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nachoaveragejoe234 · 10 months ago

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Since I had to block a bozo who defends the hate of Russian civilians, (redjaybathood), here is proof of anti-Russian sentiment towards civilians, it's not propaganda and you ain't a tankie for calling it out.

OK, so I have to respond. Firstly, my criticism doesn't mean "I think Putin's behaviour is the right thing."

Let me ask you something. Why don't you lame Chinese civilians for their government? Why don't you call them names? Their leader is also a communist who threatens other countries. Why aren't Chinese civilians considered tankies? Why don't North Korean civilians get treated like they're part of the problem? Cherry picking.

Next, you're literally doing what the OP and many other people are calling out. Hating the civilians for existing and living in a dictatorship.

And since you freaked that I didnt send the links even though you can look it up yourself (meaning you're lazy), fine. Here we go. Now let's see if you try to accuse me of lying. This is the sentiment that lead to the Japanese internment camps which everyone agrees were wrong, but I know people would cheer for Russian ones. There's a LOT of Russia-bashing, believe it or not.

And serious actual hate crimes and attacks. All called "propaganda" by bigots.

That's arson if you don't speak German.

If a foreign minister needs to call you out, it's not propaganda.

NOTE: Dubs being put on hiatus, Russian non politial products like snacks and drinks being removed or given WARNINGS in stores, none of that happens to other "evil" countries like China. Selective outrage? I'd say so. And literal paragraphs about hate from the Wiki page.

All of these are civilians who are being treated like shit on the ASSUMPTION that if you're Russian, you must hate peace. Dictators are not the people. People are brainwashed. You don't have the right to judge the peopleof a dictatorship because they aren't born evil, they're taught to obey the dictator. It happened with Hitler. It happened with Stalin. It happened with Mussolini. It happened with Pol Pot. It happened with Milosevic. It happened with Hirohito. It happens with Xi. It happens with Kim Jong Un. Why is it that when it happens with Putin, and ONLY with Putin, are the civilians suddenly just as problematic as the leader? You can't judge an entire nationality based on a select number of people you've seen who agree (or pretend to agree, as many may not actually agree but pretend. If all you view them as is cowards, but you don't hold the same values to other citizens of dictatorships, you are in fact, a BIGOT and it's not problematic or propaganda or false to say so. I made myself very clear. If you still disagree that's your problem and you are a toxic person. Jesus fucking Christ)

Tell me again how being Russian automatically makes you a bad person and how civilians aren't victims just because they are living in a corrupt country. You judge the entire population based on what fringe nationalists and some brainwashed people say. Blanket statements about an entire nationality or race are NOT okay. Peoplewho criticizes this aren't automatically pro-tyranny. Not that you care or believe that.

As a bonus, let's talk about how America and Canada (my country) used to HATE UKRAINE, and they had Ukrainian internment camps.

Your reaction to this should NOT be "I don't think Ukrainians deserve peace". BOTH RUSSIA AND UKRAINE DESERVE PEACE AND TO BE FREE FROM HATE. THE HATE GOES IN ALL DIRECTIONS. THAT'S THE REASON WAR IS A THING. PUTIN NEEDS TO STOP FIGHTING. PEOPLE NEED TO STOP JUDGING CITIZENS OF A DICTATORSHIP FOR BEING FROM A DICTATORSHIP. THE MORE RUSSIANS THAT CALL OUT PUTIN ANY WAY THEY CAN THE BETTER. ALL OF THESE STATEMENTS CAN AND SHOULD CO-EXIST AND I YOU DON'T THINK SO, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. "BUT THEIR LEADER!" "BUT I'M UKRAINIAN" "BUT LISTEN TO WHAT PEOPLE SAY" "SHUT UP TANKIE" "ORC/RUZZIAN AREN'T SLURS THEY'RE TRUE". ARE NOT EXCUSES. The orcs and Ruzzians are Putin and his lackeys, not the people who live in said tyrant's cities. Obviously people should help Ukraine, that's absolutely fine. But people should not do or say anything the people above have said. It's pretty easy to find out of touch comments on Twitter and Quora that blanket the entire population as the same "evil commie tankie orc zombies". People calling out this stuff aren't trying to make a competition of "who has it worse" when in fact war harms EVERYONE.

That's all I can say. Don't like this? Then you should really think.

#slavophobia #tw: xenophobia #tw: hate crime #anti russian sentiment

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episodicnostalgia · 1 year ago

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Star Trek: The Next Generation, 104 (Oct. 17, 1987) - "The Last Outpost"

Written by: Herbert Wright Directed by: Richard Colla

The Breakdown

The Enterprise crew are in pursuit of the mysterious never-before-seen Ferengi, when their ship suddenly powers down while orbiting an uncharted planet. Initially Picard is given the impression that a Ferengi weapon is involved, when they receive a call from the Ferengi themselves admitting to having the same problem. Ultimately it’s determined that the power drain is coming from the planet’s surface, so both ships send a landing party to investigate while everyone else is forced to wait in hope for a solution that doesn’t involve freezing to death.

Once on the Planet, the Ferengi immediately begin attacking with what appear to be whip-phasers (the default weapon of any strong capitalist society), and a fight ensues until it’s interrupted by some sort of all powerful deity-guardian (from a long extinct civilization. Pretty standard ancient space stuff) who decides to test which crew is more honourable-and-just. Since the Ferengi are buffoonishly evil, Riker is able to make short work of the test, and the Guardian is pretty much like, “Sorry for the trouble with your ship, here’s your power back” before vanishing. The end.

The Verdict

The first half of this episode mostly works at successfully building suspense over new unknown enemy. And then we finally meet the Ferengi and things get… unintentionally hilarious? Yes, I think that’s about as generous as I can be. By the time we meet this episode’s obligatory all-powerful space deity/guardian, the story has hit peak moral-lesson-of-the-week platitudes.

1.5 stars (out of 5)

Additional Observations

Picard dismissing old earth nationalistic values, and then immediately implying his ancestor’s flag was better than the American’s, seems a little off-brand for a starfleet captain.

Data getting caught in a Chinese finger trap is dumb. I know it’s being played for comedy, but it just falls flat. And Riker’s “let’s beam a box of these over to the Ferengi” gag at the end is equally dumb, and an obvious knock off of the ending from ‘The Trouble With Tribbles’.

Picard’s an asshole: While grappling with the reality of the entire crew freezing to death, Dr. Crusher considers the possibility of sedating Wesley to ease his inevitable suffering, to which Picard gives us us the gem: “He has the right to meet death awake.” …I mean, sure I guess he should be allowed to make that choice if he wants, but do do you think it might be worth asking him? Going out peacefully in my sleep seems alright to me, and it’s not like you can’t just wake him up if you all survive. Picard must REALLY hate that kid.

After watching episodes like this I can understand why so many people hate the Ferengi. Thankfully DS9 does a much better job with them.

#star trek the next generation #TNG season 1 #The Last Outpost #retro review #star trek review #star trek #star trek tng #ferengi #tv shows #tv review #tv series review #90s tv series #90s tv shows #herbert wright #richard colla #episodic nostalgia

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hussyknee · 2 months ago

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I replied to @aelfwyn and @homosociallyyours the comments but I'm going to C+P them here because y'all USAmericans need to stop seeing yourselves as an exceptional kind of monster. As a settler colony, the dynamics are more complex, but being conditioned to put race solidarity above class interests isn't a uniquely white thing. It's a colonial thing that's shared by the majoritarian population of most nations in the Global South because our countries are colonial borders that we inherited. Once the Europeans fucked off after 200 years or so, suddenly there's a former administrative border that's 70% Group A and 30% Group B. Group A then consolidates power by genociding the shit out of Group B, colonizing their land. And then any yahoo from Group A can get their fellows to sacrifice their own class interests by promising to keep Group B in their place. Cue decades of separatism and militarization, keeping the country in a state of emergency that leads to an autocratic government and eroded democratic freedom.

Basically, post-colonial Global South nations like us have inherited the same violence you see in white settler societies like the US, Israel, Australia, except for the part where y'all get rich by keeping half the world in war and poverty lol. But the exploitation, war mongering and refugee crises created by that end up empowering your own fascists and creates an untouchable elite class that wreaks havoc even among the settlers at home— which is where most of the West is at now. You experience the same violence we do, but only in the end stages of colonialism.

This is why for Sri Lankans, watching the US and the West the last few years gives us déjà vu. You know how the US ousted Trump in 2020 but then the Dems were such a bunch of out of touch crony capitalists that betrayed all the minorities that turned out for them and allowed the hatred of immigrants and Muslims to became so widespread that Trump is now back in charge with control of House, Senate and Supreme Court? That happened to us in 2019.

(Putting in bullet points so you can follow easier.)

– The Rajapaksas came to power in 2005 by promising what Sinhalese Buddhists call "ending the civil war" and the rest of the world calls "the 2008 Tamil Genocide". They were all but worshipped as saviours of the nation and became a political dynasty on a wave of rabid entho-nationalist fervour.

– However, they put paid to all that loyalty and goodwill over 10 years of Marcos-level corruption, extra-judicial terrorism, embezzlement, nepotism, fraud, civil rights suppression, and autocratic rule.

– When Mahinda Rajapaksa tried to amend the Constitution and contest for the Presidency a third time in 2015, even his own home district turned out to oust the lot of them in favour of a coalition govt.

– This coalition was created between a splinter faction of the Rajapaksas's ethnofascist socialist party led by diet racist Maithipala Sirisena (nicknamed My3) and the minority-friendly neoliberal Opposition led by Ranil Wickremesinghe.

– (He is known for despotically sitting on the party leadership pot for 40 years while unable to shit.)

– This ramshackle entity was called the "Yahapalanya" Government ("Good Governance"...government) No one really trusted or liked it but they were the "lesser evil" compared to the Rs.

