#ignorant fascism or purposeful

[tododeku-or-bust]

Establishment Democrats continue to be a fucking joke, and not funny ones either.

[flouryhedgehog]

Voting is a tool.

By which I mean, voting is just a tool; it isn't sacred or magical.

And by which I also mean, voting is one tool that is good for one kind of purpose. If it isn't suitable for the goal you're trying to achieve, you need different tools.

Every time someone makes a post on here rightly criticizing Joe Biden's support for genocide, there's at least one person in the notes saying "but remember, you still have to vote for him!" or, "did you know Trump wants to deport Muslims?" or, "then who do you want me to vote for?"

But that's like going into a plant nursery and demanding they sell you the correct drill bit for planting a tree. They will never sell you the drill bit you want, because the drill bit you want--the drill bit suitable for planting trees--doesn't exist, and also plant nurseries don't sell drill bits.

Standing in the plant nursery asking about drill bits will probably initially get you people explaining to you where to find a shovel, and a watering can, and some mulch, because those are tools that will help you plant the tree. If you ignore the attempts to educate you, and start yelling about how they must just want you to throw away your drill, and also they probably hate trees and hate you and want you, personally, to suffer in a world without shade, you'll start getting different answers, like "please stop shouting" and "I'm going to have to ask you to leave now."

Because you're demanding that they tell you how to use the wrong tool for the job. They can never give you the answer you want; the answer you want doesn't exist.

I can't tell you who to vote for to prevent the rise of fascism in the United States, both because you can't prevent something that's already happened, and because you can't vote your way out of fascism.

You need different tools; you need to ask different questions and be willing to sit with the answers, even if they aren't the answers you want.

Boycotts are a tool. Protests are a tool. Shutting down highways, physically blocking weapons shipments, picketing arms companies, those are tools. So is going to your library and checking out books about Palestine, and about decolonization generally.

Instead of asking which war criminal you should vote for, perhaps ask how you can organize members of your community to support and look after each other and keep each other safe. Perhaps ask how you can support Land Back and prison abolition. Ask how you can organize a union in your workplace.

The tool you're most comfortable using isn't going to work for this job. Learn how to use another.

[copperbadge]

Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?) Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.

Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don't even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn't really have the time for stuff that wasn't travel-related. In any case, let's dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)

So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.

First there's the issue of what AO3 hosts -- RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.

Second, there's the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.

The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It's not only that freedom of expression "protects you from the government, not the Justin" as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It's an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.

Should the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?

I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of "harm prevention" and "censorship", which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I'm comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I'm not sure a lot of people critical of AO3's content truly are. Perhaps some can't be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It's just fiction. Or is fiction "just fiction"? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.

The idea that prose can incite violence or cause harm is both valid to examine (witness the rise of fascism on the radio in the 20s, on Facebook and Twitter in the past ten years; they're very similar processes) and a very slippery slope. Because again: who decides what harm is, and what causes it, and what we do about it? Our values align us with certain beliefs, but those are only our values, not universal truths. So AO3 is part of the ongoing question of harm and benefit both to society and individuals.

AO3 itself, however, has a fairly defined policy that it is not meant to police content; it is an archive, not a bookstore or a school board. AO3 refines its TOS and policies as necessary, but the goal is always open access and as much freedom of expression as possible, and if that's uncomfortable for some people then that's a discussion we have to have; ignoring it won't make it go away. But it has to be a discussion, it can't be a unilateral change to the archive's TOS or a series of snaps and clapbacks, and I don't see a lot of people ready to move beyond flinging insults. Perhaps because they were taught a much more binary view of freedom of expression than I was.

So, self-evidently, I support AO3 and I don't have a problem with RPF. Whether other people do is something we're going to have to get to grips with, and that's likely to be a process that is still going on when most of us are dust. I'd rather have a century of ambiguity than a wrong answer tomorrow, anyway.

But whether AO3 hosts RPF is truly a separate issue from its donation drives, because it's a criticism some people level at the site which exists whether it's fundraising or not. So people can criticize AO3's open policy and they can give it as a reason not to support the site, but it's just one aspect of the archive and the fundraising as a whole should be examined separately.

I think AO3's fundraisers are deeply misunderstood (sometimes on purpose) because even people who are anticapitalist get a little crazy when money gets involved, and this is, to fandom, a lot of money -- a few hundred thousand, reliably, every fundraiser. To me, a fundraiser that pulls in three hundred grand is almost quaint; my current nonprofit pulls in better than ten million a year and my previous employer had an endowment of several billion dollars. At my old job I didn't even bother researching people who couldn't give us a hundred grand.

On the other hand, AO3 is an extreme and astounding outlier in the nonprofit world, because basically it's the only one of its kind to work the way it does. It is entirely volunteer-run on the operational side (ie: tag wranglers, coders, lawyers, etc) and has no fundraising staff (gift officers, researchers, outreach officers) as far as I'm aware. To pull in three hundred grand from individual one-time donations, without any paid staff and without even a volunteer fundraising officer? That's insane. That doesn't happen. Except at AO3.

What people misunderstand, however, is the basic status of a nonprofit, which is a legal status, not simply a social one. (I'm adding in some corrections here since it gets complicated and the terminology can be important!) The Organization for Transformative Works, the parent of AO3, is a nonprofit, which indicates how it was incorporated as an organization; additionally it is registered federally as tax-exempt, which carries certain perks, like not paying sales tax, and certain duties, like making their financials transparent to a certain extent. (Religious nonprofits are exempt from the transparency requirement.) If you're interested in more about nonprofits and tax-exempt status a reader dropped a great article here.

