#rebuke supremacy

[probablyasocialecologist]

Israel is a nation founded on and sustained by settler-colonial violence, whether the Haganah and Irgun militias in 1948 or their descendants, the Israeli Defense Forces, Mossad, and Shin Bet. Without the massacres, without the trails of tears leading to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan, Israel would not exist. Settler violence in the name of Jewish supremacy is both Zionism’s original sin and its operative logic. From the left flank of Zionism (represented by figures like Yigal Allon, leader of the Israeli Labor Party) to the right (like Menachem Begin, commander of the Irgun Militia and future Likud Prime Minister), the founders of Israel were united in their designs on historic Palestine and beyond. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, declared in 1937, “We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time . . . [the partition] is only an arrangement for the next twenty-five to thirty years.” The dreams of early Zionist leaders live on in the settlers who terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank and push their settlements ever-deeper into what they call Judea and Samaria, or the “Land of Israel.” To today’s liberal Zionists, this is a deeply inconvenient historiography. After all, the Zionist colonization of the West Bank is widely condemned, and the International Court of Justice recently found that Israel’s fifty-seven-year-long occupation and settlement of the West Bank is illegal under international law. For decades, liberal Zionist writers have attempted to portray the West Bank settlers and their benefactors as the bastardization of a sacred ideal, rather than what they more truthfully represent: the bare, exposed soul of Zionist settler colonialism, without reservation, without media training, without hasbara; pure, unadulterated violence, biblical racism, greed, and theft. The settlers are, if nothing else, remarkably honest about the nature of the Zionist project. By cordoning them off as aberrations to be rebuked, the intent of liberal Zionist commentators is to reclaim the legitimacy of Israel via controlled demolition. This manifests in what the academic Kerry Sinahan recently described as “critical counter-insurgency,” a mode of commentary and reporting which is designed to “to rescue Zionism, rather than Palestinians, from the rubble of Israeli destruction.” Counterinsurgent critique is a means of controlling the narrative and constricting the spectrum of political possibilities. If the Zionists themselves set the parameters for acceptable criticism of Israel, they can ensure it serves their interest—and that it doesn’t go too far, to the rational end point of anti-colonial resistance.

3 September 2024

[nyxelestia]

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Fandom Community Spaces

One of my fandom servers recently imploded. I didn’t just want to post my immediate reactions and spend the next 3-5 business years litigating my feelings, so I took a few months to deconstruct what happened. Now I’m reconstructing everything into a case study on white supremacy culture in progressive spaces.

Below the poll, I’ve spelled out 17 traits of white supremacy culture, as they appear in progressive spaces, organized into four categories. I relied predominantly on the works of Tema Okun and Robin DiAngelo, whose works and websites expand upon everything I talk about.

I don’t want anyone to beat each other (or themselves) up if they’ve noticed these traits. Just fix it.

My goals with this guide:

Fans can put names to their observations.

Mods/Leaders of fandom spaces ask themselves, “how many of these have I done?”

Everyone gets an idea for what can be done about these traits.

Each listed trait has:

Definition of the trait

Common or fandom-specific examples

Suggestions to begin fixing it

Additional Commentary specific to this particular server incident

That makes this post very long, but it should be easy to skip over sections.

(If you are thinking of sending someone this post because they expressed a lot of these traits, first take a moment and identify how many of these traits you have practiced.

If someone sent you this post as an accusation, show them the above paragraph and ask what traits they recognize in their own behavior. If they say "none," ignore that person. I have will not facilitate the use of anti-racism as a smokescreen for bullying.)

I wasn't able to put this poll at the bottom of the post. I encourage you to wait until you get to the end and then answer the poll.

Because Tumblr polls expire in a week, I also encourage you to answer the same poll here on StrawPoll.

White Supremacy Culture Traits

Context (Basic Outline of What Happened)

In late Oct. 2023, someone on this server made an insensitive joke regarding Native American spirituality. They were quickly corrected by another member, and a third, indigenous member defended the gravity of their culture.

In DMs, a server mod (without the knowledge of the rest of the mod team) rebuked that indigenous server member for mini-modding, but claimed they would also moderate the person who made the joke in the first place; that person who made the joke was this mod’s friend.

This Inciting Incident Mod never did moderate their friend. When this came to light for the rest of the mod team in early Dec. 2023, the Inciting Incident Mod left before they could be ‘fired.’ Meanwhile, the Server Owner tried to cover up the preceding mess when announcing this mod’s departure.

The Indigenous Server Member used @everyone to explain to the server what had happened, dropped screenshots, and left the server.

When the community at large, including other mods, demanded more accountability and action from the mod team and the admins, the Server Owner doubled down on their defensiveness and denials for the next month.

Behind the scenes/in mod chats, the rest of the mods tried to advocate for the same things that the community was demanding. Most of their suggestions were shot down and input disregarded (primarily by the Server Owner).

Ultimately, all the mods were “let go” (fired), leaving only two admins. The second Admin largely followed the lead of the Server Owner, who was the one posting most of the announcements and engaging in the discourse.

The Admins unilaterally froze the server mid-conversations in late Jan. 2024.

They deleted the server on March 4th, 2024.

I. White Fragility

White fragility is the various phenomena by which white fans’ distress at discussions of racism take precedence over the actual occurrences of racism. This is not a conscious tactic, but the result of the layers of insulation from irl racism that white people are conditioned with, combined with white culture and experience being so pervasive as to become invisible.

1: Right To Comfort

Believing that white fans’ requirement for comfort in fandom spaces is more important than the on-going discomfort fans of color experience in the same spaces.

Examples:

Prioritizing the emotional and psychological comfort of some fans over the on-going experiences of other fans.

Scapegoating those who named the racism in the community and accusing them of ‘rocking the boat.’

These might sound familiar:

"This is just supposed to be a fun hobby."

"Can we get back to the good vibes?"

"Why can't we all just get along?"

“Hobbies/Fun shouldn’t be this much work.”

Treating any and all discussion of racism as acts of antagonism.

Fixes:

Learn to sit with discomfort before responding or (re)acting, especially if faced with an accusation. It’s an opportunity for growth, not an opening for attack.

Avoid taking criticisms personally, and avoid treating feedback as accusations. Yes, some accusations and call-outs are personal, but most are not. Even the ones that are personal need not be treated as final value judgments nor the end of the world.

Additional Commentary:

The white fan who’d made the insensitive joke in the first place did not lash out at being corrected. The discomfort was predominantly from some white mods who interpreted all mentions of racism as a conflict.

This trait is frequently found the trait called ‘Urgency.’

2: Defensiveness

Reacting to criticisms as if they were personal attacks, prioritizing comfort over growth, and using hurt feelings to derail discussions.

As author @xiranjayzhao put it in their video discussing a similar incident in the publishing industry, “If you are more concerned at being called racist than racism itself, that is an active hindrance to dismantling racism.”

Examples:

Treating criticism as threatening, inappropriate, or rude.

Focusing on making sure one’s own feelings or the feelings of community leaders are not getting hurt. This process often takes up more time and energy than addressing the actual problems do.

Spend energy defending against charges of racism instead of examining how racism might actually be happening.

White fans targeted by other oppressions (I.e. sexism, homophobia, etc.) express resentment because they feel that the naming of racism is erasing their experiences of marginalization from their other identities. This is especially prevalent in fandom as our communities are dominated by women and queer people.

Fixes:

Identify and understand the link between defensiveness and fear. When you recognize your own defensiveness, ask yourself what you are defending, and what you feel that you are defending against.

Develop culture of naming defensiveness when it arises.

Be honest with yourself and with the community about the power dynamics in the situation and respond thoughtfully. The person with greater power has the greater responsibility to name and move through their own defensiveness.

This is most important for small, online community leaders (I.e. Discord server mods). However little power we feel like we have, we still have more power than all the other members.

Additional Commentary:

Defensiveness was ultimately the biggest problem in this particular server’s implosion, and continues to be the most prevalent problem I observe in many other communities. The majority of the problems in these communities came not from actual acts of racism or patterns of insensitivity, but a few white fans’ defensiveness when these were named.

3: Fear of Open Conflict

When discomfort with talking about racism begets outright avoidance. This becomes “toxic positivity,” creating a pattern of suppressing any and all disagreements with a fixation on “keeping the peace.”

Examples:

Ignoring or deflecting conflict, no matter how minor.

Emphasis on tone, performing friendliness, and on everyone ‘calming down’ once even a hint of conflict arises.

Scapegoating people who bring up racism or equating criticisms with ‘rudeness.’

Fixes:

Role play, discuss, or plan for ways to handle conflict before it happens.

Don't require hard issues to be raised in `acceptable' ways.

Once a conflict is resolved, revisit it and see how it might have been handled differently.

Additional Commentary:

This particular server’s admin team was understandably hypersensitive to conflict; the server had been previously wracked by fandom dramas unrelated to racism. However, this sympathetic feeling metastasized into an unsympathetic habit of total conflict suppression. Had that Inciting Incident Mod not reacted to that faint hint of friction, or had the admins later been willing to name and acknowledge mistakes from the moderation team as an unintended instance of racism, almost none of this final drama would have happened.

4: Denial

Insistence that racism is an individual problem that requires intent; refusal to see or acknowledge systemic problems brought to one’s attention.

Examples:

A pattern of downplaying or denying what POC are saying about their experiences.

Insisting intent is more important than impact.

Insisting that if someone did not mean to be racist, then the harms they perpetuated cannot have been serious.

