#the other adolf hitler

[angelique-of-the-volturi-guard]

All the political discourse rn and I have seen NOBODY talking about The Third Wave???? Do you know what that is???? No???? Well Imma tell you! in 1967 high school teacher Ron Jones conducted an experiment during a lecture on the holocaust when they couldn't understand how the German people could allow the Nazi's to do such things to the jewish people. Jones started a movement called "The Third Wave" and told his students that the movement aimed to eliminate democracy. Jones postulated that democracy’s focus on individuality was against mankind’s “authoritarian” nature, which he aimed to emphasize with the movement’s motto: "Strength through discipline, strength through involvement." and only made simple changes on the first day like asking his students to sit properly, to raise their hands before speaking, and to address him as Mr. Jones. The experiment was meant to be only one day, but the students took to it. On day two a salute was made and the movement was called the third wave. It began to grow as his students not only took to his tactics, but other students wanted to join in. The line "Strength through community" was added in. And then on the third day as the movement grew again, the motto "Strength through action" was added. Students were given member cards, taught how to initiate new members, and were instructed to report anyone who did not abide by the rules. By the fourth day the experiment was blowing out of Jones' control so he told the students that it was a nationwide movement, and that he next day a presidential candidate of the Third Wave would announce its existence to the public. Students were asked to attend a rally at noon the next day, and three students who dissented were banished to the library while the rally was held- where jones had other friends pretend to be speakers before revealing the "president" of the movement: Adolf Hitler.

It emphasized being careful about who you follow. The experiment was made into a tv movie in 1981 called The Wave (which I highly recommend watching btw), and shows how easily people can fall into fascism. Please watch it or read the novel of the same name by Todd Strasser, or Check out the wikipedia page. Get yourself educated and use what you learn to protect your loved ones please.

[prairiedeath]

when are we gonna stop calling all of this a "precursor to fascism" this IS fascism. There IS genocide happening. Dissent IS being violently squashed. We DO live in a police state, where ethnic and gender minorities are brutalized and killed. It can always get worse but calling the stage we're at now anything but what it is, is just dangerous. It's why we have so many people still playing along with the two party system. Fascism isn't a boogeyman that's lurking around the corner, it's what we've been living under all along. Adolf Hitler's biggest inspiration, by his own admission, was the colonization of the americas and the genocide of the indigenous people of turtle island.

Just because American fascism isn't quite effecting privileged liberals as much as it's effecting minorities doesn't mean it isn't fascism. Quantifying fascism only by the way it effects the privileged is missing the point entirely. Fascism is designed FOR the privileged and it's kind of insane that this point flies over everyone's head. There are thousands of people in concentration camps at the southern border of the United States. There are still black and brown people being beaten and shot to death by police here in america. I will repeat myself, the united states is the nation that inspired adolf hitler, not the other way around.

grabbing you screaming at you: READ SETTLERS!!!!!!

[drowndrawn]

Lula compares Israel's attacks on Palestinians in Gaza to Hitler's killing of Jews

Brazilian president Lula (PT) stated this Sunday 18th that what is happening in the Gaza Strip is not a war, but a genocide, and compared Israel's action to that of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler against the Jews.

“What is happening in the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian people does not exist at any other historical moment. In fact, it exists. When Hitler decided to kill the Jews,” he said.

Asked about the Brazilian government's decision to be the new donor to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, Lula criticized the leaders of the countries that decided to suspend contributions. “When I see the rich world announce that it is stopping contributing to the humanitarian issue for the Palestinians, I wonder how much political awareness these people have?”, he said. “And how big is the heart of solidarity of these people who cannot see that in the Gaza Strip there is not a war happening, but a genocide?”

The president also questioned: “Who will help rebuild those houses that were destroyed? Who will repay the lives of 30 thousand people who have already died? 170 thousand who are injured. Who will give back the lives of children who died without knowing why they were dying? Is this enough to disturb the humanitarian sense of the planet’s political leaders?”

“It is not a war between soldiers and soldiers. It is a war between a highly prepared Army and women and children. Look, if there was an error in that institution that collects the money, find out who made the mistake. But do not suspend humanitarian aid for the people who have been trying to build their state for decades”, concluded Lula.

I'm actually quite proud of having voted for him. He was bold, Brazilian's newspapers are roasting him for saying the TRUTH, but is this kind of boldness that we need right now.

