#it is a hatred of the oppression and subjugation of innocent people

[notetaeker]

Two distinct patterns of antisemitism can be identified by the Jewish holidays that celebrate triumphs over them: Purim and Hanukkah. In the Purim version of antisemitism, exemplified by the Persian genocidal decrees in the biblical Book of Esther, the goal is openly stated and unambiguous: Kill all the Jews. In the Hanukkah version of antisemitism, whose appearances range from the Spanish Inquisition to the Soviet regime, the goal is still to eliminate Jewish civilization. But in the Hanukkah version, this goal could theoretically be accomplished simply by destroying Jewish civilization, while leaving the warm, de-Jewed bodies of its former practitioners intact. For this reason, the Hanukkah version of antisemitism often employs Jews as its agents. It requires not dead Jews but cool Jews: those willing to give up whatever specific aspect of Jewish civilization is currently uncool. Of course, Judaism has always been uncool, going back to its origins as the planet's only monotheism, featuring a bossy and unsexy invisible God. Uncoolness is pretty much Judaism's brand, which is why cool people find it so threatening and why Jews who are willing to become cool are absolutely necessary to Hanukkah antisemitism's success. These "converted" Jews are used to demonstrate the good intentions of the regime which of course isn't antisemitic but merely requires that its Jews publicly flush thousands of years of Jewish civilization down the toilet in exchange for the worthy prize of not being treated like dirt, or not being murdered. For a few years. Maybe.

-Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews

Anon im not sure what your point is here by sending me this. This is all true, I agree with you about the truth of antisemitism. and also it has nothing to do with anything I ever mentioned here. Thanks for the excerpt of history, I guess. The more you know.

[animebw]

I've been struggling to figure out how to write this post for the past couple weeks. Part of me thinks I shouldn't bother writing it at all. Not like my words will accomplish much in the grand scheme of things. But if I don't say anything, these thoughts will just keep gnawing at my mind like caged animals. And as the chaos in Palestine shows no signs of slowing, I need to get this out before it's too late for my words to do anything but cast regretful looks back at a moment I was too cowardly to add my voice to.

So.

Most of you don't know this, but I'm Jewish. Not incredibly so; my dad's side of the family is full of active temple-goers and worshippers, but I've mostly just tagged along for holidays and bar mitzvahs. It's a part of myself I used not to think that much about, just one aspect of my life among many. But in recent years as right-wing anti-semitism has ramped up, I've begun appreciating my Jewish connections more and more. Judaism may not be a religion I follow, but it's been an integral part of my culture and community over the years. It's the connections I share with my extended family who I usually only see a couple times a year on Passover and Hannukah but nevertheless tie us together unshakably. Being Jewish is an indelible part of me, and I've always wanted to make a more active effort in connecting with and exploring that part of my heritage. There was even a time back in college where I was tentatively planning a birthright trip to Israel to connect with my ancestral roots or whatever. Classic post-graduation travel abroad stuff.

It feels really weird to think back on that now.

I've never read much of the Torah, I admit. Not like I could, since I never learned Hebrew. But everything I've picked up about Judaism over the years has overwhelmingly painted it as a call for compassion, kindness, and community. Yes, the world can be cruel, it says, which is why we must add light to the darkness wherever we can. Celebrate the freedoms we've won. Cherish the bonds we've forged. Weep even for those who've wronged us as they suffered in turn from God's judgement. Judaism, to me, has always been about how absolutely essential it is to choose love over bitterness and hatred. It is our responsibility to cultivate a kinder, better world, so those who come after us need not suffer the same ills as us. It's been a comfort in many rocky periods of my life.

And it is with that perspective that I say unequivocally: what Israel's government is doing to Palestine is indefensible. Bombing hospitals, dropping chemical weapons, denying critical aid to innocent civilians trapped in the barrage, even bombing safe routes they themselves told Palestinians to take. Displacing people from their homes, their lives, their dignity with no regard for their basic humanity. Speaking with increasingly dangerous rhetoric with a desire to wipe the entire population off the face of the map. Never mind the decades upon decades of abuse that Palestine has already suffered under Israeli occupation, second-class apartheid citizens in their own homeland. There is no excuse on the face of the planet that can justify this cruelty and carnage.

Yes, Hamas are bloodthirsty terrorists themselves, and there can be no peace until they are brought to justice. But Israel's actions in response to the October 7 attacks have long crossed the boundaries of justified retaliation. What Bibi Netanyahu and his far-right government are enacting upon Gaza is exactly the same breed of genocide that has been enacted upon Jews across the world throughout history. From our subjugation in Egypt through the Holocaust, we know all too well how it feels to face this evil, see it rip through our communities as it seeks to tear apart the fabric of our very personhood. So to see the craven extremists in Israel's government invoke those horrors in an attempt to justify subjecting another downtrodden, oppressed people to the same fate... I don't think I can properly describe how angry it makes me.

Netenyahu and his government do not speak for all Jews. Hell, according to recent polls, they don't even speak for most Israelis anymore. They do not get to claim Judaism for their own murderous purposes. They do not get to use my voice as justification for their war crimes. They betray the soul of this culture with every hospital they blow to bits and every scrap of aid they deny the suffering children next door. And I refuse to be silent in face of their propaganda. I refuse to let this culture, which has been nothing but a source of kindness and community to me, to be weaponized to excuse the same monstrosities we celebrate rising above every year. I refuse to accept their definition of Judaism as long as I have breath to speak against it.

Palestine deserves freedom. Palestine deserves self-autonomy. Palestine deserves the same kindness that Judaism preaches to all downtrodden people of the world. And Israel must stop this senseless slaughter before their history of surviving the world's horrors ends with them becoming the horror in someone else's scripture. Find and destroy Hamas without punishing the people of Gaza- over half of whom weren't even born when Hamas came to power- for their crimes. Work toward a two-state solution where Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, can live side by side in solidarity of the trials they've both overcome. Remember compassion in a world that venerates blind hatred. Remember the kindness we claim rises above all attempts to squash it down. Remember that the heart of Judaism is supporting those who struggle through darkness, helping them find their way out into the light.

Remember who we claim to be.

And refuse to let us be defined by death.

#FreePalestine

[leovoid]

Attack on Titan video update...

Hello everyone, and first and foremost I would like to apologize for the lack of updates on my YouTube channel. A lot of things have happened that has caused my updates to come to a halt. Truthfully, most of it being writers block, others being work, my partners pregnancy, and the changes made at the end of Attack on Titan that made me have to change somethings in my script. But regardless, I wanted to share a piece I've written today to show you all that progress is being made, and a video will be uploaded eventually. I would love to hear any opinions about it good or bad Thank you so much ^^

Grisha Yeager - The beginning of the story

The story begins with Grisha Jeagar and his sister Faye, at the tenderness of their childhood idealistically and naively sought one of the many wonders of this world, a wonder in which many deems trivial.

These children knew nothing about the world, about the hatred the world has for their people, and yet, their childish endeavors pushed them forward to seek what it was that they fervently wished to see with their very eyes, something they knew they would never be able to see normally.