Nonprofits, unlike for-profit companies, cannot pay a share of their income to stakeholders. Nonprofits don't have financial stakeholders, only donors. They can have employees and pay them a salary -- that's me, for example -- but if a nonprofit pulls in $10M in donations, my salary is paid from that, I don't get a percentage and nobody else does either. That's what it means to be a nonprofit -- the money above operational costs goes back into the organization. The donations we (and AO3) receive must be plowed under and used for outreach, server maintenance, further fundraising, services expansion, et cetera. You can see this in the 990 forms on Guidestar or ProPublica, or in their more accessible breakdowns on Charity Navigator. Nonprofits that do not put the majority of their income towards service provision tend to get audited and lose their nonprofit status. So nobody's getting paid from all that money, and the overage that isn't spent goes into what is basically a savings account in the name of the nonprofit. (I'm vastly simplifying but that's the gist.) Using that money for personal purposes is illegal. It's called "private inurement" and there's a good article here about it. The money belongs to the OTW as a concept, not to anyone in or of the OTW.

So the biggest misunderstanding that I see in people who are mad at AO3 fundraisers is that "they" are getting all this money (who "they" are is never clearly stated but I'm pretty sure people think @astolat has a special wifi router that runs on burning hundred dollar bills) while "we" can't monetize our fanfic. But "they" get nothing -- nobody even earns a salary from AO3 -- and you can easily prove that by looking at the 990 forms they file with the government, which are required to be made public. You can see the most recently available 990, from 2020, here at Guidestar. Page seven will show you the "highest compensated" employees, all of whom are earning zero dollars or nonmonetary perks (that's the three columns on the right).

Either AO3 is entirely volunteer-run or someone's Doing A Real Fraud. The money the OTW spends is documented (that's page 10 and 11 primarily) and while they may pay for, say, the travel and lodging expenses of a lawyer going to DC to defend a freedom-of-expression case, they don't pay the lawyer for their time, or give them a cut of the income.

Despite what you've read, the reason "we" can't monetize our fanfics on AO3 has nothing to do with the site being the product of volunteer handiwork or AO3 having it in their terms of service or it being considered gauche by some to do so; it's because

IT'S ILLEGAL.

I cannot say this loudly enough: It is against the law for a nonprofit to be used by its staff, volunteers, or beneficiaries to earn direct profit from the services provided by the nonprofit.

You can be paid to work at one, but you cannot side-hustle by selling your handmade friendship bracelets for personal gain on the nonprofit's website. If the nonprofit knowingly allows monetization of its services, it can lose nonprofit status, be fined, be hit with back taxes, and a lot of other unpleasant bullshit can go down, including prosecution of those involved for fraud. If you put a ko-fi link on your fanfic, you are breaking the law, and if AO3 allows it, they are too.

Okay, that was a sidebar, but in some ways not, because it gets to the heart of the real complaints about AO3 fundraising, which is that people in fandom are sick or unhoused or in some form of need and other people in fandom are giving to AO3, a fan site that is financially stable, instead of giving to peoples' gofundmes or dropping money in their Ko-Fi or Paypal. And while it is a legitimate grievance that there are people who are in such desperate need while we live in an era of unprecedented abundance, that's not AO3's fault. AO3 doesn't solicit actively, there's no unasked-for mailings or calls from a gift officer. They just put a banner up on their website, and people give. (Again, this is incredibly outlier behavior in the nonprofit world, I'd do a case study on it but the conclusion would just be "shit's real, yo.") You might as well be mad that people give to their local food bank instead of someone's ko-fi.

You cannot lay at AO3's feet the fact that people want to give to AO3 instead of to your fundraiser. That's a choice individuals have made, and while you can engage with them in terms of why they made the philanthropic choices they did, to blame an organization they supported rather than the person who made the choice to give is not only incorrect but futile, and unlikely to win anyone over to supporting you. We know from research that guilt is not a tremendous motivator of philanthropy.

It is also not necessarily a binary choice; just because AO3 gets a hundred grand in $5 donations doesn't mean most of the people giving don't also give $5 elsewhere. I support the OTW on occasion, and I also fundraise for UNICEF and the Chicago Parks Foundation and BAGLY and others, in addition to giving monthly to several nonprofits that I have longterm relationships with -- my alma mater, the animal rescue where I got the Cryptids, my shul. And I give, occasionally and anonymously, to fundraisers that pass through Radio Free Monday, which are mainly individuals in need, because I was once in need and now I pay it forward. These are the choices I have made. Nobody twisted my arm. I respond poorly to someone making the attempt to do so by attacking places I've given.

I think the upshot is, after all of this that I've written, that we cannot begin to come to grips with questions of institutional inequality in philanthropy, or freedom of expression and censorship, until people actually understand what's going on, and too few do. So all I can do is try and explain, and hopefully create a forum for people to learn and grow when it comes to charitable giving.

Archive Of Our Own and the Organization for Transformative Works are products of our community and as that community changes, we will necessarily continue to re-evaluate what aspects of it mean and how AO3/OTW express the community sentiment. I hope that the ongoing discussion of support for AO3 also leads to people learning more about their philanthropic options. But criticizing AO3 for fundraising by attacking it for fulfilling one of its stated purposes is silly, and attempting to guilt people into giving in the ways one thinks they should give rather than how they do give is just going to make one extremely unlikable.

As members of this community, we have to be a part of the push and pull, but it's difficult to do that competently in ignorance. So, I do my best to be knowledgeable and to educate my readers, and I hope others will do the same.