[aphrodicci]

ᴘʟᴀɴᴇᴛᴀʀʏ ᴊᴏʏꜱ

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paid chart readings are open!

BEFORE I GET INTO THIS, I WANT TO REMIND YOU THAT THE CELEBRITIES/PUBLIC FIGURES THAT ARE LISTED HERE ARE USED FOR AN EXAMPLE TO HOW IT COULD MANIFEST IN ONE'S CHART. I DO NOT SUPPORT THE ACTIONS OF SOME OF THE PEOPLE I HAVE LISTED, THANK YOU.

♇ before we expand about the planetary joys placements, we need to understand what it is about.

♇ planetary joys comes from hellenistic astrology, so nothing after the planet saturn [uranus, neptune and pluto], are not included within the belief. but planetary joys is about where the traditional planets in rejoice in a chart. [where they work the best].

SUN ⟶ 9H; the house of God.

MOON ⟶ 3H; the house of Goddess.

MERCURY ⟶ 1H; the house of Helm.

VENUS ⟶ 5H; the house of Good Fortune.

MARS ⟶ 6H; the house of Bad Fortune.

JUPITER ⟶ 11H; the house of Good Spirit.

SATURN ⟶ 12H; the house of Bad Spirit.

♇ in this, the benefic planets, venus and jupiter are associated with the benefic houses. [5H AND 11H].

♇ in this, the malefic planets, mars and saturn are associated with the malefic planets. [6H AND 12H].

♇ sun, saturn and jupiter are diurnal, meaning it's at the top of the chart, the morning or the day. whereas moon, venus and mars are nocturnal, meaning its at the bottom of the chart, the night.

♇ mercury can be both since it's on the helm, the ascendant, the first house.

PLANETARY JOYS PLACEMENTS ⬎

SUN IN THE 9H

♱ the 9H is known as the house of God, connections to beliefs, faith and philosophy. also with education as it is about arrangement about what someone could believe in.

♱ people that i've seen with this are wildly liked, especially celebrities that i'll list after this. they could also be people who have massive supporters, and they can be very vocal about their opinions, bad or good.

♱ they can be very provoking people, but they can also be people who make other people take accountability or even make a movement; or they could make other people aware of another person's behaviour.

DAKOTA JOHNSON = ELLEN.

KENDRICK LAMAR = DRAKE.

MARTIN LUTHER KING = WHITE RACISM.

they can also be known for their great smiles.

celebrities with 9H sun ⟶ martin luther king, billie eilish, brigitte bardot, jessica alba, kendrick lamar and dakota johnson.

MOON IN THE 3H

♇ the 3H is known as the house of Goddess, it's opposite the 9H. thus the name Goddess. along with it being associated with the Moon, and the Moon Goddess is Luna/Selene which translates to Moon. it is about alternative religions, different ideas, and can be people who like to spread messages or commands.

♇ very strong opinions, they also have a lot of supporters, though they could also be very annoying and provoking. if they're not careful, they can come off as know it alls.

♇ as celebrities, they're very easy to market and they can do well with influencing other people. can have a really wide smile as well.

♇ could be the type to never practice what they preach. or they could preach their opinions more than actually teaching someone or having a cordial conversation with them.

celebrities with 3H moon ⟶ mariah carey, adolf hitler, eminem, robert pattinson, zendaya and margot robbie.

MERCURY IN THE 1H

♱ in Hellenistic Astrology, before the First House was called the Ascendant, it was known as the House of Helm. the 1H is entirely about you.

♱ people with this placement can speak about themselves, A LOT. always making something about themselves. either way, these people are usually spoken about and even edited.

♱ they could have the decency of being very annoying. but its a great fame indicator because they're very marketable. they also have to be careful about what they say because it can come off as very different to others.

♱ mercury is very happy in the first house, because its in the house of self expression, it's very radiant and likes to express themselves to the world.

celebrities with 1h mercury ⟶ selena gomez, katy perry, elon musk, gigi hadid, bella hadid and blake lively. [see how almost all of them are known to be very annoying]. another set of people who could talk about themselves a lot.

VENUS IN THE 5H

♇ the 5H is perceived as the house of good fortune, sometimes the 9H is perceived as that. but it's mainly known as the house of God due to description i've already provided. though, venus in the 5H is about your self-expression, creativity, pleasure and hobbies that can be turned into jobs.

