#narratives against native americans

[coffeestainedprogress]

Trying to romanticize my life in this coffee shop in an attempt to finish editing and revising my writing sample for grad school applications🙃

[kunosoura]

what’s fucked up is that what the British did in the highlands displaced a lot of Scottish people who became part of the waves of migration to the new world which both displaced untold scores of indigenous people and integrated into the population. John Ross was largely of Scottish descent, but served as Principal Chief of the Cherokee and was a key figure in the resistance to the displacement of Cherokee nation; on the other hand, you have the history of white mountaineers descended (at least narratively) from Scottish highlanders largely forming the vanguard of white settlers displacing native nations.

[txttletale]

hey not trying to be a shithead but genuinely curious; and not saying it isnt, but what makes honest hearts like super racist? because, okay its been a while but i dont remember it being *that* bad?

am i missing something? (probably)

well, essentially, the whole dlc hinges its plot on its idea of 'tribal' society vs. 'civilized' society. this is like... a distinction with origins in 19th century scientific racism used to argue that indigenous peoples were 'primitive' and 'backwards', a lesser form of life compared to the more developed 'civilized' people. and this is a distinction that is everywhere in all the fallout games, including new vegas (i think it's super fucking racist that the white gloves practice of cannibalism is constantly narratively linked to their 'tribal origins' and described in the terms of a regression or degeneration)--but honest hearts is about it and so it's really inescapable.

joshua sawyer can say whatever he likes about multi-ethnic diverse groups or whatever but the tribes in honest hearts are very clearly inspired by racist stereotypes about native americans--they are naive, gullible morons (follows-chalk can't understand the concept of a casino) at worst and noble savages with (textually) biblical innocence at best. their names, their art, their societies--all just a white guy's idea of "vaguely native american" without any research or care.

and imo worst of all (and this is something im aware the devs have properly acknowledged) they have absolutely no agency--your role in the dlc is to be a "civilized" outsider who tells them which of two white "civilized" mormons to listen to. none of the 'tribals' are able to make their own decisions or lead themselves--they need a mormon missionary to tell them what to do! there is no way to resolve the dlc without picking which white mormon missionary they should listen to other than just murdering everyone indiscriminately.

and, like--i am aware that honest hearts thinks it is gesturing towards a critique of these ideas. you can criticize the paternalism daniel shows towards the sorrows, and the dlc clearly intended it to be criticized--but that criticism is weak and hollow when the only way to follow up on it is to put a different white mormon in charge. it is the most archetypal white saviour narrative possible--and yes, i also know daniel was 'supposed to be asian', but that doesn't change anything because he is in fact, as the "civilized" missionary preaching paternalistically to the "primitive tribals", fundamentally white-coded

so i mean yea it's racist because it relies on racist stereotypes about native americans, mandates that a white person come and take charge of these poor stupid 'tribes'--but even if you changed all that, it's fundamentally about an idea of 'civilization vs. tribal society' that it accepts as a true and meaningful distinction as its core premise, and that is just a straight up racist premise.

(and the reason i keep bringing up that both daniel and josh are mormons is that mormons have a long and storied history of brutal violence and colonialism against indigenous peoples, from their original violent settlement of utah to their 'indian placement program' to their deeply racist scripture, which makes their portrayal as benevolent white saviours particularly galling and repulsive)

[still-searching-for-something]

Full disclosure: I am an Ashkenazi Jew with pale skin, so I encourage any Mizrahim who see this post to comment their own views if they disagree or want to add something that I may have missed.

“Jews are white!”

I truly marvel sometimes at how many levels of stupidity are displayed in just three words. First off, the statement is wrong on the face of it—biological races don’t exist, even if the social construct of it does.

But secondly, when leftists say this, they’re completely ignorant of the 3000 years of our history which very much says we are in no way shape or form members of the “white” social category. We are white people, despite the word “ghettos” having originated as a term for the impoverished Jewish segregated areas in European cities? Nazis didn’t invent ghettos, by the way, the first mention of them dates to the early 16th century to refer to a Jewish ghetto in an Italian city state.

American Jews suffer the supermajority of religious based hate crimes in the United States, despite making up like 2% of the total population. We are having to put armed guards outside our synagogues. A quarter of hiring managers don’t want to employ Jewish people—and that’s just how many admit to that. Not a century ago, we were literally murdered for not being white enough. And now goy Americans want to come in, glance at Israel, and announce we’re white colonizers?

This whole discussion doesn’t even begin to touch on the rich history of the Mizrahim and Beta Israel and the Bene Israel and the Cochin Jews and the Kaifeng Jews. Left wing antisemites will only mention Ethiopian Jews and Mizrahim to say that they’re discriminated against by the evil White Jews in power. They ascribe no agency to them—they just infantilize Jews of Color to being two dimensional victims of evil Ashkenazi Jews.