Insisting that a person or group can free from racialized conditioning, leading to statements like "I don't see color," “I don’t care what anyone’s race is,” “we can’t even tell race on the Internet,” and "we're all the same."

Fixes:

Learn to acknowledge any fear that naming racism brings up; the feeling is not wrong or right.­ Move through the feeling and address what has been raised.

Assume that any naming of racism is on target. Instead of asking, “is it racism,” ask, “how is it racism?”

Learn not to take accusations of racism or white supremacy culture as personal attacks or criticisms.

Get into the habit of saying, “tell me more,” instead of jumping to denial and counter arguments.

II. Exceptionalism

AKA “the Illusion of Control.” The belief, conscious or subconscious, that one knows the right way to do things and is uniquely qualified implement it. This might literally mean one’s self, or just people similar to one’s self.

5: Paternalism

The belief that one can dictate what is ‘best’ for everyone or make decisions on others’ behalf without their input.

Examples:

Deeming it unnecessary to understand the viewpoints and experiences of people for whom one is making decisions.

Labeling people for whom one is making decisions as unqualified.

Majority of community members get marginalized from decision-making processes. Either there is no mechanism for community input, or community input is disregarded by those in power.

Frequently, these decisions also have the most outsized impact on those with the least power, e.x. members who don’t have personal friendships with mods.

Fixes:

Realize that everyone has a worldview, including you. No one’s experiences or education (or lack thereof) disqualifies them from having agency in your community.

Always include those most affected by community decisions in the brainstorming and decision-making processes.

Build in an understanding that every approach yields unintended consequences; even the most strategically made decisions will have unanticipated consequences.

Additional Commentary:

The Server Owner consistently made unilateral decisions on other people’s behalf. They also required members to be 21+ in this server, despite the show it was for only being 18+

In the interest of living up to my own standards, I must acknowledge that I was also being paternalistic.

When I first joined the server, I questioned that age requirement. The Server Owner claimed that they felt uncomfortable talking about mature topics around 18-20 year olds…and “joked” that they viewed 18-20 year olds like children. Their defensiveness reminded me of elementary school children insisting kids in the grade immediately below them are babies. On the spot, I thought the Server Owner must be in their early 20s at the oldest. With zero evidence but a lot of confirmation bias, this feeling cemented into an assumption due to some of their moderation choices (e.x. pinning messages by their whims, thus confusing newcomers). I even wondered if they grew up in a cult environment due to unusual gaps in their knowledge (e.x. being surprised that it didn’t snow in most of Thailand). I thought I could and should, over time, convince them of 'better' ways to moderate, and attributed my disagreements with some of their moderation choices to their youth.

Then the Server Owner mentioned having been to uni nearly 20 years ago, making them almost double the age I’d assumed they were.

Looking back, this was an act of paternalism on my part that spanned over a year and a half. I’m not proud of this, and I would like to think I would still come to be ashamed of this even if the Server Owner actually had been as young as I thought they were. Regardless of their actual age, this was an incredibly paternalistic viewpoint for me to have about any adult.

6: Power Hoarding

People scrabbling to hold onto whatever little power they have; resisting anything which makes them feel threatened in their position of leadership or influence.

Examples:

Feeling threatened when someone suggests changes in how things should be done in the community.

Suggestions for change often get taken as an indicator of poor leadership.

People with power insisting they do not feel threatened or defensive in the face of suggestions for change.

Assuming that anyone wanting a change are ill-informed or malicious.

“Blaming the messenger,” such as focusing on the person advocating for change rather than the substance of what change they are trying to make.

Fixes:

Leaders should expect challenges and change and learn to see this a sign that someone cares about the community enough to want to stay and reform it. Because our spaces are predominantly for hobbies, people have less need to stay, even if they have a strong desire to. If someone truly thought we were hopeless leaders, they would not be advocating for change; they would just leave.

Adopt a “tell me more” approach when someone suggests a change or challenges an existing structure * even if the thing they are trying to change is something you care deeply about preserving.

Make friends with your ego. Everyone has one. You’ll do better in the long run when you know what will automatically kick up your defensiveness; don’t try to pretend nothing will.

Additional Commentary:

The admins caused many of their own problems by consistently disregarding others’ input; they not only ignored the criticisms of the community, they ‘fired’ the entire rest of the mod team for giving suggestions that the admins did not want to hear.

7: Individualism

Believing that one can be immune from social conditioning and systemic biases, or that individual actions are sufficient to change a community.

Examples:

Believing that one can be “isolated” from the conditioning of the culture they were raised in.

Not seeing the ways dominant identities * in gender, class, sexuality, religion, able-bodiedness, age, etc. * are informed by belonging to a group that shapes cultural norms and behavior.

This one is also hard for people in fandom to recognize. Many of us are marginalized in one aspect of our identity, and marginalization in one area can make it incredibly difficult to recognize or acknowledge privilege in another.

Accusing people advocating for change of “not being team players,” because one does not recognize the large groups on whose behalf they are advocating for.

Focusing on whether or not an individual “is racist,” while ignoring systemic racism in the community’s culture or leadership.

Fixes:

Get into the habit of acknowledging both your marginalizations and your privileges. For example, I am a queer woman of color, which are three traits of marginalization. I was also raised middle-class, I have a college degree, and I am cis; three traits of privilege. All these traits inform my experiences and world view and make me subjective in different ways.

Learn how our dominant identities and how our membership in dominant identity groups informs us both overtly and covertly (while realizing too that these identities do not have to define us).

Realize we all have internalized conditioning, including racist conditioning. Commitment to anti-racism is not about being ‘good’ or ‘bad;’ it’s a commit to challenge one’s own conditioning and subconscious biases on an on-going basis.

Focus on collective accountability as much as individual accountability.

Because many people, especially on social media, use ‘accountability’ as a euphemism for ‘punishment,’ I want to be clear that this does not mean collective punishment. It means recognizing that people react to their peers (dis)approval on even the smallest scale, that people want to fit in, and that people often fear standing out. We are often not making individual decisions so much as “going with their gut” or “going with the flow.” When that’s the case, that means we need to re-condition what our gut tells us and change where that flow is going * both of which are community actions, not individual ones.

Additional Commentary:

In the Individualism page on her website, Tema Okun shared a personal story about how her upbringing had blinded her to the very real risks her POC colleagues faced even while working with well-intentioned white leaders. This story resonated with me and my experience in this fandom server.

The white admins either did not understand (or did not care) what it would cost a POC like me to try to help them. I was attempting to mediate rather than prosecute, and speaking gently as I did - which I was only doing to try to balance the need for change against the admins’ need for white comfort. Multiple people blocked me during this time period, and most did not see what came after. I try not to assume I’m more important or relevant than I am, but I and many others noticed the drastic change in the admins’ behavior once my rhetoric shifted from ‘benefit of the doubt’ to ‘naming mistakes and suggesting changes.’ I was trying to help the admins, but it came out to nothing and I still ended up paying a price and losing friends.

8: I'm The Only One

The assumption that one knows best; therefore, they have the unique right and responsibility to take unilateral action.

Examples:

Believing that the only way to get something done right is to do it one’s self. (Related to ‘One Right Way.’)

Believing that only one person is entitled or qualified to determine the right way and take action, typically in isolation from the people who will be impacted by our decisions.

Often goes hand-in-hand with micro-management (or in the case of online communities, micro-moderation).

Attempting to downplay or cover-up flaws or mistakes in leadership, fearing that the community cannot survive people discovering leadership isn’t perfect.

Fixes:

Hold ourselves and each other accountable for mistakes without assuming that we need to be perfect to lead.

Focus on collaborative and collective strategies for responding to mistakes, including accountability but also growth and inner development.

Leaders should make an effort to take in input from as many sources as possible, including the people saying things they do not like, do not want to hear or are challenging their leadership.

Especially the individuals who hold the most power, such as server admins and owners (who have more power than other mods). The higher up in this hierarchy that we are, the more likely that anyone who truly thinks we’re hopeless would simply opt to leave…which means the higher up in the hierarchy we are, the more likely that anyone who is challenging us still expects both themselves and us to stay where we are. Their challenges are not a threat, but an opportunity for growth.

Additional Commentary:

Those last two bullet points under Examples and Instances are what kicked off the entire server-ending drama in the first place. Even though the Inciting Incident Mod made a truly disappointing mistake, I don’t actually see them as having made the biggest misstep in this mess. This mod micro-managed someone and abused their power to shield a friend, but had the admins been willing to acknowledge those mistakes directly, most of the ensuing drama would not have happened.

When I asked the Server Owner to let someone else take over the server instead of closing it off completely, they claimed all the people I suggested were not equipped to handle the server. The only person they were willing to let take over the server was someone who had uncritically supported them during all the discourse. (Though I later found out that this entire discussion was never in good faith to begin with; explanation in the Final Feelings section below.)

9: Entitlement.

Assuming a right to something without any consideration for the possibility that one may not have the right. This assumption frequently is unidirectional and/or implicitly only functions as long as most other people do not have a similar right.

This trait was not core to either Tema Okun’s work on white supremacy culture nor Robin DiAngelo’s work on white fragility. However, it is an underlying component of racism (who is entitled to what), white supremacy culture (entitlement to other people’s works), and white fragility (entitlement to comfort).

Examples:

Assuming that one does not need to ask (or wait for an answer) to use someone else’s work for one’s own purposes. (Related to the trait ‘Urgency.’)

Believing that people’s boundaries regarding their work or creations do not matter. I hope I don’t need to spell out why this problem gets so in fanfic-based fandom spaces. That can of worms would need its own post and I’m already exhausted from this post.