Play: “Faye: But it must be nice, I wonder what we can see from up there”

“Grisha: That naive day of my youth when I had to face the truth of this world”

Grisha had to face the truth, the cruelty of this world, a world that would not allow innocent children to roam freely without severe consequences, a world that would not spare a little girl for the naivete of their youth.

The history of King Fritzs' conquest has left a scar on the world, and a deep hatred for his people.

As a result, when Eldia fell to Marley, Eldians were forced to live in internment zones, stripped of their dignities, pride, and liberties.

The people subjugated to accept not being shipped off to paradise and killed as living humbly, considering it a grace to live under Marleys rule, even if it comes at the cost of inequality, prejudice, and persecution.

Play: “Grisha: My father was awfully talkative for someone who just lost their daughter”

Despite losing their daughter without reason or answer, Grishas father instead dogmatically attempted to institutionalize his son of the propaganda that Marley set for Eldians barbaric history.

That his race were nothing more than devils who once tyrannically ruled all, killed all, and oppressed all.

Whether this history can be seen as factual isn’t the point, for all that was on Grishas mind was the loss of his sister and the hands of her killer.

Grisha attempted to bring the situation to light, but was instead immediately shut down by his father continuing his preaching of the many lives and cultures slain by Eldians hands, but even so…

Play” Grisha: Faye and I didn’t do any of that, we were just walking around!”

Was it fate that was cruel or just some twisted sense of luck?

Had Grisha been born under normal circumstances his disposition would’ve been completely correct, however he was cursed with the history of his ancestors, caught within a web of corruption without choice.

Who was truly right here? Grishas father for obeying his oppressors in favor of his families safety, or Grisha for seeking justice?

The reality of it is that both of them were victims of this cruel world.

Play “ Do you have regrets about your family” Episode 63 15:00

Years pass and Grisha eventually learns the inhumane truth of his sisters fate.

Fueled with rage not just at the death of his sister, but for the injustices committed towards his people, Grisha dedicates his heart to rebelling against his oppressors, forming an alliance in seek of freedom.

But Grisha becomes blinded by his hatred, passing on a biased truth of their history onto their son, committing the same mistakes his father did all those years ago.

Creating another layer in the chain of corruption.

But that corruption runs even deeper than Grisha imagined.

For when he was face to face with his sisters killer, he was met with the corruption of the world first hand.

Instead of even a glimmer of remorse or disdain of his actions, Gross instead rationalized his actions under the pretense that “it was interesting”

Going even further to rationalize his insanity and lack of empathy by stating that humans in general simply want to see violence.

And despite how purely insane this mindset is, there is some truth to this.

When one is surrounded around peace and prosperity, one cannot help but fathom the question of the unknown, to peer into its foreign conception.

But this does not mean that all who live in peace wish to see death or wish to cause harm to others, as there are other elements at play here that causes Gross to have the disposition he does.

In a general sense, it is clear that Gross lacks empathy for his fellow man, but the brutal reality here is that Gross does not see Eldians as people.

Cultivated within the corruption of Marleys propaganda and Eldias bloody history, it becomes clear how he is able to commit such atrocities without remorse.

Deeming that all of humanity wishes for the extermination of all Eldians, how can one have empathy for another human when you don’t see them as human.

With a justifiable outlet for the monstrous desire deep within, no wonder he feels no remorse for the lives he takes, no wonder he cares so little for the apparent truth of Eldias grand history.

But on the opposite side of the same coin, it is no wonder that Gross would eventually pay a debt he never wished to incur

As the seeds of rebellion seeking justice and freedom bloomed long before he was ever born.

Were Eldias' perception of their history truth or was it Marleys?

Does it even truly matter?

Play “Kruger: There is no truth,  anyone can become a god or a devil, all it takes is for someone to believe in it”

For liberty, for justice and freedom Grisha was chosen and began the entire story.

Not just for his hatred towards the injustices committed against him, but for the innate wonder that young boy had that fateful day, the innate curiosity and seeker of something beyond the world's corrupt nature.

To be free to see the beauty of this world, to exercise his birthright as a child unknowing of the sins his ancestors before him committed. 

For that same innocent wonder to be passed onto generations forever more, Grisha must...

Eren: Fight…

[cascaria]

Sucks being a Christian because the core fundamental ideas of it, the reason I still identify with the faith (beyond any intangible, spiritual reasons) despite everything, are unconditional Love and Acceptance. And yet for millenia it has been and still widely is twisted and molested and perverted into a basis and justification for hatred and oppression. The amount of people I've seen driven away from a God I recognize as Love because the loudest voices that claim to serve Him use Him as authority on which to blasphemously base their own hatred and evil is genuinely sickening. They are not fighting the good fight, they are not standing up against "persecution". They are actively damaging and even ending the lives of those who need Love the most just because they can't stomach the idea of someone being different. Of someone existing outside their shallow and propagandized view of the world. There are Christians getting their heads chopped off over seas but Trans people just trying to exist peacefully is persecution??

There is a special place in Hell for anyone that uses God or the Bible as a justification or basis for the oppression and otherizarion of LGBTQ+ individuals. Just as there is a special place in Hell for anyone that uses God or the Bible as justification or basis for the oppression and subjugation of women, or of other ethnicities, or of those with disabilities, or any other aspect that may make them different from the cishet white men spewing blasphemy from the pulpet, indoctrinating generations of impressionable people into believing an innocent stranger is a threat to their very existence. I usually try and skew positive with my online presence and stay away from hefty topics, I just want to spread a little Love and/or happiness at the end of the day, but this has been weighing on my mind lately and I felt the need to say something, even if I'm just yelling into the void. If nothing else to put on record what I mean when I say I'm a Christian, or rather what I don't mean.

I know some people mean well, I know some people just don't know any better. I know because I was there. I was raised in that exact way, I believed all the rhetoric fed to me. It wasn't until I disconnected from the constant stream of poison and actually made friends from different walks of life that I realized how wrong it all was. Still, ignorance is no excuse, and evil is still evil. People raised as slave owners back in the day weren't innocent just because they didn't know that slavery was wrong. They still held the whip.

God is Love. He is not your fucking gun to murder all the innocent people you don't like with. If you can't respect that, keep His name out of your fucking mouth.

Peace and Love on planet Earth.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

In the cognitive war against Israel, supporters of what historian Bat Ye’or called Palestinianism have come to accept the fact that Israel will not be defeated employing traditional tools of warfare. Instead, the Jewish state’s enemies, abetted by the academic and media elites in the West, have been using different, but equally dangerous, tactics to delegitimize and eventually destroy Israel in a cognitive war.

By dressing up old hatreds against Jews and transforming it into what comprises the “new anti-Semitism,” combined with a purported goal of seeking social justice for the oppressed and repackaging ugly biases as academic scholarship, professors, student activist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Israel’s other ideological foes have found an effective, but odious, way to ensure that the Jew of nations, Israel, is still accused of being: a racist, apartheid oppressor of an indigenous people; white European Jews with no historical connection to the Holy Land who are colonial usurpers of Muslim land; the main impediment to Middle East peace; and a brutal military occupier of land on which illegal “settlements” are built as a way of subjugating an existing innocent population in the quest for a Great Israel that will swallow even more territory to which the Jews have no legitimate claim.