But Israel doesn’t fit neatly into this Americanized narrative of white oppressors against brown natives. Do Mizrahim and other Jews with brown skin—who make up the majority of the population—experience racism in Israel? Yes, of course. There was a full civil rights movement in Israel over it—look up the Israeli Black Panthers. But the way their experiences are only trotted out by left wingers to score points against Israel and then hushed away again is obscene. And anyway, even Ashkenazi Jews aren’t white either—Europe has made it clear to us, over and over again, that we are not white.

In short, no, we aren’t white. Not the Jews who pass as white, nor those of us who don’t.

[weemietime]

I've been percolating this for a while. One of the hardest things about being Jewish is how nowadays, even commonly accepted historical facts are now seen as debatable when it comes to Jews. Our very history itself is being actively rewritten in front of our eyes. Bad actors continually vandalize Jewish articles on Wikipedia to co-opt our intracommunal terms and bastardize them against us.

Just look at the difference from 2021 to 2024 in the Zionism article. You can see where they've left shit alone in other places that contradicts this, such as clearly defining Palestinians as Arabs and then clearly defining Arabs as native to Paran/Saudi Arabia. To this day people push the false narrative that Jews are settler colonialists in our own homeland, ignoring that the Ottomans, which most Palestinians are descended from (the Arab migration during the Ottoman Empire, not Turks), were living on stolen land.

They stole it. They (Arabs) built Al-Aqsa over our most precious religious site. And if you say this, people turn around and call you Islamophobic. It'd be like if Americans accused Native Americans of being European and decided that actually, they are the indigenous population, and if you have a problem with that you're Christophobic.

31% of the total Israeli population is Ashkenazi and out of that number there are a good deal more who escaped active pogroms and persecutions in places like Russia and Poland. The Kielce pogrom happened after WW2. The majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi at 61%. So the narrative as it is now looks like the following:

- Yemeni Jews are entirely expunged and ethnically cleansed from Yemen. The last remaining Jew is jailed.

- Yemen deports these Jews to Israel.

- The Houthis release a statement saying that Israel must be destroyed.

- Everyone accuses the Yemeni Jews of Israel of being genocidal colonizers in their own homeland which they were expunged from.

There is such an overwhelmingly massive campaign emerging from the Islamic Republic in particular as well as Hamas to rewrite history and erase Jewish indigeneity in Israel altogether even though again, Ashkenazim (who they claim are European, but again, are indigenous to the Levant) are a minority in Israel.

We all just ignore that Arabs cannot even pronounce the word Palestine, yet they want to claim that Palestinians have been Palestinians for thousands of years in Israel.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Predation, not fear of wolves, keeps elk from denuding Yellowstone

So you remember that "how wolves change rivers" video that came out a few years ago? The premise was that with the reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park, they singlehandedly altered the behavior of overpopulated elk, who were less likely to damage riparian vegetation and allowed rivers to recover to a more natural state.

It is true that elk behavior has changed, and that has had a positive effect on ecosystem within Yellowstone. However, a new in-dept study demonstrates that it was more of a group effort of several different species of predator--humans included--rather than the wolves alone. It isn't just the presence of wolves that cause the elk to be more fearful, but increased risk of predation overall.

Obviously this is a new study, and it stands alone at the moment. So there will almost certainly be critiques that help us fine-tune our understanding of what's going on here. But the more information we have to flesh out the story of Yellowstone's rewilding, the better.

What I want to emphasize is that this is NOT an argument against the positive ecological role of wolves as a keystone species. There are all too many anti-wolf activists who will see this as an excuse to vilify this species, since those of us who support wolf reintroduction often leaned on the earlier studies to show the benefit of wolves within Yellowstone.

Rather, I want to promote the idea that this study helps demonstrate that biodiversity = good! Wolves are good, mountain lions are good, grizzly bears are good, because they are all a part of the native ecosystems within Yellowstone and beyond. Obviously we now have to balance this out with post-settlement human conflicts, but we have increasing evidence that there are so many more options besides the wholesale extermination of large predatory species anywhere they might ostensibly come into contact with humans or our livestock.

So no, wolves are not the miracle animal that earlier narratives have painted them as, but they are still a crucial keystone species in the ecosystems they historically inhabited prior to European/American colonization and extermination efforts, and this study still supports wolf reintroduction, particularly within Yellowstone.

[fuckyeahhistorycrushes]

If no one has brought it up yet: Ulysses. S. Grant. Man had some seriously sexy attitudes for the mid 1800s; he thought the Mexican American War was an unjust invasion and land grab, thought the policies against Native Americans were "shameful" (had a Seneca man write the terms of surrender for the Confederacy by extension), loved his wife so much he became an alcoholic when he was away from her, told her not to change a thing about herself when she was considering having surgery to correct her lazy eye, brought the feds in to investigate the KKK, freed the only slave he was ever given when he was deep in poverty instead of selling him, was so trusting he got caught up in scandal because he believed in the people around him- 

Sorry this man is slept on so badly and he was so sweet and beautiful. He's been buried by the Lost Cause southern narrative and has some seriously progressive views for his time period. I love him very dearly. 