– (Yes, our left-wing is fiscally liberal and socially conservative and right-wing is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The kind of situation Tankies cannot compute. But honestly the difference between them is that neoliberals sell national resources to foreign investors and pocket the money and the socialists accrue foreign debt for national infrastructure that they then rob at both ends. They're both varying levels of ethnonationalist union-busters.)

– The neoliberal policies of the Yahapalanya coalition began to rebuild the economy. But they ignored the poor and working class who were struggling and starving, ignored the minorities that were being terrorised by ethnofascist mobs, and generally reminded everyone how much they were the same kind of incompetent, corrupt, crony capitalist assholes. Pointing at dollar rates, industry gains and the rise of the gig economy while the majority of poor still can't put food on the table isn't a winning argument, especially while scamming the Central Bank and protecting your own crooked MPs. (Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.)

– They still might have won a second term, especially after the Rs jumped the gun in 2018 and attempted a Parliamentary coup by getting President My3 to defect back to them. That put the Rs back in disfavour, but much less so than they were in 2015.

– But the coup led to Yahapalanya's My3-Ranil hell marriage falling apart once and for all.

– Amid the disarray, the Rs got a bunch of ISIS radicals from nowhere to orchestrate the worst terrorist attack we've ever experienced on Easter Sunday 2019, that the Yahapalanya govt failed to prevent out of sheer shocking incompetence.

– (Anyone with a brain knew they were behind it the minute the bombs went off, but no one can accuse the average voter of having one when the alternative is the opportunity to scapegoat a minority).

– The My3-Ranil coalition proceeded to completely bungle the aftermath, refusing to resign from either government or their respective party leaderships, going after any and all Muslims as hard as the Rs ever did, and mud-slinging at each other instead of taking responsibility.

– Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mahinda's brother and Defence Minister who was in charge of the Tamil genocide during his Presidency, became the rallying cry of the nation

– The neoliberal party (UNP) got sick of Ranil and realized they'd never win another election under his leadership with the entire country howling for his blood. All but a handful of them walked out from under him and formed their own party, the SJB, which stood as the Opposition.

– Meanwhile, the Rs created their own party, absorbing most of the socialist legacy party (SLFP), and made the SLFP itself a minor coalition partner under My3—thus effectively dismantling the two-party legacy of 75 years.

– The new neoliberal party SJB, lacking the structure and generational support of their parent, couldn't find its own ass with both hands and a mirror on a stick. And so Gotabaya Rajapaksa swept to a landslide Presidential win in 2019 virtually unimpeded on the wave of racist, Islamophobic hysteria.

– That's right, we hated Tamils and Muslims so much we elected Mahinda's barely-leashed attack dog that his own brothers feared, who was known to disappear political dissenters and feed them to crocodiles. (No, really. He did. This is a guy who has a shark tank in his house. Fuckin' James Bond-ass villain.)

– This was followed by a super majority for the Rajapaksa party in the 2020 Parliamentary elections, only the second in our history. It installed former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister, glutted the Parliament with Rajapaksa cronies and yes-men even worse and allowed them to introduce Constitutional amendments that basically made Gota all but king.

– Gota then disregarded all his advisors and his brother and proceeded to completely bankrupt the country via massive fraud during COVID. Within two and half years, our treasury was completely empty. We had no fuel, food, medicine, we went into 7 hour brownouts in the middle of a heatwave, people died in miles-long queues for essentials and cooking gas, the country ground to a stand still.

– This is why in April 2022, one of the most massive sustained country-wide citizen protests in the world erupted in Sri Lanka. Apparently the Sinhalese Buddhists that brought these fucks to power could stomach genocide, war crimes, tortures and murders of journalists and activists, scapegoating, terrorizing and witch hunting minorities and busting unions, but when the urban middle class SinBuds can't feed OUR children is when we have enough.

– The govt repeatedly brutalized protestors for weeks until the working class and poor finally snapped and burned down several dozen of their houses, including the Prime Minister's mansion. It was only then that PM Mahinda resigned and Parliament dissolved. (I say again, protest only works when you're prepared to resort to violence as the alternative.)

– Then instead of resigning himself, Gota went to fucking Ranil, who in 2020 had failed to win his own seat in Parliament and was only there because of a Constitutionally reserved seat for the UNP.

– After twenty fucking years being enemies, Gota made a deal that allowed Ranil to be PM again in exchange for heading an interim coalition govt with the Rajapaksa party.

– Ranil got the urban liberals to turn on the poor and unions by waving a return to stability and fuel resupply in front of them, which made the protests break down.

– Predictably, nothing got better.

– A few weeks later, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans travelled to the capital during the fuel crisis. They came hanging off trains, loaded on top of trucks and buses, and even on foot. They all physically stormed the President's mansion and forced Gota to flee the country.

– While Gota was flying around like panicked bird trying to find a country without an extradition treaty and the Lankans lit fireworks in celebration, Ranil forced a Parliamentary vote that made him Executive President once Gota resigned, and created another interim govt.

– HE GOT THE LIBERALS TO BETRAY US AGAIN.

– He had the military crack down on protestors (firing tear gas from helicopters!!), making arrests, allowed all the Rs and their cronies to come back yet again, and refused to call elections for another 18 months.

– (I personally became suicidal over it and it's why I will kill liberals on sight. They are the worst kind of maggot in creation, a knife hovering over the back of every left-wing push for change.)

– Ranil being Ranil he fucked over the "stability"-minded libs for the second time as well.

– By the time he was forced by the Supreme Court to call elections, the entire country was furious and sick to death of the entire two-party clown show and all the career criminals on both sides of the fence.

– The left-wing 3rd party coalition the NPP, that formed around the nucleus of the former Marxist party, the JVP, was the only one that rose in people's estimation. They were the only one that had stayed on ground zero of the protests with unconditional support for the unions and students without trying to co-opt them. They had run on an anti-racist, truly progressive platform, promising to crack down on corruption in 2020 and had been reduced to just three seats, but those three seats were occupied by charismatic, erudite, canny and organized MPs free of scandal. They were literally the only feasible option by virtue of being the only one that wasn't a disorganised, flaming dumpster fire run by crooks.

– But even then, 30 years of Red Scare was so effective that JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is the only one to become President without an over 50% majority in the first preferential vote.

– AKD dissolved Parliament immediately and announced General Elections, operating until then with a Cabinet that only comprised the three seated NPP members (himself, my professor, and Vijitha Herath, that ended up beating her as the MP with the most preferential votes in any election. Boo.)

– The bunch of incompetent nepo babies in the Opposition SJB further alienated, enraged and disaffected even the ones that had turned out for them six weeks previously—

– —so that at the General Election, every single district turned red. The whole country has never turned any one colour in our 75 years of universal franchise. Even people who predicted a 2/3rds majority are shocked. Apparently the Tamils and Muslims of the North and East are just as sick of their own representatives.

So now we're in this new era of what-the-fuck where we can apparently expect things of our elected representatives other than "please don't fuck us over too badly", but it remains to be seen whether any long term lessons will stick.

Basically, if you live in the US, you can also look forward to this kind of thing if Trump burns the whole place to the ground in less than 4 years, along with the GOP. Sooner or later it will be the white liberal's turn to be eaten, and that is when the left will be able to rise up and answer fascism with violence. Nick Fuentez's house got burned down so you can already see it starting to happen. All you had to do was get white women on your side.

Also the reason our protestors weren't massacred like others have been historically, and how Bangladeshis were this year, is because enough of the military and police personnel were also disaffected that they decided they weren't paid enough for this and even joined the protestors in the end. At some point, even the enforcers of the elite must realize that they are the working class. The army and cops that protected Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh did not, and it did nothing to deter the student protestors that led the charge. Students of public unis here were also the ones who were our vanguard. Student leaders are the great white hope of society and every time we let the state throw them to their dogs we're letting ourselves get eaten alongside them.

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats. The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems destroyed and purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government, an unmarried abortion rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House. Five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history.

On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state.

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! THERE IS A REPRESENTATIVE FOR MALAIYAHA TAMILS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY AND IT'S A YOUNG WOMAN! This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, these people are not Marxists or anything near; they're mild social democrats who would only be threatening to like, USAmerican liberals, who are now center-right. The actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is extremely high.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

#sorry for tagging y'all again after writing all those replies. just ignore this #knee of huss #sri lanka protests #sri lanka politics #sri lanka elections #sri lanka news

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staticespace · 6 months ago

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"If I don't vote for Kamala, what do we do about Trump?"

"Just assassinate him successfully then! No need to vote for her if he's dead!"

Excuse my French, but some of y'all are putain d'insupportable.

Okay, cool. You killed Trump.

The problem doesn't stop there.

Because now, you have a large group of people with both money and power in the United States who supported him who will turn around and blame every minority group ever for violence in the country and decide to vigilante their justice the same way an assassination would.

Trump isn't the whole fucking problem.

He's only a part of it.

The whole problem is that this country has been spirally into fascism for many years, bit by bit, chipping away at the seams since even before Obama became president. And after we got a Black president, well, the racists and white nationalists ramped it up, pushing propaganda, psyops, putting "their boys" in higher positions like they already were.

Trump is at the forefront because of how he stacked the Supreme Court, and he's the one white Christian nationalists want to rally behind because he successfully put people in place to reduce rights for anyone with a uterus and increase them for corporations (remember the Chevron case and how the current SCOTUS overruled it).

This is so far beyond Trump.

He's just been the most successful so far.

Killing him won't end it. He's not some big bad villain who contains all the evil.

If anything, his murder would embolden the forces behind him into action, just like it did on January 6th, 2021. He is already more popular now than days before because the assassination failed (and no, it's not some conspiracy, please shut up).