This is the current narrative in what Melanie Phillips has called “the world turned upside down,” an inversion of truth and fiction, calumnies and lies targeting the Jewish state in an effort to elevate the Palestinian cause, delegitimize Israel, and make Israel a pariah in the world community. But this narrative, unfortunately, is based on a presentation of lies, a series of repeated tropes about the malignancy and illegality of Israel that has little to do with facts, history, or reason. These lies are repeated promiscuously until they accepted as fact, a Goebbel-esque tradition that creates a new truth through the unrelenting repetition of falsity, disingenuity, and distortions of reality.

[troybeecham]

Fr. Troy Beecham

Sermon, Proper 11 A, 2020

Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

In the Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus speaks in very challenging language for contemporary sensibilities. Jesus explains his parable to his disciples saying that at the end of days, God will execute judgement on evildoers. Now, to the ears of his disciples and his contemporary audience, they had no trouble in thinking about God and judgement and evildoers being cast into a furnace of fire. Quite to the contrary, they eagerly desired for God’s judgement to begin because they had obvious evildoers in mind – the occupying Roman Empire. Just like his original hearers, our contemporary identity politics lead us to demand that everyone be accepted and celebrated for who they are because any destructive behavior can be explained away due to their intersectional identity, and no one may be considered an outcast, depending, of course, on one’s intersectional identity. Just like the people two thousand years ago living under the crushing might of the Roman empire, our current philosophy of intersectionality also allows for entire groups of people to be branded as unacceptable and worthy of being an outcast based on their intersectional identity, an identity that is inescapable, ruthless, and able to accommodate violence in the pursuit of “justice”. It is sad and absurd, all in one, how in our drive to excuse ourselves of responsibility for our sins and evildoing we have created yet another system of judgement that brands itself as a system that does away with judgement, unless you happen to be part of a politically undesirable group, of course.

Let’s look at the parable for a moment. If you were a subjugated Israelite living under the oppression of the Roman occupation, hearing that God would execute violent judgment was totally acceptable, even desirable. But is that what Jesus is talking about? Doesn’t he talk about God the Father as the God who is self-emptying love? How does Jesus’ teaching about the Father square with the judgment language in this parable?

Like so many of Jesus’ parables, we are so removed in time and place that we miss how the details open up the meaning of the parables. First of all, today’s parable is a continuation of the parable from last week about the sower of seeds who casts seed on all types of soil. In this parable, the sown field contains both good seeds and bad seeds because an enemy, Satan, has snuck into the field at night to sow the seeds of weeds among the wheat. In Jewish law, any field that had more than one kind of seed planted in it made it unclean, and so a farmer would lose the entire crop for the year. What a disaster for people living at subsistence levels! The weeds in this parable produce a plant almost indistinguishable from wheat unless you know what to look for at close inspection. Even then, it is hard to tell them apart. The slaves in the parable (typically used to signify the rightful landowners whose land had been confiscated by the Roman occupation, leaving them, at best, as tenant farmers) rightly ask the landowner (a word often used to signify wealthy, non-Jewish settlers who had been given land by the empire) if they should go out into the field and pluck up the weeds by hand so that the harvest will not be compromised and ruined, leading most likely to malnourishment or starvation, or to increased debt by asking the landowner for enough food to survive. It’s a completely understandable request in the face of crushing poverty and starvation.

When the landowner says let the plants all grow together until the harvest and then let the reapers separate the wheat from the weeds, he has no care that for his tenants nothing that comes out of that field is edible because of religious law. For the landowner, no big deal. He gets his crop either way, and he gets greater control through the instruments of debt and starvation over his tenants. For the tenants it is a catastrophe. Those who were listening to Jesus preach these things understood, and it would have incited deep anger and hatred for the forces of the occupation. No wonder that Jesus’ countrymen who betrayed him to the Roman authorities used his parables as proof that he was inciting riot against the empire. But was Jesus trying to incite riot and violence?

I don’t think so, and here’s why. In explaining the parable, Jesus makes it clear that he is speaking about the end of days, when the chief actors in the parable are God and his spiritual agents, his angels. Using such apocalyptic language was typical of Jesus’ preaching and teaching. ‘Apocalyptic’ in this sense means revealing the truth of the world, the world behind the curtain, which only a few are able to glimpse and see, and even seeing fail to fully understand. Jesus preached and presented himself as one who not only saw behind the curtain but who understood God and the Truth of creation completely because he knew the mind of the Father, and was God’s appointed representative, the Son of Man. He is teaching us the Truth of creation because God created all things through him.

But because we are not able to fully understand the Truth, we often get lost in explanations that make sense to us. I am not making any claims to greater understanding because I know myself well enough to know that I would have misunderstood Jesus just as deeply as his first disciples. Jesus did say, later after his resurrection, that the Holy Spirit would be sent upon his disciples to lead us into all truth. Because of this, I do think that it is profitable, and by the Holy Spirit it is possible, to do our best to be open to exploring as deeply as possible the parables of Jesus to seek ever deeper understanding, perhaps even wisdom.

So, what do I think are some further keys of insight into this parable? How can we inch closer to understanding? First of all, if we read this parable and the explanation that Jesus gives to us and it fills us with a sense that we are being given enough wisdom and authority to decide who is a saint, or the wheat, and someone doomed to judgment, or the weeds, then we have entirely missed the point. If we think that we are wise enough, good enough, innocent enough to walk through the field of humanity and decide who is good and who is bad, then we are showing ourselves to be the most unwise, the most wicked, the most guilty because we are arrogating to ourselves the role of God and his angels. When we try to place ourselves between God and the judgment of evildoers, trying to take the role of judge in deciding who is an evildoer and who is a saint, we are exalting our own ‘wisdom’ and wickedly put ourselves in the seat of God. There is no human system of deciding who is ‘ok’ and who should be excised from society that is holy or wise. We may say that we are being harmed by a person or by society at large, and even turn to the law for redress and protection, but that is a far cry from passing final judgment on others. Only God has the wisdom to discern between “all causes of sin and all evildoers”, and the wisdom to execute justice. Here’s another important thing to ask, because the parable is by nature slippery and leaves us with uncertainty: does the fire that Jesus talks about in this parable represent eternal damnation, or does it signify the refining fire that separates gold from dross, a fire that we all will face so that we might eventually shine like the sun? At this point I think we have simply to say with all humility that only God knows, and that whatever God does is done in love.