[rodeodeparis]

re holocaust exceptionalism: as someone who's genuinely annoyed by how ashkenazim do not realize that they're "white" in the us, i really don't think ethnic ashkenazim being white by today's standards has anything to do with conclusions that the holocaust was "unique" or that it's worth recognizing, let alone why its memory is used to justify -sraeli atrocities. the us (for example) is perfectly capable of recognizing the danger uyghurs (largely not white) are being put through - the fault of china, the "enemy superpower" - while not recognizing the danger palestinians (largely not white) are being put through - the fault of their vassal state in the middle east and their own blind support for it.

at the end of the day, countries like the us view the holocaust the way they do because it's both "safe" and politically advantageous for them to view it that way. compare that to, like, iran, who doesn't have good relations with the us and its friends, hence that holocaust denial conference ahmadinejad hosted in 2006 where he invited david duke to speak. (yes, really, look it up.) also compare it to how the us has yet to recognize the many genocides it's committed against native americans, let alone making any significant effort at reparations past whatever haphazard thing they drafted up in the 19th century. the "unique" thing could be a way to deny other genocides the us and its allies were involved in as much as it could be a genuine belief that the genocides the us was complicit in were justified, but it doesn't matter.

as for why individuals think that way, i'd say it's more on a case-by-case basis. some understand how political atrocity recognition and having an ethnostate of your own are and are afraid that losing "power" will somehow make the world revert to rampant antisemitism. some think the us is acting out of the kindness of its heart and are just mindlessly swallowing hasbara narratives that people wanting a free palestine also want to kill every jew. either way, you get the sense that jewish people who are z-onists who think this way are placing themselves in some sort of "competition" against palestinians and other oppressed people, like there's only so much love to go around. looking at the world in this way is selfish, even if it comes out of fear, but you don't need me to tell you that.

[mariacallous]

Over the past decade, China has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its international media network. The Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, and the China Daily web portal produce material in multiple languages and use multiple social-media accounts to amplify it. This huge investment produces plenty of positive coverage of China and benign depictions of the authoritarian world more broadly. Nevertheless, Beijing is also aware that news marked “made in China” doesn’t have anything like the influence that local people, using local media, would have if they were uttering the same messages.

That, in the regime’s thinking, is the ultimate form of propaganda: Get the natives to say it for you. Train them, persuade them, pay them—it doesn’t matter; whatever their motives, they’ll be more convincing. Chinese leaders call this tactic “borrowing boats to reach the sea.”

When a handful of employees at RT, the Russian state television network formerly known as Russia Today, allegedly offered to provide lucrative payments to the talking heads of Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based far-right influencer team, borrowing boats to reach the sea was exactly what they had in mind. According to a federal indictment released last week, RT employees spent nearly $10 million over the course of a year—money “laundered through a network of foreign shell entities,” including companies in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, and Hungary—with the aim of supporting Tenet Media’s work and shaping the messages in its videos.

The indictment makes clear that the influencers—propagandists, in fact—must have had a pretty good idea where the money was coming from. They were told that their benefactor was “Eduard Grigoriann,” a vaguely Euro-Armenian “investor.” They tried to Google him and found nothing; they asked for information and were shown a résumé that included a photograph of a man gazing through the window of a private jet. Sometimes, the messages from Grigoriann’s team were time-stamped in a way that indicated they were written in Moscow. Sometimes the alleged employees of Grigoriann’s alleged company misspelled Grigoriann’s name. Unsurprisingly, in their private conversations, the Tenet Media team occasionally referred to its mysterious backers as “the Russians.”

But the real question is not whether the talking heads of Tenet Media—the founders, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, who were the main interlocutors with the Russians, but also Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson—had guessed the true identity of their “investor.” Nor does it matter whether they knew who was really paying them to make videos that backed up absurd pro-Moscow narratives (that a terrorist attack at a Moscow shopping mall, loudly claimed by the Islamic State, was really carried out by Ukrainians, for example). More important is whether the audience knew, and I think we can safely say that it did not. And now that Tenet Media fans do know who funds their favorite influencers, it’s entirely possible that they won’t care.

This is because the messages formed part of a larger stream of authoritarian ideas that are now ubiquitous on the far right, and that make coherent sense as a package. They denounce U.S. institutions as broken, irreparable: If Donald Trump doesn’t win, it’s because the election is rigged. They imply American society is degenerate: White people are discriminated against in America. They suggest immigrants are part of a coordinated invasion, designed to destroy what remains of the culture: Illegal immigrants are eating household pets, a trope featured during this week’s presidential debate. For the Russians, the amplification of this narrative matters more than specific arguments about Ukraine. As the indictment delicately explains, many of the Russian-sponsored videos produced by Tenet Media were more relevant to American politics than to the Ukraine war: “While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions.”

