#in historic settings of indigenous genocide

[the-everqueen]

i can't believe i have to say this but since the fandom didn't get the memo:

DON'T WRITE DREAMLING SLAVE AUS SET DURING THE TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

i don't care if the context is "it's a dream," "it's Hob's guilt resurfacing in a freudian meta-narrative," or "but this is the catalyst for Hob's redemption arc." it is incredibly fetishistic and disgusting to use a historic moment of collective trauma that still has repercussions on Black people today for the sake of your white mlm ship. it is incredibly dehumanizing and disgusting to insert white characters into a historic moment of collective trauma that explicitly impacted Black people and continues to do so today.

i don't care about your fictional white man's guilt. my real, flesh-and-blood friends and family continue to experience the devastating consequences of the transatlantic slave trade and other historic instances of global white supremacy.

[coridallasmultipass]

TW for racism and genocide of Native Americans

Today I learned that the original "The only good _, is a dead _," was "The only good Indian, is a dead Indian." And it really sucks that now I know this information.

Looks like it's speculated to be attributed to one specific Union general due to his actions, but it was more likely just a common anti-Native sentiment of the time held by a lot of the settlers, not just one person.

Like I know I hear 'the only good snake, is a dead snake' most often since I love being in snake discussion groups, which also sucks because I love snakes, and they shouldn't be killed.

But I've also heard like 'the only good Nazi, is a dead Nazi.' And like, I So agree with that, fuck Nazis, but I don't want to think about the original phrase being reclaimed like that for a laugh, no matter how much I agree that Nazis suck.

It should stay as horrifying and sickening as 'the only good Indian, is a dead Indian' in my opinion. I think we should retire the phrase entirely and just note that, that was the origin of it - the continued genocide of Native Americans during the 1800s when settlers were eager to get rid of us so they could claim property for themselves while forcing us into insufficient reservations as US America expanded westward.

This book I'm reading describes that the usual retaliation for the theft of a cow would have been the execution of an entire Indian village. One specific horrifying example given, is from accounts of a traveler that joined a group of Mexicans pursuing Indians (Chumash) in possession of stolen horses. They come across a group of some old Indians, women and children, drying the horse meat. Every last one was killed, and their ears cut off as proof for the priests that they made every effort to retrieve the horses.

This shit is so sickening. They were hungry and trying to survive.

It also describes how the accounts of Indians from my tribe before the mission system were all about how generous and welcoming they were. (Though, it was through the lens of the Spanish who saw us as ideal candidates for conversion because of this.) Then after the collapse of the missions and post-assimilation, the accounts simply describe the Indians' drunkenness and disorder. What did you expect???? You assimilate a group of people so they're entirely reliant on you (the rigid structure of the mission system and the dismantling of their previous tribal villages), and then suddenly turn them out to a world without their previous villages and social order. Of course they're going to struggle and suffer and abuse the drugs (alcohol) you introduced them to.

I hate this so much.

The book also mentions how, during the mission period, anyone who ran away from the missions to go back to their original tribal lives, would be dragged back to the missions and cruelly punished with restraints, lashing, or stocks, and they couldn't understand why because punishment was exceedingly rare before Spanish rule.

Ugh. Anyway.

I'm going to bring this up any time I hear anyone mention that phrase, because the horror of that time period should not be diminished in its modern reclamation. ('Diminished,' because I, a 30yo Native American, did not even know the origin. I thought it was a modern phrase. Our local Native history was always glossed over in school to focus on the mission system. I didn't even learn of my tribe's revolt until like 2016 when I went to a lecture my tribe held.)

I get that reclamation is supposed to be like a good thing, to take away the power of its original use, but I personally don't think that's appropriate for this phrase that was used as a rally for genocide.

Maybe I'm just being a sensitive baby, though, who knows! I'm crying while reading a history book about my tribe. This shit really hurts deep, though. It always has.

[baby-girl-aaron-dessner]

Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes today as the jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to an adult film actress who said the two had sex.

However, we must refrain from perpetuating the “historic conviction no one is above the law in the greatest country on earth” narrative.

Let’s remember that he has become the first convicted felon among a lineup of war criminals, mass murderers, rapists, and slavers. Their crimes have included enabling genocide, setting up torture sites, invading other countries, exploiting the global south, ethnically cleansing indigenous people etc. Of course, Trump is also guilty of several of these crimes.

A glaringly obvious recent example is Dick Cheney - and his team - not being prosecuted for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. We were all expected to just move on from that lie.

The fact that the first ever Presidential conviction is over hush money to cover a sex scandal is not at all surprising however, it is revealing.

[beekeep]

Saw this post floating around, don’t wanna target anyone or argue with Zionists, but it is my duty (especially as an actually indigenous Jew) to educate well-meaning gentiles who might see this and think they have no right to speak on the matter. I’ll go point by point.

1) “Is it so terrible for a Jew to be a Zionist?”

If we were living in any other era, where the genocidal crimes of Israel were not as widely known (though they were very well documented), you could perhaps ask this question in sincerity. Many Jews (such as myself) grow up in religious educational settings which either fail to mention the human rights violations of the state or claim they’re justified because “they want to kill us!” Past a certain point, though, one can’t continue to claim ignorance of what Zionism actually does. Short answer: yes, it is terrible for anyone to claim to be a Zionist, but this will be more evident as I continue to analyze these arguments.

2) “Zionism is the belief in the inherent right of the Jewish people to return to their homeland”

First of all, Palestine is not the “homeland” of the Jewish people any more than Siberia is the homeland of indigenous american tribes. Is there a historical connection? Yes, but though assimilation and migration Jews have found homes across the world. For me, my homeland is Mexico, because my family has lived there for generations, partly through migration but mostly through having cultivated the land for millennia. Even biblically speaking, Palestine does not “belong” to the Jewish people, it belongs to G-d. Furthermore, there is no shortage of Jewish scholarship and activism that asserts that wherever we live, that is our homeland. Frankly, I’m more interested in fighting to stay where I am than fighting to force people out of their homes to accommodate me.

3) “Zionism is the belief in the Jewish right not to be murdered”

By murdering others instead? Once again, there is no shortage of Jewish scholarship and activism in favor of Jewish self defense where we live. Jewish resistance fighters lived and died fighting the nazis in Europe under the third reich. If Zionism was actually interested in preventing Jewish death, it would fight antisemitism where it is. “Preventing murder” is not an excuse to commit genocide.

4) “there are so many definitions of Zionism”

Sorry but I just think of this tweet from @jewdas on Twitter when I read this: “There’s a actual existing Zionism which practices apartheid and denial of human rights. But there’s another Zionism inside my head which is all rainbows and kosher marshmallows, so who can say which is the real Zionism?” In other words, the actual, material consequences of Zionist beliefs are more important than what any individual thinks their Zionism is. Once again, we live in the Information Age, where anyone can easily learn about the damage that Zionism has done in Palestine and abroad. There is no excuse to continue using the label that doesn’t presuppose complete ignorance of Israeli violence.

5) “zionists just want to be safe from antisemitism in the diaspora”

See points 3 & 4.

6) “and this is different from evangelical zionists”

Materially speaking, not really. Once again, see point 4. Until you pull all US/european colonial support for Israel, this claim falls flat.

7) “zionists just want to live peacefully with other indigenous people in the area”

That’s not what indigeneity is, it doesn’t mean “from there,” it’s a specific relationship to the land and to its cultivation. (On a side note, even biblically and historically speaking, Jews are not “from” Palestine.) See point 2. Zionism has proven it is not a peaceful ideology. See point 4.

