#probably accused of lying about being a jew

[graymatteradvocate]

-

[kick-a-long]

My take on Attack on Titan is pretty conflicting. On one hand, as you said, it's classic Holocaust/WW2 inversion. I have a deep feeling that the creator Isayama took a basic knowledge of antisemitism (i.e. the armbands) and applied it to the story. My issue lies in the fact that he never once mentioned that antisemitism inspired his story (I've searched high and low and apparently he pointed to WW2 a few times but that's it...) and I find it very despicable to use Jews as inspiration and never mention us once (unless I missed something but idk). I can't shake off the feeling that he probably used his little knowledge about us and expanded on it using his own mind only to use more antisemitic tropes without even realizing. Now the guy's smart and I'm not trying to say he's dumb or infantalize him but gentiles are very ignorant of us, even when they learn about the Holocaust/WW2, they have a hard time understanding us and knowing about us tbh. I'm pretty confused also because an important point of the story is the Eldians being referred to as "the children of the devil" which is so specific to Jews but he never mentioned us ONCE when speaking about influences/inspirations so I have no clue where his knowledge of us lies. Which isn't a good thing.

Attack on Titan is perfect when it comes to showcasing antisemitism and it frustrates the fuck out of me because here you have the Eldians which are a very great depiction of Jews imo (he may not have mentioned us but it's so blatant that we are the inspiration, it's impossible to miss) and yet 1) it's most likely done on accident by some random gentile who never gave us credit and 2) writing choices/mistakes put it in antisemitic territory. The fact that we didn't create this is mind boggling.

I'm a huge fan of aot even with all its flaws and I actually wrote something insanely long pointing of the similarities of "Eldian oppression" with antisemitism and how Eldians are clearly an alternate version of us. I searched everywhere and somehow no one wrote anything making a (decent) comparison. People hate when real life stuff gets compared to fiction and I get it but the case here is that we are the main inspirations so I personally enjoy examining the similarities.

Now one of the issues I've seen be raised about Eldians clearly being Jews is that: Eldians used to rule the world, they colonized and oppressed everyone so that's the reason everyone hates them. This is obviously not good to pair with the fact that Jews are the inspiration here. I'm conflicted because Isayama's vague/weird writing here makes people believe this is the case but as someone who read the manga a million times, I believe it's supposed to be vague because you're supposed to question if this is even true. I think you're supposed to think "maybe this is false and everyone is lying and rewriting history to hate and oppress the Eldians who just scare them with their powers". There's also the fact that Eldia wasn't the only empire and the Marleyan empire (Marley is the main power house of the world) also did heinous things just like Eldia's accused of and I think this is supposed to get you to think real hard. Either way, it gets into antisemitic territory for sure. But in my paper I wrote, this mimics another feature of antisemitism: the rewriting of history which we have to deal with so they can justify oppressing and hating us and the intellectualization of antisemitism. I gave so many examples.

I think aot perfectly highlights the pure insanity of antisemitism honestly. It showcases how cartoonishly evil it is.

Off topic but this paper I did for fun made me extra frustrated because why are we held to such an impossible standard?! I've also studied other movements by minorities wanting to be liberated and to uplift themselves and just like Zionism, these movements have their good and bad and yet only Zionism gets all the criticism. It's so unfair wtf. I know Zionism has caused more harm in comparison (but those movements are not criticised at all, unless it's by a right winger..) and it deserves criticism for that but so did Communism (which is antisemitic and I call that shit out but I personally understand the reason for Communism's existence and respect that it's going to continue to exist). Once again we are the prototype and they're testing the waters of what's "socially acceptable" to say about minorities by using us as the test dummies!

Okay I'll stop now because I will just keep going haha

I feel similarly. i think i don't like labeling it as antisemitic because antisemitism is centered around jews and has an active and obsessive element that other bigorty doesn't. AoT has a total absence of jews but has used jewish narratives about antisemitism second and third hand to push Japanese nationalism. I guess it's hard for me because I don't consider jewish erasure to be antisemitism as I know it even if it's a big part of anti jewish bigotry. if that makes sense? it's not even intentional jewish erasure in my opinion because it treats antisemitism as a universal thing, which it isn't. i think they, like many people, think antisemitism started with ww2 and ended with it. also that it came out of thin air, that antisemites are good people who are mislead instead of intentionally spreading lies to justify the underlying prejudice ingrained in their culture. it gets the cause and effect backwards.

my reasons for thinking the japanese don't understand jews as separate from all europeans or americans or the shit jews face as being a historic recurring thing is that they are one of only a handful of countries that never had a sizable population of jews, muslims, or christians. and even if someone is buddist or atheist there they usually still follow folk religion traditions.

so it's definitely full of anti jewish bigotry but with no relationship to any established antisemitic theory.

[gryficowa]

The biggest difference in my approach between Russians and Israelis is that both have a different mentality (Because attention, it's not about the fact that Israelis are Jews, seriously, as if it mattered, the only thing that can make it worse is the history where Jews were victims and the Zionists took advantage of this to colonize Palestine), it's just that in the case of a Russian, I usually met LGBT+ people and people who hated what Putin was doing in Ukraine, unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky with Israelis, many of them turned out to be pro-Israel (And of course they had an Israeli flag, because they are such patriots)

But probably because I look at Russians differently, Zionists will accuse me of anti-Semitism (Even though I'm on their pathetic list anyway), it's a pity that they ignore the things I mentioned, many Russians simply don't love Russia like Israelis love Israel, and that's a big difference, and many of them do not listen to their government's propaganda, so these are the key differences that make me more calm when I see Russians than Israelis, because unfortunately, but this difference just makes me look worse at Israelis, and not because they are Jews, but because they are fucking Zionists

Simply assuming it's anti-Semitism when you hate people for being uncritical of their country's crimes is fucked up on many levels

You can support LGBT+ Russians and those disappointed with the crimes of your country in Ukraine, just like you can support Ukraine, because the villain is one person, yes, Putin, he is the culprit, he hurts Russians and Ukrainians, unfortunately, it is not the same with Israelis, many of them they are blinded by Israel and it changes the context, you simply cannot support people who look uncritically at the crimes of their country and constantly justify them, it is simply impossible

I just can't look at Russians and Israelis the same because of all this

Russians are simply more critical when Israelis will still believe in Israeli propaganda and will look at you as inferior because they consider themselves better than you

I want to believe that there are Israelis who support Palestine, but unfortunately they are still victims of propaganda and they believe in many of them, because Israel has been lying for years and it is difficult to break free from many years of brainwashing, unfortunately, there are very few of them and Zionism is simply 3/4 Israel, which makes it not only the government that is the problem, but also the Israelis themselves, which is disturbing on many levels

And unfortunately, even Israelis who fight for Palestine still believe in a lot of propaganda about, for example, Hamas

So yes, the fight for Palestine with maintaining the status quo so that Israel will continue to be a country, which is rather more depressing, unfortunately, many Israelis have been brainwashed from childhood and this is still more than the rest, which does not change the fact that it is still problem with Israelis, because the problem here is not just Israel itself, but also its citizens (Zionism) and you cannot look at them as Russians, whose mentality, as I mentioned, is very different

I'm not saying that all Russians are against Putin, but I'm saying that compared to Israelis, they don't sound like programmed bots who write the same propaganda at every turn

I look at them as people and their actions, so it's sick that you can't be critical of Israelis because suddenly you're anti-Semitic, as if their being Jewish was an explanation for defending genocide, which is a sick way of thinking

I'm simply more willing to support Russians (Yes, I'm for Ukraine, I'm not crazy) than Israelis, not because I'm an "Anti-Semite" (Which is nonsense on many levels), but because they don't behave like bots and don't write propaganda all the time, and they don't have a fucking flag on their profile -_-

I hate Putin because he is a problem, if the Israelis weren't brainwashed like they are, I would be in the same situation, the problem is that everyone knows what it looks like and it's depressing on many levels, but no, it's better to use the "Anti-Semitism" shield instead of getting angry, think about why they don't like you

Yes, I'm talking about this key difference because I have the impression that few people want to notice it and prefer to call everyone anti-Semites rather than wonder why people don't look at Israelis the same way they look at Russians, because how can you support Israelis when many of them support genocide? Or does they deny it? Well, it can't be done

Why have we started using being Jewish as a defensive shield against genocide? This will harm future generations of Jews who will be victims of discrimination, because Zionism will be associated with Jews, and this shit needs to be separated, I don't want Jews to be associated with Zionism and Israel in the future, I just don't want it, I wouldn't wish this even on my worst enemy