♇ people with this placement are excellent at portraying the roles they are given. and it doesnt necessarily mean career role, personality role and the expectations they're supposed to live up to.

♇ most of them do have romantic controversy like, princess diana, dolly parton and even henry cavill. and most of them could have problems with battling hyper-sexuality. they're people who are easily liked and can be very influential.

♇ people could want to copy their style a lot, especially people like princess diana, alexa demie and eva longoria. they're visionaries so a lot of people trust their judgement when it comes to making creative decisions, and they usually have really beautiful children.

celebrities with 5h venus ⟶ barack obama, princess diana, alexa demie, henry cavill, dolly parton and eva longoria.

MARS IN THE 6H

♱ in hellenistic astrology, the 6H is known as the house of bad fortune, as it is the house of sickness, competition/rivalry, where we wear our selves down.

♱ in a career, they have to fight for their spot, and could sometimes fight to be known as the "best" as what they do. their career usually involves them receiving critique and validation from the viewers.

♱ they tend to be people who has controversy with their children, like john lennon was said to be abusive with his son, drake once rejected his son until he had a blood test happen and jay-z was said to have a secret child with a woman who was likely a minor when she was im-pregnanted. and unfortunately, sharon tate died eight months pregnant.

♱ they're people who are usually seen to have a classic aesthetic and seen as people who will remain legends or just remembered within their fame. they're usually in conflict or compared to people within the same industry as them.

♱ and women with mars in the 6h tend to be highly admired because of their beauty.

celebrities with 6h mars ⟶ sharon tate, drake, john lennon, jay-z, audrey hepburn and adriana lima.

JUPITER IN THE 11H

♇ jupiter is know as the house of good spirit, about productive belongings, how one makes a living [you can also perceive it as how one is agreeable] and religion.

♇ people with this placement have a bigger than life personality, and sometimes are perceived as the "cool girl" or the "cool guy" people just want to be around them and hear what they have to say, no matter how crazy it sounds.

♇ they usually have a likeable and memable personality. and most of them have a better time with fame, it can be about being liked, or always able to make money out of something. they usually tend to have longevity with what they put out.

celebrities with 11h jupiter ⟶ kanye west, adele, zendaya, anne hatheway, salma hayek and frida kahlo.

SATURN IN THE 12H

♱ the 12h in hellenistic astrology is known as the house of bad spirit, it's where your hidden enemies lie, the realer side of fame, and is also the house of material and hardship.

♱ to have saturn in the 12h shows that how you interact with fame is karmic, how you treat your money and your finances will follow you into the next life. you could be considered as a celebrity who is hard to connect with, or a person hard to connect with in general.

♱ they tend to have rumours and information about them revealed, some of it are usually made up and delusional, considering its the twelfth house as well. can be uptight people and can abuse their power onto the unknown, or people they see smaller than them.

♱ most of them ending up being humanitarians as the 12h is about what you do for the community, particularly people who have less. it's usually apart of their karmic debt to do so.

celebrities with 12h saturn ⟶ angelina jolie, beyonce, kendall jenner, zayn, whitney houston and tyra banks.

masterlist

[wilwheaton]

This is what many of us have seen. If you look at the internals, the subgroups of the more reputable polls, and you look at their results after weighting and you're bewildered because those internals with the subgroups would auger for a result much stronger for Vice President Kamala Harris, this explains it. Nate Silver has admitted that herding is taking place. He says the odds against so much close agreement is 1 in 9.5 trillion. Almost everything else would say this is not the toss up that polls are saying. Objectively, she is the better candidate. She is younger, more dynamic, more vigorous, younger, more mentally sharp, more experience, a better communicator, giving a better message. He is pushing weird and dangerous conspiracy theories, he is much, much older, he is plainly lying, he isn't disciplined, he faces 3 indictments, he has been convicted of 34 felonies, he was found liable for sexual assault by a jury, he has other legal challenges, he is pushing a dark vision, he is talking about using the American military against the American people and using the language of Adolf Hitler, he is expressing his bigotry. She has run a better campaign than he has. She has a far better ground game. She has more paid staff. She has more volunteers. She has raised more money. She has better surrogates. She has a better message. Again, Donald Trump is using the language of Adolf Hitler. Do we really believe that the Adolf Hitler message is competitive with the inclusive, centrist, normal, smart campaign and message of Vice President Kamala Harris? It just doesn't make sense that they would be tied.