In the face of this world’s calamities, of the confusion of our present time, in the face of rage and violence, the only faithful response of a disciple of Jesus in this world is to leave all judgment to God, to never seek vengeance, to love our neighbor – yes, even those neighbors we think of as evildoers, who fail our intersectional system of judgment – as ourselves. Jesus said that the world would know that we are his disciples by the way that we love each other. Do we only love those who share our world view (philia love), or those who are relatives (storge love), or those with who we share the feelings of passion (eros love)? Or will we love as God loves, the love that is self-emptying, that gives all for the wellbeing of others (agape love)? Jesus calls his disciples to this agape love, a love that takes us outside of ourselves and personal desires or hurts, outside our cultural value/judgment systems. He also said that the world would only come to know that he is the Son of God if his disciples are seen living lives of agape love, the love that passes no judgment, that empties itself for the sake of all people, that leads us to serve all people.

Will we be faithful as disciples of Jesus, loving each other so that we are conspicuously different, conspicuously his disciples, so that the people of the world will come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one, the true, the only vocation given to us by our Savior Jesus. Have we gotten enmeshed with the judgment systems of the world? Have we allowed the rage of the world to take up residence within our hearts, leading us to believe that becoming warriors of social justice will reveal Jesus to the world? Have we allowed our hearts to judge others? If we answer yes to any of such things, then let us with our whole hearts fall to our knees and ask God to restore us in grace to faithfulness to Jesus, to the Faith he revealed to us. The only hope for the people of the world is to see humility, compassion, forbearance, mercy, and agape love in the disciples of Jesus, a people set apart by self-emptying love and absolute trust in the mercy and justice of the God who is Love.

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

[wisdomrays]

Concord and Alliance Once More

QUESTION: The noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, stated that his supplications to God about his followers not being destroyed by a wholesale disaster and their not remaining constantly under others’ dominance were accepted, but the supplication about his followers’ not falling into discord and disunity was not accepted. Could you elucidate the aspects that these points share and the messages they convey to us?

ANSWER: In order to educate believers, the Qur’an related many different stories about the lives of the Prophets. An important point relayed in these stories is the destruction of people who refused to believe in the Messengers that God sent to guide them. The people of Prophet Noah, were destroyed by a flood after they obstinately denied him and oppressed his followers. The people of Prophet Hud (Eber in the Old Testament) were destroyed by an inauspicious storm; the people of Prophet Salih by a terrible blast, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were sunk into the ground.

Whether these acts of God were restricted to a certain region, or whether the destruction included all humanity, we do not know. However, when we consider the fact that the Prophets before the Pride of Humanity (Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him) were each sent to a particular people, then it is possible to discern that every act of destruction was limited to that particular region. Therefore, if people did not believe in the Prophet sent to them and insisted on their unbelief and oppression, ultimately facing destruction, it was limited to that group of people.  However, accordingly, as the seal of the Prophets was sent to all humanity then the entirety of those who refused to accept his message but insisted on denial and oppression should be destroyed.

The accepted petition

It is for this reason that the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, supplicated so that his followers would not face such a wholesale destruction.

“But God would not punish them so long as you were among them; and God is not to punish them (or other people) while they implore Him for forgiveness for their sins” (al-Anfal 8:33).

This verse indicates that his prayer was accepted.

There are certain distinctive features that are unique to the Final Prophet, (peace and blessings be upon him). One of these is that for as long as he spent his blessed life among his followers and led them, they would not face total destruction as befell peoples of the past. According to the apparent meaning of the verse, this truth is apodictic. It is also possible to infer the following implicit meaning from the verse: As long as the Prince of the Prophets lives in the hearts of Muslims, God will not punish them as He did earlier peoples; he will not sink them into the ground. If there is a sound Muhammadi spirit among the believers, just as God Almighty forgave the followers of the Final Prophet during his lifetime and after his demise, God will forgive and protect them until the end of the world.

In the rest of the world, it is also stated that another means of believers’ protection from destruction is realized by their asking for forgiveness. If Muslims ask for forgiveness immediately after committing sins, God will save them from misfortunes that could befall them from above, below, from the right and left; He will not sink them into the ground. In short, God Almighty accepted the Prophet’s prayer about Muslims’ not facing total destruction. The Qur’an stated this truth and history has evidently revealed this.

Temporary periods of subjugation in the cycles of history

Secondly, the Final Prophet supplicated to God asking that Muslims’ not stay under the invasion of an exploitive state. God’s Messenger saw with his Prophetic sight that could reach the unseen, that believers would sometimes face invasion, but this would not continue forever. Some 4–5 centuries after his blessed life, Muslims faced successions of crusades. After that the Mongols came, invading Baghdad, the center of the caliphate, but none of these invasions became permanent. None of the invasions by the crusaders, the Mongolians, or by the oppressors and transgressors in later periods lasted. A day came and all were finished by God’s permission and grace.

In our time, the Islamic world is suffering from invasions of a different nature. Where as in the past, invasions were realized by brute force, these days they are operated by means of pawns within the Islamic world. These pawns are administering the Muslim geographies. Tyrants with a nature that suits others’ purposes are selected and used to subjugate the Islamic world.

As has always happened in the past, and will happen again after this, people will gain their independence, with the permission of God, and the period of tyrants will come to an end. Who knows which ants will once more bring down the palaces of Pharaohs, and which mosquitos will make Nimrods fall flat on their faces. The noble Prophet petitioned God about this matter and God Almighty accepted his prayer and gave him the glad tidings that his followers will not remain under invasion forever.

The source of disunity: Human weaknesses

Lastly, with his Prophetic sight which could reach the unseen, the Pride of Humanity saw that feelings of greed, envy, rivalry, ambition for fame, love of status and desire to be the center of attention would cause discord among his followers and bring them to loggerheads with each other. He entreated God to save them from such a danger but did not receive a positive reply because this is a direct test of individuals’ free will. Although God Almighty did not totally reject the petition of His beloved Messenger, neither did He decree that they would confront one another. God left believers’ living in unity to their willful choice. God did not create people as—forgive the expression—beasts, or not as trees to remain standing in peace when put side-by-side; He created them as human beings and endowed them with willpower. Hence, human beings must give their willpower its due and constantly struggle against their negative feelings such as jealousy, grudges, hatred, malice and intolerance, so that they can progress. In other words, the issue of maintaining concord and unity was not given to Muslims as an unmerited favor. On the contrary, God Almighty made Divine guidance and assistance on this issue conditional to their giving their willpower its due.

In this regard, if believers wish to make a consensus, agree with and embrace one another, they must open their arms to everybody in the same way that Abdulqadr al-Jilani, Abu Hasan al-Shazili, Jalaluddin Rumi did. In terms of their personal rights, they should be without hands against those who strike them, without speech against those who curse them and without bitterness against those who break their hearts. They must keep the door to agreement and unity open all the time. If they achieve this by giving their willpower its due, they will have established unity and togetherness in this world; and in the Hereafter, they will receive the surprise blessings of God. Such endeavors they make in this world will bring very different returns in the next one.

Like a rocket on a launcher

Remember that giving one’s willpower its due against lustful feelings turns that person into a monument of morality; or, not giving in to envy and greed despite the good things granted to others makes that person a hero of dignified contentment. In the same way, in order to maintain concord and alliance, individuals’ using their willpower to act in spite of themselves will make them into monuments of virtue.