But it's probably also anti-Semitic to think about people in the future…

I simply want the memory of the Jews who fought for Palestine to be preserved, and not covered up by the crimes of Israel and Zionism, because history has already erased many people who helped them (Poles, Muslims, there were also Germans, the two and the third were erased much more harder)

I simply do not wish this on the Jews who fought for Palestine, they cannot be erased, because they are heroes and greater ones, because they are hated by those who lie that they care about them, it is simply courage and strength that many people do not have, erasing them would be a crime, so we must take care of the memory of these heroes, so that they would not be erased like Muslims and Germans who fought the Third Reich and saved Jews in the past

I'll just end this post with that

[perfectlyvalid49]

Well, @palefirefox decided to block me, which is actually probably fair, given that I’ve been relentlessly calling him on his bullshit. Before he did though, he did claim that he didn’t say any of the things I accused him of in my numbered post last night, and that I couldn’t find quotes. (bottom of my post included so you can see that it is what he's responding to):

I made the list I made by going through his blog, so some of them might be hard to find, but here’s what I could pull just from what’s on my blog (I highlighted the relevant parts on the longer bits because I didn’t want to be accused of taking anything out of context but there’s a lot to read):

Judaism isn’t a real religion/ Judaism doesn’t allow converts

If Judaism does allow converts it’s a Zionist plot

Palefirefox has “expertise in cultural history” that the members of the culture that is under discussion (Judaism) lack.

Being Jewish doesn’t mean you know more about Judaism than palefirefox does (given the way it was used to “answer” the question, I’m interpreting the below to mean that because Christians aren’t necessarily experts in their religion, Jews aren’t either. Which is actually a fair point, but it doesn’t answer the question of how he knows more, and also it’s easier to know when someone is wrong than to produce the correct answer yourself. I pointed out that the average Christian might not be able to name all of Jesus’s disciples, but they can probably tell that Odin wasn’t one of them.)

He has claimed that antisemitism isn’t a valid term because “Semite” refers to both Jews and Arabs, so Jews can’t use it to refer only to themselves

He has said that he won’t consider any evidence coming from the USA in general, and has disregarded provided links to proof because they weren’t quality (including the OED and BBC websites)

People claiming to be Jewish who are telling him that he’s wrong are probably lying and shouldn’t be believed

Jewish people were probably taught their own religion incorrectly and he knows it better than they do

While he demands that others provide proof of what they say, he flat refuses to provide any proof of his own.

Anyway, if anyone wants to send this on to him so that he can see that the mean lady on the internet has proof, I’d appreciate it.

[taxfraudhousewife]

how far do i go back before i can stop feeling guilty

i know it wasn’t me just my blood

closest i’ll ever get to sweet white guilt

guilt any european might hold so it shouldn’t matter

from sand made soil by way of blood and salt

from soil never mine but i still long like it is

i don’t care — not me

from soil steeped in seasonal flood

from red the poppies grow

i don’t care — not me

if they came for the jews and the slavs and the gays and the muslims

fuck am i supposed to do with that

if they came for the healers and artists

then i have no choice right

i don’t care — not me

if it’s everyone but me might as well shower with them

i got lucky

the right mix of jew and slav and gay and muslim can be nothing at all

the right mix gets to be niece and cousin of everyone else dragged away

why now and not two years ago

is that what happens when you see one palestinian kids brain fall out her fuckin head

maybe it’s actually the worst thing i’ve seen

is that good or bad

every weird fuckin execution makes me think of you

is that what your last waking seconds were

cold and hungry and probably better off dead

i didnt get the humiliation part of genocide until now

it makes me think of you were your last few years spent ashamed

was it cause of how you turned out

do you blame them like i do

you blame them by the masses i know

but by the man do you blame them

had you not been ethnically cleansed would you personally still turn out like that

i hate them hard like it would bring you back

i know you’d hate it but the thought of you fills me with hate for them

you don’t get it cause it’s you but you looked like shit i’m being deadass

you were so skinny and green and it was so fucked up and i just wanted to cry the whole time

you don’t get it i know you don’t care but that was fucked and i still dont understand

i can’t understand and it just fills me with hate for them

all i know or think i do is

they did that shit to you

i wish i knew you before you lost your fuckin marbles

before they stole your fuckin marbles

i know it’s still you just missing several marbles

but it makes me really fuckin sad cause you’re nice

i hated people harassing me to eat i thought you were sabotaging me

i hated the body shaming i thought everyone was lying to sabotage me

maybe it was cause yours sounded less like an accusation

you of all pieces of shit made me eat and i couldn’t make you eat

i know it’s different i know it’s just convergent evolution

still i can’t stomach it

the thing in my head is always

I COULDVE TAKEN CARE OF YOU

then i could’ve been your right hand

isn’t that fuckin dumb as fuck

bold ass assumption for me of all pieces of shit to make

still i could’ve i would’ve

easy for me to say now

is that how lenins and hitlers are born

whatever it is you got me i’ll die for your cause except i won’t cause i’m scared to

sometimes i feel like it wouldn’t feel right to now

never called myself uyghur but an extension of you

not the village not the elders and children just you

really you and husya were the only things holding my heart there

husya is not okay i repeat the husya is not okay

i hoped you might save him as dumbfuck as that sounds

i thought he’s a terrorist and you’re a terrorist so obviously you’re like friends with his boss

hoped too hard you might be friends with his boss

didn’t think to know you’re not iran backed

he used to be normal i did his online russian course in grade nine

in grade ten i saw him for two days and we drank hennessy on the bus

he didn’t talk about it

not a god fuckin damn idea where he is now

like we don’t even know what fuckin country he’s in

would you happen to know

can you see him from all the way up there

is he blowing up malls is he freeing slaves

does he eat well is it hard to get weed wherever he is

you men and your abandoning

if you’re not in cold storage and you care to divinely intervene

and if you feel bad for my grieving you if you might make it up to me

can you watch over him o holy muslim jesus

make him gtfo while he can

[nataliesnews]

Fwd: I am more and more frightened as to what is happening here.....what happens to Palestinians, happens to Israeli Arabs and now also to those on the left 4.2.2024

Natalie Ginsburg <natanyag@gmail.com>bject: I am more and more frightened as to what is happening here.....what happens to Palestinians, happens to Israeli Arabs and now also to those on the left To:

I went with Gershon Baskin to a meeting of the peace organizations at Givat Haviva. I was sorry in the beginning as I had did not feel well and was rather dizzy but I am glad I went though I am very disturbed at the stories we heard about people being called in for questioning for wearing "suspicious" clothing, having written a post or having mentioned the word "shakied" ... which today is identified with being a terrorist.

What did not improve my mood was that our Palestinian friends in Hebron who were not allowed to harvest their olives and not allowed on their land find that the hill has been taken over by the settlers.  There are 20 people in the family, all of whom have lost their jobs and have not worked since the war. All these years we visited them and celebrated Ramadan together and helped with the olive harvest. None of them have ever had a problem before. So we are trying to send them money.

And to add to the dark mood because of some of the stories we heard, there was also the  story of Ellen's neighbour, Rami Matan, who is a hero of the Yom Kippur war.  A retired colonel of 73  It reminds me of Jews who fought in the First World War and died in the Holocaust because they were Jews. You will probably say I am exaggerating but when a man of 73 who is ill and lying in bed with a temperature of over 39.9.   They overturned the house. He is accused of writing graffiti against the army which his son says is a lie......and if he did....that is why he is treated as a terrorist.  Today there was another post that he had been called in again for questioning.  

I cannot find the story but one Arab nurse found herself fired after a colleague  had been annoyed that she had blocked her on face book

This is a picture of four activists. The men are from the south. The parents of the one man were killed by the terrorists and the other man also lost family.  And they still support the fight for a peaceful solution. 

eye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-students-universities-incitement-campaign-targeted

In  the third photo is Warda Sada whom I have known for many years in the peace movement. At the end of the PDF you read about how she was fired....... But also about what other Arabs are going through. One woman 

The young woman holding the hat is a teacher at a school. The hat as you can see has on it the Palestinians colours and also the magen davied. She was wearing it at a demonstration and this police officer started shouting at her to take it off and she refused. The morning of the conference she came late as she had been called in for questioning as a supporter of Hamas. But she said the questioner had been very polite and she wasn't scared. But can you imagine someone being called in for an article of clothing?  

On the news they keep speaking of freeing thousands of terrorists but Gershon says that there are basically a few hundred who are really terrorists and many of them are    women and children  them are imprisoned for throwing stones, and, which should also speak to South Africans who were against apartheid, there are a few  hundreds who have been imprisoned without a trial. And this pdf of the 82 year old woman who was arrested with her caregiver. She suffers from Alzheimer. 