Related to Right to Comfort: believing one is entitled to a peaceful community, even when it comes at the expense of everyone else’s sense of safety and belonging.

Fixes:

Assume one does not have permission until and unless told you do.

Graciousness if someone does not want you to use their works.

Their reasons may have nothing to do with you, so also learn not take someone else’s refusal personally.

When you do assume a right, take a moment to imagine it’s reversal (I.e. everyone else having the same rights to your work or output). How comfortable are you with this prospect of everyone ‘borrowing’ from you that which you are currently trying to borrow from someone else?

Additional Commentary:

I detailed my direct experience with the admins' entitlement down below under the trait titled ‘Urgency.’

This trend continued with their behaviors towards what server content they did and didn’t delete prior to deleting the whole server. When fans who left or were banned insisted all their own messages in the server be deleted, they were refused on the basis of ‘preserving’ the server. Yet the admins had no problems deleting every channel that had even a shred of discourse in it. They later deleted a few other channels on the grounds of people’s personal information potentially being in those channels and putting members at risk…except that if there was any such information, it had always been present in this channels; why did it suddenly matter now? I concede that they eventually deleted the individual members’ messages per their requests, and that the fear-mongering about private information came from another member altogether. However, between nebulous accusations that an admin had been party to a past doxxing of this member in the first place and the on-going problem of the admins behaving with false urgency (another trait below), I’m having a very hard time being sympathetic about this or giving them any more benefit of the doubt. Their selection of which channels to delete look less like protecting server members and more like a failed attempted to protect their own reputations.

III. Binary Thinking

This is not just a futile attempt to simplify reality, but an entitlement to a simplified reality and a habit of attempting to force others into one’s own dualistic constructions.

10: Either/Or

Polarization of issues and assumptions, categorical thinking, and viewing everything through this binary lens.

Examples:

Positioning or presenting options or issues as either/or -- good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us, pro/anti, good/evil, safe/dangerous, etc.

Related to Perfectionism: a suggested solution must be either perfect or it’s useless.

Tendency to escalate instead of de-escalating, especially in a context where de-escalating is viewed as dismissing a problem.

Generalizing individual experiences or statements to the collective, or attempting to dismiss a claim because it is coming from an individual; either “everyone” is saying something or “no one” is saying it.

Fixes:

Cultivate a habit or community culture of looking for multiple ‘takes,’ viewpoints, and conclusions.

Break the habit of trying to sort people and ideas into two or a few categories.

Practice taking situations with seemingly only two possibilities and identifying points between them or alternative options altogether.

Be willing to set a future date or deadline for continuing a disagreement in order to de-escalate emotions in the moment. We have more options than either fixing everything in the moment or ignoring problems forever.

Additional Commentary:

When asked for transparency, this server’s Admins acted as if mistakes had to be either ignored or turned into a big production. This left no room to acknowledge a mistake, learn, and move on, since that was neither ignoring the mistake nor treating it with sufficient drama.

11: Perfectionism

Belief that there is a single right way to accomplish something. Belief that individuals must implement only correct, successful actions (and that missteps and mistakes represent fundamental character flaws).

Examples:

Mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them.

Making a mistake is confused with being a mistake; doing wrong is confused with being wrong.

Believing a problem can be permanently resolved with the correct or ‘perfect’ course of action.

Fixes:

Develop a community where the expectation is that everyone will make mistakes, but those mistakes are opportunities for learning, not value judgments.

Accept that, when faced with a systemic or deeply entrenched issues, community leaders will need time to address the problems.

They will probably need to try multiple ideas, some of which might not work. That’s okay; it does not have to be a failure if you learn from it and try again.

Additional Commentary:

In the case of this server’s implosion, perfectionism appeared with the Admins’ fixation on looking for a solution that would ‘put the matter to rest.’ They ignored or actively derided suggestions that did not ‘solve’ the problem in its entirety.

12: One Right Way

The belief that there is a particular correct or ideal way of doing this (and that fault lies with others for not following this particular correct way).

Examples:

Assuming that once people are introduced to the right way, they will ‘see the light’ and adopt it.

Believing that when one’s way is not working, the fault lies with everyone else for not ‘converting,’ not the method itself.

Related to perfectionism: believing there is a singular or permanent solution to on-going, systemic problems.

Believing only certain people are qualified to address or resolve problems. This is especially prevalent among people whose post-secondary education was mostly institutional (i.e. college).

Fixes:

Create a culture of support that recognizes how mistakes sometimes lead to positive results.

Challenge notions of what constitutes the "right way" and what defines a "mistake."

Catch our internalized assumptions about being ‘qualified’ to fix a problem on our own or take on a large responsibility.

Additional Commentary:

Once again, in the interests of living up to my own standards, that means admitting when I’m doing or did the very habits I’m castigating. While my intent was not to behave as if I thought there was One Right Way, I recognize that my actions had the same impact as if I did believe in One Right Way. I presented a solution (collection of rules, guides, and channels) from a server I owned in another fandom entirely, and implied that there was only one right way to ‘fix’ the server.

That said, their conduct in utilizing this also reflected Entitlement and Urgency (which is where I elaborated).

13: (Belief in) Objectivity

The belief that there is some neutral, unbiased experience or viewpoint a person can have.

Because patriarchy so often uses claims of emotionality to dismiss women, many women become oversensitive to claims of subjectivity or identity-based bias. This can make recognizing the invalidity of objectivity difficult in communities whose leadership is dominated by women, especially white women (as white men tend to be most likely to rely on accusations of excess emotion in the first place).

Examples:

Fixation on prioritizing facts over feelings, or thinking feelings can be disregarded and ignored.

Requiring people to think in a linear fashion or otherwise expecting others to perform only the type of logic validated by those in power.

Those in power get to be scared, hurt, or angry and still viewed as rational/logical, while marginalized people who are visibly scared, hurt, or angry are deemed irrational/illogical.

Refusal to acknowledge when a certain line of logic is covering an emotional bias, perspective, or agenda.

Fixes:

Own up to one’s subjectivity; instead of assuming that one can have some arch-neutral worldview, be clear about your background, experiences, and potential biases (whether you believe you actually have these biases or not).

Recognize your own worldview will be as subjective as everybody else’s. If your view of society is also part of the dominant view of society (e.x. if you are white and/or cis and/or male and/or…), this means you were probably conditioned to believe certain assumptions are objective when they are actually subjective.

There is no way to be human without being biased by one’s identity and experience; some identities are just so privileged or normalized by institutions that they are the “invisible” default or norm.

Get into the habit of trying to determine what a situation you are in looks like from the outside, what information others do and do not have, or getting diverse perspectives on various situations.

By “get into the habit,” I mean we should practice doing this even in situations without confrontation, crisis, or argument. Analyze successful incidents and events this way to get the practice for handling unsuccessful incidents and crises.

Utilize ‘I’ statements and make sure not to assume that your personal experience is the same as everyone else’s experiences.

Community leaders have to take extra special care with what we say about our communities and how we present our assumptions and experiences. When we claim a community is trustworthy or safe, we just make it even less trustworthy or safe for anyone feels otherwise, because this disconnect between our experiences (that we generalize) and theirs (that we individualize) creates a barrier against further feedback.

Additional Commentary:

This was also related to at least one admin struggling to disconnect their own experiences with everyone else’s experiences. To the admin, because so much of their own time was consumed by this discourse, they spoke and behaved as if this were consuming the entire server. They did not realize that most of the members of the server had nothing to do with this discourse, and many did not even know it was happening…until the admin started repeatedly utilizing @everyone. This implies the admin viewed their own experience as “objective” and thus projected their own experience onto everybody else.

VI. Validation Seeking

I called this collection of traits ‘validation seeking’ because they all trace back to appeals to external authorities or claims of external pressures.

14: Progress = More

Assuming solutions always require “more” of something; never considering that existing resources could be sufficient or that “less” might be a solution.

Examples:

Assuming the goal is always to grow membership, rather than maintaining an enjoyable community

Assuming that “more” will fix a problem (e.x. more moderators will fix a moderation problem)

Disregarding the costs of growth (such as how increased number of channels can make a community overwhelming to newcomers)

Valuing people who have achieved a certain milestone or objective metric of progress more than those who have not (e.x. valuing older members over younger ones, valuing college-educated members over those without college education, etc.)

Fixes:

Try to make sustainable decisions, with an aim not for endless growth but maintaining the actual goal of the community.

When pursuing “more” of something to solve a problem, first evaluate what you actually need and determine why the existing number of resources is no longer sufficient when it previously had been.

For example, are you actually pursuing more moderators because there is an increase in activity and the existing moderation team feels burnt out and falling behind? Or are you just assuming that you need more moderators regardless of activity levels?

15: Quantity Over Quality

Believing that only things that can be numerically measured have value (and that things which cannot be measured have little to no value).

Examples:

Fixation on things like number of members in a community (quantity) over the members’ relationships and experiences in said community (quality)

Treating quantified milestones as a goal in their own right, rather than means to an end or a guideline (e.x. acquiring a certain number of moderators or maintaining a certain number of channels in a server)

Discomfort with emotions and feelings (as they cannot be measured objectively)

Fixes:

Determine traits and practices important to your community which cannot be easily quantatively (safety, respect, mutualism, etc.) and think of ways to evaluate them (for example: open-ended questions in a survey instead of relying exclusively on numerical ratings or menu options)

Focus less on output goals and more on process goals, such as how many new ideas were considered or how many people felt fully heard in a meeting. Even if, in the short run, this feels like leading to a bunch of unproductive meetings, in the long run this creates a more robust decision-making process.

