#slavery and colonialism are bad

[archaeologysucks]

My Cultural Resources group at work had a meeting this morning wherein we discussed the current ahistorical political climate in the US, and how that impacts our ability to do our jobs, especially in light of the fact that we are frequently the only representative of our profession working with construction crews that are often dominated by people with right-wing politics. There’s little we can do, officially, apart from make a list of companies that make our work more difficult, and try to avoid working with them, but I’m glad to work for a company that encourages us to speak up about hostile work environments.

[nando161mando]

"All Cops Are Bastards" (EN: English)

[p2ii]

I feel like there's something to be said about the way fandom will treat characters who's trauma they can personally relate to Vs characters who they cant

[homonationalist]

Once the veneer of fantasy is stripped off, the setting terrestrialized, and the orcs recognized as human, then, all the classic themes of Western racist thought become immediately visible. Tolkien’s aesthetic judgment on Mongols and orcs simply repeats Meiners’ aesthetic classification of races, and the even earlier medieval hierarchy: “The figure prized in medieval romances corresponded to Greek statuary, physiognomy was important, and a ‘skin of dazzling whiteness’ exemplified true beauty. Such beauty symbolized goodness, while blackness, small stature, and an ill-proportioned body meant ugliness and evil.” Similarly, twentieth-century German racists would contrast Aryans and dark “ape-men.” Blacks themselves, of course, had traditionally been seen in racist thought as close to apes, and possibly even prone to couplings with orangutans. In keeping with the foregoing, Tolkien describes an orc as “a short crook-legged creature, very broad and with long arms that hung almost to the ground” (TT, 62), while at the siege of Helm’s Deep, we are told, the orcs “sprang up [the ladders] like apes in the dark forests of the South” (TT, 178). The pure-blooded orcs’ fear of the sun also has its precedent in one German anthropologist’s contrast of a diurnal Aryan and a nocturnal non-Aryan race.

Charles W. Mills from “The Wretched of Middle‐Earth: An Orkish Manifesto” (2022)

[therealmackenson10]

If you have time please check out my latest track.

Mr. Mack- Bad Religion

Free the people, free their minds.

“What we found as Africans living in the West is that our memory has been erased, and the eraser has been forgotten. Others have been telling our stories.” - Tony Browder

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

you know. there are few things that make me sit and think carefully about my instinct to say something would be a Good Fictional Metaphor for a real-world issue like the time i saw the take with my own two eyes that piranesi is a powerful, insightful, accurate metaphor for both colonialism in general and slavery in the US

[thenwethrowitonthefire]

Our previous-prime-minister-now-head-of-navo currently keeps saying that we should prepare for war which might break out between now and the next 5 years.

[queer-geordie-dyke]

This has been said ad nauseum, I know, but the thing I just *cannot* get over is how very quickly and easily the left as a movement abandoned its most basic principles:

“Rape is an abhorrent, violating crime and we must believe and uplift survivors” - until it is done to Jewish women and girls in the name of ‘resistance’ then it’s just fine and dandy, or we might not even believe you at all.

“An armed force invading and mass murdering civilians is a war crime” - until the victims are Jews and you’ve decided it’s ‘resistance’ and ‘you don’t get to criticise how they fight back.’ No, mate, the word you’re looking for is ‘pogrom.’

“Slavery is bad” - until it is Jews being held hostage in Palestinian homes and forced to work then it’s ‘they were treated well and fed, what more do you want?’

“Indigenous peoples regaining their ancestral homelands is a key part of decolonisation and is a worthy endeavour” - until it is Jews regaining the land of Israel after centuries of disenfranchisement then it’s ‘white supremacy’ and ‘colonialism’ and the most evil thing in the world.

“Collective punishment is bad, citizens aren’t responsible for the actions of their government” - until we can treat every single Israeli like evil incarnate and deserving of the worst abuse and treatment simply for existing.

“Oppressed people know their own oppression better than you do. Listen to them and don’t presume to know better about the issues they face” - until it’s Jews talking about antisemitism and then it’s ignoring them, talking over them and accusing them of weaponising their oppression to silence criticism.

“Abuse and violence against an oppressed group must be condemned wholeheartedly and we must stand with the persecuted” - until it is Jews facing a 400% increase in antisemitism - being spat at, beaten, raped, ostracised from public spaces, having their schools and synagogues targeted, and then it’s shut our eyes and ears and pretend none of it is happening.

