#leftist xenophobia

[bisexualmikisayaka]

okay I’m taking a break tonight but it really is fascinating how cassian fails to integrate into the rebellion vs how syril is ushered in with open arms. syril says all the right stuff over the tapped line to get himself picked but when he’s actually talking to the ghorman front he can’t stop being, well, syril - he’s awkward, halting, hesitant. and yet the ghormans welcome him in with open arms, even taking his firing record as a sign that he’s their man and could never be setting them up. there is some measure of opsec, but they want him to be on their side. but cassian - another representative of a voice on the radio - is too self assured. his expertise makes him too critical, too standoffish to the ghormans. even though what he tells them is true - that they’re not careful enough, that theft is easy but getaway is hardest (aldhani, anyone?), that practically announcing yourself only leads to more repression - they read him as dispassionate rather than burdened by what he’s lived, and that drives them further into the arms of their true enemy.

we as the audience know that the root of cassian’s concerns are justified (cassian, as shown by the expression on his face during the bar exchange and also every part of andor, knows well what happens to dreamers in this fight), and we’re also aware how much he knows it’s just as much an information war as it is a physical one. but the ghormans have experienced prosperity for decades and, save the tarkin massacre, have largely avoided the most punishing yokes of the empire until now. they have no idea how bad it can get, but it is plenty bad now, and as such, they cannot continue to accept this treatment. syril seems like the answer to striking back, whereas cassian asks them to bide their time and wait and consider a less showy, less meaningful angle. it makes sense, and it will also make it that much more painful when we ultimately watch everything fall apart

[thirdmagic]

everytime i look at how people compare the way russian citizens are treated in light of the russian invasion of ukraine and the way israeli people and jews are treated after oct 7th and it just.... you know, as a person who belongs to all of these cultures, it always feels extremely disingenuous to me and very untruthful

[hilacopter]

"I don't hate Jews just Israelis" ok so you hate half the Jews. because of the country they happen to live in. and the shitty government they don't even support. cool.

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

One of the best analyses of this movie, and specially Ariel as a character and what she represents, I've listened to so far.

[plantfeline]

literally i make a new twitter account just to tweet stuff at phil for the phan twt vid, just for dan to say the entire continent of asia has homophobic governments in like a weird flippant joke and then backtrack with a proper statement about expanding the tour a few hours later and also hes got a ‘mullet’ now

[hilacopter]

I have given up at trying to get people to treat us with any sort of basic human decency. I'll see people wishing for Israelis to get killed, raped, tortured etc, people telling us to "go back where we came from" yet simultaneously talking about how violence and hate crimes are justified for any filthy Israelis who dare step foot in another country, people telling us we don't deserve a single moment of security or peace in our lives because we dared be born in the one country that's safe for us, and people ON JUMBLR will go "they're clearly using Israeli as a dogwhistle for Jew so it's fucked up" "half of the world's Jews are there so it's antisemitic and therefore fucked up" as if it wouldn't be otherwise. I've given up at this point because I've realised no matter how much we try we can't justify our existences to anyone. All I can really do is lean into the argument in the ridiculous hope people will at least see us alongside diaspora Jews, as a part of the Jewish community as a whole, because sure people don't really like Jews anymore but at least they have to pretend like they do.

[charlesoberonn]

Reactionary Far-Right Voters: I vote for anti-immigrant anti-diversity politicians because I don't want people I view as my inferiors to be equal residents in my country.

Leftists Who Think Politics Are Only About Material Conditions: What they're really upset about is corporate greed depreciating their wages. That's why they're lashing out.

Reactionary Voters: No, I'm not? My wages aren't a concern. I just hate gay and brown people.

Leftists: They've been abandoned by the establishment.

Reactionary Voters: No, the establishment still treats me pretty well. I just hate that minorities are also being treated better. I miss the days when it was just my group in charge.

Leftists: They can't relate to the elitist mainstream media.

Reactionary Voters: I don't listen to the mainstream media. I only listen to hyper-conservative media figures who instill fear and distrust.