Treat ‘accountability’ not as a euphemism for punishment (which social media tends to do), but as an opening for receiving support.

Additional Commentary:

The admins fixated on obtaining more moderators, but the reality is that the problems facing the community did not need more moderators, but rather a shift in culture altogether - a thing which could have easily been engendered by the admins on their own, even without additional moderators.

16: Worshiping the Written Word

Fixation on knowledge provided by institutions over people’s lived experiences and on-going, dynamic realities.

This one is hard to recognize in virtual communities because most or all of our interactions are “written” in chats and social media.

Examples:

Attempting to use dictionary definitions of words as arguments in and of themselves or treating them as the end of an argument.

Refusing to acknowledge that the way people use a word in daily living may not match up to the institutional definition.

Using errors in spelling, grammar, or language to justify dismissing someone’s arguments.

Over-valuing people who can write well (or just write a lot), and undervaluing the contributions from people who rely on other media formats or informal documentation.

Fixes:

Treat encyclopedia articles and dictionary definitions as a conversation starter, not an argument ender, e.x. “This is my understanding of that word; what’s yours?” or “In what ways does this ‘official’ definition fall short?”

Focus less on using resources (articles, videos, guides, etc.) as an appeal to authority in an argument, and more as a starting point from which you develop your own community guidelines.

Additional Commentary:

I had an out-sized impact on discourse simply because I could write a lot in one go. Some of that was me anonymously relaying other people’s words on their behalf and some was original on my part; most of what I said simply reiterated what others had already conveyed. However, as I did so in a pseudo-academic manner, my word was given more weight.

Sharing of resources like educational articles or videos were treated as the end of a discussion, rather than the start of one.

17: Urgency

Applying extremely short deadlines to action, giving no time for rest or consideration. Utilizing the overarching urgency of racism as an excuse for short-sighted, short-term actions.

Examples:

Related to Quality Over Quantity: prioritizes measurable actions over impact.

Fixation on appearing to address racism moreso than actually doing it.

Uses expediency to justify poor-decision making processes or lack of consideration (related to Entitlement, Power Hoarding, and Conflict Aversion).

Often relies on perpetuating the idea that racism can be “solved” (which in turn implies that future accusations of racism cannot be made, nor community problems discussed).

Creating a culture of anxiety as people believe they must act immediately or they will never get to act at all.

Related to Right to Comfort: rushing decision-making in order to rush towards an idealized state of no further conflict.

Fixes:

When the feeling of urgency arises, slow down and encourage people pause, restate the goal, and dive deeper into alternatives.

Avoid making decisions under extreme pressure.

Work to distinguish what is actual pressure and what is pressure that you or others are creating.

Establish plans ahead of time for how decisions will be made during times of urgency, and how crises can be handled in the short-term while leaders evaluate ideas for long-term change.

This is related to Conflict Avoidance. When community leaders are uncomfortable with conflict, this also means not wanting to think about potential conflicts, and thus having no plans when conflict arises anyway. Becoming comfortable with conflict also allows planning for conflict management.

Additional Commentary:

When I showed the admins my fandom wank resolving set-up from another server (as mentioned in my additional commentary on One Right Way), they asked me if they could just use it as it was. However, they were too impatient to actually wait for an answer and used it, anyway, before I could respond. It was very clear that my answer never actually mattered to them. Had they waited, I would have explained how this exact set-up was not a good fit for this community and its current problems; I was sharing it assuming they would use it as a source of inspiration to brainstorm their own ideas for their own server. In addition, while I did not mind sharing, these were not my sole creation, but the product of a team of mods in my other server. Even if it had been a good fit, I would have checked with other mods whose labor had gone into this set-up to see if they were also alright with its wholesale reuse.

My experience is only one example. Ultimately, the admins kept fumbling, and increasingly claimed it was all due to the pressure and demands from the community that they ‘handle it’ - refusing to acknowledge that community members weren’t asking for an immediate solution to every problem. This urgency was self-inflicted. The server admins disregarded all their remaining mods’ suggestions that would have given them more time to address these problems carefully. Server-wide slow-downs, channel trimming, temporary server freeze, etc. - the admins had multiple ideas given to them, but shot them all down. The admins’ goal was not to address the problems, but to suppress discussions of racism as fast as possible because they were uncomfortable with admitting its existence in the first place (see Right to Comfort at the top).

Final Feelings

What Took Me So Long To Say Anything?

I didn’t want to risk the admins prematurely deleting the server out of spite. They were already unilaterally and suddenly taking away a community space from hundreds of fans entirely for their own benefit. I could not count on them being above robbing people the final opportunity to recover the last shreds of their materials and memories from the server.

I also, quite frankly, just had a lot going on in my offline life.

I continued to take my time even after they deleted the server because I was hurt and furious. I needed time to turn what was originally a soliloquy of my sorrows into an educational guide.

This was exacerbated by finding out that the admins faked the ‘death’ of the server:

As you can imagine, I was furious - and to be honest, I still am. That anger was precisely why I made myself slow down. I did not want to burn down the fandom for the sake of keeping only myself warm.

Complicated Feelings

I feel hurt and betrayed by the Admins and disappointed in the Inciting Incident Mod…but one thing I will say for them is that they expressed interest in learning the language and culture of the country that our fandom’s show came from.

They showed far more interest than that aforementioned Indigenous Server Member ever did.

I don’t begrudge this indigenous fan for defending their cultural tradition, nor their anger over how it was handled. I also acknowledge that in fandom and irl, Asian diaspora often end up partaking in white supremacy culture and entitlements. However, I do find this fan's umbrage at the initial ignorance to be tremendously hypocritical given this fan’s approach to Asian cultures, traditions, and histories. Their fanfics, server interactions, and other fanworks in this Asian media fandom demonstrated incredible disregard about Asian cultures - one which this fan never showed any interest in undoing or challenging.

I doubt it was a coincidence that this fan blocked me on Discord right around the time I started talking about the westernization of eastern characters and settings. Even if it was, that doesn’t lessen the pervasive apathy towards Asian culture in their fandom activities.

I routinely see fans call for the decolonization fandom when it comes to BIPOC people settings, only for these same fans to turn around and perpetuate the colonization of fandom when it comes to Asian people and settings.

This does not mean western fans shouldn’t participate in an eastern fandom! This participation is the best way to learn about a new culture. Mistakes and missteps are parts of the learning process, both at the individual level and at the collective level.

This is also not to pass a judgment on that specific fan or their creative works. That would be hypocritical of me in turn, given I’ve enjoyed some of those stories and fanworks, anyway.

I am bringing this up to demonstrate why solidarity is difficult for fans of color.

As an Asian diaspora fan in particular, I hate feeling like my choices are “BIPOC fans with ignorance and apathy that they don’t want to unpack” and “white fans with supremacy culture that they don’t want to unpack.” Either way, I’m going to have to put up with a ton of entitlement (never mind the rampant fetishization of Asians from all sides, which is its own can of worms I can’t even open right now).

And if I try to speak up about any of this, I will get blocked or I will be accused of being an anti-fandom killjoy.

Again.

Final Thoughts

People change for the better, and communities change for the better.

I know fandom can change because I’ve seen how it’s already changed. Fans take social justice issues and racial justice issues far more seriously than they did 20, 10, or even 5 years ago, and that’s just my own living memory of fandom.

We should always take a moment to recognize and celebrate how much better we are today than we were in the metaphorical yesterday.

But being better than yesterday does not mean being good enough for tomorrow.

And we still have a long way to go.

-

Thank you for reading this monstrously long post all the way to the end. Please remember to answer the poll at the top. Please reblog, and I encourage you to add your own experiences when you do.

[redjaybathood]

White supremacy is a mental disease fr, because how can you have posts that says that's what happening in Ukraine is a literal genocide but other posts that says what's happening in Palestine is not a genocide and is just a two-sided war? And that's not including all the 100's of posts about how as an Ukrainian you feel more sympathy and solidarity with Israelis and comparing Palestinians to Russians of all people, but I guess solidarity between White supremacists will always take priority over solidarity between victims of genocide.

Buddy, if it's a disease, call your doctor. You don't get to police how should I think and feel about Israel and Jewish people in the context of October 7th and how pro-Pals spread the most vilest - and easily rebuked - lies about them. You don't get to accuse me of not supporting Palestine enough while outright lying about me, content of my blog, and wilfully ignoring posts in support of Palestine. You don't get to do it - I don't believe you lifted a finger for Ukraine, but even then you would not be entitled to your pseudo righteous anger.

You're not in Palestine, and you are not in Israel, and you are not in Ukraine. Ballistic missiles are not raining on your heads. You're not in a bomb shelter, trying to calm down your cat and your elderly neighbour. You haven't starved a day in your life because it was too dangerous for supplies to be brought in, or because it was literally impossible due to blockade, or because war pushed you well behind the poverty line. You never had to deal with "this horrible terrible thing that happened to those people? Is awesome, but didn't happen, and they deserved it anyway". You never had to guess who will be the next one to die. You never - nothing, anon, you're nothing.

Now, am I talking about Israel, Palestine, or Ukraine? With the exception of starvation, that's all three of us. You don't get to come up to any of us with your white saviour bullshit - you may be black or Asian, from Global South and not the West, idk and idc, bc it's still this fucked up idea that you're the one who knows what's what.

You, frankly, don't know shit.

