#i acknowledge it as genocide

[diabetesnscoliosis]

I had thought that the rhetoric of "I'm a part of x group and don't think y is xphobic" would eventually come crashing, but I didn't anticipate it would take oct 7 to do that. Not that it doesn't make retrospective sense.

from my perspective over the years, there were all sorts of conversations around this: is criticism of Islam racist? Is Queer a slur? The concept of "identifying" as disabled, which then expanded to various sexualities, gender, sex and incredibly rarely... race.

My experience looking at these circles showed me that the answers to these questions and concepts lied in who thought it was OK, rather than critical analysis of the questions and concepts itself. It was the priority of token representation than dealing with the issue itself; the bigotry in question.

This would culminate in the US 2016 election, with many justifications for voting in one of the most dangerous and impactful presidents in the world boiling down to "I'm Mexican and I agree" or "I'm gay and I agree". No discussion of why agreeing with a politician that has tangible, negative impacts on the target demographic would render one individual protected from rhetoric or policy.

What am I seeing post October 7 is similar . "My statement isn't anti semitic, x jewish person agrees with me!" This statement doesn't address why the statement isn't antisemitic, but shuts down criticism by tokenising the Jewish person and dehumanises them; they are a prop to use to "prove" the point of someone else and no more.

The use of tokens to prove arguments instead of facts and reasoning is probably the byproduct of the US "culture wars" ideology that's been forcibly exported to every anglicised state. That doesn't mean i don't expect better from leftists, who should be the group to use facts and reasoning to argue against individualist right wing policies. It is such a shame to see my political ideology become downtrodden by intellectual laziness.

If you cannot use reasoning to prove your point, who are you acting for?

That's a rhetorical question. If you cannot use reasoning, you use ideology, and ideology only serves to divide the "believers" and "unbelievers"; it's about power.

Bigotry is irrational and can always be argued against.

[tododeku-or-bust]

Because has "white power" or any other actual racist, antisemitic, white supremacist slogan ever gone through what "river to the sea" just went though? Curious. Because we all know that the US government does NOT actually care about its Jewish populace. Crazy how I keep talking about the white right of comfort because it keeps applying.

[feral-ballad]

I don't think it's because they support or do not support that they're unfollowing. I honestly think they're like myself who is absolutely EXHAUSTED seeing bad news after bad news in this stupid world and being FORCED to have an opinion on something we cannot control. Just something to think about before getting hostile or feeling superior.

i don’t know why you think condemning someone’s silence to a genocide is “getting hostile or feeling superior” but sure. i guess i can’t get hostile when there’s people dying. so sorry you’re forced to have an opinion, must be very tiring.

[plushpile]

Currently frustrated (again) abt how little it feels like we can talk about certain things in the plush community, mainly when it comes to politics and stuff like that

A huge example on my mind rn is the whole squishmallow/jazwares thing

It frustrates me to see ppl in my servers and on other sites continuing to buy squishmallows right now, and I feel like it's only gonna get worse as the holidays get closer

I can't help but think that a lot of these people just don't know (I mean shit, posts about it were literally hidden/deleted on the main squishmallow subreddit), and I want so badly to tell them but in multiple places that's not allowed, because of the nature of the community and people wanting to keep it a certain way

In a way I get it, but the silence is deeply upsetting when support of genocide and disgusting misinformation is what's on the table

I know a lot of us are in this community for comfort, or to connect to childhood, whatever it could be but as adults in this community we should not let our own comfort take precedence over the lives of innocent people, it doesn't matter if you're political or not

On the other hand, I feel like we're avoiding this topic to specifically avoid discourse, but frankly I don't care because I don't want to share a community with anyone who would oppose the beliefs fueling the boycott of this company

I don't want to share a community with people who would defend genocide, specifically the killing of innocent people in Gaza, for any reason, and it's disheartening not knowing who I could be rubbing shoulders with in this community because of the specific lack of conversation about these important topics

I don't really have any profound point here, I don't have a solution, I'm just frustrated and disgusted

Fuck Jazwares, stop buying squishmallows, and FREE GAZA

[terryfuckingturniptruck]

Alright, here we go again. I'm sorry that you all want to feel righteous and just but not voting or voting third party is only going to make everything worse. Of course the dems are fucked up politicians too but if you are going to just not vote for anyone bc of the genocide, then you are voting indirectly for that orange fucker to be back in office. And not only is he for the genocide in Palestine, he is for various other types of genocide and other egregious behaviors as we've seen.

