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littlechinesedoll · 3 years ago

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Harvest Festival drabble

Part 1 tumblr | ao3

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Above are some screenshots from Justice League Unlimited Season 3 episode 2, “For the Man Who Has Everything.” Edited Clark to be older. It’s something to go with the fic. It was part of the inspiration for this chapter.

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Bruce has an appointment with his Kryptonian doctor the day after their Union. Kal makes excuses for Bruce with the Medical Guild and instead, on the days after their Union on the Harvest Festival, he lets Bruce feign illness.

Their reproductive endocrinologists are furious. It will take weeks of additional medication to get Bruce to release another batch of ova. This angers Kal, and he tells the doctors that even if they plan to only store their reproductive material for later insemination, he lies and says he and Bruce have not decided yet on bringing forth children.

“You’re not getting any younger, Kal-El,” says the lead doctor.

“Well then, let’s hope my young mate doesn’t become a widow so soon,” Kal sneers.

It’s as if these doctors believe a Union is only for rearing children. Indeed, Krypton needs children, and it is their job to make sure that Unions are successful at reproducing, raising these children, and repopulate the planet. But Kal will not give this planet his children.

Bruce sequesters himself in Kal’s home, staying out of sight of the public. It’s a grand house provided by the government since Kal is of a high rank. Floor to ceiling windows overlooking the farm about to be harvested. It’s a reprieve for him that the workers don’t ever bother the councilor’s new mate.

He’s largely left alone, except for the servant girl he’s been given by the High Council, a rankless named Ona, who’d mistakenly told him about being medicated without his knowledge. (1) He can see she’s honest and hadn’t known he’d been kept in the dark, so he keeps her. She’s the one who turns away visitors, who are mostly of the same rank as Kal, and receives their gifts when they’re at the door, wishing to meet Kal’s mate. She tells them he’s unwell and cannot entertain guests.

She helps him dress since he knows Kal likes the flowing, floor length robes on him when he comes home. He’s told her that he can dress himself, but she insists on doing everything for him (people under Alfred weren’t even like this—didn’t find joy in serving) to make up for her inability to keep her mouth shut. But Bruce has told her that had been a good thing. (And Bruce secretly likes the corset like things she laces up in the morning—if he’s gonna be depressed, he might as well look good.)

“Please take me with you!” Ona begs her master late in the night before he retires. Bruce had confided in her earlier that day that they won’t be staying on Krypton.

Kal never intended to keep her longer than he and Bruce were staying. “Ona, Bruce has more on Earth than I do here. He’s basically a prince,”

The girl falls to her knees. “Please,” she cries. “This is the kindest House I’ve ever served. Please don’t leave me. I will swear I will take great care of Master Bruce,”

Kal sighs. The only way she’ll be protected is if a House receives her, therefore giving her a name and a sigil. But Kal isn’t the head of his House. It’s not his decision to receive a rankless. So he concedes. “Alright, you can come with us,”

Ona sobs in relief and gratitude.

Kal tells her that Earth can change her, that if she wants to serve them, she will have to do as he says, and promise to do one thing for him.

She agrees to obey.

Kal gives her a necklace with a blue crystal pendant. He tells her it’s to protect her and she can only take it off if she’s willing to carry the burdens and responsibilities Sol, the yellow sun of Earth, will bestow her. She immediately puts the necklace on. All she wants is to serve the House that has been nothing but kind to her.

What surprises her, when Kal helps her off the floor, is that he tells her that on Earth, if in the future, she wants to stay but be released from Kal’s House, to be released from the invisible chains of a rankless, all she has to do is ask, but she must keep the necklace on no matter what.

Ona vows to him as her master to never take it off and watches her master’s back as he leaves. She’s just been told she can have her freedom. She doesn’t know if she wants it.

A week after the feigned illness, Bruce pleads for Kal to let him go back to Earth. He can’t bear to be on Krypton any longer, and that’s not just the homesickness talking. Kal pulls the strings a man of his rank can manage and arranges for a journey to Earth without it alerting the High Council, and the Agricultural Council, which he heads.

This of course, displeases the High Council when it’s reported to them almost a week later after they’ve left, that Kal-El together with his mate and servant, has left the planet for Earth. Their displeasure further grows when they learn of Kal-El’s refusal to comply with the reproductive program he had agreed to, and the disrespect he’s shown the team of doctors assigned to manage the course.

Bruce requests they go to Kal’s childhood home.

They arrive in Smallville without fanfare. The house Kal grew up in is more of a bachelor’s country home, surrounded by vast fields of crop, much like his grand home on Krypton, that he cares for himself. Jonathan and Martha Kent joined their creator decades ago, just after Kal had gotten used to his abilities in his mid-twenties. The morning after, Bruce stands in front of their gravestones, out on the property under an apple tree.

“You raised a wonderful son, Mr. and Mrs. Kent,” Bruce says as he lays down a wreathe of flowers. “I’m glad to have met him,”

Kal wraps arm around his mate, hand around a him as he brings him closer. “They would have loved it if you called them Ma and Pa,”

Bruce leans his head on Kal’s sturdy shoulder. “Ma and Pa,”

Ona is a busy bee. After teaching her the basics of caring for a Terran home, Kal realizes she’s a quick learner and takes to everything with ease. He has to tell her to sleep at noon after lunch or else she’ll clean the entire house from top to bottom despite having already cleaned after breakfast is served.

She’s at Bruce’s beck and call, serves their meals after Kal cooks, cleans up after them, and only sleeps after both have retired to their room, and wakes up before the sun is up to help Kal with the farm.

A week after arriving on Earth, Bruce has one of his most emotional bleeds. It’s three days of non-stop crying. Kal doesn’t leave him alone for a second.

Bruce tells him there’s more blood than usual, but there isn’t. The cramps don’t let him get out of bed and Bruce doesn’t feel like the hot water bottles and painkillers are doing anything. Kal holds him and massages his belly and his lower back in attempt to ease the aches.

“I don’t want to go back,” Bruce says, when all that’s left on his pads are spots, and he snuggles further into Kal’s warm embrace. “Please don’t take me back,”

Kal cradles his mate and kisses his hair. “Never,”

They agree on a schedule. A week out of every month, Kal goes back to Krypton to resume his duties. As a representative of Krypton to Earth, Bruce gathers it’s much like being an ambassador of a country in another land. Kal tells him, he’s slowly transferring his duties and is requesting for more assistants and delegating more work to them, without telling them of course, with the plan of a surprise resignation once everything has settled into a new routine. Kal plans to commit to being Krypton’s envoy on Earth full time, together with his cousins, Kara Zor-El and Van-El. (2)

The time Kal spends with Bruce though, is time Kal uses to make up for his mistakes. He lets Bruce choose whether or not they sleep in the same bed, every night. He treats it like they’re not married yet, like’s he’s courting Bruce according to human customs by taking him out on dates, bringing him places he thought he’d never get to visit or see even with money, bringing him flowers from exotic places and chocolates from Europe, or food from Bruce’s favorite places out of the country. They watch movies together, cook together, redecorate the Kent home together, go shopping (Kal finds shopping a nightmare because Bruce doesn’t know when to stop), have picnics on the farm, watch stars. Through all these activities, they stay in Smallville, and Bruce asks his side of the family not to disturb him.

They don’t have sex.

Growing up on Earth, Kal’s Terran upbringing and the traditions and strict rules of Krypton often clashed. He had never engaged in any physical intimacy with anybody, believing he should respect the way of his home planet. He agreed to the reproductive program believing it was right. But the longer he kept the secret from his soon to be mate, the more he questioned the rigid rules of Krypton’s culture. And then he saw the disappointed face of his mate when he learned of his betrayal.

At the turns of the moon, Bruce bleeds and never misses. After that first bleed, Bruce doesn’t anymore come to him to ask for comfort. Instead, he takes pain killers for the cramps and goes on to work and go about his days like the cramps didn’t incapacitate him the first time Kal held him through it.

“I didn’t want to think about it,” Bruce answers when Kal asks, one day when they’re snuggled together on the couch watching some nature documentary on Discovery. “I want to go back to Gotham now,”

Kal chuckles. “Trying to escape the sun, are you?” he jokes, pressing a kiss to Bruce’s temple.

Bruce shrugs. “Maybe,” he looks up at Kal and jokes, “This Kansas sun is way too much for my sensitive, porcelain skin,”

A bubble of laughter erupts from the Kryptonian. “I’ll need to provide better shade then,”

In time, Kal will propose marriage to Bruce the Terran way. He’ll have to save up for a ring, set up something romantic and fancy, and kneel in front of the love of his life at sunset, and ask him to marry him.

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Notes:

(1) in the series Krypton, a rankless Kryptonian is one without a sigil or a House (or not allowed to use the sigil of their House if stripped of rank), and a guild. They are mostly used for labor and menial jobs. A guild is like a career. Kryptonians are made and created for their guilds. Their lives are planned out before they’re created, since children are formed in labs—Kryptonians do not reproduce sexually. The House El is from the Science Guild since Kal’s parents are scientists. Jor-El may have been involved with Earth sciences since he brought the issue of seismic activity to Krypton’s High Council. Lara Lor-Van/Jor-El may have been involved with technological advancements. Kal-El is now involved in agriculture which is also a branch of science that deals with food production—a farmer like his foster parents on Earth. I decided to adopt this because Justice League Unlimited inspired me and because it’s what Clark grows up on Earth with.

(2) Van-El is Clark’s dream son in the JLU S01E02 “For the Man Who Has Everything.” He was voiced by Josh Hutcherson.

there’s a lot of stuff about Ona, but I wanted to explain the culture of Krypton because drama!!

#superbat #clark kent #my fic #fanfic #superman #batman #bruce wayne #no capes #fanfiction #omegaverse #mpreg

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 3 years ago

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Was Napoleon a tyrant? I don't necessarily think he was: at least, I believe he was a better alternative to the absolute monarchs he was fighting. But there are those who disagree. What are your thoughts on the subject?

This is a can of worms to be sure.

I mean....how are we defining the word tyrant? All monarchs are tyrants to someone. Monarchy, by its very nature, is tyrannical in one way, shape, or form, no matter who is at its head. Even in the more neutered forms we see now days with the British. The Queen still exerts a ridiculous amount of power, all things considered.

Napoleon was no better or worse than any other monarch in Europe at that time. Indeed, better than some, worse than others. Because you know, he was human!

This got VERY long. SO LONG. Choice excerpts from below the cut:

"'Power was encroaching with large strides behind the words order and stability,' as Thibaudeau put it."

"(And I suspect he was concerned about seeming too eager for power/setting up a monarchical system. Fouche: You're about as subtle as a canon going off right next door. Napoleon: Hush.)"

"Theeeeeen the little bastard (affectionate) became Emperor."

"Napoleon Vs. Jeff Bezos: fight! fight! fight! (I'm putting my money on Napoleon.)"

tl;dr: a more or less benevolent emperor who had his faults and who was intimately aware, for better or worse, more than most monarchs, that the head is only tenuously attached to the body. (Skim to the bottom for my thoughts on the personal things i.e. how I interpret Napoleon's actions and brain)

But, more seriously, as with most absolute statements, I am opposed to calling him a tyrant because it is reductive and serves no purpose except to make broad sweeping political statements that I believe are far more about the person making the statement exemplifying their modern political, republican position (as in, actual republican-I-support-the-existence-of-republics not the gop) rather than expressing any sort of truth about the past. (wHaT iS tRuTh.)

For historical purposes, it can over-simplify the situation and lead to skewed interpretations of events because you're coming in with this word that has a lot of modern, 20th and 21st century baggage to it.

And, because these people are coming in with this big, bad word of tyrant as a label for Napoleon, it doesn't allow them to engage with the nuance and complexities of his reign.

Anyway.

Napoleon, as emperor, supported centralized power held in his own hands, with support from other governing bodies (senate, council of state etc.). However, Napoleon had a lot of influence in the structuring of these governing bodies and the subsequent appointments as a means to exert control over entities that would otherwise be able to act somewhat independent from him and impinge his power.

We see this consolidation of power beginning, obviously, under the consulate. 'Power was encroaching with large strides behind the words order and stability,' as Thibaudeau put it.

There was the whole theatre around the Tribunate offering to extend Napoleon's tenure as First Consul for another ten years as a means of thanks/showing gratitude for all he did for France (Fouche was like: fuck that, let's just make a statue of the guy). Napoleon played the part of Humble Servant of the Public and refused both statue and the ten year extension. (Very Julius Caesar: You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?)

In actuality, though, he was pissed because he wanted it extended for life.

This resulted in the Council of State deciding "independently" (i.e. Napoleon wasn't present but he sure as hell influenced that Council session) to hold a plebiscite in order to ask The People two key questions: 'Should Napoleon Bonaparte be consul for life?' and 'Should he have the right to designate his successor?'

Napoleon nixed the second question saying to Cambaceres, 'The testament of Louis XIV was not respected, so why should mine be? A dead man has nothing to say.' Which is to say, he knew people would vote for him to be Consul for life, but the prospect of him choosing a successor, a la the Roman Empire, and having that choice be without input from the people and respected upon his death? Less clear.

(And, I suspect he was concerned about seeming too eager for power/setting up a monarchical system.

Fouche: You're about as subtle as a canon going off right next door.

Napoleon: Hush.)

For the Plebiscite, there were around 3.56 million votes for Yes to the question of Napoleon as consul for life and only around 8,300 for No.