[infiniteglitterfall]

I guess this might be why the UK seemed to go so antisemitic so quickly

I'm researching the 1947 pogroms in the UK. (Actually, I'm researching all the pogroms and massacres of Jews in the past 200 years. Which today led me to discover that there were pogroms in the UK in 1947.)

From an article on "The Postwar Revival of British Fascism," all emphasis mine:

Given the rising antisemitism and widespread ignorance about Zionism [in the UK in 1947], fascists were easily able to conflate Zionist paramilitary attacks with Judaism in their speeches, meaning British Jews came to be seen as complicit in violence in Palestine.

Bertrand Duke Pile, a key member of Hamm’s League, informed a cheering crowd that “the Jews have no right to Palestine and the Jews have no right to the power which they hold in this country of ours.” Denouncing Zionism as a way to introduce a wider domestic antisemitic stance was common to many speakers at fascist events and rallies. Fascists hid their ideology and ideological antisemitism behind the rhetorical facade of preaching against paramilitary violence in Palestine.

One of the league’s speakers called for retribution against “the Jews” for the death of British soldiers in Palestine. This was, he told his audience, hardly an antisemitic expression. “Is it antisemitism to denounce the murderers of your own flesh and blood in Palestine?” he asked his audience. Many audience members, fascist or not, may well have felt the speaker had a point. ...[The photo of two British sergeants hanged by the Irgun in retaliation for the Brits hanging three of their members] promptly made numerous appearances at fascist meetings, often attached to the speaker’s platform. In at least one meeting, several British soldiers on leave from serving in Palestine attended Hamm’s speech, giving further legitimacy to his remarks. And with soldiers and policemen in Palestine showing increasing signs of overt antisemitism as a result of their experiences, the director of public prosecutions warned that the fascists might receive a steady stream of new recruits.

MI5, the U.K. domestic security service, noted with some alarm that “as a general rule, the crowd is now sympathetic and even spontaneously enthusiastic.” Opposition, it was noted in the same Home Office Bulletin of 1947, “is only met when there is an organized group of Jews or Communists in the audience.”

The major opposition came from the 43 Group, formed by the British-Jewish ex-paratrooper Gerry Flamberg and his friends in September 1946 to fight the fascists using the only language they felt fascists understood — violence. The group disrupted fascist meetings for two purposes: to get them shut down by the police for disorder, and to discourage attendance in the future by doling out beatings with fists and blunt instruments. By the summer of 1947, the group had around 500 active members who took part in such activities. Among these was a young hairdresser by the name of Vidal Sassoon, who would often turn up armed with his hairdressing scissors.

The 43 Group had considerable success with these actions, but public anger was spreading faster than they could counter the hate that accompanied it. The deaths of Martin and Paice had touched a nerve with the populace. On Aug. 1, 1947, the beginning of the bank holiday weekend and two days after the deaths of the sergeants, anti-Jewish rioting began in Liverpool. The violence lasted for five days. Across the country, the scene was repeated: London, Manchester, Hull, Brighton and Glasgow all saw widespread violence. Isolated instances were also recorded in Plymouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Swansea, Newcastle and Davenport. Elsewhere, antisemitic graffiti and threatening phone calls to Jewish places of worship stood in for physical violence. Jewish-owned shops had their windows smashed, Jewish homes were targeted, an attempt was made to burn down Liverpool Crown Street Synagogue while a wooden synagogue in Glasgow was set alight. In a handful of cases, individuals were personally intimidated or assaulted. A Jewish man was threatened with a pistol in Northampton and an empty mine was placed in a Jewish-owned tailor shop in Davenport.

And an important addendum:

I've read a whole bunch of articles about the pogroms in Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Eccles, Glasgow, etc.

Not one of them has mentioned that the Irgun, though clearly a terrorist group, was formed in response to 18 years of openly antisemitic terrorism, including multiple incredibly violent massacres. Or that it consistently acted in response to the murders of Jewish civilians, not on the offensive. Or that at this point, militant Arab Nationalist groups with volunteers and arms from the Arab League countries had been attacking Jewish and mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods for months.

I just think the "Jewish militants had been attacking the British occupiers" angle is incredibly Anglocentric.

Yeah, they were attacking the British occupiers. But also, that's barely the tip of the iceberg.

Everyone involved hated the Brits at this point. If only al-Husseini and his ilk had hated the Brits more than they hated the Jews, Britain could at least have united them by giving them a common enemy.

[determinate-negation]

what do you think of the argument that anti zionism is anti judaism because a high % of jews are zionists, so if you say youre anti zionist you just dont listen to jews and secretly hate people for being jewish. i feel like it's obviously wrong but also i dont know how to say 'its not wrong to hate fascism just because a lot of jews bought into nationalist fascist propaganda' without seeming hugely antisemitic as a goy lol

its a bullshit point. ideology is not an unchanging thing thats tethered to certain ethnic/religious groups. thats closer to a fascist, racialist worldview than anything else. if you said we cant criticize something pertaining to a group because the majority of this group of people believe in it or are ok with it you couldnt criticize capitalism or popular culture or american imperialism or really say anything thats not already a hegemonic belief. its also just factually a bad argument that relies on limited and biased data, and ignores that there has been a purposeful campaign to crush dissent and ostracize or persecute left wing jews and anti zionists in the jewish community for the past like 70 years, you cant say this is a natural ideological formation. i have some things addressing this tagged on my blog as zionism or anti zionism ill link them here in a second

[thyfleshc0nsumed]

hey crazy question, since you said there is no evil what would you call hitler evil? trump? mussolini? genghis khan? jeffrey dahmer? jeffrey epstein? KKK members? IDF? and if they're evil then i guess you're telling me child rapists are the only ones that shouldn't be called evil? why is that?

