#not saying that german is inherently better

[spacelazarwolf]

ashkenazi is a minhag not a race. ‘ashkenazi jew’ just means ‘my ancestors ended up in the ashkenaz’ or ‘i follow ashkenazi traditions.’ it says less than nothing about what you look like. i could give you the same reply i give everyone who tries to make this argument, that there are plenty of non white ashkenazi jews, that there are plenty of white non ashkenazi jews, that it’s antisemitic as fuck to assert that ashkenazi jews have inherent racial privilege simply for being ashkenazi, but i think that’s the wrong move because i’m not going to meet you in you misconception. i’m going to try to bring you into the actual conversation.

i said this in another reblog but i’ll reiterate. individual whiteness and institutional whiteness are two very different things, and i think the reason these conversations are so exhausting is because 99.99% of the time, “are jews white” is not a discussion of individual whiteness. it’s a discussion of institutional whiteness, which is even more important to have now that many western countries are headed back toward a more explicit institutionalized white supremacy.

individual whiteness is highly contextual. if you have never had any experiences that made you question how people perceived your race, then you’re probably pretty solidly white. if sometimes you get pegged as white but sometimes you don’t, or if you have to put active effort into looking white, that is an entirely different experience than someone who’s never thought about it a day in their life. which is yet another entirely different experience from someone who is always perceived as not white and chooses not to or cannot pass as white. this is, i guess pun intended, not a black and white issue. just because you, a progressive, look at someone and think they look white doesn’t mean a racist isn’t going to look at them and notice their aquiline nose or textured hair or eye shape. there is no line between white and not white, and imo trying to create one is just giving ground to white supremacists, which i for one refuse to do.

but the problem is, people keep trying to apply these observations about individual whiteness to institutional whiteness, not understanding that institutional whiteness is not based on individual skin color. at its core, it’s based in culture. white supremacists don’t think they’re superior specifically because they have white skin. the ideology of white supremacy was created to explain why, in the eyes of white supremacists, their culture was so much better than everyone else’s. you can see this in nazi germany and fascist italy, the fixation on german culture or italian culture being superior. this was their primary motivator. physical appearance was just the thing that was most obviously different between them and other civilizations outside europe, so it was a convenient explanation.

another thing that cannot be understated in this conversation is that white supremacy was created specifically with jews in mind. yes, white supremacists in europe had contempt for different cultures in other countries and there were a lot of horrific ways that manifested. but this conversation is about jews. jews were the foreigners living among them. they had been othering us for centuries. there was always some explanation for why the jews couldn’t have rights or why the jews were the problem, whether it was cultural or religious, it always boiled down to “they aren’t like us.” and when the ideology of white supremacy was forming, a huge part of it was another attempt in a string of attempts to explain why the jews, the “other”, were inferior. it is not up for debate whether or not jews have access to institutional whiteness. we do not, because it’s an institution that was created specifically and explicitly to exclude us by name.

so hopefully with that context it’s easy to understand why “but police aren’t going to distinguish between a [non black] jew and a white person” in a conversation about institutional whiteness is simply a nonargument. it doesn’t engage with the root of the conversation, and at the end of the day all it does is derail it. and that is not helpful for anyone.

schrodinger's jew: jews are and are not white until an antisemite makes up their mind about which type of antisemite they want to be.

[autism-disco]

exams really just go on forever and ever and ever and ever

[glitter-stained]

Damasio, The Trolley Problem and Batman: Under the Hood

Okay so @bestangelofall asked me to elaborate on what I meant by "Damasio's theories on emotions in moral decision-making add another level of depth to the analysis of UTH as a moral dilemma" and I thought this deserved its own post so let's talk about this.

So, idk where everyone is at here (philosophy was mandatory in highschool in my country but apparently that's not the case everywhere so i genuinely have no clue what's common knowledge here, i don't want to like state the obvious but also we should recap some stuff. Also if I'm mentioning a philosopher's or scientist's name without detailing, that means it's just a passing thought/recommendation if you want to read more on the topic.)

First thing first is I've seen said, about jason and the no killing rule, that "killing is always bad that's not up for debate". And I would like to say, that's factually untrue. Like, no matter which side of the debate you are on, there is very much a debate. Historically a big thing even. So if that's not something you're open to hear about, if you're convinced your position is the only correct one and even considering other options is wrong and/or a waste of time... I recommend stopping here, because this only going to make you upset, and you have better stuff to do with your life than getting upset over an essay. In any case please stay civil and remember that this post is not about me debating ethics with the whole bat-tumblr, it's me describing a debate other people have been voicing for a long time, explaining the position Damasio's neuropsychology and philosophy holds in this debate, and analyzing the ethics discussed in Batman: Under the Red Hood in that light. So while I might talk about my personal position in here (because I have an opinion in this debate), this isn't a philosophy post; this is a literature analysis that just so happens to exist within the context of a neuropsychological position on a philosophical debate. Do not try to convince me that my philosophy of ethics is wrong, because that's not the point, that's not what the post is about, I find it very frustrating and you will be blocked. I don't have the energy to defend my personal opinions against everybody who disagrees with me.

Now, let's start with Bruce. Bruce, in Under The Hood and wrt the no kill rule (not necessarily all of his ethics, i'm talking specifically about the no kill rule), is defending a deontological position. Deontology is a philosophy of ethics coined by christian🧷 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The philosophy of ethics asks this question: what does it mean to do a good action? And deontology answers "it means to do things following a set of principles". Basically Kant describes what are "absolute imperatives" which are rules that hold inherent moral values: some things are fundamentally wrong and others are bad. Batman's no-kill rule is thus a categorical imperative: "Though Shall not Kill"🧷, it is always wrong to kill. (Note that I am not saying Bruce is kantian just because he has a deontology: Kant explained the concept of deontological ethics, and then went up to theorize his own very specific and odd brand of deontology, which banned anything that if generalized would cause the collapse of society as well as, inexplicably, masturbation. Bruce is not Kantian, he's just, regarding the no kill rule, deontological. Batman is still allowed to wank, don't worry.)

In this debate, deontological ethics are often pit up against teleological ethics, the most famous group of which being consequentialism, the most famous of consequentialisms being utilitarism. As the name indicates, consequentialist theories posit that the intended consequences of your actions determine if those actions were good or not. Utilitarism claims that to do good, your actions should aim to maximise happiness for the most people possible. So Jason, when he says "one should kill the Joker to prevent the thousands of victims he is going to harm if one does not kill him", is holding a utilitarian position.

The debate between deontology and utilitarism has held many forms, some fantastical and some with more realistic approaches to real life like "say you're hiding from soldiers and you're holding a baby that's gonna start crying, alerting the soldiers and getting everyone in your hideout massacred. Do you muffle the baby, knowing it will suffocate and kill it?" or "say there's a plague going on and people are dying and the hospital does not have enough ventilators, do you take the one off of the comatose patient with under 0.01% chance of ever waking up to give it to another patient? What about 1%?", etc, etc. The most famous derivative of this dilemma, of course, being the infamous trolley problem.

This is what is meant when we say "the UTH confrontation is a trolley problem." The final confrontation at the warehouse is a variation, a derivative of the utilitarian dilemma that goes as follows: "if someone was trying to kill someone in front of you, and that murder would prevent the murder of thousands, should you try to stop that murder or let it happen?"