But these themes are also consistent with the Trump campaign’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions. People who have come to distrust the basic institutions of American democracy, who feel aggrieved and rejected, who believe that immigrants are invaders who have been deliberately sent to replace them—these are not people who will necessarily be bothered that their favorite YouTubers, according to prosecutors, were being sponsored by a violent, lawless foreign dictator who repeatedly threatens the U.S. and its allies with nuclear armageddon. On the contrary, many of them now despise their own country so much that they might be pleased to hear there are foreigners who, like the ex-president, want to burn it all down. If you truly hate modern America—its diversity, its immense energy, its raucous debate—then you won’t mind hearing it denounced by other people who hate it and wish it ill. On X earlier this year, Chen referred to the U.S. as a “tyranny,” for example, a phrase that could easily have been produced by one of the Russian propagandists who regularly decry the U.S. on the evening news.

These pundits and their audience are not manipulated by Russian, Chinese, and other autocrats who sometimes fill their social-media feeds. The relationship goes the other way around; Russian, Chinese, and other influence operations are designed to spread the views of Americans who actively and enthusiastically support the autocratic narrative. You may have laughed at Trump’s rant on Tuesday night: “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.” But that language is meant to reach an audience already primed to believe that Kamala Harris, as Trump himself said, is “destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn’t have a chance of success. Not only success. We’ll end up being Venezuela on steroids.”

Plenty of other people are trying to reach that audience too. Indeed, the Grigoriann scheme was not the only one revealed in the past few days. In a separate case that has received less attention, the FBI last week filed an affidavit in a Pennsylvania courthouse supporting the seizure of 32 internet domains. The document describes another team of Russian operatives who have engaged in typosquatting—setting up fake news websites whose URLs resemble real ones. The affidavit mentions, for example, washingtonpost.pm, washingtonpost.ltd, fox-news.in, fox-news.top, and forward.pw, but we know there are others. This same propaganda group, known to European investigators as Doppelganger, has also set up similar sites in multiple European languages. Typosquatters do not necessarily seek to drive people to the fake sites. Instead, the fake URLs they provide make posts on Facebook, X, and other social media appear credible. When someone is quickly scrolling, they might not check whether a sensational headline purporting to be from The Washington Post is in fact linked to washingtonpost.pm, the fake site, as opposed to washingtonpost.com, the real one.

But this deception, too, would not work without people who are prepared to believe it. Just as the Grigoriann scam assumed the existence of pundits and viewers who don’t really care who is paying for the videos that make them angry, typosquatting—like all information laundering—assumes the existence of a credulous audience that is already willing to accept outrageous headlines and not ask too many questions. Again, although Russian teams seek to cultivate, influence, and amplify this audience—especially in Pennsylvania, apparently, because in Moscow, they know which swing states matter too—the Russians didn’t create it. Rather, it was created by Trump and the pundits who support him, and merely amplified by foreigners who want our democracy to fail.

These influencers and audiences are cynical, even nihilistic. They have deep distrust in American institutions, especially those connected to elections. We talk a lot about how authoritarianism might arrive in America someday, but in this sense, it’s already here: The United States has a very large population of people who look for, absorb, and believe anti-American messages wherever they are found, whether on the real Fox News or the fake fox-news.in. Trump was speaking directly to them on Tuesday. What happens next is up to other Americans, the ones who don’t believe that their country is cratering into chaos and don’t want a leader who will burn it all down. In the meantime, there are plenty of boats available to borrow for Russians who want to reach the sea.

[blackflash9]

How AC3 Depicted the Minority Struggle

A common theme throughout AC3 comes from its iteration of the Templars - The Colonial Rite. The narrative was a lot more charitable and sympathetic to the Templar ideology - so much to the point that you'll often get some of those in the community who have become utterly convinced by their rhetoric to the extent that they've been deceived into believing that they were noble and righteous all along despite evidence to the contrary. Do you know who isn't convinced by them? Connor. The protagonist whom some still pretend was some bubbling deer-in-the-headlights who couldn't comprehend how "right" they were. In fact, Connor didn't think any target he killed was right. He even explicitly questions and poses counterarguments. And how do they respond? They just... call him naive instead of properly answering him. Johnson was killing the Natives who opposed him acquiring their land. His argument was that he could protect the Natives when the British or the Colonists came for them. But when Natives ask him if he is really concerned about their protection then he should give them muskets. To which he replies "War is not the answer". Easy for him to say, he wasn't getting driven off of his land. Not taking up for the Patriots, mind you, because they were honestly no different when it came to Native Americans, but Pitcairn's idea of peace was "better we hold the strings than another". When Connor questions that logic, he gets told he's being naive. Hickey? He brags about how Haytham and Connor are chasing lofty goals while his only goals were tits and gold.

Church was chased down by both Haytham and Connor for stealing supplies from the Continental Army. He was a just greedy hedonist who was trying to justify his actions. Connor counters every point Haytham makes while fighting him at Fort George. Sure, he thought if they helped the patriots they'll probably be on their side (but if Juno was right, the Templars were gonna seize his village's land anyway so there was no way he'd have been able to rescue his people), when Connor asks Haytham what makes Templars so special that they know how everything should be, all Haytham offers are excuses.