J Ann Selzer Busts Emerson and others for manipulating their polls on tv!

[komsomolka]

The term Russophobia was centered on fear – fear of Russian expansion into the zones of influence of the British Empire, in Iran or India, for example. This “Russian scare” assumed such vast proportions that even the remote island nation of New Zealand built a series of coastal forts in the 1880s to ward off a perceived Russian attack. [...]

Russophobia is deeply rooted in people’s subconscious in the Western hemisphere and is virtually part of the local identity, which needs Russia as an opponent in order to reassure itself of its assumed superiority. [...] The phenomenon is “cyclical,” where narratives of a good Russia appear when Russia is experiencing a phase of weakness, while stories of evil Russia come to the fore in the Western media when the country becomes more “assertive.” These narratives are de facto timeless and almost mythological in content. [...]

For centuries, European colonial powers conquered, divided and appropriated the wealth of almost every region in the world. But none of these actions transformed their respective states into “voracious” and “hungry” empires in their own Western self-image. The stereotype of the undying Russian thirst for land, on the other hand, is a mainstay of Russophobia and is partly based on a forged but very powerful document. According to the English historian Orlando Figes, various Polish, Hungarian and Ukrainian authors forged a will of Peter the Great in the course of the 18th century and then circulated it within Europe. The forged document, which was submitted to the archives of the French Foreign Ministry in the 1760s, spoke of an extensive Russian plan for the subjugation of Europe, the Middle East and as far as the Southeast Asia. Although the supposed Tsar’s will was recognized as a forgery from an early stage, it was instrumentalized by Western foreign policymakers as a justification for war against Russia for about 200 years. [...]

Today’s insinuations that Russia would “carry on” with other Eastern European states after a victory in Ukraine also reflect the spirit of the forged will, according to criticism from the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in 2022. The fact that the will is a forgery has always been irrelevant to Russophobes, because it ideologically fits the stereotypical image: “Because, after all, forgery characterizes Russia’s policy better than any historically authenticated truth,” according to the German war propaganda concerning the document in 1916. Adolf Hitler made very similar remarks in 1941 – even though it was the German army that was stationed in Russia and annexed large territories during both world wars. The stereotype mainly reveals the projections of the politicians of Western powers, who assign their own way of thinking and acting to the Russian leadership. [...]

The stereotype of Russian backwardness is ancient and could historically only have taken root because contrary facts were consistently ignored in the West. “Russia is like another world,” wrote Bishop Matvey of Kraków as early as the mid-12th century in a letter to the French crusading preacher Bernard of Clairvaux. But the stereotype did not really catch on until the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, when Europe began to form an identity as a separate cultural area, which was essentially achieved by distinguishing itself from other cultural areas, explains historian Christophe von Werdt: “Russia played a particularly important role in this interplay of European identity formation and perception of what was foreign. For in its case, Europe was confronted with a ‘foreign’ Christian land that it could not colonize or culturally assimilate.”

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Western Europeans increasingly came to Russia as diplomats, mercenaries or merchants, recording their impressions of the unfamiliar country. Eastern European historian Manfred Hildermeier writes that the cultural distance evident in the records was “increasingly combined with a sense of superiority.” German travelers, for example, reported with amazement that Russians bathed naked in the river in full view of others and men and women were not separated by gender in the saunas located almost everywhere, but went there together. [...]

The Swiss author Guy Mettan demonstrates the selectivity of Western judgment even more pointedly. He compares the popular 1761 travelogue of French astronomer Jean Chappe d’Auteroche with the contemporaneous account of a Japanese boat captain named Kodayu, who traveled the same route through Siberia at the same time as the Frenchman. “But they seem to describe two different planets,” notes Mettan; the accounts of their voyages could not be more different.

Whereas d’Auteroche discerned backwardness and barbarism everywhere in Russia, Kodayu soberly describes everyday life, living conditions and socio-political circumstances. Reading both books side by side is fascinating, because it painfully reveals the contrast between the impartiality of the traveler from the Far East and the Westerner’s urge to judge others from a position of superiority and emphasize his supposed civilizational advantage.

The craftiness and deceitfulness of Russians is another recurring paradigm of Russophobia. As early as the 16th and 17th centuries, Western visitors to Russia identified deceitfulness and mendacity as typical Russian character traits – not, however, as traits of individual Russians, but of all Russians. According to Russophobic logic, this general character trait, by association, will then also be reflected in Russian politics. [...]