Women make peace were also at the meeting. I heard that they are candidates for the Nobel prize. They have done a wonderful job of joining  Palestinians and  Israeli women and have thousands in the organization. Machom watch has only a few hundred and having started over 20 years ago many of our members are no longer young enough to be as active as they were or have died. But I think that we have done much more over the  years in actual fact as have the villagers' group. 

And for just some light amusement...two young demonstrators last  night

And this is the sign we walked with last night.

"The voice of our sisters calls out to us" 

The two women who are not interested in this are the wives of Netanyahu and that of Herzog.  With all we hear of what is happening to the kidnapped woman and young girls it is shocking. Netanyahu is ready to fight to the last two men......his two sons. One of whom is in Miami with two bodyguards who, I heard last night, are changed every two weeks.

The sign says, "We send you our sympathies" from Miami. Although she is possibly in Israel. He certainly is not and no reporter ever asks Netanyahu if he feels no shame.

signing off. 

[theelf-online]

For the first question, its basically just like when kids pick an obvious feature about someone and then double down on making fun of it. Just like one of the comments I’m Jewish and I also have a big nose. That’s just a fact and I’d be lying if I said otherwise. Obviously not all Jews have large noses, my sister happens to have a small button nose for example. Its hard to pinpoint an origin, but I do know it was a well established negative stereotype before ww1 + the rise of Nazis. If I had to guess I’m going to probably say medieval Europe is where it started? Especially over the Middle East (since many other middle eastern ethnicities have similar noses to the “stereotypical Jewish” nose,).

For the third question that’s just pure antisemitism accusing Jews of killing Jesus. If you want to further than what I’m saying here, the term used is the “Jewish deicide”. I’m pretty sure there is some textual evidence people use as “proof”, however I know nothing about the Bible and won’t pretend to. I’m pretty sure even Wikipedia covers it though. The tldr though is that the Jewish deicide basically goes as far back as Jesus does, although the Catholic church partially back-tracked on that in the 60s (not really. Just said that modern day Jews weren’t at fault and should stop being attacked. Not that Jews never did it)

Hello. Here are some genuine questions that I am afraid to ask. These are in good faith. My autistic ass can't tell if they're Bad questions though.

Why is there a stereotype that Jewish people have big noses? How did that begin? When?

Why do black people's (natural) hair sparkle when wet? My mom's ex had such sparkly hair when it was wet. Is it because it's black, so the reflection off the water is more noticeable? Do the curls help to make it more sparkly? I don't notice type 1-3 black hair being very sparkly, but I do notice type 4 black hair being so so sparkly when wet.

Why do some people say Jewish people killed Jesus, and others claim it was the Romans? I was taught in Catholic school (c. ~2005) that it was Jewish people. Is it a difference between religions? Is it just antisemitism? Both? What's true? (Assuming Jesus was real.)

This has been: questions I'm scared to ask in case they're Bad.

Sorry if they are Bad and please explain how/why so I don't do it Again.

[thoughtsonargentdawn]

On the matter of ERP

Oh, I’ve wondered when it’s best to talk about this particularly contentious topic. Though considering there’s been outright harassment of GMs (Game Masters) about their approach to it recently this might be the pertinent time.

ERP, if anyone reading this doesn’t know is the broad term meaning “erotic roleplay”, its a loaded term in itself to be quite honest - what is erotic to one person may not be to another, subjective terms tend to get very messy in situations when there’s a multiplayer dimension towards it.

Whether or not you engage in it. Many claim they do not but... regardless of the online roleplaying community you will be in, it will happen. Human sexuality is a very interesting, sometimes terrifying thing to see in action. Clearly the only moral viewpoint is to prevent underage players (depending on the country, this definition may vary) from being exposed unduly to clearly things they should not be. I should make it abundantly clear here, those who deliberately target those who they know are underage (by their own country’s laws) and impressionable with the clear intent to manipulate and get some sort of perverse satisfaction out are the problematic individuals. They are thoroughly repugnant and should be taken into therapy for their issues. forcibly if needed. Now, with that out of the way, onto the nuances of the matter. What goes on between two consenting adult players in their own private chat channels (or in a place they aren’t displaying it to others) is truthfully, none of our business. The comparison I would like to give is this - you see two people making out with one another rather publicly on a park bench, this is the equivalent of writing your saucy erp in the middle of Stormwind. You wouldn’t do it offline in such a place, why online? Now two people sending spicy texts to one another while one is on the bus and another one walking down the street? That is the same as doing it over whisper. If you’re trying to peer into someone’s phone and see what’s being written that’s a completely different crime being taken place, and you’re arguably worse than the people doing the erotic actions. Now, two people (or more) in an  instanced area that only those who are consenting to the situation are inside? The equivalent is being in someone’s home behind closed doors doing as they like. You want to know what’s going on there? Again none of your business, and while the authorities (or blizzard) have a right to check, why would they when they have more important things to do? On the topic of blizzard, it is a well known fact that blizzard GMs are trained on day one to expect “unusual” and “weird” things when it comes to roleplay servers. A former member explained on twitch during the great lay-off that so long as consent wasn’t being violated and players were comfortable, they generally let it continue as normal, if it’s in private channels not being exposed to the public, there is little cause for concern. In their paraphrased words “You will see some weird shit on roleplay servers.”

Now onto the murkier areas. An often thrown about argument is that “you can’t verify their age” well yes, you can’t. Much in the same way if you click “I’m over 18″ on any of your favourite adult content websites while being 17 you are in actuality lying about it. Where does the liability fall there? If someone says they are 18 or older and persistently states that, the problem falls then on the dishonest party. Not to mention that in a number of nations the age of adulthood is set lower than 18, further complicating the process. In most European countries it is set anywhere between 15 and 17. Now I know some parts of the community would love to call all european nations nonces or whatever worn out term is used these days, despite being in them themselves... but besides the point  the whole “underage erp” argument is a dramacow itself, over inflated for the purpose of scoring some sort of points.

It’s become the point now that people actively “hunting” down erp or the more heinous crime suspected erp like some sort of online gestapo looking for thoughtcrime are now more of a problem and are compounding the deeper problem even further. How many times have you seen people falsely accused of erp? (Remember above, between consenting adults and in private, blizzard literally really has better things to care about) It happens on a weekly, sometimes daily basis. “Oh i saw A and B in the garrison” - oh really? I mean garrisons are the closest thing we have to housing in this game, so why automatically assume there’s a problem?

“Ah but F and G were in this instance for several hours.” - yes people can roleplay in dungeons, some of the best environments are inside them, Karazhan for example is wonderful for everything from gothic dance halls, theatres and creepy, massive libraries. Court of Stars is the only way to roleplay in Suramar without having to deal with endless re-spawns of mobs.

“But I saw J and K sat beside each other for over an hour in the Cathedral district/Valley of Honor/The Bazaar not speaking in say, they must be erping!” - Or they’re talking about private things to do with their characters that you wouldn’t be announcing to or in fact need to tell to the world unless you’re fishing for attention? And even if they were, recall the whole sending texts to one another scenario.

The simple fact is in many cases these “erp hunters” have had irrefutable proof given that they also erp, making their efforts a complete sham. They aren’t after a “safer server” they’re after good boy points with whatever bizzaro crypto-fascist groups that equates hunting down erpers like “finding the jews” or “purging the commie”. At the same time their overly publicised attempts to “stop erp” just makes the genuinely heinous individuals who predate and go after impressionable and easily manipulated younger players more careful, or even worse, easier to hide under the veil of being aggrieved wrongly because your “cry wolf” over every one not roleplaying to your subjective standards as “an erper” has now reached the point where genuine cases of abuse are being brushed aside because people can’t be bothered to deal with your dramacowing.

But will they listen? Probably not, and the unfortunate thing out of all of this is it poisons the atmosphere of the server even more when you have people running around, rather than roleplaying, they look for perceived faults to use as hammers against their fellow players.

[anotherkindofmindpod]

I just read both interviews, Part 1 and 2 of Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone Interview of 1971. It sounds as though John and the other Beatles DID have a realistic gripe about Paul taking over, directly projects, handing out musical assignments, etc., etc. and I'm sure he had the ego by this point to match! I would probably have become irritated by Paul as well. And no hints or even reading between the lines of John being emotionally hurt by Paul with regard to loss of intimate relationship.

Hello and thanks for writing in, Listener!First, I’d like to point out that we haven’t reached the Lennon Remembers portion of our Break-up Series, and will dig into it much more thoroughly in a future episode (stay tuned!).  