The turnout rate was 60% which is uhh...impressive! (To be fair, there was no real evidence of tampering with the vote. Unlike in subsequent Plebiscites, such as the results for Do We Make Him Emperor, which were absolutely doctored. But, considering the highest turnout ever seen in the French Revolution was around 30/35%, double that is certainly something.)

Lafayette was pissed with this. He kicked up a fuss in the Senate and wrote to Napoleon saying that his 'restorative dictatorship' had been well and fine for now but has Napoleon thought about restoring liberty? and that he was certain Napoleon, of all people, wouldn't want an 'arbitrary regime' to be installed!

Napoleon: Bold of you to assume that, Lafayette.

There were, at this time, some mumblings and grumblings about tyranny from the liberals and those still wanting to continue the experiment of the French Republic, to be sure. They increased as time went on and Napoleon's power continued to consolidate.

Theeeeeen the little bastard (affectionate) became Emperor.

Lafayette: WhAt Is tHiS??

Napoleon: Look into my face and tell me honestly that you are shocked.

His government, as Consul and as Emperor, was centralized and very top-down in how it operated. Little was done without Napoleon's input.

The seemingly democratic institutions that had propped him up into power were retained and Napoleon used them as a means to facilitate his rule. As noted earlier, Napoleon had a heavy hand in appointments and the processes in place to fill various offices. Nothing was really...independent of him and his influence.

Though, in terms of Image Building of Empire, Napoleon worked hard to try and maintain the façade of impartiality as emperor. That he was head of state, sure, but all state apparatuses operated independent of him.

(Why is Napoleon's hat so big? because it is full of lies supporting the imperial image making machine.)

That said, when it came to filling those offices, Napoleon focused on merit more than anything as he wanted his governing officials to be capable, hardworking and, above all else, loyal.

(A good quote from Napoleon in one of his more Eat the Rich moments of the consulate: 'One cannot treat wealth as a title of nobility. A rich man is often a layabout without merit. A rich merchant is often only so by virtue of the art of selling expensively or stealing.'

Napoleon Vs. Jeff Bezos: fight! fight! fight!

(I'm putting my money on Napoleon.) )

This is getting really long and I feel that I've not addressed anything in a useful manner, but am I going to stop? No.

Napoleon, himself, at least in 1803, did express some conflicted views about assuming an imperial title. To Roederer he said, 'So many great things have been achieved over the past three years under the title of consul. It should be kept.'

Cambaceres said to Napoleon that upon assuming an imperial title 'your position changes and places you at odds with yourself.' No longer are you merely a public servant, an upholder of the Republic's ideals. Now you are a man wearing a crown, trying to be the upholder of the Republic's ideals.

(nb: I feel that duality is something Napoleon never fully got a handle on. He would veer strongly into authoritarian monarch then have moments of Rousseau-ian Idealism.)

Napoleon was insistent that his rule be a parliamentary monarchy (keeping the governance framework implemented in the Constitution of Year VIII, if I am not mistaken. But don't quote me on that.) and that the French were not his subjects but his people.

So, the imperial government worked thus with the Legislative process divided between four bodies:

Council of State which would draw up legislative proposals,

Tribunate which could debate on legislation but not vote on it,

a legislative body which could vote on legislation but not discuss it, and

Senate which would consider whether the proposed legislation conformed to the Constitution.

The Senate and the Legislative body could, theoretically, curtail Napoleon’s freedom/power. However, considering the fact that he was involved in the appointment process of these offices, and the general rhythm of daily governance, how much power they were able to exert over him was limited.

(This is at his height! Of course, towards the end we see a shift in that. But that's largely tied up in his military defeats and the British banging the door knocker demanding to be let in. Also they brought with them some friends. You might have heard of them? Bourbons?)

The initial terms the Senate brought to Napoleon with their offer of accepting him as a hereditary monarch included, but weren't limited to:

liberty cannot be infringed

equality cannot be jeopardized

sovereignty of the people must be maintained

the laws of the nation are inviolable

all institutions were to be free from undue imperial influence (e.g. the press)

the nation should never be put into a position where it needs to behead the head of state. Again.

Napoleon was uh. Not best pleased with this and had a new version drafted up that included acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the people, but a lot of the other things (e.g. freedom of the press) were cut out.

Yet, Napoleon maintained certain parts of the French Revolution's values which were reflected more in the 1804 Code Napoleon and other legislative and legal pieces than in the initial terms of Senatorial acceptance of his imperial title.

Some of the things enshrined in the Code that were carry-over from the Revolution include, but aren't limited to, the abolition of feudalism, equality before the law, freedom of conscience (to practice their own religion), gave fixed title to those who had bought church and émigré lands during the 1790s, and the equality of taxation was maintained (tax those aristos and the church). Also, there was affirmation of the idea of careers being "open to talent" rather than an accident of birth (as touched on above).

The Freedom of Conscience clause in the Code was a further formalization of several Articles Napoleon amended onto the Concordat in 1802. The Articles guaranteed the principle of religious toleration and made the Protestant and Jewish churches similarly subject to state authority (alongside the Catholic).

These are just a brief summary of some of the more liberal/revolution-informed aspects of Napoleon's governing.

The non-liberal ones I believe we're all pretty familiar with: suppression of the free press, roll-back of rights for women (women are for babies!), reinstatement of slavery (which he later reversed circa 1810/12-ish), top-down Emperor-has-final-word approach to ruling (Napoleon was all about Authority From Above, Trust From Below) etc. etc.

At the end of this, I would say Napoleon's empire falls into that "benevolent monarch" situation. For a given value of "benevolent." As stated at the start, he was like most other monarchs in Europe at the time. Better than some, not as great about certain things as others.

Really, it all ties back to Order and Stability.

Napoleon's assent, and his approach to strong, centralized ruling, was a result of uncertainty and constant government change over ten years of revolution alongside the growing belief, by 1803, that a republic like the Romans or Greeks was not going to happen any time soon. Not without constant warfare and the forever looming threat of a Bourbon restoration.

In addition, Napoleon was doing imperial drag. (If that makes sense.) He was dialing the notch of Emperor up to 11 - being the most emperor of all emperors. So, state control was absolute because he couldn't show any signs of weakness - either in his own body, his familial body, or the body of state. The court protocols were intense and over-the-top at times because he had to prove he was not just a second son of a parvenu lawyer from the sticks. No! he was worthy of this pomp. He was worthy of imperial majesty. He was worthy of the crown and scepter.

Napoleon was not raised to be anything other than a military officer and a middle-class head of a family (would have been a MASTER at doing Sunday Dad Puttering About the House). When he dawned the mantel of power, particularly that of empire, he had to make it up as he went along. For such a self-conscious and proud man, this was difficult. He never wanted to misstep and be embarrassed - on a personal level, political or military.

At the same time, he was reared on Rousseau and Revolution so still had those values and ideals imbedded in him, and those fears and memories. Napoleon knew as well as any Frenchman that a monarch's head is easily removable should it become necessary. Therefore, he sometimes ran roughshod over the liberty to ensure security. For better or worse, that was the choice he made.

Napoleon was a flawed leader with a complex approach to governing that was focused on a centralization of power within him while, at the same time, trying to be the Successor of the Revolution, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Layers! Like an onion.

His approach as emperor really was within the realm of normal-for-the-times when compared to most other monarchs on the European stage in 1800. He also granted liberties to his people that were unheard of in other countries.

I feel like all my Napoleonic ramblings end with the same message: Dude was nuanced. Dude was complex. Dude did good things and bad things. Dude helped people and hurt people. Dude contained multitudes. Because he was simply human, at the end of the day.

ANNNNNNND we are done.

Gods bless all y'all who made it this far.

Have my favourite picture of Napoleon at Tuileries as a prize.

hmm that beautiful heavy, handed symbolism.

#napoleon #napoleon bonaparte #ask #reply #napoleonic #history #19th century #imperial myth making #napoleonic identity

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anakinisvaderisanakin · 3 years ago

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Introductions (AU; the government are introduced to the Emperor’s right hand man)

Emperor Palpatine sat at the helm of the table, his expensive ornate satin cloak pulled up to cover his deformed features. He had made a rare exception to the never appearing in public rule, if only to summon his little group of closely affiliated followers for a less than chummy supper. The Coruscant sun had already begun to set, its pinkish rays disappearing behind the skyscrapers visible from the large single viewport of the Emperor’s dining hall. Two months had passed since the fall of the Republic. Two months since the war came to an end, two months since the Jedi were declared traitors and executed en masse. Two months since Palpatine declared himself dictator, since his regulations had begun being pushed onto all known systems. Two months, and Governor Tarkin had thought himself to be lucky with his role.

A few faces, he recognized. Former admiral Wullf Yularen was a welcome addition despite being a bit below the required rank, fighting the just fight against outliers and naysayers. Orn Free Taa was a more unfortunate case (he had likely invited himself by flattery and empty promises), while Vizier Mas Amedda was an obvious presence. Sate Pestage, Janus Greejatus, Ars Dangor, Kren Blista-Vanee and Verge’s smug faces had Tarkin fighting the urge to roll his eyes at their insipid subservience. Artist Eveli Charis was, Tarkin figured, the most surprising member of the meeting - serving as the only female face of the small crowd. Her aside, and finance minister Gagh rounded off the gathering.

These people were - each in different ways - the most influential people of the new Empire.

“I have not gathered you simply for the sake of sharing a dinner in the wake of our victory. Indeed, I have been wishing to relay to you my plans for the grand future of our Galaxy,” said Palpatine suddenly, his voice gravelly and his gnarly hands reminiscent of claws where they rested against the table cloth.

Tarkin thought he could see a pair of golden eyes gleaming beneath the shrouded darkness of Palpatine’s hood, but chalked it up to a trick of the light. Instead, he focused on the hand stitched embroidery of the Emperor’s burgundy robes. The man had always had an affinity for fancy dress.

“It is clear that you shall provide eyes and ears for me, and I trust you to fulfill your duties towards the Empire, and subsequently to me. However, I’m afraid I must offer you a small surprise.”

“Another, Your Highness?” Tarkin said with an amused smile, and he couldn’t help but feel triumphant when Palpatine let out a pleased cackle in response.

“I’m afraid so, Governor. Surely, you shall all take this little revelation in stride. Are we not in dire need of powerful allies?” he responded, gesturing with one clawed hand towards the Vizier who stood poised by the doorway.

On each side of the hydraulic sliding doors themselves, a royal guard clad in crimson stood at a patient salute. The Emperor’s personal bodyguards, their faces cloaked and hidden from view much like Palpatine himself. Their presence was an odd mixture of reassuring and oppressive, Tarkin had decided. But he saw no reason to fear them, given his own standing with the Emperor. If anything, he benefited from their presence as protectors.

“Will you reveal to us this secret, Your Highness?” asked Charis, her expression curious and incredulous at once.

“My child, have you not been taught the virtue of patience?” was Palpatine’s response; a thinly veiled insult that put her in her place, as she shrank back in shame and lowered her head in an obedient bow.

“Forgive me my insolence, Your Highness,” she offered, apologetic and the Emperor simply shrugged her words off.

“Think nothing of it. You are correct, it appears to me that I have unfairly omitted mentioning this to either of you. Alas, it is time I remedy this arrogance.”

Tarkin noted how the Emperor turned his head briefly, giving the Vizier a barely perceptible nod and the man stepped back. On cue, the guards uncrossed their electro-staffs and parted to the sides. Confusion seemed to overtake most of the party’s faces, as the doorway slid open with ease - only to reveal a man. Clad in black armour with red and silver accents; broad shouldered, tall and visibly disdainful towards his company. He stalked wordlessly up to Palpatine’s right hand side, where he lingered - gloved hands folded in front of his hips, legs wide apart. His eyes were glowing, an amber shade to their irises, a bloodshot sclera. The man’s face was scarred, rugged; and the only visible emotions seemed to be anger and resentment. One single dark blonde curl fell over his creased forehead.

But that wasn’t the oddity. Someone in the company - Tarkin suspected it to be Yularen, judging by the tone - gasped.

Indeed, it was difficult not to recognize the young man by the Emperor's side - the Emperor, whose features had twisted into a toothy grin. The man said nothing, taller than Tarkin remembered him. Something warped and cruel and twisted distorting his rather handsome features into something unrecognizable, all charm vanquished. He was pale, peering in distaste down at the dining party as if they were beneath him. It didn’t sit right with Tarkin, given that they all knew who he was and what his past profession up until about two months ago would have been.

Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker had joined them for supper.

“May I introduce to you Lord Vader,” said Palpatine, breaking the eerie silence. “Some of you may believe you are familiar with this man. I assure you, you are mistaken. The man whom you may recall is long gone. Lord Vader has seen the error of his ways, and accepted the Jedi traitors for what they are. He came to my aid during the assassination attempt ordered by master Windu.”

Tarkin listened closely, but he was not the only one who seemed unable to tear his gaze from Skywalk-- Vader’s stern features. He looked so much older than his age, as if he had seen a million lifetimes of suffering pass him by. His hollow eyes seemed haunted, but their inherent glow was more reminiscent of a predator locked in a cage. Simply biding his time, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce. Still, he made no move and did not utter a single word.

“Lord Vader has turned out to be, much like you, one of my most trusted advisors. He is my right hand man, and while I have neglected to provide him with an official rank - he outranks every single one of you. It is my belief that only he has the means to do what needs to be done,” the Emperor continued.

Yularen seemed to shift uneasily in his seat, his eyes wide and a blunt disbelief etched into his aging features.