Western observers have been indignant about the European-like appearance of Russians for centuries, meaning the Russians, in their clothes and appearance, are virtually lying already. The French writer Astolphe Marquis de Custine wrote in 1839: “I do not reproach the Russians for being what they are; what I reproach them for is pretending to be what we are. They are still uncultured… and in this they follow the example of the apes and disfigure what they copy.” [...]

If the Russians try to remedy their supposed backwardness by orienting themselves toward the West, then they are wrong again; at heart, they remain half-savage barbarians.

Russians are people “with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul,” wrote the U.S. journalist Ambrose Bierce in his “Dictionary of the Devil” in 1911. Bierce meant this satirically – as he did with each of the approximately 1,000 entries in his book. He critically echoed the clichéd thinking of his time. In 2022, the political scientist Florence Gaub told ZDF, a German public television broadcaster: “We must not forget that even if Russians look European, they are not Europeans, in this case in a cultural sense.” She did not mean this satirically.

Probably the most powerful element in Russophobia is the stereotype of Russian tyranny. It entails two complementary parts: a demonic leader and a sort of slave mentality of the Russian population.

Tsar Ivan IV – in Russian he is called “the Austere,” while in the West he is called “the Terrible” – was an archetype of the cruel Russian ruler, explains Oleg Nemensky. According to Nemensky, the “black myth” of the bloodthirsty tyrant, “whose brutality allegedly exceeded all conceivable limits,” emerged in the 16th century at the time of the Livonian War and occupied the most important place among the propagandistic Russian stereotypes of the time. Ivan the Terrible, in Western eyes, “combined the symbolization of evil and brutal power with the servile bondage of his subjects.”

Indeed, Ivan IV was a brutal ruler and apparently a sadistic character who employed cruel methods of torture and execution. However, whether this made him exceptional in his time is questionable. Yet, Ivan the Terrible’s legendary reputation established the image of Russian rulers in general in the rest of Europe, which was also basically applied to the Russian rulers of the following centuries: cruel, tyrannical, brutal. The fact that soon after the 31-year reign of Ivan, Tsar Alexei I, who bore the epithet “the meekest,” on the other hand, is something few will ever have heard.

Undoubtedly, it is common in wartime to demonize the leader of an opposing power as personified evil. According to Arthur Ponsonby, it is one of the tenets of wartime propaganda to direct hatred at the enemy leader. But in the Russophobic culture of many Western countries, this logic also applies in peacetime. [...] For example, the fact that Vladimir Putin was to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg in 2004 caused such indignation in parts of the public that both the university and Putin decided against it. The reason for the storm of protest, it was reported, was the “Chechen war waged in a manner contrary to international law.” In 2011, the planned awarding of the Quadriga Prize to Putin (then the Russian prime minister) was also cancelled due to general outrage. In contrast, these standards were not applied to U.S. presidents: Bill Clinton, who shortly before had commanded a war of aggression against Yugoslavia in violation of international law, received the German Media Prize in 1999, the Charlemagne Prize in Aachen in 2000 and the European Mittelstandspreis (Medium-Sized Business Prize) in 2002. [...]

Nemensky emphasizes that it is extremely remarkable that the antithesis of Western freedom vs. Russian slavery is reproduced again and again across different eras of history, even if there is a change in the specific concepts. No role is played by the centuries of Western slavery, which lasted even longer in the U.S. than serfdom did in “backward” Russia.

According to the Russophobic narrative, Russians are a people incapable of governing themselves and therefore covet slavery. A people that is consistently ruled by tyrants and dictators must itself be inherently authoritarian and subservient, according to the circular argument that has been recapitulated for centuries.

“This nation finds more pleasure in slavery than in freedom,” the Austrian envoy Sigismund von Herberstein reported from Moscow in 1549. The Russians are a “tribe born into slavery, accustomed to the yoke and unable to bear freedom,” the Dutchman Edo Neuhusius told his readers in 1633. “Political obedience has become a cult, a religion for the Russians,” the abovementioned Astolphe Marquis de Custine noted in 1837. “Russia was for us the epitome of bondage and forced rule, a danger to our civilization,” wrote German public broadcaster ARD correspondent Fritz Pleitgen about the thinking of German journalists in the 1960s. “‘Slave consciousness’: Why are many Russians so submissive?” asked the German public broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk in 2022.