[inaflashimagine]

i will say that it's telling of the oscar voters that kotfm, a movie about white men committing genocide and the mass murder of the osage nation, didn't get any awards tonight and the way they only talked about the film during awards season was 'how long it was'

[estrogenism]

idk i wish people would talk more about papua when it comes to occupied nations.

free papua.

[oldhabitsdiescrming]

i can't explain this eloquently, but i'm thinking of my ancestors in light of palestine.

i'm native american. what happened to my ancestors runs in my blood. it lives in every move i make and lies down with me at night. it's been centuries and i still feel it, still look up at the trees and know that the nature i am so connected to is due in part to the bones buried beneath. my heart aches for the people i will never know anything about besides how they were buried by colonization and lack of mercy, lack of humanity. i miss their ghosts, and i cannot help but think of how inevitable it is that future palestinians will feel the same.

because that's the thing. palestine will persevere. there will be a revival of gaza. i believe this, much like my ancestors believed centuries ago. even so, there will be no going back to the way it was before- a before that existed in the 1940s, not recently. the generations born from those who have survived and the generations born from them (and so on) will have this in their blood forever. the same moon i look at will be the one these generations will look at, and the same grief for those we never got to meet will settle deep within. there's no escaping generational trauma. even when that apartheid state fades to nothingness, palestinians will be forced to persevere.

[jyndor]

spoilers for farha, which you all should watch but is very, very brutal even if it is not terribly graphic.

tw: infant murder, settler colonial violence. read with caution.

the scene where the one israeli genocider doesn't end up killing the infant is such a powerful scene for a number of reasons. but one aspect of it that sticks out to me is that when his commanding genocider tells him not to "waste a bullet" and he can't go through with curb stomping the fucking newborn to death, he ultimately condemns the baby to a crueler death - to starve to death, alone in the night, beside his family's bodies.

it is of course a crueler death, and I am sure the soldier is aware of what will become of that baby when he places the kerchief over his face and walks away. but this moment is not about the soldier being decent or kind at all, of course - if he was halfway decent he would die rather than kill that baby.

he doesn't care what will happen to that baby as long as he doesn't have to bear witness to it. to cover the baby's face is to cover his eyes to the cruelty of his and by extension israel's actions. it makes him uncomfortable to think of curb stomping a baby to death, but not of starving him. of leaving him alone and screaming.

he doesn't even consider for a second disobeying the order and shooting the baby, putting him out of his misery - as horrific as that would be.

because it isn't about the baby for him - it is about HIS comfort. he's comfortable with ethnic cleansing, he's comfortable with terrorizing a woman who has just given birth and her family, it is not at all about shame or horror or a tiny spot of decency in him. he's just not comfortable with having to step on a baby and kill him.

he is more comfortable with letting that baby starve out of sight than he is taking direct action against him.

this is the liberal zionist or frankly the liberal colonizer even beyond zionism - because it's all connected. as long as they do not have to be the ones to crush the infant to death under their boot, as long as they can shield their eyes from the brutality of their country, they'll take that option.

I think about israelis living so close to the gaza strip, living in relative security and having food and shelter and yes bomb shelters because THEY are citizens of a settler colonial state and people who are being colonized are going to resist the violence of occupation.

