelligence who has no idea how to form thoughts so you let a 50 year old billionaire who spends too much time on his phone decide your thought process for you.

"He was throwing his heart out to the crowd!"

Now, I don't really play baseball, basketball, netball, or any sport where you throw anything other than sometimes darts, but... is that how you throw? You perfectly extend your arm at that angle? Twice? After spending years posting tweets that very much align with Nazi viewpoints? Do you throw a pitch in baseball and scream SIEG HEIL as the ball hurtles towards your opponent? No. Stop being a fucking idiot. This was deliberate. He did it twice.

"He's autistic! He doesn't know better!"

Please comment if you actually think this so I can personally call you a stupid cunt and block you. We absolutely do know better. Autism and Nazism aren't mutually exclusive.

"You're inhibiting his free speech!"

1st amendment only applies to censorship from government positions of power, which I am not, as should be obvious from the fact that I have no power to censor him. Though I shouldn't have to explain that.

"Well, he's gonna get away with it so stop being so sensitive!"

Yes. He is. But that's not a flex, that's A FUCKING MASSIVE PROBLEM. Call me sensitive if you want, but absolutely every single one of you should be offended by this. Did you pay attention in history class, or were you too tired after a long night of being fucking railed raw and bone dry by propaganda on Twitter? Moron.

"Well, he's rich and you're not, so there!"

Yep. Got me there. He's rich, and I'm not. Yknow, Hitler and a lot of Nazi officers were pretty minted too. So was Epstein, King Leopold, Stalin, Jimmy Saville, every MP currently serving in parliament... but sure, they're great people because they're rich, right?

"You're just a stupid offended libtard!"

Google "The Holocaust".

"Well, you're still using his app!"

His app? You mean the one he bought, then fucking ruined because he has no idea how to run it, right? And you because its basically impossible to find mutuals as a vtuber without it, you knew that, right? "His" app, please, you probably think Ronald McDonald makes your burger when you order McDonalds, you moron.

"If we punish Elon for this, then that's a violation of the first amendment!"

You mean like banning tiktok, removing any and all talk of election rigging, then putting it back up the next day? Or maybe like deleting any criticisms of you and your nazi salutes under your recent tweets despite it blowing up everywhere else? Or does that not count because its something you agree with? Yeah. You've been cucked harder than Sneako and you don't even realize it. Elon and his government buddies are leaving your free speech rights looking like this

Aaaaanyway

I find it well and truly laughable that so many people like Elon will say all this insane shit and do all these fucking heinous things and people will defend them. Like how that gun woman who shit herself says stuff like "I'm not homophobic, I just think gay people are disgusting and that they should die" or that comedian nobody finds funny anymore spends hours whining about trans people but says he's not transphobic.

Lets all be on the same page for once and have the balls to say what we actually think. Elon got so close, but being a spineless edgelord who doesn't have the balls to just say what he thinks out loud is quite the weakness.

[mariacallous]

Amy Brown was not screaming. She was not crying. She was not throwing up.

But on Bluesky she said that she was doing all three, simultaneously. Brown’s husband visited a Walgreens while he was on a business trip in Ohio in February. He told her the prices were cheaper than in California, where they live.

The price disparity led her to post that she was screaming, crying, and throwing up. Several Bluesky users responded to tell her she was exaggerating, and that nobody could possibly care that much. They were right. She didn’t. She was referencing one of the internet’s common sayings, one used so often that it’s the name of a Spotify compilation.

What Brown experienced is familiar to any former Twitter/X user gathering their bearings on the young and decidedly more earnest social network Bluesky: a distinct humor-detection issue. Some users are unable to decipher jokes, or they are deliberately trying to miss the point to make a different one. Many Bluesky users migrated over from X, where the top DOGE who did Nazi-like salutes on television is live-tweeting the destruction of American infrastructure. That’s a different and much more serious problem. Still, the seeming obliviousness-slash-self-seriousness of many Bluesky users is grating when you’re not used to it.

“They're speaking a completely different language than me,” Brown says. “We're both speaking English, but I'm speaking internet.”

Brown, a former social media manager for Wendy’s, joined Bluesky in 2023. Her X account was banned after she impersonated Elon Musk for almost two hours on November 4, 2022.

The “incident,” as she calls it, happened shortly after X announced paid verification. Brown changed her profile picture to one of a balding entrepreneur and edited her display name to “Elon Musk (real).” She convincingly emulated his voice, posting musings like “my wife left me lol” and “my penis is NOT weird.”