Presumably this ask isn’t in response to anything we’ve actually discussed on the podcast, in which case I feel that I should explain that what we do on our show is reevaluate conventional wisdom and contextualize public statements within the realities of actual behaviors. In other words, not taking things like Lennon Remembers at face value is AKOM 101.

If what we were doing on this podcast was as easy as simply reading the most infamous interview John Lennon ever gave (the one upon which the conventional story of the Beatles break-up is founded), it wouldn’t be much of a podcast or a very groundbreaking analysis, would it?

Second, I’d like to mention that listeners/readers can hear the entire (3.5 hours!) interview on You Tube.  Very evocative with audio!  Wenner’s editing in the print versions often make John sound more coherent and less vitriolic towards everyone but Paul than the audio reveals (i.e. the shitty comments about Paul are always printed but the ones about George, Brian, etc often aren’t).

Next, we’d like to state the usual disclaimer (which everyone is probably already aware of but is a good reminder anyway!):  John later disavowed this interview.  In fact, he was so angry at Jann Wenner for publishing it as a book, it apparently created a permanent rift between the two.  You may choose to view/value this interview as John being super honest, but please consider that in this allegedly “truthful” book/interview, John:

claims George is musically/creatively inferior to John

declares the McCartney album “rubbish”

reveals his belief that he and Paul’s confidence levels are intrinsically, inversely related to one another

says George was so aggressively rude to Yoko that John wished he would’ve punched him over it

proudly admits that he “maneuvered” the other Beatles to get Klein in as manager

bemoans the fact that everyone says Brian Epstein was so great “just because he’s dead” and that Brian cheated and robbed the Beatles

makes derisive comments about “fags” at least five times in the printed version alone and calls Lee Eastman “a wasp Jew, man, that’s the worst kind of person on earth.”

admits to lying in interviews and deflects accountability on the basis of being “just a guy” who mouths off about stuff

As for Paul, John is admittedly all over the place, swinging fairly wildly from nostalgic (reminiscing about having “a good mind like Paul’s” on his side and co-writing with their “fingers in each others’ pies”) to bitter (”Paul thought he was the Beatles,” etc).

As for the accusations that Paul was tyrannical, we’ve addressed these before (particularly in Break-Up Episode 2).  Just as Geoff Emerick, Michael Lindsay Hogg and Doug Sulpy (and even John, when he was feeling more generous) have articulated, we too feel that Paul stepped up and led the band in a time of need and deserves unequivocal credit for that.  We believe much of the subsequent complaining from the other Beatles is akin to the kind of griping one directs at a colleague who gets promoted (“who died and made you king!?”) and while some of it was likely based in genuine irritation at Paul’s communication style, much of it was probably petty.  This is why we are looking at the situation from all angles, to get a better sense of what is reality v. spin.  In any case, we don’t dispute that there were power struggles within the band.Any reader is free to choose John’s side in any/all of these battles.  But our overall takeaway from this particular interview is that John was unloading a lot of pent-up rage; against teachers, fans, Aunt Mimi, his mum, critics, Paul and anyone else who didn’t properly recognize his genius and praise him for it.

“That’s what makes me what I am. It comes out, the people I meet have to say it themselves, because we get fuckin’ kicked. Nobody says it, so you scream it: look at me, a genius, for fuck’s sake! What do I have to do to prove to you son-of-a-bitches what I can do, and who I am? Don’t dare, don’t you dare fuckin’ dare criticize my work like that. You, who don’t know anything about it.”

Based solely on Lennon Remembers, one could reasonably believe John didn’t like anyone but Yoko and Allen Klein (of whom he also speaks with reverence).  Fortunately, John gave a million other interviews in his lifetime, so even though this one is given a disproportionate amount of weight (probably b/c it is the most inflammatory and “raw”) we can compare John’s comments, behavior and art over a broad spectrum of time.  We feel this gives us a better, more thorough and more authentic portrait of John’s POV.  This is a good idea with ANY public figure, but especially important in John’s case, since, by his own admission he has a tendency to say what he feels in the moment and doesn’t necessarily stand by his own statements afterwards.

John in 1976:  “I get a bit absolute in my statements. [laughs] Which sometimes get me into deep water, and sometimes into the shallow.”

To your other point, our overall impressions about John’s feelings regarding  “loss of an intimate relationship” with Paul certainly do not hinge on Lennon Remembers, nor have we ever suggested they do.  In fact, LR is commonly used as the primary proof-point by McCartney detractors and Lennon/McCartney deniers (those who willfully and sometimes passionately  ignore and/or deny the deep love between John and Paul, as described by John and Paul themselves and everyone in their lives) that Paul was a tyrant who destroyed the Beatles with his massive ego.  

We have never disputed the existence of Paul’s ego.  But consider this: John refers to himself as an egomaniac REPEATEDLY throughout this interview.  Why is there a loud faction of people who consider John being an avowed egomaniac perfectly reasonable (sexy even!), but find it unforgivable that Paul is the same way?  Consider these excerpts from Lennon Remembers:

Do you think you will record together again?

I record with Yoko, but I’m not going to record with another egomaniac. There is only room for one on an album nowadays.

How would you assess George’s talents?

[…] Maybe it was hard for him sometimes, because Paul and I are such egomaniacs, but that’s the game.

Who do you think is good today? In any arts…

The unfortunate thing about egomaniacs is that they don’t take much attention of other people’s work. I only assess people on whether they are a danger to me or my work or not.

[Tangential]

But the Beatles were artists, and all artists have fucking’ big egos, whether they like to admit it or not […]

Yes, John rants repeatedly about Paul’s ego during this interview- while he simultaneously declares his own genius and artistic superiority over others. We find it mind-boggling how this irony continues to evade some people, but there it is.  

George Harrison has repeatedly complained about BOTH John & Paul’s egos (and their shared ego IRT “Lennon/McCartney”), but again, this is often ignored in favor of singling out Paul as the villain.  

Furthermore, it’s helpful to bear in mind when consuming Lennon Remembers that John and Yoko had received training in media-messaging by this point and were very savvy at Public Relations.  We know from people close to them that they drafted their stories in advance before offering them to the public. This fact, combined with Lennon’s tendency to “mouth off” means we have the right and responsibility to question and examine John’s claims rather than simply  parrot them mindlessly.

If you are genuinely interested in our take, we recommend our Break-Up Series. We think you will find it well-researched and thoughtful, even if you disagree with some of our conclusions.

Or if you simply dislike McCartney and find him “irritating,” that’s fine too.  Not everyone has to like everyone!

For additional discussion/analysis of Lennon Remembers, I recommend any of several threads on Erin Torkelson Weber’s site, the Historian and the Beatles.

the flawed lens of Lennon v. McCartney

Jann Wenner’s bio

how Rolling Stone shaped the breakup

discussing a podcast appearance

Thank you so much for this ask!  It is always a pleasure to share information.  Have a wonderful day.-The AKOM crew

[nura-winderson]

so for reasons I happen to have a Demonomicon lying around in my house, so I figured why not check on our lovely Obey me! boys to see what folklore says about them?

*possible spoilers ahead*

Lucifer

The translation of the name is “Lightbringer”. The name was to be used to point out the planet Venus, the brightest object on the sky that fights the Sun’s light - explaining how this got transferred to the rebellion against God.

Christan lore refers to the this name as the synonim for Satan, and soon became a forbidden word to be even said out loud.

Hebrew lore remembers Lucifer as the prideful cherub of Eden, the garden of God, his body covered in gold, diamonds, ruby, emerald and several other gems. After God has named him to be the guardian of all living beings, he intended to meet with God as equals and therefore was precipitated first to Earth and later to Seol.

In the 19th century a luciferian religion has risen implying that Lucifer was the positive figure showing through the pages of the Old Testament and has marked Jahve or Adonai the evil entity, even claiming the Lucifer and his followers are the real creators of Earth.

Mammon

The demon of richness, greediness.

His name translates to “money, wealth”, originating from the middle-eastern word mammon, which can be even found in the Bible: “ No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon (money).” (Matthew 6,24). In some translations of the script not everyone has recognized the meaning of the word mammon, which resulted in some translations as a reference to an evil pagan entity, and the demon was born.

In Johannes Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia deamonum he’s remembered as the british embassador of Hell

Leviathan

Lord of the Seas, in Johannes Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia deamonum he’s mentioned as “Admiral of Hell” or “Minister of the Sea”.

His symbol of the most infamous of them all, even used as the emblem of the Church of Satan: a goat- or devilskull in the middle of a downwards pointing pentragram. The pentagram is surrounded by 2 rings and 5 hebrew letters: L V I T N, the hebrew name for Leviathan.