Leftists: They're a frustrated and neglected working class.

Reactionary Voters: All of my heroes are millionaires and billionaires. Stop erasing my xenophobia and supremacist beliefs! They paid a lot to teach it to me.

Leftists: This is liberalism's fault.

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

I think Americans in particular really need to understand that the concept of white privilege as it works in US society and politics is not one that can be universally applied.

As just one small example, try telling a Slav living here in the UK that in the midst of the constant media and public onslaught of xenophobia against Eastern Europeans (and let me tell you, it is *constant*) that they possess white privilege, they would likely laugh in your face.

And that's not even touching the entirely conditional status of 'white' given to white passing Jews, who are white when it's convenient to paint them as oppressors in leftist's coloniser fantasies and then relegated to 'lesser' status by white supremacists.

It's a far more nuanced issue in most of the world than "white vs. everyone else."

[xclowniex]

There is just something so disheartening about Israeli's who leave Israel, getting excluded by the left for being Israeli. Its not suprising tbh but it is disheartening

On the obvious side of things, its just straight up xenophobia.

On the less obvious but still kinda obvious side, it shows that jews are not welcome anywhere.

You can be an Israeli jew who chose to leave Israel, the thing which a lot of leftists are calling for, and still not be good enough because you were once in Israel.

The goal post keeps moving from one shitty point to the next shitty point. It was intially about demonzing Israeli jews, now its about demonizing Israeli jews who have moved to the diaspora. Soon it will be about demonizing diaspora jews who ehave either friends or family or both in Israel and all of the above groups encompass the majority of the jewish population, regardless of their stance on zionism. Then the goalpost will move again to jews who don't know anyone in Israel, but is friends with a jew who does.

It all just feels like they don't want us to live in any capacity.

[jewish-vents]

this new hatsune miku nationality trend is starting to piss me off and of course the watermelon crowd just had to ruin it. at the beginning this trend was super cute and cool and now it just turned into a fest of antisemitism and xenophobia. i’ve been a vocaloid fan since 2016 so miku is one of my biggest comfort characters ever, and seeing her now being swept into this bullshit makes me so angry yet exhausted at the same time. people just won’t leave israelis alone and it’s sickening at this point. stop being so obsessed about us already!! let us have fun with trends and fictional characters too!! why do you want to erase our identities and cultures so badly? how on earth does that even help palestinians exactly. and the funniest thing is that they continue saying it’s only antizionism, not antisemitism lmao.

there’s an israeli person who drew miku as an israeli on twitter (or x. whatever), and the amount of death threats and other horrible things people commented about them is outrageous. i think they eventually deleted the post because of the harassment, and it’s just… so unfair. miku can be drawn as every nationality in the world, and no one will bat an eye. i bet even if somebody draws her as russian or something nobody will give a fuck. people will only lose their marbles and be racist/xenophobic when israel is mentioned and it’s disgusting. i know i may be extremely dramatic over a fictional character and a bunch of buffoons on the internet, but this just shows how ‘leftists’ aren’t really who they represent to be. they act like nazis in a death cult. it’s like they only pretend to care about palestine just to have an excuse to hate on israel and dehumanize half of the world’s population of jews. and yes, believe it or not israelis do have a culture, one that’s more diverse than you’d imagine. cry about it.

it’s pretty ironic how i became so emotionally drained because of a japanese vocal synthesizer. and i really love miku. but i’ll never forgive these hypocrites for not allowing us to breathe anywhere. not to mention the fact they really like to fandomize the conflict for some reason, which is just. insane.

i wish a day would come and people could just treat us like humans beings. let us fucking be

.

[bobcatmoran]

So with Tim Walz, governor of my home state, as the VP nominee (and news stories about him/Minnesota coming out of the woodwork) here's some stuff that will probably be helpful to know over the next 3 months:

The Minnesota Democratic party is, due to a 1944 party merger with the local Farmer-Labor party, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, or DFL for short. Local media refers to them as such.