“You wish to speak, Colonel?”

Tarkin heard himself say; wondering if they were the only ones present - apart from the Emperor himself - who had maintained some sort of personal relationship to the man Palpatine had renamed and retooled so viciously.

“No, Governor. I--” he began, but was immediately cut off by Palpatine.

“You are wondering how the man you knew as a Jedi could turn on his own kind, is that not so? You are surprised to see that his loyalty towards the Empire could outweigh his loyalty towards his kin. Am I correct, Colonel?”

Yularen seemed to pause a bit longer than required, but gave a curt nod as he found the voice to speak up.

“Yes, Your Highness. I am merely… surprised, as you put it,” he said as a manner of surrender.

“It is understandable that you would be shocked. Should you like to speak of your own decision, Lord Vader?” the Emperor drawled, his voice menacing and sing-songy at once as he gestured to offer Vader the opportunity to speak.

“No,” the young man simply said, standing so still that his lips barely even seemed to be moving; his gleaming eyes scanning each and every person present before it landed on Tarkin - the only man who’s amusement outweighed the concerns. “I believe my actions will speak for themselves, as will your evident trust in me, my master.”

The voice was a bit deeper and gruffer than Tarkin recalled it - but that could be maturity - but its monotone quality was new. Vader spoke as if the words held no meaning to him, as if whatever he said was pointless and a waste of breath. As if his words were unbefitting of anyone but the Emperor. Yet, at the same time, he was matter of fact and to the point. A quality Tarkin had enjoyed in the past, and one he presumed Yularen had as well.

“Oh, I implore you to amuse this unspoken inquiry, Lord Vader,” Palpatine pressed, and as much as it came off as if being in good faith, it was an obvious demand no loyal servant could ignore.

“As you wish, my master,” Vader simply obeyed, his burning eyes still holding Tarkin’s in a cold, disgruntled stare. “I was the single man to commandeer the troops as they marched on the Jedi temple. I surveyed the situation, and I made sure not a single soul present escaped their fate. I am prepared to do whatever it takes to serve my Emperor, and I will not be frowned upon by the likes of you.”

The last word was delivered with such pure, unbridled loathing that it seemed to lower the temperature of the room by several degrees by proxy of mere intent. Vader nonchalantly folded his arms over his chest, lips drawn into a thin line and the perpetual scowl of his forehead had already begun to carve out fine lines in their wake. Palpatine was still sneering, grimy teeth bared in a ferocious grin.

“As you can see, Lord Vader’s conviction is admirable and undeniable. He has proved himself worthy of my trust, and so, I expect you to follow my example accordingly. I expect you to show him the reverence he requires,” the Emperor concluded, that odd glow to Vader’s eyes mirrored by his as he briefly peered up from beneath his hood - this time, it could be no trick of the light.

“I trust your infallible judgment, Your Highness,” Tarkin finally said, being the first to accept the new norm. “I may not be completely assured of Lord Vader’s motives as of yet, but he shall gain my respect when he has proved himself worthy of it.”

“My friend, you need not fear. However, I understand your concerns, and I have no doubt that you will come around quite soon,” said Palpatine, and while there was malice to the tone, he was also unusually honest and benevolent.

Tarkin suspected that was entirely on him, and their long history as colleagues and friends. He nodded, glancing over at Vader whose eyes regarded him still. Their gaze was arduous, and heavy, and vile - but that seemed to be their natural state, rather than any personal vendetta.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” was Tarkin’s only reply, and he shot a defiant glare back at Vader. “You are much too gracious.”

“Will you cease your repulsive display?” Vader snapped, and while Tarkin at first almost expected Palpatine to defend him; he found that the Emperor seemed humored enough by the obvious insult to allow the man to finish his trail of thought. “The Emperor will offer you no favours based on your fawning. You embarrass yourself, Governor.”

“Now, now, Lord Vader. I believe such childish bickering belongs elsewhere,” he finally shushed, as Vader relented like an obedient school boy fearing punishment. “However, I must agree. It would serve you well to evolve your attempts at flattery into a less… tacky matter.”

That triggered a reaction from Vader, as one corner of his lips twitched briefly upwards in a mocking, superior half smirk. He said nothing, but the triumph in those golden eyes spoke for itself.

“Now, with this out of the way, I wish to return to the matters at hand - but there is one more thing I wish to clarify. Lord Vader will not tolerate any mentions of the man you might recall him to be. He is no longer the naive child of yesterday. There will be a penalty for such insolence - no matter whom it may derive from. Lord Vader is a reinvented man. You shall address him only as such, and by no other name. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” was the singular response - and a brief hint of delight, and perhaps relief, crossed Vader’s scornful face.

“Very good,” said the Emperor with a cackle.

__________

I am not generally a fan of suitless Vader, but this idea came to me and it kinda required that so I went with it for once. Enjoy!

Ao3 link below:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32029582

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pub-lius · 3 years ago

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A Debunking and, in my Humble Opinion, Superior Version of Weird History’s “Hardcore Facts About Alexander Hamilton”

I haven’t updated my blog in quite some time, and that is due to my schedule being primarily dominated by school. So, I decided my first step into posting semi-regularly once more shall be a more casual, more fun endeavor.

If you have not heard of the Weird History youtube channel, good for you. It is yet another social media platform that misconstrues history to appeal to the public’s enjoyment of extremes and strangeness. I saw The Historical Fashion Queens make a video responding to their highly misinformed documentary on corsetry on Miss Abby Cox’s youtube channel, which I highly recommend. This intrigued me, and I decided to find a video I could dissect off my expertise, at first only for fun in my own time. This resulted in the production in a very long bullet list in the notes app of my phone. So here is my informal destruction of this godforsaken video.

Disclaimer: I am not at all excusing any of the awful things Alexander Hamilton did during his lifetime. I am absolutely the last person who would even come near to claiming that many of the things he did were justifiable in the slightest. Although, he might be the only historical figure which I have a very strong interest in the life of, as he was incredibly complex, and the part of me with a love of psychology finds him absolutely fascinating. There is also something to be said about the way we consider moral standards of historical figures. We are quite lucky to believe in the time that we do, and not all of our standards can apply to historical figures. This does not mean they should not be held accountable. I find that a way to criticize people while also praising them where it is due is by judging them based upon their intentions. In my opinion, Hamilton’s intentions were not to harm anyone in most situations, so I don’t think he was a terrible person, nor do I think he was a particularly good one. Then again, I don’t think either of those things about a mass majority of people, so let us proceed without further delay. (Note: I will also be referring to the collective Weird History channel as the Narrator to avoid any mental gymnastics, and all of my knowledge is coming from my memory of Hamilton’s writing and some biographies.)

Automatically, the video starts with mention of the musical, but that just reminds me that many use Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton as a basis of their statements about him without utilizing much critical thinking, so I am slightly nervous.

The Narrator then refers to Hammy Ham man as “...one of America’s most undervalued founding fathers...” Now, it is debatable whether or not Mr. Hamilton is undervalued per se, but when it comes to the founding fathers, they are usually undervalued or overvalued. At this point, Hamilton is both.

I shall not subscribe, thank you for the offer though, Mr. Narrator.

Now for the first fact: “Historians don’t know when Hamilton was born.” Yes, this is correct, but I don’t believe this should be labeled as “hardcore”, but perhaps that is just me. One early document indicates that Hamilton was born in 1755, while all later ones point to 1757 as his year of birth. We know Hamilton was not always a completely honest man, so it is possible that he lied.

Also, they show an image of a baby, and I do not know if this is actually Hamilton, but they use a lot of strange imagery, which I found humorous.

“A self-made man born out of wedlock.” Now, this fact could indeed be “hardcore”, if this was not colonial America we are discussing. Hamilton actually wasn’t really special in this regard. Yes, his rise to fame was impressive considering his circumstances, but this wasn’t unheard of.

The Narrator then says that Hamilton’s mother, Rachel Faucette, was “estranged from her husband.” This caused me some confusion as it is a vast understatement. Her ex-husband was absolutely awful to her.

Additionally, they claim that James Hamilton left his family behind for some reason that I did not write in my notes, but the most likely reason that he actually left was because of his awesome debt. James Hamilton also had a history of ambitious pursuits for money, so it would not be extreme to claim that he moved to another island to attempt to make a fortune in some trading endeavor.

They also cease to mention the Stevens family, who housed young Alexander while he was working for Beekman and Cruger, and had a great influence on him, but I digress.

“A college dropout who joined the Revolution.” Once again, this isn’t special. Many rowdy young Whigs left behind their careers and educations for pursuit of military fame in the Continental Army. They also do not mention anything of Hamilton’s expansive military career, which aside from being indicative of primitive research, but would produce more “hardcore facts.”

Although, they do discuss his application to Princeton college, which is interesting enough I suppose, although everyone who has heard the first two songs of the musical knows this story. His proposal for an “accelerated course of study” was likely inspired by Aaron Burr, as claimed by Chernow and Miranda, or James Madison, as supported by evidence provided by author Noah Feldman in his novel, The Three Lives of James Madison, which is an excellent read. Young Madison, having already completed a course, decided to do so again, but compacting a usually three year course into a shorter period of time. He hardly slept during this period, which was stressful upon his health, making Princeton more disinclined to allow a similar course to be taken.

The Narrator then claims that Hamilton “formed his own militia of 25 men.” Technically, yes? But not exactly. Hamilton joined a paramilitary group called the Hearts of Oak, and they drilled in Trinity Churchyard. This became ironic later. He then became a captain in the New York Artillery Company, and enlisted his own men, which was at one time around thirty or so, if my memory serves me correctly.

“Founded a bank that existed for over two centuries.” Ah, yes, a very hardcore fact indeed. Yes, Hamilton did establish the Bank of America, but Robert Morris was the one who inspired him to do so. Though, I do think the financial plan is a product of his own genius, but I will get into that much later.

I got an ad. :(

The Narrator also says that the misfortunes done to the New York shipping industry by the Articles of Confederation were the most prominent, if not sole, motivation for Hamilton to concoct his financial plan. He first recognized the need for a sound financial plan when he was in the army. You know, when he was watching men die of inadequate supplies because the government couldn’t tax the states.

This video, like Chernow’s biography and Miranda’s musical, claims that Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were friends when, in actuality, they weren’t really. Yes, they knew each other, and they didn’t hate each other until the end of Hamilton’s life, but they really didn’t think about each other much before the Election of 1800.

“Hamilton authored over half of the Federalist Papers.” Indeed, he did! I enjoy this fact. It isn’t very “hardcore” but it is very impressive. The Federalist Papers were arguably Hamilton’s greatest accomplishment, as he organized the entire thing and, as previously stated, authored much of them. I very much enjoy the Federalist Papers, as they give some insight as to Hamilton’s political and philosophical theories, as well as how he thought of the world. It makes for an interesting read if you have something you’re looking for.

Now, this may be a hot take, but Madison’s essays are by far more effective, as they were better organized. Hamilton and I share a common flaw, and that is the lack of brevity.

“Involved in America’s first sex scandal.” Yes, we all know. I’ll get into the Reynold’s affair later because it’s its own beast to conquer. Basically what you need to understand information I shall provide later in this post is that James Reynolds extorted money from Hamilton, and if Hamilton failed to pay, Reynolds would expose the affair Hamilton was having with his wife, Maria. Hamilton paid, but when Reynolds was arrested for something else, he exposed Hamilton anyway.

“He worked with Aaron Burr to defend a man.” Once again, this isn’t very surprising. They were both capable lawyers in the same area, so it was basically inevitable. Though there was this one instance where Hamilton and Burr were working on a case together and Hamilton, being himself, insisted upon having the last word. Well, Burr was tired of him, and I can’t say I blame him, so he made every possible argument in his finishing speech, leaving Hamilton with virtually nothing.

The Narrator also mentions Hamilton’s opposition to slavery, but he didn’t really outwardly oppose it as much as you would think listening to the musical or reading Chernow’s biography. Far from being the “fervent abolitionist” Chernow and Miranda glorify, Hamilton didn’t really do much for the enslaved. He helped John Laurens in his Black Plan and joined the Manumission Society, but other than that, he never made any attempt to progress the abolition of slavery. He also “purchased” slaves for his in-laws, and some argue that he “owned” some himself, but there is no contemporary evidence to support this that I have seen. The enslaved and servants that were in his household likely belonged to his wife.

“Founded a newspaper that still exists.” Ok.

“Died by duel.” I swear, this fact is by far the most unnecessary. They mention the duel so many times that it is already redundant. I completely skipped over this part, and the video ended, so I was thoroughly underwhelmed.

Well, seeing as this post is already longer than my attention span, I shall save you the pains of having to read any more in just one post. I shall make a follow-up to this where I give my own facts, which I believe are far more hardcore than “he founded a newspaper.” I hope you have enjoyed and this isn’t too terribly boring. I hope to get back to posting soon.

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nordleuchten · 3 years ago

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La Fayette in Prison - Part 4.2 - Adrienne in Paris

After six months the dreaded news came. Adrienne was to be transferred to Paris. Virginie wrote:

My mother arrived in Paris on the 19th of Prairial, the eve of the fete de l'Étre supréme, three days before the decree of the 22nd, which organized une terreur dans la Terreur. At that time, no less than sixty people were daily falling victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal. All seemed to forebode approaching death to my mother.