8) “people refuse to see the difference in types of Zionism because they hate the Jews”

No, it’s because there are no material differences. See point 4. Evangelical Zionism and Jewish Zionism actually share quite a bit in common. The “Jewish state” would not exist without evangelical Zionists. See point 6. And the original Jewish Zionist thinkers had a vested interest in tying the two together.

tl;dr, Zionism is a violent ideology in practice, and no amount of making excuses can hide the fact that it is genocidal and serves European/American interests. Additionally, just because one is not Jewish does not mean one does not have a duty and an obligation to eliminate Zionism wherever it crops up. Zionism has had disastrous consequences for Palestinians, and as western citizens, we benefit from their suffering. It must end now. May Palestine be freed in our lifetimes.

[ladyimaginarium]

coining the term twospiritphobia / twospiritmisia.

Q: what is twospiritphobia / twospiritmisia?

A: the discrimination, hatred, exclusion & erasure of those who identify as two spirit and/or indigiqueer.

Q: why not just call it homophobia/transphobia against indigenous qipoc / queer indigenous poc?

A: because not every indigenous person identifies by western lgbtqia+ labels which are a predominantly western eurocentric concept that does not always align with indigenous turtle island concepts, not all queer natives identify with two spirit due to its heavy inherent historical, social, political, cultural, spiritual & ceremonial connotations & because we deserve to have our terms to describe our own experiences of discrimination that inherently includes our indigeneity & our own sacred two spirit nature.

Q: why did you(&) coin this term?

A: because i've noticed that in the past year & even before, the predominantly white queer community refuses to include us let alone see us & when they do, it's usually to tokenize us then throw us away when we're no longer convenient, erase us (see: nex benedict, when the mostly white queer community erased their indigenous two spirit identity to make them their trans/nonbinary martyr despite them being choctaw & completely ignoring mmeiwg2s+/mmeip issues which is never talked about in queer spaces unless natives talk about it), talk down to us when we don't conform to your western concepts of gender & orientation that do not inherently apply to us, speak over us & our issues & push us out of your fucking queer spaces without ever actually trying to work with us despite the fact that we the two spirit community who were revered as sacred have existed on turtle island for over 5000 years & were the first victims & survivors of racist imperialist homophobic & transphobic based war crimes & genocide & have been fighting & resisting for our liberation far before anyone else ever set foot on these lands, longer than any other queer community on turtle island, longer than stonewall & whenever queer history is brought up, two spirit people & the violence against us from the beginning of colonization of turtle island are never discussed & quite frankly i've had enough of native erasure both historically speaking & in the present day. there's a reason why there's a 2s in front of 2slgbtqia+ in "canada", because we were here first. we will not be erased. there can be no liberation without two spirits at the center of queer activism. by adding this to your vocabulary you acknowledge & honor two spirits as the first queer people of turtle island & we deserve your allyship, respect, protection & solidarity, respect the indigenous roots of the term two spirit, honor indigenous peoples' way of living, loving & learning & building communities across turtle island, emphasize the importance of indigenous perspectives & identities within the broader 2slgbtqia+ community & further acknowledging & recognizing the historical & ongoing contributions of indigenous peoples to discussions about gender & sexual diversity & highlights the need for visibility & inclusion of two spirits in these conversations & acknowledging, respecting & honoring indigenous peoples as the traditional stewards of the land & that indigenous peoples were the first to build communities that honored romantic, sexual, gender & sex diversity on the land of turtle island ever since time immemorial.

Q: what are some examples of twospiritphobia?

A: the erasure of two spirits both historically & in the present, assaulting/committing hatecrimes against individuals who are, or who are perceived or assumed to be two spirits, nonnatives — both white settlers & nonnative poc — culturally appropriating two spirit when it's an exclusive closed term from closed cultures for indigenous people of turtle island, if you are not first nations, métis, inuit, indigenous american, alaska native, indigenous mexican, indigenous central american, greenlandic inuit or otherwise not indigenous to turtle island and/or mixed with any of those groups, & you are not either reconnecting, semiconnected or connected to your culture, you cannot use the term, using antinative slurs against two spirits on any context or form that one cannot reclaim and/or using said antinative slurs casually/as insults, harassing/threatening/mocking/intimidating two spirit individuals while motivated by said individual's two spirit & indigenous identity whether online or face-to-face, treating two spirits differently than pericishetallo natives, even if one is native themselves, attempting to "correct" two spirits on their own identities, saying our two spirit identities are wrong, using religion and/or spirituality as an excuse to harm or exclude two spirit people, fetishizing/objectifying/sexualizing/romanticizing individuals based on their two spirit identities, opposing and/or dismissing the need for explicit two spirit representation & progress for two spirit rights & two spirit liberation, erasing two spirit issues as inherently gay/trans issues, not acknowledging twospiritphobic behavior in others, refusing to speak up for two spirit people, telling two spirits that they're unnatural or "attention seeking", speaking over two spirited people when they tell you you're being racist/being twospiritphobic, policing two spirits on who we can & can't be in relation to ourselves especially from nonnatives even more from white settlers, accusing two spirits of "oppression olympics" whenever we bring up our issues, not acknowledging two spirits as the first queer people who've existed for thousands of years on turtle island & denying indigeneity as the core element of being two spirit.

disclaimer: do not fucking remove credit from us& being the coiner of this term, while the experiences of twospiritphobia/twospiritmisia are nothing new, we& as an indigenous bodied system demand respect as the coiner of this term. please ask if you intend on using this term on your wikis/masterlists. do not use this term for yourself to describe your experiences if nonnative/2S. nonnatives do not fucking derail, especially yt folx.

[jewishvitya]

hei. i enjoy your blogs, i hope you could clear something up for me., i just saw someone claim to be "zionist as in i believe jewish people have the right to self determination in their indigenous homeland",, ive actually seen the claim that jewish ppl are indigenous to israel and are somehow denied that identity as a form of anti semitism and erasure of jewish experience multiple times.. and it always confused me so much cuz like israel was set up as this nationalist project in 1948, before the region was a mess mostly under the rule of the ottomans, but the palestinian culture and ppl were always there. how can someone be indigenous to a region if they werent there before? is there any truth to the claim or is it just co-opting leftist language again?

its so evil how the state of israel could jist completely legitimize itself by co-opting jewish culture and pretending like being in support of it is a fundamental part of jewishness :(

Thank you!! I'm glad you do.

I can try, but I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining this. Maybe someone else can add to this. If I repeat things I said before, I apologize.

That is a definition of zionism used by many zionists who lean politically to the left. I don't subscribe to these softer definitions of zionism because saying it's just "the right to Jewish self determination in our ancestral homeland" ignores that in practice over the last century the next words are "to the exclusion of others." I define zionism through its practical outcome - which is what we did to Palestinians.

Jewish people originate here. Our religious laws and practices (many of which are regularly disregarded by Israel and by settlers when they do things like destroying olive trees and water sources) are tied to this specific land. There are holidays and religious rituals that are either fundamentally changed or can't be practiced at all if we're anywhere else in the world. Culturally most branches of Judaism maintained this connection throughout our history. And we didn't leave willingly. An empire expelled us from the place that was our land. When the point of indigeniety comes up, this is why. You'll see arguments like - when does indigeniety expire? How many generations until you no longer have a claim to the ancestral homeland you were driven away from?

So this is the cultural context for Judaism. This is something that I also can't really ignore. I can't pretend I don't care about this land and the connection we always had to it.

That said, I still see this as using leftist terminology inappropriately.

To talk about Israel, a lot of us talk about colonialism, and specifically settler colonialism. I lived in the West Bank settlements so to me this really resonates. The argument I get at that point is that an indigenous group can't colonize their own land.

And this is why I'm saying it's a misuse of terminology. We're using that label to absolve ourselves. As if the word "indigenous" is a stamp of approval we get to apply to our actions while we repeat the violence of colonizing forces in history.

Ethnic cleansing, occupation, building settlements - and now also genocide. The tools we use resonate with indigenous people all over the world, because they suffered through similar kinds of oppression. Always with differences and different contexts, these things are never 1:1, but there's a reason indigenous groups around the world are in solidarity with Palestinians. I shared about a video from a Korean person talking about how colonialism by Japan broke the thread of their history - old buildings that had to be rebuilt instead of being preserved, historical cultural practices and art forms being lost or changed due to the loss of artisans. These are things Israel is doing now.