I think about how generally they are so removed and detached from the brutality of what israel does to palestinians, and how after oct 7th, many people who considered themselves liberal zionists went completely apeshit racist and genocidal, and this is according to actual peace activists in israel, actual anti-zionists in israel, actual leftists in israel. the ones who have refused to cover their eyes to the realities of the occupation and the genocide.

you see it on social media - people who consider themselves non-zionists or liberal zionists have been laughing at hateful genocidal zionist memes, and centering their own pain, and it reminds me of how liberals in the united states will do ANYTHING not to witness the horrors of us imperialism when it threatens their comfort.

this is not unique to zionists, this is a symptom of settler colonialism. I do believe that sometimes liberals can do better than that, but they often end up useless as allies to resistance, actual resistance, when it fucking matters the most.

so many liberal americans will continue to watch their favorite racist shows or buy disposable vapes or support joe biden, and they'll make all kinds of excuses about why they have to but the truth is this: they value their comfort more than they care about genocide.

I mean frankly even I do to some extent. I pay my taxes. I'm not gonna go to prison on tax evasion because I want to make a point about genocide. I wish I had the courage of my convictions to that level but I don't. I know that I would never go serve in the military even if it was conscription, I'd go to jail for that but that's never been a real concern for me here.

meanwhile, there are people who do not have the comfort to lose. in the film, farha does not have the privilege to choose comfort. she can close her eyes, she can look away, but she hears the baby cry and cry and cry until the baby passes away. she has no choice.

in choosing his own comfort, the soldier unknowingly condemns a child to witness trauma he can choose to ignore. now farha, a 14 year old girl, has to live with not being able to free herself from her sanctuary/prison to save the baby.

a 14 year old girl injures herself to save a baby, but a grown man covers a baby's face and lets it starve so he can live with himself. he still murdered that baby, but he'll tell himself that he didn't.

people often say they know what they'd have done if they'd lived during the holocaust or other atrocities. but honestly these same people don't do shit now. they cover their eyes.

if you're going to accept the deaths of innocent people, at least say that your comfort, your security, matters more to you than their lives.

because it clearly does.

anyway go watch farha on netflix.

[news4dzhozhar]

How deranged does the US look to the rest of the world to be proudly welcoming an indicted war criminal to address Congress?

[yuinterrobangapologist]

I feel like I need to make this it's own post, so here, to reiterate.

Politics is a formal environment.

If Kamala Harris just went out and said "Israel is a settler colony and should be abolished," then Israel would fucking paint Gaza fucking red, and start working with even the most fringe and volatile foreign and domestic entities to stir problems here. America funded terrorism in the Levant, why do you think Israel couldn't do that here?

I know we all fucking hate it. But the Vice President can't always can't call a genocide a genocide the same we she's not allowed to say the f-bomb.

We truly have no idea what Kamala's actual personal goals towards Palestine are. She is calling for a ceasefire and two state solution, and maybe that is what she wants, but if she did want more, she couldn't say it, she'd still have to say this instead.

And before you say "Trump spoke freely!" Trump's enemies were American minorities, celebrities and other politicians below him in tangible social power, and then, stable nations and limited nations. Insulting China day in and day out does cause problems, but China isn't a rogue state. Insulting North Korea is different than insulting Israel, because North Korea has far fewer corporate and American allies.

Our enemies are white supremacists and domestic terrorists, who've been consistently committing mass shootings and other miscellaneous hate crimes, the police, who you know...are an unchecked martial law (which is something the President couldn't fix quickly), a Supreme Court with no checks whatsoever, and Israel, which is currently committing genocide, and has the power to escalate the violence even further for any reason they want.

Progressive Politicians don't have the privilege of being allowed to be brash, confrontational, or assertive that Conservative Politicians have.

If you actually ever want to be politically involved, involved in changing the real world for the better, the first pill you have to goddamn swallow is that You have to be polite to the enemy. Not you specifically as an individual. But the politicians who make laws and decide our fate who we need to ally with.

Again, this isn't claiming Kamala is more progressive than what we know, again, that's essentially unknowable. But she's as progressive as is pragmatically possible in the current situation.

Politics is an abusive household. You can fantasize about beating the shit out of your abuser and taking you and your siblings to safety. That's. Not. Real. You have to appease the abuser at times to minimize the damage so you can your siblings can fucking survive. The difference is there is no C.P.S. There is no one to save us, we have to survive ourselves, and that means we have to talk to our abuser as if everything's okay or they'll fucking beat us to death.