Y'all hardcore getting on my fucking nerves, cause I know at least some of this is because people don't want to vote for someone who doesn't exactly fit everything they want in the world.

You're never, ever, going to get that person unless you run for office yourself.

I could go down the whole spiel of parasocial expectations and human nature, but I'm not. I'm really not in the mood for it.

It fucking sucks that we have to vote between several evils and that third parties are substantially less popular than the major parties, unlike in other countries where they do have two main parties but the other parties are also important and often get elected in high positions.

But that's not gonna change suddenly. We're not gonna suddenly get that in time for the election. Trump's current presidential legacy follows over 50 years of systemic effort (like, I'm talking back beyond Reaganomics).

Some other efforts have also been systemic, like the right to homosexual marriage! And that was a good systemic effort! But gay marriage didn't become legal overnight! And voting for third parties or getting the Perfect Candidate also won't happen overnight!

And now, at the Nth Hour, is this really the time you want to take a stance in neutrality by not voting, hoping someone will kill Trump, and not paying attention to the millions behind him?

So fuckin unserious.

I'm not telling anyone who to vote for. That's not my prerogative here.

But, I am saying, if you don't want Trump or what he represents, stop hoping for the perfect storybook savior and work with what you have.

Merde.

#us election 2024 #static speaks #discussion #vote please

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cacaitos · 8 months ago

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yk what's weird to me about pre-KnS yamaguchi manga (save for cybermomotaro) is that despite leaning so much on like those edgy loner nationalistic guy main characters they alway are written in a way that almost would suggest an arc to end up like something closer to kakugo yk?

like yes kakugon't (rei HAJC) got the rising sun-every man for himself-violent retaliation and angeris perfectly fine-group thinking is for pussies things going on but by the end he goes forming decent friendships and cooperation in a way that suggests a betterment of his character. with garan, he's also another loner samurai hunting evil and degenerates bc, in very anachronistic yamaguchi fashion, rehabilitative justice/prison system doesnt do it for him and Bad People should Die bc they cant fundamentally change and hippies and love is for pussies (again). but in like the last chapter we find he raises orphans to avoid them becoming trash adults or criminals. so, which of the two is it? is it nature or nuture with this series.

then all pre-KnS works end very suddenly, and specially with HAJC and Garan, at these very odd points where they seemingly contradict the main character's already so-wrong-they-cant-be-serious opinions but dont ever really change anything despite being aware and calling attention to itself...

so on those terms idk if i feel as strongly to keep saying he did like a 180º on his take on the matter when starting KnS, but it cant say the contrary either, for now...

#txt

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qqueenofhades · 3 years ago

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I apologize if anyone else has also complained about this to you but the media hypocrisy re: this war happening in Ukraine vs it happening every day in Middle Eastern countries that are spurred by both the US and various EU countries + Russia is only further adding to the anger that I feel. It's all sf disgusting and US/UK reporters being so blatant about it with the "this isn't some third-world country, it's a MODERN environment" is also hilarious once you consider how even Eastern European countries aren't exempt from this framing only when it suits Western countries. Like oh ok, so when Balkan countries wage war against each other we're "barbarians who started WW1 and needed the brave British soldiers to save us from the evil Ottoman Empire", but when Russia is the main aggressor then we are suddenly 'modern', got ya. I feel for everyone who has to see this hypocrisy take place rn while the US/Russia hasn't stopped their pillaging of Middle Eastern countries.

YEP. God, this exactly. It was pretty stunning to see the contrast -- Poland urging Ukrainian refugees to come in their thousands, without COVID vaccine documentation or even passports, as compared to their response when Belarus shipped in all those Middle Eastern refugees in an attempt to force an EU border crisis (which happened like TWO MONTHS AGO, since this year has already lasted a thousand eons). In which case, they closed the border, militarized 15,000 soldiers, put up barbed wire, and did everything to avoid letting any of those refugees in, even though their circumstances were, objectively, exactly the same. It's not that the Ukrainian refugees don't deserve it, because obviously they do. It's just that those Middle Eastern refugees deserved it just as much, and there is no question that this is getting so much attention because it is happening in mainland Europe, against white and (largely) Christian Europeans. (Although Ukraine's significant Jewish population and the fact that President Zelenskyy himself is Jewish should not be forgotten.)

Also, obviously, the attention comes because 1) Russia has nukes and Putin wants everyone to remember that fact, 2) this pits the entire twentieth-century world order of "the West vs. the Soviets" against each other yet again, and 3) the real history of the Cold War was about the rest of the world caught in the ideological and imperial crossfire. There were never any actual battles on American or Russian territory, but as those two empires tried to out-dominate and crush the other, we had countless proxy wars and conflicts. Korea, Vietnam, Latin America, Cuba, Afghanistan and the Middle East, etc etc., and we are still reaping the fruits of that poisonous whirlwind. As I have also said many times, I am dumbfounded by all the references to the "worst war in Europe since 1945," when the Balkan wars are RIGHT THERE. Except once the basic wrangling for independence was done with, that was a premeditated genocide carried out by Serb Orthodox Christian nationalists against the Bosniak Muslims, the West pretty much sat on their hands and watched it happen, and they don't want anyone to remember that. The siege of Sarajevo lasted over two years. They didn't even technically END until Kosovo obtained its (contested) independence in 2008, which was then not regularized in the Brussels Agreement until 2013. If we're acting like this conflict, which thus far has not lasted even a week, is the worst breach in the entire post-WWII security order, I have questions.

There is absolutely no question that this is the ultimate result of the toxic stew of imperialism, racism, ethnic and religious bigotry, fascist nationalism, and all the ugly ways that humans have found to divide and discriminate against each other over the centuries, and to hurt each other in the name of superior ideology. In an earlier post, I warned about "whataboutism" -- i.e. if your first response to the current Russia/Ukraine conflict is to point out all the bad things the West has done and try to excuse Putin as a result, that's neither constructive nor helpful, and plays into his toxic propaganda about Russia just being a helpless puppet instead of the (former) other half of the global-nuclear-hyperpower dichotomy that dominated the entire post-WWII world. However, I have been equally clear that the West's own comprehensive policy failures have played a role, especially in its (wrong) belief that capitalism "won" the Cold War and needed to be imposed on the world even more aggressively as a result, and at any cost. We're seeing how Western liberal democracies have increasingly backslid into corrupt, neo-fascist, oligarchic authoritarianism, even as they're calling out Russia for that exact thing. The political situations aren't exactly comparable, but they've been heading that way, and if the West wants to actually make an effective long-term response and be viewed as anything close to the moral exemplar, they have so much work to do at home. Which I am... skeptical of their ability to do, not least because the alternative is so profitable.

Currently, the American right wing is divided over whether to condemn Putin in line with the Republican party's old policy of The Soviet Union is the Evil Empire, or just go full masks-off fascist and follow Trump down the path of celebrating an unhinged madman with nukes, because they feel that Good Ol' Vlad is the "defender" of "traditional white Christian values," which tells you everything that you need to know about how insanely horrifying they have gotten. (Iirc, that's exactly the same thing that people said about Hitler.) They admire Putin because they openly hanker to impose that same repressive model against an increasingly diverse America, and because they wish they could get away with just destroying their opposition in the way Putin does. As I said, if nothing else, let's hope this actually leads to an honest reckoning about how much we've fucked up the entire twenty-first century, the poisonous narratives that we're still swallowing wholesale, and the utter lie that strongman authoritarianism and its associated violence can ever bring any kind of lasting or peaceful global paradigm. The West (especially GOP/Government of Putin America) has been fighting kicking and screaming against being forced to examine its own past honestly, and that is only adding to the myopia of its response.

Sigh. This is heavy stuff. I am going to attempt to take at least a minor break from doomscrolling and do something else for a bit. As I likewise said before, this is legitimately very bad and frightening, but we still need to avoid catastrophizing and spreading panic and making everything worse ahead of time, because right now, we're still all right, and we're still here. If nothing else, we've been prepared for a long time to ask the question of how to face the hardest times and what we would do when it looks so very, very dark. So yes.

Much love to all.

#anonymous #ask #history #cold war #russia ukraine war

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snenby-with-two-daggers · 1 year ago

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Our teacher at uni specialised in medieval history was saying that from the sources we actually have, it is very likely that it even wasn’t assassination, just a bunch of drunken guys decided to show off their skills with swords (Vaclav being included, not that a bunch of drunkards went after sober him). And that they dug him up and proclaimed him saint suspiciously fast after his death. Something about how christianity worked at that time and that medieval nationality mostly wasn’t “i’m from this country and my ancestors were from this country and we speak this language” or however is nationality defined today, but it was decided by what saint belonging to which country were the one you worshipped/prayed to/swore your allegiance to. That suddenly there being someone who could be proclaimed to saint was very useful for political situation and further insuring the solemnity of czech principality

If any of you is at Upol, docent Stejskal’s lessons are the goldmine if you want to unlearn the whole “uwu we never did anything wrong, the evil germans are responsible for everything bad that ever happened to us” nationalist propaganda pushed by communist regime and often remembered by basic school and highschool’s history teachers. That guy is honestly amazing and if every teacher was as inspiring and putting things to context as him, it would solve 90% of problems of our schooling system.

Something morbidly funny about the patron saint of Czechs, a nation known for being betrayed by allies multiple times throughout history, being a guy whose brother murdered him by, you guessed it, stabbing him in the back

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tomorrow-and-tomorrows · 4 years ago

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SNK 139.5: Towards the Final Pages with no Final Answers

The final pages of the updated ending are bold, but I think ultimately more evocative than the original preliminary ending.