Now, here's a question: why are there so many derivatives of the trolley problem? Why do philosophers spend time pondering different versions of the same question instead of solving it?

My opinion (and the one of much, much smarter people whose name i forgot oops) is that both systems fail at giving us a satisfying, clean-cut reply. Now, most people have a clean-cut answer to the trolley problem as presented here: me personally, I lean more towards utilitarianism, and I found it logical to pull the lever. But altering the exact situation makes me change my answer, and there is very often a point where people, no matter their deontological or utilitarian velleities, change their answer. And that's interesting to examine.

So let's talk about deontology. Now my first gripe with deontology it's that it posits a set of rules as absolute and I find that often quite arbitrary. 🧷 Like, it feels a little like mathematical axioms, you know? We build a whole worldview on the assumption that these rules are inherently correct and the best configuration because it feels like it makes sense, and accidentally close our mind to the world of non-euclidian ethics. In practice, here are some situations in which a deontologist might change their mind: self-defense killing, for example, is often cited as "an exception to the rule", making that rule de facto non-universal; and disqualifying it as an absolute imperative. Strangely enough, people will often try to solve the trolley problem by deciding to kill themselves by jumping on the tracks 🧷 which is actually a utilitarian solution: whether you're pulling the lever or you're jumping on the tracks, you are choosing to kill one person to stop the people from being run over. Why does it matter if it's you or someone else you're killing? You're still killing someone. Another situation where people may change their answer would be, like "what if you needed to save your children but to do so you had to kill the ceo of united healthcare?" Note that these are only examples for killing, but the biggest issue is that deontology preaches actions are always either good or wrong, and the issue with that lack of nuance is best illustrated with the kantian problem regarding the morality of lying: let's say it's the holocaust and a family of jews is hiding in your house. Let's say a nazi knocks on your door and asks if there are people hiding in your house. You know if you tell the truth, the jews in your house will be deported. In that situation, is it morally correct to lie? Now, Kant lived before the Holocaust, but in his time there was a similar version of this problem that had been verbalised (this formulation is the best-known derivative of this problem btw, I didn't invent it) and Kant's answer, I kid you not, was still "no it is not morally acceptable to lie in that situation".

And of course, there are variations of that problem that play with the definition of killing- what defines the act of killing and can the other circumstances (like if there's a person you need to save) alter that definition? => Conclusion: there is a lot more nuance to moral actions than what a purely deontological frame claims, and pushing deontology to its limits leads to situations that would feel absurd to us.

Now let's take utilitarianism to its own limits. Say you live in a world where healthcare has never been better. Now say this system is so because there is a whole small caste of people who have been cloned and genetically optimized and conditioned since birth so that their organs could be harvested at any given moment to heal someone. Let's say this system is so performant it has optimised this world's humanity's general well-being and health, leading to an undeniable, unparalleled positive net-worth for humanity. Here's the question: is this world a utopia or a dystopia? Aka, is raising a caste of people as organ cattle morally acceptable in that situation? (Note: Because people's limits on utilitarianism vary greatly from one person to another, I chose the most extreme example I could remember, but of course there are far more nuanced ones. Again, I wasn't the one to come up with this example. If you're looking for examples of this in fiction, i think the limits of utilitarianism are explored pretty interestingly in the videogame The Last of Us).

=> Conclusion: there is a lot more nuance to moral actions than what a purely utilitarian frame claims, and pushing utilitarism to its limits leads to situations that would feel absurd to us.

This leads us back to Under the Hood. Now because UTH includes a scathing criticism of Batman's no kill rule deontology, but Jason is also presented as a villain in this one, my analysis of the whole comic is based on the confrontation between both of these philosophies and their failures, culminating in a trolley dilemma type situation. So this is why it makes sense to have Bruce get mad at Jason for killing Captain Nazi in self-defense: rejecting self-defense, even against nazis, is the logical absurd conclusion of deontology. Winick is simply taking Bruce's no-kill rule to the limit.

And that's part of what gets me about Jason killing goons (aside from the willis todd thing that should definitely have been addressed in such a plot point.) It's that it feels to me like Jason's philosophy is presented as wrong because it leads to unacceptable decisions, but killing goons is not the logical absurd conclusion of utilitarianism. It's a. a side-effect of Jason's plot against Bruce and/or, depending on how charitable you are to either Jason's intelligence or his morals, b. a miscalculation. Assuming Jason's actions in killing goons are a reflection of his moral code (which is already a great assumption, because people not following their own morals is actually the norm, we are not paragons of virtue), then this means that 1) he has calculated that those goons dying would induce an increase in general global human happiness and thus 2) based on this premise, he follows the utilitarian framework and thus believes it's moral to kill the goons. It's the association of (1) and (2) that leads to an absurd and blatantly immoral consequence, but since the premise (1) is a clear miscalculation, the fact that (1) & (2) leads to something wrong does not count as a valid criticism of (2): to put it differently, since the premise is wrong, the conclusion being wrong does not give me any additional info on the value of the reasoning. This is a little like saying "Since 1+ 3= 5 and 2+2=4, then 1+3+2+2 = 9". The conclusion is wrong, but because the first part (1+3=5) is false, the conclusion being wrong does not mean that the second part (2+2 =4) is wrong. So that's what frustrates me so much when people bring up Jason killing goons as a gotcha for criticizing his utilitarian philosophy, because it is not!! It looks like it from afar but it isn't, which is so frustrating because, as stated previously, there are indeed real limits to utilitarianism that could have been explored instead to truly level the moral playing field between Jason and Bruce.

Now that all of this is said and done, let's talk about what in utilitarianism and deontology makes them flawed and, you guessed it, talk some about neuropsychology (and how that leads to what's imo maybe the most interesting thing about the philosophy in Under the Hood.)

In Green Arrow (2001), in an arc also written by Judd Winick, Mia Dearden meets a tortured man who begs her to kill him to save Star City (which is being massacred), and she kills him, then starts to cry and begs Ollie for confirmation that this was the right thing to do. Does this make Mia a utilitarian? If so, then why did she doubt and cry? Is she instead a deontologist, who made a mistake?

In any case, the reason why Mia's decision was so difficult for her to make and live with, and the reason why all of these trolley-adjacent dilemmas are so hard, is pretty clear. Mia's actions were driven by fear and empathy. It's harder to tolerate sacrificing our own child to avoid killing, it's harder to decide to sacrifice a child than an adult, a world where people are raised to harvest their organs feels horrible because these are real humans we can have empathy towards and putting ourselves in their shoes is terrifying... So we have two "perfectly logical" rational systems toppled by our emotions. But which is wrong: should we try to shut down our empathy and emotions so as to always be righteous? Are they a parasite stopping us from being true moral beings?

Classically, we (at least in my culture in western civilization) have historically separated emotions from cognition (cognition being the domain of thought, reasoning, intelligence, etc.) Descartes, for example, was a philosopher who highlighted a dualist separation of emotion and rationality. For a long time this was the position in psychology, with even nowadays some people who think normal psychologists are for helping with emotions and neuropsychologists are for helping with cognition.(I will fight these people with a stick.) Anyway, that position was the predominant one in psychology up until Damasio (not the famous writer, the neuropsychologist) wrote a book named Descartes' Error. (A fundamental of neuropsychology and a classic that conjugates neurology, psychology and philosophy: what more could you ask for?)