I'm gonna ignore your bad faith misreading of my ideas and your attempt to insinuate I am a child abuser and answer your first question for other ppls sake, cuz I think it is a reasonable thing ppl might be grappling with.

In a word, no.

In a few more words, I think the question fails to properly interrogate what I mean when I refer to evil. 'Evil' is a component of a moral framework, and I feel that moral frameworks are by and large shallow and not very useful in furthering for understandings of the world around us, or very conducive to creating material change, from an individual scale to a societal scale.

The central idea I put forward in that post is that it is not some grand moral badness that enables violence and abuse, but rather systems of power. All of your examples speak to this. You mention the wealthy, political leaders, a state backed by a global superpower, and a group that was comprised of people with systemic power over their victims.

Viewing them merely as "evil" is frankly uncurious and in some ways, cyclical and thought terminating. It begs the question: "they're bad because they're bad because they're bad."

We have NO disagreement in the fact that what those people do or did have produced violence and harm, many on a scale which is difficult to fully comprehend the magnitude of. It is equally difficult to understand even how one could act with such cruelty towards fellow human beings. But just because it is difficult to understand does not mean it is impossible. They didn't do those things because they were born with some kind of evil gene or soul.

They, like you and I, were created by the context of the world around them. If Adolf Hitler died as a child, would Germany have been rid of its antisemitism or have lost its imperial ambitions? Would war have been averted? Certainly not. There were specific, relatively measurable conditions which allowed fascism to flower. If not him, someone else would have helmed that movement.

If Adolf Hitler were born in another place and time, he would not be Adolf Hitler in any meaningful sense. A person is more or less a sum of their environment. People cannot exist outside the context that they do in fact exist in.

And so to then declare someone as 'evil' amounts to saying just about nothing. It's zero sum. If people do harm simply because they are evil, then what can be done? Create a list of them and then systematically exterminate them?

Many people have twisted my words and claimed that what I am saying is that we should expose our bellies and allow bigots to gut us, or that I equivocate violence against oppressors and violence against the oppressed. This is categorically untrue. When violence is brought against you, violent response can be prudent.

But what happens after the relations of power have been altered? When the abuser or oppressor no longer has the power to harm you? Is there reason to harm them besides to punish or sate a desire for revenge? If they no longer have the means to do 'evil,' then what purpose does violence against them serve besides for the sake of our own bloodlust?

You will not see me shed a tear for Israeli settlers killed by opposition forces, or for abusers killed by a victim defending themself because those relations of power are still in place. Settlers can leave, soldiers can dodge the draft, and abusers can stop abusing.

But if they settle, kill, and abuse because they are 'evil,' then what choice did they have to begin with? And what can be done to stop colonialism, state violence, and abuse in the future? Are evil people just going to stop being born?

The framework of evil adds nothing, gives no solutions, and hinders progress by giving us amnesty for not looking at our own relationship to power structures. But a materialist, analytical framework provides us tools to deconstruct those structures and hopefully move beyond them.

[nico-esoterica]

⭐ More on Megan x Japan ⭐

Japan adopting Megan not only makes sense w/ Astrocartography but it's, imo, what happens when a Leo Moon who was always made to feel unwelcome.. prioritizes going into spaces where they're truly honored and celebrated. Not just where they're 'wanted.' Big difference.

Astrology can be very literal in some charts. Megan's Sun is conjoined to Japan's vertex. In synastry, that represents a 'fate' point. It means that their two energies coming together is inevitable and will be a pivotal period in the lives of each. This is a connection that's so intense and palpable that it can be remembered for decades afterward. Anyone that's searched up this term romantically on Lindaland forums knows what's up.

In reality, strictly astrologically, she's not really as nonchalant as she seems. It's a persona people gravitate towards. She's always been very likable and popular (10H Aqua Sun in a day chart) but those big groups and crowds of people aren't as invested in her emotionally. They don't try to accommodate her or listen at all and that negligence makes her defensive and self protective and that Merc-Asc square and that Merc-Pluto sextile paired with her Moon-Mars conjunction start serving another purpose. Her 4H Leo Moon is a baby girl at heart and she genuinely wants to be cherished and be as silly, sweet, and carefree as she naturally is without the anxiety that someone's going to take advantage of her or ignore her completely. Like, put a stack aside and take that girl to a theme park where she won't have to wait in line, can eat whatever she wants, and ride all the rides and laugh up a storm and watch the fireworks at night.

But mainly--She's always been someone with a BIG imagination who's multifaceted and even though people lover her, what she needs is people to love ALL of her. Like, she's a big ass nerd and people usually don't associate black women's creativity with their intelligence, so that's another thing. So, Japan, with its Venusian planets trining her earth points actually allows for her to feel more seen than she potentially ever has been. There's something about Japan that 'gets' her and the relationship is mutually beneficial. Its Aries Sun/Leo Moon is not only prideful (the nationalism and fascism which can't be ignored ofc) but if the country was a person, they see 'the next big thing' in a sort of scrying-like way before it happens due to their 12H Leo planets being ruled by an 8H Sun. As we see with eternal flames in nature where certain fires can burn for decades, if the conditions are right this foretells seeing cultural shifts which start off as market trends which become hallmarks and staples of different eras. Earth rising people w/ fire planets, especially if there's a luminary and/or the outers involved, have this sort of precognition, imo.

Both Megan and Japan are Earth Risings. Megan's Jupiter-Pluto copresence in her 8th operating in her relocated chart's 1st in Japan forecasts her being a cultural juggernaut. As long as it continues to be respectful, Japan appreciates her in ways those in her home country hate seeing themselves as.