Some might act with incredible malevolence against you despite their claiming to be believers. They might throw stones and thorns on the path you tread. They might render your roads impossible to walk on and destroy the bridges in front of you. They might wish to completely isolate you from society. However, if you are to become a paragon of virtue for the sake of concord and alliance, you must overlook all of these acts and keep walking, saying, “This too shall pass.” When the bridges in front of you are destroyed, you must make new bridges from ropes and wood somewhere else. Without falling into separation from God, in spite of those who willfully took the path of separation from Him, you must keep walking with God’s permission and grace.

The day will come when some of those who did these evils to you will regret their actions. When they come with regret, it is very important that they should find you where they are standing. Even when they voice their regret, what falls to you is to give a gentlemanly response and say, “Good heavens! We have no knowledge of this. We always felt that you were near us.”

In truth, you will know that they had drifted kilometers away from you from jealousy and envy, that they had made remarks as: “Bring the movement to a halt. Do not let them survive. Finish them off!” You will know that they committed all of these wrongdoings without any serious and reasonable explanation. On the contrary, the motive behind this was the feeling of rivalry, jealousy and envy. Even inside the most innocent one of them, there was the feeling of competing. They were trying to gain a bigger share of the pie. For journeyers to the Truth, overlooking all of these evils and standing where they had been as if nothing had happened will be a great virtue.

Understanding human nature correctly

It should not be forgotten that it is not always possible to keep up concord and alliance; that certain disagreements may arise all the time, for human nature is prone to this by creation. Hence, even if we personally run after the loftiest ideal for the sake of concord and alliance, we should realize that we might encounter most unexpected attitudes and behaviors so that we do not lose hope through the profound disappointment we feel when we face heart-rending events.

For the sake of preserving the spirit of unity and togetherness, some may act like the Rightly Guided Caliphs and establish close ties of fraternity with those around and virtually form a structure as sound as steel. Such a concord and alliance was once formed between the Companions of the noble Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. However, as different understandings and different philosophical considerations were included in the issue in later periods, it is not possible to say that the same purity was maintained.

Every person has some certain weaknesses. Some may display particular behaviors in order to upset the general harmony of the collective they are in. Some may commit certain wrongs and sins to harm the general harmony. Some may fail to melt their ego like a cube of ice in the pool of the collective and fail to gain a consciousness of forming a whole. What falls to us in the face of all of these is to evaluate issues with a big conscience, not to drive people away from us by being furious with their wrongs. On the contrary, we should try to win them, make efforts to help them up, and thus take these people entrusted to us as far as we can take them.

Many verses of the Qur’an command believers to respond to evil with goodness, and to be forgiving and tolerant. Thus, we need to act in accordance with these principles taught by the Qur’an, and overlook faults as much as we can. Otherwise, we make most people run away from us, and this harms the acts of goodness we try to realize for the sake of God’s good pleasure. If we wish to retain concord and alliance, we should not dismiss anyone on account of their mistakes and faults; on the contrary, we should seek and find ways to reach everybody’s heart, and try to help them up by embracing them with compassion.

[therealdragonnerdagain]

Dear Fellow Black People

Life is too short and being angry about white supremacy is a waste of energy.

I'm writing this because I'm tired of watching black people trying to reason with delusional white racists on the internet.

I'm writing this because -- for the sake of our own sanity -- black people need to stop giving a shit about white people and just make the best of our lives. I'm about to tell you why it will benefit you mentally and spiritually to focus on living your life the best you can and just ignore white people. True to Universe 25, white people are kicking and thrashing against their own crumbling empire. They knew this was coming because it happened to black people first -- In fact, it's how they took over the world from us. We don't have to do shit but watch their downfall.

This is why you should stop giving a shit:

White people enjoy having white privilege and are never going to give it up. Never. Yes, even the "good liberals." Some of them virtue signal because they are ashamed of the overt racists among them (Nazis, KKK, etc) but are in reality complacent with subtle racism (Look at their reaction to Get Out) and try to normalize shitty thoughts and behaviors by saying things like "everyone is racist" (no, everyone isn't) and "humanity in general is evil" (no, humanity is not generally evil). It's an attempt to make us all as bad as they are so they can continue to be crappy people without question.

Stop explaining racism to white people. They don't understand it and/or pretend not to understand it just to exhaust you, and the ones who do understand do not give a shit. We know that racism is an IRRATIONAL hatred of an entire group of people (what have black people as a group really ever done to white people?), but white people will never see our resentment against them and all the shit they’ve done to us as rational. They will always be forever enraged that we dare to not complacently enjoy oppression even while they deny us employment, healthcare, nutrition, decency, respect, and continue to demonize us in the media.

White people are angry about Black Panther because the movie didn’t just troll us: it trolled white people too. Most white people are aware that black people (the moor) originally ruled the world and that white people were once at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They do not like being reminded of that. Black Panther acknowledges that white supremacy is coming to an end and that white people are losing everything they unapologetically slaughtered other people for. At the same time, the movie demonizes black Americans and mocks Africans by reminding us of what was lost and what we can never get back. Because clearly, China is the next world power.

White people are on a mission to take us out with them as they die, and they can not be reasoned with. They are rabid dogs so focused on subjugating and oppressing us scary, threatening black people that they can’t even see how China is the real threat. China has been slowly placing price tags on white asses for years now. Before long, they will run everything. Their population is exploding, while white people are disappearing. It would be in their best interest to kiss China’s ass, but they are too busy shitting on black people, making racist jokes about Latinos, fighting Arabs, and fighting each other.  

You can't get through to white people because they actually believe everyone else is as bad as they are. They actually, truly believe this. They lack any and all ability to empathize with people who are not white (this is why they don't care about police brutality, why they don’t understand Black Lives Matter, why the #MeToo movement was seen as “aggressive” by them because it was black-led, and why they are always "blind" to systemic racism), and the vast majority of them can't even empathize with animals. They are the only people who enjoy killing things for sport and taking pictures with the corpses. They are the only people who disrespect nature and don’t have an issue raping it dry. They are 10% of the world's population and have managed to remain statistically the most violent. They can not be reasoned with. People who see you as less than a person will NEVER listen to a thing you say.

They constantly project, and this is why they continue to brutalize, murder, and rape us with the belief that we are like them and will do it to them. This is also why they fear black people gaining true wealth and power: they think all the hate they gave will come back on them. For this reason, weed will always be illegal in most predominantly white states, and even in the states where it becomes legal, its distribution (and therefore its wealth) will still be monitored closely so that it only monetarily benefits white people: no one will be allowed to grow pot in their house.

White people are literally a different species to us. This is why they don't see us as human, when ironically, they are the ones who aren't human. White people are the only "humans" who can't trace their evolution back to Africa. This is why they are so against teaching evolution in schools but mask it behind a Christian agenda. Yet they pretend that "we are all African" to get away with the shit they do. They are not African. They are not human. They are a different species entirely, which is why they refer to our blood as "monkey blood" because it’s primate blood and theirs is not. When two people get married, they have to get a blood test to see if their child will survive. Otherwise, the fetus will be rejected by the mother's womb as if it is a disease or a foreign object. Why? Because two different species have mixed over the years that should not be mixing.