“Queer rights for all” - until Israel dares to be a beacon of queer rights in the Middle East and then it’s ‘pinkwashing.’

Do you even hear yourselves? Do you even care that you are being breathtaking hypocrites? How do you expect anyone to ever take you seriously ever again?

[the-catboy-minyan]

"Jews are by religion stateless" shut the fuck up SHUT THE FUCK UP HAVE YOU EVER EVEN BEEN IN A 10 FEET RADIUS OF A TORAH BOOK? HAVE YOU EVEN READ THE DICTIONARY MEANING OF A SINGLE JEWISH HOLIDAY??? HAVE YOU EVEN READ THE FUCKING SHEMA?????

"Zionism is Antisemitism"

This statement pisses me off. I first saw it while arguing on Facebook, but now, with the antizionist hijacking Neil Gaiman's post, I think it's time to address this ridiculous claim once and for all. Let's first define Zionism:

"If you are a Zionist you support genocide" - Is self-determination in our ancestral homeland genocide? If so, then of who? Is there an ethnic group who's reason for existence if denying Jews access to their homeland?

"Jews are by religion stateless" - FALSE. That is the Wandering Jew trope, prescribed TO us by Christians. Jews have lived in Israel CONTINUOUSLY for over 3000 years, in small numbers between 136 and the 1880s. They have been in continuous contact with the Diaspora community throughout, with the Egyptian Diaspora in particular sending funds to rebuild cities that were ransacked by colonizers in the 1600s.

"Zionism is a secular ideology started by an atheist" - first of all, Judaism is an ETHNOreligion, meaning it doesn't require faith to be part of the tribe. Someone who is born Jewish can only leave Judaism if they convert to another religion(which historically meant either leaving for another tribe or participating in imperialist religions, like Tomás de Torquemada). Additionally, a return to Israel is a core part of the Jewish religion, with our ancestor having prayed for a "next year in Jerusalem" for 1700+ years.

"Zionism feeds antisemitism" - No, antisemitism proves the necessity of Zionism. With the existence of a Jewish state, Diaspora Jews aren't at the mercy of the goyim around them, and can coexist as equals. If the goyim can't stand to see Jews as equals, it's not the fault of Zionism. If goyim hold Jews collectively responsible to the actions of each and every Jew, it's not the fault of any one Jew. Stop victim blaming Jews.

"I'm Jewish" - doesn't stop you from having internalized antisemitism. Work on that. We all need to. This applies to ALL Diasporas, to Israelis, to matrilineals, patrilineals, to Jews who's both parents are Jewish, to converts, to everyone. We ALL need to decode the thousands of years worth of cultural osmosis from cultures and religions who's centerpiece is dehumanizing and persecuting us.

[visenyaism]

Sorry if you’ve been asked this but what do you think of all the rot in asoiaf? Obv some of it is related to the problems with monarchy but I feel like a lot of it isn’t and it just leaves me curious. Like cold hands or people killed by the others idk what that symbolizes there. Jon is in a land in which rot is in stasis from the cold and it’s creepy as shit. And then there’s stuff that could have multiple interpretations like dany by proxy of selmy experiencing bio warfare with the corpses like I know some people see it as the fall of old ghis but I wondered if maybe it was a sign to dany about breaking the wheel and doing as her ancestors did. Idk I know it’s a nasty series and sometimes grrm is just doing stuff so that it’s gross but I feel like rot comes up SO much and I people are usually talking online about like Tywin when it comes to rot.

Oh one of my favorite things about the asoiaf series is how heavy-handed george rr martin is with the rot symbolism. and (at the risk of sounding like an mfa vomited on my keyboard) the way that the political, pestilential, societal, and climatological aspects of the rot symbolism all interconnect.

In a society founded on so many feudal evils that has perpetuated for centuries, something has to give. It is a recurring theme in these books that violations of human decency under feudalism cause cataclysmic societal collapse represented through literal and metaphorical pestilence.

There’s the sociopolitical collapse in the riverlands caused by war of human decency and norms like guest right and prohibitions on kinslaying or cannibalism just dedicating away as times get hard. broken men. bodies left to rot in the sun for the crows to feast on. There’s the fermenting wildfire under every major street in Kings Landing. There’s the familial/relational decay of incest especially the targaryens and the lannisters. The people who hold power and that society rot, despite everyone’s best efforts at keeping up appearances: Robert Baratheon the “war hero” dies of a very nasty festering stomach wound he got in a drunken hunting accident, Tywin gets shot on the privy and his corpse putefies in the sept.