Damasio's book's title speaks for itself: you cannot separate emotion from intelligence. For centuries we have considered emotions to be parasitic towards reasoning, (which even had implications on social themes and constructs through the centuries 📌): you're being emotional, you're letting emotions cloud your judgement, you're emotionally compromised, you're not thinking clearly... (Which is pretty pertinent to consider from the angle of A Death in the Family, because this is literally the reproach Bruce makes to Jason). Damasio based the book on the Damasio couple's (him and his wife) study of Phineas Gage, a very, very famous case of frontal syndrome (damage to the part of the brain just behind the forehead associated with executive functions issues, behavioural issues and emotional regulation). The couple's research on Gage lead Damasio, in his book, to this conclusion: emotions are as much of a part of reasoning and moral decision-making as "cold cognition" (non emotional functioning). Think of it differently: emotional intelligence is a skill. Emotions are tools. On an evolutionary level, it is good that we as people have this skill to try and figure out what others might think and do. That's useful. Of course, that doesn't mean that struggling with empathy makes you immoral, but we people who struggle with empathy have stories of moments where that issue has made us hurt someone's feelings on accident, and it made us sad, because we didn't want to hurt their feelings. On an evolutionary level (and this is where social Darwinism fundamentally fails) humanity has been able to evolve in group and in a transgenerational group (passing knowledge from our ancestors long after their death, belonging to a community spread over a time longer than our lifetime) thanks to social cognition (see Tomasello's position on the evolution of language for more detail on that), and emotions, and "emotional intelligence" is a fundamental part of how that great system works across the ages.

And that's what makes Batman: Under the Hood brilliant on that regard. If I have to make a hypothesis on the state of Winick's knowledge on that stuff, I would say I'm pretty sure he knew about the utilitarism vs deontology issue; much harder to say about the Damasio part, but whether he's well-read in neuropsychology classics or just followed a similar line of reasoning, this is a phenomenally fun framework to consider UTH under.

Because UTH, and Jason's character for the matter, refuse to disregard emotions. Bruce says "we mustn't let ourselves get clouded by our emotions" and Jason, says "maybe you should." I don't necessarily think he has an ethical philosophy framework for that, I still do believe he's a utilitarian, but he's very emotion-driven and struggling to understand a mindframe that doesn't give the same space to emotions in decision-making. And as such, Jason says "it should matter. If the emotion was there, if you loved me so much, then it should matter in your decision of whether or not to let the Joker die, that it wasn't just a random person that he killed, but that he killed your son."

And Bruce is very much doubling down on this mindset of "I must be stronger than my feelings". He is an emotionally repressed character. He says "You don't understand. I don't think you've ever understood", and it's true, Jason can't seem to understand Bruce's position, there's something very "if that person doesn't show love in my perspective and understanding of what love is then they do not love me" about his character that I really appreciate. But Bruce certainly doesn't understand either, because while Jason is constantly asking Bruce for an explanation, for a "why do you not see things the way I do" that could never satisfy him, Bruce doesn't necessarily try to see things the way Jason does. And that's logical, since Jason is a 16 years old having a mental breakdown, and Bruce is a grown man carrying on the mission he has devoted himself to for years, the foundation he has built his life over. He can't allow himself to doubt, and why would he? He's the adult, he's the hero, he is, honestly, a pretty stubborn and set-in-his-ways character. So, instead of rising to the demand of emotional decision-making, Bruce doubles down on trying to ignore his feelings. And Jason, and the story doesn't let him. Bludheaven explodes. This induces extremely intense feelings in Bruce (his son just got exploded), which Jason didn't allow him to deal with, to handle with action or do anything about; Jason says no you stay right there, with me, with those emotions you're living right now, and you're making a decision. And there's the fact Bruce had a mini-heart attack just before thinking Jason was dead again. And there's the fact he mourned Jason for so long, and Stephanie just died, and Tim, Cass and Oracle all left, and the Joker is right there, and Jason puts a gun in his hands (like the gun that killed his parents)... All of that makes it impossible for Bruce to disregard his emotions. The same way Jason, who was spilling utilitarian rhetoric the whole time, is suddenly not talking about the Joker's mass murder victims but about he himself. The same way Jason acts against his own morals in Lost Days by sparing the Joker so they can have this confrontation later. That's part of why it's so important to me that Jason is crying in that confrontation.

Bruce's action at the end of the story can be understood two ways:

-he decides to maim/kill Jason to stop the insupportable influx of emotions, and him turning around is his refusal to look at his decision (looking away as a symbol of shame): Bruce has lost, in so that he cannot escape the dilemma, he succumbs to his emotions and acts against his morals.

-the batarang slicing Jason's throat is an accident: he is trying to find a way out of the dilemma, a solution that lets him save his principles, but his emotions cloud his judgement (maybe his hand trembles? Maybe his vision is blurry?). In any case, he kills his son, and it being an accident doesn't absolve him: his emotions hold more weight than his decision and he ends up acting against his morals anyway.

It's a very old story: a deontologist and a utilitarian try to solve the trolley problem, and everyone still loses. And who's laughing? The nihilist, of course. To him, nothing has sense, and so nothing matters. He's wrong though, always has been. That's the lesson I'm taking from Damasio's work. That's the prism through which I'm comparing empathy to ethics in Levinas' work and agape in Compté-Sponsville's intro to philosophy through.

It should matter. It's so essential that it matters. Love, emotions, empathy: those are fundamental in moral evaluation and decision making. They are a feature, not a bug. And the tragedy is when we try to force ourselves to make them not matter.

Anyway so that was my analysis of why Damasio's position on ethics is so fun to take in account when analysing UTH, hope you found this fun!

[mariacallous]

American Jewish food is most typically defined as pastrami sandwiches, chocolate babka, or bagels and lox. But I am here to argue that the greatest American Jewish food may actually be the humble hot dog. No dish better embodies the totality of the American Jewish experience.

What’s that you say? You didn’t know that hot dogs were a Jewish food? Well, that’s part of the story, too.

Sausages of many varieties have existed since antiquity. The closest relatives of the hot dog are the frankfurter and the wiener, both American terms based on their cities of origin (Frankfurt and Vienna respectively). So what differentiates a hot dog from other sausages? The story begins in 19th century New York, with two German-Jewish immigrants.

In 1870, Charles Feltman sold Frankfurt-style pork-and-beef sausages out of a pushcart in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Sausages not being the neatest street food, Feltman inserted them into soft buns. This innovative sausage/bun combo grew to be known as a hot dog (though Feltman called them Coney Island Red Hots).

Two years later, Isaac Gellis opened a kosher butcher shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He soon began selling all-beef versions of German-style sausages. Beef hot dogs grew into an all-purpose replacement for pork products in kosher homes, leading to such classic dishes as Franks & Beans or split pea soup with hot dogs. Though unknown whether Gellis was the originator of this important shift, he certainly became one of the most successful purveyors.