So to me, this is using the word "landback" and "liberation" for a violent takeover of land from an indigenous group. You mentioned the Ottomans - Palestine has been conquered over and over throughout history. Those regimes, sure, fighting them off can be liberatory, if the intent isn't to become the conquerors in their place. But there's nothing to liberate from Palestinians, because they're not colonizing anything. They belong in this land.

I'm really angry that so many of us try to deny the Palestinians their own connection. They have roots here, a long and rich history shaped by life in the land. While we destroy so much and say our claim is so strong we get to kill or drive them away for it.

[the-catboy-minyan]

when people say "death to america" do you assume they mean kill every non-native in the united states? Or do you suddenly understand the concept being communicated then?

you know what, does does give more context to why people think calling for the death of Israel is okay. now, I can explain why that's still a fucked upthing to say:

1) most people who say "death to America" are Americans, there's a massive difference between calling for the death of your own country as a privileged citizen of that country, calling for its death as a discriminated citizen of that country, and for calling for the death of a country you never even set foot in.

the best comparison I can come up with is: you will call your sibling a bitch when they're acting rude to you or others, but you'll be hella upset if a stranger decides to swear at your sibling.

the stranger is making assumptions on your sibling's character based on one or a few negative interactions, and have no idea what they're really like as a person.

you (most likely) have known your sibling since you/they were born. you have a clear image of who they are in your head based on many different interactions. when you curse them after they acted out, you're calling them out on their behavior while being emotional. your sibling will most likely recognize that, and while they may get offended and hurt (depends on your relationship), they're not going to assume you have bad intentions at heart.

while a country isn't a person, its citizens are, most Americans will recognize the intention behind other Americans saying "death to America", but you can't assume Israelis will read "death to Israel" with the same mindset, especially when it's not said hy one of their own. ESPECIALLY when most of them have a history of being persecuted for their identity as Jews (saying most since not all Israelis are Jewish and I can't speak for others), and when there are people alive at this moment calling for the actual death of all Israelis.

2) there's a massive difference between American and Israeli history. I'm not an expert in history, so I can't reliably give examples, but for startes Jews are native to Israel while Americans were originally European colonizers.

you're looking at Israeli history from an American lense, and making comparisons between events that have wildly different historical contexts. American culture is extremely black and white and heavily influenced by christianity, you're interpreting the conflict as "evil white colonizers (like those first European colonizers)" versus "helpless indigenous noble savages (like those Native Americans)", this is just not the reality of the conflict.

3) if the message is being read as a call for genocide by Jews, there's a high chance that means their cultural history is giving the sentence context that you don't understand.

people are telling you "the thing you're saying has negative implications", and your response is "but I meant it THAT way, you meed to see it from MY perspective". I'd suggest taking a step back and see it from their perspective.

anyways 6/10, thanks for the context, still a call for genocide.

[radgirl-spray]

Rant.

it always gives me whiplash when gringos call me or other latinas on radblog "Republican" and "nazis".

Because they are so sure they are making such the point about us being nazis and bringing conservative and apocalyptic takes on them because we don't want men in females spaces, and yet from our perspective, they are still thousands of people all across latam who simply dissapeared when the north american goverment decided to interfiere in latam's politics which lead to real, actual genocides based on politic stance. Specifically being leftist.

My country in particular had one of the most brutal dictatorships in latam. Over 40.000 people were killed, tortured or simply dissapeared just to prevent socialism, despite the socialist president at the time being chosen democatrically.

Now, women, mostly college students feminists at the time were systematically tortured. I'm not talking about internet persecution or some horrible missgender crime. I'm talking of whole brigades raping 14 to 21 year old girls. I'm talking of soldiers setting girls on fire. I'm talking about men open pregnant women to dispatch the baby. I'm talking about torture and murder.

Why? because they dared to talk about politics, because they dared to talk about contraceptives. About feminine issues. For being Left.

It was also a time where the wrong opinion could get you killed, could mean your children being killed. For being brown, for being indio, for being poor. Think of you neighbour accusing you of hearing certain music and your house being raded and your teenage children being taken to a camp to never be seen again. I'm not talking 100 years ago. I'm talking my parents and anyone who is 5 years older than me.

To this day we are extremely affraid of police and the military. The levels of poverty Latam has are hardly something people in first world countries have seen in a years, because the poverty itself has been caused for said countries and their progress. I'm talking whole neighbourhoods of houses made of cardboard while some first world country leaves a bunch of chemical wasteland just right up the corner where we live so they live better.

Two years ago there was a breakout in my country, it was quite famous. You know the first thing the police did?

They raped and hanged a girl on the street. In 2021.

And then comes some random USA/Canadian citizen and calls you "a republican" and "a nazi".

Did I mention after II world war many nazis escaped to latam and formed whole german colonies for either experimenting on humans or create pedophile nets and raping centers? the more you know.

But we are nazis, we are republicans. Despite the fact that that our indigenous people recognize women as adult human females, that indigenous women were hunted down and used historically to be bred by whites colonizers just like them. Despite the fact that most of us are mestizos, that color and class go hand in hand in latam, that we have a culture heavily based on religious intakes of what's women's place and that we shut up when the men talk, because that's macho culture. We are nazis and we are republicans, despite the fact that their fucking country killed thousands of us because we wanted to try left and to hope for something more than extreme poverty. Shit, we've even been called colonizer by some chicano who doesn't even speak spanish. I mean, what are the odds.

But the white men need to speak, the gringo has something to say, they need us to respect their pronouns and go along with their progress. So they packed their bullshit religion and ship it right down the frontera, and now we have to swallow too. Because we are latinas, we live in the backyard, right? what do we know about the experiences of american dudes in skirts.

[hero-israel]

What's so annoying about this constant uwu I'm baby leftist refrain of "just because you're indigenous to a place doesn't mean you have the right to displace people" that's coming from goyim and antizionist self hating Jews alike is that... Jews decolonizing Eretz Yisrael did not have to displace anyone. That was never the intended goal of even the most conservative, if you can call them this, racist Zionist leaders?

Jews resettling our homeland en masse does not fucking mean displacing anyone. These are two separate events. And blaming Jewish immigration for the displacement of Arabs is ignorant at best. It's a clear red flag they don't know the complexities of the Nakba, the different (if concurrent) factors for different groups of Palestinians to flee or be forced out in waves.

In any event, had Palestine accepted the partition plan, no displacement would have occurred. No war = no ethnic cleansing. Even though Jewish communities were routinely destroyed leading up to the partition, there still was no general will to cleanse the land of Palestinians among Jews. Many of the 750,000 Palestinians were displaced as a military exigency by a nascent Israel. This would not have occurred had the partition plan gone as intended. This would not have occurred had their been no partition plan at all.

Jewish resettlement =/= cleansing Arabs.

And at worst, acting like Jewish decolonization itself is an act of displacement, that all this was inevitable because of the mere presence of Jews increasing in Palestine, or some character of ~European~ Kha- I mean- Jew-ish people, or that their was some secret Zionist committee who all got together to drink blood in their Bank Palaces and circle jerked at the idea of cleansing Palestine... I mean then you're just antisemitic. Jews moving anywhere is not a crime, it is not a plague, it is not a humanitarian catastrophe. Jews should not be barred from any country. Human migration, at least when it's not military and financially expediated by an imperial power, is never immoral.

I don't think the Ottomans resettling Circassians and Balkan Muslims in the region was bad. I don't think Egyptians and other Arabs immigrating to Palestine in the 19th century was bad. The pro Palestinian side denies that these groups even came to Palestine, but if they were forced to acknowledge it, I doubt they would say they were displacing the totally real and indigenous Palestinian People? Probably because Arabs/Muslims are granted inherent legitimacy to them. This was always about "The Ummah 💪" to them. A Malaysian has more of a right to live in Palestine than a Jew from the Old Yishuv. They just hate Jews.

