#rootless cosmopolitans

[lacephale]

Yo, I Killed Your God

[funkpunkandpunkfunk]

Marc Ribot & The Rootless Cosmopolitans - Clever White Youths

[woman-respecter]

ok ive been keeping my mouth shut on the topic bc im a coward but it is seriously seriously concerning how many people feel comfortable gleefully being mask-off antisemites at the first possible opportunity, and even more concerning how many of said people are very popular tumblr users whose thousands and thousands of followers at best cannot recognize antisemitism and at worst condone or even encourage it. and yeah some of these people have had at least somewhat concerning politics for a while (not naming names but iykyk) but some of them have seemed mostly normal or even positioned themselves as allies to the jewish community. so uh please excuse me feeling very distrustful and scared rn

[germiyahu]

The Jews rather famously moved all around the Mediterranean completely by choice 😇

They hate the indigeneity argument not just because of the (tbh) dogwhistle that Jews are simply too cosmopolitan to belong to a specific place and clearly had an origin in that specific place at a specific time… but I think largely because it would force them to confront the Arab/Muslim Empire as a colonizing force and what that means for those polities and their descendants and how they relate to Power. This account in particular brushed off people saying “Native American groups moved around a lot and had quite interconnected societies actually.” Why? Because it displays how indigeneity as a metric for anything is always going to have holes or complications, it’s not a one size fits all analysis. And it equally applies to Palestinians if you bear the logic out.

But can you imagine someone turning around and smugly deciding that Palestinians can’t consider themselves indigenous? I have a strange suspicion this kind of “you fools you IDIOTS!” approach to indigeneity in the Old World would not be directed toward any Arab group.

[prussianmemes]

the glassy eyed 1000 yard western euro stare you get when you tell the people sitting in you and your visibly ill girlfriend's seats that they're in your reserved seats and they go "ach... ja but your reservation is not written here there is no r-"

excuse me you germano-frankish beady eyed cocksucker, we're on a čd train and my čd ticket shows us as having these seats, and your rootless ugly white and black deutschebahn fart app doesn't even have seat reservations because despite your national stereotype you have the same organization and respect for order a gypsy does.

don't give me your "mon dieu et iz not written here" - the train is chronically overcrowded because your third world national rail company can't book properly, you've been sitting for 3 hours from shitggart and have only been looking at your insta stories while pretending to study pierre von shittenlips. i have a visibly ill and weak passenger with me but beyond the former iron curtain, despite your supposed cosmopolitan love for all, you're like the rats in the paradise experiment who actually just viciously serve themselves first above all.

and the nerve to snicker and chat amongst yourselves once we get off... after very clearly sitting in our seats...: TOTAL WEST EURO CONTINENTAL DEATH.....

i believe now in celto-slavic racial superiority

[several-large-luxury-sedans]

Is the "media literacy" in the room with us right now?

[cruelsister-moved2]

That brendan dipshit always treats geopolitical events as a joke and never shuts the fuck up. I remember him having to leave tumblr for a bit after getting major backlash for linking a rickroll and saying it's a livecam of Russia invading Ukraine because he believed the invasion wouldn't happen. He's a white boy way too obsessed with smugly owning the libs.

what a stupid asshole i honestly just cant imagine how it feels to be an indigenous american right now watching the people who settled YOUR land being so smug and self-righteous because i guess they think what happened to your people is over now and its fine. tbh ive always been saying horseshoe theory isnt real but it is real exclusively for white men lol if youre a white man whose politics are motivated largely by the pursuit of the righteous rush you get from feeling like you have the moral upper hand then whats the difference between u and any other man like that

[razistoricharka]

Dawned on me that my parents are going to have a very rough time by old age with the dwindling number of tradespeople and medical professionals poached by the EU and I'm feeling like Iosef Lilianovich Dros

[nogoodnikolai]

your homeland is the ground beneath your feet. your homeland is where you take your shits. you're gonna let a bunch of dead fucks tell you where to take your shits

[transmascpetewentz]

israelis are absolutely not westerners lol this is just rootless cosmopolitan rhetoric taken right from stalin. are you proud yet?

[autokratorissa]

Anti-imperialism isn’t based on states or social movements meeting certain pre-set criteria. If Russia wasn’t doing all these things you mention, would that make the invasion acceptable for the working class? Suppose Russia had somehow magically managed to fight a “clean” war, without civilian casualties or mistreatment (such a war is a fantasy and can never exist). Would that make the war okay? Are communists merely opposed to imperialist war because it is ugly? What if, in this hypothetical other war, Ukraine was systematically doing all the things Russia is being accused of? Would that mean communists would have to support Russia? The communists in Vietnam did plenty of brutal and cruel things— if they did enough of them, would that have made the US war and its puppet regime good? Would it have meant workers should have supported the bombing campaigns, the Phoenix Program, the corrupt and repressive Saigon government, the entire imperialist effort of making Vietnam submit? At that point, why should the French colonial rule have ever ended?