Like American Jews, the hot dog was an immigrant itself that quickly changed and adapted to life in the U.S. As American Jewry further integrated into society, the hot dog followed.

In 1916, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker opened a hotdog stand to compete with Charles Feltman, his former employer. Feltman’s had grown into a large sit-down restaurant, and Handwerker charged half the price by making his eatery a “grab joint.” (The term fast food hadn’t yet been invented, but it was arguably Handwerker who created that ultra-American culinary institution.)

Nathan’s Famous conquered the hot dog world. Like so many of his American Jewish contemporaries, Handwerker succeeded via entrepreneurship and hard work. His innovative marketing stunts included hiring people to eat his hot dogs while dressed as doctors, overcoming public fears about low-quality ingredients. While his all-beef dogs were not made with kosher meat, he called them “kosher-style,” thus underscoring that they contained no horse meat. Gross.

The “kosher-style” moniker was another American invention. American Jewish history, in part, is the story of a secular populace that embraced Jewish culture while rejecting traditional religious practices. All-beef hotdogs with Ashkenazi-style spicing, yet made from meat that was not traditionally slaughtered or “kosher”, sum up the new Judaism of Handwerker and his contemporaries.

Furthermore, American Jewry came of age alongside the industrial food industry. The hot dog also highlights the explosive growth of the kosher supervision industry (“industrial kashrut”).

Hebrew National began producing hot dogs in 1905. Their production methods met higher standards than were required by law, leading to their famous advertising slogan, “We Answer to a Higher Authority.”

While the majority of Americans may be surprised to hear this, Hebrew National’s self-supervised kosher-ness was not actually accepted by more stringent Orthodox and even Conservative Jews at the time. But non-Jews, believing kosher dogs were inherently better, became the company’s primary market. Eventually, Hebrew National received the more established Triangle-K kashrut supervision, convincing the Conservative Movement to accept their products. Most Orthodox Jews, however, still don’t accept these hot dogs as kosher.

But over the last quarter of the 20th century in America, the Orthodox community has gained prominence and their opinions, and food preferences, hold more weight in the food industry.

The community’s stricter kashrut demands and sizable purchasing power created a viable market, and glatt kosher hot dogs hit the scene. Abeles & Heymann, in business since 1954, was purchased in 1997 by current owner Seth Leavitt. Meeting the demands of the Orthodox community’s increasingly sophisticated palate, their hot dogs are gluten-free with no filler. Recently, they’ve begun producing a line of uncured sausages, and the first glatt hot dogs using collagen casing.

Glatt kosher dogs can now be purchased in nearly thirty different sports arenas and stadiums. American Jews have successfully integrated into their society more than any other in history. So too, the hot dog has transcended its humble New York Jewish immigrant roots to enter the pantheon of true American icons. So when you bite into your hot dog this summer, you are really getting a bite of American Jewish history, and the great American Jewish food.

[ganondoodle]

(honestly i ... just kinda dont understand why english always changes names so drastically, like please dont take this the wrong way i dont want to be annoying about this but most of the things i have heard the english words for just sound so much more ... childish? like alot of it is kinda made more cute sounding (Gigama/Minigama=frox, Miasma=gloom, Mayoi=bubbul frogs), even tho the names for main characters are kept the same, i never heard of anyone having problems with idk, yuno/yunobo being called that instead of .... william or something, it really just feels like a disservice to english speaking players like, get it, its a game for KIDS lol- at least in my opinion, but i dont wanna derail this again ;O;)

took me a long while to realize that miasma is called gloom in english, i thought people were calling the hands gloom-hands as a cutesy name fnjvgn,kdfvnsdnjskl

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’ve seen people describe English as “simplified” and I think we need to differentiate between something being simple and something being efficient.

English is a relatively efficient language as far as just conveying information goes. This doesn’t mean that English is better or that English speakers get across information faster. Most people get across information at the same speed. That’s why speakers of Spanish or Japanese for example, languages where you need to use a lot more words to convey the same idea, speak so quickly. And why speakers of English or Mandarin speak slowly.

Whether you like using more words for specificity or context and suffixes, etc. to get across your point probably depends on a combination of your personal preference and your own native language.

As a native English speaker learning Spanish I’m like. Why do I need to use so many words? Why is every sentence such a mouthful? But that’s because the other languages I speak are English and some German. My brain isn’t used to using that many words.

No grammar structure is inherently more superior and no grammar structure inherently takes up less space on the page. Like the old joke of when Twitter doubled its character limit Japanese speakers could fit another paragraph in while German speakers could fit another word or two. Japanese’s writing system just takes up less space even though it takes more words to say things than German does. And German is partially efficient in speech because of all its compound words, which take up a lot of space.

[marxistlesbianist]

How do I stop getting more and more terrified of the upcoming Trump administration. I know on a material level Harris would not be much better but every new cabinet pick and headline makes the liberal in me scream and cry, I'm a trans woman just starting her transition and I'm scared I will never become the person I want to be. I'm scared it's too late for me. I need a Marxist perspective, what do I do?

Unfortunately marxism cannot provide you with any way to avoid fear as such, but this does not mean it is useless here. Marxism as an analytical method helps us to see the social/economic mechanisms affecting our lives as they really are, rather than as the quasi-divine forces which liberalism supposes them to be. I and many others have found that looking at the world in this more grounded manner has the effect of lessening our anxiety, but how you react to this vision of material reality is still up to you.

That being said, here is a rough outline of a marxist outlook on the US political economy to–day, which might help you to ground through the anxiety of the election results:

The US empire is an empire in decline. This is not the fault of any single politician, but of the inherently unstable ground on which capitalist economies are built. Capitalism necessitates constant market growth, and with nearly the whole world already captured by the US economic order, this is an increasingly impossible demand to meet. As climate change worsens the third world countries exploited by the US are pushed to either drown under ceaseless natural disasters, or revolt against the economic system distroying their ecology—in both cases the US hegemony is weakened and our great empire dies by a thousand cuts. The only way to avoid economic crisis is to move away from the capitalist mode of production all together, but bourgeois politicians will only ever offer us incomplete solutions to the problems they have created.

Fascism is the liberal response to economic crisis. Throughout the history of the 20th century, we have seen that even the most socially progressive liberal “democracies” have morphed into fascist monstrocities when the capitalist economy is threatened. Voting in ostensibly progressive candidates without seriously challenging the political economy won't save us--as the people of Germany learned when the liberal chancellor Hindenburg appointed Hitler as the head of state after beating him in the election. This happens because fascism is at its heart the imperialist system turned inwards; when the German bourgeoisie were no longer able to sustain their economy by exploiting colonized countries like Namibia, they revitalized their economy by building a more advanced version of the Namibian colonial state at home.

Because the system is already collapsing in on itself, the primary task for us to organize toward is not challenging the system as it is, but building something better in its place. Of course, the task of defending our movement will necessarily bring us into conflict with the current bourgeois state, but we must remember that the point is not to oppose our enemies but to defend our friends. Even if a socialist president were elected to the white house, their dictates would only mean anything if there existed an organized body of workers prepared to exicute the plan inspite of bourgeois sabatage. Conversely, a sufficiantly large and well organized body of workers would be capable of building socialism in the US no matter what Washington says.