And don't you talk about solidarity, when you guys were shitting on Ukraine even before HAMAS slaughtered hundreds of Jews, and suddenly y'all care about Palestine and angry with people who are experiencing genocide and not virtue signaling enough. I got death wishes from you self-righteous anons way before I ever said, hey, isn't it fucked up that people deny a terrorist attack that was literally live streamed, happened?

Because let's not mince the words, most of my posts in support of Israel were about the Oct 7th and its aftermath. You don't get to twist my words, saying that I am somehow in denial or support of the genocide of Palestinian people.

You lot, however, are - in support of both genocide of Ukraine and Israel. In actions and in words.

I have as little patience for someone like you as for an Israeli who comes to my posts and comments that I can't be supportive of Palestine. Bitches watch me.

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Okay, Finally getting around to posting my dracula thoughts because I've been busy all day and have just gotten to finish listening to the podcast episode:

God, Mina goes through so much emotional labor. I found it incredibly interesting that the narrative punishes the men for leaving her alone even though she wants to help, although she's the one who ultimately suffers for it when Dracula bites her. She tries to stay helpful and keep her emotions in check, when she's been literally bitten by a vampire in a way that's clearly analogous to sexual assault. It's also so heartbreaking how she blames herself for being bitten, and when the communion wafer burns her- again, because she was bitten by a vampire through no fault of her own- she feels that she's been rejected by God because she was a victim of assault. I'm so glad Jonathan was quick to assure her that it wasn't her fault, and that he also held Van Helsing accountable for his insensitivity. And that Mina said she wouldn't forget Van Helsing's remark about Dracula having "just fed"- she's a sweet, intelligent lady and a beacon of hope, but she also won't accept her trauma being dismissed. Van Helsing is a fascinating character in his own right, but I love how Mina consistently displays her agency by putting him in check when he dismisses her intelligence and her feelings, as we saw her do earlier when they met.

I also found it interesting how Mina pitied Dracula- not because she's just so sweet and forgiving and too good for this world, but because she recognizes that if she were to turn into a vampire, she'd want someone to pity her, too. Jonathan's feelings are incredibly justified- Dracula has tormented both him and his wife, so of course he wants him to burn in hell. Dracula is an abuser, a murderer, and analogously, a rapist. But Mina offers a compelling question- what is Dracula actually living for? Does his constant hunger and desire for power over vulnerable people actually offer him any happiness? Perhaps I wouldn't exactly pity him as she does, but it's an interesting philosophical point that those who want to dominate other people and insatiably crave power are often miserable, themselves, and this abusive behavior stems from their own misery.

Yall I feel so bad for Renfield. Both Dracula and Seward took advantage of him and his mental state for their own gain. Not much else to say here, but his character does pose a seriously fascinating examination of the morality of our protagonists.

It's really interesting to me that Dracula's plan mirrors ideas seen in eugenics- feeding on people (and therefore forcing them to reproduce more vampires) so that he may create his own "superior" race. The character of Dracula can be read as both xenophobic (a malevolent foreigner whose character contains many tropes associated with anti-Semitic canards and disrupts English society) and as a rebuke against the ideas of racial supremacy and colonialism. And considering Stoker was an Irishman writing this book in the 19th century, these colonial and intersectional themes take on another layer of interest regarding Britain's colonization of Ireland.

Quincey Morris. No notes

[nagirambles]

Rambling about Fairies - Manga Chapter 188

Shagotte trails past the rather fine line of uncanny valley in her manga design, but we're not here to talk about that so moving on.

This is not exactly the first instance we're seeing of magic actually taking form as an impediment in the Fairy Tail universe, but it's the first time it's taken form as an actual disability.

Magic has a very contrasting relationship with humans in both Earthland and Edolas-- on Earthland, everyone is born with it whether they are mages or not. But if you are a strong mage, getting physically drained of too much of it gets you Magic Deficient and some could even die. On Edolas, people aren't born with it, but they live side by side as we do with electricity.

But Exceeds are in-between all of that.

They are in Edolas, and they are born with magic within them. But unlike Earthlanders, who seem to have their magic residing in their bodies unnoticed if unused, Exceed magic manifests physically in the form of wings. That's why Happy was born knowing how to fly, and why they couldn't fly when their hearts weren't in it.

And Shagotte, was born an Exceed with not enough magic to efficiently use at all. She's disabled, in the most literal sense of that meaning--- she cannot live without assistance in Extalia, where they believed in their supremacy over humans, where disability and weakness is most frowned upon. Where humans are looked down upon because they don't have magic, and being associated with humans at all could be considered treason.

I wish they did more with this idea. It's such an ironic mess, that her secret, her powers were exactly what created the hellish facade of perfection that would have discriminated strongest against her if she weren't the one on the pedestal in the first place. Then when it all comes crashing down on her, the exceeds were forced to realized what truly mattered was solace and family, rather than being viewed as all-powerful gods.

It reminds me of the humans in Edolas. They live on, in a facade of luxury, continuing to use their magic as if it weren't running out, just to pretend nothing's wrong when their world's on the verge of losing it all forever. They're willing to rebuke innocents and even kill them to achieve their eternal magic-- but Coco, only Coco, was able to realize that she didn't want an eternity of magic, just an eternity of smiles together.

It's such an extensive parallel, but they both end at the same place-- the dream idea of a warm home and family that Earthland Fairy Tail embodies.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Titania McGrath

Published: Jun 4, 2024

Illness and wellness are mere taxonomies of power

“Illness” is a social construct, defined solely (and in negative terms) against its antithesis: “wellness”. Society, in other words, has created the category of “illness” as a means to impose power on those who do not conform to cultural norms of what it means to be “well”.

A person can only be said to be “ill” if one accepts societal expectations that “wellness” is the norm and that it is inherently a positive experience. Illness and wellness are mere taxonomies of power, inculcated by the hegemonic and oppressive discourses of “medical science”. Referring to someone as “ill” or “unwell” is simply the medicalisation of human diversity.

The notion of a “treatment” or a “cure” is, therefore, a form of erasure, through which illness is othered and dehumanised. The hierarchical dichotomy of “well” and “ill” are co-constituting, each one creating the other through a process of performativity.

Just as heterosexism posits the supremacy of heterosexuality to queerness, healthism situates wellness as the default experience of humanity in order to stigmatise illness as inherently deviant. These assumptions deny the performative nature of illness and wellness towards a neoliberal goal: individual autonomy as a means to secure labour for the capitalist system.

For the benefit of society, we must do the following:

♥ Close all hospitals and any other institutions that perpetuate healthism.

♥ Reject all forms of biological science as white, heterosexist, patriarchal constructs and ban the study of all branches of medicine, including anatomy, biochemistry, endocrinology, genetics, immunology, neuroscience and pharmacology.

♥ Re-educate children to embrace and celebrate illness rather than seeking a “cure”. If a child is “diagnosed” with a “disease”, this narrative must be countered by helping them to understand that illness should not be subordinated to the performance of “wellbeing”, and that they should be actively engaged in disrupting the cultural norms of healthism.

♥ Rebuke those who claim to be “in need of medical attention” as identity-traitors. Such internalised healthism is a form of complicity with systemic medicalisation.

♥ Resist the oppression of health normativity in everyday language. Criminalise pleasantries such as “How are you?” and “Are you well?”

♥ Stop taking aspirin.

==

You laugh, but "healthism" is a recurring concept in Fat Studies and other critical theories relating to health. This isn't something Titania (Andrew) came up with, it's a real thing in critical theory.

There are similar concepts in Disability Studies, in which they argue that we think it's desirable for people to have all their body parts and for them to function correctly, not because that's how the human body has evolved and is structured, but only because of a desire by straight, white, male "scientists" to impose their "ideal" onto everyone and oppress those who don't fit the mold. They're completely serious.

[infinitewavesblog]

Jack Breaks the Flow of Time

From "Jack's Multiverse"

Jack has a unique influence on the flow of time when they uses their magic. With a calculated mind, used for trapping prey, Jack uses their time magic at crucial, yet seemingly inconsequential moments.

Rewinding by mere seconds to offset someone's pacing, freezing items in time to neutralize their weight, all as they're still learning to use their abilities. For Jack, it's never about their power, but what they can do with their power. It's how they implement their time magic that made Jack a threat.

Entities from all over took an interest in Jack, leaning toward opposition, to test Jack's might. Through it all, Jack's resolve was tested. Though some threats were tougher than others, Jack conquered them all.

One particular threat, came from Jack themselves; or rather, an alternate version of Jack. Jaxon Hughes, a mage hunter. With similar trials to Jack, Jaxon took a different path; rebuking all magic-users. He developed a fighting style specifically for countering various forms of magic. Jack being the cause of this rift practically summoned Jaxon along with several other alternate versions of Jack, and they were forced to battle for supremacy.

To learn how this story ends, follow me for more! Jack's Multiverse will be available for all to read for free. I'll be releasing this on a chapter-by-chapter basis, once enough hype builds around this story. Please like and share this to increase its reach.

[steel-and-fire]

Session Summary: Hags and Hoards

Doodles by our Tiefling bard player, Lynxpitaya, as always~

So, last time the party was on their way to Kolas, the vampire infested village where the various clans battle for supremacy, intending to find the sector of the cult we are after and take it down...

On their way, they met this giant lady, Ruby, who is a half Goliath, and had her leg hurts... agreeing to give her a lift to her home. After a little time of discussion, with Ferenir mostly listening and observing as he drives the wagon, they reach her home...which is an old tower. Ferenir finds it a little curious, but she comments how it belonged to her father, an artificer.