The Jewish resettlers built towns on empty land. They bought as much land as they could legally from the Ottomans. There were zero pogroms against Arab communities. There was space and economic opportunity for Jews and Arabs alike, and every Zionist leader acknowledged this. Does this mean everything was perfect and the Jews were totally faultless? Of course not. But the Zionists set out with a clear code of conduct for Zionism to occur. This is historical fact.

Even if not all of the 750,000 Palestinians who became refugees were specifically cleansed by the proto IDF, 200,000 or so people being cleansed is still a crime against humanity. Almost a million people fleeing their country at once is still a tragedy. But this was not an inevitable and direct consequence of Jews rebuilding Israel. There is a timeline where Zionism still occurred and was successful, and no Nakba occurred. This was 100% always a possible outcome.

Insisting otherwise means you think Zionism itself is a genocidal colonial mindset, which clearly all these people do believe wholeheartedly. But we'll never get anywhere as long as people don't recognize the umbrella of connotations and ideas that Zionism held and still holds. We'll never get anywhere while people still treat Jews living in our homeland as foreign suspicious duplicitous dangerous interlopers. Why should Jews come to the table if we're treated as the enemy no matter what? If the very core of Israeli identity is treated as rotten and not worthy of, not just respect, but life?

Excellent points throughout!

Retconning Zionism into being only about refugee displacement is also done to stifle discussion of the partition plans of 1947 (or 1937). Palestiners want to have their cake and eat it too - nonstop crying over the decisions of 1940s Jews, disregard and denialism of those of 1940s Arabs. The talking point is always "Why should they have given an equal share of the land / the best land / ANY land to new immigrants?" Funny how Jewish immigration was such a threat that it was perfectly understandable and natural for Arabs to riot and massacre to make it stop, yet not enough of a threat to consider that maybe it would get bigger and that a negotiated compromise would be a good idea. The only thought, the only goal, was killing.

(Similar: "there can't be a 2SS because of the settlers, let's make a 1SS" - the settlers would still be there in a 1SS, so they aren't the block. The block is refusing to allow for any Israel at all. Winning is the Jews losing.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Denazification, truth and reconciliation, and the story of Germany's story

Germany is the “world champion in remembrance,” celebrated for its post-Holocaust policies of ensuring that every German never forgot what had been done in their names, and in holding themselves and future generations accountable for the Nazis’ crimes.

All my life, the Germans have been a counterexample to other nations, where the order of the day was to officially forget the sins that stained the land. “Least said, soonest mended,” was the Canadian and American approach to the genocide of First Nations people and the theft of their land. It was, famously, how America, especially the American south, dealt with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Silence begets forgetting, which begets revisionism. The founding crimes of our nations receded into the mists of time and acquired a gauzy, romantic veneer. Plantations — slave labor camps where work was obtained through torture, maiming and murder — were recast as the tragiromantic settings of Gone With the Wind. The deliberate extinction of indigenous peoples was revised as the “taming of the New World.” The American Civil War was retold as “The Lost Cause,” fought over states’ rights, not over the right of the ultra-wealthy to terrorize kidnapped Africans and their descendants into working to death.

This wasn’t how they did it in Germany. Nazi symbols and historical revisionism were banned (even the Berlin production of “The Producers” had to be performed without swastikas). The criminals were tried and executed. Every student learned what had been done. Cash reparations were paid — to Jews, and to the people whom the Nazis had conquered and brutalized. Having given in to ghastly barbarism on an terrifyingly industrial scale, the Germans had remade themselves with characteristic efficiency, rooting out the fascist rot and ensuring that it never took hold again.

But Germany’s storied reformation was always oversold. As neo-Nazi movements sprang up and organized political parties — like the far-right Alternative für Deutschland — fielded fascist candidates, they also took to the streets in violent mobs. Worse, top German security officials turned out to be allied with AfD:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/08/04/germ-a04.html

Neofascists in Germany had fat bankrolls, thanks to generous, secret donations from some of the country’s wealthiest billionaires:

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/billionaire-backing-may-have-helped-launch-afd-a-1241029.html

And they broadened their reach by marrying their existing conspiratorial beliefs with Qanon, which made their numbers surge:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages

Today, the far right is surging around Europe, with the rot spreading from Hungary and Poland to Italy and France. In an interview with Jacobin’s David Broder, Tommaso Speccher a researcher based in Berlin, explores the failure of Germany’s storied memory:

https://jacobin.com/2023/07/germany-nazism-holocaust-federal-republic-memory-culture/

Speccher is at pains to remind us that Germany’s truth and reconciliation proceeded in fits and starts, and involved compromises that were seldom discussed, even though they left some of the Reich’s most vicious criminals untouched by any accountability for their crimes, and denied some victims any justice — or even an apology.

You may know that many queer people who were sent to Nazi concentration camps were immediately re-imprisoned after the camps were liberated. Both Nazi Germany and post-Nazi Germany made homosexuality a crime:

https://time.com/5953047/lgbtq-holocaust-stories/

But while there’s been some recent historical grappling with this jaw-dropping injustice, there’s been far less attention given to the plight of the communists, labor organizers, social democrats and other leftists whom the Nazis imprisoned and murdered. These political prisoners (and their survivors) struggled mightily to get the reparations they were due.

Not only was the process punitively complex, but it was administered by bureaucrats who had served in the Reich — the people who had sent them to the camps were in charge of deciding whether they were due compensation.

This is part of a wider pattern. The business-leaders who abetted the Reich through their firms — Siemens, BMW, Hugo Boss, IG Farben, Volkswagon — were largely spared any punishment for their role in the the Holocaust. Many got to keep the riches they acquired through their part on an act of genocide.

Meanwhile, historians grappling with the war through the “Historikerstreit” drew invidious comparisons between communism and fascism, equating the two ideologies and tacitly excusing the torture and killing of political prisoners (this tale is still told today — in America! My kid’s AP history course made this exact point last year).

The refusal to consider that extreme wealth, inequality, and the lust for profits — not blood — provided the Nazis with the budget, materiel and backing they needed to seize control in Germany is of a piece with the decision not to hold Germany’s Nazi-enabling plutocrats to account.

The impunity for business leaders who collaborated with the Nazis on exploiting slave labor is hard to believe. Take IG Farben, a company still doing a merry business today. Farben ran a rubber factory on Auschwitz slave labor, but its executives were frustrated by the delays occasioned by the daily 4.5m forced march from the death-camp to its factory:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

So Farben built Monowitz, its own, private-sector concentration camp. IG Farben purchased 25,000 slaves from the Reich, among them as many children as possible (the Reich charged less for child slaves).

Even by the standards of Nazi death camps, Monowitz was a charnel house. Monowitz’s inmates were worked to death in just three months. The conditions were so brutal that the SS guards sent official complaints to Berlin. Among their complaints: Farben refused to fund extra hospital beds for the slaves who were beaten so badly they required immediate medical attention.

Farben broke the historical orthodoxy about slavery: until Monowitz, historians widely believed that enslavers would — at the very least — seek to maintain the health of their slaves, simply as a matter of economic efficiency. But the Reich’s rock-bottom rates for fresh slaves liberated Farben from the need to preserve their slaves’ ability to work. Instead, the slaves of Monowitz became disposable, and the bloodless logic of profit maximization dictated that more work could be attained at lower prices by working them to death over twelve short weeks.

Few of us know about Monowitz today, but in the last years of the war, it shocked the world. Joseph Borkin — a US antitrust lawyer who was sent to Germany after the war as part of the legal team overseeing the denazification program — wrote a seminal history of IG Farben, “The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben”:

https://www.scribd.com/document/517797736/The-Crime-and-Punishment-of-I-G-Farben

Borkin’s book was a bestseller, which enraged America’s business lobby. The book made the connection between Farben’s commercial strategies and the rise of the Reich (Farben helped manipulate global commodity prices in the runup to the war, which let the Reich fund its war preparations). He argued that big business constituted a danger to democracy and human rights, because its leaders would always sideline both in service to profits.