And he was in no delusion as to what the Patriots are. He points out Sam Adams' hypocrisy of fighting for freedom while owning a slave, he tells off the Sons of Liberty that they mistake him for one of their own before Achilles mentions Pitcairn. He thought Washington was a good guy before he learned he burnt his village, but in Forsaken Haytham lets go of the grudge he held against Washington because he came to see him as a great leader and better tempered than Charles Lee. So it's not like Connor was completely naive as everyone portrays him to be.

Everyone dismisses Connor as this naive kid who doesn't know "how the world works", but no one seems to give a convincing answer to the questions Connor asks. Whenever he asks the people in power (or who seek power, like the Templars) what makes them so special that everyone should obey them, they don't have an answer either. What Connor goes through in the game, is what every oppressed group has gone through. They're always told to wait, always told to liberate themselves at the convenience of their oppressors, their grievances are used as bait by those who seek power but they'll forget the same oppressed people who helped them the second they attain power. But their liberation never comes. The only people who can truly liberate are themselves. That's what the deleted monologue was about. His Creed.

[she-is-ovarit]

Listen to sex workers, except for the ones who criticize prostitution and the sex trade and openly describe the trauma caused by their exploitation - they just weren't a right fit for the job.

Listen to the biologists, psychologists, and neurologists, except for the ones who publish credible studies against the idea of brain sex and remark that, actually, a person cannot change their sex - there still exists alternative facts.

Listen to gay and lesbian people, except for the ones who refuse to have sex with trans people, dislike being amorphously referred to as "queer" or find it retraumatizing, and argue that sexual orientation pertains to sex and not gender identity - they're just genital fetishists and sexual predators.

Listen to trans people and gender dysphoric people, except for the ones who don't believe that identifying as something really makes someone something, that sex can't be changed, and that pronoun use determines identity - they have internalized transphobia.

Listen to women, except for the ones who don't believe that "woman" is just a social category and that oppression and discrimination on the axis of biological sex exists - they're just terfs and similar to Nazis.

Listen to intersex people, except for the ones who prefer the term "person with a disorder of sex development", are bothered by dyadic trans people co-opting terminology such as AFAB/AMAB, and speak out against trans surgeries and HRT being done to kids - they're just extremists.

Listen to gender nonconforming people, except for the ones who maintain that their style, nonconforming mannerisms, and/or same-sex attraction does not mean they're not their sex. They're just eggs, they'll turn into trans people soon.

Listen to Latino people, except for the ones who speak out against "Latinx" being coined as a term and a reflection of Euro-American colonialism - they're just traditionalists.

Listen to black people, except for the ones who take issue with "blacklivesmatter" being consistently refocused to "black trans lives matter", consider the argument that female sex-segregated spaces are akin to Jim Crow Laws as racist, and point out that trans murder rates - in which most of these murdered people are people of color - are being used by mostly white trans-identifying male people in arguments for self-serving intentions. They're just transphobic.

Listen to Native people, except for the ones who indicate that "two spirit" doesn't mean what white trans people think it means and worry about Euro-American colonialism further appropriating their culture and language - they're just a minority and are behind the times.

Listen to Jewish people, except the ones who continuously stress that comparing the disagreement with gender ideology to Naziism and genocide is deeply disrespectful, often anti-semitic, and minimizes the experiences of victims of genocide and their families. They're probably not even Jewish.

Listen to Marxists and feminists, except for the ones who point out that female people are treated as a reproductive and sexual resource based upon sex. They're transphobic.

Listen to intersectional feminists, except for the ones who point out that intersectionality that isn't female-focused isn't feminism. They're just terfs.

Don't listen to desisters/detransitioners, except for the ones who maintain the narrative that receiving SRS or HRT did no harm to them or that they're desisting due to 'gender affirming care' working for them. The rest were just cis people in denial of their own gender identity.

[whencyclopedia]

George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer (l. 1839-1876) was an officer in the US Army, serving in the cavalry from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War and the wars against the Plains Indians 1866-1876. Although he became a widely recognized hero during the Civil War, he is best remembered for his death at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Custer established a reputation for recklessness, courage, and self-promotion early in the Civil War and, by 1863, after the Battle of Gettysburg, was a national hero. He blocked the retreat of General Robert E. Lee (l. 1807-1870) in April 1865 and was present at Appomattox Court House when Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant (l. 1822-1885). After the war, he oversaw Reconstruction in Texas before taking command of the newly formed 7th Cavalry in campaigns against the Native Americans of the West.

He led his troops against the Cheyenne people at the Washita Massacre/Battle of the Washita River in November 1868 and, ignoring the terms of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868, marched his troops into the Black Hills in 1874 where he discovered gold. News of this discovery soon brought more settlers and miners into Sioux and Cheyenne territory, igniting the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. At the Battle of the Little Bighorn (25-26 June 1876) Custer and his men were slaughtered by Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux warriors under chief Sitting Bull (l. c. 1837-1890). Afterwards, thanks in large part to the efforts of his wife, Elizabeth Bacon "Libbie" Custer (l. 1842-1933), George Armstrong Custer came to be regarded as a great American hero.