As strikingly interchangeable as these statements are across the centuries, this insight is useful for understanding the deep-seated, traditional hatred of Russia among the liberal middle classes of Western countries. It is precisely in these groups, represented today by the Democratic Party in the U.S. or the Green Party in Germany, for example, that the stereotype of a despotic Russia has always been extremely powerful. [...]

It has also been observed historically that Russophobia eventually subsides. This could happen even without war, as the end of the bloc confrontation in 1990 showed. However, the phenomenon will not disappear, but will remain latent as long as Western societies do not fundamentally address the problem. Historical models exist for this, and the parallels between Russophobia and anti-Semitism are a topic in themselves. [...]

Former CIA official Phil Giraldi [...] said in an interview that the Biden cabinet is full of Russophobes who blame Russia for all sorts of things. He also said that many people in the CIA were motivated by Russophobia and believed the stereotypes. In the political-media landscape of Western countries, however, people are usually unwilling to even recognize the problem. [...]

What is clear from all this is that the phenomenon of Russophobia has little to do with Russia and the Russians themselves – but a lot to do with Western societies. [...] Russophobia is at its core a racist phenomenon, notes Guy Mettan. Russophobes fundamentally refuse to recognize people from Russia or the Russian state as equal and equivalent to their corresponding Western counterparts.

[worlds-worst-ships]

Do you seriously, actually ship it?

Okay. Lets talk. Because apparently some of you are defending... well... "that" (under the cut)

"He's autistic! It was a stim!"

If you genuinely think that this has ANYTHING to do with autism, you are an objectively stupid person. Like, your brain is so fucking smooth, it puts the surface of freshly tempered glass to shame. You're a barely functional reprobate with subhuman intelligence who has no idea how to form thoughts so you let a 50 year old billionaire who spends too much time on his phone decide your thought process for you.

"He was throwing his heart out to the crowd!"

Now, I don't really play baseball, basketball, netball, or any sport where you throw anything other than sometimes darts, but... is that how you throw? You perfectly extend your arm at that angle? Twice? After spending years posting tweets that very much align with Nazi viewpoints? Do you throw a pitch in baseball and scream SIEG HEIL as the ball hurtles towards your opponent? No. Stop being a fucking idiot. This was deliberate. He did it twice.

"He's autistic! He doesn't know better!"

Please comment if you actually think this so I can personally call you a stupid cunt and block you. We absolutely do know better. Autism and Nazism aren't mutually exclusive.

"You're inhibiting his free speech!"

1st amendment only applies to censorship from government positions of power, which I am not, as should be obvious from the fact that I have no power to censor him. Though I shouldn't have to explain that.

"Well, he's gonna get away with it so stop being so sensitive!"

Yes. He is. But that's not a flex, that's A FUCKING MASSIVE PROBLEM. Call me sensitive if you want, but absolutely every single one of you should be offended by this. Did you pay attention in history class, or were you too tired after a long night of being fucking railed raw and bone dry by propaganda on Twitter? Moron.

"Well, he's rich and you're not, so there!"

Yep. Got me there. He's rich, and I'm not. Yknow, Hitler and a lot of Nazi officers were pretty minted too. So was Epstein, King Leopold, Stalin, Jimmy Saville, every MP currently serving in parliament... but sure, they're great people because they're rich, right?

"You're just a stupid offended libtard!"

Google "The Holocaust".

"Well, you're still using his app!"

His app? You mean the one he bought, then fucking ruined because he has no idea how to run it, right? And you because its basically impossible to find mutuals as a vtuber without it, you knew that, right? "His" app, please, you probably think Ronald McDonald makes your burger when you order McDonalds, you moron.

"If we punish Elon for this, then that's a violation of the first amendment!"

You mean like banning tiktok, removing any and all talk of election rigging, then putting it back up the next day? Or maybe like deleting any criticisms of you and your nazi salutes under your recent tweets despite it blowing up everywhere else? Or does that not count because its something you agree with? Yeah. You've been cucked harder than Sneako and you don't even realize it. Elon and his government buddies are leaving your free speech rights looking like this

Aaaaanyway

I find it well and truly laughable that so many people like Elon will say all this insane shit and do all these fucking heinous things and people will defend them. Like how that gun woman who shit herself says stuff like "I'm not homophobic, I just think gay people are disgusting and that they should die" or that comedian nobody finds funny anymore spends hours whining about trans people but says he's not transphobic.