US companies like Standard Oil and Dow Chemicals poured resources into discrediting the book and smearing Borkin, forcing him into retirement and obscurity in 1945, the same year his publisher withdrew his book from stores.

When we speak of Germany’s denazification effort, it’s as a German program, but of course that’s not right. Denazification was initiated, designed and overseen by the war’s winners — in West Germany, that was the USA.

Those US prosecutors and bureaucrats wanted justice, but not too much of it. For them, denazification had to be balanced against anticommunism, and the imperatives of American business. Nazi war criminals must go on trial — but not if they were rocket scientists, especially not if the USSR might make use of them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

Recall that in the USA, the bizarre epithet “premature antifascist” was used to condemn Americans who opposed Nazism (and fascism elsewhere in Europe) too soon, because these antifascists opposed the authoritarian politics of big business in America, too:

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/premature-antifascist-and-proudly-so/

When 24 Farben executives were tried at Nuremberg for the slaughter at Monowitz, then argued that they had no choice but to pursue slave labor — it was their duty to their shareholders. The judges agreed: 19 of those executives walked.

Anticommunism hamstrung denazification. There was no question that German elites and its largest businesses were complicit in Nazi crimes — not mere suppliers, but active collaborators. Antifacism wasn’t formally integrated into the denazification framework until the 1980s with “constitutional patriotism,” which took until the 1990s to take firm root.

The requirement for a denazification program that didn’t condemn capitalism meant that there would always be holes in Germany’s truth and reconciliation process. The newly formed Federal Republic set aside Article 10 of the Nuremberg Charter, which would hold all members of the Nazi Party and SS responsible for their crimes. But Article 10 didn’t survive contact with the Federal Republic: immediately upon taking office, Konrad Adenauer suspended Article 10, sparing 10 million war criminals.

While those spared included many rank-and-file order-followers, it also included many of the Reich’s most notorious criminals. The Nazi judge who sent Erika von Brockdorff to her death for her leftist politics was given a judge’s pension after the war, and lived out his days in a luxurious mansion.

Not every Nazi was pensioned off — many continued to serve in the post-war West German government. Even as Willy Brandt was demonstrating historic remorse for Germany’s crimes, his foreign ministry was riddled with ex-Nazi bureaucrats who’d served in Hitler’s foreign ministry. We still remember Brandt’s brilliant 1973 UN speech on the Holocaust:

https://www.willy-brandt-biography.com/historical-sources/videos/speech-uno-new-york-1973/

But recollections of Brandt’s speech are seldom accompanied by historian Götz Aly’s observation that Brandt couldn’t have given that speech in Germany without serious blowback from the country’s still numerous and emboldened antisemites (Brandt donated his Nobel prize money to restore Venice’s Scuola Grande Tedesca synagogue, but ensured that this was kept secret until after his death).

All this to say that Germany’s reputation as “world champions of memory” is based on acts undertaken decades after the war. Some of Germany’s best-known Holocaust memorials are very recent, like the Wannsee Conference House (1992), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (2005), and the Topography of Terror Museum in (2010).

Germany’s remembering includes an explicit act of forgetting — forgetting the role Germany’s business leaders and elites played in Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazi crimes that followed. For Speccher, the rise of neofacist movements in Germany can’t be separated from this selective memory, weighed down by anticommunist fervor.

And in East Germany, there was a different kind of incomplete rememberance. While the DDR’s historians and teachings emphasized the role of business in the rise of fascism, they excluded all the elements of Nazism rooted in bigotry: antisemitism, homophobia, sectarianism, and racism. For East German historians, Nazism wasn’t about these, it was solely “the ultimate end point of the history of capitalism.”

Neither is sufficient to prevent authoritarianism and repression, obviously. But the DDR is dust, and the anticommunism-tainted version of denazification is triumphant. Today, Europe’s wealthiest families and largest businesses are funneling vast sums into far-right “populist” parties that trade in antisemitic “Great Replacement” tropes and Holocaust denial:

https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/2019-05/Europe%E2%80%99s%20two-faced%20authoritarian%20right%20FINAL_1.pdf

And Germany’s coddled aristocratic families and their wealthy benefactors — whose Nazi ties were quietly forgiven after the war — conspire to overthrow the government and install a far-right autocracy:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/25-suspected-members-german-far-right-group-arrested-raids-prosecutors-office-2022-12-07/

In recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about denazification. For all the flaws in Germany’s remembrance, it stands apart as one of the brightest lights in national reckonings with unforgivable crimes. Compare this with, say, Spain, where the remains of fascist dictator Francisco Franco were housed in a hero’s monument, amidst his victims’ bones, until 2019:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_S%C3%A1nchez#Domestic_policy

What do you do with the losers of a just war? “Least said soonest mended” was never a plausible answer, and has been a historical failure — as the fields of fluttering Confederate flags across the American south can attest (to say nothing of the failure of American de-ba’athification in Iraq):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification

But on the other hand, people who lose the war aren’t going to dig a hole, climb in and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. Just because I think Germany’s denazification was hobbled by the decision to lets its architects and perpetrators walk free, I don’t know that I would have supported prison for all ten million people captured by Article 10.

And it’s not clear that an explicit antifascism from the start would have patched the holes in German denazification. As Speccher points out, Italy’s postwar constitution was explicitly antifascist, the nation “steeped in institutional anti-fascism.” Postwar Italian governments included prominent resistance fighters who’d fought Mussolini and his brownshirts.

But in the 1990s, “the end of the First Republic” saw constitutional reforms that removed antifascism — reforms that preceded the rise of the corrupt authoritarian Silvio Berlusconi — and there’s a line from him to the neofascists in today’s ruling Italian coalition.

Is there any hope for creating a durable, democratic, anti-authoritarian state out of a world run by the descendants of plunderers and killers? Can any revolution — political, military or technological — hope to reckon with (let alone make peace with!) the people who have brought us to this terrifying juncture?

[Image ID: The Tor Books cover for ‘The Lost Cause,’ designed by Will Staehle, featuring the head of the snake on the Gadsen ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag, shedding a tear.]

Like I say, this is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about — not just how we might get out of this current mess, but how we’ll stay out of it. As is my wont, I’ve worked out my anxieties on the page. My next novel, The Lost Cause, comes out from Tor Books and Head of Zeus in November:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Lost Cause is a post-GND utopian novel about a near-future world where the climate emergency is finally being treated with the seriousness and urgency it warrants. It’s a world wracked by fire, flood, scorching heat, mass extinctions and rolling refugee crises — but it’s also a world where we’re doing something about all this. It’s not an optimistic book, but it is a hopeful one. As Kim Stanley Robison says:

This book looks like our future and feels like our present — it’s an unforgettable vision of what could be. Even a partly good future will require wicked political battles and steadfast solidarity among those fighting for a better world, and here I lived it along with Brooks, Ana Lucía, Phuong, and their comrades in the struggle. Along with the rush of adrenaline I felt a solid surge of hope. May it go like this.

The Lost Cause is a hopeful book, but it’s also a worried one. The book is set during a counter-reformation, where an unholy alliance of seagoing anarcho-capitalist wreckers and white nationalist militias are trying to seize power, snatching defeat from the jaws of the fragile climate victory. It’s a book about the need for truth and reconciliation — and its limits.

As Bill McKibben says:

The first great YIMBY novel, this chronicle of mutual aid is politically perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful even amidst the smoke. Forget the Silicon Valley bros — these are the California techsters we need rebuilding our world, one solar panel and prefab insulated wall at a time.

We’re currently in the midst of a decidedly unjust war — the war to continue roasting the planet, a war waged in the name of continuing enrichment of the world’s already-obscenely-rich oligarchs. That war requires increasingly authoritarian measures, increasing violence and repression.