Her children were allowed to visit her one last time and her oldest daughter, Anastasie, argued and pleaded with the guards that she was old enough to be taken with her mother to Paris, that she was an adult and guilty of the same “crimes” as her mother. Anastasie was fifteen at this point in time and the guard refused her, although they were visibly touched by her plea.

Frestel, well aware of the imminent danger, wrote Morris in Paris and informed him about the situation. Morris lost no time and immediately demanded Robespierre himself to release Adrienne - he was ignored. Morris had previously been quite open about this dislike for the revolution and was therefore not really welcomed. He however made it very, very, very clear, that the Americans were quite attached to La Fayette and his whole family and that if, should anything happen to Adrienne or the children, this could quite possible be the final straw for the Americans. He said, and I paraphrase here, Morris himself was a tad more diplomatic, “Our rebellion against England started with a trade boycott. America is one of the last countries that still trades with France. The American government is and will remain neutral, but if something were to happen to Adrienne or her children and the American people start boycotting French goods, well, what is the government supposed to do?” After that, Morris was even more hated by the Jacobins but his initiative proofed to be successful. Adrienne remained in prison but it was made clear that she should not be executed. Americas neutrality was nothing that France could afford to lose.

Frestel had furthermore collected all the jewellery that still reminded in Chavaniac and sold most of it, so that Adrienne would have money while in prison. A number of the servants even gave some of their own money to Adrienne (have I mentioned how great and loyal and amazing the servants were?).

Adriennes mother, the duchess d’Ayen, her sister, the vicomtesse de Noailles and her grandmother, the duchess de Noailles were all executed early in July of 1794. Her mother and sister had fled to safety in Switzerland but decided to return to France to nurse Adrienne’s dying grandfather. After his death, the three women were arrested. Virginie wrote concerning their arrests:

My grand mother and my aunt de Noailles, who had remained along time at Saint - Germain, to take care of the Maréchal de Noailles in his old age, returned to Paris after his death, anxious to attend once more to their religious duties. They were, soon after their return, put under arrest in their own house, at the Hôtel de Noailles. The danger of their situation filled my mother's mind with terror and absorbed all her thoughts.

They died on the same day. Their local priest was able to get close enough to them to give them the absolution. He later noted that the two duchesses at least were content with their fate because they would both die before their child. On the day of the execution, the duchess de Noailles was the first to be guillotined, followed by her daughter, the duchess d’Ayen who in her turn was followed by her daughter, the vicomtesse de Noailles. A parent should not outlive their child.

I can not imagine what Adrienne must have felt as she received the news. All her live she had been extremely close with her mother and her older sister Louise. She furthermore could never be completely certain that she were not to follow her family members to the guillotine. Her American connections kept her safe for the time being, but that could change quickly.

The downfall of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety was Adrienne’s salvation. More moderate forces took over the reign of government and less and less people were executed. Adrienne however was still in prison - and she did not know why. James Monroe, a close and dear friend of La Fayette had just taken over as ambassador from Morris and getting Adrienne out of prison was one of his top priorities. He could not risk a diplomatic misstep in his affair and he therefor did something very clever - he asked his wife Elizabeth Monroe if she would like to visit Adrienne. Elizabeth naturally agreed and soon the Monroe couple visited Adrienne on a regular basis and brought her all sorts of things she might need in prison. Their visits served two purposes (beside cheering poor Adrienne up). They made it clear that America was still very invested in the wellbeing of Adrienne and her family. They also kept Adrienne in the spotlight because it almost seemed as if the new government had simply forgotten that she was still imprisoned - and still without any reasonable charges. Adrienne wrote Monroe on October 3, 1794:

It is likely that I will be the last to leave this place. I believe that the threat of execution is subsiding and if hope persists, there is no danger for me, as I have not the least reason to be held. But the situation of my children so far away from me adds to the sorrow that will follow me to my grave. These cruel anxieties and this kind of torment not being completely without remedy, I beg you to ease my cares by allowing me a moment of conversation with a man who should have your full confidence. Nothing is easier than what I am asking you, and I cannot believe that you would refuse me. (…)I truly need you to look after the interest of my dear children from whom I have been torn apart. It isn’t too much I think after a two-month confinement in the same place, to ask for the consoling confirmation that I have some right to hope for my liberation at the moment of their arrival. You see, my dear sir, that I assume no pride in this because I sense that you have already enough assurances of my appreciation that I am ready for you to undertake new responsibilities. But, I am accustomed to remaining silent when I am not allowed to express openly what I feel. Pardon the candor with which I express myself to you; and doubt not that not only what the United States and its minister has done for me, but what they have willingly attempted to do for me, has instilled in me a very sincere appreciation.

There are many letters between Monroe and Adrienne, a few letters between Adrienne and Washington and only one letter between Adrienne and La Fayette (that I know of). Monroe did not only aided Adrienne in obtaining her release but he also helped her further with her finances and to take care of several relatives and former employees. Here is just one of the many, many examples. Adrienne wrote to Monroe in an undated letter (in all likelihood November 1794):

I cannot finish without recommending again to the kindnesses of the American minister, Mr Mercier, a servant who has served me for seventeen years with fidelity and zeal, and who has also run risks for me and shared with me a month in prison. He has a position at this moment, but I cannot bear the idea that he would suffer poverty. And I need to hope that he will not be abandoned by the United States. A very poor family whose son is the victim with my husband also has sacred claims to their kindness, the father, the mother and five children will be furnished of what aid that will relieve them.

Adrienne was not in a great position herself, but she constantly thought of others.

After a grand total of sixteen months in prison, Adrienne was finally released. Her immediate aim was to get her son and his tutor Frestel to the safe shores of America. She first re-purchased Chavaniac from the government so that Louise Charlotte and her children had a safe place to stay. She also argued with the government that she was eligible to inherit her mother’s properties - they eventually agreed with her. Monroe in the meantime had “found” an American passport for Georges. (Let me know if you all are interested in a separate post about Georges time and reception in America).

Adrienne and her daughters travelled to Austria, there to argue for La Fayette’s release - and that is exactly where we continue next time, with La Fayette’s stay in the infamous Olmütz prison.

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 4 years ago

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Burn The Bread Book: Industrial Communism Will Not Liberate You

The True Cost of Bread

For years I've watched a man drive his pick-up truck into the forest around me and cut down all the trees that aren't legally protected. So, every tree that isn't a pine or an oak. The moment a carob or olive or hawthorn or mastic or strawberry tree grows big enough to burn, he cuts it down and drags it away for firewood. He even fells trees I planted, while smiling and waving at me like he’s doing me a favor. I glare at him silently but don’t say a word, knowing he has the full power of the state behind him.

He uses the wood to fuel his traditional bakery which has several large outdoor ovens. The much-loved industrial product he produces is bread; a product that has rapidly replaced all the native food-bearing plants of the area as they’ve been cut down to make room for wheat fields.

The villagers are proud of the bakery because it attracts visitors from all over the island and thus creates further opportunities for them to earn profit. The local bureaucracy; the democratically-elected village council, gives the baker free reign to do as he pleases since so many livelihoods depend on his bakery.

Because the baker cuts everything down as soon as it reaches human height, the trees never get big enough to fruit, so they don't spread their seeds and grow new trees. The forest slowly dwindles to nothing but pine trees and can no longer sustain most animal life. The climate dries, the soil erodes, the air grows stagnant and depleted of oxygen. All that’s left in the few remaining forests that haven’t been bulldozed to grow more wheat is a sterile pine desert.

The baker will soon no doubt lobby the village council to allow him to harvest the pine trees too, otherwise the all-important bakery will cease to be operational when he runs out of legal trees to fell.

In just a few years, all the fruits, nuts and berries that sustained the people in the area for millennia are wiped out and replaced with a consumer product that is made from a single grain crop. A thriving ecosystem has been replaced with a wheat monoculture that could collapse at any moment and take the lives of everyone it feeds with it.

It’s worth noting that the baker, like most people in my village, and in fact most people on the island, considers himself a communist. The village has a “communist party” clubhouse and they always elect “communist” local leaders and vote for “communist” politicians in the national elections.

Any anarchist worth their salt has no tolerance for these faux-communists, or “tankies” and their brand of collectivist-capitalism because they cling to money, states and rulers and really only embrace Stalinist politics because of the promise of cushy government jobs for them or their relatives.

The Stalinist politicians openly buy votes by promising jobs in the public service to their supporters. A job in the public service here is a guaranteed free ride for life for you and your family, with the salaries multiple times higher than private sector salaries and benefits out of the wazoo - including multiple pensions. They get a full pension for each gov sector they worked in, and the more connected civil servants are rotated through jobs in multiple sectors in the last few months leading up to their retirement to ensure the maximum pay-out possible.

I’m confident anyone reading this knows Stalinism is designed to enrich the bureaucrat class and give them complete control over the state’s citizens. No anarchist sees that shit as communism. But in a “real” communist society; an “anarcho-communist” society where money, state and class have been abolished, the local baker would presumably still bake that bread, and since it would be offered freely to everyone far and wide, he'd need to bake a lot more of it and thus need more wood. More forest would be razed to keep the bread production going. Everyone living in the village and anyone passing through, and people in faraway cities will expect to have as much gourmet bread on their plates as they desire. More bakeries would need to pop up on the mountain as demand rises for delicious bread in the cities below, with the rural population working hard and doing their duty to feed the hungry urban population.

Over the years, I’ve put a lot of thought into envisioning how the workers seizing the means of production would end the environmental devastation this bread production brings to the mountain. I struggle to see any scenario where communism would stop the devastation being wrought on the ecosystem. The forests would continue to be razed to ensure production won’t slow down.

Free bread for everyone today means no bread (or any food) for anyone tomorrow as the top-soil washes away, the climate warms, the wildlife goes extinct, and the whole mountain rapidly turns to desert. It’s inevitable that soon even wheat will cease to grow in the fields surrounding the village.

Regardless of the economic system in place, the villagers being able to consume as many fresh loaves of baked bread as they can carry means all the forests in driving distance of the village are eviscerated, eventually all the fields become barren, the crops fail, and everyone starves. This is already well on its way to happening, and switching to a communist mode of production would do nothing to allay this inevitability.

“How would you feed people then, genius?” I hear you scoff. The answer is simple; tried and tested for millennia. I wouldn’t feed people. People would feed themselves instead of expecting others to labor to feed them; an entitlement that arose with industrial civilization. People would be inclined to protect the forests instead of bulldozing them for the supposed convenience of industrial food production if they picked their food directly from those forests everyday.

They’d protect the forests with their very lives because they’d need the food that grows in the forests to survive without industrial farms, bakeries and factories outsourcing food production and then hiding the ecocide they cause just out of sight of the villages and their carefully manicured streets.

Bread and other industrial products alienate us from our ecosystem and cause us to stop caring about how our food is produced, so long as it’s there in the store when we want to eat it. Putting food production back into the control of the individual is the only way to preserve the ecosystem. Direct food is the only anarchist mode of production. When other people are tasked with growing your food, they will take shortcuts because the food isn’t going into their own mouths or the mouths of their loved ones. Food harvesting needs to go back to being a way of life for every able-bodied person, rather than something industrial farm workers are tasked with to serve an elite class of privileged office workers who are completely disconnected from the food chain.

All over the world, complex centuries-old polyculture food-forests that sustained countless lives for generations are destroyed by the arrogance of industrial production, replaced for a short while by a wheat or corn monoculture so people can pick up their bread down the street from their home or workplace instead of muddying their feet to gather food from the wild as their ancestors did. This convenience seems like “progress” to civilized people, at least until the destructive industrial agriculture process renders the wheat fields infertile and farms all over the world are turned into a vast uninhabitable dust bowl. A sustainable way of life that kept us alive and thriving for centuries has been tossed aside in favor of a short-lived attempt at industrial convenience that has already proven itself a horrible failure; bringing us and every other lifeform to the verge of extinction.

Industry is not sustainable. Industrial systems are all destructive. Communism, capitalism, fascism, they’re all founded on ecocide. The authority of the baker is upheld over everything else because domesticated people would rather consume “free” industrial bread for a few years than unlearn their destructive consumerist habits. If we are to survive these times of devastating ecological collapse, humans need to go back to fostering vast food forests as our ancestors did for millennia; producing and gathering our own food without destroying the very ecosystem that gives us life in the name of luxury and convenience.

"The People's" Authority: How “Anarcho-Communism” is Authority-Forming

If someone kept cutting down all the trees to bake bread, the people who depend on the forest to survive would of course have to intervene to stop the loggers from destroying the forest and thus killing their way of life.

This happens in rainforests today where indigenous people who have been let down by the state gleefully issuing licenses to corporate loggers, and turning a blind eye to illegal logging, instead take matters into their own hands and shut down the loggers using force.

They put their lives on the line to do this, and a lot of them are killed by the loggers who value their profits over the lives of indigenous people. They know if they don’t act to stop the loggers, the forests they call their home will be decimated and their way of life will have been destroyed forever. They’ll be forced into the cramped cities and have to labor all day everyday to buy the bread and beef that stripped their forests bare.

So how would an anarcho-communist society deal with someone who cuts down all the trees to bake bread? In an anarcho-communist society, everyone will be environmentally conscious and consume sustainably, right...? No. Not if you’re engaging in any kind of critical thinking.

Loggers can only destroy forests at the current explosive rate if the society imbues them with authority. If they have no authority, there's nothing stopping others from using force to end their pillaging of our natural resources. Without the authority of civilization behind them, the loggers have incredibly diminished power and no real motive to risk their lives to fell trees.