She didn’t know whether she’d be banned for her behavior on X, but she was OK with the possibility. “It's like, Elon's already the main character on this platform every day, and now he owns it. Do I really want to be here anymore?” she says.

While you can still find plenty of this kind of humor on Bluesky, there are a surprising number of people genuinely confused by it. There are several factors to blame here.

First is the clash between former users of X and Facebook. Anyone who logged their time on the Everything App is familiar with the language of Twitter: posts steeped in irony, in-group references, platform-specific history. When they left X, they brought all that wisecracking, insidery drollery with them. They even brought their pig-shitting-on-its-own-testicles JPEGs.

Meanwhile, former power users of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are accustomed to their own barometers of funny. While Twitter felt like an intentional way to primarily interact with mostly strangers, and a familiar face might cause the user a moment of horror, Facebook was the opposite—at least initially, before it became Click FarmVille for engagement bait and advertisements for oddly specific custom novelty tees.

Bluesky also got a big boost in users from mainstream television: MSNBC ran multiple segments about the social network, including bumps on Morning Joe, The Weekend, All In With Chris Hayes, and The Rachel Maddow Show. Regular MSNBC viewers who took the plunge might not be as familiar with the tenor and style of online conversation on the smart-ass social web.

The lack of humor detection is made worse by tech: algorithmically curated content, à la Bluesky’s Discover feed, surfaces random posts to random people. A Maddow referral on Bluesky might see an ex-Twitter user’s vivid description of what they’d do to the Hamburglar if they saw him in person and react with genuine horror and confusion. It’s also PEBKAC issue—problem exists between keyboard and chair. You cannot force a person to understand a joke. The only action more futile is to get mad about it.

If these disparate groups have anything in common, it’s disgust with gigantic tech companies led by unpalatable CEOs, paired with a yearning to post in the lingua franca of their previously beloved platforms. Everyone’s brains are broken in different ways. I empathize with those who don’t get the joke. But I empathize more with the people trying to make them.

To paraphrase an Axios story from last year, America is in the midst of a gullibility crisis. People can’t tell what’s AI, a manipulated screenshot, a joke, or a lie. Many of us have opened up our relationship with reality. And the political climate has exacerbated the issue, according to Josh Gondelman, a comedian who previously worked as a producer and writer on Desus & Mero and wrote for Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.

“Since Trump’s run for the presidency, there has been a rapidly accelerating not-getting-jokes on the internet,” Gondelman says.

By Gondelman’s recollection, Bluesky hit a point where it was populated enough with active users to be both fun and useful at some point within the past six months. “But that also means it hit the tipping point where it’s populated enough to be annoying,” he says, laughing.

Mattie Lubchansky, an Ignatz Award–winning cartoonist, author, and illustrator, describes herself as “a primarily joke-posting kind of person.” The humor-detection issue of Bluesky is part of a broader phenomenon she has observed, which she calls “riff collapse.”

The day after the 2025 Oscars, Lubchansky posted: “i haven't seen any of the oscar movies this year, nor have i seen any movie ever made. i'm afraid that the people trapped inside the screen will be angry at me for not helping them escape; and once they are out i will be punished. anyway, here's how the awards validated an opinion i already had.”

The replies that followed were earnest opinions and arguments about Oscar-nominated films. Some people asked for movie recommendations. Some unironically recommended she check out The Purple Rose of Cairo. Only a handful of people seem to have understood that she was joking. Lubchansky says she sees this type of “riff collapse” happen daily, and she thinks it’s because of the influx of new users from Meta and X.

But the frustrations around new social platforms isn’t new. Networks will continue to pop up, ideally, and longtime users will continue to be annoyed by newbies.

In the early-to-mid-1990s, people often first accessed the internet when they arrived at college. Around September of every year, a bunch of new users would log on to their university’s network and start poking around the forums and discussion groups.

“The internet old timers would be very frustrated, because the new people didn’t know the social norms,” says technologist, writer, and former WIRED contributor Anil Dash. “Exactly the phenomenon we’re seeing right now.” September, for the most online netizens, was a dreaded time of the year. AOL opened the floodgates, allowing anyone to access the internet at any time. AOL’s bloom coincided with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated the telco industry and brought internet connectivity to homes and institutions across the US.

This period was called the Eternal September, with “wave after wave of newbies getting online,” Dash says.