His legacy and reputation held until shortly before the Second World War (1939-45) when scholars began challenging the traditional narrative. Today, Custer is a controversial figure, often condemned for his brutality and ruthlessness. Although Custer should certainly be held accountable for his actions, it must also be recognized that he was primarily advancing the genocidal policies of his government which saw the American Indian as an obstacle to progress, civilization, and Manifest Destiny.

Early Years & West Point

George Armstrong Custer was born on 5 December 1839 in New Rumley, Ohio, to Emanuel Henry Custer, a blacksmith, and his second wife, Marie Ward Kirkpatrick. He was named after a minister as his mother hoped this would encourage him to follow that path. He had three older half-siblings from his mother's first marriage and four full siblings, including Thomas and Boston, who would also join the military and die with him in battle.

He was sent to live with his older half-sister and her family in Monroe, Michigan, to attend school and met the girl who would one day become his wife, Elizabeth Clift Bacon. After graduating, he moved to Hopedale, Ohio, and enrolled at the Hopedale Normal College, pursuing a teaching degree. He began his teaching career in Cadiz, Ohio, in 1856 and boarded at the home of the Holland family, where he fell in love with the daughter, Mary Jane Holland. He hoped to marry her but found little opportunity for advancement in Ohio, so he decided to change careers and apply to West Point Military Academy. Scholar Nathaniel Philbrick comments:

He'd been a seventeen-year-old schoolteacher back in Ohio when he applied to his local congressman for an appointment to West Point. Since Custer was a Democrat and the congressman was a Republican, his chances seemed slim at best. However, Custer had fallen in love with a local girl, whose father, hoping to get Custer as far away from his daughter as possible, appears to have done everything he could to persuade the congressman to send the schoolteacher with a roving eye to West Point.

(47)

Custer entered West Point in July 1857 and, before the end of his first session, had earned 27 demerits. By graduation, he had been given more demerits than any of the other cadets in his class. After graduation in June 1861, he faced court martial for failing to break up a fight between cadets but was only reprimanded as the American Civil War was already underway. Many of Custer's classmates had left to fight for the Confederacy and the Union forces were in dire need of trained officers. Custer was commissioned a second lieutenant and sent to drill volunteers in Washington, D.C.

Continue reading...

[minkparched]

About Bartleby and Sonia's dynamic in Sonic Underground...

Since Sonic Underground is so hated by much of the fandom and VERY FEW fans engage with it outside of an irony-poisoned lens, there's so much subtext and interesting tidbits thrown in that got lost in the wilderness of fandom ghetto. One thing I noticed is the dynamic between Bartleby and Sonia.

Bartleby seems to embody both the "cowardly" and "loverboy" archetype, being a (for the lack of a better word) utter simp for Sonia and promising her he'll "do anything for (her), my pet. Anything" as soon as she uses her ~feminine wiles~ to change his mind into becoming more sympathetic towards her "disreputable" brothers for a scheme against Robotnik. In most of their interactions, Bartleby lights up each time he sees her and despite believing that her brothers Sonic and Manic are bad influences, still genuinely cares for her well-being..

That being said though...

In several scenes, Sonia is in disguise and she often comes across Bartleby. On two occasions, she sees her fiance on a date with another woman and she (rightfully) becomes jealous. In one scene, she's in disguise near a hair salon to investigate unrelated matters and she comes across Bartleby, which makes her nervous. Bartleby, not knowing who spotted him, becomes visibly offended at the thought of being "caught" from whatever he was doing (however, it seemed innocuous). The series sets up a punchline that Bartleby lives some kind of secret (or at the least, separate) life from Sonia and it's a reoccurring joke that shows up whenever Sonia stumbles across Bartleby doing whatever Bartleby likes to do when Sonia is not around.

This also separates him from a character that he's constantly compared to, Antoine D'Coolette. Antoine was Sally's number 1 simp that refused to move on from his blind romantic devotion to her until he faced constant rejections and in spite of all, only gave up once Bunnie showed interest in him. And unlike Bartleby, he did not try concealing anything about himself outside of excessively playing up his bravery to win Sally's affection (well, unless you count Patch as being "Antoine" but then that got retconned by Penders for an admittedly better idea). Although there are some stunning similarities among prototype Antoine Depardieu and Bartleby Montclair, which makes me think that some of Antoine's prototype character motifs did get recycled for the Bartleby character.

Anyway back to the main point. And that is Sonia and Bartleby's relationship dynamic. Another thing that is pretty funny, is how Bartleby and Sonia argue over stupid things even when they're clearly still together like in the Artifact where Bartleby refuses to believe the ball he has in his hand is an explosive sold by Robotnik, accuses Sonia of trying to sell it for Resistance, and says she used to be a nice hedgehog before her brother's corrupting influence.

Certainly, Bartleby's classist views on "peasants" and his borderline racist/xenophobic views of some indigenous Mobians (strangely, Jamaican-accented but wearing Native American headdresses) whose island he wanted to turn into a resort (in the French dub, these connotations are way clearer with him calling them "primitives", while in the English dub he calls them peasants while calling their living conditions primitive) influences his disdainful feelings towards Sonia's "unruly" brothers. It's also especially narratively potent in a canon where class warfare is an established part of the living world and 3 of the main protagonists (Sonic, Manic, and Sonia) represent the different social backgrounds.

