#not gonna tag anything bibi or kpop related bc that's not why i made this post

[mystiika]

i’m sorry to post so much negativity but the call out post from yesterday was necessary & for this i honestly just need to get this off my chest. i don’t have a personal & am not about to post this to fb so here we are. its more of a personal rant/vent than anything & people are more than welcome to scroll past ESPECIALLY bc this has nothing to do with rp.

it’s my personal thoughts in response to the scandal with bibi currently going on. technically it’s a couple weeks old ( ? ) & the song itself was actually released in january so i have no idea why its becoming a problem now but i only just heard about it last night. it’s been blown way out of proportion tbh but since people are making it an issue i’m gonna do my best to contribute something constructive to the conversation. note that this is highly educational about the reality of the holocaust. & both that & explanation of the scandal all lead up to my personal thoughts on the topic. there’s a lot of context that’s omitted to fit people’s narratives & i’m not about to contribute to that so this is pretty long. i also break down her korean lyric a little more than you see in the basic translations. not gonna say my translation is the most accurate one out there but i am currently studying korean & know that when you switch to english you lose a lot of nuance so it’s only natural that you’re gonna miss some stuff. but if anyone is fluent & thinks i’ve gotten something wrong then feel free to say something ! like i said i’m still just learning.

i’ll also say that if you don’t know much about the holocaust in general besides “hitler was bad & killed a bunch of jews” ( which is no fault of your own ! ) then this post might be interesting to give some more historical context you might not have learned in school.

you’re more than welcome to link people to this post for whatever reason. & i’m not sure anyone would want to, but i ask that you don’t reblog as this does include personal details about some of my family history as well as difficulties i have personally faced as the result of being jewish.

as a disclaimer: there is a heavy focus on the experience of the jewish people for obvious reasons & this in no way negates the struggles other peoples have faced. we’re not the only people that have struggled with some of these issues i mention & i don’t claim that, just as the struggles of other minority groups do not negate my own. we as a jewish people have been repeatedly silenced over the god knows how long we’ve existed so when i eventually discuss personal issues don’t come after me saying that “well you’re not the only one that had ( insert hate crime here ) happen !” i know i’m not, that’s the point of the post. but don’t dismiss me, it’s not a good look for you. also the jewish people are a minority group in most parts of the world & if you disagree, at least read the post before arguing with me about it.

trigger warnings under the cut: nazi terminology, antisemitism, ableism, homophobia, forced sterilisation, death threats, death as a general topic, genocide mention, holocaust mention, slavery mention, racism & covid mention. i also just say nazi a bunch, like a lot.

i’m going to start this off by taking this time to remind you that racism was a huge issue in ww2 & the holocaust. if anything white jews ( or just jews who had aryan features ) were able to “pass” as non-jewish far more easily than people who weren’t white or even just generally “looked” jewish. the nazis promoted xenophobia & racism against all "non-aryan" races. african & asian residents of germany, & roma people, as well as black prisoners of war. they were all victims of nazi racial policies. this included hundreds of african-german children despite having german heritage. to quote hitler, jews were seen as responsible for “bringing [ black ] people into the rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardising the white race which they hate & thus lowering its cultural & political level so that the jew might dominate.” & anyone who wasn’t aryan was seen as “bastardising the european continent at its core.” hence the treatment of the african-german children i just mentioned.

it’s also important to mention that these racial policies did not affect white south africans, anyone white in general & europeans of gentile ancestry from other continents were all exempt. latin americans who had “obvious” germanic or white aryan ancestry were also exempt. why? because of racism. the lighter your skin, the better your chances were.

as a separate note, japanese people were considered “honorary aryans” because of the pact they signed to be a part of the axis. hitler also spoke about this in multiple public political statements, with one in particular talking about how both the japanese & chinese peoples had a right to be proud of their history & admitted that said history was “superior” to that of the german people. so as far as i’m aware, they were the only asian peoples known to have not been deliberately imprisoned or killed. but given the nazi’s treatment of other asian peoples at the time, i don’t doubt that there were a number of them who were subject to the policy anyway. again, why? because of racism.

i’m also going to take this time to mention that while the jewish people & non-white or non-white passing people were among the main targets of the holocaust, that does not negate the fact that other peoples were also heavily targeted whether it was psychologically, physically, or emotionally on top of those who were also killed in the mass genocide we heard about. most notably ( but not exclusively mind you ), this included non-heterosexual people & disabled people. disabled people were among the first to be targeted by nazis & set a precedent for the treatment of jews that would come to follow. a large portion of disabled people across europe were forcibly sterilised due to their disabilities as well a significant number of gay men that were chemically castrated by court order. we also have no idea how many of these men were also institutionalised if they didn’t agree to conform & refuse to continue their “homosexual ways”.