Speaking of local media, we have two major local newspapers: the Star Tribune out of Minneapolis (Strib for short) and the somewhat smaller Pioneer Press out of St. Paul.

Minneapolis and St. Paul are the Twin Cities. They're next to each other, but woe betide you if you mistake one for the other. Minneapolis is the larger of the two, with the more vibrant nightlife and history as a flour milling hub, while St. Paul is the state capital, home to lots of liberal arts colleges and a significant Asian-American population, mostly the Karen ethnic group from Myanmar and Hmong.

Other reputable local news sources include MinnPost (online indie news site), the Minnesota Reformer (unashamedly leftist and pro-union), and Sahan Journal (focused on stories affecting the local immigrant and minority communities). We also have Minnesota Public Radio, or MPR for short, one of the largest NPR affiliates in the nation with a pretty solid local news arm. Bring Me the News is rarely a source of breaking news, but what they do report on is solid.

Alpha News is not a reputable local news source. They're far right wing and have a *cough* casual relation with reporting on actual events.

About 1% of Minnesota's population are Somali/Somali-Americans, concentrated in Minneapolis, especially the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. They're a major target of local racism and Islamophobia, by conservative assholes. The nonsense rumor over Minnesota's new flag being based on the Somali flag (because…uh…blue? and star?) stems from that particular local brand of xenophobia.

It's "Hot Dish." "Casserole" is the name of the type of cooking utensil you make Hot Dish in.

[cdr2002]

The character of Megatron post 2005-6 is a constant conflict between “wouldn’t it be a cool subversion if the ‘bad guy’ was actually a based leftist?” and a character originally fundamentally designed as an embodiment of warfare, violence, conquest, resource pillaging, xenophobia, and fascism.

Labor worker revolutionary and Nazi Gun On Legs should kind of be completely incompatible but Transformers media is going to keep trying to make this mixture work regardless and all we can do is hope for the best.

Also somewhere between them is Cool Edgy Gladiator.

That being said, Transformers One is a fantastic movie and you should all watch it.

[aqlstar]

In the context of whatever was going on on @spot-the-antisemitism ‘s inbox- I wrote down some thoughts about Islamophobia and anti-Muslim biases:

I tend to think that attitudes towards Muslims in the West and in West Asia and North Africa should be analyzed separately because they come from such radically different historical experiences and pre-existing power structures.

I therefore understand people that feel frustrated by the term “Islamophobia” because it implies (or may be considered to imply) uncritically that non-Muslim west Asians or North Africans are necessarily subject to the same kind of bias present in, say, some American Christians.

For example, we live in America, but my dad’s side of the family (Assyrian) is generally rather wary of Muslims and afraid of the spread of Islam. By some definitions, this makes them Islamophobic. We do have culturally Muslim Iranian family friends, it just took a little while for us to trust that they were not anti-Semitic or anti-Assyrian and were actually very open to unlearning some of their biases.

It bothers me that their generational trauma response that has unfortunately been proven useful and necessary would be grouped in with ignorance and bigotry that some American Evangelical Christians display when it comes to Islam. (Saying things like all Muslims worship the devil or that they hate Jesus or defending Christian imperialism while condemning Islamic imperialism.)

On the other hand, I support combatting said ignorance and bigotry, whether we call it Islamophobia, xenophobia or just anti-Muslim conspiracy. I don’t really want to die on the hill of word choice.

I also believe, contrary to the opinion of most young leftists, that it isn’t okay to dehumanize people that are part of the historical “oppressor class.” I can see how a very rational generalized wariness of Muslims in a West Asian context could hypothetically be weaponized to promote hatred and violence against Muslims. What word would be used for that phenomenon?

Does anyone have any thoughts, additions, objections, concerns?

*also note that I think a similar distinction needs to be made for the phenomenon of Christian oppression.

In North America? We have Christians whining about not being able to evangelize in public schools and calling it Christian oppression.

In Egypt? Christian oppression means violence against copts, burning churches, and human trafficking.