Lets all be on the same page for once and have the balls to say what we actually think. Elon got so close, but being a spineless edgelord who doesn't have the balls to just say what he thinks out loud is quite the weakness.

[whencyclopedia]

Eyewitness Accounts of the Holocaust

The Holocaust was the murder of 6 million Jewish people by the SS, Gestapo, and other organisations of Nazi Germany and its allies in the years prior to and through the Second World War (1939-45). Innocent men, women, and children were shot in mass executions, or, if not too young or too old, they were sent to labour camps where they worked until they could do so no longer. The ultimate fate of millions was to die in the gas chambers of extermination camps like Auschwitz in occupied Poland.

In this article, accounts are presented by those who witnessed the Holocaust genocide firsthand, both its victims and those involved in its execution who were obliged to give evidence in, for example, the post-war Nuremberg trials of 1945-6.

Unburied Corpses, Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

Wislon-Oakes - Imperial War Museums (CC BY-NC-SA)

The Nazis & the Jews

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) established himself as the dictator of Nazi Germany in 1933, and he identified Jewish people as the main enemy of the state. Based on dubious and inconsistent racial theory as propounded by such Nazi figures as Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946), Hitler and the Nazi Party began a propaganda campaign against German Jews, which presented them as an inferior race who were holding Germany back from achieving its full economic potential.

Hitler wanted to remove all Jews from German territory, but the first step was to identify who exactly was a Jew. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws loosely identified Jews since even having a single Jewish grandparent placed an individual in that category. A series of 'solutions' to what Hitler called the "Jewish problem" were rolled out, such as encouraging emigration and persecuting Jewish business owners. Jews were then attacked in such pogroms as the Kristallnacht of November 1938. Next, Jews were rounded up and obliged to live in segregated areas such as ghettos in cities or in concentration camps. Jews were deprived of citizenship and other basic rights.

From 1942, the Nazis began what was secretly described as the 'Final Solution', that is the plan to murder all European Jews. Jews were transported to labour camps where they worked on state projects until they died from disease, extreme malnutrition, or physical exhaustion. Other Jews, and those who could no longer work or were too young or too old to work, were transported directly to death camps like the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in occupied Poland where they were killed in gas chambers and their remains were communally cremated. Jews were not the only victims since the Nazis also targeted Romani people, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Freemasons, homosexuals, political rivals, prisoners of war, and those with physical or mental disabilities, amongst others. In addition, hundreds of thousands more victims were murdered in mass executions in occupied territories during the Second World War by mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen. The Jews made up by far the majority of those killed, and it is estimated that 6 million died in what is today called the Holocaust. The sheer scale of the Nazis' programme means that determining the precise number of victims is not possible.

Arrested Jews, Baden-Baden

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-86686-0008 (CC BY-SA)

Hugh Greene, a British newspaper journalist, recalls what he saw of the Kristallnacht in 1938:

I was in Berlin at that time and saw some pretty revolting sights – the destruction of Jewish shops, Jews being arrested and led away, the police standing by while the gangs destroyed the shops and even groups of well-dressed women cheering.

(Holmes, 42)

Avraham Aviel, a Polish Jew and survivor of a mass execution, gives the following account of his experience in May 1942:

We were all brought close to the cemetery at a distance of eighty to a hundred metres from a long, deep pit. Once again everybody was made to kneel. There was no possibility of lifting one's head. I sat more or less in the centre of the town people. I looked in front of me and saw the long pit then maybe groups of twenty, thirty people led to the edge of the pit, undressed probably so that they should not take their valuables with them. They were brought to the edge of the pit where they were shot and fell into the pit, one on top of another.

(Holmes, 319)

An anonymous survivor from a ghetto massacre in Lviv, Ukraine, in August 1942 gives the following description of its aftermath:

I went with my mother to the office of the Jewish community regarding an apartment and there in the light breeze, dangled the corpses of the hanged, their faces blue, their heads tilted backward, their tongues blackened and stretched out. Luxury cars raced in from the center of the city, German civilians with their wives and children came to see the sensational spectacle, and, as was their custom, the visitors enthusiastically photographed the scene. Afterwards the Ukrainians and Poles arrived by with greater modesty.