After that, everyone gets to helping her prepare the meal she promised for them. Horny, the tiefling bard, helps butcher the deer meat, Ferenir goes to gather potatoes from outside, and Aramil, the elf rogue, is to bring tea to another one of her guests. A young man that escaped from Kolas, and she has been taking care of him after she found him in bad condition.

But, that's when things start to get weird. First of all, Aramil notices the young man is in a very weird condition, fully healthy physically but mentally confused, and the tea also does not smell right (nat fucking 20 baby). So, in typical Aramil fashion...with barely any explanation, he grabs the guy and they jump off the window from the second floor, landing kinda badly next to Ferenir, who had been beating grub with his hammer and gathering potatoes. Meanwhile, Horny notices some weird expressions from the Goliath, and when she hears the sound of the window breaking upstairs, she drops her mask entirely. She locks the door, and reveals her true self...

A terrible, giant, horned, blue Hag. She grabs Horny easily, who panics and asks for help from his new Archfey Patron, cashing in the free favor he got from her the other day. She helps him, giving him empowered spells, and he uses Hideous laughter to get the Hag on the floor laughing, while also setting her on fire with a Hellish Rebuke.

Ferenir hears that, still extremely taken aback and confused over what's happening, but rushes inside, breaking the door, to see the spectacle of the monstrous hag in the ground, on fire, and laughing. There isn't much time to explain, and he makes the split second decision to just trust his friends, rushing to the Hag and beating her down with his hammer while she's still down.

Which.....worked extremely well, activating his Hammer twice, one with a normal hit and the second with a crit, to do massive damage and destroy her lower body. Aramil then came in as well, and even though the Hag tried to persuade him to spare her, he finished her off with a dagger to the head, dropping her dead.

Theeeen, Horny and Aramil get outside to heal the young man's broken leg from the fall, while Ferenir is still in the kitchen...confused as fuck over what just happened.

Oh well, he goes to loot. He finds a mirror that shows a....creepy rude and stupid clown standing behind you, entirely harmless but fun for pranks (he started with Aramil...hehehe...), a weird blood rob that they can't activate cause none of them has occult knowledge, and....a talking skull! Bill! He was one of her victims, that she enchanted to keep as entertainment. Ferenir takes a liking to him, and as per usual, takes all the silly trinkets alongside him, like the goddamn hoarder he is.

The other guys also decide to take the kid with them, since he barely has any of his memories of himself, whether it was by the enchanted tea or otherwise, and drop him off to a village. There is some roleplay as everyone interacts with each other, especially the new guys, Bill, the talking skull and...Chestnuts, the angsty teenager, as they decide to name him. Aramil has his work cut out for him, kek. But Horny helps with some spells, totally ethically!

They take a stop to rest as night falls, Horny had the first shift as they were approached by a beautiful but unsettling woman with face paint, that offered fresh hunt in exchange for sharing their campfire. Already kind of suspicious from the Ruby incident, Horny and Aramil decide to turn her away. During Ferenir's shift, he chats with Bill, and makes him a nose that can move with his jaw, so he can point at things without aid(?), while discussing about getting him a hat or a wig.

Fen got plans for him.

[belacqui-pro-quo]

Israel is a nation founded on and sustained by settler-colonial violence, whether the Haganah and Irgun militias in 1948 or their descendants, the Israeli Defense Forces, Mossad, and Shin Bet. Without the massacres, without the trails of tears leading to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan, Israel would not exist. Settler violence in the name of Jewish supremacy is both Zionism’s original sin and its operative logic. From the left flank of Zionism (represented by figures like Yigal Allon, leader of the Israeli Labor Party) to the right (like Menachem Begin, commander of the Irgun Militia and future Likud Prime Minister), the founders of Israel were united in their designs on historic Palestine and beyond. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, declared in 1937, “We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time . . . [the partition] is only an arrangement for the next twenty-five to thirty years.” The dreams of early Zionist leaders live on in the settlers who terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank and push their settlements ever-deeper into what they call Judea and Samaria, or the “Land of Israel.” To today’s liberal Zionists, this is a deeply inconvenient historiography. After all, the Zionist colonization of the West Bank is widely condemned, and the International Court of Justice recently found that Israel’s fifty-seven-year-long occupation and settlement of the West Bank is illegal under international law. For decades, liberal Zionist writers have attempted to portray the West Bank settlers and their benefactors as the bastardization of a sacred ideal, rather than what they more truthfully represent: the bare, exposed soul of Zionist settler colonialism, without reservation, without media training, without hasbara; pure, unadulterated violence, biblical racism, greed, and theft. The settlers are, if nothing else, remarkably honest about the nature of the Zionist project. By cordoning them off as aberrations to be rebuked, the intent of liberal Zionist commentators is to reclaim the legitimacy of Israel via controlled demolition. This manifests in what the academic Kerry Sinahan recently described as “critical counter-insurgency,” a mode of commentary and reporting which is designed to “to rescue Zionism, rather than Palestinians, from the rubble of Israeli destruction.” Counterinsurgent critique is a means of controlling the narrative and constricting the spectrum of political possibilities. If the Zionists themselves set the parameters for acceptable criticism of Israel, they can ensure it serves their interest—and that it doesn’t go too far, to the rational end point of anti-colonial resistance.

[sulacomplex]

phone banking for my org but i can’t find it in me to finish because i’m thinking of Sonya Massey and the evil that took her life. i’m thinking of all the ways in which white supremacy and colonial brutality rule in direct contradiction to Black Life to our faith, our spirituality. “I’ll rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” only to true evil does that sound like a threat of violence.

i’m thinking of how this is universal colonial violence. of how they always come for our faiths, our spirit.

how Isr*el drops more bombs on holidays - how for the past years and years and years Ramadan, both Eid’s, Ashura, etc… mark not only some of the holiest days of the year but also the deadliest.

the same forces that killed Sonya Massey that killed Breonna Taylor that killed Sandra Bland that killed George Floyd that killed Micheal Brown that killed Ahmad Aubrey that killed…

these same forces kill kids and grandparents and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and cousins and humans in Palestine.

i’m thinking about how through all this death - sanctioned by the state, sanctioned by the Democratic party, sanctioned by the Republican party, sanctioned by the very mission of the United States - they want us to vote. and our lives are talking points, they’re voter issues, they’re hot debate topics.

i’m thinking of Sonya Massey and i’m thinking of Palestine and of the endless list of martyrs who should have never been martyred and my heart is broken and i’m dreaming of revolution and those dreams are all i have

[wolgraugorimilir]

A letter to Deborah

Deborah is a Christian theologian, and a friend of the family. She took an unexpected interest in my writing, and we've been going back and forth about God. I'm going to share my letters, because I put a lot of thought into writing them. (and I love to muse about God and Mesopotamia)

Deborah,

Thank you for deciding to say something when you were unsure. I consider that a great compliment, as I strive for openness with all my relationships.

I apologize for my ignorant comments about Jesus. Truth be told, I never expected that any Christians would want to read my writing. (I certainly never expected to open a dialogue with a theologian). I'll go back in and soften my language, because I don't want to alienate anyone who would otherwise respond.

"I further dare to say that you don't know Him at all, because then you wouldn't hate him. Not possible... I wonder if, when your little brother died (and believe me I would not for worlds discount by an atom the terrible tragic significance of that in your life) some well-meaning person told your aching, bewildered, grieving self that "Jesus wanted him for Himself" or some other pernicious nonsense? Have you always blamed God for that loss?"

I agree that I don't know Jesus. I never tried to understand Him. I can't remember much about my childhood, but I remember thinking of Jesus as something certainly real, but confusing and vaguely malevolent. I can't remember how people talked about Henry's death. I remember that it quickly became something taboo. We didn't say his name. 

I think the bitterness came later. Jesus transformed into something Hideous to me slowly, as my social consciousness developed, and as the resultant horror caused by christian nationalism and white supremacy became tied to His name. 

I've never been able to separate the two things: The Jesus that Was, and the Jesus that became the rallying cry for genocide. This is partly because I feel that there's not a meaningful difference between intention and effect. (I've only ever been hurt by people who Meant Well).

"Anyway, dear Toni, this is not a rebuke from an offended believer, but real concern for your deep wound, and deep hope that you can find someone with whom to unpack this "bitterness" and "hate," which will infect your own spirit if you let them."

Thank you Deborah. Your genuineness reads. I unlearn my hatred a little bit with each conversation like this one, and by writing this bitter little story. 

Mesopotamians were bitter people too. If you'll humor me, I'd like to share one of my favorite poems, The Story of Adapa:

Adapa is a sorcerer. He attains power to rival the gods through his wit and will, but he is a servant of Ea, the god of Waters, and Wisdom. Ea summons Adapa to heaven to answer for a magic spell which went too far. Through a series of psychedelic trials, Adapa is tricked. He could have reached out and taken that which would have made him a god, but he chooses not too. He despairs when he realizes his mistake too late. He is bound in service to Ea forever. The gods laugh. 

If there are gods in this world, I think this is how they would act. 

It feels cathartic to tell that story. I can picture the farmers who told it. Their teeth are rotting. There are parasites in their blood. They toil for cruel masters.

Sheesh. Welp. Keep it pushing. We don't have it THAT bad.

"Pray to Osiris if that helps...God is remarkably tolerant."

Maybe I will! I haven't tried to pray in a long time.