now that some of the historical significance racism had in the holocaust has been mentioned, the majority of the people who were upset or offended by bibi’s use of the term nazi ( which i explain more later dw ) were either of german decent or jewish, or simply third parties who wanted to support the voice of people who were hurt by its use. the fact of the matter is that the holocaust was the most recent major incident in a long line of acts of hate towards the jewish people. & by long line i mean a large majority of our holidays covers “did they try to kill us” & “did they manage to do it”. we were killed, enslaved, children were separated from families, etc... not to mention the numerous attempts to separate us from our religion & culture through repeatedly being conquered by various groups. we talk about miracle after miracle because we believe that it’s because of those miracles that we as a people survived all these things. but the fact that this is our history doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to face some these issues even now in 2021.

i think people forget how rampant of an issue antisemitism is today, media aside ( which i could write a goddamn essay about, including the rpc btw ). our synagogues are the target of bombings & shootings. even a school in toronto that my aunt works at was forced to evacuate because of a bomb threat not long ago. nazi symbolism like swastikas or general hate speech have been gratified across anything you can think of, including the walls of schools i attended growing up.

i had a coworker who had such a hatred for jewish people & anyone that said anything positive about israel that other people i worked with felt it was necessary to tell me he was talking to others, threatening that he was going to hurt or kill me because they thought it was a genuine threat to my safety. i had several of these same coworkers promise not to leave me in a room alone with said person because both they & i were afraid his guy was going to try to hurt me ( or worse ) & i nearly had a panic attack at work when they first told me about it. another incident with this same coworker happened i had taken off jewellery/accessories before work including a leather bracelet that said israel on it that i had gotten when i visited last. i was sure i had left it at work but “no one had seen it”. i found out when i went in to work 2 days later that he had taken this bracelet & hung it over the faucet of the industrial kitchen sink so it could “dry” when it was obvious that it would ( & did ) only suffer from water damage when it was likely no where near the sink when he found it. all because he wanted to destroy it & hurt me when it was clear it was something that was important to me. by this time i had been wearing that bracelet for years & afterwards it was so damaged that i had to stop wearing it for fear of it breaking. with it i also had a ring that had a jewish prayer on it which i can’t imagine he liked much either. & i genuinely think i’m lucky that he didn’t just throw them both out. when my manager continued to do nothing about him & his treatment towards me ( which inconvenienced everyone from coworkers to customers ), i left that job out of concern for my safety.

i have also had to fight & argue about the fact that jewish privilege does not exist because “the jewish people never suffered from racial profiling” ( which isn’t true since a large number of jews aren’t white anyway? ) & because there’s a lot of jewish representation in hollywood even when half of it is just perpetuating hurtful/negative stereotypes. white privilege is not jewish privilege & it’s embarrassing how many times i have had to say that. i have had people constantly dismiss these very real & upsetting experiences i’ve had because they think they or other groups have had it “worse”. i remember one night i was so upset after trying to have a conversation with “friends” about why jewish privilege wasn’t real that i literally called one of my only jewish friends crying because suddenly the fact that the fact i had to quit my job because i was scared for my safety wasn’t enough because “there are a ton of jewish directors in hollywood”. i called him because he was one of the few people i knew wouldn’t try to argue with me when i explained myself. i left that first conversation feeling so goddamn invalidated by people i trusted enough to have a conversation about something that i was already upset by, that it took me hours to calm down. i’ve found it really difficult to talk about my experiences since then because it seems any time i talk about my experiences it’s not bad enough to warrant any sort of sympathy & it turns into a conversation about the struggles other people face. i mean, someone else having a heart attack doesn’t mean i don’t need stitches on a stab wound.

on other occasions, i remember my parents sitting my brothers & i down to check in & make sure we hadn’t experienced anything bad because we were openly jewish. let me repeat that, my parents were so concerned about our well being that they asked on several different occasions if we had ever been targeted. not by family directly, but i’ve been told not to wear my star of david necklace over my shirt in case someone sees it & i’ve seen jewish friends of mine talk about them taking of their kippot ( which is like a religious hat essentially ) in certain situations because it was like having a target on their back. none of that is privileged. again, white privilege is not jewish privilege.