For those interested in moving who'd like to be read like this, I offer Astrocartography services here :)

[brazenautomaton]

I should come up with a name for this because I think it's the unifying thread I see between communism, and fascism, and censorship / anti-shippers, and homophobia, and a bunch of other shit. some theory that seeks to unify all that really should have an elegant name, shouldn't it? but it doesn't

rambly

I've said that it's impossible to deplatform fascism or communism because their ideas are so fucking childishly simple they can be independently re-derived by anyone who is upset at the world. "I'm upset. This is the fault of someone, who hates me and did it on purpose. Oh, I hate that guy so much. He does all the bad things, and if I kill him, there will be no more bad things." and that's why nobody's able to give a coherent definition of fascism, because you can't peg "emotional immaturity and righteous ignorance" to any specific teaching, you can't keep the concept of being emotionally immature and blaming others secret.

but despite the basis of these ideologies being so simple they don't need language, communism and fascism didn't exist until after the industrial revolution. what i think happened is, there's a personality trait people have that can expand immensely, that wasn't able to expand until the railroad and telegraph shrunk the world.

and that thing I wish I had a good name for is "the belief or assumption that a person's immediate environment includes everything they're aware of."

I think it's a thing people noticed but haven't identified as the causative factor, they just use it as an insult. but people want to be in control of their environment. they want things they don't like to not be there. the ability to control and affect our immediate environment is the basic definition of agency. if it's your house, it's your rules. that's reasonable!

but with the antis, and the homophobes, and the commies, and the fascists, they clearly behave as though their "house" encompasses everything that they are aware of.

the easiest example is the early 2000s homophobia where the refrain was "do what you want in private but don't get in my face about it," used to justify fucking with people who were in nobody's face. back then we all said "that's an agentically laid lie to justify their real opinion!" and guess what with an uncoordinated group of people it's never an agentically concocted lie. they did act only to get the gays out of their faces, but their "faces" encompassed everything they know about. gay dudes are gross, gross things make them upset, the only way to not be upset is to know there's no gay dudes being gross everywhere! and this mindset is something that only happened with the telegraph because before that, the area of your awareness wasn't that big! (the exception is probably Muslims in the Holy Land)

communism and fascism are both the assumption that everything you're aware of is right in your face, it's simple, it can and should be given to you to just Do Right. you can't have this idea that you have figured out everything wrong with the world until the area of your perception is big enough that you can think you're seeing the world. once your zone of perception is wide enough you instantly believe that all of it is directly your business, everything that upsets you is happening right in your face and you have to use your personal agency to control your environment by making the upsetting things go away.

this is why antis act the way they do. it's not an agentically crafted lie to get power. their behavior is compulsive like all political behavior is compulsive. the idea that someone is Doing A Bigotry somewhere makes them very upset, and it's right in their faces, and they want to make the upsetting thing go away, and the only way to do that is to take control of anywhere the upsetting thing might happen and make it not happen. the only way they know how to do this invariably destroys everything they touch but they cannot stop themselves, they have to take control of every environment so they won't be upset by the thought of people doing bad things. the communists have to take control of all economic activity so they won't be upset by the thought of someone getting rich. the fascists have to take control of every life so they won't be upset by the thought of someone not bowing to their supremacy. this mindset cannot conclude something is none of your business, because if you're aware of it, it's your business.

[worldlytutor]

I think anarchists rejecting the history of socialism and communism is infantile and extremely offensive. Billions of people collectively believed fought built and died for these countries you decry as totally unacceptable. Like the Three Arrows thing. No racism no fascism no communism right? A secret third thing. I find the logo offensive, borderline reactionary. It was used by, historically, soc Dems. Calling the history of global class struggle and the workers states built from it equivalent to fascism is the most reactionary thing I can think of. If I see you with a patch, a tattoo of that, anything, it is genuinely on sight. I do not like you or trust you and I will not work with you.

Are you a socialist? Do you want socialism? What socialist hates communism but espouses anti fascism? Don't you know who the fascists hate most of all? Do you think communism has been achieved, and it was bad? Are you on the level of Homer Simpson, saying "oh sure in THEORY communism works"?

I used to be an uneducated, edgy teenager. And when I was, I spoke confidently that communism didn't work in practice, and couldn't work because of ethnic strife or whatever I read on /pol/ and I was talking along with my white friends and nodding sagely because I Knew What Was Really Up and had handy aphorisms to make my point seem well-reasoned and sensible. That version of myself was a fucking idiot. Uneducated, ignorant, and propagandized, despite what I would have liked to believe otherwise.

Unlearn the propaganda that so conveniently gets you to side with NATO in the global class war 1945-91. Learn how biased the western reporting on the soviets was. See how everything they accuse others of in dubiousness, they are guilty of themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt and more than we can possibly ever know. The soviets paid the price in blood for the freedom of humanity. No one else could have done it. Never abandon them. Give benefit of the doubt and analyze your research.

Anarchists have never had a revolution. Please don't abandon the history of workers states so easily because you accept the western smear campaign at face value. Never believe the US State DEPT! Don't believe a foundation created by a US congressional act with the express purpose of smearing communism, when they make unsubstantiated claims about the primary economic rival of the US committing genocide! Stop accepting their propaganda! Do better! Don't accept at face value unproven claims when you know they lie and will continue to lie! Look at how we create genocide in no uncertain terms. Look at what you know to be truthful and what is conjecture.

If I see those fucking arrows on your little battle jacket, or whatever, you are a certified tool to me.

[my-pjo-stuff]

Some people are calling Luke a 'white fascist' to demean his character. Like, dude, everyone aside from the side characters, is literally white in the first series lol.