Even after the intensely polarized reader reception that took issue with the lack of storytelling precision and clarity when it was most needed, SNK chose to end with a decisively ambiguous symbol. In literature, a symbol is something that clearly means something -- but with the most "literary" symbols, their meaning cannot be absolutely defined; any attempted answer as to what a symbol represents has no finality or certainty, and interpretation will remain ever open to debate. A symbol both invites and resists interpretation.

Naturally, the immediate response to the symbolic tree on the final page is to try answering the invitation to the question, "What does it mean?"

One prominent answer I've seen is that it symbolizes the continuation of the cycle of war and violence either because a) of the symbolic parallel to Ymir or b) on a more literal level, that it implies the actual potential revival of new era of Titans. A reasonable interpretation either way, but also, I think, an incomplete one.

The first reason for this is that "the endless cycle of war" was already clearly and powerful represented in the preceding panels:

The cycle of war was already continuing in the decades or centuries before the child arrived at the tree. A culminating image symbolizing the persistence or resurgence of an era of war as the final panel would thus arguably be redundant and unnecessary.

Furthermore, the chapter is entitled "Toward the Tree on That Hill." If the tree were simply a symbol of war, by implication the chapter could equally be called 'toward the endless cycle of war'. But such a relentlessly bleak and tonally flat ending sentiment would be firmly incongruous with the story's recurrent conviction in the equal cruelty and beauty of the world -- a conviction that I believe it has been faithful to all the way to its end.

The Long Defeat

But while on this topic of war, let's linger a moment on the "cruelty" side and the consequence of this wordless construction and subsequent destruction of a city -- the most bold and possibly controversial additional panels that are also my personal favourite additions.

One objection that has emerged against this brief sequence of Paradis' apparent destruction is that it renders the entire story to be "pointless". Eren's 80% Rumbling, Armin's diplomatic peace talks between the remnants of the Allied Nations and Paradis, and before that, the proposal of the 50-year plan and Zeke's euthanasia plan... everything, to the very beginning to the Survey Corps' dreams of some kind of freedom; was it all for nothing? All that striving, that hope, that final promise bestowed upon Armin: was it all a pointless story? Even more radically, is the story suggesting that Eren might as well have continued the Rumbling to 100% of the earth? Was Zeke's euthanasia plan the cruel but correct choice all along? What was the point of rejecting the 50-year plan if that had a greater chance of success at preventing this outcome?

I think Isayama suddenly pulling back to such a long-term view of history to the scale of decades or even centuries into the future calls for a reorientation in attitude towards exactly what kind of story we have been reading. Yes, if the metric is Paradis' survival, maybe it was indeed all "pointless". But that's also to say that, on the broadest scale, SNK is a story about futility, that it is a deliberate representation of the struggle to make one's actions historically meaningful.

In the long view of history, all the events, from Grisha running beyond the wall to see the airships and the first breaking of Wall Maria to Erwin's sacrifices, Paradis' discovery of the outside world, and finally to the Battle of Heaven and Earth, it would all merely be a handful of chapters in the history textbooks of the future. A future in which war and geopolitical conflict will continue even without Titans. That does not mean that all paths to the future are equal -- the 50-year plan would not have put an end to Titans, and Zeke's euthanasia plan distorts utilitarian ethics into just another form of oppression; there are better and worse decisions that lead to more and less degrees of suffering, but no decision can ever be the final one.

The additional panels remind us that in history, there never exists a singular "Final Solution". The reason there are readers who vehemently support Eren to have flattened 100% of the world, and the reason the Paradisians supported the oppressive, authoritarian, proto-fascist Jaegar Faction under Floch and even after the Rumbling, is that because they want to believe that a Final Solution to end conflict exists and will work. They resist the fundamental uncertainty and complexity of the situation, instead preferring a singular, unified, and coherent Answer to Paradis' struggle to survive. I'm reminded of the scholar Erich Auerbach's theorization of why fascism appealed to many people during periods of political and social crisis, change, and uncertainty. Writing in exile after fleeing Nazi Germany, he observed that:

"The temptation to entrust oneself to a sect which solved all problems with a single formula, whose power of suggestion imposed solidarity, and which ostracized everything which would not fit in and submit - this temptation was so great that, with many people, fascism hardly had to employ force when the time came for it to spread through the countries of old European culture." (from Mimesis p. 550)

This acutely describes the Jaegar Faction's rise to power and continued dominance in Paradis. But their promise of unity, of a single formula to wipe out the rest of the world either literally through the Rumbling, or to dominate them with military force, is a false one. Even if Eren had Rumbled 100% of the world instead of 80%, history would still go on. The external threat of the world may have been eliminated, but internal conflict and violence would still continue onward throughout the generations born on top of the blood of the rest of the world. Needless to say, out of all the options, Eren's 80% Rumbling is the very epitome of perpetuating the cycle of violence as it creates tens of thousands of war orphans like Eren once was, and it would justify employing violence for one's own self-interest to an extreme degree. For the generations to come that would valourize Eren as a hero, it would set a dangerous precedent for what degree of destruction is acceptable for self-defence -- nothing short of the attempt to flatten the entire world. It is no surprise that Paradis would meet a violent end when its founding one-party rule of the Jaegar Faction has their roots in such unapologetically bloody foundations.

Neither the 80% Rumbling nor the militaristic, ultra-nationalistic Jaegar faction that come to govern Paradis are glamourized as the "correct" solution to ensuring Paradis' future. (This can also put to rest any accusations of SNK's ending as "fascist" or "imperialist" propaganda, since the island's modern nation that they founded ends in war. All nations must fall eventually, but not all do in such blatant destruction). Importantly, neither is Armin's diplomatic mission naively idealized as that which permanently achieves world peace. No singular or unifying formula can work because reality is complicated. Entrusting oneself to seemingly simple Answers is simply insufficient, even if they are ideals of peaceful negotiation; that method may work given the right conditions, but the world will always eventually complicate its feasibility.

After all in the real world, there's the absurd irony that some in the West had called the First World War "The War to End all Wars". These days, WWI is merely one long chapter in our textbooks just a few pages away from the even longer chapter of the Second World War that is followed by all the rest of the conflicts that have followed since then even with the establishment of diplomatic organizations like the United Nations. In this sense, showing Paradis' eventual downfall is perhaps the only way to end such a series that is so concerned with history, from King Fritz's tribal expansion into empire, the rise and fall of Marleyan ascendency, and finally of the survival and apparent shattering of Paradis.

From its beginning to its end, SNK has poignantly evoked J.R.R. Tolkien's conception of history as The Long Defeat. In one character's words, "together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat". That is to say, "no victory is complete, that evil rises again, and that even victory brings loss".

No heroes, only humans

Eren's desperate, fatalistic resignation to committing the Rumbling, along with the characters' rejection of all the rest of the earlier plans to ensure Paradis a future, are merely the actions of human beings to that began with the need to find not even necessarily a Final Answer, but at least an acceptable and feasible one for the time being. But the characterization of Eren's confusion, childishness, and regret in the final chapter is startlingly real in how it demonstrates how, all along, we have been dealing not with grand heroes, but simply people who have no answers at all. SNK has always been about failures - and often ironic failures; it has always been a story about painful and frequently futile struggle.

People make mistakes, they can be short-sighted, selfish, biased, immature, petty, and irrational, and I think the ending follows through with depicting the consequences of that.

Erwin's self-sacrifice before being able to reach the basement (and his regression to a childhood state in the moments before his death), Kenny's futile chasing after that universal compassion he had seen in Uri, Shadis never being acknowledged by history despite his final heroic action, and so on -- these stories of ironic, futile failures are still meaningful in their mere striving. Eren's ending and Paradis' demise despite Armin's endeavour to ensure them a peaceful future are entirely consistent with this.

SNK certainly follows the shounen trope in which young individuals are bestowed great power and correspondingly great responsibility, and must then reconcile the burden of possessing that greatness on which the fate of the world depends. Yet it is equally defined by its representation of the state that us normal human beings confront everyday: the struggle against the apparent powerlessness to enact any meaningful or lasting change at all. Simultaneously, this helpless state does not exempt us from the responsibility to act in whatever small capacity we are able to resist oppression, ideological extremism, and the perpetuation of violence.

Towards That Symbol

That was a rather long but vital digression about the additional "construction and destruction" pages. To return to the issue of the symbolism in the final panel, here I will turn from seemingly affirming the tree as symbolizing the cycle of violence, towards what I think is the greater complexity of what the tree might "actually" symbolize.

As I've said above, I don't believe that the final chapter title is synonymous with 'toward the endless cycle of war'. In tone, theme, and characterization, SNK has always been defined by the tension between cruelty and beauty, the will to violence and the underlying desire for peace, and the rest of the contradictory impulses that all simultaneously coexist. The end of SNK as a whole commits to a similar lack of closure, ambiguity, and interpretive openness.

So far I have rambled on about only a view of the perpetual "cruelty" of history. Where, then, is the "beauty"?

In short, the "tree = cycle of violence" interpretation is obviously based on how that this tree recalls the original tree in which the spine creature, as the source of the power of the Titans, resided. But it's worth first considering, what exactly is this creature? We seem to get our answer in the chapter that most precisely crystallizes the dual "cruelty and beauty" of the world:

The spine creature might be said to be life itself. Or more specifically, the will of life to perpetuate itself, for no reason at all but for the fleeting moments in which we feel distinctly glad to have existed in the world.

The creature at the source of the Titans, and in extension the Titans themselves, is neither inherently a positive or negative, "good" or "evil", creative or destructive force. It's both and all of those at once. As with any power, the Titans were merely a tool that was put to use to oppressive ends.

So as I now suggest that the tree at the end is symbolically a "Tree of Life", I don't at all mean "life" in the typically celebratory or optimistic sense: rather, I mean it in the ambiguous, ambivalent, uncertain, and complex sense that has been evoked throughout the above discussion of the inevitable continuation of war.