I believe we can win this war and secure a habitable planet for all of us — hell, I believe we can build a world of comfort and abundance out of its ashes, far better than this one:

https://tinyletter.com/metafoundry/letters/metafoundry-75-resilience-abundance-decentralization

But even if that world comes to being, there will be millions of people who hate it, a counter-revolution in waiting. These are our friends, our relatives, our neighbors. Figuring out how to make peace with them — and how to hold their most culpable, most powerful leaders to account — is a project that’s as important, and gigantic, and uncertain, as a just transition is.

Next weekend, I’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con:

Thu, Jul 20 16h: Signing, Tor Books booth #2802 (free advance copies of The Lost Cause— Nov 2023 — to the first 50 people!)

Fri, Jul 21 1030h: Wish They All Could be CA MCs, room 24ABC (panel)

Fri, Jul 21 12h: Signing, AA09

Sat, Jul 22 15h: The Worlds We Return To, room 23ABC (panel)

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/19/stolpersteine/#truth-and-reconciliation

[Image ID: Three 'stumbling stones' ('stolpersteine') set into the sidewalk in the Mitte, in Berlin; they memorialize Jews who lived nearby until they were deported to Auschwitz and murdered.]

[sonics-atelier]

To draw a parallel between Feyre's actions in the Spring Court and concepts such as colonization and mass genocide, it's important to analyze the nuances and consequences of her actions. Here’s a detailed breakdown :

( because you idiots can't comprehend it can you ? )

Reasons for the Parallel:

1. Disruption of Established Communities :

- Colonization : Historically, colonizers disrupt existing societies, imposing new rules and systems, often disregarding the welfare of the local population.

- Feyre’s Actions : By undermining Tamlin's rule and sowing chaos in the Spring Court, Feyre disrupts the lives of its inhabitants, forcing them to live in fear and uncertainty.

2. Exploitation of Power Dynamics :

- Colonization : Colonizers typically exploit their superior power to dominate and control indigenous populations for their own benefit.

- Feyre’s Actions : Feyre, leveraging her position and abilities, manipulates the internal politics of the Spring Court primarily to serve her personal vendetta against Tamlin, rather than considering the impact on the common citizens.

3. Cultural and Social Displacement :

- Colonization : Indigenous cultures and social structures are often eroded or obliterated under colonial rule.

- Feyre’s Actions : By destabilizing the Spring Court, Feyre causes significant social upheaval. The citizens’ trust in their leadership and societal norms are shattered, akin to the cultural displacement seen in colonized societies.

4. Infliction of Psychological and Physical Harm :

- Genocide : Beyond physical violence, genocide includes the infliction of psychological terror and destruction of ways of life.

- Feyre’s Actions : Although not a literal genocide, Feyre’s actions inflict psychological harm on the Spring Court’s residents, instilling fear, paranoia, and instability, which mirrors the psychological impacts of genocidal actions.

5. Manipulation and Betrayal :

- Colonization : Colonial powers often employ manipulation and betrayal to achieve their goals, breaking treaties and exploiting trust.

- Feyre’s Actions : Feyre deceives and manipulates Tamlin and his court, betraying any semblance of alliance or trust for her personal goals.

6 . Brought to my attention by @wingsdippedingold , Justification Given :

Political Leadership and Setting a Better Example:

1. Responsibility to Protect Civilians :

- As a political leader and High Lady, Feyre holds the responsibility to protect all civilians, including those in rival courts. Her actions should prioritize the welfare of innocents over personal grievances.

2. Ethical Use of Power :

- Leaders must use their power ethically, avoiding actions that harm innocent people. Feyre’s actions reflect a misuse of power for revenge, rather than for justice or the greater good.

3. Diplomacy over Sabotage :

- Effective leadership often requires diplomacy and conflict resolution rather than sabotage and subterfuge. Feyre could have sought diplomatic means to address her issues with Tamlin without causing widespread harm.

4. Setting Precedents :

- As a leader, Feyre’s actions set a precedent for future interactions between courts. By resorting to manipulation and causing civilian suffering, she undermines principles of justice and fair governance, encouraging a cycle of retaliation and conflict.

5. Moral Integrity :

- Leaders are expected to uphold high moral standards. Feyre’s actions, driven by personal vendetta, showcase a lack of moral integrity, damaging her credibility as a just leader.

Conclusion:

While Feyre's actions may not be a direct parallel to colonization and mass genocide in their most extreme forms, the underlying principles of causing widespread harm to innocent civilians for personal gain and disrupting societal structures draw notable similarities. As a political leader, Feyre’s actions should reflect a commitment to protecting all people under her influence, employing ethical and diplomatic solutions, and maintaining moral integrity to set a positive example for governance and conflict resolution.

[agp]

started flipping tables in my head again like those old rage comics cause cbc published another article on solidarity with palestinians that presents 'from the river to the sea' as a call for the ethnic cleansing of jewish people, but that 'its meaning and use is more complicated'. ill click the link on the part of the sentence that says 'experts told cbc' (its complicated) when i feel like flipping tables again but in the meantime lets try working with one instead of dropping the whole thing.

from the river to the sea palestine will be free from jews is an antisemitic position, one that is no different from the same calls for the ethnic cleansing of jewish people antisemites around the world call for in their own countries. a problem arises in that israel benefits from antisemitism in what it maintains as diasporas, antisemites and zionists have worked together for over a century to tie jewish people to this particular colony in palestine, and the notion of jewish people as necessarily foreigners wherever they may be maintains its legitimacy specifically through the exception that is israel.

to belong somewhere is too often not to belong elsewhere, and in the case of zionism, belonging is employed in a way that existentially ties the struggle against antisemitism, the ongoing genocidal process that targets jewish people, with zionism, the ongoing settler colonial process that targets palestinian land and produces a genocidal relationship between its settlers and indigenous people. for jewish people not to belong 'here' and not to 'belong nowhere', they must 'belong somewhere', and for them to 'truly belong' (the american way), they must put into question the belonging of everyone only to fall back on settler bourgeois property relations. that is why the right to return of palestinians is something zionists refuse to concede to, and fundamentally can not: because the unbelonging of palestinians from their land is a necessary function of israeli sovereignty, through the colonial establishment of bourgeois property rights.

the violence capital has wrought on the body of the earth has been given a special attribution to jewish people for a long time. so called socialists have historically tempted to solve the contradictions of capital by means of scapegoating jewish people. the violence committed in the name of israel is not uniquely jewish in character: it is colonial, imperialist, capitalist violence being committed by people who are jewish. even though israel is a product of global antisemitism and a pervasive cultivated desire in the west to expel jews, the israeli economy and its settler bourgeois property relations is its material raison d'etre, and this, again, is not uniquely jewish, it is simply another segment of the bourgeoisie being bourgeois. what one calls a national bourgeoisie

from the river to the sea palestine will be free. from apartheid. from genocide. from settler colonialism. from imperialism. from capitalism. but right now it is not. the sun will set on israel one day, just like canada and the us, just like the so called thousand year reich that only lasted a handful of years because of its imperialist colonial and genocidal relationship to its volk, lebensraum, and whoever and whatever was next door.

to fill the gap of 'what does freedom involve' with 'the ethnic cleansing of jewish people' shouldnt be considered more reasonable when the topic is israel and palestine. it should be rejected as an antisemitic position, and yet it is so often being presented not only as a reasonable conclusion but as the only way it could be. as common sense. of course freedom means kill the jews, and to question this is the real antisemitism. of course this is all the palestinians could ever mean by freedom

when mel gibson was screaming about freedom in that movie do you think it was about getting back to committing pogroms? that jewish presence was his characters real problem with the english? idk ive never seen it but why would it necessarily be the case with israel and palestine? there being a greater need to expel jews because there are a higher proportion of jews is just antisemitic reasoning. it being a colony that is so jewish it explicitly considers itself as such shouldnt be a reason for us to implicate every jewish person globally as a collective in punishment and further buy into and reproduce zionist propaganda.