Thank you again for your wise words. I will always cherish our correspondences, and muse on them when life is kind enough to allow me to write. I would welcome your prayers! Send baby Henry my finest regards, if you can get in touch!

Blessings from a dirty apartment in Minneapolis,

-Toni (I also go by Maeve)

[exilley]

the sheer vindication that came over me when i read that rebuke. exactly what i havent had the clarity of mind to put into words … when people make the distinction between “good” and “bad” korea, as though such a distinction werent merely the product of the US’s effectual success in militantly and economically imperializing the ROK as a puppet state to project all their politics and ideals onto. the sensationalism the west portrays the ROK under is inherently voyeuristic. South Korea is a socially regressive state when it benefits american exceptionalism and a bastion of progressivism when it can be caricaturized into a rhetorical tool for western political discourse. Feminism in particular in the non-western world has been historically weaponized as a proxy by the west to uphold white supremacy. This is all stuff you can deduce by yourself this doesnt require any special knowledge! What are you all doing with your daily 36 hours of screentime on this site

[penmanshipeb]

The preaching of the gospel, the good news, God's word is the only antidote that God has prescribed regarding this world. He gave his Son. The Son gave his life. By way of our belief in the gospel of Christ, he save and deliver us from this present evil world.

The Son did not come starting programs, beginning a political party, or any other thing. He came preaching and teaching the kingdom. He came preaching and teaching the time to come. He came preaching hope, belief, and faith in God; that if we believe and receive the kingdom of God, we will be there in that world to come. (He's going to destroy this one.)

The gospel is for the purpose of calling people out of this world. The gospel, good news, or God's word is for the purpose of stopping the the works of Satan. The preaching of the Word of God torments devils. The preaching of the Word has become my hope.

However, despite the supremacy of God's word, in this age of the Church, the word of God is not going to appeal to the Church. 📜 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; [4] and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. - II Timothy 4:3-4 It is therefore going to take for us to INDIVIDUALLY respond to God. In this age of the Church, it will not be a corporate turning unto God to take heed to, believe in, and for the hearing of God's word. 📜‭‭Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. - Revelation 3:20

📖 ‭‭Then they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and taught. [22] And they were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. [23] Now there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, [24] saying, “Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!” [25] But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet, and come out of him!” [26] And when the unclean spirit had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him. - Mark 1:21-26

📖 ‭‭You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. - I John 4:4

📖 ‭‭He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. - I John 3:8

📖 ‭‭To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. [22] “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” ’ ” - Revelation 3:21-22

📖 ‭‭Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. - Revelation 21:1

[tiodolma]

So Sir Launcelot departed from him and came to Sir Kay, and made him to be borne home upon his shield, and so he was healed hard with the life; and all men scorned Sir Kay, and in especial Sir Gawaine and Sir Launcelot said it was not his part to rebuke no young man, for full little knew he of what birth he is come, and for what cause he came to this court; and so we leave Sir Kay and turn we unto Beaumains.

KAY DID NOTHING WRONG!! He was suspicious and he wanted to humble the darn kid! Courts have proper decorum jfc! We cant just admit any pretty boy "knight" and give him everything right off the bat! Put him with the kitchen pages and make him learn!! (Also feed him for one year <3)

ONLY KAY HAVE RIGHTS! 🕺

KAY SUPREMACY 😤 /jk

.....

Okay real talk but did gawain and gareth just wanted to fck with kay in the first place? What's with this secret identity business?

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

NUTTIGE IDIOOT

“Nuttige Idioot” is Afrikaans for “Useful Idiot.” Two words that explain unreconstructed Afrikaner white boy Elon Muck perfectly.

And his useful idiocy to the Fascist American Right is accelerating.

Muck probably does personally believe in white supremacy; certainly the rest of his dodgy family, who made their money profiteering off Afrikaner war crimes in the era of Apartheid, hve shown no indication that they have accepted the changes of the past 30 years in South Africa. His best friend is German immigrant Peter Thiel, who brought and active love for Hitler and Nazism with him. Birds of a feather do indeed flock together. As to whether he believes any of the rest of it is not exacty proven, but if he’s doing it for a lark and doesn’t believe any of it, then he’s even more dangerous than he appears to be.

Yes, everybody’s sick of Elon Muck; I’m sick of him, too. But the problem for all of us, even people like me who won’t be found dead on the platform is that Twitter, with all the myriad flaws it’s floundered through since Day One, has managed to become the most influential social media platform out there. Just like what Facebook, it isn’t limited to pop culture and sports and cat pictures. It’s now used by journalists, activists, researchers, doctors, diplomats, and heads of state and has managed to become a critical source of both news and learned opinion. The fact that some readers of my genre of books declared that my friend Barrett Tillman and I are the “best” authors in our minnow pond - and that a bunch of Twitter users agreed with them - got me noticed by a New York literary agent who now represents me (and Barrett) on some projects I didn’t think I could ever find a way to do - and I didn’t even have to go bother myself with twittering! That’s how powerful Twitter can be.

So, for Muck to dismantle Twitter is bad enough. But to then turn it into a geyser of fake news, disinformation, and hate speech, far beyond what it was in the Bad Old Days, makes us all less safe as a country. Elon Muck is a national security risk and needs to be treated as such. By the government.

The narcissism/radicalization cycle that took hold of Muck at some point in the past two years has been accelerating rapidly, with acceleration growing on acceleration, since he finalized his acquisition of Twitter - was it only six weeks ago?

Within days of the takeover, Muck established relations with every member of the Dark Forces that had wrecked the place and led to those individuals being de-platformed beginning in 2020. He is now in near constant contact and dialogue with the most rabid conspiratorial fantasists and anti-Semites on the internet. Whether he really knows or understands any of his new enthusiasms is irrelevant. He jumped head first into the “globalist”/pedophile vortex which created the “Pizzagate” conspiratorial fantasy that led to the rise of the entire QAnon cult. He accuses former Twitter management who he has organization arguments with of intentionally allowing Twitter to become a breeding ground of pedophilia and child sex trafficking - all the while working with the people who probably are the pedophiles and sex traffickers if recent arrests mean anything! These false accusations and defamations rose to the level last week that last Friday Muck drew a rebuke from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey - up until that tweet, one of his bigger supporters in the takeover.

The message Muck is now broadcasting on the most powerful social media platform is indistinguishable from the far-right claims that “globalist” enemies are behind a vast Satanic network of pedophiles who prey on our children. Despite our surprise that a guy who once appeared to be a Liberal Hero with his “invention” of “the best electric car,” and his “invention” of a successful space exploration company has now “turned” 180 degrees shouldn’t be so surprising. Musk’s main allies now are literally the people who created Pizzagate and all the other conspiratorial fantasies and blood libels.

Watching Muck tells us where liberalism and conservatism are these days. Back when Musk was playing at being a liberal, he was a normal billionaire liberal. Flamboyant and egotistical, but the politics were more or less on the side. His pet issue was climate change, which he rode hard, though now one wonders if he’d have been such an environmental warrior if the government subsidies for his tinny electric toys - the primary source of Tesla’s semi-existant profits - had been less than they were. Had he not been the lib’rul fanboi he was, the Rich White Libs might not have bought in on the cars - and now that he’s gone Nazi, the cars are no longer the Official Car of Rich White Lib’ruls.

Let’s remember something that was there from the beginning: Muck is not this “creative genius.” HE DID NOT INVENT ANYTHING. Not Paypal. Not Tesla. Not Space-X. What he did was bring his part of his dodgy family’s dodgy profits from their participation in Apartheid Afrikaner war crimes to America and invest it in these projects, which had all been created by other people. Other people from whom he stole the credit when he claimed invention of Pay-Pal and named himself “Chief Engineer” of Space-X. He’s the modern version of the Swedish Nazi who went to Germany in 1938 and became an SS officer, and then at the end of the war stole a couple suitcases full of gold fillings taken from dead Jews in the concentration camp he worked at and returned to Sweden to found IKEA.

Muck regularly engages with and affirms the various claims and attacks of Mike Cernovich, the main promoter of “Pizzagate,” the conspiratorial fantasy that Democratic elites were using a D.C. pizza shop as the center of a child sex ring, that eventually evolved into QAnon. He’s also affirmed the claims of Lara Logan, who was recently banned form Newsmax - of all places! - for claiming World Economic Forum “elites” were “dining on the blood of children.” We now know that literal blood libels can get you banned from Newsmax. But Muck loves her.

Musk’s giving these people the keys to the Twitter kingdom. Former “contrarian” journalist Matt Taibbi, who jumped through the looking glass back in 2020 and Bari Weiss have become Muck’s in-house “reporters.” Whatever their problems, neither ranks with Cernovich and Logan and their “Scoops” from “The Twitter Files” have merely demonstrated that former Twitter executives were worried about doing their jobs right. But each new “revelation” has brought a new round of accusations from the far-right media sources working with them.

Jim Baker, the former FBI general counsel who later joined Twitter was working with Taibbi and Weiss on their initial releases. But then Muck’s new “friends” informed him of Baker’s background with his role in the purported Russia-Russia-Russia “hoax.” He was summarily fired.

Just last week, Muck’s new “friends” have decided that the current Twitter employees assigned to feed them information are actually part of the larger anti-conservative conspiracy. And it comes with the defamatory accusations that these people are promoting pedophilia and child sexual exploitation. In the Far right fever swamp, these are not those actual terrible things, but are rather clubs to be used against political enemies: anyone seen to support the rights of the LBGT community.