In ancient jewish folklore and also in the Bible he doesn’t appear as a demon but rather as the world’s greeatest aquatic monster. When God created the seas, he decided let Leviathan take the throne underwater and command the seas and all living beings in it. He feeds of aquatic dragons, and when he rages of hunger or thirst he causes water ripplings that take 77 years to calm.

In some folklore he’s mentioned and the gigantic entity that can only be seen in the horizon of the seas, his body so large noone has ever seen it entirely, and has been discribed as swimming in a circle around the oceans biting on his own tail (similar to Jormungand in Norse mythology).

In the Babilonian Talmud Rab Safra has once spotted an enormous being swimming in the ocean, his two horns had engraved inscription that read: “This tiny being which only lengths 300 miles is on it’s way to serve as food for Leviathan”

Satan

Does not have his own title, however the words “Satan” does come up in the chapters of Lucifer and Samael.

Asmodeus

Hebrew legends claim him as the serial killer demon birthed by Lilith and Adam. According to the apocryphal book of Tobit, Asmodeus, smitten with love for Sarah, killed six or her successive husbands on their wedding nights. Following instructions given to him by the angel Raphael, Tobias overcame Asmodeus and married Sarah. Later in the Testament of Abraham he again appears as preventer of spouses’ lovelife.

In other legends he’s not presented as evil as previously, rather as the demon of Ursa Maior he helps in different sorceries. For example in the Testament of Solomon he helped in buiding the Jerusalem Temple along with other enslaved demons. It is also said that when God punished Solomon for his overwhelming arrogance, Asmodeus was the one to claim the throne during his punishment in disguise.

Beelzebub

Lord of the Flies, one of the most infamous and powerful rulers of Hell. The first mention of him in the Bible is when Jesus performes exorcism and is accused of working together with Beelzebub, later even that he himself is the Lord of Flies.

The origin of the name has several theories, including Baal-zebub, God of Ekron, who’s messengers are represented as flies. Another theory points out that the ancient jew cultur had the “zabulus” expession which has a distorted verios of the greek “diabolos” which may has been combined with the phoenician Baal (god, lord), hence creating a “lord of devils”.

In both the Middle-East and Egypt several sacred artifacts have been discovered which gives an idea that some kind of fly-based cult may have existed. Plinius has also left records behind indicating that roman and syrian temples have presented sacrifies for flies and the Lord of Flies here names Achor.

In the Middle Ages Beelzebub was presented as the fallen monarch of the serafs, who stands just below Lucifer in the hierarchy of Hell. In other scripts however he is portrayed as standing just above Lucifer.

In Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal he’s illustrated as a fly who’s wings are covered in skulls and bones.

Belphegor

He also originates back to the Middle-East, his name probably comes from Baal-Peor, Baal meaning God or Lord and Peor being a mountain, he’s the Lord of Peor Mountain, possibly a regional pagan god.

In the Middle Ages he’s referenced as the wealth-bringing demon, later on additionally he’s the helper of those seeking technological or scientifical discoveries. In the Pseudomonarchia daemonum he’s mentioned as the french ambassador of Hell.

Machiavelli’s Belphegor is most likely to be thanked for his fame. In this comedy he’s sent to the human world to find out if spousal loyalty truely exists. He interviewes numerous married men and women only to claim that the rumors are false.

John Wilson’s comedy Belphegor of the Marriage of the Devil as the name implies even matches him up.

Italian and french tv series have also been created with him being the lead character, the latter became a movie later on.

Diavolo

Does not have his own title.

Barbatos

The 8th demon of Lemegeton, always surrounded by four demon kings and three demon legions. If made a pact with, he can provide excessive information on science and may lead to treasures locked away by magic. Knows all the secrets of past, present and future and can communicate with animals.

Simeon

Does not have his own title in the book, however he does appear in the Eastern Ortodox Church, claiming he is one of the 72 translators of the greek Old Testament.

Luke

Does not have his own title, but he might be the angelic verios of Luke the Evangelist who did become Saint Luke and is patron saint of artists, physicians, bachelors, surgeons, students and butcher.

Solomon

Does not have his own title, but King Solomon is referenced several times as the sorcerer enslaver of demons. The Testament of Solomon is not considered canonical in either jewish or christian lore however it does contain numerous theological and magical themes ranging from Christianity and Judaism to Greek mythology and astrology that possibly hint at a Christian writer with a Greek background. He posseses a ring with the Seal of God (a pentagram pointing upwards) which he received from the archangel Michael and which gives him the power to command demons.

He eventually gains power over Beelzebub who is considered pince of demons, hence Solomon is able to enslave any and all demons.

notes

i think it’s terribly interesting how Levi is a lot closer to gluttony as Beel. I have this headcanon that perhaps originally Levi and Belphie were supposed to be twins (they do look awful similar and think about the character design! they are the only ones with a tail instead of wings), but for some reason (that perhaps we can later learn from the continous story) the characters were swapped.

I also believe that Solomon will have a much bigger part of the story as he has right now.

[squirrelwithatophat]

The minority groups stereotyped as being sneaky and manipulative are always the ones who have historically been forced into hiding for self-preservation reasons.

LGBTQ people have been threatened with violence (both by states and fellow citizens) and pressured to be cisgender and heterosexual. When they pretend to be cishet to avoid aggression and discrimination, then they are accused of being deceptive. Homophobes and transphobes weave wild fantasies about secret queers infiltrating schools to molest children, crossdressers penetrating pure “women’s spaces” to indulge in voyeurism and exhibitionism, and all manner of scary stories. Because accusing someone of being a potential rapist on account of merely having a dick is a great way to encourage disclosure. Conversion therapists feel justified in branding gender non-conforming children as LGBT or pre-LGBT even when these children have literally never identified as a different gender or expressed any same-gender attraction, because obviously they must be hiding it; why LGBT kids might be motivated to hide it is never seriously considered, and the shrinks confidently declare victory in “fixing” kids who were never queer in the first place. Parents openly badmouth the LGBT community in front of their own kids and then express shock and outrage years later because their now-adolescent or adult offspring hid their queerness and/or never showed them any warning “signs” - either their child is a horrible liar or they’re not “really” queer at all! During the “Lavender Scare,” the US government hunted and tried to fire any suspected secret gays in their midst, because all the sneaking around and hiding being gay must make them vulnerable to Soviet blackmail - you know, as if fear of losing a stable job and being blacklisted from future employment wouldn’t create a massive vulnerability to blackmail in the first place.

Jews have faced pressure to convert to Christianity as well as violent persecution, exclusion from jobs, and an array of legal and social handicaps for being openly Jewish. Then anti-Semitic dingbats spin conspiracy theories about crypto-Jews lurking around every corner. If they’re lying about being Jewish, maybe they’re lying about the nefarious Jewish conspiracies and subversive plots! The first rulers of Catholic Spain demanded all Jews convert or go into exile; generations later, the Spanish Inquisition went on a rampage over paranoia that secret Jews had faked their conversions and infiltrated Christendom, corrupting it with their Jewish ways. What might have motivated people to fake religious conversion, I wonder? Any attempt to hide or shed the stigma of being Jewish only fed paranoia and stereotyping about Jewish deception and subversion. By the 19th- and 20th-centuries, rightists would routinely try to discredit people by alleging secret Jewish ancestry - you can still find lists falsely labeling various Soviet officials and political radicals Jewish circulating around the internet today.

A few years ago, there was a bit of a moral panic surrounding the concept of “taqiyyah.” What’s taqiyyah? It’s a Shia teaching that it’s permissible to conceal one’s religious beliefs in the face of persecution. Naturally, right-wing pundits had a field day raving about scary lying Muslims and how their religion teaches them to deceive everyone. In such a tolerant, religiously pluralistic culture where following the “wrong” faith totally wouldn’t make you a target of surveillance or conspiracy theories, clearly only a conniving sociopath would try to hide their religious identity, probably because they’re also secretly plotting terrorist attacks.

Personally, I tend to consider paranoia about minorities “passing” as the surfacing of a guilty conscience. But maybe I’m just trying to get your guard down to trans you when you’re not looking.

the idea that being closeted is being a liar is a heterosexual propaganda that hates queer people protecting themselves. you don't have to come out if you're not safe.

[salixj]

“Please explain, I don’t understand how you are all so happy and singing and dancing when you are here and not at your home.  Please can you tell me why?”

It was 18:05, minutes after Shabbat had gone out in Athens, in the Sofitel Hotel in Athens International Airport. The conversation was between me and Sophia, a puzzled but very courteous front desk manager at the hotel. The reason had been havdallah, the culmination of the singing throughout Shabbat tefillot and meals.

