#right-wing narratives

[alwaysbewoke]

[still-searching-for-something]

Today was Yom HaShoah, the day that Jews remember the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the industrialized genocide of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1941-1945.

This is a really simple opening statement, but bear with me--I think it gets a lot more... 'yeah, buts' than most people may realize. And I think a good way of illuminating that is to break down the difference between how gentiles and Jews commemorate and remember it.

In my experience, gentiles seem to view the Holocaust as the ultimate example of mankind's barbarity to mankind. Like, the distillation of evil, the most obvious example of dehumanization and bigotry brought to its horrifying and extreme conclusion. They emphasize Nazi Germany's responsibility, elevate the instances of non-Jewish Frenchmen and Poles and Germans who made efforts to save Jewish lives, and generally view Nazi oppression as a catastrophe of whom Jews were one of many victims. And they emphasize the Allied Powers' role in ending it by liberating the camps and invading Germany. Hence why International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on January 27th, the day Auschwitz was liberated.

But Jews have a different perspective.

We view the Holocaust as the most extreme manifestation of--but far from the conclusion to--mankind's barbarity to Jews. Not to his fellow man, per se, not to some universalized insert minority here slot, but to Jews, particularly and deliberately. The Nazis could never have accomplished their genocide were it not for the two millennia of anti-Jewish hatreds and dehumanization embedded deep in the institutions and political structures of European society. They didn't have to persuade Europe that the Jews were incurably evil, the Europeans already believed that. The Nazis had 99% of their work done before they'd even come to power, work that was done by the the Russian Empire, the Romans, Martin Luther, Christian Passion Plays, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the centuries of blood libels, the Fourth Lateran Council, the New Testament, the Spanish Empire, and on and on and on and on. It's as if some people think Hitler just woke up one day, out of the blue, with a total hatred of Jews and managed to use propaganda to convince the previously 100% tolerant Germans to hate Jews, too. Antisemitism did not begin or end with the Holocaust.

The sole responsibility of Nazi Germany in the Holocaust is also just... not true. Vichy France rounded up 13,152 Jews in the Vel' d'Hiv roundup, with not a single German participant, and sent them off to be murdered in Auschwitz. Vichy passed antisemitic legislation without any outside coercion--French Jews were hiding as much from the French police as they were from the Gestapo. France, of course, was the home of the Dreyfus Affair--antisemitism was and is a deep part of French society. And it isn't just France. Ukrainian nationalists participated in the Lviv pogroms, killing maybe around 8,000 Jews, Poles perpetrated the Jedwabne pogrom, and that doesn't even bring in that countries like the US, Switzerland and Ireland and Britain blocked Jewish emigrants, and I could just keep going on, but I think you get the point. Quite simply, six million Jews interspersed throughout Europe don't get murdered if it isn't without the collaboration of--or at minimum, silent assent and indifference--of all of their neighbors. The Nazis were the primary perpetrators of the Holocaust, of course, but almost all of Europe collaborated on some level, too. And this is a history that gets wiped away in favor of the comforting narrative of the Allied Powers bursting into Auschwitz, killing Nazis, and being horrified by what they've found, and then the poor people in the surrounding towns having NO IDEA about what had been going on. I think this narrative is why gentiles have International Holocaust Remembrance Day when Auschwitz was liberated--when they 'came to the rescue'--and why we have Yom HaShoah on the day in the Jewish calendar that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began--when we died on our own terms in spite of our murderers.

Think of the tiny, unwritten, centuries old minhagim of small Jewish shetls and towns like Trochenbrod, which were entirely annihilated. The end of the burgeoning Yiddish cinema. Yiddish going from 13 million speakers to 600,000 today. See how many entries in this list of shetls end with "town/city survived, but all/most Jews exterminated." Imagine for a moment, the potential rabbis and scholars and actors and scientists and artists who could have lived, had they survived or been born of Jews did. Three and a half million Polish Jews, to around 15,000 to 20,000 Polish Jews today. Imagine if Thessaloniki were still a majority Jewish city. How many Jews worldwide would be alive today had the Holocaust never happened? I've heard estimations of 32 million, compared to the real life 16 million. To kill such a massive number of people from an already tiny minority group--that has real consequences. The cultural loss for the Jewish people is staggering and beyond human comprehension.