This past weekend, Muck went after Yoel Roth, head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. Because Roth is gay and Jewish he’s been a particular target for the far-right. Roth stayed on during Muck’s early weeks at Twitter and was frequently put forward to defend against claims Muck was promoting hate on the platform. But last week Roth took the fateful step of mildly criticizing Muck’s engagement with the right in public. Saturday night Muck retaliated by insinuating that Roth might be a pedophile, which explained Twitter’s purported laxity toward “groomers” and pedophiles.

Cheerleading a smear campaign by the global far right against a gay Jew is not only morally terrible and vicious. This stuff frequently leads to real world violence, with online conversations now filled with every kind of anti-Semitism, images of gas chambers, hook-nosed cartoons and worse. There is really no limit to the predation and malevolence Muck is capable of. He’s done this before when someone didn’t recognize his Glorious Genius, most prominently to a British caver in 2018 when the man who ultimately saved a group of Thai youths trapped in a flooded cave had the temerity to decline Muck’s suggestion he use a submarine during the rerscue effort. Muck then cut loose with “claims” of the rescuer’s involvement in pedophilia, which seriously negatively affected the rescue effort.

For questioning Muck even mildly, Roth is on the receiving end of just the sort of campaign he was charged with preventing, now led by the owner of the platform he was charged with policing. When its led by the guy with 120 million followers who owns the platform it’s a different matter entirely.

Muck’s outrage on Sunday was to promote a tweet that pushes the right wing goal of prosecuting Dr.Fauci. For what criminal offense?

The fact is that Muck doesn’t mean anything with this. He didn’t mean it when he said that Twitter removing Hunter Biden dick pics at the request of the Biden campaign was the clearest possible example of a First Amendment violation - an event that didn’t actually happen.

These aren’t arguments. They’re poses. They’re Muck “virtue signaling” to his new in-group. Muck’s model for Twitter 2.0 is 8chan, the site you go to when you’re looking to connection with the worst filth the internet has to offer - neo-Nazi indoctrination, misogynistic trolling, and every form of bigotry and hate you can imagine.

As far as Muck being anything close to “conservative,” there is no evidence he opposes abortion. His constant pursuit of government subsidies suggests he is not in favor of free markets. His sympathyand support for Putin in Russia and XI in China suggests that he has no understanding of the idea of American-lead internationalism. His “conservatism” is limited to shitposting and “triggering the libs.”

Four years ago, Muck tweeted, "Climate change is the biggest threat that humanity faces this century, except for AI." This pas weekend, he tweeted, “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters.”

If “Woke Mind Virus,” AI, and Climate Change are now his three interests, if he really believed any of them, wouldn’t her find allies for the struggle against WMV are don’t also insist climate change is a hoax?

The truth is, Muck doesn’t really have political beliefs; he has personal interests, and they are closely connected to his financial interests.

The hypocrisy at the center of Muck’s tenure at Twitter is crucial to understanding his political activism. Under his management, Twitter let back on its platform organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville; neo-Nazis like Andrew Anglin; and election deniers and insurrectionists like Roger Stone, while at the same time suspending accounts that mocked Muck or expressed left-leaning views. He is promoting what Adam Serwer defined as a “belief in a new constitutional right. Most important, this new right supersedes the free-speech rights of everyone else: the conservative right to post.”

Muck’s far-right activism, like everything else in his life, is personally motivated by the accumulation of money and “being perceived as a visionary who will reshape human society.”

But unlike Trum, the epitome of the Twitter Troll, Muck is a try-hard - as he has been with everything else he has pursued. Over at 4chan, his Fauci tweet barely merited discussion. “Elon is just being controversial to drive traffic to his website,” as one poster there put it. Muck is a failure at being anything other than cringey.

Saturday night in San Francisco, alleged “comedian” who’s no longer so funny Dave Chapelle called Muck to the stage during his show, where he was booed relentlessly by the crowd for over ten minutes, unable to get a word in, and according to people there he “looked stunned.” The ever-tasteful Chapelle then tried to claim the boos were coming from Twitter employees that Musk fired. Chappelle then said that all the people booing had terrible seats, and they were “way up there.”

In response to the Fauci outrage, he received the following”

“Re Musk tweet? Courting vaccine-deniers doesn’t seem like a smart business strategy, but the issue is this: could you just leave a good man alone in your seemingly endless quest for attention?" Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

"Elon Musk wants to criminalize Anthony Fauci because he disagrees with him. Elon is no champion of free speech," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

"It’s America. You can select any pronouns you damn well please. But Anthony Fauci has likely saved more human lives than any living person in the world. Shame on you," Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.).

"Dr. Fauci is a national hero who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health. Despite your business success, you will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions. You may have money, but you have no class." former CIA director John Brennan.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the tweets as "incredibly dangerous" when asked at a briefing on Monday. Musk's "personal attacks ... are disgusting and they are divorced from reality, and we will continue to call that out and be very clear about that," she said.

The other side: "I affirm your pronouns Elon," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Last night, the Twitter Trust and Safety Council scheduled a meeting to “discuss recent developments” at Twitter. Feeling anxious about what might happen, Muck dissolved the Council twenty minutes before the meeting.

And this morning, Elton John - who probably has more followers on Twitter than Muck, announced he was leaving Twitter and recommended his followers do the same.

All of the major advertisers Muck needs to pay that looming multi-billion interest payment 100 days from now have either left Twitter or paused their advertising. If a few hundred milliong Twitter users leave, that list of departing advertisers is going to get longer. Muck will either declare bankruptcy, which will destroy his relationships with his fellow richies who personally invested in his game, or be forced to sell even more Tesla stock, which will drive its value down, at the same time that the Wall Street vultures are developing plans to short Tesla stock into a forced bankruptcy.

Muck may soon be wishing those kids he was hiding from at school when he was 12 had found him and put him out of his misery then.

[Thats Another Fine Mess]

[papirouge]

You know, this is pretty silly, but I'm kinda starting to dislike the term "PoC", mostly because its used so often when it doesnt make sense. Like I still recognize its usefullness sometimes, but many times I'll see phrases like "POC are usually considered dangerous and threatening". Like I'm sorry, but in what world are asians considered scary or dangerous, or light skinned hispanics and native americans? It's literally only black and brown people that are seen this way. I dont know why so many people like to group every single non-white together when our experiences are often very different. "POC tend to be more disadvantaged at any level of education and perform worse." Again. asians literally kick white people asses when it comes to academics and success, literally what the fuck are you talking about??? Just say blacks and hispanics, like its only a few words more."

That's why I'm pro black women. Not pro Black (Black men can choke and BLM was a pro Black MAN movement) and not pro POC. Asians are infamously anti Black and I'll never forget how glad they were to feast on the anti BLM/the 13% Black menace resentment to push their anti asian hate thing. There was a reddit threat with a asian man saying Black people had the blood of the asian women who got killed by that WHITE psychopath..... His reaction is everything you need to know about how Asians will always suck up whiteness to dunk on Blacks.

And yeah, I roll my eyes soooo bad whenever I see Asians pull out the bEing a MoDel MinOritY is HaRd.....hmmmm, shut up? 🙃 they have the same lack of self awareness has those millionaires complainzd about being stuck in their 1500 square mansion during quarantine..... Just shut up, already.

And despite their struggle of being the model minority, Asians never peep a word when the Whites are using them to diss Blacks and argue that the problem is that they're just stupid and need to integrate moar (of course they forget that Asian vs Black immigration story are entirely different, their racial stigma is not comparable (east asians are still PALE and phenotypically very closer to whiteness than Blacks and that definitely plays a role). So deep down, they LOVE being the model minority and stick up FOR THEMSELVES when the Whites don't on other POC. They just pretend being sad about it to sound relatable to other non White communities and rebuke the "Asians are white supremacy cucks" narrative.

That being said, I'm the first to point out how the Black community needs to get its shit together. Of course, rap culture got created by the CIA to destroy the African American community, this whole ghetto, baby mama, glorifying illiteracy shit got shoved to Black Americans.. None of those things are organic to Blackness, otherwise it would still be as much of a thing in Africa, when that's not the case (African immigrants do better in the USA than ADOS, that's for a reason) but there's still need to be accountability. I'm sick of some Blacks acting like Blacks dealing drugs and shooting each other were victims. They are predator and need to be treated as such. Candace Owens is insane but she's very right on that aspect. Black men are the main source of Black femicide yet those men expect us to mule for them against White supremacy..... Black women need to burn the cape and look out for THEMSELVES. Black men are emasculated bum and will always use their women as human shield than hold themselves accountable (they always blame their shortcomings on White supremacy, yet lust after the White man's women...the same women birthing their oPpResSor lmao). This realization made me snap out of that BLM shit (not that I was really into this anyway but I thought it was still a positive thing that more ppl grew aware of police brutality) and made me pro Black women. Other communities can choke big time.

And don't get me started on Latinos. Those people will clown gringos to sound cool but weren't they the one clowning France soccer NT and how full of Blacks it was so they possibly couldn't be french? Weren't Argentinian soccer fans bragged about their White passing team and how their country wasn't "like a Netflix movie"? lmao Those idiots have the tragic mulato curse written all over their butt. They milk their latin-ness at convenience but will ultimately always stick to the Whites like the brainwashed colonizer crossbreed spawn that they are. They are raging colorists for a reason.... That's why I only trust & claim Black looking latinos à la Dominican Republic or Brazil - the others are White idc lmao White Latinos are demented and I'm absolutely not surprised they were so cool to welcome nazi. Absolute demonic breed... Their lizard lineage can't seat at the POC table. We humans out here.