For trans women, the state of affairs following Trump's election is fundamentally no different than it was before November 6th. For 250 years the US government has been hostile to our existence, and yet there are more of us living out of the closet now than there ever have been in this country's history. The liberties which the republican party now threatens to deprive us of were not given to us by liberal politicians, but won inspite of them by the masses of our trans elders fighting tirelessly for themselves and their children—and for so long as we continue the struggle we have inherited, the bourgeois state will never be able to defeat us. Of course, much of this history of struggle has been obscured by the liberal order trying to co-opt our movement, but it is still there to be discovered. (If you only know about Stonewall, I highly recommend you read about the history of STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), an organization founded by some of the trans women who lead that riot.)

Of course, none of this is to say that the situation isn’t terrifying; just that it is also manageable. You may not be able to live the life you wanted, but that doesn't mean you can't still lead a life worth living! The liberal in you screams and cries because she sees that things are bad, but doesn't see how you as an individual can make it right. Adopting a marxist perspective to see not just that things are bad but also how and why, and organizing with your class allies instead of working on your own will silence your inner liberal’s tears as she becomes obsolete. Individual Trump staff picks don’t mean much for us in our project of building a socialist movement. Regardless of who sits in office, the work before us is the same. So let’s get to work—for the revolution of the world!

Lastly, because I always found it annoying when people would tell me to "join an org" without elaborating, here is a brief rundown of some organizations you could look into:

PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) has the widest reach of any nominally communist party in the US. Their top leadership are largely opportunists insofar as I can tell, but the local chapters vary enough that some of them are involved in genuinely productive work.

FRSO (Freedom Road Socialist Organization) is a lot smaller, but with more genuine leadership and a strong ideological line. They are growing, and tend to be much more active in the few areas where they are organized.

DSA and CPUSA (Democratic Socialists of America, and Communist Party of the USA) are both useless as organizations, but you might still find some people there you can organize with—especially of there aren’t any better orgs in your area.

SALT (Socialist ALTernative) basically encompass the worst of all worlds in my experience, but individual experience may vary.

Even if there are no active organizations in your area, joining one and sitting in on zoom meetings is still a worthwhile step forward!

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Hello! Thank you so much for your current Q&A regarding Israel/Palestine. I'm a teacher (for foreign languages) at a secondary school in Germany, so I'm constantly torn between the "criticism of Israel is inherently anti-semitic/the existence and safety of Israel is German state reason", which means, for example, that we as teachers are supposed to suspend students for the day if they come to school wearing the Palestinian scarf etc. (I don't think this is good practice, and I'm glad I haven't had to enforce this yet), on the one hand, and on the other a lot of students from the middle east, even Palestinian students, who are obviously and completely understandibly highly upset about the ongoing situation because their families are much closer to the conflict that I as a white German am. These students often go from understandable criticism ("Why can they just say your home now belongs to them?" regarding the illegal settlements) to downright anti-semitism; I overheard one student saying something (probably Arabic) in an insulting tone to another student that had the word "israel" in it and then he tried to tell me "israel" meant "dog", so it wasn't anti-semitic (what??). I'm uncomfortable with several of the measures my federal state (which is my employer and to whom I have to be loyal or risk getting removed from teaching) has taken regarding the I/P conflict (which has resulted in several Jews and Jewish organisations to be penalised for anti-semitism), but also with the extremely scary vitriol of Muslim students towards Jews and Israel. Your blog in general and your Q&A is giving me a better understanding and ability to convey a more nuanced position to the students in my care. Thank you for this opportunity, and for providing it without usernames attached.

Just to sort of untangle all the issues you're speaking to for readers less informed on how All Of This is playing out across Western and Central Europe, here are the dynamics at play here, and specifically in Germany:

-West and Central European white supremacy, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and racism; particularly as directed towards Arab and Near Eastern populations.

-Palestinian trauma.

-German national commitment towards eradicating anti-Semitism from its society as a way to avoid ever repeating the crimes of its past.

-Hardcore anti-Semitism within Near Eastern Diasporic populations deriving from both the European colonizers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the appropriation (imo) of Palestinian trauma and rage.

-The place of anti-Semitic rhetoric and narratives within Israel-critical speech.

It's a knot it will take a multi-national team of specialists to even begin to untangle.

I'm so glad anything I'm doing here is helping you be able to navigate what is, quite frankly, a clusterfuck.

[canthelpit0]

-Everything you need to know-

-masterlist -taglist Rules/AboutMe/Writing

ABOUT ME

Please call me Fae, it's Nickname for my actual name. Im bi, and I'm a minor. I just choose not to say my age on here. I love Music and often listen to many different Genres. I've always loved writing, but I've never really published anything in any fandom. don't judge my writing; I'm getting better I promise. I feel like I have a very active imagination. but most of the series fanfics that I write will probably not be planned out that much. I haven't been a fan for too long, I'd say, like early-mid 2023.

My page is made to be looked at in dark mode.

music taste: LanaDelRey, Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, Chase Atlantic, Drake, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish, Melanie Martinez, mitski... (I usually just listen to whatever I think sounds good, not because a certain artist made it.)

favorite song: it changes all the time (depending on the month, season, my mood, trends, etc.)

fav youtubers: the triplets, larry, Ben of the week, Shanspear... (I don’t watch a lot of yt)

fav food: mashed potatoes 🛐, Schnitzel 😍, ice cream, chicken, cherrys..

WRITING

allthough i feel like my english is pretty good, it is not my first languge. I'm actually German (well, tukisch really..) so, if there is something weird about the way I explain something inherently American, that’s why 🤷‍♀️

what I will be writing: fluff, angst, smut, hcs. I'll write almost anything (for Chris/Matt), I don't mind. go wild with requests I don't judge. the reader will mostly be poc!friendly, but not outright POC. I’ll write hcs for nick x m!reader, just not full stories

what I won't be writing: I might not write some requests. because I feel uncomfortable writing about something I don't know about/have experienced. For example: black!Reader, Latina!Reader, etc. (Heavy emphasis on race, because if yall have a specific fic in mind where the race has something to do with the story, go ask a writer who is black or Latina to write it, they’ll probably have better depiction than I could ever have.) unless it’s German/turkish reader.

also: R4pe, incest, threesomes, wired kinks (piss, shit, feet, etc)

My requests and Asks are open. feel free to send suggestions or questions. I'm fairly new on Tumblr, so I'm def looking for mutuals. Don't be scared to text me, i love meeting new people 🤭

RULES

Don't steal fics

if you don't like the concept of a fic, just scroll

Don't leave hate.

Criticism and feedback are always welcome in my inbox, just don't be rude about it.

[room-surprise]

do you know or have thoughts on why the dm characters sometimes reference ‘hell’ (as in ‘what the hell?’) given how the series handles religion? is that an anime thing or translation thing or…???

This is such a great question, and fun to answer, so thank you for writing to me!!! I think there's two things happening at the same time: What does hell really mean in English, and what are the characters actually saying in the original Japanese?

If the characters say hell in the original manga or in any translations, I think it is pretty safe to assume that they aren't referring to the Christian hell specifically, since it doesn't appear to exist in the Dungeon Meshi world. They are instead referring to the generic concept of a hell.