The title "Toward The Tree on That Hill" is derived from its associations with Eren and Mikasa, but more specifically of course, from Armin's affirmation of existence. However, the tree as a symbol of existential affirmation is undercut with the revelation that, despite Armin's diplomatic mediation between the Allied Nations and Paradis, the island nation never escapes war just as no nation in the history of the earth has ever fully escaped war.

The image of Armin running toward that life-affirming tree by the end becomes twisted and complicated, as the image of the anonymous child approaching the Tree of Life evokes both awe at its beauty and grandeur, and a deep dread at the foreboding of its cyclical return to Ymir's tree that signalled the beginning of a bloody era.

And I think that is precisely it: Life is not some idealized, beautiful vision that we always want to run toward; it is also ironic, complicated, and dreadful. It is ambivalent. Like a literary symbol, the meaning of life cannot be pinned down absolutely. The tree therefore becomes itself a symbol of uncertainty, of an open future that is cyclical both in its beauty and war.

As a final observation, it is surely no coincidence that, the small, black, birdlike silhouettes of the war planes destroying the city from the sky is replaced by the similarly small black silhouettes of birds in the final panel.

If the birds represent freedom from war, the irony is that the immediately surrounding land appears to be one completely empty of people save for the exploring child; it is a freedom attained only without people's presence. Yet at the same time, a child from some existing civilization has reached it; perhaps it is freedom that they have reached, perhaps it is something else that they see in the tree. What is it that they were looking for? What does the tree and its history represent for the child, and what does it mean for their future? Alternatively, does the child-in-the-forest imagery negatively recall the warning that the world is one huge forest of predator and prey that we need to protect children from entering?

Rather than providing answers, this tree embodies all of the potential questions, and all of the potential answers. These possibilities will unfold themselves into an uncertain future beyond the chapters of history that Eren, Armin, Mikasa, Zeke, Erwin, and all the rest of the characters were part of and left their mark on; and whatever future this child will witness or create, it will similarly be one of the struggle against futility, as the journey begins anew with each generation in every new era. Neither - or both - hopeful or despairing, the final image of this tree, just like life itself, contains those innumerable irresolvable tensions as it gestures towards all possibilities, both oppressive and free.

#snk 139 #snk ending #snk extra pages #snk meta #snk #snk spoilers #brain dump #this is a pretty personal interpretation so if there are any logical inconsistencies i don't know what to do with them #yes the execution of the final arc/chapter is flawed but it's still very conceptually interesting #i still have my disappointments but overall i've made my peace with it #translating my tangled thoughts into words however imperfectly: i think that's what freedom is all about #snk manga #aot #aot 139 #aot ending

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ghost-in-the-stalls · 4 years ago

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Since the hiatus is over, I'm gonna rant a bit about Stand Still, Stay Silent and how the author's take on her new religious views are impacting things.

So if you don't read that webcomic,sorry for this. I'll put it under a read more if it gets long (which it probably will).

So first of all, I'll clarify that these are my views and I know this is a HEATED thing rn and I'll basically just say I'll be willing to like... debate about it with anyone who wants to but I also personally reserve the right to turn off anon/block you if you get nasty with me or if it sounds like you aren't actually interested in hearing what I'm saying so much as spreading your own beliefs around.

Secondly, I want people to understand that I personally am American. I am speaking from an American perspective. I understand that Minna is not American. I may be conflating our experiences in a way they cannot be. However, I also recognize that author intent and audience interpretation are two very different things. With this in mind, I also recognize and understand that intent is nothing when compared to impact. So though I may be speaking from an experience that may not be true at all for Minna, I also recognize that my feelings and perspectives are valid as an American audience member. Something being written by a Finn does not negate the fact that it is available to read regardless of geographic location, and that it's impact will ultimately reach further than just her own bubble. So this post is me speaking about impact on myself as an American audience member, not intent on her part.

First I'll say that the bunny comic - Lovely People - is, in my opinion, objectively in poor quality and taste. Not even taking into account my own views on religion yet. It was very tone deaf about the history of Christianity and oppression and completely ignored how Western Christianity plays a major part in a lot of modern oppression and social problems that the comic tries to address. The pseudo-apocalyptic theme of the social credit system had the potential to be a very interesting and thought provoking direction! Social media has fucked with our society and our mental health in a way that we really need to address!

However, the comic made the Christians the only group we see experiencing oppression from this system in the story. This effectively does two things in tandem. One, it fails to address just how negative of an impact the social credit system would have on us all. Looking around at our way of interacting with the world now, we're still almost all of us suffering for the way things are. We have incredibly high social anxiety, people are encouraged from a young age to conform aggressively to beauty standards and share all their personal details online, and - most notably to my next argument - anywhere an individual lacks privilege is exploited by our society and they are put under a microscope, and are ultimately aggressively punished for being part of a marginalized group. Not born with the physical traits considered acceptable by Western standards of beauty? Tough luck. Not physically or mentally able to participate in the current system in place? Tough luck. Not willing to conform to strict gender roles? Identify as a marginalized gender or sexuality? Not willing to be quiet and secretive about it? Tough fucking luck. But the ONLY group that is shown to be oppressed at ALL in the bunny comic is Christians.

What makes this even more tone deaf is that, Two, it is thus completely blind to how Western Christianity has played a direct and aggressive role in supporting the oppression of these other group in our current fucked up system. I'm NOT saying Christianity is evil or that anyone who practices the faith is bad. Not at all. Religion is, at it's core, a beautiful thing. But the fact stands that MANY people in positions of power have used their Christian beliefs as a tool to oppress others. In America especially (yes I'm speaking as an American and I acknowledge that) Christianity is THE mask used by the far-right and the oppressors to spread their ideologies. Even white supremicists and nationalists ultimately will try to argue that white people and the US are God's Chosen Ones which is why they're TOTALLY RIGHT in doing the terribly things they do.

Making a comic about how a social credit system causes oppression and then showing that oppression as EXCLUSIVELY happening to Christians is not only in EXTREMELY poor taste, it is directly harmful. It is the same message and behavior that a lot of Christians use constantly to gaslight marginalized groups that they are against. "Oh I'm oppressing you? No actually I'M oppressed because I'M CHRISTIAN and you just can't handle the fact that you're going to hell for not repenting for existing!"

Even if those are your true beliefs. Even if you genuinely think that Christians are oppressed and that anyone arguing against you is refusing to repent. Does spreading information in that way really seem effective to you? Does it really seem loving and caring to you? To sit there and talk about how others are always hurting you, but you aren't hurting anyone else at all by telling them they're going to hell for being?

I'm digressing. But my point here is that the comic is in incredibly poor taste, and I genuinely will never understand why people expect non-Christians to take the message of "you're going to hell if you don't conform to my beliefs and also I'm oppressed" positively.

Moving on to Stand Still, Stay Silent...

She has said several times that she does not intend to change the path SSSS has been on from the beginning. This is honestly not comforting whatsoever.

First, this is definitely because - even before the recent developments - SSSS was always very shallow imo. I loved it! Don't get me wrong! But a major part of that love was because I genuinely thought it was building up to something bigger; I thought it was eventually going to go deeper. I now understand that that was never the case. It's a shallow story with a lot of potential that I don't think was ever going to get fully explored.

Now here's the thing. Part of me is really upset about that. What I thought the story was going to be I now see will never happen. But a bigger part of me is frankly happy about that now. Because, like I said up top, intent and impact are very different. If she were to suddenly go unexpectedly deeper than the story has been, I wouldn't trust that there wouldn't be shitty subtext and more of the same tone-deafness as the bunny comic. Whether intentional or not.

And even if she hadn't recently converted to Christianity. The fact that she is someone who is susceptible to these ideas and values tells me what kind of a person she really is anyway, regardless of religious identity. Which, frankly, would mean the subtext would still be shitty. I don't trust it. I don't trust her.

So frankly, people have every right to be suspicious of how SSSS may be impacted going forward. She can say that it won't be all she wants. But either the story will go deeper - like I had always hoped it would - and there would inevitably be an inseparable link between her values and beliefs and the themes of the story, OR the story will never go deeper at all which would mean imo that it would ultimately fall flat as a story.

People are allowed to be disappointed by this. People are allowed to be suspect of how she may potential work harmful themes into the comic going forward - whether intentionally or not. I'm allowed to be wary of this, especially as someone who has had VERY bad experiences with Christians who have tried to tell me the same things she made clear in her bunny comic.

#ssss #stand still stay silent #lovely people #minna sundberg #yes im tagging this #and ill probably regret it later #but damn i needed to get this off my chest #i needed to get this out there bc i NEED people to understand why i #and so many others #are upset by this

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Crooked Timber's Ministry for the Future Seminar

Kim Stanley Robinson's 2020 novel "The Ministry for the Future," is a fierce imaginative work. Robinson doesn't just depict a future beyond the climate emergency and capitalism itself, he depicts the specific, wrenching transition that takes us there.

https://www.orbitbooks.net/orbit-excerpts/the-ministry-for-the-future/

As I wrote in my review, the (variously attributed) maxim "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," isn't quite right. Imagining postcapitalism is an easy lift, but imagining the path to that world is *very* hard.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/03/ministry-for-the-future/#ksr

Robinson didn't leap into this project - he's been working up to it for literally decades, at least since the publication of the "Three California" books, which include one of the most uplifting novels I've ever read, PACIFIC EDGE:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/01/15/pacific-edge-the-most-uplifting-novel-in-my-library/

Meanwhile, his 2312/Aurora/New York 2140/Red Moon novels constitute a kind of rangefinding exercise, starting 300 years the future and then walking his projection backwards to find a plausible route to get there.