Anarcho-communism is an industrial ideology based around the notion of seizing the means of production and then running the factories, saw mills, oil rigs, mines and power plants democratically. Industrial civilization is an incredibly totalitarian authority that is nevertheless upheld by “anarcho”-communist theory, even though anarchists supposedly oppose all forms of authority.

In an industrial communist society, much like in a capitalist society, logging is necessary to further the industrial production the society is built around. As long as production drives the system, trees will have to be felled for all kinds of reasons: from lumber and paper production to making way for crops and cattle.

So, logging is highly valued by the people that uphold the industrial society, and in a real world scenario, these “anarcho” communists would have to take measures to protect loggers from repercussions from a small, uncivilized minority – the indigenous inhabitants of the forest. These measures are, by any definition, an authority. A monopoly on violence. A state in everything but name.

But since the loggers are providing this valued service to good, decent, reasoned, educated, domesticated, egalitarian, democratic, civilized anarcho-communists in big shiny cities who are accustomed to a litany of luxury consumer products being delivered to their doors everyday… Decidedly authoritarian methods will need to be taken to ensure the anarcho-loggers can do their anarcho-work without facing retaliation from the “primmie” forest dwellers. These methods can easily be justified in the ancom’s mind; there’s nothing an ancom loves more than to “justify” authority with their mighty reasoned logic™️.

So when faced with the conundrum that the anarcho-communist city needs lumber, paper, corn and meat, and the only thing standing in the way of production is a few indigenous tribes, the ancom will put their anarcho-Spock ears on and declare: “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. Just as capitalist and socialist states today violently suppress the indigenous people who take action to shut down logging and mining operations that quash their way of life, the anarcho-industrialist will send a red-and-black army in to escort their red-and-black bulldozers and discipline anyone that interferes with the will of “the people”.

The indigenous inhabitants of course won’t give a shit that their forests are being felled by communists rather than by capitalists. They won’t give a shit that the bulldozers are now owned collectively or that the land they’ve lived on for millennia has now been designated as belonging to “the people” (the civilized voting majority) instead of to the state or to capital.

The forest that nurtures the indigenous people and their children is still being decimated to maintain the destructive lifestyles of apathetic city-dwellers. Their lives are still being ended because to civilized people, they’re a backwards, regressive minority standing in the way of progress... Damaging the revolution, inhibiting the growth of their glorious egalitarian civilization. The educated, “progressive” majority outvote them. Anyway, everyone who has spoken to a red anarchist knows primmies are dirty reactionary ableists who want to stop us from building wheelchair and drug factories, right?

Civilized people always have pushed the notion that the “common good” or the good of the many will always outweigh the needs of individuals or small groups of people, ever since Aristotle, in his "The Aim of Man” wrote:

"The good of the state is of greater and more fundamental importance both to attain and to preserve. The securing of one individual's good is cause for rejoicing, but to secure the good of a nation or of a city-state is nobler and more divine." Communism is even more adamant in this “the will of the majority is paramount” shtick, going as far as to declare the industrial-worker class as the only voice that matters, with everyone needing to become part of the worker class in order to abolish class differences.

This logic is why the USSR, China and other communist experiments forced collectivization on self-sufficient indigenous peoples and then slaughtered them when they inevitably resisted. If people won’t consent to being displaced from their ancestral lands to work on the industrial farms and factories that fuel the destruction of their homes, they’re branded “kulaks” and “counter-revolutionaries” and “reactionaries” and are systemically genocided, usually by destroying their food sources.

Industrial goods are valued by industrial society over the forest and its inhabitants because domesticated people want to eat bread and microwaved pizza and the real cost of those products (environmental destruction) is of no real concern to industrial society beyond empty gestures like an occasional “save the rainforests” or “go vegan” banner.

The inhabitants of the forests and their strange foreign culture are too far removed from the busy cities for the average urbanites to involve themselves in their plight. Even the civilized rural people who live around the forests are forever striving to urbanize their villages in the unending quest for upwards mobility. In my experience, they’ll happily trade every tree in sight for a gourmet bakery, Apple Store or coffee-shop so they can feel as civilized as the people in the big cities who tend to look down on them for being “hillbillies” or “country bumpkins”.

“The people in the big cities of Sao Paulo and Rio, they want us to live on picking Brazil nuts,” a farmer says. “That doesn’t put anyone’s kid in college.” (From RollingStone.com.)

The settler-farmers who are burning what’s left of the Amazon rainforest to the ground say they’re doing it for their children... To make the cash to pay for their children to be educated and get good jobs in the city. It shouldn’t be controversial for me to say civilized people value their civilized life and will always put their civilized needs before the needs of uncivilized others.

Civilized people can relate to their civilized neighbours who have the same struggles as them: paying their bills, educating their kids, buying good insurance, washing their car, deciding where to go on vacation, renovating their kitchens, choosing the next Netflix show to binge watch... So it’s not surprising that they’ll do everything they can to prop up civilized people and kick down the uncivilized people who stand in the way of their quest for ever-increasing industrial comforts.

I can already see the denial stage setting in on some of your faces as I type: “But us anarcho-communists aren’t like capitalists, we’re good caring people. Humane people. We’ll make industry green, we’ll manage the forests in a sustainable manner using direct democracy, unions, unicorns and equality!”

Why would anyone swallow that crock of shit? Why would thoroughly domesticated people used to all the comforts of destructive industrial civilization suddenly decide to forgo those comforts because of democracy? Why would 7.7 billion people suddenly change how they live because anarcho-communism has been declared? How would ancom civilization make industry “green” when it’s clearly demonstrable that all industry is destructive to the environment and to wild people, and modelling a society on an industrial system has had disastrous results throughout history, regardless of what the attached ideology was named?

All controlled mass-society, including every historical experiment at building a communist society has created authority; bodies of people that hold power over others. That power grows over time and takes the “communist” society further and further away from its revolutionary origins. Every indication is that authority would continue to be manifested with industrial anarcho-communism. There is no evidence that anarcho-communism would avert authority when it’s so dependent on destructive, exploitative, alienating, domesticating industry and the control and domination of a global population of workers.

All Industrial Goods Free for All People: A Recipe for Disaster

In communism everything is free for the taking and resources are often treated as if they're infinite. If you decide you need something, you take it from the communal store. Kropotkin said no one has the right to judge how much an individual needs, except the individuals themselves.

Since most reds hold that resources should be allocated according to “need”, decisions would need to be made to determine who in the community has “need” of the biggest shares of resources.

I know most ancoms, like Kropotkin, claim every individual will just take whatever they “need” (want) from communal stores, but I'm going to cry foul on that because it's really not practical in an industrial society. Resources aren't infinite and no one is going to spend their life doing gruelling manual labor and then just give everything they produce away to some random stranger who shows up at the communal store with a dumpster truck and says "I need your community's entire monthly output of goods today, so load it up". For some reason ancoms think assholes would cease to exist in a communist society. Why would anyone work their asses off, wasting their life away doing menial manual labor just to watch some shitlord drive away with everything they produced because he announced he “needed” it?

“But as woke anarcho-communists in an advanced fully-automated luxury communist society, labor will in fact be quite limited and fun because we can divide duties between all our comrades! And profit will no longer be a concern since everything we make will be given to anyone that wants it free of charge, so we don’t need to worry about marketing our products and that will further minimize the amount of labor we’ll do, giving us ample leisure time to enjoy the fruits of our production!”

For the purposes of cold-hearted mockery, I’m slightly paraphrasing an ancom who responded to an early draft of this piece. What fantasy realm are ancoms living in where all the massive problems posed by industrial production (including the ongoing extinction of near-every lifeform on Earth) will evaporate when you remove profit and marketing from the equation?

I keep saying this in my writing but here I go again: In an industrial society that aims to give everyone in the world equal access to consumer goods, industry does not decrease; it increases. If everyone in the world suddenly has free and equal access to the mountains of wasteful shit that Western consumers consider necessary to life, not only would production need to massively increase, but we would run out of resources to exploit much more rapidly.

That’s assuming anyone would even want to work in the mines and factories in a supposedly equal society if they no longer had guns to their heads. Why would anyone go back down into that mine once their chains are broken? Does anyone honestly think those Congolese kids give a shit if you have a new phone every year? Should they really be expected to sacrifice themselves for your entitlement? So you can continue to live in luxury with all your little conveniences?

In a real world implementation of industrial communism, communities will no doubt quickly impose limits on what can be taken from communal stores after a few people take way more than they have any right to and other people go without as a result, despite them laboring for hours a day to produce those goods. Kropotkin might insist we’ll all be happy toiling away all day to make this consumerist shit just to give it away to random strangers, but he was a privileged scholar who never had to work a day in his life, so what do you expect?

Industrial society right now is fed by the ceaseless labor of billions of exploited people in the Global South. People are forced to toil in mines from childhood to procure the materials that other people (also including children) then assemble into consumer goods in factories, all for starvation wages. This is debilitating, dangerous work that leaves the people who do it sucked of their youth after a few years.

Anyway, let’s play along with communist mythology for a bit to get to my next point. In an ideal communist society (where I guess minerals are somehow found equally all across the planet and not overwhelmingly located in the Global South as in the real world), outsourced labor would presumably go away because communists would never exploit workers in distant lands (who ever heard of an imperialist communist, right? Right??) So instead production would need to be localized, and then the goods would be distributed according to need.

For resources to be allocated according to need, you'll have some kind of deciding body in place to judge what each person's needs are; what resources each person should be given.

There are lots of factors to take into consideration when deciding someone’s “needs”, like how far they live from work, how far they live from the store, how many calories they burn doing the labor they do, the size of their family, their dietary restrictions, disabilities they might have, their particular metabolism, how many parties they throw, how many friends they have and thus might invite to the parties, their religious and cultural practices, the size of their house, the size of their garden, the type of insulation their house has and how quickly it loses heat, the fuel efficiency of their car... I could list hundreds more things but I’ll stop myself.

Giving bureaucrats this power will no doubt mean certain favored groups / individuals will be rewarded and less desirable groups / individuals will be neglected, or even punished. This is the nature of authority. You’ll need a body of full-time bureaucrats to collect all this data and measure how it should determine your share of the pie, and those bureaucrats are going to have biases. If a computer does it, the programmer will have biases. And you'd still need bureaucrats to collect the data and feed it to the computer. Then they could easily feed incorrect or selective data to the computer because of their biases.

It's always felt like a recipe for corruption and exploitation to me for a bureaucracy to determine someone’s worth... Which is probably why Kropotkin stipulated that everyone should be able to just take whatever they themselves decide they need from the stores.

Of course, the real solution would be to not base your proposed utopian society on industrial production in the first place... Promising industrial production will be unlimited because everyone will voluntarily agree to work real hard in the factories and mines and slaughterhouses and the goods will be distributed to everyone everywhere somehow while maintaining a sustainable ecological green solarpunk paradise just makes you a smug fucking liar. No different than a grinning politician promising to give us freedom, liberty and prosperity if we vote for him.

The only red anarchist tendency that made a modicum of practical sense in my mind was anarcho-collectivism, because at least the workers would receive the direct value of their labor hours instead of having external bodies decide how much value / worth to assign to them as a person.

If you're going to spend your life toiling in a factory or farm to produce goods for other people, would you really want a bureaucrat or a committee or even a direct voter body deciding how much you deserve for that labor, while giving someone who does the same job (or a much easier job) more than you because of potentially biased reasons?

Regardless, anarcho-collectivism still only really values the workers who are most willing to submit to the factory grind and put in the most hours. Anarcho-collectivism still holds ecodical industry and luxuries for cityfolk up above all life on the planet... So that 19th century ideology isn’t going to save you either. Throw it right in the trash with the bread book because this “reform-industrial-society” charade isn’t helping when the planet is on fire.

If industrial communism were actually implemented in the real world, you can be relatively certain that some kind of authority would need to be put in place to prevent bad actors from showing up at the store and taking a community’s entire monthly production. People would need to police the store and judge whether someone is worthy of taking as much as they’re taking. They’d need to become authorities, upholders of law and order. Purveyors of “justice”.

Let’s be clear now because I know a lot of red anarchists are going to try to “justify” this authority as being “necessary for the good of society” as they will do. Policing who can take food and how much they can take is a clear authority. Not a “justified” authority, because such a thing simply does not exist.

And this store-policing is not the anarchist tactic of “direct action” either, let’s make that clear right now, because it’s a frightenly common misunderstanding with red anarchists. Creating a police force has nothing to do with direct action.

Direct action is an isolated use of force unconnected to institutional systems of power. People who engage in direct action are not appealing to a higher authority for legitimacy. Their action is not legitimized by anyone and they receive no protection or reward from an authority as they take the action. There’s no monopoly on violence being granted to them by an authority, so there’s nothing to guarantee their safety from retaliation if the action fails or succeeds.

There’s no institutional power-imbalance being created when someone takes direct action against an authority. The authority already created the power imbalance, and your direct action is a form of defense to shield you, your ecosystem or your community from that imbalance.

Direct action is an entirely anarchist tactic, but pinning badges on people, officiating them, and giving them the authority (and the monopoly on violence) to police a store and withhold food and products from certain people for whatever reason has nothing to do with anarchy. Building a hierarchy like this has nothing to do with anarchy.

Police officers and judges (authorities) ruling over a communal store is authoritarian. An officiated police force is a completely different thing from the isolated use of force by a lone actor or a small group of actors to preserve life and combat authority (direct action).