Hopefully those questions have made you intuitively realise that our opposition to imperialism is not a crude opposition to “bad things” happening. All wars are more or less horrific, but communists are not opposed to wars as such, and have fought wars before when they are (or are thought to be) in the interest of the working class. The world is brutal, and classes have to fight for their interests; in extreme cases, this necessarily means war. We oppose imperialist war because such wars are hostile to our class interests, such as the solidarity and active cooperation of the proletariat internationally, which is necessary if we are to ever build lasting proletarian power; this war has debilitated any potential solidarity between the Ukrainian and Russian proletariat, and, to a lesser degree, many others. So, ultimately, the specific horrors that occur on and off the battlefield are irrelevant to the question of whether we should support or oppose the war effort of our state or alliance. It is very relevant to all sorts of other questions, but not to this one, not to the fundamental question of what the proletariat’s attitude towards the war as such should be.

As for Russia’s possession of its occupied territories: Russia is not going to give them up and Ukraine will never have the military capacity to force Russia out of them. That is not happening. Any restoration of Ukrainian control over the occupied territories as a whole, as opposed to the back-and-forth of a fluctuating frontline, will only ever be achieved through negotiation and Russia agreeing to withdraw in return for various guarantees— which is exactly what Russia was offering and asking for in the initial round of peace talks. I think that course is now off the table, largely because of Ukraine’s decision (under NATO advisement and coercion) to abandon talks and commit to a long war once the initial Russian campaign had failed; Russia’s war aims escalated at that point and became annexationist. So that means the restoration of Ukraine’s control over its lost territories requires, even if it were feasible, the industrial slaughter of a protracted war of attrition that, if Ukraine really did begin to be that successful, would threaten nuclear war as Russia searched for any means to restore control of the battlefield. That’s what support for the war means, on the NATO-Ukrainian side; it means, at best, commitment to a brutal war with no end in sight that will destroy all of Ukraine. At worst, it means the death of us all. Neither option is in any way to the benefit of the proletariat anywhere, least of all in Ukraine.

Of course communists want to make the world a better place— but so does everyone. Literally everyone will characterise their politics like that, so it’s a hopeless, pointless, empty statement. The Nazis and ultranationalists in the Russian and Ukrainian fighting forces want a better world, the ordinary depolitical conscripts want a better world, Putin and Zelenskyy and Biden want a better world, the communists that the Ukrainian state has disappeared—such as the Kononovich brothers—want a better world. Unless you actually know what that means for someone, it’s a useless thing to ask. For communists, it means we want the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish itself as the ruling class. It will never do this by bleeding itself dry fighting the bourgeoisie’s wars, nor by supporting its national bourgeoisie plunging it into further and further destitution so that it can fund its class peers elsewhere in fighting such a war.

You say that we can make a massive difference without doing anything. How? The NATO states didn’t consult their populations before they threw materiel and money into Ukraine to cause as much damage to Russia as possible. The proletariat in those countries hasn’t done anything to help Ukraine; the bourgeoisie has, and has made the proletariat pay for it. As for lifting fingers, the NATO-aligned European states are plunging their economies into chaos to follow Washington’s orders; is it the German bourgeoise that are going to shiver in the cold and struggle to afford food? Or its proletariat? We didn’t ask for, nor do, this, but we’re going to have to face the consequences of it, even if the war itself doesn’t escalate outside of Ukraine. So are the Russian proletariat, and, above all, the Ukrainian. No workers anywhere gain anything from a war like this, and not just because it’s bloody and people die and cities are destroyed. None of us gains because of the nature of the war itself as a war between competing geopolitical blocs for spheres of influence and access to markets. Why do you think the Americans have been so eager to trap Ukraine into hundreds of billions of dollars of debt?

All wars are destructive and immiserating, and almost all are against our interests as workers. We will get nowhere by following our national bourgeoisie into a war— a war which we will have to fight and suffer for, not them. The most urgent need is for the war to end without escalating, and that can only be achieved by the warring governments agreeing to a ceasefire and entering into negotiations. Arms companies making more money than we can comprehend, and NATO states unloading their strategic reserve, not to mention actively training the Ukrainian military, does the absolute opposite of encouraging that; it’s directly intended to prolong the war for as long as possible and weaken Russia as much as possible.

I have a legitimate question for the “we need to stop arming Ukraine and end the war” leftists. I’ve been wondering this for a while and I sincerely hope someone answers this!

If you’ve paid any attention to what’s happening in Ukraine (which might be asking too much of Westerners, idk) you’ll notice that when a territory is liberated from Russian occupation, soldiers find: torture chambers, executed civilians, and hastily-dug graves. You get horror stories from survivors of occupation about rape, child kidnapping, and people being dragged out of their houses with their hands bound being their backs to be shot. It happened in Bucha, in Izyum, in Kherson. At this point, we should 100% assume that these horrors are currently happening in the territories that Russia still holds. If we cut aid now and push to negotiate, and Russia gets to “keep” any of these territories, it’s not just redrawing lines on a map. It’s condemning people to brutal occupation and ethnic cleansing.