I know how tempting it is to say this is a "lesser of two evils" situation, and if that's what you need to see in order to vote Blue, then fucking do it. But if you honestly think we could have a candidate just say what we're all screaming on social media to like an audience of a small state county, to the entire fucking planet, then you seriously would genuinely benefit from watching a single live action U.S. tv show to understand that if you act like a dick in front of the wrong people, they will retaliate disproportionately.

[leolaroot]

i follow this artist on tumblr and they post/reblog a perspective on joe biden that is so ridiculous to me its funny to watch happen day by day. the main thought appears to be that joe biden is 1 incredibly mentally strong 2 a victim of an ageist slash ableist conspiracy where everyone around him is trying to push this false narrative that hes unfit for his job and finally 3 in need of constant praise, acceptance, encouragement, and statements of support from his voters. predominantly in the form of youtube videos/gifs of people dancing being shared every time he accidentally OR intentionally says something that turns away voters.

[lynchiangf]

wrote and then deleted this post like 3 different times bc I can't put my thoughts about this into words as clearly as I'd like but it makes me so angry how zionists have largely "monopolized" judaism bc the narrative that all jewish people are zionists benefits them. I wish more people understood that they don't even care about jewish people on the whole. they're perfectly happy to erase the many jewish people who are and have been vocally anti-zionist. on zionist terms you can only be jewish if you agree with everything israel does, otherwise you don't exist. they're not interested in jewish people as people at all, they're interested in using them as tools to justify a nation-state's violence. and yet people still buy into the idea that israel is there for all jews. drives me up the wall

[aingeal98]

The way people have acted to Palestinians online here ever since Biden dropped out is crazy like if my family were getting constantly bombed and I didn't know if I'd wake up tomorrow to more news of them being killed and I had to come online to people trying to justify hyping up the ones financing their murders I'd black out in a murderous rage. But instead I see so many Palestinians being so fucking patient with Americans like yes orange man bad yes we all hate Trump but please stop proudly announcing that you're going to unconditionally vote for the current administration financing genocide. Please let us try to push her left by getting her to commit to policy that involves not funding genocidal settler colonies. Please stop calling people protesting the genocide ungrateful to American liberals. I understand that you're scared of what might happen to you but my family is currently experiencing your worst fears and you're loudly making posts hyping up uncritical support for those responsible.

Like fucking hell the patience and composure is more than any human should have to bear. Fuck America First in both it's red and blue formats. Widening the in group for your pathetic empire teetering on the edge of facism isn't going to slow the facism down. It's just going to make more people comfortable throwing others under the bus. If you're not willing to at least bluff and pressure dems to commit to better policy then you can at least shut the fuck up about supporting genocide because things could get soooo hard for you if everyone doesn't lick the boot enthusiastically enough. ESPECIALLY when you're addressing Palestinians who are currently watching their families carry the remains of their relatives in plastic bags.

[venndaai]

us politics, palestine

As a transgender American I deeply truly do not agree with people currently saying we shouldn't vote for Biden in the next presidential election to teach him a lesson (I don't think that worked in 2016 and I can't see a reason it would work better now), but to the other people currently going "okay, the genocide is bad, but look at all this great stuff Biden's done"- read the fucking room.

[thousandyearphantombunker]

My baby girls with hero complexes 😍🥰❤️

This is a safe place for Belos and James lovers!

We've both been called genocide apologists because we like fictional characters no matter how many times I explain that I think James committing genocide was ooc or how Belos just doesn't work as a villain for me because the 'realistic horrors of homophobia/racism'- weren't portrayed well at all! But uhh apparently that makes us genocide apologists

considering having a sane conversation surrounding these men is impossible us fans might as well just start saying our faves have done nothing wrong to piss people off

Like yes kings slay! Shoot Sleet and brand people's wrists! These men have done nothing wrong in their lives ever!