Creating a police force, even if it’s formed of volunteers, even if they were elected, even if they make decisions collectively, even if their uniforms are red and black, even if the officers placed on duty are regularly rotated, is authoritarian by any definition. There are no anarchist cops. An “anarchist cop” couldn’t be a bigger oxymoron.

Here’s an example of direct action: me punching a logger who is cutting down my favorite tree. This action is completely removed from structural systems of authority because I have no authority or structural power behind me. There’s nothing legitimizing my use of force or giving me a monopoly on violence. My use of force doesn’t extend beyond my own two fists. Since assault is illegal, and his logging is legal, the logger has the full authority of the law behind him, so any action I take to oppose that authority is punching up. It’s fighting to curve a gross power imbalance. It’s anarchy.

In this civilized world, I could be severely punished by law enforcement for using force to stop his desecration of a forest. As the state gave him his logging permit, he has authority over the forest and every life that depends on the forest to survive. He punches down every time he fells a tree. He is the full embodiment of archy. If I choose to stand in his way, there’s no state behind me, no court, no police force. Me physically stopping a logger from felling trees is an isolated use of force to strike back at a system of authority. The logger destroys life for profit, and if I take action to stop him because I don’t want to see the forest become a barren desert, I don’t become a state or any kind of authority based on that decision to fight back.

Forming a police squad and a bureaucracy to patrol and govern an officiated communal store, appointing authorities to sit and judge how much each individual deserves to eat, on the other hand, creates legitimized systems of power and an institutional monopoly on violence. It creates a state, or at the very least a proto-state that will later develop into a full-blown state as the bureaucracy grows.

The German philosopher Max Weber defined the state as a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. State violence, whether it’s committed on behalf of the state by a politician, a judge, a cop or a logger, is always a legitimate force. Any violence the state does is immediately “justified” simply by virtue of it being dispensed by a legitimate state actor who is doing it for the good of the state and its authority.

A logger with an official permit to slice up a forest is thus fully justified in the eyes of society to do as much harm to the forest as is deemed necessary by the authorities who granted the permit.

A state exists wherever an authority can authorize and legitimize violence. There is no way for an anarchist to “justify” a coercive, authoritarian institution such as a police force that will no doubt be biased against minority groups and lead to the accumulation of power by the dominant group, and abuses of power by the people doing the policing. Even if minority groups are involved in the police force, the majority group will still oppress their groups.

A society that mass-produces goods and distributes them in communal stores will manifest itself as a state, regardless of Kropotkin’s insistences that everyone will work voluntarily and then take whatever they want from the stores. There’s no practical scenario where industrial labor is truly voluntary. There’s no practical scenario on this Earth of rapidly diminishing returns where “free” stores won’t need to be policed to deny unlimited goods to individuals and groups who the governing body decides are less worthy of the fruits of their labor.

Anarcho-communism simply isn’t revolutionary as long as we are depleting all our resources in the name of industrial civilization; something anarcho-communism demands as an industrial, work-based ideology that revolves around civilizing the land and its inhabitants in order to extract resources and labor. There’s nothing revolutionary about continuing the global ecocide under the guise of democracy. Every anarchist should understand the difference between isolated force and authority, but very few self-identifying social anarchists seem interested in this and are content prating on about “justified authority”, debating “how an anarcho-communist police force could work” and excitedly discussing Chomsky’s latest speech telling them to vote for a lesser-evil neoliberal politician.

I know I sound bitter, but I’ve been disillusioned with the majority of red anarchists I come into contact with for years now and they only seem to get worse as industrial society plods on and the sands and seas climb further up our necks.

Anarcho-communism is not the solution to fighting authority, it’s simply a skin-deep re-brand of authority. A sparkly new paint job. There’s a reason so many ancoms strive to “justify” authority. They don’t actually care about reaching for anarchy.

Is Communism Always Authority-Forming?

In my mind, communism can only work outside of industrial mass society. A small community gathering or growing supplies and freely sharing them with the rest of the community. Each community trading with other small communities. Marx and Engels ironically dubbed this hunter-gatherer form of society that had long existed in human history as “primitive communism” and suggested it was inferior to their advanced industrial communism that valued the factory and centralized city life above all else.

Mass industry requires mass agriculture, mass labor, mass transport, mass resource extraction, mass construction, mass policing, mass military... Mass society and will only lead right back to capitalism and statism because it's so unwieldy and authority forming. Any communist tendency built around industrial exploitation is going to create all kinds of fucked up hierarchies and just lead us right back to the apocalyptic status quo.

Most communists I’ve talked to about this are unable to accept that some people will still act like assholes if capitalism collapses, which I’d probably find endearing if these people weren’t such giant assholes themselves; calling me a privileged reactionary for daring to suggest their blessed ideology might have some flawed logic. They insist everyone will cease being selfish assholes once capitalism is done away with because “assholes are only assholes as long as capitalism pits them against each other.”

Even if we wake up one morning and marketing, consumer culture and wealth are all done away with, we still have generations of indoctrination in authoritarian behavior to contend with. That doesn't go away overnight. But even without consumer culture to guide them, people are still completely capable of being assholes. Going back to before mass-society even existed, people would murder each other and take their stuff. They'd raid each other's settlements, they'd steal their children, they'd fight over territory and cultural differences. These aren't things that were invented by capitalism and they won’t go away just because communism is declared.

People aren't inherently just or unjust. Humanity is not good or bad. Every person is an individual, each with different experiences, motivations, traumas. Communism expects everyone to be altruistic. Capitalism expects everyone to act out of greed and self preservation. Neither is true because both are ideologically driven worldviews that attempt to define human nature in order to instruct us how to behave by instilling us with their morals. People are greedy, people are generous, people are kind, people are mean-spirited. Every person in the world is all of these things and more. People are not defined by one single personality trait their entire lives.

I’m haunted by every shitty thing I’ve ever done and I’m sure I’ll do more shitty things yet, despite my best intentions. No one is above making mistakes. Mutual aid is a great thing, but it needs to be earned. There are people in our lives that we trust and people we can’t stand to be around. Not everyone is deserving of the products of our labor. Some people in the world will always try to exploit you, even if they already have everything their hearts could possibly desire. Some people will be kind to you no matter how big an asshole you are.

I’ve been accused by communists of being cynical, of being “regressive” and “counter-revolutionary” because I don’t buy into the communist notion that humans are inherently good and they just need the right industrial system to bring that good out of them.

Any society where I’m expected to just sit back and watch as a logger destroys my ecosystem because he’s serving the “greater good” isn’t a society I want any part of. I value my autonomy over the desires of traumatized workers pushing buttons for 8 hours a day in a city far-removed from me. I’d rather take the logger’s chainsaw away than fiddle my thumbs as he takes everything I know, and to hell with whatever bureaucratic process enshrined him with the right to decimate the forest to give bread to the workers. Fuck the workers and their bread and their fully-automated luxury communism and their divine democratic rights.

There’s simply no reason to believe exploitative assholes will go away if communism is ever enacted.

There’s a man I know who constantly exploits me for my labor, and I always go along with it. He dangles a carrot on a stick in front of me every time; promising that after I help him, he’ll hook me up to his well so I can have free water for my trees. For years he’s made this promise.

I’ve spent countless hours doing dangerous work for this guy with no reward. He always disappears after I do the work without giving me what he promised. Then the next week he wakes me up again at 6am on a Saturday by honking his horn, apologizes for not getting around to hooking me up to the well yet, saying he was too busy or in the hospital or had a family emergency, promises he’ll do it this week, and then I’m hanging off a cliff or a roof repairing pipes for him all day while he barks orders at me.

I do it because I’m a fucking pushover who can’t say no to people due to my ridiculous kind nature. But whenever I ask him for anything, I’m met with a blank stare, an abrupt subject change or a sorry excuse. I was stranded a two hour walk down the mountain last week when my car broke down, and he drove right around me and didn’t even slow down. When I saw him later, he swore on his life that he didn’t see me because the sun was in his eyes. I nodded and shrugged.

Communism wouldn’t stop this lying dipshit from exploiting me; he’d still need someone to fix his leaky pipes, start up his diesel generator, saw off the upper branches of his olive trees and climb shoddy makeshift structures for him regardless of the economic system in place. He’d still give me a sob story about his painful ulcer and I’d still do the hard work to spare him the pain of doing it himself. He wouldn’t stop being an exploitative asshole just because democracy is installed in the workplace. He wouldn’t start practising mutual aid when he goes to great lengths to avoid all work and shames other people into doing it for him.

Red anarchists throw every insult in the book at me when I voice my doubts about their wistful ideologies; condemning me for being critical of the amazing breadman Kropotkin or their “green industry” tsar Professor Bookchin... It’s hard to give my perspective as an indigenous anarchist to these people who are so hostile to any worldview that doesn’t validate their luxurious industrial lifestyle and their driving desire to make that lifestyle more democratic in order to receive a bigger share of the pie.

Between the shouts of “reactionary lifestylist” and “dirty primmie” they lobby at me, I try to explain my perspective to them. I see suffering in the world and I want to make sense of it. I’m not satisfied just handwaving it away and clinging to fanciful utopian ideologies designed to energize European factory workers from the 1800s. I don’t believe red-industry will cure society of all its ills and free humans from their chains.

The warehouse I’ve worked in for more than a decade will not become magically liberating if I’m given the power of democracy. It’ll still be a miserable fucking place filled with toxic pesticides that are slowly killing me.

Some ancoms will no doubt unironically reply to this piece with reasoning that just amounts to "no, actually, anarcho-communist industry will be a utopia because Kropotkin said so". They’ll quote a bunch of literature to me that is nothing but empty promises by long-dead European philosophers for industrial egalitarianism. I’ve really run out of patience for that line of thinking. It’s no different than a 7 year old trying to win an argument by insisting “because my dad said so”... But when it comes down to it, that’s all most reds can do. Quote their heroes and cling to the hope that they’ll be proven right some day. That hope is what keeps them going as their miserable civilized lives burn the world up. “All our suffering will end once we have democracy in the workplace”. Those poor, deluded, hope-filled souls.

Everything I know tells me industry cannot be made "green" any more than capitalism can be made ethical. All agricultural industrial society in history has resulted in ecocide and eventually collapse. When you extract resources, burn fuel, manufacture goods and distribute them to millions or billions of people, you do real irreversible harm to ecosystems and human lives. Ancoms are not magical beings that can somehow escape the consequences of this because they're supposedly "good" and “egalitarian”.

If anarcho-communism were ever attempted, half the "nuances" it has will be thrown out for being fantastic, half-baked and impossible to implement in an industrial mass-society. Compromises will be made to make the system functional. A lot of things have been claimed about communism, but whenever its been attempted in real life models, almost none of those claims have come to fruition and they never will because:

a) Resources aren't infinite.

b) Industrial output has a high 'hidden' cost, and most importantly:

c) Work isn't voluntary.

No matter how much you swear you’ll make labor democratic, no one is working because they really want to. They’re working because the system requires them to work to survive. No amount of democracy will stop the system from asserting its authority on everyone inside its suffocating walls. Abolishing the borders between territories will do nothing if industrial civilization continues to box us in and starve us if we dare to resist its rule. If we can’t escape civilization, the whole world is nothing more than one big prison.

Civilized people labor to create consumer goods because the system gives them no other option if they want to survive. The only way people will continue to toil in the factories and warehouses in "a communist society" is if they are forced to by the system. No free hunter gatherer will voluntarily give up their freedom to stand at an assembly line pushing buttons so other people can have Corn Flakes, weedkiller and AAA batteries. It's something that needs to be forced on humans by domestication and the joined threat of violence and starvation that props up the industrial system.

Industry is a clear authority and anarcho-communist theory is completely oblivious to that. Anarcho-communism is nothing more than an attempt to reform the tyranny of civilization to give it a sly smile. It’s the anarchist version of Barack Obama promising change but just delivering more of the same and expecting you to celebrate it.

Seize the Means of Destruction! (And fucking burn it to the ground…)

Ancoms insist “people would choose to produce only what is needed” in an anarcho-communist society. That word; "needed" is really useless. Anyone can define anything as being "needed", but almost none of the things defined as such are actually needed. This is why industrial communism isn't really compatible with anarchy: anything and everything will be defined as "needed" by domesticated people, no matter how authority-forming the things are. If it means they get to keep consuming, anarcho-consumers would happily define everything from pesticides to slaughterhouses to automobile plants as “needed”. This is the power of democracy. Whatever narrative the collective adopts becomes the official, approved narrative and anyone questioning it will be seen as subversive and dangerous and a threat to order and common decency.

This "needed industry" argument is a lot like the "justified authority" argument a lot of red “anarchists” keep making to uphold every shitty authority they cling to all the way up to the state, prisons and the police.

Usually they’ll just rename these authorities “the commune”, “the social re-integration facility” and “the peacekeepers” and be satisfied that they’ve come up with a real change. It's meaningless. Domesticated people will not allow themselves to see past the carefully manufactured alienating world they’ve inherited. Very few civilized people are willing to risk losing what they perceive as the great comforts imbibed to them by industrial civilization.

Even if they recognize how strangling these “comforts” actually are to them and everything else on the planet, instead of rejecting them outright, they draw up elaborate plans to reform the way those “comforts” are produced and dispersed. Most of these plans, when deconstructed and debullshitted, ultimately amount to little more than slapping the word “anarcho” in front of everything and trusting it’ll be all good because it’s anarchized now.

People thrived without industry and agriculture for millennia. Civilization has led to the extinction of near everything on the planet. 99.9% of industrial goods are not "needed" by humanity, they're wanted.