NON-CHRISTIAN HELLS

Hell is a word that can refer to a "bad afterlife" in many different world cultures. Obviously all of these cultures have their own names for these places, but when they are translated into English they are frequently referred to as "Buddhist hell", "Hindu hell", "Nordic hell", etc.

The word "hell" was adopted by Christians to describe something in their religion, but does not originate with them.

The modern English word hell is derived from Old English hel, to refer to a nether world of the dead. The word has cognates in all branches of the Germanic languages, and they all ultimately derive from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic feminine noun xaljō or haljō ('concealed place, the underworld'), and can be traced back even further to Proto-Indo European.

When the Germanic peoples were converted to Christianity, the word "hell" was adopted to refer to the Christian underworld. Before that time, hell was called many different things by the Christians, including "Sheol" (grave, death, pit, underworld), "Gehenna" (valley of wailing), "Hades" or "Tartarus." (The first two are Hebrew words, and the latter two are Ancient Greek. All of these words are attempting to describe similar things, a bad afterlife.) These Germanic cultures (most of Northern, Western and Central Europe) are the primary cultural influence of Dungeon Meshi's Eastern and Northern Continents, where the story takes place, and where most of the characters are from. So the word hel/hell would be native to the region, and logical for the characters to use both as a swear word, and also as a reference to whatever afterlife they might believe in.

WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERS ACTUALLY SAYING THOUGH?

Dungeon Meshi is, for better or for worse, written in standard, contemporary Japanese, without any particular emphasis or attempt to sound "old fashioned" or like it is "fantasy", so any changes or additions made in translation to make the dialog or narration sound that way are just that: additions and changes. The changes made during translation aren't inherently bad, but the original text is very neutral, and open to interpretation. For example, Yaad calls Laios "tono/dono" in Japanese, which is an honorific that has no direct English equivalent, but is used between two people of similar social status, when one wants to be extra polite to the other. It does not imply nobility, but respect higher than "mister" and lower than "lord." Most English translations have rendered this as "Sir Laios" which isn't literally what Yaad says, but conveys the idea with something that "feels right" for the setting. It may be that in Dungeon Meshi the characters are literally saying the English word "hell/heru" in Japanese (ヘル), the word jigoku (地獄), which is the Japanese word for Buddhist hell, another word for a specific different underworld or afterlife, they are saying a Japanese swear word, or just using casual/impolite language that doesn't have a direct translation into English, and so needs to be localized into something that will make sense in English.

The last one is most likely what is happening, and I can think of a couple of common phrases that would most likely be translated into "What the hell?":

The polite, neutral way to say "What's that?" or "What [should I] do?" is "Nan-darou? (なんだろう?) or "Nani?" (何), which just means "What?"

The more casual, aggressive, masculine way of saying it is "Nani-kore?" (なにこれ？) which doesn't mention hell in any way, but translates to something like "What the hell?" or "What the fuck?" It's more rude because it's casual speech, but doesn't literally use words for hell or fuck in it. It technically means the same thing as "Nan-darou?" or "Nani?" But translating it the same way would be ignoring the context and tone of the words.

Another thing that's often said in Japanese is "Uso!" (うそ！) Which literally means "lie" or "not true", but in conversation it’s often used to say things like "you're lying!", "For real?!", "really?", or "No way!"

Often these exclamations of "Uso!" don't have anything to do with lying or untruths, they are meant to express surprise (this can't be happening!) or a response to someone talking about an outrageous and terrible event they experienced, like saying "No way! I can't believe that happened to you!" It's also sometimes translated as "What the hell…" or "Unbelievable…"

If the translators tried to keep this sort of thing literal, the manga would be full of lines like:

CHILCHUCK, running for his life from a mimic: What's this?! (Nani-kore?!) (He isn't literally asking what the mimic is, he is expressing surprise, so he should shout some curse words in English like hell, fuck, shit, etc.)

MARCILLE, horrified by the chimera: Lie! (Uso!) (She isn't just saying the word "lie" with no context, she is expressing shock, horror and disbelief at what she sees, so she should say something like "No, that can't be..." or "Impossible...")

I am not an expert in Japanese, but I hope that all of this is helpful to you, anon, and anyone else that's interested in this sort of thing!

[hero-israel]

hi, fellow Jew here

what's antisemitic about the genocide claims? i've heard this a lot, and aside from being Horrific Misinformation, i don't... see why this is antisemitic? like it's bad and wrong but i don't know if it comes from Jew-hate if ykw i mean.

sorry, this could be a stupid question-

When it comes to Jewish institutions, all misinformation, false accusations, and conspiracy theories are inherently antisemitic. Charging Jews with "genocide" in these circumstances - when they are shooting back in a two-sided war, aimed at an armed group, taking steps to encourage and allow civilians to flee - requires a false accusation and a minimization / inversion of terms.

David Schraub:

"For thousands of years, for much of the world, part of the cultural patrimony enjoyed by all non-Jews—spiritual and secular, Church and Mosque, enlightenment and romantic, European and Middle Eastern—was the unquestionable right to stand superior over Jews. It was that right which the Holocaust took away, or at least called into question: the unthinking faith of knowing you were the more enlightened one, the spiritually purer one, the more rational one, the dispenser of morality rather than the object of it. To be sure, some people were better positioned to enjoy this right than others. And some people arrived onto the scene late in the game, only to discover that part of the bounty they were promised may no longer be on the table. Of course they’re aggrieved! The European immigrant who never owned a slave but was at least promised racial superiority is quite resentful when the wages of Whiteness stop being what they once were. Similarly, persons who lived far from the centers of Christian or Muslim power where Jewish subordination was forged are nonetheless well aware of what was supposed to be included in modernity’s gift basket. They recognize what they’ve “lost” as acutely as anyone else.

“The Germans,” the old saying goes, “will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” And not just the Germans. Many people deeply resent the Jews for what Auschwitz took away from them—the easy knowledge that their vantage point was elevated over and superior to that of the Jews, the entitlement to be able to talk about Jews without having to listen to Jews. The desire to neuter the Holocaust is a desire to return to that old state of affairs. And so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Jews exhibit a special ferocity over the meaning of “genocide.” As noted above, the controversy of this MBL language has in large part played out in terms of whether it is even proper for Jews to register an objection. Are we valid contributors to the conversation? Are we equal players in this struggle? This is no coincidence. When people charge the Jewish state with genocide, part of what they are doing—with varying degrees of explicitness—is telling Jews “this concept which obliged us to listen to you no longer can underwrite that duty.” And in that brave old world, they can return to the baseline that had existed for thousands of years—where it was unthinkable, outrageous, blasphemous, for a Jew to have the temerity to contest a non-Jewish articulation of Jewish experience."

[thevioletscout]

Did you know!

Betty Boop was based on an African American jazz singer named Esther Jones, pictured below!

Despite this, Betty Boop has been consistently portrayed as white, and Esther Jones' likeness was used without her permission. 

And if you've actually read this far and not just nodded and scrolled on, congratulations! I was lying to you, that entire thing was bunk.