getting back to the holocaust for a moment, i’m not going to go into too much detail just because if i’m being honest, i don’t have that much detail to begin with. my grandfather & his family lived in greece at the time, with all of them very much so involved with & practising judaism. they’d heard of what was happening across europe because of nazis/hitler but the only person my grandfather could convince to flee the country was his cousin. every other member of that side of the family died in the holocaust & an entire part of my family tree was completely wiped out. i lost a huge part of my connection to my heritage & i struggle to connect with my greek roots because all the people who tied me to that are either are dead or were separated from it themselves by having grown up in canada.

as a kid, i also went to hebrew school. & among the many things we were taught, every single year when yom hashoah ( holocaust remembrance day ) came, we retold the story of the holocaust just as we retold the stories of all the previous times different groups tried to wipe out the jewish people. every single year we are given a reminder of what happened & hope that it may never happen again. we were taught the names of people who helped us so that we don’t forget what they did for our people, we were taught the names & stories of people who survived. we were also taught that the word nazi is the term for a people who are based around hatred. we say the term nazi because that’s what they were & still are. that name has weight & the people who were involved do not deserve to be separated from it. but we were also taught about how many of the german people themselves were the victims of hitler & what i’ll call “true” nazis. people were threatened or killed if they refused to join the regime & a lot of people had no choice. we put blame on the perpetrators of the ideals, not on the people who were doing what they thought they needed to in order to keep themselves & their families alive. we do no equate nazis with the german people as a whole because we recognise they are not the same. or at the very least that’s what i was taught.

so as background for the scandal itself, bibi is a korean hip hop artist who recently received a lot of backlash in regards to a rap verse she wrote in the song code clear ( linked HERE if you want to listen to the full song but it’s 21 minutes long so be warned ) & HERE’s a link to a tik tok showing her verse specifically though i can’t confirm the translation is perfectly accurate. the song in full is talking about the situation of the world with heavy emphasis about covid as well as a lot of mention of racism & was a collaboration project that featured 62 individual artists, only one of which was bibi.

the song overall was well received but one of the lines in bibi’s verse was “[ their hate ] is suffocating, they be like nazis”. so first i’m going to link the initial apology she posted to her instagram HERE. her personal apology on instragram was not the only one that was made, there was second apology that was later released by her company’s ceo ( who i’m also a fan of by the way, but for the life of me i can’t find an article to link with the translation of the statement ).

her intentions in the verse made it clear that she was comparing the current injustices of racism to nazi germany & everything that happened with the peoples nazis targeted. whether she knew how deep the issue of racism was within the nazi regime is unclear. honestly i don’t think she did but that’s not really the point. i think she saw the mass genocide of people that didn’t deserve it & compared that with the experiences we’re familiar with in racism as we know it today. personally i think that’s good. she’s making a connection to a moment in history we look back on & recognise that was fucked up. she’s not minimising the magnitude of what happened, if anything she’s reminding us of it. that as a concept something that the jewish people constantly do because we don’t want to forget what happened & the lives that were lost. the holocaust wasn’t something in the distant past the way the maccabees took control of judea & fought against the seleucid king so they could reinstate the jewish religion back in 200 whatever the fuck bce. this was less than 100 years ago. there are still people alive today that lived through ww2 & survived the holocaust.

bibi’s lyrics are also completely taken out of context. people see that she used the word nazi & instantly said that it’s offensive or unnecessary. other people were arguing that it’s perfectly fine to use because it’s “history” or that “most of the people saying it probably weren’t affected during the holocaust” as if what happened doesn’t continue to affect people ( whether they themselves realise they’re being affected or not ). i’ve also seen people comment across various platforms that she shouldn’t be comparing traumas & to a degree that’s true, but the persecution people face is rooted in the same thing. nazi is not a word that’s meant to make people comfortable but it’s also not a slur. it’s the term these people used to describe themselves when murdering & oppressing people in order to “prove” their superiority whether it was the result of antisemitism or racism ( which as i’ve explained, played a much larger part in the nazi regime than people want to admit ) or any of the other reasons i listed earlier.

people don’t want to see the word bc it’s uncomfortable to think about such a dark time in history & they don’t like to be reminded of what happened. other people don’t get that luxury. i get that some german people have guilt about this part of their ancestry & even more people that want to leave it in the past but they don’t get to make that decision. & for the people stating that it’s okay because it’s in the past have completely missed the point. the comparison is there because people are still being targeted undeservedly & for things that are out of their control. not to mention that nazis themselves aren’t even a thing of the past. neonazis are still prevalent today & don’t solely target jewish people. & once more for the class... why? because of racism! just because people don’t associate the constant oppression & murder of people of colour today with mass genocide doesn’t mean that it’s not still happening. she made that analogy because there’s a parallel.