I just find it kinda funny now in Live Action series, it's Percy who is the only white character now meanwhile Luke is Wasian.

I'm gonna be for real here, the whole "Luke is a facist" take is SO incredibly stupid and harmful. Like it's even worse than the whole pedo/groomer take. Because that take I could at least somewhat get (after killing the last of my critical thinking skills with years of alcohol abuse), while the fascist one is just genuine buzzword-throwing. I am CONVINCED that everyone who calls Luke fascist either read the books with their eyes closed or doesn't know what fascist means. Because this is the official definition of the word fascism:

Luke NEVER got anywhere close to "right-wing nationalist". They guy's expressed goal (and actions) were leading a violent revolution of demigods (the lower class) against the gods (the upper class). With the purpose of bringing about a "Golden Age" for demigod kind. Not to mention, Luke was never really authoritarian or intolerant either! Not much more that CHB or any other IRL leaders anyway. Nationalistic doesn't apply either, his nationality barely plays a role in anything he does! And the closest thing to a government in PJO are the gods which, again, Luke actively rebelled against. If you REALLY wanna bring in irl terminology Luke would be something along the lines of a far-left extremist with communistic and/or anarchist sympathies. But most certainly NOT a fascist or anything else right-wing.

It's just so genuinly harmful and stupid to call him that. "Fascism" isn't just a word to describe something that is bad. "Fascist" isn't supposed to mean a person who you dislike. Fascism and fascists are two very serious terms applying to very specific, VERY HARMFUL things. You shouldn't just slap them onto everything! Like even ignoring the fact that you are watering down a very serious topic to the point of it being petty fandom discourse, you just also look stupid as shit doing it! And everyone with even a bit of critical thinking and understanding of history will KNOW you are stupid!

And I know I like to play this card a lot, but as someone from the country who may just have the MOST baggage with fascism and stuff? It genuinely get's under my skin when people say shit like that. It feels like a personal offense, because how dare you use a word like that for something as petty as a fictional character?????

Genuinly the only thing even more braindead than the fascist take is the eugenicist take. Which- yes. I have seen people calling Luke eugenicists completely straight. Generally in conjunction with the fascist take ontop. If you cannot like Luke or want to hear his defence, then take it from someone whose country actually USED TO BE FASCIST. Luke is far from it. -With kind regards, a German who read a history book.

[magicalgirlmindcrank]

No something like deadpool kills the marvel universe isn’t a deconstruction. The reason punisher kills the marvel universe is, is because most of it is showing how impractical superheroes would actually be and basically the whole power fantasy aspect of super heroes

Spec ops the line is quite literally meant to be specific a deconstruction of military shooter games like call of duty which criticizes the genre for providing players with an unrealistic and immoral Power Fantasy through the glorification of war

And yes well Godzilla is about nuclear war. That doesn’t mean it can’t also be a deconstruction of the giant monster movie, it’s just not talked about as much because it doesn’t matter as much as but yes it still is a deconstruction. In the same way cloverfield is by showing you how horrible and terrify a giant monster attack would be it’s just that Godzilla as contempt for every other giant monster movie because it uses it as a means to an end well cloverfield was made as a love letter to it

The Starship troopers the movie is literally one just deconstruction of everything the book is, in fact it’s basically the antithesis of everything the book stands for

To finish off satire isn’t satire with out deconstruction. To make a satire you have to deconstruct something and point how ridiculous and stupid it is, it’s why the first addition of warhammer 40k is a deconstruction

Half of these as I already said are contempt the other after is out of hatred and that’s why there so good, it’s what separates the garbage of the gold and why Marsha law is high art and madoka is for complete morons

Do you think before you speak, or do you just spew whatever bile comes to mind? Is your own bullshit clogging your ears? It's honestly hilarious how you can say 'it's about deconstructing the power fantasy around heroes' while indulging in the power fantasy of Frank 'non-superhuman' Castle killing literal demigods. How you just blatantly ignore that the tragedy of needless mass destruction is the very foundation of the giant monster movie genre. How you somehow misunderstand Cloverfield as well (the 9/11 trauma could NOT be more blatant). How you think the book Starship Troopers is good, or not already a sort of satire of fascist ideology. How you keep bringing up Marshall Law when it's fairly vapid satire that lacks clarity of purpose. How you failed to even mention the Watchmen. How your main frame of reference seems to be exclusively movies, comic books and the first edition of Warhammer 40k, as though it's no longer a parodical take on fascism. How you keep conflating deconstruction with satire and parody. How you seem to think these things can't come from a place of affection. How you repeatedly ignore that I'm the one that said Madoka isn't a deconstruction in the first place.

Some real top kek stuff Anon

[mywifeleftme]

312: Victor Jara // Manifiesto

Manifiesto Victor Jara 1975, Discos Pueblo

Manifiesto is assembled from recordings intended for an album that was to be called Tiempos que cambian (literally Times That Change, or New Times) smuggled out of Chile by Jara’s widow Joan after the folksinger’s torture and murder by the Pinochet junta in 1973. It was simultaneously released by different labels under a variety of titles around the world. My copy hails from Mexico, released by leftist folk label Discos Pueblo, who make their intentions clear in a statement (machine-translated by me) on the back of the sleeve that reads in part:

“We find it necessary to point out that due to its quality and value, Victor Jara’s work should be disseminated, but always by those who identify with it, and not by the transnational companies that financed his return to Chile by organizing the bloody military coup of 1973. [Ed. Something in their use of word “retorno” is probably being lost in translation here; I think it implies something like Jara’s “return to whence he came,” e.g. his burial in Chilean soil.] Those transnational corporations that today benefit from Victor Jara’s singing, filtering out its combative aspects and presenting it as incomplete, seem to ignore the deep paths that people use to preserve the integrity of the voice of their singers. This album is our answer.”