The climate stuff is also very salient. The series starts during late summer and as things get worse and worse in the world declines into the autumn where the summer fruit and all of the abundance is literally rotting through the hands of the characters. (see: renly’s peach vs doran’s blood oranges!) The cold up at the wall keeps the rot at bay for a while, but it does not entirely stop it. Coldhands’ hands are still blackening. Things are still unraveling at the hinges of the world. that’s pretty representative of the way that the violence of the border wall and the penal colony stationed there to patrol it are not sustainable. The decline of the night’s watch from a once proud order to a penal colony full of cruel and often impoverished convicts dropped off there by circumstance is a symptom of the society that sends people up there. But something still has to give. The wall will fall down and the existential crisis will come, it’s just slowed.

Critically, there is also the forgotten parable of Old Valyria: a society founded on extreme cruelty and slavery which eventually experiences cataclysm coming up from the very tunnels they send the enslaved into to die for the empire. A lot of what Daenerys experiences in Essos is an extension of that commentary on slave societies to me. Like. as the slavers try and reconquer places dany has liberated, people fleeing the violence, bring disease like the bloody flux with them. The rot creeps back. (important: disease and rot in the series is not always something people get for being morally bad. it often happens to people who just have no choice but to live in these places.)

But that’s why I think the way Volantis is described really ties a lot of those elements of the rot symbolism together. This is a society that has founded itself up from out of the corpse of old valyria. The city maintains some veneer of old glory, but the fountains are dry and the paint is chipping. The people there eat food that is so sweet it literally causes your teeth to rot out if you were to consume it every day. In terms of climate, I think it’s relevant that it is described as extremely, almost disgustingly, humid, and everything is excessively perfumed to cover up a tangible smell of decay.The air is quite literally cloying and difficult to breathe. You feel dirty after walking through it. The evil of slavery is rotting the city to its core in the same way that the evil of feudalism and the wars for the iron throne is affecting the city of king’s landing.

To wrap allllll this up. Rot is a signal that obviously societal collapse is coming, but it’s also transitional: the empire of old ghis brought about its downfall, and then valyria found itself on the same principles which brought about its own downfall, and then the Targaryen went to westeros and engineered their collapse in Kings Landing while the freehold did the same essos. I think the climatological and disease aspects of it are really heavy-handed symbolism that something has to give in the societies and we’re at the point in the series where that’s about to happen.

I think the ultimate arc of the series ends in some form of significant societal collapse, but instead of building upon a rotten foundation again people are going to have try and hope for something new and gather the courage to build that.,quite literally dreaming of the spring.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You know, it’s funny.

I watch a lot of Kids Cartoons, because I have a Kid and I like hanging out with him. Cartoon animals are fairly common. They are often portrayed with familiar, human family units: a mom, a dad, a baby, maybe siblings.

It’s too bad.

The Human Family is special.

Mantids are born alone. The species that live near me cannot survive the frosts of winter, so as the days shorten and the world becomes inhospitable to them, they provision for the future by laying eggs in protective cases in places unlikely to freeze. When the days lengthen again, the babies emerge. And so. All Mantids are Orphans.

Much of Life on Earth is like this. Not just Bugs.

Most of the life on Earth is photosynthetic. Over half, by both species count and biomass. Trees and grasses and ferns and algae do not need to move, not quickly, not in a coordinated way. So they never learned to perceive their surroundings. If you cannot perceive, you cannot be attracted or repulsed; you cannot Love. Trees may nourish each other through The Great Mycorrhizae, but this is mediated by the Fungus, not the Tree.

Merlin and Dorado. Annelid and Isopod. Orphans.

An infant deer can walk within minutes of life if need be. An infant wasp may feed upon its siblings. The infant octopus’s first meal may be its mother’s corpse.

The Human infant is pulled into the world by hands. Hands that care. The Human infant is helpless, for years, requiring not only a single adult of its species but an entire village to be said to be “raised properly.” The Unloved child DIES

Love is what defines Humans. Domestication is not like Colonialism or Slavery; to Domesticate a Plant or an Animal or a Fungus, you must Love it. You must Love it for generations, handing your Love down to your descendants. Caring for the beasts and plants, feeding and sheltering them, helping them find mates. To Domesticate a species is to crown yourself their God, and I will tell you now that the noble Aurochs and the mighty Boar felt blessed by our Love, and that when Cows & Pigs are raised properly by farmers (who are not themselves property of Conglomerated Business Interests,) that the relationship between the Farmer & their Animals is one built from Love.