Ancoms aren't going to suddenly decide to give up their phones, Doritos and washing machines when they find out they're environmentally destructive. They'll just rubber-stamp all the things they want as "needed", “eco-friendly”, “sustainable” or “green” and call it a day. And we’ll be expected to keep working our miserable jobs and like it because now they’re anarcho-jobs in an anarcho-society with anarcho-exploitation and anarcho-masters.

Keeping people in the mines and factories building those consumer goods that "the people" decide they "need" will require massive authority that will be just another iteration of capitalism in all but name. Just like “communist” Russia and “communist” China and “communist” North Korea. Not a trace of communism will survive once industrial civilization is done grinding everything up. There’s nothing about “anarcho-communism” that will spare it from the same fate. Claiming to be anti-authority rings hollow when you cling to authoritarian industrial civilization, workerism and all the other authorities ancoms at large decide are “justified”.

A bureaucracy will always be instilled in an organized mass-society and this is why industrial communism isn't tenable. It’s why every time industrial communism has been attempted, it has simply been manifested as a perverse collective-capitalism with even more centralized power than regular-flavor capitalism. The bureaucracy will quickly morph into a state, and by definition the society will no longer be communist. But of course, it’ll keep calling itself “communist” and ensure the distinction between capitalism and communism remains paper-thin so people won’t be able to envision a better world than the brutal industrial wasteland we’ve all been born into.

Any system that allocates resources and polices people is functionally a state, regardless of what it brands itself as.

All implementations of industrial society have failed to liberate people, instead making their lives more and more miserable with each stage of industrialism, and to claim that attaching “anarcho” to the front of an industrial system will make a difference is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Communism has never succeeded at liberating us historically and will not suddenly succeed just because you promise you’re better than other communists and you and all your super-libertarian ancom comrades will pick up cans of paint and make all the chimney stacks bright green.

Authoritarian behavior will only ever be repeated if society is structured around authoritarian institutions like industrialism and democracy. Both Marx and Kropotkin’s communism are centred around these institutions because their ideologies require that people be controlled by bureaucracy. Whether it be decentralized democratic bureaucracy or centralized party bureaucracy is irrelevant. The result is the same: Authority and control.

Without this bureaucracy, the society would descend into anarchy. Yes, wonderful, amazing, freeing anarchy. The very thing every red fears most because it would mean they’d no longer get to forcibly structure society and people around their sacred ideology and force their authority and morality on them. Domesticated people sit trapped in sterile little boxes, fed a steady drip of pesticide and high-fructose corn syrup as they labor, consume, consume, consume and then die.

This isn’t life. This isn’t anarchy. This is a waking nightmare, a depraved hell-world that has all of us thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it acceptable. Branding it “communist” or “libertarian socialist” or “democratic” or “egalitarian” or “decentralized” or “anarcho-communist” will not end the nightmare. It will not stop the planet-wide ecocide civilization has wrought on all living things. The means of destruction being controlled by industrial workers instead of industrial bosses will not stop the ecocide.

Seizing the factories and making them democratically managed as all reds yearn to do won’t do anything to save us from violence, misery, alienation and eventual extinction.

The only way to destroy authority is to burn industry to the ground before it devours every last lifeform on the planet.

The only chance we have to survive what’s coming in the next few years as our ecosystems are collapsing all around us is to tear down every factory and close every port and slice up every road until civilization is in ruins.

But in all honesty, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to watch television and sip iced tea and we’re going to wait for the end. I’m going to keep watching in silence as the local bread man fells the last remaining wilderness.

Maybe the planet will recover somewhat in a few millennia and maybe the next lifeform that evolves will have more sense than the desertmakers. This is the last hope I cling to.

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dwellordream · 3 years ago

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“...Accompanying Eleanor to Paris was her younger sister, Aélith or, as she became known at the French royal court, Petronilla. Most likely also accompanying their mistress was a large entourage of Poitevins ranging in rank from noble lords and ladies to knights and domestic servants, although it is impossible to identify them. Eleanor’s new subjects were prepared to expect the worst of Eleanor and her Poitevin companions, for writers had long depicted southerners as soft, vain, and corrupt compared with the more vigorous and virtuous northern French. At the first encounters between Eleanor, her entourage, and the Parisians, all experienced a degree of “culture shock.”

Her elevated rank as duchess of Aquitaine meant that she was accompanied by a larger retinue from Poitiers than previous queens had brought with them to Paris. Eleanor’s personal household, like the entourages of other great aristocrats, would have numbered at least forty or more persons. The young queen and her companions stood out at the Capetian court, dressed in the excessive costumes favored by ladies of southern courts. Communicating among themselves in Occitan, their lack of the reserve and propriety expected of northern courtiers shocked members of her new husband’s entourage. They could hardly believe the freedom with which Eleanor and her ladies felt at ease joining in the men’s conversations.

The size of the new queen’s household, its large alien element with its unfamiliar ways, and the priority that her servants gave to the needs and interests of her duchy all presented causes for friction between the newcomers and long-serving officials and courtiers of the royal household. Eleanor, the darling of the ducal court at Poitiers, was oblivious to the offense that she and her “clan” or coterie of Poitevins caused at Paris with ways that were alien to the French royal court. A teenaged girl comparable to the young Marie-Antoinette some six centuries later, she was hardly aware that courtiers could change suddenly from sycophants to slanderers if her thoughtless words or rash acts appeared to threaten their standing at court.

…Eleanor soon saw that a restrained and earnest atmosphere prevailed at her pious husband’s court, regardless of whether it remained at the royal palace on the Île de la Cité or was going on circuits around the royal domain. Like all princely households, Louis’s was constantly on the move, circulating between royal residences at Compiègne, Orléans, Étampes, and sometimes stopping along the way to visit royal monasteries or bishoprics. Eleanor could not avoid noticing the contrast with the boisterous and merry ducal court of her father and grandfather at Poitiers, crowded with singers, mimes, jugglers, and entertainers of all sorts.

The Church equated all professional performers from talented musicians to buffoons with prostitutes, and it admonished respectable people to avoid them. The Capetian kings took this admonition to heart, and entertainers learned that their chances of winning favor at their court were slim. The young queen quickly observed that cultural life in northern France was far more dominated by the Church than in her homeland. The leading personalities in the political and intellectual life of Louis VII’s lands came from monastic backgrounds.

…Because Eleanor of Aquitaine was the granddaughter of William IX, the troubadour duke, a common assumption is that she introduced an air of sensuality and pursuit of pleasure to the French royal court. In addition Eleanor has an outsized reputation as a patron of poets, supposedly a pioneer in acquainting the French court with troubadour love lyrics promoting the art of courtly love, and redefining the perfect chivalric knight as an admirer of the ladies. While troubadour songs arrived in northern France during Eleanor’s years of presiding over the French court, there is little direct evidence of her playing a major role in encouraging this new trend.

….It cannot be doubted, however, that Eleanor, like other great ladies of her day, gave some encouragement to courtly literature through hearing it, reading it, and enjoying it. Nonetheless, the subjects of the new queen associated her with her troubadour grandfather’s attitude toward love and marriage that conflicted with Christian teaching. For the more pious among them, a linking of Eleanor with southern courtly love poetry tended to tarnish her in their eyes. They would apply to their queen their long-held prejudices about the character and the customs of natives of the Mediterranean south, even though her native Poitou lay on the borderline between northern France and the Midi or Languedoc.

In turn, Eleanor’s childhood experiences led her to unrealistic expectations about her role at the French royal court. Possibilities for a place in the public sphere that were not yet closed to aristocratic women in the south were rapidly evaporating in twelfth-century northern France. Changes in inheritance practises throughout northwestern Europe that favored the eldest son meant that aristocratic women there were less likely than their southern counterparts to inherit any of their father’s property, and they lacked the degree of independence that Eleanor expected a great lady of her status to enjoy.

When Eleanor arrived in Paris, she was ill-equipped for her role as a queen consort. Because her mother had died young, and her childhood was spent in a court without a duchess to preside over it, she had no model for conducting herself as French queen. Prominent in Eleanor’s past, however, were strong willed women who had exercised influence in political matters in the chaotic conditions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The few learned men writing histories in those troubled times had expressed no surprise when ladies exhibited leadership abilities equal to those of men, describing them with imagery that was “by no means entirely pejorative.”

In Aquitaine and in all the Midi, noblewomen succeeded to the rule of principalities, and public roles for aristocratic ladies were not unusual. Eleanor’s perception of her role as French queen was shaped by such great women whose stories she had heard as a child. The young queen’s unique position as the first Capetian royal bride to have brought with her a great landed inheritance led her to expect that she would share with her husband authority over her ancestral lands. She expected also that she would play a part in the governance of his kingdom.

…At the French court before Eleanor’s marriage, a long tradition had been in place of the French queen as “an ally and partner in governing,” her royal husband’s companion and helpmate. The Capetian queen’s power had reached its peak with Louis’s mother, Adelaide of Maurienne; she had been Louis VI’s partner in ruling after their marriage in 1115. Adelaide’s power had rested on her place in the great hall of the royal place, where she was present at her royal husband’s side.

A queen’s role as her husband’s counselor and helpmate would endure only so long as royal government continued to be conducted informally through discussions in the king’s hall. Such a situation prevailed down to the early twelfth century because royal government was still centered in the royal household. The royal household was not limited to the domestic sphere, but was a public institution, indistinguishable from the royal court, the seat of dispute settlement and decision-making, and household officials performed public functions.

Queen Adelaide had occupied a crucial place, openly taking part in the public policy debates and decisions of great councils, and her assent to royal acts was recorded on royal charters. Louis the Younger’s experience of his mother’s active partnership with Louis VI in governing led him to assume that his bride would share his work of ruling over the French kingdom, and Eleanor’s background likewise caused her to expect to be her husband’s chief counselor, in part because she had quickly calculated that hers was the stronger personality of the marriage, despite her youth.

Yet Eleanor would never enjoy the participation in royal government that her mother-in-law had relished. Official documents tell almost nothing about either Eleanor’s activities or her influence on Louis VII, rarely associating her name with his. The most likely documents to survive from their reign are charters granting privileges to religious houses, charters that the monks took care to save. During Eleanor’s years as Louis’s consort, the queen’s name was disappearing from royal documents; she is mentioned in little more than half those issued during the fifteen years of her marriage, although Louis VI’s charters had recorded regularly Adelaide of Maurienne’s assent.

Those mentioning Eleanor mostly record her assent to Louis’s documents concerning Aquitaine. Of Eleanor’s own charters as French queen, only some twenty survive, all but one dating from before the couple’s departure on crusade; and only three of these, mere confirmations of her husband’s documents, treat matters beyond her own duchy. Any power that Eleanor was to wield in the policy sphere would be personal and indirect, derived from her intimate conversations with her royal husband.

As queen, she had a unique opportunity to influence Louis VII through their “conjugal intimacy,” which enabled her to express her views in private and to press him to implement them. A queen’s ability to persuade the king, taking advantage of her privileged access, was regarded as a benefit to the community, inspiring him to merciful and pious deeds. These queenly responsibilities were not purely “private” matters, but part of the work of representing kingship to the people as merciful, benevolent, and devout.

Yet Eleanor’s unique access to the king through her sexuality was alarming to clerics at court, who regarded all women with suspicion. The possibility of a queen taking advantage of her intimate contact with her husband for selfish gain or advancement of a court faction inspired envy and distrust among her rivals for the king’s ear. Unfortunately for Eleanor, religious reforms of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries were inspiring renewed questioning of the queen’s shared authority with the king as moralists and theologians were redefining gender roles. No longer were Eleanor’s formidable female ancestors in Aquitaine appropriate models for noble ladies, and aristocratic women were being stripped of power in the public sphere that they had previously held, if only precariously.

Males were growing less and less tolerant of powerful women, condemning them for any initiatives in the public sphere as “unwomanly,” somehow unnatural and wrong. French queens, in addition to their primary function of producing royal offspring, were expected to occupy themselves with pious activities, overseeing their ladies’ sewing of vestments and altar cloths for favored religious houses, distributing alms to the poor, and interceding with their royal husbands on behalf of their subjects for mercy. Eleanor’s refusal to be forced into such a constraining mold of wifely submissiveness would cause her grief in both her marriages.”