I will get to my answer to her…Yet I first want to backtrack.

So much has been written about the LY 002 Shabbat Athens landing, that I was on. Articles have been published, many of them scathing, attacking someone or some entity. Many written out of justified anger, like mine that I wrote on my phone in the airport after Shabbat, when reading what had been posted against us.

I want to tell a different side of this, now that I am – finally – home, having arrived at 3:15 a.m. I am calmer, and able to see the entire incident, understand the passions on all sides, and reflect, and reach a slightly different conclusion.

Firstly, I feel very bad for the crew of stewards and stewardesses, who were just trying to do their job, and had been brought late to the plane waiting in traffic for hours through no fault of their own, but due to a poor decision by their managers not to leave early due to the weather.  They were bearing the brunt of the shouts of anger from all sides — religious and irreligious — over a decision that hadn’t been theirs. I told them this as I got off the plane, as I saw their pain and frustration and knew they were not in the wrong and had had a really bad day — I hope I managed to comfort them somehow. Maybe they should have reacted better, but then again none of us is perfect.

I feel bad for the irreligious people, who had to wait a further three hours to get a plane home, and who missed out on the special Shabbat experience that I will never forget.

I feel bad that so many accusations continue to fly as I type this. I still feel El Al was in the wrong, but the airline, too, can make mistakes.

However, the aspect I keep coming back to, aside from the accusations of violence that I really, really hope were not true — if there is one thing we must learn it is that dialogue is the only way to resolve our disputes — is the above conversation.

To recap the situation: some 40 minutes before Shabbat was to come in, a swarm of about 180 religious Jews (maybe a quarter of whom would be classified as “Haredi”), most of us talking on the phone or texting with our families in Israel or the USA, descended on the Athens hotel.  Clutching our hand luggage, and for many of us a portion of the meal we had been served earlier, saved in case we had no food for Shabbat (I saved my omelet and roll; they were never eaten), and stealing glances at our watches as Shabbat crept ever closer, we were led into the lobby. The hotel and El Al representatives calmed us down by explaining that meals were taken care of, and that we should pair up in s twos or threes for rooms, and that we had nothing to worry about. There was not enough room for all of us, so approximately 30 people were taken to another hotel.

We found partners (mine were nice, though both snored), formed lines, received our keycards, and exchanged ideas on how to avoid using them on Shabbat (electronics are a problem for those who observe Shabbat).  I am a seasoned traveler, who has guided on numerous occasions for Ramah Israel in Poland, Prague, and Morocco, as well as having been in many a US hotel room for Shabbat, and shared my personal favorites: tape over or put toilet paper in the tab that the latch of the door fits into, or put a towel over the door, and make sure your valuables are in the safe.

Not that many of us had much to put there: I am sure you have heard the oft-used expression, especially before Shabbat, “I have literally nothing to wear”? This time, it was true – all I had were the clothes on my back, some food, and my tallit and tefillin – all the rest of my emergency clothes that I always take with me in case of such a situation had been checked in when the nice operator at the El Al counter in JFK offered to check my rolling hand luggage for free. Kicking myself for doing that, I sprinted back to the airport and found a store selling white Athens souvenir t-shirts, and socks with for some unknown reason, San Francisco emblazoned on them. Once the t-shirt was turned inside out, I had my Shabbat shirt.

Thus bedecked in splendor, I went to Kabbalat Shabbat, missing my family, and with some trepidation over the upcoming Shabbat.

Most of my new comrades were similarly dressed. The lifelike statue at the top of the stairs, that seemed to be a distortion of Michelangelo’s David (made from fake granite, facing the other way and with hand outstretched, but still totally nude), that many were avoiding looking at, seemed to reinforce my fears that this was going to be a strange Shabbat.

Yet, it was strange, but in a wonderful, marvelous, unifying spiritual manner.  One of my new friends, Ben Chafetz, wrote a beautiful piece describing Shabbat that I encourage you to read. It was truly remarkable what Chabad in Athens had done at the last minute, in terms of warm hospitality, abundance of food, a Sefer Torah, and other logistical preparations – many of us gave a donation after Shabbat for a mikveh that doesn’t exist there by way of thanking them.  Equally remarkable was the hotel staff and management, who went out of their way to help us.  Despite my criticism of El Al in my first piece on this that I stand by, they did their best to provide for us once the decisions had been made and the mistakes by others left in the past, and that is worthy of praise as well.

Everyone there had their own sob story of what they were missing in Israel – I hadn’t seen my wife and kids in two weeks, but there were worse stories: a few bar mitzvahs that people were missing, an aufruf, the family gathering at a yahrtzeit, and sadly, one woman who told me that the body of her mother had been in the belly of flight LY002, on its way to burial in Israel, and she had no idea what had happened with it over Shabbat. Perspective can be a wonderful thing.

Yet: we all breathed deeply and let Shabbat work its magic. The most remarkable thing was the atmosphere, that 150 Jews from all walks of life, wearing the strangest Shabbat outfits and bringing a vast plethora of Shabbat traditions to the shul and table, created, without a decision-making process on behalf of anyone.

The Kiddush Hashem was awesome — singing in the different accents, dancing with strangers, divrei torah and shiurim — the atmosphere we created together was one of Simchat Shabbat. The heat-warming breaking down of any barriers due to the circumstances was invigorating, caused many unexpected friendships, and broke stereotypes for us all that hopefully will not be rebuilt. Seeing all these Jews who would probably never have said anything to each other simply because of what the other was wearing, in conversations around tables or in the lobby, was inspiring.  How beautifully ironic that none of this atmosphere was captured to show, because all those creating it were religious and could not use cameras or phones.

There is a saying: You don’t control the situations you are in, but you do control how you react to them” – and that was demonstrated perfectly.  None of us chose to be there, yet we made the best of the situation, and kept a Shabbat that none of us will ever forget.

In the afternoon I went for a walk — sadly the airport is too far from the real sites, so that will have to wait for the next time I am there — ending up on the top floor of the airport where there is a small, free museum that I highly recommend if you are ever there — a collection of what had been found while building the airport. Similar to Israel, Greece has a vast amount of archaeology and immense finds in every nook and cranny, and it was very special looking at coins and pottery made in the second century BCE — as in, exactly the Chanukah time period. I even found myself getting emotional when I realized that here was an Israeli, a tour guide who teaches about Jewish values — then and now, stuck in Greece because he insisted on keeping Shabbat, looking at coins minted during the time that the Ancient Greeks tried to crush Ancient Israel for the “crime” of doing exactly that, and in a few days will be celebrating that holiday back in Israel.

One of the divrei Torah that was given in the shul was a thought I have given many times myself to students. Briefly, the parshat hashavua (Torah portion) we read — Vayetzei — has in it the verse where our Matriarch Leah named her fourth son Judah, meaning “I will thank G-d”; the root “odeh” being the same as “todah,” meaning thanks. If you follow that thought, our name, Jews, means thank you. That, too was a key element of Shabbat — thanking everyone who had made it.

So: after Havdallah, I made it my business to thank every one of the hotel workers that I saw, as did many of us.  As I was doing that, Sophia, the desk manager, asked me in her broken English, what I wrote above:

“Please explain, I don’t understand how you are all so happy and singing and dancing when you are here and not at your home. Please can you tell me why?”

The conversation is too long to write in full, but I explained to her what Shabbat was, and told her a bit about the rituals and theology, answered her follow up questions, quoted to her Asher Ginsburg’s famous saying, “More than the Jewish people have kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jewish people,” and she was nodding politely, but clearly not getting it.

So I added one more thought, that I think she liked, and it is a thought that I am taking with me as this saga continues to swirl:  Shabbat is, amongst other values, about Kehilla, community, togetherness, about taking time to be with one’s family and friends, and about creating and strengthening community. (As was put to me by my new friend Mitch – who lives 5 minutes from me, but whom I had to come to Athens to meet — Shabbat is the time for shmoozing, so let’s schmooze!)

This week, I told Sophia, you saw a new Jewish community create itself under conditions that were beyond its control to alter, but were within its control to use and benefit from. The singing and dancing came from that yearning to strengthen our bonds to our belief and our community, in the same way that Shabbat has done for so many centuries in other conditions.  I have made many friends that I hope I will stay in touch with, and hopefully allowed one desk manager named Sophia to get an inkling into Shabbat in Judaism.

One final thought. Community, like family, is close enough that arguments and disagreements are inevitable from time to time — that is the nature of the beast. Our task, like in the conversation over our flight, is to combat that inclination to let our arguing overtake us and the poison continue to flow, and to end the arguing by listening to the other and understanding them.