The LP is clearly a work of love (and economy), the sleeve purposely left unglued so that it can be opened like a gatefold, revealing testimonies by his peers. There’s scarcely an inch that isn’t crammed with text—even the flaps that cradle the inner sleeve itself hide lyrics to two of the album’s key songs:

The sleeve unfolded.

“I don’t sing for the sake of singing, or for having a good voice, I sing because the guitar has sense and reason, it has a heart of earth and wings of a dove, it is like holy water that blesses my sorrows. This is where my song fits, as Violeta said, a hard-working guitar that smells of spring. It is not a rich man’s guitar or anything like that, my song is the scaffolding to reach the stars. The song has meaning when it beats in the veins of the one who will die singing truths, not fleeting flattery or foreign fame, but the song of a lark to the bottom of the earth. There, where everything arrives and where everything begins, a song that has been brave will always be a nueva cancion [New Song].”

Jara’s artistry (which, besides spearheading the nueva cancion movement, also included poetry and theatrical direction) was inseparable from his politics, and the music of Manifiesto is a stirring testament to his talents and the historical moment he occupied, when Chile like Cuba before it seemed on the verge of breaking free from centuries of resource extraction-driven imperialism and making its own way. These songs cannot help but feel elegiac given the circumstances of their release, and indeed they do frequently mourn the historical oppression of the common worker. Jara’s was a lark’s voice, not that of a conventional rabble rouser, and most of these songs seem best suited for night-time gatherings of comrades and lovers or, in the case of the dazzling instrumental “Caicai Vilu” (referencing a Mapuche creation myth), perhaps a rural cotillion. But these songs were recorded during the years of Salvador Allende’s triumph, a movement that Jara had personally helped galvanize, and there is the sense that these are songs about moving in a changed world that still feels almost surreal. Only at the very end, with the rock-inflected call to arms “Canto libre,” does Jara’s Revolutionary sentiment take on a more martial beat, finally unfurling a flag of victory.

That victory would be short-lived of course, as U.S. imperialists would soon back Pinochet’s reign of terror and grind the Chilean people under the heel of fascism for another generation. It’s hard to make an argument that Jara and Allende’s side “won” in any meaningful sense (without an appeal to some abstracted moral arbiter anyway). It may be blinkered to even try, knowing that Pinochet died obscenely wealth in his nineties and that there were never meaningful consequences for his even wealthier American backers, while a despairing Allende perished at his own hand and Jara with his fingers broken and his body riddled with bullets. Yet I do believe that a song can transcend the accounting of atrocities and persist on its own terms. Music like Jara’s will endure as long as there are human beings who seek a recognition of their own worthiest qualities in art. As one of the Mexican edition’s compilers says:

“…his voice will not have coffins or crematoriums, nor dark prisons nor barbed wire, comrades! His voice and his guitar continue the fight, they remain alive seeking victory. And they will also return as flags when the Homeland regains its joy.”

312/365

[satanicmacchiato]

i really wish people would perhaps not insult the intelligence of the average buddhist to suggest we are so ignorant of history and so tasteless that we would think it's appropriate to deface property that isn't ours with spray painted swastikas, or that we think so lowly of our sacred symbols we draw them in the built up filth on an unwashed car for fun. it's perfectly fine to assume that people who do this intend it as a way to be provocative, and not actually promote our religion.

the diagram you pulled up on google images of what's a "nazi swastika" vs. what's a "spiritual" swastika isn't necessary because you should already know that a person who uses it for vandalism or draws it in dirt does not have the same relationship to that symbol as we do. where we pretty much exclusively display it in temples and on statues. not to mention, the symbol does not even figure significantly in certain buddhist denominations.

buddhism is a religion. we have rules about how we should carry ourselves. we have instructions on what to do and what not to do to people and things in the world. why do you think that after millennia of lacking a missionary impulse and being persecuted to the point of having entire strains of practice go extinct, we think the best way to Promote The Good Word To the Masses is to spray paint a swastika onto somebody's garage. can we be real here.

genuinely asking here, what purpose does it serve to try and split hairs over whether or not a nazi drew a swastika the "right" way? we know sometimes they just can't do it. just look.

even if you don't even know all the intricacies of every buddhist tradition, even if you had absolutely no idea some of us are taught to reserve special places to store sacred texts and objects to keep them away from mundane things, please use some common sense and ask yourselves why we would be so ignorant of its historical use of defacing property? you realise that in some countries outside the west, "world war II" is actually called, "the global war against fascism"? we know what nazis were. it just opens up a whole new question of how racist YOU have to be to believe that the rest of us are so sheltered and innocent that we would think it would be in good taste to spray paint a swastika as a form of religious expression.

back to the point of whether or not a swastika is oriented in the "correct" way. here is a photo i have taken of a temple i belong to. the symbol on buddha and the one on the halo each face either direction. it's almost as if the real thing you all should be looking at is context and not just the specific way the thing is drawn.

i beg of all of you, if you really had any respect for our particular relationship with this symbol and our religious beliefs you will STOP dragging us through the mud in cases where hateful and ignorant people deface property with it. YOU KNOW VERY WELL THAT THE POINT OF USING IT IN VANDALISM IS TO INTIMIDATE AND/OR SIGNAL TO OTHER HATEFUL PEOPLE.