White people are a different species entirely and it's been widely believed for years that they are actually hybrid descendants of the violent and savage Neanderthals that slaughtered their way from cave to cave (Sound familiar? That's basically white history in a nutshell). They even have fairy tales of how they came here from another planet. They rationalize their existence by saying they are descendants of angels and Tall White Aliens. Even white people don't believe they are human.

What kind of race hasn’t evolved to survive their own planet’s sun? If white people were from Earth, they would not crumble in the sunlight. They would not have stories about vampires and subterranean Martians. They would not be so diseased and frail. Because they would have evolved – as we did – to survive this planet.

The fact that we are a different species has been used to justify white people’s shitty treatment of us. Bio warfare (the invention of an AIDs virus whose origins they conveniently can’t trace and/or blame on black people), discrimination, brutalization, lynching, raping, slavery. The appropriation of our culture for their monetary gain. Constantly dictating what “human” is and telling us how to dress, think, and feel. Holding us back from our dreams. Stealing our genetics like accessories but shaming us for naturally having them. You can’t wear natural hairstyles to work or school and are expected to torture yourself with chemicals (perms) to appease them, so it’s literally illegal to be black. Brainwashing our community with Christianity. Dividing us with colorism. Keeping us poor, uneducated, and desperate. Distributing drugs among our people. Murdering every. Single. Civil rights leader. We. Ever. Had. Then having the gall to use MLK to lecture us about peaceful protests that they always slaughter our people for anyway. Then at the end of it all acting innocently appalled by our anger when we don’t quietly accept being treated like shit.

Four hundred years of consistently pulling devious shit against black people have proven their hatred for us is very real and is not going to change. It doesn't matter how "progressive" some white people appear. Most are doing it for political reasons, to sooth their own egos or to separate themselves from extremists like the KKK. White civil rights activism isn't about black people at all. It's about white people and their politics. The easiest way to look good is to pretend to give a shit about black people, right NatGeo?

White people are disappearing. They are 10% of the world's population and only maintain control because they control all the wealth. We could rise and kill them all (but we won't) which is why they are so terrified. Again, they are projecting. They think we are as bad as them, that we'll rise up and kill them all when their numbers are low, so their police brutalize us, and they encourage interracial dating in an attempt to survive through our genes, and they SUDDENLY give a shit about the environment because they won't be able to survive it in about 200 years the way our melanin-induced skin can. This is another reason why they want to get melanin in their genes.

Universe 25.

White people know they are on their way out. They have known a long time. Like I said on another post, they love writing stories about their white nightmares.

The Planet of the Apes was about a world ruled by apes (black people) and the horrified white man (Heston) who finds himself a slave there.

The Dragon Age franchise talks about Universe 25 in Inquisition. Solas is an ancient elf who watched elven civilization crumble due to wars over resources and imbalances in the social hierarchy. He foresees it all happening again to humans and it’s painfully obvious in his conversations with Varric and Sera. At first, Solas encourages Sera to actually do something to fight the system, then he quickly realizes that Universe 25 – the collapse of a system built on social inequality and/or experiencing a population explosion that divides resources – is inevitable and agrees that Sera is “fine as she is.”

Black Panther is just the latest version of these white nightmares, only white people have it wrong. When white people finally succumb to Universe 25, it is not black Africans who they need look to for salvation. The end of Black Panther preaches peace between the races and uses MLK to try and brainwash us into being kind to white people when Universe 25 finally happens to them (it’s sad that they think we’re so stupid that we can’t see through that shit) but in reality, it is not black people on whose mercy white lives will depend. That’s what the racists (some of them anyway) don’t get.

White survival is about to depend entirely on the Chinese.

White people will not be able to stand up to the Chinese, which is why they are pushing interracial dating. They want to elevate biracials to white status – just as they did with the Irish and the Scots – to improve their numbers, but it won’t be enough. So they are probably going to turn to Latin people next, who already consider themselves white and white adjacent. If they stopped being dicks to Latin people, Latin people might save them. Most Latinos are so anti-black and so thirsty for white status, you bet your ass they would do it.

 The reality is, white power has lasted this long because white people have done this before. They bred with the original indigenous black people across the globe to create most of the beige races that exist today, to survive, to continue to rule us. They will continue to do it in desperation but are slowly coming to the realization that their genes are actually weak and that they are, in fact, helping to create a world full of brown people. This is why some of them – the extremists -- are actually against interracial dating.

This is also why they won’t legalize abortion: they desperately want white women to keep having white babies and they desperately want black women to keep having black babies they can use as canon fodder in their wars.

But Universe 25 is inevitable for any civilization that experiences a population boom and starts fighting for resources. White people literally caused this population boom by raping black people to create new races.

It was already predicted long ago that white people would only rule for 600 years. They have 200 years left, and if they aren’t killed by Global Warming, they will still eventually fade away because they were never meant to survive this environment.  

White people can’t be saved from themselves. Just let them slowly die out. Let them fall in the grave they dug for themselves.

Black people are dying out too. We are the originators, the indigenous people of Earth who once populated and ruled the ancient planet, but before long, we will be gone, and it will be a planet of beige-colored people, a genetic mush of multicolored eyes and hair.

I pity that future generation, the people who will descend from us and who have to clean up our mess. Everyone will probably look the same at that point, so there will be no racism. But there will still be sexism, religion, pedophilia, terrorism, war, disease, social inequality, and poverty, because the white gene and its thirst to dominate and control will survive inside the black one.

You think I’m joking or that I’m being “racist” when I say this, but it is the reality. Black people originated true equalitarianism, a concept most white people can not even begin to grasp because their culture revolves around patriarchal power structures (in direct opposition to black matriarchal power structures), competition, selfishness, greed, “might is right,” and rewarding predators.

White people are doomed to be ruled by China. And even if white people all disappeared as they fear, we would still have to live with anti-black Chinese, Latinos, Indians, Arabs, and basically anyone who isn’t black because basically anyone who isn’t black hates us.

White people can not save themselves and are determined to take us down with them.

Let white people be. Let them be. Eat popcorn. Watch their turn at Universe 25. Watch. File your nails. Laugh. Stop stressing out over shit that’s about to be over anyway.

What can black people do in the meantime? Rediscover our spirituality. Communicate with the Source. Take care of ourselves and our communities. Be good to each other (end colorism). Practice LoA to enrich our personal lives. Move forward. Don’t look back. Detach. Observe the changing world powers from a safe distance.

Nytimes and other assbackwards websites will tell you not to ignore white people. Those are the sunken black people who can’t be saved, who have no idea what’s going on, who their ancestors were, or what happened in the past. Ignore them too.

Let them go. It is not worth the stress and life is too short to spend wringing our hands over racism.

It is out of our hands.