Esther Jones, better known as Baby Esther or Lil Esther, was only a child when Betty Boop made her debut, her exact age is a mystery due to a lack of records. That image I showed you before? That's of a model named Olya P. for the magazine Retro Atelier in 2008. Also Olya’s not even black, she’s white and either Russian or Ukrainian.

Betty Boop was indeed visually based off a jazz singer and actress, but it was Helen Kane, a white woman. Clara Bow, another white singer, is also sometimes cited as an inspiration, but with less evidence. 

It was Helen Kane who found out her likeness was used without permission and filed a lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Fleischer Studios for it. While he would later wholeheartedly admit it, he denied the likeness as part of his testimonies. In the process, he argued that Kane had taken most of her songs and style from Baby Esther. However, according to Wikipedia it’s possible a lot of the evidence for that was fabricated in an attempt to discredit Kane.

So to be more precise, Betty Boop was based off a white woman who might have based her image off a little black girl.

Also, the topic of Betty Boop's intended race gets a little silly regardless given that she was first conceptualized as an anthropomorphic poodle. While it's not exactly unheard of for the 1930s, I don't think they were really focusing on coding her as a specific race at that moment.

The cartoon Minnie the Moocher (remember this) would even depict Betty Boop as coming from a German immigrant family. Many speculated she was even Jewish due to this as well as the Fleischer brothers and her voice actress Mae Questel both being Jewish, but Benjamin Ivry of Forward pointed out that her family's meals were not Kosher so this was unlikely. 

Now you might be thinking; okay but what's the harm in portraying Betty Boop as black? Can’t black people reclaim this one character for themselves? And honestly, I kinda agree. Personally I think Betty Boop is one of those characters that can be ANY race, not just white or black, given her ambiguous and stylized features. I love seeing black women cosplaying Betty Boop or her being portrayed as black in art.

However, the reason I bring this up is because I personally think false or misleading information does not make for good representation. Especially when it leads to situations where artists have to explain themselves for giving Betty Boop light skin when the reason cited otherwise is blatant misinformation. Though thankfully the one interaction I have had about it before posting this was very polite.

Not to mention, this kind of thing maybe not necessarily buries but distracts from the very real contributions and accomplishments of black people in Betty Boop's history.

Let's talk Cab Calloway, for example.

Cab Calloway was a singer and bandleader acclaimed for mixing jazz with vaudeville. He was the first African American to sell one million copies of a single record, and collaborated with Fleicher Studios for three animations, Minnie the Moocher, Snow White, and The Old Man of the Mountain. In these, he would perform a song, the first and last even being directly named after his music, and he was even directly rotoscoped while dancing. 

I can't find any sources for who approached who for these collaborations, but I feel its needless to say there's an inherent respect for Calloway and his work in these cartoons. For a black man in the 1930s. And they didn’t even hide it, Minnie the Moocher and The Old Man of the Mountain features live footage of Cab Calloway and his very visibly black band.

These cartoons bleed passion from both the singer and the animators. And if you’ll excuse the sidenote, I watched those cartoons as part of my research and even today his music is still absolutely enchanting. 

And Calloway was not immune to racism just because of his success either. He and a friend, Felix H. Payne Jr. were even victims of police brutality by officer William E. Todd in 1945 when they were attempting to visit Lionel Hamptom at the whites-only Pla-Mor Ballroom.

His work matters. Betty Boop was only one small part of his career, the man did a lot in his time, but he brought something truly amazing to the table.

There are real people whose accomplishments deserve to be recognized, but I feel they often get pushed aside in the efforts to make up representation that was never actually there under the false belief that there was none in the first place.

Hell, this entire thing is a discredit to the real life of Esther Jones herself!

She was a literal child who’s date of birth and especially death are unknown. She gained fame in her hometown Chicago which led to her becoming an international celebrity, touring Europe as an honored representation of African Americans alongside Josephine Hall. Then she basically retired as a teenager and disappeared from the public eye.

And what is her memory nowadays? As a sexy flapper that supposedly inspired Betty Boop’s creation.

Even knowing this was false, I had to fight back so much misinformation while making this. This photo right here? I was led to believe this was a photo of an adult Esther Jones, but it’s not! We don’t have photos of her as an adult! This is a completely different, unidentified, woman photographed by James Van Der Zee!

And quite frankly, as a white woman I feel like a jerk having to be the one to tell black people that actually no Betty Boop was based on Helen Kane, not Esther Jones.

So in conclusion, STOP MAKING SHIT UP.

[Sources:

Betty Boop - Wikipedia

Cab Calloway - Wikipedia

Baby Esther - Wikipedia

Модель Оля | BETTY BOOP Wiki | Fandom

Dizzy Dishes (1930)

Minnie the Moocher (1932)

Snow White (1933)

The Old Man of the Mountain (1933)]

[freshstitches]

Hi! You mentioned "continental knitters who get into Nazi stuff" - would you be willing to explain that? I hadn't heard about that and would like to learn from history rather than repeat it.

Here are some things that people have said to me when I never asked for their help or opinions:

"This is the German/nordic way to knit, it's the best." And they will not accept other regional traditions. This is a red flag, but not always a bad conversation. Many styles of knitting are fast and efficient.

The issue is, a few of these conversations go to a weird place. "What is your heritage?" Followed by "If they taught you that way, maybe they weren't real Germans. Do you still have family there." The last people who asked whether they were real Germans are the reason I don't have any family there.

Be respectful of other textile traditions, don't say one is inherently better just because you like it. Everyone has different abilities and preferences. It's also simply false that continental style is faster or better for all. When I do a lot of 2 handed colorwork, the posture for continental knitting activates my tendonitis. I knit fast, I purl fast, I have no trouble knitting 3 stitches together. There's no need

[reddest-flower]

The fascist party was one of the first to be financed by the largest industrialist in Germany, Hugo Stinnes. In the period from 1924 to 1927, the Hitlerite party was already supported by a number of major concerns and banks. At that time, the party was financed by the metal industrialist Ernst Borsig, the manufacturer Edwin Bechstein and the head of the Deutsche Bank Emil Kirdorf and others. Starting from 1928, the aces of heavy industry, the Gelsenkirchen concern, the capital magnates Fritz Thyssen, Albert Vögler, the Krupps (Gustav and Alfred Krupp) and others, have been especially strenuously supplying the fascist party with money. Thus, the fascist German party, as they say, was nurtured from birth, nourished and raised by the German secret police and the German imperialists. This party was bought in the bud by the German imperialist bourgeoisie. The whole gang, all these “Führers” and Führerlings, starting with Hitler himself, are people who sold themselves entirely to the imperialists, their faithful dogs and obedient servants unquestioningly fulfilling the will of their masters – the largest bankers, industrialists and landowners of Germany. These “masters” dreamed of military revenge, dreamed of the seizure and plunder of all countries.

The fact that the Hitlerite party is the party of the largest imperialist predators and the worst enemies of socialism is quite eloquently told by the capitalists themselves. The well-known tycoon of German predatory capital, the owner of the largest metallurgical concern in the Ruhr, Thyssen, says in his letter published in America to the New York Times on June 9, 1940, “For several years, during which I had the opportunity to observe the Hitler regime as a state adviser and industrial leader, I realized with increasing clarity what a grave mistake I made in the summer of 1932 when, together with Krupp, Kirdorf, Schroeder and others who subsidized the National Socialist Party, I took upon myself, so to speak, the guaranteed responsibility for Hitler’s good behavior towards Germany and the whole world and helped him to come to power.” The “socialist” Hitler, along with his entire party, were bought by Thyssen, Krupp, Kirdorf, Schroeder and others. And Thyssen speaks about this with all frankness in the above letter.