to abolish israel would not only liberate palestinians, it would also liberate jewish people from zionist claims of an existential relationship to apartheid in palestine. to believe that without zionism jewish people could not culturally or biologically survive is to take the zionist claim regarding existentiality and colonialism to those degrees.

the liberation of palestine is historically inevitable. it will happen. this process necessarily involving the ethnic cleansing of jewish people is an antisemitic lie that serves a dual function: rejection of palestinian resistance based on essentialist claims of antisemitism and rejection of antisemitism based on essentialist claims of zionist interest. zionism puts the interests of jews and palestinians in conflict, and only a free palestine can allow for actual jewish safety there.

from the river to the sea palestine will be free from collective punishment. but right now it is not. palestinians are experiencing genocide at the hands of israel and its supporters. the end of apartheid is a historical necessity: it will eventually happen. you cannot stop it from collapsing, only delay it. israels days are numbered, just like canada and the us. every day without a ceasefire is another particular form of breath of existence for israel, and another set of breaths taken away from palestinians. ceasefire now.

[fiercynn]

White settler institutional support of Israel — such as that of the University of California — points to two historical contexts. The first is the history of the formation of the Israeli settler state, since 1948 and before and after, its expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their lands and homes, its depopulation of over 400 Palestinian villages, and its ongoing attacks against Palestinian individuals, communities, and institutions, including, as the Palestinian poet and translator Fady Joudah has observed, Palestinian memory. All of this is ignored by political and educational leaders in the United States in the interest of the Israeli colonization of Palestine and the subjection of Palestinians to settler obliteration.   The attachment of these institutions and leaders to the Israeli state points to a second context: the racialization of social understanding among white settler individuals, institutions, and collectives, and an identification of individuals, institutions, and collectives with white settler life, self-understanding, and social sense. The affirmation of Israeli acts of genocidal violence as self-defense is not only a grotesque distortion. It points to a social truth: that the social form of the American settler state foments an identification with settler ways of being—with white settler life and social existence—through which individuals, collectives, and institutions understand themselves and in relation to which the world becomes legible for them as a space for life.  This identification suggests a third context: the ongoing attempts to domesticate the struggles for decolonization following World War II in the institution of the modern state and the modern terms for the law. These include the basic terms through which the social is understood, terms such as the “individual,” “right,” “property,” and “whiteness,” which sustain the law and which the law reinforces. It is not only that Palestinians are a non-white, non-European people struggling for liberation and freedom against a settler colonial oppressor—and this is the case—but that their struggle, in whichever form it takes, conjures a panic in white life and settler being, a fantasy, as the anti-colonial militant and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon put it in The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961, of “swarming” and “gesticulating” Black and Brown beings, against whom the settler colonial state sets its police, military, and pedagogical forces. It is in this context that we must understand the many attacks against Palestinian academics and intellectuals, such as Nadia Abu El Haj, the author of a pathbreaking book on Israeli archaeology and its relation to colonization; the attacks against psychoanalysts, such as Lara Sheehi, who has brilliantly studied the links among settler colonialism and psychoanalysis; the attacks against the Palestinian novelist, essayist, intellectual, and teacher Adania Shibli, whose receipt the LiBeraturpreis at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 20 has been unjustly delayed; the attacks against the Palestine Writes conference, a gathering of Palestinian writers, activists, intellectuals, and artists held from September 22-24 at the University of Pennsylvania and “dedicated to celebrating and promoting cultural productions of Palestinian writers and artists.” The desire to prevent Palestinians from publicly and collectively celebrating their literary, artistic, poetic, and cultural productions is a social and psychical assertion of and an identification with a mode of being and life: a form of life that one might call “settler life” in all of its whiteness and in all of its attachment to the state and the law, and in its racialized, anti-Black and anti-Indigenous social sense and ongoing counterinsurgent and carceral practice. [x]

- jeffrey sacks for mondoweiss on october 18, 2023

[eretzyisrael]

by Michael Rubin

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), New York's millennial congresswoman, believes herself the barometer of progressive morality. But by reframing Jesus as akin to Palestinian terrorists fighting Israel, she instead cloaks herself in a mantle of ignorance and moral confusion.

Conflating political and religious fervor, AOC took to Instagram on Christmas Eve to opine, "In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in the mass genocide of innocents. He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader's power," she wrote. "Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today's Palestinians, so much so that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year's Christmas Eve celebrations."

"The entire story of Christmas and Christ himself is about standing with the poor and powerless, the marginalized and maligned, the refugees and immigrants, the outcast and misunderstood, without exception," she added.

Where to begin?

Christians have little say about whether Bethlehem holds Christmas celebrations. In 1950, Christians made up approximately 86% of the population of Bethlehem and its surrounding villages. That share of the population stayed relatively steady until Israel handed the Palestinian Authority control over Bethlehem, and then the proportion of Christians plummeted. Today, barely 13% of Bethlehem's residents are Christian. At issue was the Palestinian Authority's deep discrimination against Christians. When Muslim families moved to Bethlehem and forcibly took over Christian property, for example, the Palestinian Authority did nothing to evict the Islamist squatters, even when judges sided with the Christians.

Palestinian terrorists in Bethlehem developed the tactics that Hamas later applied in Gaza. In 2002, for example, Palestinian terrorists seized the Church of the Nativity, barricading themselves in the holy site and stealing the priests' and nuns' food and water. They essentially sought to use the sensitive, civilian site as a shield to wage war. The Palestinian gunmen desecrated the church during the six-week siege. An Israeli sniper killed one, a most-wanted terrorist, after he began firing an automatic weapon from within the church. Terrorists then set fire to a neighboring building. The siege ended after six weeks with the evacuation of some terrorists to Gaza and the remainders to Europe.

Christians in Gaza fared even worse under Hamas. Just like the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Hamas imposed its extremist interpretations on Christians. It forced women to veil, banned alcohol, and sought forcibly to convert children. While Islamist propagandists note that Islam, unlike Judaism, considers Jesus a prophet, they punish Christians who suggest Jesus to be the son of God who died for mankind's sins. In 2006, 5,000 Christians lived in Gaza. Within a decade, that number declined by 80%.

Put aside her whitewashing of terror. AOC and her fellow travelers lack basic understanding of history. Jews were the indigenous population of the territory Romans renamed Palestine. Jesus was born a Jew, his last supper was a Passover Seder, and he died a Jew. Therefore, when progressive pundit Cenk Uygur posts, "If Jesus returned to the place of his birth, could he survive the night? Or would he be just another Palestinian casualty?" he is half right. Should Jesus reappear today in Bethlehem, he likely would not survive the night because, as a Jew, he would be subject to Palestinian lynching.

If AOC truly understood Christianity, she would realize that Jesus would not stand for the rape of girls and women, or the beheading and burning of children. Jesus preached love and compassion, not hostage-taking and terror. She would pray for the release of hostages and the end to terror, not peace under Hamas's yoke. If AOC understood history, she would realize Israel is the nation of migrants and refugees. While Jews are indigenous and always lived in the territory, it was the slaughter of Jews in Europe and the mass expulsion of Jews in Arab lands that led to a population influx, and that many Palestinians migrated from Syria as Jews transformed the land.

Politics should never trump principle. Unfortunately, for AOC they do. Embrace of Hamas principles condemns Jews, Christians, and moderate Muslims to pay the price.

[mossy-rainfrog]

Build A Cowboy Round 5!