[alyceinwonderland777]

The post👑:

The comments🤡:

I swear, I'm sick and tired of people talking nonsense. Norse mythology was appropriated by the Nazis for their sick propaganda, but it has nothing to do with Fascism or Nazism. It is something very ancient that has been around for centuries. What the Nazis did is called cultural appropriation. They did the exact same thing with the Swastika. The Swastika is a Hindu symbol and those bastards have appropriated it and turned it into their sick propaganda symbol.

The purpose of the tweet was to make it clear that the Fascists and the Neo-Fascists have appropriated and are appropriating some art forms and some cultural symbols for their sick propaganda and that we must erase the black spot that these bastards have drawn on them, but evidently this user either didn't understand it or doesn't want to understand. Fortunately, thanks to the Internet today it's possible to find information on anything and therefore this user and all people like him should use their brain and educate themselves instead of talking bullshit. Forgive my outburst, but these things are intolerable. Fascists need to keep their filthy hands off other people's cultures. I would like to conclude my speech by saying that the worst scourge of this world is ignorance.

[particularj]

On today’s Supreme Court sprint to ignore the law and enshrine fascism, all 6-3 decisions:

Homeless people can now be arrested and jailed just for being homeless and sleeping in public. Totally not cruel or unusual punishment and totally won’t affect victims of domestic violence. Unrelated (read: totally related), conservatives want to end no-fault divorce.

The Chevron precedent, which allowed subject matter experts in federal agencies to clarify and interpret any vagueness in Congressional legislation affecting their field, was overturned so conservative judges who don’t even understand biology can now be the arbitrary rule makers. Expect lots of lawsuits and the near complete gutting of the EPA and other agencies from their enforcement powers.

Proving and charging people with Obstruction became more difficult, based on an absurdist narrowing of the definition to purposeful grabbing of documents or objects and playing keep away.

And for more information about why the SEC case yesterday is so, SO problematic and hypocritical, read here. (Even more frightening given the Chevron case today.)

Basically, all of our good government regulatory agencies are being kneecapped from enforcement by this court.

[aruanimess]

As a armin arlert lover, thoughts on floch?

Hi, Anon!

It took me like a full five minutes to understand why the question was phrased like this. Like Floch has done so much since that ceremony scene, I forgot he had said all these horrible things to Armin.

This got long so I'm putting it under the cut.

Frankly, I think he's a good character, not in moral terms, but in the sense that he fulfills the role of the antagonist quite nicely. I obviously don't like him as a person, but I understand his function within the story, and I think his arc was fairly well-executed (unlike other antagonists like Yelena imho).

Isayama is in this continual conversation with the ideals of authoritarian states and what can make them appealing to vulnerable individuals that I find very interesting. And this is perfectly captured in the character of Floch. Not only because of his past trauma and survivor's guilt, which absolutely make him the perfect candidate for radicalization, but also because he wasn't the most moral of guys to begin with.

Floch joins the Survey Corps at what is arguably their all time high point. For the first time in a hundred years, they've got a series of relative wins: Eren's Titan, capturing Annie, figuring out who the infiltrators were, finding out the truth about their world, deposing the king etc. Morale is at its peak. So inevitably we meet a series of characters who join in because they believe in the propaganda and, sure, may have a renewed conviction for the actual cause, but still don't get what the job entails. I mean, look at this (not so) sweet summer child:

And the thing is: this is not a bad thing in and of itself. After all, we see Marlow do the same. But unlike Marlow, who was a guy that cared about his fellow man and was generally very anti-corruption from the start and competent to boot, Floch has an inferiority complex the size of Paradis. This is literally how he gets reintroduced to the story (I don't remember if he was seen earlier, but even if he was this is his first substantial appearance):

(please ignore Jean's majestic jawline and focus on the speech bubbles)

He's practically screaming "Jean, Jean, validate my existence, please!!"

So we know he is a guy with low self-esteem, who is also not particularly concerned with ethics outside of some juvenile idea of "winning," on top of that you add a horrific traumatic event and... well, Erwin.

Erwin is a character who uses unsavory means to inspire others to fight for him. Yes, he ultimately has an honorable purpose in mind, but he is also exploiting the very same weaknesses in people's characters to serve his ends. He is a demagogue and the story is not shy in telling you about it. (I'm too lazy to cite my sources, but, like, the first time we really see him, he creates tension to manipulate the result of a trial, so...).

(nvm I found some while looking for something else)

Floch is actually the character who expresses doubt when he is faced with Erwin's final order:

And how Erwin convinces him?

"That's absolutely right. It doesn't make a single difference. No matter what dreams or hopes you may have, no matter what blissful life you've lived until now, what happens when your body gets crushed by a rock is the same. Everyone dies sooner or later. Does that mean all life is meaningless? Was the fact that you were ever born meaningless from the start? Would you say the same of your dead comrades? Were those soldiers' lives meaningless?

No, they weren't! And our fight gives meaning to those soldiers' lives! Those brave fallen men and women! Those poor fallen men and women! The only ones who can remember them are us the living! So we will die here and trust the meaning of our lives to the next generation!"

Like, the man went all out! The "everyone is a hero" and the cult of death is literally one of the points Uberto Eco brings up in his essay Ur-Fascism. I'm not saying Erwin is necessarily a fascist, but he needed to convince these soldiers to die ASAP so he used the fastest route possible: fascist rhetoric.

And then he went and committed to the bit!! He actually sacrificed himself and everyone around him and the plan worked!!!

So now a weak-minded, traumatized Floch has been presented with the ULTIMATE piece of propaganda, what is he meant to do?? Not believe it? And accept that he went through all this for nothing? Please!

I can absolutely see how a guy like Floch would end up the way he did, and that's why I think he is an interesting character and a compelling antagonist.