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/03/18/new-york-2140-kim-stanley-robinson-dreams-vivid-about-weathering-climate-crisis/

But all these brilliant novels really seem to be warmup exercises for the main event, The Ministry for the Future, which depicts the intermeshed systems of economics, politics, geoengineering, streetfighting and tragedy that might rescue us from dying in our own waste-gases.

It's urgent, frightening and hopeful, raising as many questions as it answers.

These questions are now taken up in one of Crooked Timber's "seminars": a series of interdisciplinary essays about the book, culminating in the author's response.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/03/the-ministry-for-the-future-seminar/

The first of these essays comes from Maria Farrell: "What is Ours is Only Ours to Give," about the digital technology at the core of TMFTF, namely blockchain and independent social media. Farrell is characteristically incisive on these elements.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/04/what-is-ours-is-only-ours-to-give/

Her thoughts here tie back to her notion of the "prodigal tech bro," and how we should treat the tech industry's claims of genius with skepticism - even when those claims are cloaked in confessions of being an EVIL genius.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

The next essay is Oliver Morton's, digging into the solar geoengineering in TMFTF, and the "sustained contradiction" such an effort might produce - relieving the urgency of addressing carbon production and accumulating new policy debt in the process.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/05/on-solar-geoengineering-and-kim-stanley-robinson/

Morton's a very good choice for this role: his 2016 book on geoengineering, "The Planet Remade," remains one of the best technological, economic and political overviews of the subject:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/05/04/the-planet-remade-frank-clear-eyed-book-on-geoengineering-climate-disaster-humanitys-future/

Next is Jessica Green's "Can the World’s Bankers Really Save the Climate?" which drills into Robinson's fictional carbon markets, where central bankers are pressed into service to save the planet in an unjust (but rapid and necessary) compromise.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/06/can-the-worlds-bankers-really-save-the-climate/

Green's an expert on climate and finance, so she's as good at spotting the cards that Robinson palms here as Farrell is with tech. Green credits Robinson with identifying the "true sources" of climate obstruction, but thinks he's missed the mark on how to deal with them.

Next is the Roosevelt Institute's Todd Tucker with "Ministry for Your Future Soul": praise for KSR's depiction of the scientific process, scientists, policy wonks, and the progress of policy. Tucker calls Robinson a "Gramscian science fictionologist."

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/07/ministry-for-your-future-soul/

Robinson's "dynamic imagination...makes the book valuable to policy nerds" because "fiction can inform planning," specifically through that exercise of starting with the outcome we want and then working backwards to imagine the steps we need to get there.

This "backcasting" method has many and varied adherents. It's the method that Anonymous used to create its notorious ops, as documented in Biella Coleman's 2014 book on the ensemble:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine

But it's also the method that Amazon uses for new product decisions: starting by writing the press-release announcement and then working backwards to sell the org on developing the product to go with the press-release:

https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/amazon-uses-a-secret-process-for-launching-new-ideas-and-it-can-transform-way-you-work.html

Next is Belle Waring's "Sudden Tempest of Ultimate Summer," which goes straight for the political violence in TMFTF, and KSR's seeming discomfort with this violence, coupled with his evident belief in its necessity.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/10/the-sudden-tempest-of-ultimate-summer/

As Waring points out, alongside all the nonviolent tactics Robinson depicts, there is a lot of (mostly offstage) violence - and when that violence is onstage Robinson pivots away from it, subjecting the Davos hostages to Powerpoint presentations instead of a firing squad.

Waring also grapples with the intimate, gendered role that violence plays in the book - the relationship between heroine Mary Murphy and the traumatized antihero Frank May, who holds her hostage, and whom Murphy subsequently dedicates herself to.

The next installment - Half the Earth? - comes from John Quiggin, a trained agricultural economist who delves into Robinson's depiction of a successful "Half Earth" transition in which humans surrender half our planet to other animals.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/11/half-the-earth/

Quiggin is pretty bullish on the possibility of this happening, noting that we have more than enough food as things stand and that human fertility is already below the replacement level everywhere except Africa, where it's still trending down.

For Quiggin, vacating half the Earth is do-able: "We are, suddenly and surprisingly, at a point in history when radical change seems not just possible but likely."

Next is Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, whose "What’s In Our Way?" - a frank look at how KSR depicts north/south politics, and the realism behind a scenario in which mass death in India leads to little change, while the erasure of LA sets change in motion.

https://crookedtimber.org/2021/05/03/whats-in-our-way/

Táíwò calls this "equal parts fatalism, pragmatism, and optimism," and while he acknowledges its realpolitik, he also calls upon us to imagine something better - led by the global south, rather than the "elite of the elites."

There are three more responses to come: from Henry Farrell, Suresh Naidu and Robinson himself - a contribution I'm eagerly awaiting. Based on my own experience with the CT seminar on my novel Walkaway, this will be an intense project for him.

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/cory-doctorow-seminar/

For all that the seminar raises serious questions about whether TMFTF can be a roadmap (as opposed to an inspiration) for a transition to a better, sustainable future, the book remains an awesome, towering accomplishment, a beacon and a delight.

What's more, Robinson has walked back his early 2020 idea that TMFTF would be his last novel for an indefinite period while he worked on nonfic (about the Sierras and conservation). He says he's back to writing novels, which is *outstanding* news.

I read TMFTF as I was writing THE LOST CAUSE, my post-GND climate novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias and plutocrat wreckers.

You can read the prologue here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-decameron-36398964

That book is now done, and reading TMFTF and thinking about its boldness, its brilliance and its flaws made me reconsider my own story. Imagining the end of capitalism remains the hard problem of our future, and Robinson has done sterling work on that problem.

The Crooked Timber seminarians are carrying on the work Robinson started in TMFTF, shoring up its weak spots and calling attention to its sturdy frame. Taken together, the CT essays and Robinson's novel are a heady tonic for a world in transition.

#pluralistic

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gryficowa · 6 months ago

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I love how anti-Russian people use Russia's past to spread hatred towards Russians and anyone who looks at Russians even slightly positively (Because many of them are LGBT+ and is anti-Putin) is suddenly considered "Spreading propaganda about the good Russian"

Information for you: According to this logic, Ukraine is also bad, because Ukrainians, before they gained the land, were bad people and raped Polish women, yes, you heard right, this is the history of Ukrainians, and does it mean that what Putin is doing is fucking good? No it doesn't and it shouldn't fucking matter because these Ukrainians who are alive today are not the Ukrainians who raped Polish women, you fuckers

Seriously, Ukrainians did a lot of bad things to Poles, which you want to erase to show that all Russians are bad because "Their history shows them as evil"

"Even before the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, both Polish and Ukrainian political and military organizations operated in Volhynia. They were in sharp conflict with each other. After June 1941, quite a large part of the Ukrainian political circles in Volhynia decided to cooperate with the Germans - to such an extent that that Ukrainians constitute the main part of the auxiliary police forces in this area. They participate in carrying out the Holocaust of Jews and take part in the pacification of villages - both Polish and Ukrainian"

"As the months of the war pass, the tension in Polish-Ukrainian relations systematically increases. In 1942, we are dealing with increasingly frequent physical attacks on the Polish population - both the intelligentsia and the peasant population. In the fall of 1942, about six thousand Ukrainians leave the German auxiliary forces and join the underground, which causes a new, very important military and political factor to appear in Volhynia. The structures of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army are being formed, which remains in a very close alliance or is simply politically subordinated to the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a splinter group led by Stepan Bandera. Poles decide to enter the place abandoned by Ukrainians. This is done in consultation with the structures of the Polish Underground State and not to help the Germans, but to create an opportunity to defend against attacks from those Ukrainians who went underground. Ukrainian political groups, but also part of the Ukrainian population, view the takeover by Poles of functions previously performed by Ukrainians as extremely negative"

You see right, Ukrainians hurt Poles, so according to this logic you should hate them…

The history of Ukraine is quite bloody (And that's probably why Zionists think that Poles collaborated with the Nazis, so eh…)

So should I be anti-Ukraine because evil ancestors hurt Poles? No, there's something wrong with your head

What Putin is doing is inexcusable, but I blame Putin because he is a shitty person

This turned out to be a series of posts, so you see…

But I can't hate someone for their country of origin or ethnicity, I hate people for supporting genocide, or I mention the problem (I compared Russians and Israelis in previous posts because I noticed a key difference that is ignored, which is trust in your government, so yeah...)

I don't like Russia and Putin, but that doesn't mean I have to hate Russians, because many Russians are wonderful people, just like Jews who are hated by Zionists and some pseudo-pro-Palestinians (Mainly with right-wing views…), let's stop judging people for their origin and ethnicity, and for what kind of people they are

#free palestine #ukraine #free ukraine #russian aggression #history lesson #poland #xenophobe

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 65-66

This is the start of the “Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times” arc, but I want to focus on these two chapters because they feature Mark. I’ve got a lot to say about Mark under the cut, but the short version is that he’s a lousy Nazi and he deserves everything that happens to him.

A large chunk of Chapter 65 is just Caesar hanging out in Joseph and Speedwagon’s hotel room. They try to play cards, but they’re both cheats. This wouldn’t bother me at all until Speedwagon points out that he’s been here for eight hours, and never bothered to explain why. You’d think Joseph would have demanded an answer a long time ago, since he’s not known for patience.

As it turns out, Caesar’s been waiting for Mark, a buddy of his in the German Army. Stroheim was in the German Army too, and he told Joseph that the Nazis had discovered three other Pillar Men in Rome. That’s why he and Speedwagon came here, after all. Well, Caesar’s an Italian, and Italy and Germany are allies, so Caesar managed to persuade the Germans (through Mark) to let him take a look at the Pillar Men. So in this chapter, Mark rolls up in a car and drives them over to the site.