We are. So special for this.

It is a form of madness, after all. To see the Self in the Other. Or perhaps a divine insight. Those are hard to distinguish.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

We all know OFMD has been tremendously healing to watch when you're queer, but it's honestly just amazing to see as a person of color, too. I am so, so used to characters of color being the only non-White cast member, or stereotypes, or being told that "hey, x Disney character is Black now, aren't you happy about that?"

And OFMD has so many characters of color that are allowed to be complex and nuanced. I'm almost never able to enjoy historical fiction because of how the genre often treats characters of color, but OFMDs characters of color feel like real people who I know in my family and community. Olu isn't a big scary Black man, he's so sweet and practical and a little bit awkward around his crush. Frenchie is comically superstitious and able to pull off an awesome con. Roach loves piratical violence but he also makes lovely assortments of tapas and is delightfully offended when Stede insults his cooking. Jim is allowed to be cool and mysterious and a little bit goofy. Fang is so precious I smile every time I think about him. And don't even get me started on how amazing it is to see an indigenous Jewish man as a romantic lead!

One of the worst things about historical fiction, for me at least, is how all the characters of color are almost always there just for trauma porn. It so often feels like Black characters especially are just there for White audiences to feel bad for. But in OFMD, anti-racism and anti-colonialism are baked into the narrative. Racism exists, but we always get the last laugh, whether that's by knifing a racist through the hand or setting a boat of rich racist assholes on fire.

It encourages me to feel like I can ask for more from other TV shows. I don't have to just roll my eyes and put up with yet another historical drama where the only Black character's arc revolves around the trauma of slavery. It's so refreshing to see. I can't wait for more of it in season two!

[nando161mando]

"All cats hate cops" (EN: English)

[cursedartistnelari]

South park Avatar Au is finally here!! No idea if someone has done this before but I Really wanted to draw all SP characters in this Au, but honestly i don't know who should be a water bender, air, earth or even non bender. Please, I need help with Stan, kenny, Eric and Butters and if you have any headcanons about other characters I'll LOOOOOOOVE to read you and draw it if i have time, life is not funny

Okey so about kyle's lore, his mom is from the fire nation while his dad is from one of the colonies they have in the earth kingdom that is now owned by the fire nation, either way kyle is born in the earth kingdom.

At first his mom was one of the fire nation radical, basically just pro slavery, colonialism, and all the really really bad stuff until meeting gerald, whobwas a prisoner at the time. She realizes the truth about the fire nation, they fall in love and before scaping, they concive Kyle. When realizing sheila was pregnant they run away to a little village in the earth kingdom and kyle was born there. Unfortunately said village is colonalized and beomes fire nation territory so he grows up to be a soilder as his mom but in reality is a rebel working in secret for the earth kingom resistence.

Sorry for any mistakes English is not my first language, so who should be next?

[damnfandomproblems]

We received a handful of very similar submissions not too far apart from each other, so I've decided to break format a bit and include them all in one post together here to get them out of the way. Each will have their own Fandom Problem number but we will still be getting the same amount of posts today, this will just be one item in the queue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fandom Problem #6735:

I saw someone complain that Hatsune Miku drawn as an Israeli teenager is exactly the same as drawing Nazi Germany Miku!

This is an example of an antisemitic trope called Holocaust inversion - but that's actually beside the point.

I saw the same person post their own lovely fanart of an Egyptian Miku.

Look, I don't think random ass Egyptians nowadays are to blame for their government's or their ancestors misdeeds. Nor do I think Egyptian Miku somehow represents them.

But I find it hypocritical that they're implying Israeli civilians are just like the fucking Nazis when they're from a country where ~20 Jews live.

There are over 50 000 Egyptian Jews in the world! They had to leave Egypt because there they're were being murdered or having their houses firebombed. Most went to Israel because no other country would take them.

I guess by this person's logic they're just as bad as Nazis.

But since this is a fandom blog, let's bring Miku back into this:

Miku is Japanese.

Japan is a nation with an imperialist past. Japanese nationalism is still going strong. The Ainu people and Ryukyuan people had their homelands colonized, and were forcibly assimilated. To this day the Japanese government does not recognize them as minority ethnic groups.

The Wikipedia category page for Japanese war crimes has well over 50 entries, sorted by the nation they were committed in. Between them, hundreds of thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands were raped or forced into sexual slavery. This is not a distant past, there are "comfort women" survivors still alive today. The Japanese government didn't apologize for any of this until the 1990s. Japan continues to not have any laws in place to prevent racial or ethnic based discrimination.