Hi good evening sorry for vanishing OK SO i mentioned in the tags of my first poll that this cowboy is not just going to be a vaguely historical cowboy, but from a Very specific time frame, because of the fic that his partner Javi exists in. That being said, there is a lot to unpack here with this! The time period exactly is 1841, the setting is Texas (because I am texan and we are predictable) and oh my god this is one of the most insane times for a character to be from texas 😭

Our cowboy will have in fact lived through the Mexican War of Independence (1810-1821), the Texas Revolution (1835-1836), tx's CRINGEFAIL attempt at self governing, rapidly approaching our annexation into the US in 1844-5, and then coming right up on the fuckign CIVIL WAR in 1861. These guys deeply understand the concept of "get me the fuck out of the interesting times, im sick of the interesting times". im so sorry cowboys, you can blame Herman Melville for this.

anyways yall didnt come here for a history lesson but you are in fact going to get one because i am insufferable first and an artist second :) and also as a note, race and backstory are always intertwined things but Especially when it is fuckign 1841 so. yeah exercise caution, there will be discussion of racism, medical close-calls, and anti-indigenous genocide. PLEASE ACTUALLY READ THE BACKGROUNDS BEFORE CHOOSING ONE! you dont have to read the sources. those are just there because i have autism. 👍

DETAILS BELOW THE READMORE BC I GOT WAYYY TOO WORDY⬇️

BACKSTORY A: Black Cowboy fled Texas* to Oklahoma with his family after the revolution, now travels up the trade routes breaking wild horses, passing along abolitionist messages, and assisting refugees. A miracle baby surviving a cleft lip with limited surgery and sustained permanent hearing damage as a result, he took up the trade of horsebreaking with flying colors, keeping right up with his older brothers. A sharp shot, keen eye, and a talented horseman, his best trained horses help him identify sounds that he otherwise can't hear. Loosely familiar with PSL, but primarily used a mix of lip-reading, localized/community generated sign growing up.

* After the US aided Texas in staging a coup against Mexico and declaring independence, an ordinance passed in 1836 that fully banished free Black people from the region unless they had personal pardon from Congress. This ordinance was not passed without pushback, and it changed shape and restriction over the years as people of color such as Joseph Tate, John and Charity Bird, Diana Leonard, Allen Dimery, and more all fought for their right to their own lands and lives. The law eventually settled into what was known as the Ashworth Act in 1840, which allowed free Black people to stay IF they had been residing in the state before 1836. It certainly wasn't the victory many had hoped, and even though many free Black persons in Texas were granted pardon to stay, like the Ashworths who the act was named after, many others were forced to leave after their allotted time was up, and were threatened with the future of slavery should they return. thank you texas history for being a vile piece of shit 👍

BACKSTORY B: Mexican/Tejano Vaquero from West Texas whose family has been ranching and cattle driving for decades. Has no interest in moving post-revolution, fuck you very much. If the borders are going to cross his family without asking*, then there's no need to cross them back. Technically lives with his family, but spends extensive periods of time away from home on cattle drives. Steady-handed, steadfast, quick to keep his herd safe. Miraculously survived a cleft lip as a baby and sustained permanent hearing damage** as a result, but that didn't stop his father from teaching him everything he knew, nor our man from taking to it like a fish to water. Knows more about cattle driving than you will ever forget.

*Some brief notes on the borders shifting and alienating people in their own rightful land.

**There was no official sign language of Mexico until the first Deaf school was established in 1869, but he and his family likely have a community-based one that works for them.

BACKSTORY C: Coahuiltecan (specifically Payaya)* cowboy, farrier, and leatherworker. Picked up the line of work as family was pushed to assimilate, one of the few still claiming Coahuiltecan identity at this time**, and has made a good living for himself and his sisters with it. Like the others, miraculously survived a cleft lip as a child but sustained permanent hearing damage as a result. Knows Plains Indian Sign fluently, and also relies on the direction of his horse for picking up sudden sounds before he can spot them. Tries to keep his work as local as possible to avoid separation from family for long, and whenever that is necessary, makes sure to come back soon.

*Note: Coahuiltecan is a term referring to several northern-Mexican and southern-Texan autonomous groups with distinct cultural differences. However, since Spanish and French colonizers lumped these groups together, an immense amount of distinguishing knowledge has since been lost.

** Also note: the Tāp Pīlam Coahuiltecan Nation is still very much around today (check out their site!) but nearing the mid 19th century, people at least claiming/listing this heritage on legal documents dwindled immensely for a variety of reasons.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

For many Americans, the second Monday in October brings back memories of childhood poems and classroom celebrations of Columbus Day. Growing up in the 1990s, I still recall the rhyme we were taught to commemorate Christopher Columbus "discovering" America:

🎶A long time ago in 1492🎶

🎶Columbus sailed the ocean blue🎶

🎶He sailed and he sailed til America he found🎶

🎶Helped Columbus prove the world was round🎶

Except, none of this was true. As we mature and reflect on history with a more critical eye, it's essential to recognize that much of what we learned about Columbus was deeply flawed—if not outright propaganda. It's time we take a hard look at the truth behind Columbus's legacy and why celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day is not just appropriate but necessary. Let’s Address This.

Myth vs. Reality: The Columbus We Were Taught

The narrative that Columbus was a brave explorer who set out to prove the Earth was round and "discovered" America is simply false. Columbus wasn't on a mission to expand scientific understanding. The ancient Greeks proved the world was round thousands of years before Columbus, as did Muslim scientists centuries before him. Nor did Columbus "find" a new world unknown to the rest of humanity. Some historians like Ivan Van Sertima argue that African explorers arrived in North America well before European explorers—except they didn’t engage in colonization. Moreover, Indigenous peoples had lived in the Americas for tens of thousands of years—recent scholarship suggests as long as 33,000 years or more—so to call them “found” is patently absurd.

Moreover, celebrating a “Columbus Day,” when Columbus never once set foot in what we now call the United States is also nonsensical. The myth of his connection to the U.S. is a fabrication, and it is important to remember that when Columbus landed in the Caribbean, he wasn’t acting out of a noble spirit of discovery. He was seeking wealth and glory, with a brutal indifference to the lives of the people he encountered. This is not my opinion, but his own stated intentions.

[...]

The Shift Toward Indigenous Peoples' Day

According to the Smithsonian, Indigenous Peoples' Day "recognizes that Native people are the first inhabitants of the Americas" and highlights their long-standing contributions to society. This shift in narrative is a crucial step toward correcting centuries of injustice and erasure. Indeed, we must additionally take meaningful steps to support Indigenous Peoples—here are seven things you can do today.

And to be sure, Columbus Day is not some ancient American tradition—it has only been a federal holiday since 1937. Back when President Jimmy Carter was 13 years old! Thankfully today, more and more states are rejecting Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples' Day. As of today, at least 17 states and Washington, D.C., have replaced Columbus Day with a day that honors the original inhabitants of the Americas. This change represents an important shift in how we acknowledge history. Indigenous Peoples' Day isn't just a symbolic gesture—it’s a recognition of the ongoing genocide, displacement, and discrimination Indigenous peoples have faced for centuries. It’s a call to remember the rich histories and cultures of the Native Americans who lived in these lands long before Columbus set sail.

The Path Forward: Learning and Honoring Truth

So, what should we do with Columbus? He should absolutely be taught about—but accurately. He was a historical figure who committed mass genocide, rape, and enslavement. These are facts, not interpretations. Teaching history honestly is the first step toward healing and understanding. Celebrating Columbus does nothing to further our understanding of America’s history or its native peoples. Instead, it perpetuates harmful myths and erases the suffering of those who were victimized by his actions. It’s long past time for the United States to reject Columbus Day and fully embrace Indigenous Peoples' Day. Celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day is not just about correcting historical wrongs. It’s about recognizing the resilience and contributions of Native Americans and creating space for a more truthful understanding of American history. This holiday serves as an opportunity for reflection, learning, and respect for the people who were the original stewards of this land. Rather than celebrating a figure who represents the worst aspects of colonialism, we should spend this day learning about the cultures, histories, and ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples.

Qasim Rashid is spot-on: Columbus Day should be binned in favor of Indigenous Peoples Day.