I, for one, am done with blame. We were in Athens for a reason, I will always remember that Shabbat, and life is now continuing.

[automatismoateo]

Religion itself is literally the definition of insanity,and religious people should be treated as such (Warning:very long text) via /r/atheism

Submitted September 27, 2021 at 06:01PM by Vladimir_Slavic_Boi (Via reddit https://ift.tt/3EUtR5J) Religion itself is literally the definition of insanity,and religious people should be treated as such (Warning:very long text)

(Sorry for the typos,English is not my native language)

Since this is my first post here,let me present myself.I'm a 18M,ex-Orthodox Christian from Montenegro,one of the most religious countries in Europe,with up to 94,6% religious people (72% Orthodox Christians,19.1% Muslims and 3,4% Catholics) with the rest being either Jews,agnostics or atheists.Well,maybe not one of the most religious,but people here are batshit crazy about religion,and would aggressively attack anyone who attempts to question their beliefs.As you can already guess,atheists aren't welcome here.I kind of try understand this,since religion played a big role in the survival of the Montenegrin people and the state during the Ottoman era,but things got out of control.It got up to the point where religion now plays a big role in our politics,our government members spend more time in churches than in their offices,and the Orthodox people in the country are divided between the supporters of MOC (Montenegrin Orthodox Church) and supporters of SOC (Serbian Orthodox Church),with both churches,mainly the latter one always making big ceremonies with lots of people gathering,which is obviously not a very good idea since we're dealing with this COVID thing,not to mention small number of people are wearing masks or keeping the distance.Also not to mention the SOC last year had a few of its church leaders killed by COVID.But I guess God works in mysterious ways and he just wanted them to be safe in his hands,right? Now that I represented myself and my country to y'all,let's begin with the story.

So,today I was chatting with my friend.We were sitting and talking about certain subjects,like immigrants,ISIS and shit they did in Europe.Nothing related to religion,but that didn't stop him from turning religion as the main subject here.He was talking about how the terrorist are brainwashed by thinking they will end up in Heaven if they kill someone who is not a member of their religion.Then I said how they are also brainwashed by believing they will end up in heaven after death,because nowhere in the Bible or Quran it says some ghosty thing will leave our bodies after they expire.Rather,it says we sleep in our graves until we get revived in the Resurrection Day.Of course,he accused me of lying,started talking about God,souls,and asked me what I think happens after death.As an atheist,I said "well,you die,get buried,rot,and that's it".He asked me to prove that,and said I will go to hell if I don't believe in God,along with everyone else who doesn't.I replied "I can't go to a place that doesn't exist" and asked him are there afterlives for insects,televisions and computers.He called me stupid,once again told me I will go to hell and said that everyone who believes in God and repents his sins to Jesus will go to heaven.I replied "Even Hitler?And these terrorists?".He said "yes".I replied "That just doesn't make any sense to me.Even if that was somehow true,I'm not gonna worship a sky daddy who is okay with someone killing millions of people as long as he believed in God".Then he asked me who created the universe,probably expecting I will say God did it.I replied back "I will reply to that once you reply to me who created the God,and who created the creator of God,and so on".After all that,he still told me I will go to hell,called me stupid and no-brainer.Then he just got up and left.

Unrelated to this story,but yesterday I was also thinking about how religious parents indoctrinate their children into believing in God,and telling them they will go to hell if they don't do it.Like,how are they OK with telling their children they will get eternally tortured in worst ways that can be imagined and they will deserve that if they don't believe in some magical sky daddy who is all-powerful,all-knowing,can cause floods and other natural disasters,but can't heal paralyzed people or people with amputated limbs?

Religion is a contagious mental illness,and I'm not feeling bad or remorseful for saying this now,and I'm not gonna feel bad or remorseful after saying this.Goodbye for now.

[ithisatanytime]

 GIve me a break, this is like the fifth day in a row i have been up well over 24 hours ok. some of you are gonna hate what i talk about here, but i just want you to acknowledge something, i didnt come to these conclusions because i was personally hateful towards any grouping of people, i came to it by accident while studying biology, a major lifelong passion of mine, straight up, i just wanted to learn about frogs and shit, but i kept running into brick walls as my interest in biology grew broader, why cant i learn about this? why isnt anyone trying to figure this out? the experiment would be easy to set up, and the answer is important so why cant we talk about it?

  at first i thought the answer was politeness, and i probably could have gone my whole life believing that and been much happier as a result, if i didnt have an innate passion for learning about this stuff, but i do, so i didnt. years and years of further study, into what this thing is that i was perceiving, thats pulling a shroud over vast swathes of information, what could it be?

  oh fuck its jewish people. even with the proof right in front of my face, i denied it for two full years, even when proof slapped me in the fucking mouth every single day for two years, i wouldnt except it. the last thing i could cling to was there was no believable method of action, i could hardly believe that jews all met in some shady building somewhere and plotted together about how they were gonna stick it to the gentiles. i could CLEARLY SEE that the people motivating, and funding this massive web of lies were almost always jewish, WAYYY beyond the scope of my confirmation bias, remember at this time i was trying hard not to believe that, anything but fucking THAT! right, i grew up training to join the army someday, i read book after book about world war 2, we were the good guys, hitler was gassing millions of people! we saved them! not to mention a literal lifetime of propaganda depicting people who hold racial views as the villian every time, that got easier to let go of once the heros started being racist as fuck towards white people, and the media and colleges were basically like “kill whitey”, it was a jarring about face. and then i found former professor of psychology at the university of california kevin macdonalds book culture of critique,

  i was already familiar with group identity dynamics, and Macdonald masterfully proofs (over and over, relentlessly) that judaism is a group evolutionary strategy, and on some level its instinctual for them to sabatoge their larger host population. i cant begin to do the book justice, each chapter basically starts with an assertion or a theory or a question, and then its just paragraph after paragraph of proofs with tons of mainstream sources sited. after i finished reading it the first time, i sought out the best argument against his book, and my god it was fucking terrible. the guy pinker accused macdonald of cherry picking, which if you read the book, its a ludicrous charge, macdonald responded and eviscerated this guys “critique” they back and forthed for a while, with pinker sticking mostly to his original erroneous charge, it was literally like he didnt even understand the thesis of the book, it was embarrassing. he later admitted to not having read the book, and then was heavily implicated in the EpSTEIN child molestation ring. you know, the one where mossad paid Epstiein to black male americas rich and powerful by taping them fucking underaged prostitutes he hired? that epstein (man who gives a FUCK if he committed suicide or was murdered!?)   obviously that doesnt have any bearing on his argument i just thought it was funny to mention, if you think im lying look up steven pinker right now.                                                                                                                                    the rest of the “critiques” of kevin macdonalds books arent even worth talking about, i considered just pasting them into this post but its already long as hell and interesting to no one else but me so ill spare you, the short version is they just called him an anti-Semite or a white supremacist, or that he had cooties or whatever the fuck else people call people who are telling the truth and they want them to stop. after that it was over for me, the book just lays it all out, the whole history of it, but more importantly the mechanism of it. jews arent some hive mind (no shit) they are just humans, they arent a monolith, they disagree, but they also do conspire, and its literally in their DNA to do exactly what they are doing here, LIE mainly, but they are only lying so they can steal, which is what they have been doing since long before you were born. again, not all jews, and not all responsible for this fucking mess are jewish, but the mess itself is distinctly jewish, its got a little hat on and everything. our country looks the way it does, is dysfunctional in this very specific way, due to massively disproportionate jewish influence.

[marjorierose]

Two events that had nothing in common

Except the location and the set, a huge decaying theater interior with dusty seats and a chandelier lying askew on the ground:

1 - Indecent by Paula Vogel at the Guthrie

This is the first post-Broadway production of this play! It's about Sholem Asch and his 1906 play The God of Vengeance, which toured Europe in Yiddish and then, when it transferred to Broadway in English, got the whole cast arrested for obscenity. I haven't read The God of Vengeance, and I regretted that a little--it was obviously groundbreaking, with the first lesbian kiss on Broadway and what seems like a ruthlessly complicated take on Jewish life. But enough of that play was included in this one that I never felt lost. And there's a lot going on here. From one perspective it's a show about representation of oppressed communities, particularly in times of heightened oppression, when any kind of negative portrayal might be considered unwise. ("Do you know what a minyan is?" Asch asks at one point, when his play has just been read in a salon for the first time and everyone is up in arms about it. "It's ten Jews standing in a circle accusing each other of anti-Semitism!") From another angle it's really a story about fandom, and about art belonging not to its creators but to the people who need it most. Asch gets tired of The God of Vengeance; he doesn't think he speaks English well enough to get involved with the obscenity trial, and when people come to talk to him about it later in life he would rather discuss his novels. He isn't really the main character of this play--that's the stage manager of Vengeance, Lemml. Being at the first reading of the play is obviously a revelation for him, and he uses it as the guiding line through everything that happens to him after that point. That ardor comes from a wholly different place than the argument about good and bad representation. Half the characters in this play are arguing about whether Vengeance is bad for the Jews, and Lemml keeps responding with tears that it changed his life, that it's genius, that it's incredibly important to him; and while that's placed into a very specific world-historical context, it's also something particular and precious and offers him as an individual a way out of where he is.