Does Miku represent imperialism, colonialism, mass murder, genocide, racism, and state sponsored mass sexual slavery, just because she is Japanese?

No, of course not. That would be dumb. We don't hold individual Japanese people, and certainly not random Japanese fictional characters, responsible for this. That would be both racist and pointless.

If you think that it's somehow different for a fanmade Israeli teenager Miku design,

🫵you are an antisemite🫵

Fandom Problem #6736:

'white people participating in the international hatsune miku trend is LITERALLY colonialism' isn't a take i expected to see and yet here we are!

I think it's time we all go outside!

Fandom Problem #6737:

I really don't want to be judgemental and I know that the whole Mikusona monday/personal Hatsune Miku design trends from a while ago were all about redesigns based on the artist's tastes.

But you know, sometimes the design is so far removed from the original that its just unrecognizable as Miku?

I mean if your character has a different silhouette than Miku, a different outfit than Miku, a different face than Miku, a different hairstyle than Miku, a different hair color than Miku, nothing that would thematically connect it to Miku, then that's not Hatsune Miku, that's your OC!

Fandom Problem #6738:

"I drew Palestinian Miku because Israeli Miku made me feel sick!"

Really? Seriously?!

You drew Palestinian Miku, not because you love Palestine, not because you love Palestinian culture, but because you wanted to stick it up to those pesky Israeli artists?

That's... I don't even know what to say. That's awful, and it reveals an awful lot about you.

You're not even Palestinian - you're appropriating Palestinian culture to fuel your hatred of Israeli citizens.

You aren't pro-peace. You aren't even pro-Palestine. You're just antisemitic.

Fandom Problem #6739:

Artist draws Chinese Hatsune Miku

People: 😍🥰🤗💗

Artist draws Iranian Hatsune Miku

People: 💖☺️😄🤩

Artist draws Afghan Hatsune Miku

People: 😊😻💞🥰

Artist draws Indonesian Hatsune Miku

People: 👏🤗💗🙂

Artist draws British Hatsune Miku

People: 😄♥️😽💕

Artist draws USAmerican Hatsune Miku

People: 🥰😍✨💝

Artist draws Israeli Hatsune Miku

People: I literally feel sick rn kill yourself you racist nationalist genocidal colonizer! How dare you touch Hatsune Miku! Your culture is fake and your art is ugly as shit!

...somehow, I feel that it isn't about genocide being bad 🤔

(and yes, I have actually seen people say each and every single word I wrote there. It's not an exaggeration.)

Fandom Problem #6740:

There's a trend going around of people drawing Hatsune Miku if she was from their own countries, which is really fun to see, but I gotta say,

If seeing someone's drawing of Israeli Miku makes you 'feel sick' (actual quote that I saw), or if you think someone drawing Israeli Miku means they support genocide,

I need you to step back and realize that this line of thought isn't normal, it is in fact really fucking racist.

Random citizens of Israel aren't to blame for their government's actions, if you can't realize that, you have been radicalized and not in a "cute" way!

People are not to blame for their government's actions. Random people sharing their culture and making a drawing fucking Hatsune Miku aren't showing approval for everything their country does.

If you can respect, say, Chinese, Russian, or Iranian artists (or anyone, really) in spite of their countries' rampant human rights violations - because it's not their goddamn fault - but you are unable to do the same for Israeli artists -

That is just racist, it's a double standard, and it reeks of antisemitism.

This sort of performative outrage, this performative disgust - it does JACK SHIT to help people in Gaza.

Please do better.

Fandom Problem #6741:

I can't help but to side eye people who draw their blorbos with Palestinian flags... OK, you drew Miku with a keffiyeh on her ass. Exactly how is that supposed to help? By creating awareness? You really think anyone on this site isn't aware by now?

It seems like performative activism at best.

If you really want to use your art to help people in Gaza, take charity commissions or something that'll help materially you know!

[therealmackenson10]

I appreciate those who’ve tuned in. We can’t stay asleep forever. The truth will set you free, but first it will make you uncomfortable. A lie can be told so well eventually be accepted as the truth.

If you have the time please check out my latest single. Now streaming on Spotify.

Napoleon stated, “History is a lie agreed upon.”Once you do your own research, you will see that what we call history has been re-written to fit a narrative. Break free and free your mind.