Ngl, I live for the drama and the potential storylines that can be sprung out of this dynamic. XD I mean I'm someone who loved pre-Flynn/early Flynn Archie for this reason.

Although Bartleby does seem to get redeemed at the end and has a nice little romantic moment with Sonia before departing to who knows where, I still wonder how that would work if Sonia's new love interest was Knuckles and she dated Stripes during their downtime. Maybe if Sonic Underground continued to a Season 2, he would've officially turned from a Neutral to a Good character and Sonia would be with Knuckles.

[txttletale]

h… how is any of that racist

assuming that you mean my posts about the 5e monster manual entry for orcs and how insanely racist it is--by happy coincidence i have a bunch of sources about this strewn haphazardly across my browser so i'm happy to answer this.

so we will start with this. the words 'tribe' and 'chief' are deeply, deeply racialised. they have been used throughout colonial (and well into modern and present-day!) history to describe groups of indigenous peoples across the world—with implications of 'primitive' people and societies within the Western myth of linear societal progress. europeans have nations and kings--africans and native americans have tribes and chiefs. the 'tribe' is not a neutral concept--it is a concept that was constructed by europeans in positions of global military domination over a century to justify a narrative about the linear progress of civilization to justify domination [1][2]. of course, it's not just the use of the words 'tribe' or 'chief' but their deployment here in the context of what is obviously supposed to be a 'primitive' method of of government--the 'orcish tribe' is inherently violence, a 'savage' society entirely built on "bloodlust" and "fear"

regis stella puts it much better than i could in this account of an early 20th-century travel memoir in Imagining the Other: The Representation of the Papua New Guinean Subject

while we're on this point i figure i'll add all the other language around 'savagery', 'inherent bloodlust' and so on in the monster manual here to further illustrate my point: it's all quite rote and repeats itself a lot.

now, wait, waiiiit, wait a second. wait a moment. hold up what was that last thing

oh thats not good. having to explain why this is racist feels a little like having to explain why its bad to hit people with hammers but i'll do it anyway: the comparison of real-life 'tribes' of people to insects, vermin, and pestilences is a very real element of genocidal rhetoric--from the holocaust [3] to the rwandan genocide [4]. what is the implied correct societal responose to a tribe that is 'like a plague?'

finally, this is the part that made me say "holy fucking shit this is in the 5th edition monster manual?" because it is pure undiluted gygaxian eugenics shit. first of all, the narrative of the ever-swelling horde, the indigenous or Asian people as an undiffernetiated mass of amorphous Other, is an old one and one that's been used to devalue the lives of people of colour and justify violence against 'the horde'. but the part that's absolutely jaw-dropping is the use of the tropes of reproductive racism--the narrative of Black and indigenous hyperfecundity is also an established racist trope, one which was instrumental in the forced sterilisation of Black and Native women in the USA [5] and now manifests itself in the "great replacement" demographic anxieties of modern racism [6] -- think of White Genocide conspiracy theories and the 14 Words. and of course that is to say nothing of the fact that is made very clear and reiterated (and mechanicised in the form of the Half-Orc player race!) that WotC wants to be very clear about how much orcs "readily crossbreed with other races". this is miscegenation anxiety, plain and simple--somethign else stella talks about.

so yeah! hopefully nobody will ever ask me this fucking question again! (this is just across two fucking pages of the monster manual by the way don’t get me started on the shit that’s in the other books! god forbid i even think about campaign modules!!)

[starlightervarda]

So

As someone who has cried at ruins, art and temples my ancestors left behind, at how I can't read or speak our own native language, and how what remains of that is in a liturgical language used in secret by an oppressed religious minority...Butchered Tongue has me in my feelings.

It's so hard to love yourself as you are when the people that had your face have been defaced, demonized and disregarded. Not just by the people that invaded us and imposed their language, culture and religion on us for centuries, but by your own people. Not much survived the centuries of brutal colonialism and religious fanaticism, and even if you had a grace period where more began to appreciate what your ancestors left behind, the push against it, to distance yourself and identify more with the invader's culture and even their ethnicity because they are 'right' by decree of religion, is depressing.

It doesn't help that we now have foreigners holding our artifacts in their museums, and pushing insane narratives about aliens building our monuments. Then there are Americans constantly making claims to our ancestry due to racist conspiracy theories, saying horrific shit about how we're the descendants of invaders and that they are the true heirs despite constant proof otherwise. What's worse is having that narrative supported by the most powerful media in the world, casting anyone but us to play us.

They fetishize our aesthetic, our history, our mythology, our land, but hate those that spawned from it.

The only time I like my face is when I recognize it in the likeness left behind in busts, statues and wall paintings. In reconstructions of mummies that have my skin, hair, eyes and nose. Things that are viewed as ugly now and erased through straighteners, bleaching creams and surgeries so we can look more like the foreigners that invaded us, whether they came from Western Europe or Western Asia.