And yet, the Nazis deliberate targeting of us is, in many ways, being pushed aside. Magnus Hirschfeld was gay, yes, and advanced the Institute of Sexology way ahead of its time and yeah, the Nazis were homophobic. But they were homophobic for antisemitic reasons. They viewed his work as Jewish perversions BECAUSE Dr. Hirschfeld was Jewish. In fact, they viewed homosexuality as a creation of the Jews. But so many progressive queer people, especially those who run in antizionist circles, seem to be trying to co-opt the Holocaust as being their trauma, downplaying Hirschfeld's Jewishness and holding the Institute up as proof that queer people were the 'real' victims of the Holocaust, entirely shutting out the millions of Jews, Sinti, Roma, and Slavs who were murdered. You can also see this in anti-mask conservatives comparing masking mandates during the pandemic to anti-Jewish legislation in the Holocaust, or the comparisons of the ongoing war against Hamas as being a 'modern day Holocaust.'

This phenomenon, Holocaust universalization, gets so much pushback from Jews for a reason--it downplays the anti-Jewish character of the Holocaust. It's softcore Holocaust denial. And it's so ridiculous we even have to say that, as the whole point of the Holocaust was to be anti-Jewish, to be the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." It's 'All Lives Mattering' the Holocaust. Holocaust universalization, and Holocaust inversion--the phenomenon of talking about Jews, Zionists, or Israelis as perpetrating a 'new Holocaust'--minimizes and trivializes the astounding damage and traumas and death and destruction wrought by the Holocaust. It's a polemical lie, so incendiary and so insulting--imagine telling a sexual assault survivor that they're morally no better than their rapist--that the only thing it can be is antisemitic. It is beyond reprehensible to talk like that, but it's so mainstream and acceptable to do it. Activists who say these things need to examine their own rhetoric, because it's dangerous, antisemitic, and adjacent to Holocaust denial. Not a place I think anyone should want to be.

The Holocaust is not a lesson Jews should have learned, an educational seminar, a 'card' Jews play, a choose your own adventure novel, a philosophical meditation on the nature of mankind's evils, or an empty slate upon which to project modern politics, warfare, or your ideology onto.

The Holocaust is, quite simply, the industrialized genocide of the European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1941-1945. And today was Yom HaShoah, the day we remember that.

[fookinstevienicks]

I really need you people to understand that "I don't think that's how they intended it" does not change the actual biphobic nature of the writing

[ravenkings]

i really wish v for vendetta (both the movie and the graphic novel) hadn't become associated with deeply irritating (and often reactionary) online political subcultures bc it really does slap so fucking hard

[hilacopter]

leftists when there are bigots in their country: obviously not everyone here is a bigot because we're human beings with differing opinions and political views, people who generalize all of us as bigots are being xenophobic.

leftists when there are bigots in the country they don't like: SEE THIS IS PROOF THEY'RE ALL EVIL ULTRA-RIGHT WINGERS AND WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN WANTING THEM DEAD WE MUST CLEANSE THE WORLD OF EVIL

[local-redhead-bookworm]

If you somehow managed to watch any of Mobile Suit Gundam and think it was apolitical, I am going to tape your eyes open and force you to rewatch it

[dragonfoods]

I will have to read a romantasy book written by a straight man or a lesbian someday just to see if a certain tone is different because a lot of the romantasy books written by women that are attracted to men are just…sometimes…interesting in a bad way

“She was the strongest, most compassionate, most intelligent, kindest, most generous woman that ever existed. All the wise older characters like to pull her aside to tell her this. Unlike all the dumb evil cows that just wanted MMC for his hot body and deep pockets, FMC wanted MMC for his mind and his beautiful soul” just gives off a weird vibe

[cuntylestat]

one of my students saying that their course is trying to turn students into leftists and is "super woke" is very funny but also a bit concerning

[bonebabbles]

Wind Runner gives birth a month early and loses a kitten to a seizure, indicated by the child having 'spittle' frothed at the corners of its mouth.

Gray Wing shuffles up with his Characteristic Wisdom,

"Maybe it's for the best that your weakest child died"

"Also maybe it would make your loss easier if you started believing in our religion just like we pressured you into taking a name like ours"

Harsh? Yes.