In 1932, Hitler spoke at the Industrialists’ Club in Düsseldorf in front of the Ruhr capitalists’ meeting. Before his masters, Hitler spoke frankly, without the usual hysteria of antics and playing at socialism. This is what he told them then: “You, gentlemen, stand on the point of view that the German national economy can be restored exclusively on the basis of private property. But you can only keep the idea of private property if it is logically justified. This idea must be morally grounded. It is necessary to prove to the masses that private property is inherent in the very nature of things. It would be wrong to conclude that we National Socialists are against capitalism. On the contrary, if we were not there, there would be no bourgeoisie in Germany.” Needless to say, Hitler was frank with his masters. And here he is, indeed, right. The Nazis are not against capitalism. They are the real servants of the imperialists. But why do they still call themselves socialists? Hitler gave an answer to this question to his imperialist masters as well. They are called socialists in order to be able to deceive the people. “Do not deprive people of hope,” Hitler said at the same meeting, “for a better future. On the contrary, inflate it. After all, the garrison of the besieged fortress fights only as long as he hopes that he will receive help from somewhere.”

Who are the National Socialists? Pavel Yudin, 1942

[fierceawakening]

So this post is going to be a bit rough and rambly but… I don’t know how we put this genie back in the box.

Do any of you remember when I’d freshly left the abusive relationship I was in and I read VORACIOUSLY, trying to figure out how I’d been taken in by such an awful person? (I vividly remember telling my dad about her saying I’m sure I’m gay because on my previous relationships with men I never thought I was in love, but this was so intense… well. I still wasn’t sure but I wondered if it might be.)

I read stuff like Why Does He Do That? and I Hate You, Don’t Leave Me. I also read things like The Sociopath Next Door and one of Hare’s books on psychopathy. I’m pretty sure my ex just had BPD, and I hasten to say even there that I have known many other people with BPD who I emphatically don’t think would treat me the way she did. I was trying to make sense of her, not trying to condemn anyone with a label I don’t have. (There are prosocial psychopaths, too.)

Mostly I was trying to make sense of her lack of remorse. She presented it as sexy and exciting—oh no, I don’t ever worry about taking kink too far, I don’t care what people think of me, I never give someone who wronged me a second chance.

I now see these as huge red flags and worried about them even then, but I tend to be someone who obsesses over whether I’m giving people a fair shake, so the idea of getting with her sounded like a fun vacation from scrupulosity.

It was actually “surely the leopard won’t eat MY face,” but I didn’t see it then.

Anyway. Around that time I got into a lot of arguments with people here who felt that putting too much stock into those books was inherently ableist.

The things the books said about lack of empathy, about how someone who lacks empathy treats even close loved ones as objects of use and not as full people, resonated with how I’d been treated by someone who professed to care about me. But it ruffled HARD the feathers of people for whom “lacking empathy” just means “beepy boopy, but not uncaring.” I have no solution to this—I think they’re two different phenomena that unfortunately have the same name (on tumblr. Not sure they do offline.)

Any double way. One thing I kept coming across in that research was the specter of the sociopathic leader. A charismatic public figure who charms a whole community or nation, and once they do that, rule with an iron fist.

The appeal was eerily similar to why I’d latched on to such a gross girlfriend. “Don’t you ever just want to go ape shitt,” basically. What if you don’t have to care? What if you get to put yourself, your family, your tribe, America First?

Doesn’t that take a load off your mind?

Those weird leftists who don’t understand God or gender or American exceptionalism… what if you don’t have to understand them anyway?

What if all you have to do is win?

My books said THAT is why we should continue to think of sociopathy as bad and people who have it as predators. Not because human rights stop mattering if someone isn’t neurotypical but because the attitude is infectious.

A person who thinks that way by default, if they’re charismatic (and many are), can EASILY get someone who doesn’t think that way to start wondering why they bother with perspective taking and empathy and remorse anyway.

Dehumanization is a virus, and people like that are carriers. The more power they have in a society, the more virulent the strain.

Do most people eventually snap out of it? I mean I’d better think so, my sister in law is German.

But how long does it take?

That I don’t know. And that’s what makes me think Trump might win.

And why I continue to think fighting ableism is important but ALSO to think acting like empathy is superfluous is playing with fire.

[hagoftheholler]

Is traditional witchcraft the same as folk magic?

I'd say they are not the same, but they have some similarities. I think it is important to keep in mind that while there are some general things people agree on when it coming to defining traditional witchcraft and folk magic, everybody is going to have a different perspective of what encompasses these practices. It's kinda up to you to figure out your own perspective.

One book I have, "Southern Cunning" by Aaron Oberon, defines traditional witchcraft as two different things: "Traditional Witchcraft [emphasis on the capital T and W] is lineaged non-Wiccan witchcraft. Traditional Witchcraft often includes a coven structure and very specific ritual techniques that vary little between person to person. Conversely, traditional witchcraft [emphasis on the lowercase t and w] refers to non-lineaged, non-Wiccan witchcraft that draws on history, folklore, and bioregionalism influences."

Keep in mind, his reasoning for the emphasis on capital and lowercase t's and w's is to provide better insight on his descriptions later in the book. He also is very upfront that not everybody may agreed with these two definitions, and that is okay.

He further goes to define folk magic, or folkloric witchcraft, as focusing primarily on local folklore, ancestral traditions, and bioregionalism to inform the person's witchcraft. Both folkloric and traditional witchcraft [emphasis on the lowercase t and w] are individualized practices, often lacking any kind of coven or group structure and has high amounts of variety between practitioners who claim the term.

Again, just because I know there are going to be vocabulary police reading this somewhere, the author that wrote these definitions was very upfront about these definitions not being universally agreed upon and that they are broken down the way they are for the sake of the reader being able to better understand the rest of his book.

I'd say that I generally agree with these definitions, with specific focus on how he defines traditional witchcraft as witchcraft that draws on history, folklore, and bioregionalism influences and folk magic/folkloric witchcraft as focusing primarily on local folklore, ancestral traditions and bioregionalism.

Now, anything can become traditional. Anything, anywhere. You could easily narrow down traditional witchcraft by country, though from what I have observed many tend to blend traditional practices from varying countries. That is why there is emphasis on history, folklore and bioregionalism. It really depends on who you're talking to, though.

Folk magic is inherently traditional, but more in the "your granny did this and now you do it" way and not the "these are practices that have been documented over the centuries and we should use/learn from them" way. You don't nesecarrily need any living relatives to practice folk magic in order to learn it, but folk magic does require you to connect with other practitioners at some point to learn. Especially if you are intending to reconnect with ancestral traditions from your ancestor's countries (for example, an American trying to reconnect with their German ancestry and ancestral traditions). This is where the emphasis on local folklore, ancestral traditions, and bioregionalism is important.

I hope this made sense. It's a sorta complicated topic.