But we already know what happened at the site in Chapter 64. The Pillar Men have already reawakened, and all the Nazi soldiers stationed there have been slaughtered. When Mark leads our heroes into the catacombs, they find the remains of the Germans, while Mark bumps into the Pillar Men themselves. (Note: the above image is not to scale).

The thing is, bumping into the Pillar Men is hazardous to your health. We saw that vampire grab Santana and large chunks of his body were completely absorbed. The same thing happens to Mark, only faster, because Wamuu doesn’t even slow down as he walks past him. He just walks right through Mark and half of his body is gone.

So when I first watched the JoJo anime, it was right after I watched the Hellsing Ultimate anime, and I got a kick out of seeing two completely different anime takes on vampire lore. Let’s face it, the Pillar Men are presented as something beyond mere vampires, but they’re basically just super-vampires, not so different from Alucard in Hellsing. And both make use of the Nazis, except in Hellsing, the Nazis are the villains, while in Battle Tendency, they’re kinda sorta allies. Stroheim is clearly a bad guy, because he killed his prisoners and tormented Speedwagon, but Mark is presented as a completely sympathetic person. He’s got a sweetheart back home, Caesar’s the one who introduced them, and he’s planning to get married the next time he goes back to Germany. And for his very brief appearance in JJBA, he’s completely friendly and helpful to the heroes. We’re supposed to feel very sorry for him when he gets killed here.

Part 2 is my favorite, but I think this stands out as it’s biggest flaw. I get the idea. Hellsing was dealing with a lot of dark themes, and the protagonists were horrifying in their own right. So Kouta Hirano used the Nazis as villains to humanize his vampire characters. By contrast, Hirohiko Araki seems to be using the Nazis to dehumanize the Pillar Men. They’re so evil that even the Nazis look halfway decent by comparison. At least the Nazis are human, with human loves and fears and honor. The Pillar Men kill Mark without even noticing him, and Speedwagon likens this to a human stepping on an ant. I get what Araki is trying to do here, but it rings hollow. Fuck Mark, and fuck his Nazi fiance. The first time we see him, we get a close up of his Iron Cross medal, with the damn swastika in the middle of it. We’re supposed to buy into the idea that he’s “one of the good Germans”, and it’s 1938, so World War II hasn’t officially started yet, so somehow Mark is supposed to be cool. But no, I don’t buy it.

Let me go off on a little sidebar and try to explain how we got here. Battle Tendency was published in 1988. Back then, Hitler had been dead for decades, and Germany had been partitioned into two countries, East and West Germany. The Nazis seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, and as time passed, pop culture grew more comfortable using the Nazis as historical villains in stories like this one. There was a sense that yeah, the Nazis were really bad, but they were gone now, and they would never come back. I think there was a similar mentality surrounding the Soviet Union after the U.S.S.R. dissolved. By the 2000′s there were all sorts of internet memes about Nazi stuff and Soviet stuff and it was rationalized as harmless envelope-pushing.

The problem is, it doesn’t seem so harmless in 2021, when Russia is a autocracy that meddles in U.S. elections, emboldening white nationalists in the process. The “alt-right” fanatics who marched in Charlottesville in 2017? The rioters who stormed the Capitol building this past January? Those assholes probably wouldn’t call themselves Nazis, but neither did the Nazis. They called themselves “National Socialists”, because they were trying to make their ugly policies sound more legitimate. The same holds true for “alt-right”, “economic nationalist”, “Qanon”, “truther”, and so on. They’re just new labels for the same old horseshit.

I don’t want to judge Battle Tendency too harshly, because it’s the product of a different time, an era when people could at least pretend that Nazism was one of the few problems that we didn’t have to worry about any more. The same mentality can be found in Hellsing. The Nazis in Hellsing are definitely villains, but the conceit is that they’re all immortal vampires or werewolves, because that’s the only way the Nazi menace could possibly exist in 1999. Otherwise, they’d all be dead of old age. Battle Tendency is set in 1938, so it takes the liberty of presenting sympathetic Nazis, because we already know they’ll be defeated in the end, right? We might as well see what makes them tick.

Araki may have thought that using Nazis in a story set in the 1930s would be no different than using Napoleonic French soldiers in a story set in the 1800s. And in the long run, that might be true, but I don’t think we’re there yet. In the here and now, it’s aged rather poorly.

Of course, just because Caesar and Joseph feel bad for Mark doesn’t mean I have to. And Araki may have been more self-aware than I’m giving him credit for. Nazi Germany wanted to set itself up as the Master Race, and in this fictional world, the Pillar Men have come to do the same thing, only they’re much, much further ahead of the game. I think part of the point of Stroheim and Mark was to contrast the Nazis’ supreamcist attitudes with Kars’ ambitions. For all of Stroheim’s boasting, he’s helpless against Kars’ might. But at the same time, for all of Kars’ power and brilliance, he’s ultimately chasing the same pipe dream as Hilter and his followers.

Let’s get back on track. While the good guys react in horror at what happened to Mark, the Pillar Men just stand around nearby and discuss their situation. They completely ignore our heroes, just like they ignored Mark. Kars wants to locate the Red Stone of Aja, because it’s the secret ingredient to the mask he designed that will make them immune to sunlight. Esidisi doesn’t understand how the stone helps their plan, but he’s totally on board. But as they head out, Wamuu suddenly attacks Kars, because Kars stepped in his shadow, and apparently Wamuu just lashes out at anyone who does this, friend or foe.

Wamuu is deeply sorry for this, and begs to be punished, but Kars apologizes instead, because he knows about Wamuu’s whole shadow thing and he feels that he’s the one who made the mistake here. I really love this exchange, because it defines the Pillar Men so well. As indifferent as they are to human lives, they respect one another a great deal. Kars is the leader, but he still treats the other two guys like close associates. He needs Wamuu’s sharp senses and keen warrior instincts. Meanwhile, Wamuu and Eisidisi practically worship Kars like a god. They’ve literally followed him around the world and across thousands of years in pursuit of his vision.

So yeah, if the goal here was to use Mark’s suffering to make me hate the Pillar Men, it doesn’t work. The Pillar Men are evil, sure, but they’re pretty cool bad guys. On the other hand, Mark looks ridiculous here, with Caesar holding and talking to half of his body. This looks like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon.

I mean, let’s set aside the whole Nazi thing for a moment. Why should I feel sorry for Mark? Because he’s in pain? He got cut in half! He should have died instantly! Because he was going to get married? We only met this guy one chapter ago! Because he’s Caesar’s friend? Well Caesar’s kind of a jerk too.

Anyway, Mark begs Caesar to kill him and end his suffering, so Caesar uses the Ripple to stop his heart. Or the half of it that’s still there, I guess.

Okay, so the whole point of Mark’s death is to really get the good guys fired up to battle the Pillar Men, right? Okay, Caesar tries to take them on, and he opens with the Bubble Launcher, the same move he talked about earlier. It didn’t beat Joseph, but Caesar’s Hamon power does hurt Wamuu’s skin, which is more than Joseph managed to do against Santana.

The Bubble Launcher is supposed to surround the opponent with dozens of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy. Wamuu can’t escape without touching them and getting hurt. But Wamuu just sprouts all these long braids from his head and clothes, and swings them around with superhuman precision to know the bubbles away without hurting himself.

As it turns out, these Pillar Men are familiar with Hamon. Santana was surprised to encounter Joseph Joestar’s powers, but Wamuu and the others have fought Ripple users in the past. And Wamuu’s more intrigued than worried...

Oh, as one final aside, on the car ride to the catacombs, Speedwagon asked Caesar if he tried to use the Ripple to destroy the Pillar Men before they woke up, and Caesar explains that it didn’t work while they were in their dormant state. Remember, at the very start of this story, Speedwagon called Straizo because he wanted someone to use the Ripple to destroy Santana before he could wake up. Now we see that even if Straizo had agreed to his request, it wouldn’t have done any good. Sunlight doesn’t seem to kill the Pillar Men so much as it makes them turn to stone, and the Ripple only hurts them while they’re flesh and blood. So the only way to kill them seems to be by using Hamon in a direct confrontation, and that’s a tall order...

#jojo's bizarre adventure #battle tendency #joseph joestar #caesar zeppeli #robert e o speedwagon #mark #wamuu #kars #esidisi #get wrecked mark

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gayregis · 4 years ago

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do you think the netflix series will stick to the books messages of anti war, family and friemdships? i hope not because those messages are what makes me like the books so much, also i hope the netflix fandom don't memefy the stories like they did with renfri, her story is supposed to be tragic and show how revenge corrupts people but the fandom just treats it like "uwu bisexual feral sword woman wants to kill big baddie wizard hehe"

correction: it's supposed to be “i hope so,” not “i hope not,” lol i can't spell

sadly, i don’t think that the netflix adaptation will stick to the themes of the books at all and here’s why.

first reason why: ciri

in the first season, they took out ciri and geralt meeting in brokilon. that is just the most unforgivable action they could have taken. that scene is literally what defines the entire series being about ciri, the child of destiny, geralt’s daughter who is the whole point of everything. they gave her more screentime, but less significance. she also is played by 18 yo freya allen who is acting as a 14 yo ciri, which blurs how she is supposed to symbolize childhood. instead, they went for a spunky sort of young teenage girl, which ciri becomes later (in the care of yennefer and during around the time of thanedd), but it is significant that she was a CHILD when cintra fell to nilfgaard, because it traumatized her for life and is the point of no return for her. because geralt thought that by fathering her, he would introduce her to death, but instead, the opposite occured - by deferring her, she was introduced to death. ciri loses her innocence, she loses the abilty to be a child. now she will continue to fixate on revenge for the entire saga, until she loses everything, absolutely everything. the witcher is a tragic story but it only manages to have this story because it is dominated by this theme of a lost childhood, surrounded by themes of family, vulnerability, revenge, destruction, violence...