The pattern has repeated itself with LiveJournal and even Twitter. Actor and investor Ashton Kutcher appeared on CNN in 2009 and challenged the network to see whose account could hit 1 million Twitter followers first. (Kutcher won.) The stunt led to a rush of users flooding the microblogging platform.

Lubchansky thinks this moment presents an opportunity for people to examine their reply etiquette.

“Read the whole post before you respond. Take a moment to respond. And if you're going to respond with a joke, and we're not friends already, go look and see if somebody's made it already,” Lubchansky says. “Because there's a really good chance they have.”

Meanwhile, Brown considers the block function on Bluesky to be a favor to its recipient.

“If someone comes into my comments and they just really, really don't understand, usually I just block them so we don't run into each other again,” she says. “No hard feelings.” It’s a different approach than the norm on X, where quote-tweets viciously insulting the original post are part of the platform’s noxious fabric.

“I'm not trying to repeat the part of Twitter where the internet makes me mad every day,” Brown says.

Satirical site The Onion has the fifth largest Bluesky account, with over 1.2 million followers. Onion CEO Ben Collins doesn’t mind people replying to jokes in earnest. On the contrary, he says it’s “the funniest part of the internet.”

“It means more people are seeing your jokes,” he says. “If everyone is immediately breaking out into uproarious applause at your joke, your audience is too small.”

As someone who regularly used and posted on Twitter for years, I share the frustration when one of my jokey posts is misread or taken as fact. But it also strikes me as unfair to shame someone because they haven’t been slamming their head on the same wall of the internet that I have.

Not everyone crawled here from the radioactive sewer of X dot com. As we all get settled along with our new neighbors, it might be helpful to remember that. If not, at least Bluesky has very robust blocking features.

[thosemotivationalquotes]

In case it wasn’t clear enough, this blog is strongly anti Nazi.

If you feel the need to rush online to come to Musk’s aid when he made a deliberate choice to do a Nazi salute (twice) then please block me and fuck off.

I’m not sure how I can be any clearer. I want nothing to do with nazis or nazi sympathizers. If you feel the need to defend anyone using the Nazi salute or saying things that align with Nazi values, then you need to sit down, read a history book, and have some self reflection.

[proshippers-against-censorship]

I only got into the whole pro/anti ship thing some months ago. I read a lot about it and realized I'm pro. Now I'm back to uni and I realized how far antis are divorced from reality.

Like I'm sitting there learning about art history and art philosophy ("what is art" is like our most important question, along with "how far can art go" and "when does it stop being art") and we're talking about artists who painted real, not fictional kids naked, some who were accused of being pedophiles, some who weren't, all while looking at and discussing their works.

Like antis could never. They wouldn't get through one lesson without melting down and viewing everyone including the professors as spreading "cp". Like we need to talk about those works. We write about them, use them as reference, all while knowing their background and of course never ignoring any aspect that you can possibly find. They think, pieces of fictional art will make someone a bad person. We literally talked about a German artist who is doing the hitler salute all the time but who could never be charged because it is clearly just a part of his art. He's not a Nazi. Even though it's hard to explain(in English)but that's the reason we are studying this shit for years.

And fictional stuff is just... meh. Like boring. Like everyone in the room would look at you like you're crazy if you started talking about an artist being a pedophile because of fictional pictures. Like have you seen old churches in Germany? There's naked kids all over the walls and they often did use models/real babies to paint this stuff

The behavior of antis makes a lot more sense when you realize that most of them have never been in college and have never sat through a course on art history.

[anamericangirl]

My favorite part about the libs thinking Elon did a Nazi salute is imagining that he really did.

Just think about that for a second.

You mean to tell me Elon walked up to the podium cheering like a dork, laughing, said shit about putting the American flag on Mars, acted like a big kid

And then went "My heart goes out to all of you ALSO BY THE WAY HEIL HITLER LMAO SIEG HEIL"

Like?????????????

Exactly lol. Like yeah the whole world is basically watching and they think he legitimately went up there and pledged allegiance to Hitler lmao. 🤣

But the truth is that’s all they’ve got. They have to blow it out proportion and over analyze it to keep the nazi narrative alive.