Most importantly though, to anyone saying “ask the Ukrainians what they want instead of forcing a war on them”: have YOU talked to a Ukrainian? Even one?

For right-wingers, I understand why they are against sending aid to Ukraine. But leftists supposedly care about other people and want to make the world a better place, no matter what it takes. Why would you turn your back and condemn people to brutality and murder when you can make a massive difference, without personally lifting a finger?

[spot-the-antisemitism]

Look at another dipshit commenting about Israeli Miku

Literally the original Miku that started the trend:

Modern clothes are culture enough when other countries do it but when the Jews Israelis do it it means they have no culture 🙄 make it make sense

OOH this counts as "rootless cosmopolitan" trope

I guess loving brain rot's name checks out

[boasamishipper]

‘israelis are evil rootless cosmopolitan european colonizers who drink the blood of palestinian children and secretly control the world’ cool do you have any other sayings fresh from the pages of mein kampf or the protocols of the elders of zion

[racefortheironthrone]

I was reading your yeomen tag and saw the term knave refering to someone bellow a yeoman. But what is a knave?

As I’ve discussed in the past, a lot of our insulting terms for people started out as class signifiers:

a villain was originally a villein (another term for serf).

a knave was a servant (often the "knave" and the "knight" were opposing pairs) but also a low-status and thus dishonorable person.

likewise, "flunky," "minion," "lickspittle" and similar terms all originally were different (mostly insulting) terms for servants.

"vagrants," "vagabonds," and "sturdy beggars" were all descriptions of homeless people, either who were seen as inherently criminal and dangerous because they were disconnected from the feudal system. There is a strong crossover to anti-Romani/anti-Zigany slurs, as well as the "rootless cosmopolitan" variant of anti-semitism, in this category.

similarly, "bumpkins," "yokels," "rubes," "hicks," "rednecks," etc. were all insulting terms for people from rural areas, usually denoting their lack of education, sophistication, and their working in outdoor manual labor.

for some gendered versions, "sluts" and "slatterns" originally had connotations of being dirty, unkempt, and being a low-ranked servant like a scullery or kitchen maid (i.e, they're dirty because they're doing "the dirty work").

upper-class Brits still use "pleb" (plebian) as an insult today.

[terulakimban]

It’s always interesting to me when goyim say there’s no antisemitism in Europe, and that it’s an American thing because that’s where the Jews are.

Why are we here, do you think? And why aren’t we there? What did your families do to us?

The US component in the TRA fight

Seeing what's happening with Hogwarts Legacy, I've noticed that many of the ignorant people saying goblins repressent Jews have to be non-European (and I'm mainly looking at United States tbh).

For us Europeans, goblins are our folklore, our ancient culture, our history. We've had goblins, ghosts, witches, meigas, wizards, elves, giants, mermaids... Since ALWAYS. Like, have you read Ulysses' adventures? Tolkien? German fairy tales? Celtic tales? These stories have been amongst us for 3000+ years. They're part of our history, our culture... And not really US culture, for example, nor US history, nor US mythology. And it's obvious in the way some of you speak, that you really have not grown-up in this world and had this folklore be part of your blood.

What Hitler did was take goblins, steal this ancient being (which is actually an umbrella term for 20+ types of goblins across Europe, including the famous leprechaum), and turn it into a Nazi tool for anti-Semitism. And we're reclaiming our culture. We're not letting Nazis take that way from us, like they took so much more from us. The previous four generations in my family have all lived wars, I'm literally the first war-free. My parents grew-up in times of conscription and fighting Fascism. My grandparents only ever knew World War II. Another, older set of grandparents, was born in the middle of World War I. All of them here in Europe, my Dad, Granddad and Great-grandfathers all having been forced to fight here and there.

So don't talk to me about anti-Semitism, war, prosecution, Nazism... I know. I've grown up in the ruins and scars left by the war. I'm still trying to help my country recover from the war. My birthplace. And part of the fight is try to undo the damage done by the Nazis, where possible, and you know where it IS possible? recclaiming my culture, my history, my folklore. I can't bring people back from the death, but I can fucking do that.

[spacelazarwolf]

all i’m saying is that it would be super fucking cool if gentiles could stop using the experiences of non ashkenazi jews to fuel their bizarre protocols of the elders of zion conspiracy fantasy they have about ashkenazi jews. y’all did not even know we existed until two seconds ago and now you want to use the two tidbits you read on wikipedia and articles from people who aren’t even jewish to go “see!!!!!!!!!!! those rootless cosmopolitans even hate other jews!!!!!!!!!!” boost the voices of non ashkenazi jews talking abt our experiences. your hot goyish takes on ashkenormativity are entirely unneeded.