2 - Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn in concert at the Guthrie

This played on a Monday night when Indecent had a day off, and they did their best to inhabit the set (they each took a turn sitting back on the theater seats within the set to watch each other). This is the second time I've seen these two perform. Here's the funny thing about Béla Fleck. He is an acknowledged genius, arguably the greatest virtuoso his instrument has ever had; and also his instrument is a popular joke. Both of these things are evident when you see him live. They raffled off a banjo ukulele at this concert, and he went over and autographed it while the number was being drawn, in the manner of someone who assumes you want his autograph. When he really digs into a solo the audience goes absolutely wild; his fingers are more capable than I really thought was possible. At the same time he and Abigail Washburn like to joke that when their first collaboration topped the bluegrass charts, it must have sold at least seventeen copies. I once wrote an essay that essentially blamed the Flecktones' greatest hits album for my decision to leave New York, but I probably would not notice if I passed Fleck on the street. They have neither high-prestige respectability nor pop-culture cool. But they do have buckets and buckets of skill.

Fleck and Washburn come from slightly different banjo traditions, which you can loosely identify as "he's bluegrass and she's country," though a big part of it is that she's also a singer. Their collaborations are less jazzy and include a lot more vocals than Fleck's stuff with the Flecktones ever had, and sometimes this makes it seem less sophisticated--you wouldn't have found a cover of "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad" on one of those albums--but again, that's mostly a matter of cultural positioning. Washburn is an incredibly nimble artist, first singing a song she wrote in Chinese based on an ancient poem, and then clogging along with her own vocals, and then modulating her performance of "Bright Morning Stars" to be both sadder and more wistfully triumphant than you've heard it before.

I don't remember how I found the Flecktones (some algorithm from early Pandora or iTunes, I think) but I got interested for the complicated highfalutin stuff, and at that point I would have loudly disavowed any interest in music that could be called country. I managed to get over that at some point in the last ten years, and that's good, because otherwise I might have missed the opportunity to see the banjo the size of a double bass that came out in this show, or to hear these two bantering over a dumb bit about how they met on BanjoMingle.com, or to hear them trading off the lead while playing "Big Country" as a duet, and that would have been a sad loss, because that duet was astonishing and intricate and all the deeper for how I have been led places by that melody before, and how happy I was to let it take me somewhere new.

[schraubd]

Zioness Has a "Manifesto"

Zioness -- a campaign for progressive Zionists launched in the wake of the Chicago Dyke March fiasco -- has a "manifesto". This perhaps offers an opportunity for me to share my thoughts on Zioness, which I've been observing since its initial inception and towards which I maintain a wary but not wholly antagonistic posture. Some people think that Zioness is just a false flag operation -- people who don't actually care about progressivism at all trying to infiltrate and kick-up-dust within progressive communities. There are several bases for this assertion. First, critics point out the links between Zioness' leadership and the Lawfare Project, which tends to take a relatively conservative line on Israel advocacy issues.  Hence, they suggest that Zioness is really just a stalking horse for Lawfare's right-wing agenda. Second, some have claimed that Zioness has taken a confrontational posture towards the progressive groups it marches with that, it is alleged, is designed to provoke and sow division. This, the argument goes, militates against the interpretation that all they really want is inclusion. These arguments don't quite track for me, however. On the first point, there are, for better or for worse, plenty of Jews with non-progressive (even conservative) views on Israel who genuinely care about and support things like reproductive access, gay rights, economic redistribution, and other pillars of the progressive community. I'd be entirely unsurprised if the leaders of the Lawfare Project fit that profile. Call them inconsistent if you like, but I think there is little evidence to suggest they're lying about the cluster of beliefs they hold. And indeed, at least in the social media feed I've been pleasantly surprised at how Zioness has seemed to genuinely pick up and promote progressive causes in a way that feels organic and heartfelt. Groups or commenters that ignore, say, women's rights six days a week and then parachute in to say "what about women in Saudi Arabia?" whenever someone says a bad word about Israel are a dime a dozen. But Zioness has not actually been doing this -- it has promoted progressive causes in ways and in contexts where there is no clear reason to do it other than that they believe in it.

On the second, there's probably something to the claim that Zioness takes on a defiant tone that can be read as hostile. There's also probably something to the claim that people being open and unapologetic about their Zionism in spaces like this will be automatically read as "confrontational." Both of these interpretations, I think, make sense given the genealogy of Zioness as reaction to the expulsion of several Jewish marchers from the Chicago Dyke March for simply holding a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it -- an act which was taken to be sufficient proof of being an outside agitator who wasn't part of the progressive community. One lesson one can take from CDM is that being subdued in one's Jewishness, and adopting a go-along-get-along stance, isn't going to save you -- in fact, it isn't even going to protect you from accusations of tossing "Zionism" in everyone's face. Another lesson is the need to avoid the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic where Zionist are told not to be open in their Zionism when engaging in progressive causes (because it's distracting and making it "about us") and then, when progressive activists seek to define Zionists out of the camp it's justified (because where were all the Zionists during all these other campaigns?). So it doesn't surprise that the new tactic will be out-and-proud, taking a more aggressive and less conciliatory stance. To be clear: this sort of confrontational, disruptive presence is very definitively not my preference. It flies in the face of all my own political instincts. But I've written about how certain modalities of organizing and protesting serve as markers for progressive orientation -- the medium very much being part of the message -- and as much as I hate it there might come a point where it's necessary for more mainstream Jewish groups to pivot towards more confrontational methods of political advocacy that "code" as progressive. Put another way, there's something a bit odd about folks from the IfNotNow wing of Jewish political action complaining that another group is behaving in a disruptive and confrontational manner, and doesn't seem interested in quietly and unobtrusively talking things out without making a big stink in public. To the extent Zioness is confrontational in demanding inclusion, that's wholly consistent with, not in opposition to, speaking in progressive shibboleths. So those are reasons why I don't join the antagonistic camp. Yet I remain wary. And the main reason is that Zioness utterly refuses to even try to think through what progressive commitments mean with respect to Israel. If we return to the manifesto, for example, it's pretty vague on what Zioness actually wants to achieve in the world. Indeed, it tries to hold that vagueness out as a virtue: "We will not define your progressivism or your Zionism." But the fact of the matter is it gives very little guidance regarding what it means, in practice, to "dismantle institutionalized racism in our government and our society." What does that commit us to? What policies are and aren't compatible with that ambition? Most tellingly, Zioness doesn't seem willing to grapple with the fact that progressivism requires certain things out of Zionism. One can believe (and I do) that Zionism and progressivism are compatible while observing the should-be-obvious fact that not all iterations or implementations of Zionism are progressive or consistent with progressivism. Being a progressive Zionist imposes certain obligations with respect to Israel as much as anywhere else; a fact that Zioness seems resolutely uninterested in contending with (and here the link to the Lawfare Project really may do some important explanatory work). So while it claims that it wants to mobilize "progressive Zionists," that term doesn't actually encompass any set of "Zionist" beliefs about Israel so long as the holder is also pro-choice. The progressive Zionist community is already existent in organizations like Ameinu, Partners for a Progressive Israel, and J Street (to name a few), and all of these understand that progressive mobilization around Israel can't be agnostic on matters of Israeli policy or even the best understanding of Zionism. If, as I've often argued, caring about Israel means having opinions about it, these groups care a lot about Israel -- but that manifests precisely because they have particular concepts of what they want Israel to be and an active desire for it to live out a progressive credo. So ultimately, I remain wary. I've already got a progressive Zionist community that I'm comfortable with; it works through the organizations I've just mentioned and they seem to do it better than Zioness is currently capable of. And while I can't fully join the critique of Zioness for behaving in a confrontational, stand-up-and-notice-me sort of way since that mode of social activism is increasingly de rigueur on the left, I don't like it and I don't have any interest in joining it. via The Debate Link http://ift.tt/2s4kcIf