- Ralph V. Turner, “Bride to a King, Queen of the French, 1137–1145.” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England

#eleanor of aquitaine: queen of france queen of england #eleanor of aquitaine #history #high middle ages #queens #french #medieval #ralph v. turner

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somepinkthing · 4 years ago

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Tbh until I played azure moon, I thought I totally agreed with edelgard's meritocracy, if not her methods of achieving it. But then azure moon dropped the whole parley scene along with the line, "It is the path of the strong, and so, it could only benefit the strong." And then claude said if people don't band together to find a solution, any change will only be temporary. And then I married yuri in my verdant wind playthrough and the ending plate said yuri worked hard to establish supports and education for the impoverished instead of just expecting them to rise themselves. And it just... got me thinking about it all

On the broad strokes, I still see where edelgard is coming from and her system is still better than what's currently in place. But, now that I'm revisiting crimson flower, I find that I do see the holes I didn't before. Namely, that the merit-system edelgard speaks of accounts for equality.... but not equity. She would open the doors to allow everyone the same opportunity but fails to account for those without the strength to take it. It's all well and good that now people like ferdinand or constance with their education and connections can contribute to society and rise by their own ability, but what about the poor farmer in a now-wartorn land? What can he contribute at this time? Can a society really be complete if it doesn't give their most vulnerable populations a chance? And I think that's where dimitri comes in. The story repeated in azure moon is that sometimes, people are gonna need help. Dimitri's focus as a leader is still rooted in protecting and serving his people. While less of a visionary than edelgard, he is more of a public servant for his people—both are important aspects of leadership. Azure moon also isn't a perfect ending. Something something the inherent eroticism of changing the structure of your government to mirror social change. You can't just do one and not the other. It's no good if you only give everyone an equal chance but put an unyielding focus on every man for themselves and fail to serve the needs of the vulnerable. But setting up social supports for those populations without giving them an opening to rise and take power for later generations will only work so long as the leader remains benevolent

Claude's methods don't clash as directly with the other two, but it does come with its own set of problems. Claude's main focuses are promoting freedom and dismantling ignorance. He believes in freedom of information, open borders, the right to live without unfair judgement, and a community focused way of living. He wants to dismantle ignorance in order to challenge social practices and norms. That means opening borders, promoting trade, educating the public... and leaving what that life looks like to the people to choose. The problem? This plan puts almost all the power in the hands of the public. There is, of course, nothing wrong with letting people decide their own future,,, but there is something to be said about the benefits of having guiding principles and rules to refer back to even while attempting to promote open-mindedness. His plans ultimately do account for both social and political change, the issue here boils down to the rewards vs the classic pitfalls of freedom and idealism within society. Educating people and promoting choices for all within society is what I'd consider the most sustainable plan BUT having a society that can't unite under anything is how the alliance became what it is. As good of a concept as it is, even claude knows slamming people with information and freedom without some guidance is asking for chaos

To their credit, all of the lords are able to acknowledge the fallacies in their way of thinking. Edelgard addresses it the least, but even she admits that she's always been aware that her path will crush people who need the current system for support—that people like manuela or catherine may end up crushed in the world she creates. Dimitri is much of the same, expressing contempt for the kingdom's politics and strict class culture. He is well aware that it cannot stay as is forever. Claude openly admits to needing people like byleth and lorenz to pave the road and guide the people in the beginning so that change doesn't become chaos and to ensure that greed doesn't ruin everything. His A-support with balthus confirms that the possibility that he'll lose control of the aftermath weighs on him and his C-support with cyril opens his eyes to a situation where a leader should have stepped in and taken control.

Basically, no matter what route you play through, the ending could be seen as just the beginning phases of social change and are not a perfect result. Hell, it's not even the finished product any of them imagined yet. And who's to say one is better than the other? Whose to say even the tightest authoritarian control could stem the chaos that follows drastic change? How can you be sure that releasing information will really encourage people to correct the crest system? Will correcting the crest system do anything to help a millenia of racism or will war just drive people inward? What if too much aid does make one class totally dependent on the other? What if failing to support the vulnerable just perpetuates the environment of the strong ruling over the weak but now under the guise of equality? How do you make people more open minded without forcing their hand? How are you sure that's the direction it'll go in? How do you account for the sudden lack of an organized religion which previously was the one thing tying three very different countries together? Especially when the only thing connecting them now is war? So, essentially, there is no golden route. It's a feel good game so we can generally infer that these issues all get addressed eventually no matter what route you pick, but you can't really say for sure that any one choice is all encompassing. We'll all have that one route we think did more right than the other two, but there are holes in each one

#edelgard von hresvelg #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #claude von riegan #fe3h meta #fe3h #fire emblem three houses

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a-little-revolution · 4 years ago

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A Brief History of Dwarfism

(TW/CW: cure, medical, pet culture and slavery mentioned, discriminative language)

LYZ LENZ Updated: June14, 2017 Origional: February 25, 2015

When researchers from the biopharmaceutical company BioMarin told representatives of the Little People of America about the results of a drug that could potentially cure one of the causes of dwarfism, they expected a better response than the silence they were treated to. This caught the BioMarin folks off guard. “I think they wanted us to be happy,” says Leah Smith, LPA's director of public relations. “But really, people like me are endangered and now, they want to make me extinct. How can I be happy?”

BioMarin isn’t the only company trying to eliminate dwarfism. For years doctors have been using limb lengthening and hormone treatments to counter and cure the over 400 underlying causes of dwarfism. And yet, despite these efforts to eliminate what many people see as a disability, society can’t stop staring. From The Lord of the Rings to Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, people have long been mesmerized by depictions of LPs. As Smith explains, “It doesn’t matter how normal I am, it’s hard for people to look at me an see anything besides Leah the LP.”

Dr. Judith Hall, a clinical geneticist whose work focuses on short-limbed dwarfism, explains that our staring and our desire to cure are intimately connected. “In the same way that ancient societies viewed those people with differences as a pathway to the divine,” Hall says, “I see them as a pathway to access the knowledge of nature. There is so much to be learned about humans and our genetic make-up by studying the genetics of people with short stature and anyone with a ‘disability’ although I hate that term, don’t you?”

But understanding our curiosity and desire to cure requires an understanding of the history of dwarfism, which lies in the nebulous intersection of medicine and myth.

For much of early history, LPs were considered to be intimately connected to the divine. In fact, pre-literate societies often saw all people with disabilities as conduits to heaven. The ancient Egyptians associated dwarfs with Bes, the god of home, family, and childbirth; and Ptah, the god of the Earth’s essential elements. (Both gods—representing youth and the Earth—play a role in enduring myths and stereotypes, like the fairy tales that claim that dwarfs live underground, or the stereotype about the childish nature of people with short stature.) Because of their connection with the gods, dwarfs were often revered in Egypt, and were allowed to serve high roles in the government.

Whereas dwarfs in the Old Kingdom of Egypt (2575-2134 B.C.E.) were often jewelers, linen attendants, bird catchers, and pilots of boats—all positions of high-esteem, by the Middle Kingdom dwarfs were more likely to be personal attendants or nurses. These positions, while still respected, were comparatively lower status. Historians surmise that dwarfs were relegated to these roles because their short limbs made them perfect midwives and the association with the god Bes. Of course, even in this age of reverence, dwarfs lived lives of bondage.

In ancient Rome, the attitude toward dwarfs was less reverential. Owners would intentionally malnourish their slaves so they would sell for a higher price. In ancient Greece, dwarfs were associated in a menacing and lurid way with the rituals of the Dyonisian cult; art from that period shows them as bald men with out-sized penises lusting after averaged-sized women. This same pattern of reverence and bondage also appears in China and West Africa, where LPs were so often servants of the king. A 17th-century author wrote that the Yoruba people in West Africa believed dwarfs to be “uncanny in some rather undefined way, having form similar to certain potent spirits who carry out the will of the gods.” And out of a similar reverence for their stature, the courts of China employed dwarfs as entertainers and court jesters. Here there also may have been a level of fetishism; Emperor Hsuan-Tsung kept dwarf slaves in the harem he called the Resting Palace for Desirable Monsters.

By the time of the Italian Renaissance, LPs had become a court commodity all over Western Europe, Russia, and China. There are tragic tales of court dwarfs and their wild antics. Jan Bondeson writes in The Two-Headed Boy about Nicolas Ferry, the infamous court dwarf of King Sanislas Leszynski of Poland. Ferry was given to King Sanislas when he was about five years old. The King promised his father he would be given the best education and medical care. Ferry’s father didn’t even consult his wife, who had to journey to the court to say goodbye to her son. Ferry, who may have also had learning disabilities, was spoiled and terrorized the court with his antics—kicking the shins of servants and crawling up the skirts of ladies. He even threw a dog out of the window when he believed the Queen loved the dog more than him.

Another Italian, Isabella d’Este, marchioness of Mantua, viewed dwarfs as collectable items. She hoarded them in her vast palace along with art, classical writings, gold, and silver. She also tried to breed dwarfs and kept them in a series of specially designed rooms, with low ceilings and staircases to scale. This was more for their display than comfort. One of Isabella’s dwarfs was “Crazy Catherine,” an alcoholic who stole from her mistress and whose misdeeds were laughed off as entertainment. The history of courts throughout Europe and Russia tell similar tales of dwarfs employed as jesters, or little more than pets—laughed at, loved, and never fully allowed to be human.

As the age of monarchy ended, the era of medicine and medical curiosity arose to fill its place, often providing more opportunities for LPs. Dwarfs were put on display—by others or themselves—for money. In a time where very few occupations were open to LPs, putting yourself on display in a freak show was at least a way to make a living. While traveling around provided LPs with more independence, it also opened them up to the gaping and insensitive curiosity of the public and medical professionals.

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, to say that LPs were subsequently taken advantage of by greedy brokers and agents. In his book Freak Show, Robert Bogdan explains the phenomena of human exhibits, singling out the insular nature of communities as a leading cause. Animals and humans that were outside of the norm were exciting curiosities; different races, ethnicities, and disabilities were all billed as novel entertainment. Bogdan quotes a handbill advertising a Carolina dwarf in 1738 who was “taken in a wood in Guinea; tis a female about four foot high, in every part like a human excepting her head which nearly resembles an ape.”

FOR MOST OF EARLY HISTORY, THE RESPONSE OF DOCTORS TO LPS WAS TO MEASURE EVERYTHING—NOSE, HAIR, GENITALS. THIS MEANINGLESS COLLECTION OF DATA IS OFTEN ACCOMPANIED BY CONDESCENDING NOTES ON THE APPEARANCE AND INTELLECT OF THE DWARF.

From these human exhibits came the growth of dime museums, midget villages, and Lilliputian touring communities, where many LPs rose to prominence. But while these exhibitions took center stage, several LPs made incredible, albeit quieter, contributions to history. There were people like Antoine Godeau, a poet and bishop best known for his works of criticism, or economist Ferdinando Galiani, one of the leading figures in the Enlightenment. Then there’s Alexander Pope, a classical poet known as the “most accomplished verse satirist in English.” Plus Benjamin Lay, an early abolitionist and good friend of Benjamin Franklin. And Novelist Paul Leicester Ford, artist Henry de Toulous Lautrec, electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz. The list goes on.

Yet even in this time, as many LPs grew to prominence, medicine was able to do little more than collect data. Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor, kept an LP family of Romanian performers captive in Auschwitz, subjecting them to various tests and experiments that included pulling out teeth and hair specimens. Mengele is remembered as the angel of death—a cruel doctor who performed unscientific and often deadly experiments—yet his data collection on LPs isn’t much different than that of the medical community in centuries prior.

For most of early history, the response of doctors to LPs was to measure everything—nose, hair, genitals. This meaningless collection of data is often accompanied by condescending notes on the appearance and intellect of the dwarf. Even as late as 1983, Mercer’s Orthopaedic Surgery offered this observation about achondroplasia: “Because of their deformed bodies they have strong feelings of inferiority and are emotionally immature and are often vain, boastful, excitable, fond of drink and sometimes lascivious.”

The obsessive data collection reads like a stack of clues, wherein doctors hope to find an answer to the riddle of difference. With nothing else to do, like the Egyptian pharaohs and the courts of kings, doctors found themselves staring too.

In the absence of a cure, most early doctors focused on prevention. They believed that dwarfism was caused by the mother having seen another dwarf or animal. In fact, for most of medical history many disabilities and unexplained deformities were chalked up to maternal impressions. Consequently, pregnant women often sequestered themselves away from their communities, acting like they themselves had a disability.

This isn’t different from the modern approach to “curing” dwarfism. With early genetic testing, many in the LP community are worried about unborn dwarfs being allowed to be born.

In the aftermath of World War II, LPs found more and more opportunities to work outside of entertainment. This was due in part to Billy Barty, a film actor and television star who, in 1957, organized a meeting of LPs in Reno, Nevada. This meeting eventually led to the founding of the Little People of America, a powerful non-profit that advocates for the rights of LPs in America.

THE HISTORY OF DWARFS IS A HISTORY OF SUBVERSION, STEREOTYPES, EXPECTATION, AND SURVIVAL. IT’S THE HISTORY OF HOW PEOPLE TREAT OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE DIFFERENT.

Before Barty, with the exception of circuses and traveling groups, most LPs were isolated. There was no way to band together to advocate for civil rights. A little more than 30 years after that first meeting in Reno, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the United States, granting LPs more access and freedom than ever before.

The history of dwarfs is a history of subversion, stereotypes, expectation, and survival. It’s the history of how people treat other people who are different. And, while much has changed, very little is different. The tension between curiosity and cure is still prevalent. The popularity of shows like Little People, Big World and The Little Couple, while laudable for their portrayal of normal people with difference, show that we can’t stop looking at LPs. And companies like BioMarin and non-profits like Growing Stronger, which all seek to find a cure, show that we can’t stop trying to change them.

Yet, as a geneticist, Hall dismisses the notion that she is trying to change the LP community. She describes her work as merely offering a choice to individuals. “There are genetic tests for Downs Syndrome, but they haven’t eradicated people with Downs,” Hall says. “In the same way, the work I do and the work of other scientists isn’t to eradicate difference, but rather to offer options for dealing with it. It’s all about offering choices, really.”

But Smith, the LPA's director of public relations, pushes back. “The world is full of difference.” Smith says, “Sometimes I wish people would look elsewhere.”

BY LYZ LENZ

Origional Article Post: https://psmag.com/social-justice/a-brief-history-of-dwarfism-and-the-little-people-of-america

#dwarfism #dwarf history #disabled #disabled history #not-from-erebor #medical #article #dwarf education

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