[brainwad]

And that much I get and sympathize with. It's when Magneto (or, some versions of him, anyway) decide wholesale genocide is the way to go that he crosses the line. Like, I'm all for taking out oppressive bigots, but he didn't stop there, and believed it was totally okay to murder and subjugate people based on how they were born, rather than something they did. His attitude is totally justifiable, but not his willingness to slaughter innocents.

Granted, many writers have magneto targeting politicians and antimutant activists specifically, but he just as often seeks out wholesale genocide based on a belief in racial superiority. Despite the pain and anger which motivates his decisions, any moral high ground is leveled by his choice to inflict pain and suffering on countless innocents, essentially making him the same as those who hurt him.

The saddest part is, since he's written by so many authors, for every time he's presented as a justified man of righteous fury, there's an equally canonical presentation of him as a hypocritical extremist motivated by blind hatred.

Compare that to Professor X, who's pretty much always written the sane way, even if audience interpretation varies.

goyim get really up in arms when jews say “magneto was right”, but it takes a lot more breath to say “magneto’s response to humans oppressing and killing mutants is also a direct response to the fact that he lived through the holocaust, where he witnessed jews being oppressed and murdered as well. although his reactions may seem violent and extreme to those whose families WEREN’T targeted by nazis, a lot of jews connect with the sentiment of fighting back against their oppressors without having to be merciful and gentle to people who want them dead”

[fantasyofmemory-blog]

The “Grievance Studies” hoax exposes postmodernist charlatans

On October 2, Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian published an article titled “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship,” incorporating the results of a year-long effort to publish hoax articles, deliberately comprised of bunk facts and irrational and reactionary conclusions, in academic journals associated with gender, racial and identity studies.

The results expose the intellectual bankruptcy of identity politics and postmodernist philosophy. Their proponents, who dominate university humanities departments worldwide, are charlatans who have published or given favorable “revise and resubmit��� comments to the most absurd and vulgar pseudo-scientific arguments.

These include: a purported 1,000-hour study of dog “humping” patterns at dog parks that concludes by calling for human males to be “trained” like dogs to prevent rape culture; a long-form poem produced through a teenage angst poetry generator about women holding spiritual-sexual “moon meetings” in a secret “womb room” and praying to a “vulva shrine;” a proposal to develop feminist robots, trained to think irrationally, to control humanity and subjugate white men; and additional articles relating to male masturbation. Another proposal, which was praised by reviewers in a paper that was ultimately rejected, encouraged teachers to place white students in chains to be shamed for their “white privilege.”

There is an element of humor in the fact that such drivel could win accolades from academics and journals. The “dog park” article was even selected as one of the most influential contributions in the history of the Gender, Place and Culture journal!

But the implications of the study are deadly serious. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have confirmed the right-wing political essence of identity politics and postmodernist thought, based on anti-Marxism, irrationalism and the rejection of the Enlightenment and objective truth.

Most chillingly, the authors also submitted a re-write of a chapter from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, with language altered to reference female identity and feminism. The paper, titled “Our struggle is my struggle: solidarity feminism as an intersectional reply to neoliberal and choice feminism,” was accepted for publication and greeted with favorable reviews.

“I am extremely sympathetic to this article’s argument and its political positioning,” one academic wrote. Another said, “I am very sympathetic to the core arguments of the paper.”

In the wake of their public disclosure, Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have come under attack by the proponents of postmodernism and identity politics, who claim the hoax is a right-wing attack on “social justice” disciplines.

Typical is the argument of Daniel Engber, who wrote in Slate: “How timely, too, that this secret project should be published in the midst of the Kavanaugh imbroglio—a time when the anger and the horror of male anxiety is so resplendent in the news. ‘It’s a very scary time for young men,’ Trump told reporters on the very day that Pluckrose, Lindsay, and Boghossian went public with their hoax. Both express a fear of false attacks on men, whether levied by regretful sluts, lefty liberals, radical academics, or whoever else.”

In reality, the hoax has exposed the fact that it is the proponents of identity politics who are advancing views parallel to the far right. While they are enraged with those who voice concern about the elimination of due process and the presumption of innocence for the targets of the #MeToo campaign, they are unbothered by the fact that the writings of Adolf Hitler are published and praised in feminist academic circles.

Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian are self-described liberals who are concerned that the present identity hysteria is “pushing the culture war to ever more toxic and existential polarization,” by fanning the flames of the far right. As a result, identitarians are “affecting activism on behalf of women and racial and sexual minorities in a way which is counterproductive to equality aims by feeding into right-wing reactionary opposition to those equality objectives.”

In contrast, the authors’ aim is to “give people—especially those who believe in liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice—a clear reason to look at the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, ‘No, I will not go along with that. You do not speak for me.’”

The hoax’s authors are correct to link the identity politics proponents’ hostility to equality with their opposition to rationalism, scientific analysis and the progressive gains of the Enlightenment. But the roots of this right-wing, irrationalist, anti-egalitarian degeneration are to be found in the economic structure of capitalist society.

The academic architects of postmodernism and identity politics occupy well-paid positions in academia, often with salaries upwards of $100,000–$300,000 or more. As a social layer, the theoreticians of what the World Socialist Web Site refers to as the “pseudo-left” are in the wealthiest 10 percent of American society. Their political and philosophical views express their social interests.

The obsession with “privilege,” sex, and racial and gender identity is a mechanism by which members and groups within this layer fight among themselves for income, social status and positions of privilege, using degrees of “oppression” to one up each other in the fight for tenure track jobs, positions on corporate or non-profit boards, or election to public office. A chief purpose of the #MeToo campaign, for example, is to replace male executives and male politicians with women, while ignoring the social needs of the vast majority of working class women.

The weaponization of identity politics is directed down the social ladder as well. By advancing the lie that white workers benefit from “white privilege,” for example, the proponents of identity politics argue: the spoils of Wall Street should not go to meeting the social needs of the working class, including white workers, who face record rates of alcoholism, poverty, opioid addiction, police violence and other indices of social misery. Instead, the world’s resources should go to me. It is this visceral class hatred that serves as the basis for absurd and reactionary arguments like those advanced in the hoax papers.

Nor have the politics of racial identity improved the material conditions for the vast majority of minority workers. Inequality within racial minorities has increased alongside the introduction of affirmative action programs and the increasing dominance of identity politics in academia and bourgeois politics. In 2016, the top 1 percent of Latinos owned 45 percent of all Latino wealth, while the top 1 percent of African-Americans owned 40.5 percent and the richest whites owned 36.5 percent of white wealth.

The influence of postmodernism in academia exploded in the aftermath of the mass protests of the 1960s and early 1970s. Based explicitly on a rejection of the revolutionary role of the working class and opposition to the “meta narrative” of socialist revolution, it is not accidental that identity politics and postmodernism have now been adopted as official ideological mechanisms of bourgeois rule.

In recent decades, a massive identity politics industry has been erected, with billions of dollars available from corporate funds and trusts for journals, non-profits, publications, fellowships and political groups advancing racial or gender politics. Identity politics has come to form a central component of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy. Imperialist wars are justified on the grounds that the US is intervening to protect women, LGBT people and other minorities.