Deserved? Also yes.

Maybe next time he'll think twice about proselytizing to a mother of a different faith who just horrifically lost a child, still cradling its corpse, after going off about how "maybe only the strongest should survive"

At least Bumblestripe waited for the funeral! The dead baby is NOT EVEN COLD, GRAY WING!!!

[onejellyfishplease]

I just finished reading the new chapter for Open Your Shell and AUGH it hurts so bad. One part really stood out to me: "Donnie's hands curled into fists, slamming down onto his desk, just narrowly missing his keyboard. He started at it. The 'D' key was coming loose." I didn't really think much of it at first, but then I realized the significance of the loose key being the 'D' one. It symbolizes that Donnie is drifting apart from his family. The key is breaking and coming loose and so is he. The key hasn't fallen off quite yet, but it will soon if nothing is done about it. Donnie hasn't left yet, but he plans to once Leo is back home. I may just be looking into it too deeply, but I really loved that line and it got me thinking, so I just had to gush about it for a minute.

oh im so glad you noticed!! i was really proud of that little nugget of symbolism.

and another little tidbit is- Donnie isn't bothered to fix it, he knows its almost broken and he isnt going to do anything to stop it. like he's accepted it as inevitable.

love it when people look into my writing like that!!

[buttfrovski]

opening pandora's box would be more tolerable than going through cartmans phone

[alwaysbewoke]

i have to remember not everyone in florida voted for these people in power because it's hard to feel sorry for them sometimes. really hard (watch til the end smfh)

and she's going to turn around the vote for him AGAIN smfh

[firefighter-diazbuckley]

i genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, think you are just plain fucking stupid if you believe in conspiracy theories and the “mandela effect”

[prokyon]

[long post of israeli bullshit propaganda]

oh i wonder if this person cares about "the joos"?? maybe their racist bullshit is at least backed up by a veneer of caring about antisemitism or something-

the FIRST post you see on this zionist shithead's blog:

if you dont know what this is, it's fascist "the west is collapsing because women get rights" crap. it's very very stock standard for nazis. you got it all here, you got ableist r-slur, you got "darkmaga" pepe frog, you got "rome fell because women!!!" and "abortion is evil and an afront to god" and "controlling the reproductive resources of the West is a necessity" crap.

but oh yeah go ahead and tell me that zionist freaks are very Jew-friendly and not right wing fuckheads, and that we should bother engaging with empty handwringing over false claims about "the left are the REAL antisemites" anymore.

it's a fucking joke.

[crackny2k]

*wokely* i think immigrants are amazing because they sell kebabs

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I think in a sense the MCU made me get away from all the comic characthers they already touched because liking a characther in the comics is very different to liking a characther on a popular movie franchise.

When I say I love Batman or that Riddler is my babygirl or that I think Superman is great and Green Arrow is fun or Zatanna is cool, I'm talking about the concept of the characther paired with some specific versions of them. The inconscistence of mainstream super hero comics as an ever changing universe that exists in different eras and was touched by different writers and artists and audiences means that in the end what we truly like about a characther is their potential and the core traits that were mantained during this whole mix, is personal. We may like the same characthers for the same reasons and still it is a very unique experience.

But the MCU took it from me. I can't say Ironman is my disaster boy or that I adore Wasp or really like Scarlet Witch because it isn't about a personal experience related to the first impressions and the versions of the characthers that marked me and made me like them despite the rest. The MCU is constant, the characthers are the same even with the writers changing and the time passing, now a characther being OOC isn't a feeling or someone breaking a fundamental trait (and this arguments of what is in characther won't take to an interesting dicussion of how we percieve the characther wadawadawada) and they are popular enough that saying I like Tony authomatically means MCU Tony unless I make a long explanation. Not only that but if I criticize Wanda for something that had a similar conterpoint in comics when I love comic book Wanda it's seen as wrong because the idea of the chracthers being more concepts to be enjoyed makes no sense in the movie universe and therefore aren't truly understandable by an exclusivaly movie viwer wich means that liking the comics version of the characthers ends up coming with the necessity of explaining the different ways I interact with both medias and why plus the differences between the comic characthers and the movie characthers until I'm tired and there is still some stans who are mad with me.