people who were hurt by hearing her lyrics are valid & i’m not saying they’re not. my jewish experience is not the only jewish experience. but just because you don’t want to hear about something doesn’t mean people can’t talk about it. she didn’t “ruin” anything with her use of the word nazi. in her lyrics she’s talking about how racism & hate spreads faster & is more dangerous than covid & she’s not entirely in the wrong by saying that. it definitely spreads faster than covid did, i mean we saw that happen with the increase in attacks against asians all over the world because they were “blamed” for spreading covid & that fear got to people before the virus ever reached them physically. she also talks about how this hatred is a never ending cycle which is also true.

leading into the line people actually took offence to, i’m not necessarily saying that nazi was the best word to use. it’s not a word to be thrown around without thinking but also, she’s using it as an analogy & isn’t directly calling anyone who’s racist a nazi. my main thing is that if you felt attacked by the comparison to the term nazi, maybe evaluate why you think modern racists are different from nazis in history. the hate is the same, the sense of superiority is the same, the desire to wipe out people who they think are “less than” is the same. words absolutely have power & again, i’m not sure she understood the full implication of using nazi in her lyrics but that doesn’t negate her intention of the lyrics & the fact that, technically speaking, she didn’t say anything incorrect.

if anything, the issue with the lyric wasn’t the word nazi itself like it seems everyone is arguing about. it’s the combination of suffocation with the word nazi as well as one of the lines immediately after talking about how the best weapon is a sharp intellect & how with their tongues as their weapons, good will win ( which is really simplifying things translation-wise tbf ). the reason for the possible issue about the line using the word suffocation was the fact that the most common cause of death in concentration camps during ww2 was the gas chambers where people would be locked in side & choke to death, suffocating on the gas that was released.

in her apology, bibi also mentions about how some of what she was trying to say is lost in translation & i definitely agree with that. if you break down the line more, the lyrics are “숨통 조여 they be like nazi”, where 숨통 means windpipe & 조여 comes from verb 조이다, which generally means to tighten but can also be used to describe feeling anxious. so when translated directly into english it is talking about suffocation but korean is infinitely more nuanced than english is. they have a million ways to say the same thing because they have very different implications. realistically a more accurate korean verb to say suffocate would be  질식시키다 which is more closely translated as to suffocate/asphyxiate/choke. in my opinion the lyrics overall read more as people who are like nazis ie who are hateful & hurting/killing people, make her anxious & that’s a totally valid sentiment. you could also argue that it’s a double entendre by referencing how important the phrase “i can’t breathe” has been within the black lives matter movement so it’s still an accurate analogy to make in my opinion.

also some people are actually out here arguing that because she used the word nazi that somehow means she's a nazi sympathiser but anyone who thinks that is fucking stupid so i don’t really feel the need to address that one.

as for the bit about intelligence, i think it was just poor placement more than anything. the idea of a line about intelligence being the best weapon is fine in theory, but intelligence can’t save everyone & people didn’t die in the holocaust because they were dumb. additionally, just because people survived it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a victory. that’s really the only part that rubs me the wrong way but honestly i don’t really blame her for that either? it’s following her talking about how people are fighting & how their voices need to be heard. the holocaust isn’t something that’s taught all that in depth in the korean education system. they cover other things in greater detail because that’s what had a greater lasting impact on the korean people & bibi isn’t at fault for that.

realistically i think people are arguing about the wrong thing & see one comment out of context & run with it. maybe i’m not the majority opinion on this but something being a sensitive topic doesn’t automatically mean it’s inappropriate. i stand by the idea that bibi did nothing wrong but even if she did, she showed clear remorse for hurting people with her choice of words regardless of her intention & said that she would educate herself so that it wouldn’t happen again. people are allowed to make mistakes out of ignorance, it’s if they don’t show initiative to educate themselves afterwards that’s the problem. call people out & hold them accountable when they fuck up, don’t condemn them forever as if they’re a bad person unless they show a pattern or refuse to change ( especially when they weren’t malicious with their intentions as it’s obvious bibi was not ).

anyway that’s my 2 cents. it was kind of difficult to write about but i do feel better now that it’s not all in my head. & if you took the time to read this then i appreciate you & hope you’re having a good day/night