The growing movement of the working class, broadening strikes across industries and widespread interest in socialism on college campuses pose an existential threat to the domination of postmodernism. Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian have struck a well-timed blow against this reactionary obstacle to the development of scientific socialist consciousness.

Eric London via WSWS

[rabbiandrewrosenblatt]

Dear Poland. . .

This week’s installment is a joint message from Rabbi Rosenblatt and Dr. Neiman about an emerging issue that has troubled many in our community.

Many in the Jewish community are utterly shocked by the passage of a Polish law that makes it illegal to associate the government or state of Poland with the Holocaust. For example, those who refer to places like Auschwitz as Polish death camps can go to prison for up three years. The rationale for this law is that the death camps in Poland were created by Nazi Germany, not by the Polish government or Polish people.

The government of Poland is not the first to try to distance itself from an association with the atrocities of the 20th Century. Japan’s government has yet to explicitly accept responsibility for its colonial occupation of much of Asia. Turkey’s government denies that there was an Armenian Genocide. We should be shocked that Poland would take a similar tack by denying the overwhelming evidence of its role in the largest, most murderous act of anti-Semitism in modern times. However, we believe people should be shocked for the right reasons. We should be shocked that the Poles think that this law is going to fool anyone.  

As Edna Friedberg of the U.S. Holocaust Museum argues, the Poles were no more the mere victims of the Nazis, than they were exclusively villains to the Jews. The Polish role in the Holocaust is complicated. Poland was occupied by a brutal Nazi regime that made Poland the geographic centre of Nazi dirty work. On the other hand, as Polish historian Barbara Engelking describes, many Poles were willing accomplices in the murder of Jews. Some did so for sport, and others for profit. They would engage in ‘Jew hunts’ to break the monotony of life. Poles often hid Jews who gave Polish ‘hosts’ their valuables. When there were no more valuables to surrender, the Poles would turn in their so-called ‘guests’ and collect a reward from the Nazis.

Friedberg explains the difficulty in characterizing the Polish response to the Holocaust in a single stroke. “It is not uniformly one of complicity or innocence.” There are more Poles recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations than from any other nationality. The Nazis tried to decapitate the Polish leadership, removing tens of thousands of intellectuals, priests, politicians and other authority figures. 1.5 Million Poles were deported to Germany as slave laborers and 2 million non-Jewish Poles and soldiers died in the course of the war. The Żegota was a Polish committee organized to provide false papers to Jews and secure their rescue. Some estimate that the Żegota had a hand in saving almost half of the Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.

 The Polish government wants to make it illegal “to publicly and untruthfully assign responsibility or co-responsibility to the Polish Nation or the Polish State for Nazi crimes [emphasis added].” They may be technically correct about the Polish government, but are they certain about the veracity of a claim of innocence with regard to the Polish Nation? Furthermore, it is facile to refer to these crimes as Nazi crimes, as if anything originated by Nazis is solely the responsibility of Hitler.

No matter what the intention of the law, we believe it fundamentally misses the point of what might be in the best interest of the current Polish government. The law looks like an attempt to whitewash the past, to engage in a form – however benignly motivated ­– of denial of an essential part of the Holocaust. Historically, limiting free speech like this makes a government look regressive and afraid of the truth. Will tour guides to Polish sites be prosecuted for telling the history of the Blue Police – those 20,000 Polish officers who were responsible for the liquidation of the ghettos in Poland? Will Jewish historical tourism to Poland become a crime? If anything, this law will be the dog whistle to white nationalists around the world.

Author and bullying expert Barbara Coloroso argues that evil cannot be enacted on a large scale without the active and passive consent of both ordinary people and those who are in charge. In Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide, she makes essential distinctions between different actors in the Polish chapter of the Holocaust. The Nazis were in her terms, instigators and perpetrators. The Polish government and police played various official roles as perpetrators and active supporters. Ordinary citizens acted in various roles as perpetrators, active supporters, passive supporters, henchmen, and witnesses [who did nothing to stop the violence]. Coloroso traces how the same dynamics existed in the Armenian Genocide, the Rwandan Genocide, and Darfur.

Timothy Snyder is a Professor of History at Yale University. In Black Earth: the Holocaust as History and Warning, Snyder argues that stripping groups of their citizenship is a key enabler of governments that perpetrate genocide. During World War 2, he notes, Poles were keen to set up governments that collaborated with their occupiers to persecute Jews. This happened under both Soviet occupation and Nazi occupation. It was possible to kill Jews and take their property, precisely because there was a duly constituted national government, and Jews were not considered to be subject to their laws. An exception that proves the rule of European collaboration with the Nazi genocide was Denmark. There, the government under occupation resisted turning over Jews. The Nazis allowed the Danes to let Jews escape en masse.

We believe our reaction to Poland needs to maintain a strong tether to the truth and complexity of the Polish story. The Torah says, ”לא תתעב מצרי כי גר היית בארצו – do not be cross with the Egyptian for you were a sojourner in his land.” To this Rashi adds, “the Egyptians gave us refuge in time of need.” The Torah is teaching an important lesson about characterizations: appreciate the complexity of even the oppressive relationships. In particular, while one generation of Egyptians was welcoming, another was cruel. In other words, it’s complex. We must remain cognizant of both Hitler’s willing partners and of the many righteous Polish gentiles. We remember the Nazi subjugation of Poland, and the fertile anti-Semitic soil in which the Germans sowed their hatred.

Furthemore, the Torah in this week’s reading teaches, “לא תהיה אחרי רבים לרעת ולא תענה על רב לנטת אחרי רבים להטת­ ­– do not be a follower of the majority to do evil, and do not answer the majority by bending to their mistake.” Sometimes it is important to reject groupthink, to reject the simple, binary characterization of good versus evil when there is an unvoiced exonerating argument or evidence. Our political and ideological discourse has too often devolved to a false dichotomy of good guys and bad guys, of sanitized and dishonest political correctness, and cruel sensationalized examples that should not be extrapolated to a whole group. We don’t accept Jewish stereotypes, nor will we condone Polish stereotypes.

This is captured in the words of Holocaust survivor Aaron Elster, who was sheltered by sympathetic Polish farmers.

I was grateful for them, but I was afraid of them because they were constantly demeaning me, and threatening me, and telling me what a terrible thing I did to come there to cause them that kind of problem … That’s what she constantly said to us, my sister and I. ‘If the Germans catch you, you’re gonna say who helped you and they’re gonna kill us.’ So it was a dichotomy of things: She wanted to help but she wanted get rid of us, she couldn’t get rid of us, you know.

The historical Polish relationship to our people is painful and complex. It has Polish heroes and villains. It is a story of many governments and average people who behaved in self-serving ways and altruistic ways to do both good and extraordinary evil. Your history is complex, Poland, and your choice is simple. If you maintain this law, you will become in 2018 the very government that you deny you were in 1939. Instead, we call on the Polish government to understand that the only way to keep their good reputation is to be honest about the truth and complexity of the story, to learn from it, and to prevent it from happening again.