They think anytime anyone raises their arm it’s a Nazi salute which means they failed history lol

[sayruq]

Yemeni, Iranian, and Palestinian authorities have spoken out in support of US university students and faculty members who have been targeted by brutal police repression for the past two weeks during mobilizations calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza. The leader of Yemen's ruling Ansarallah movement, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said during a speech on 25 April that the US government “does not respect their laws, their constitution, or any headlines they raise and brag about,” stressing that there is a “concerted effort” from Washington to silence a movement that “has begun to wake up to the horror of what is happening in occupied Palestine.” “With the demonstrations and sit-ins at prominent US universities, the US support for the Israeli enemy became clear, as authorities dealt with the demonstrations and protests … in a bad manner that goes beyond all considerations,” the Yemeni resistance leader added.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also condemned the crackdown witnessed across several universities. “The suppression and violent treatment of the American police and security forces against professors and students protesting the genocide and war crimes of the Israeli regime in various universities of the United States is deeply worrying,” Iran's top diplomat said via social media, adding that this repression is an extension of “Washington's full-fledged support for the Israeli regime and clearly shows the double standard policy and contradictory attitude of the American government towards freedom of expression.”

In Palestine, officials from Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as well as student organizations in the Gaza Strip, issued statements supporting the grassroots movement that has taken over about two dozen university campuses in the US. “We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist–US genocide against our people in Gaza,” a statement from students organizations in Gaza reads. “From here in Gaza, we see you and salute you. Your actions and activism matter, especially in the heart of the empire, in the United States … It is clear that a new generation is rising that will no longer accept Zionism, racism, and genocide and that stands with Palestine and our liberation from the river to the sea,” the statement adds. For their part, the PFLP called on Palestinian and Arab students to “rise for Gaza following the example of American universities.” “Palestinian and Arab universities must take the initiative and break the barrier of silence, following the example of American universities which have ignited an intifada within the campus for the victory of the blood of our Palestinian people, and in rejection of the continuing American support for the zionist entity,” the PFLP statement reads. In a similar vein, Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Rishq said that the government of US President Joe Biden “violates individual rights and the right to expression, and arrests university students and faculty members because they reject the genocide that our Palestinian people are subjected to in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists, without the slightest feeling of shame about the legal value represented by the students and university professors.” “The Biden administration, which is a partner in the brutal war on our Palestinian people, does not want to acknowledge that [the US public has] discovered the truth about the Nazi entity and is siding with human values and standing on the right side of history. Today’s students are the leaders of the future, and their suppression today means an expensive electoral bill that the Biden administration will pay sooner or later.”

[jewish-sideblog]

Hundreds of neo-nazis, including members of the current far-right Italian government, gathered for a ceremony outside Italy’s former neo-nazi party headquarters. They chanted white suprematist slogans, displayed white suprematist symbols, and lined up in army formation for a collective nazi salute.

The video source here is Twitter. Because despite the fact that multiple Italian politicians have confirmed it’s real, I could only find two “news” articles covering the event, from Vice and The Guardian, of all places. Both refer primarily back to this video. I hate to be the bitch who says “Why isn’t anybody talking about this,” but in this case, the “this” that isn’t getting talked about is the resurrection of the same European fascist regime that led to the literal fucking Holocaust. So I’m not going to ask, “Why isn’t anybody talking about this?” Instead, I’ll say this, and I’ll say it specifically to the Jews:

Western goyim had the chance to stop this from happening. They had the chance to show that they had grown from the Shoah, from Shoah denialism, and from rampant, centuries-old antisemitism. They had the chance to speak out for us, to protect us, and to give real meaning to the words “Never Again”. Instead, they have at best paid hollow lip service to Jewish safety, and they have enabled the globalization of the ripe conditions of nazism we find ourselves in today. We know why no one is talking about this. We know.

There are less Jews today then there were in 1939. We lost six million lives less than a century ago, within living memory. We have not recovered from that loss. But the world has forgotten. Ten percent of Americans under 40 have never even heard of the Shoah. The majority don’t know how many lives we lost. The statistics from Europe aren’t that much better.

They say that those who have forgotten their history are doomed to repeat it. Goyim have forgotten, and the repetition is here. We’ve seen them repeat thousand-year-old canards without batting an eye. We’ve seen them call for the gassing, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Jews. We’ve seen the lengths they will go to supporting misinformation about our history and culture, in service of the people who call us dirty pigs and dogs who need to be hunted to extermination.

I am horrified that I haven’t seen international news outlets or goyim on social media talk about this yet. I am angered by it. But I am not surprised. Whatever crimes against Judaism come next, I will be horrified, and I will be angered. But I will no longer be surprised by what they will stoop to.