in the netflix series, we receive approximately none of this. ciri’s trauma is more treated as a “wake up call” because she’s such a “privileged princess” who doesn’t know about or care that her beloved grandmamma committed mass genocide (what???). this is treated like something ciri needs to overcome, thus it is actually a good thing that she is seeing people being murdered left and right in the name of imperialist conquest!

second reason why: geralt

geralt in the books is a kind person. he is a pacifist. his profession is to kill, he ocassionally punches people so hard they die (he did this to save his best friend from being sliced open), and other acts of badassery, but inside, he does not want to kill and is opposed to it. this is the man that refused to slay a giant bug-like monster because he didn’t feel it was necessary (the witcher equivalent of trapping a house spider in a glass and slipping a piece of paper under it, then releasing it outside, instead of squashing it with your sandal). this is the man that felt himself unworthy to be yennefer’s lover, because he was afraid he couldn’t feel love in the same capacity she could. this is the man who pushed his best friend away on a dangerous quest because he was terrified that he’d be harmed and he’d suffer, and it would be his fault. and as mentioned, this is the man that deferred his daughter, his daughter who he genuinely loved and wanted to protect no matter what, his daughter who he legitimately raised a conflict with the queen of brokilon over, because he was terrified that he would bring violence and death into her life. this geralt is an introspective, pragmatic man. he cares deeply about the welfare of others, and the only way he can even do his job is to justify it though morality and codes of conduct which he makes up himself because he is so obsessed with not harming the innocent. he spares and befriends many “monsters” (post-conjunction creatures) and only slays the ones that genuinely pose a threat to the innocent and are usually are not creatures capable of rational thought. in the first book in the voice of reason 5, geralt literally states that he won’t kill innocent creatures.

and he continues this philosophy throughout:

he doesn’t kill dragons:

he advocates for dudu’s innocence:

he only was wary of regis because he was mistaken and thought he was going to harm dandelion in this moment:

in the netflix adaptation of the witcher, what is the first thing that we see him do? kill a monster brutally and without remorse. he doesn’t talk about his motivations behind it or why he felt justified to kill it, or why the monster was a danger in the first place. he just kills it and this violence defines him. later in the show, we see him antagonize and mock torque (when in the books he asked dandelion NOT to do just that) and he also punches dandelion right in the stomach. even when geralt was the most mad at dandelion in the books, he never did physical harm to him. ever.

the netflix show is representating a very different man. some have argued that they will try to develop him later on, but that is too late. geralt in the books was a good person from the very beginning for a reason.

third reason why: cahir.

the anti-war and anti-imperialist themes of the books hinge upon the concept of universal humanity and understanding that violence has its own motivations and reasons. cahir i think is a very good example of how the witcher saga comments on the effects of nationalist sentiment / patriotism.

cahir in the books is a teenager or very young adult during the massacre of cintra (since he was no older than 25 in baptism of fire). even though he was also young and doing this only because it what was expected of him and he was intending to bring honor to his family, that does not change the effect that he has on ciri as a child. he enters her nightmares as an exaggerated version of what he was, even though he was scared, too. this demonstrates how impressionable youth are misguided into the military and people are made unaware of just how much violence they ensue.

cahir is built up as this nightmarish figure, this horrifying man that ciri wants revenge upon more than anything else, and THEN he is revealed to also be a terrified youth. underneath the helmet, there was a terrified young man. that is an incredibly powerful image and metaphor.

and what did the witcher netflix do? ... well...

cahir shows his face, he doesn’t have the symbolism of his imposing helmet anymore. he’s much older, eamon farren is 35 years old, 15 older than cahir canonically is, so he’s not someone who has had nationalist ideals imposed upon him unfairly by his parents and society, but rather a full adult who is established and making his own decisions fully in his own control. in the books, he stops pursuing ciri once she escapes, because he has a mental breakdown from the stress of his society and family’s expectations of success, and fear of harsh punishment he will receive. he goes to prison in the imperial capital for a year for failing. in the netflix series, he stops at nothing to get ciri, chasing her down constantly and enlisting the help of sorcerers, a doppler... it’s a whole evil entourage. cahir is not the vulnerable and noble-at-heart young man that he was in the books.

in the end, these are things that are too late to change now. these things can’t be developed upon to “fix” them. ciri cannot suddenly receive her character establishment as a child. geralt cannot suddenly become a caring father who has cared about protecting ciri since day one. cahir cannot suddenly become a young man influenced by his jingoistic society who was only in full plate armor because his parents told him to. these things are so essential to their characters that they are begun to be established immediately.

and yeah everything’s going to get memed on just like they did with renfri. no one discusses the elves’ situation in dol blathanna seriously, they just like laughing at how jaskier called them “pointy.” ciri isn’t discussed at all by the fandom except for being a token baby character. it’s dark times

#ask #anon #the witcher #the witcher netflix #geralt #ciri #cahir

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and-then-there-were-n0ne · 4 years ago

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George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longeur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation – that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly – and this is much more important – I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. [...]

It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.

It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist – that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating – but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival is on the down-grade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also – since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself – unshakeably certain of being in the right.

Now that I have given this lengthy definition, I think it will be admitted that the habit of mind I am talking about is widespread among the English intelligentsia, and more widespread there than among the mass of the people. For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible. [...] And there are whole strings of kindred questions to which you can only get an honest answer from someone who is indifferent to the whole subject involved, and whose opinion on it is probably worthless in any case. Hence, partly, the remarkable failure in our time of political and military prediction. It is curious to reflect that out of all the ‘experts’ of all the schools, there was not a single one who was able to foresee so likely an event as the Russo-German Pact of 1939. And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak.

Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties. And aesthetic judgements, especially literary judgements, are often corrupted in the same way as political ones. It would be difficult for an Indian nationalist to enjoy reading Kipling or for a Conservative to see merit in Mayakovsky, and there is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. People of strongly nationalistic outlook often perform this sleight of hand without being conscious of dishonesty. [...]

Obviously there are considerable resemblances between political Catholicism, as exemplified by Chesterton, and Communism. So there are between either of these and for instance Scottish nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism or Trotskyism. It would be an oversimplification to say that all forms of nationalism are the same, even in their mental atmosphere, but there are certain rules that hold good in all cases. The following are the principal characteristics of nationalist thought:

Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can only relieve by making some sharp retort. If the chosen unit is an actual country, such as Ireland or India, he will generally claim superiority for it not only in military power and political virtue, but in art, literature, sport, structure of the language, the physical beauty of the inhabitants, and perhaps even in climate, scenery and cooking. He will show great sensitiveness about such things as the correct display of flags, relative size of headlines and the order in which different countries are named. Nomenclature plays a very important part in nationalist thought. Countries which have won their independence or gone through a nationalist revolution usually change their names, and any country or other unit round which strong feelings revolve is likely to have several names, each of them carrying a different implication. The two sides of the Spanish Civil War had between them nine or ten names expressing different degrees of love and hatred. Some of these names (e.g. ‘Patriots’ for Franco-supporters, or ‘Loyalists’ for Government-supporters) were frankly question-begging, and there was no single one of them which the two rival factions could have agreed to use. All nationalists consider it a duty to spread their own language to the detriment of rival languages. [...] Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets in shooting galleries.

Instability. The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable. To begin with, as I have pointed out already, they can be and often are fastened upon some foreign country. One quite commonly finds that great national leaders, or the founders of nationalist movements, do not even belong to the country they have glorified. Sometimes they are outright foreigners, or more often they come from peripheral areas where nationality is doubtful. Examples are Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, de Valera, Disraeli, Poincaré, Beaverbrook. The Pan-German movement was in part the creation of an Englishman, Houston Chamberlain. For the past fifty or a hundred years, transferred nationalism has been a common phenomenon among literary intellectuals. With Lafcadio Hearne the transference was to Japan, with Carlyle and many others of his time to Germany, and in our own age it is usually to Russia. But the peculiarly interesting fact is that re-transference is also possible. A country or other unit which has been worshipped for years may suddenly become detestable, and some other object of affection may take its place with almost no interval. In the first version of H. G. Wells’s Outline of History, and others of his writings about that time, one finds the United States praised almost as extravagantly as Russia is praised by Communists today: yet within a few years this uncritical admiration had turned into hostility. The bigoted Communist who changes in a space of weeks, or even of days, into an equally bigoted Trotskyist is a common spectacle. In continental Europe Fascist movements were largely recruited from among Communists, and the opposite process may well happen within the next few years. What remains constant in the nationalist is his own state of mind: the object of his feelings is changeable, and may be imaginary. But for an intellectual, transference has an important function which I have already mentioned shortly in connection with Chesterton. It makes it possible for him to be much more nationalistic – more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest – than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge. When one sees the slavish or boastful rubbish that is written about Stalin, the Red army, etc. by fairly intelligent and sensitive people, one realizes that this is only possible because some kind of dislocation has taken place. In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion – that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware – will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack – all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognized for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.

Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. It is the same with historical events. [...] If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world: and yet in not one single case were these atrocities – in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna – believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind. Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should – in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918 – and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which, it is felt, ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied. In 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count’, or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly. Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world.

[...] If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:

British Tory. Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.

Communist. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.

Irish Nationalist. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.

Trotskyist. The Stalin régime is accepted by the Russian masses.

Pacifist. Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

All of these facts are grossly obvious if one’s emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. [...] The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

The reason for the rise and spread of nationalism is far too big a question to be raised here. [...] It can be plausibly argued, for instance – it is even probably true – that patriotism is an inoculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition. Or again, it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies, and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics – using the word in a wide sense – and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it.

#George Orwell #nationalism

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