I may look like them, but I'll never know what they truly sounded like, what they did on day-to-day basis, how they worshipped our native gods, what songs they sang or what they called their grandparents.

So many of us are stuck speaking someone else's language, now matter how nativised that dialect has become, and practicing their religion, even revering the very people that broke in and destroyed everything in their wake to impose their version of everything as 'saviours'.

I wish we were taught our native languages in school, that they were never demonized, and punished into dying. That there were huge movements to preserve what we still have that's uniquely ours, but the more time passes, the less people care. All we have left are names of historical figures, gods and the odd town or city that has been misheard into something else over time.

To all my siblings in lost cultures, demonized history and butchered tongues, I hope we hold on to what we have left.

[bfpnola]

ID 1: “These are your reminders that:

Decolonization is not a metaphor or an abstract theory.

Every action/idea is born within context. This is not happening within a vacuum or the void.

It is not our place to dictate what the “proper response” is to 70+ years of occupation, genocide, and apartheid.

In 1923, even pioneering Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinksy acknowledged Zionism as a colonial project, impossible with the consent of natives.

Americans, your tax dollars (a planned $38 billion from 2017-2028) kill Palestinians. Contact your representatives.

The issue lies in settler-colonialism, not Jewish residents, as Palestine’s rich history demonstrates.

The two-state proposal is conceptually flawed, making it unsuitable for resolving conflict. How? It ignores the root issue of Zionist settler colonialism and the displacement of indigenous Palestinians. It offers solutions to symptoms.

This is not a fair fight. The resistance of indigenous people within the confines of an open-air prison ≠ the might of a nuclear-armed military superpower.

The colonial seeds of Zionism were planted nearly a century before the Holocaust.” End ID.

ID 2: “Statement from 09/08/23: Better Future Program has always, is always, and will always be a staunch ally of the Palestinian people.

Through this statement, BFP reaffirms its commitment to the Free Palestine movement, and stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine in the pursuit of their liberation from settler sovereignty, colonial dispossession, carceral culture, racial apartheid, and European/USAmerican imperialism.

BFP also denounces the Zionist agenda, which seeks to suppress the rightful claim of the Palestinian people to their ancestral homeland, and we reject the notion of a "two-state solution." This "solution" eclipses the fundamentally asymmetrical power difference between the settler-state of "israel" and the nation of Palestine.

Furthermore, BFP rejects the ideals of homonationalism and pinkwashing. For far too long, non-racialized members of the LGBTQ+ community have been complacent in the war crimes committed against Palestinians, all because of the alleged "modernity" of israeli queer life versus the "barbarity” of Palestine.” End ID.

ID 3: “It is time to reject the idea that queerness absolves whiteness/imperialism, and non-queerness justifies the abuse of generations of innocent people.

At BFP, we recognize the need to decolonize the narrative of "israel vs. Palestine" and endeavor to do so by elevating Palestinian scholarship and voices. It is wholly inappropriate to assume expertise where there is none, or to speak over Palestinian activists during dialogue regarding Palestinian liberation.

To summarize, BFP reaffirms that we will always defend Palestine and her people. BFP rejects the Zionist agenda, and its colonial, imperial, and racist trappings. Further, we reject all ideas of homonationalism and pinkwashing applied to israel's conquest of Palestine. Finally, and most importantly, BFP seeks to elevate the voices and expertise of actual Palestinians in this fight against a widespread colonial and genocidal mindset.

— BFP's Muslim + Decolonization Youth Advocate.” End ID.

ID 4: Excerpt from The Jewish Paradox by Nahum Goldman [former president of the World Zionist Organization], p. 99:

“I don't understand your optimism," Ben-Gurion [1st Prime Minister of israel] declared. "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipes us out".

"But how can you sleep with that prospect in mind," I broke in, "and be Prime Minister of israel too?"

"Who says I sleep?" he answered simply.” End ID.

To make clear, BFP does not rejoice over the deaths of civilians. But in the words of Jewish director of ProjectLETS, Stefanie L. Kaufman-Mthimkhulu, “All death & loss is not the same. Violence in response to genocide & ethnic cleansing is NOT = violence for the sake of colonial land expansion. … Jewish people in Israel are not being targeted or killed because they are Jewish. This is the logical outcome of a colonized & dispossessed people's fight to EXIST and not be wiped off the fucking Earth or continue to live under a death-making apartheid state. Please understand."

No more band-aids or superficial fixes! We WOULD NOT be here if not for settler-colonialism, apartheid, genocide, occupation. We WOULD NOT be here if not for hundreds to thousands of Palestinian deaths at the hands of the IDF every year. The historical truths, even acknowledged by Zionist leaders and British records, cannot be hidden any longer. It is journalistic malpractice to continue to obscure the context that begets Palestinians’ desperately warranted responses.

And to those who may have forgotten, ALL OF OUR STRUGGLES ARE INTERCONNECTED. This has to do with YOU too. This is OUR struggle too. Open your eyes. Please.