(Fiedländer, 436)

Nazi Classification of Jewish People

VolksVeritas (CC BY-SA)

Rivka Yoselevska, a Polish Jew, describes her experience and that of her family in the Hansovic ghetto massacre in August 1943:

Some of the younger ones I got out naked covered with blood…I was still alive. Where should I go? What should I do?

(Holmes, 320-1)

The SS lieutenant-colonel Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), in charge of the Final Solution's transportation requirements, here lies to Jews to make sure they do not create trouble as they are transported by train from a ghetto to the concentration camps:

Jews: You have nothing to worry about. We want only the best for you. You'll leave here shortly and be sent to very fine places indeed. You will work there, your wives will stay at home, and your children will go to school. You will have wonderful lives.

(Bascomb, 6)

The death camps were deliberately located in remote Poland to provide the Final Solution project more secrecy. Rudolf Höss (1901-1947), a camp commandant at Auschwitz, stated:

We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy, but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.

(Neville, 49)

New Arrivals at Auschwitz

Bernard Walter (Public Domain)

The typical conditions of the train journeys to the camps are described here by Avraham Kochav, an Auschwitz survivor:

There were twenty to twenty-five cars in every train…I heard terrible cries. I saw how people attack other people so as to have a place to stand, how people push each other so that they could stand somewhere or so that they could have air for breathing. It was terribly, terribly stifling. The first to faint were the children, women, old men, they all fell down like flies.

(Holmes, 332)

Zygmunt Klukowski, a Polish hospital director, describes the train journeys for Jewish people sent to the Belzec extermination camp in occupied Poland:

On the way to Belzec the Jews experience many terrible things. They are aware of what will happen to them. Some try to fight back. At the railroad station in Szczebrzeszyn a young woman gave away a gold ring in exchange for a glass of water for her dying child. In Lublin people witnessed small children being thrown through windows of speeding trains. Many people are shot before reaching Belzec.

(Friedländer, 358)

Yaacov Silberstein, a Jewish teenager, describes his arrival at Auschwitz in October 1942:

When we arrived we saw how the Jews were running to the electrified fence. There they stuck. They were tired of life; they could not continue in this fashion.

(Holmes, 330)

Dr Lucie Adelsberger, a prisoner of Auschwitz, describes the processing of new arrivals destined for the labour camps:

We undressed, had our hair cut – no actually our heads were shaved to stubble; then came the showers and finally the tattoos. This was where they confiscated the very last vestiges of our belongings; nothing remained…no written document that could have identified us, no picture, no written message from a loved one. Our past was cut off, erased…

(Cesarini, 656)

Aerial View of Auschwitz

South African Air Force (Public Domain)

Bernd Naumann, a survivor from the Birkenau camp, describes the prevalence of rats in the camp:

They gnawed not only at corpses but also at the seriously sick. I have pictures showing women near death being bitten by rats.

(Neville, 50)

Seweryna Smaglewska, a prisoner in the Birkenau women's camp, describes the living conditions there:

There were no roads, no paths between the blocks. In the depths of these dark dens, in bunks like multi-storied cages, the feeble light of a candle burning here or there flickered over naked, emaciated figures curled up, blue from the cold, bent over a pile of filthy rags, holding their shaved heads in their hands, picking out an insect with their scraggly fingers and smashing it on the edge of the bunk – that is what the barracks looked like in 1942.

(Cesarini, 528)

The SS, which managed the camps, made sure there was a hierarchy amongst the prisoners such as trustees who survived a little longer than the rest by being 'favoured' with certain duties such as burning the bodies in the crematoriums or beating other prisoners. SS Lance Corporal Richard Bock, a guard at Auschwitz-Birkenau, recalls:

A block chief would call out the kapo very fiercely, 'Kapo, come here.' The kapo came over and – boom – he hit the kapo in the face so hard that he fell over…And then he said, 'Kapo, can't you beat them any better than that?' And the kapo ran off and grabbed a club to beat up the prisoner squad quite indiscriminately. 'Kapo, come over here,' he shouted again. The kapo came and he said, 'Finish them off,' and then he went off again and he finished the prisoners off, he beat them to death…a kapo had to beat and club to save his own life.

(Holmes, 325)

Luggage of Auschwitz Victims

Jorge Láscar (CC BY)

Those meant for the gas chambers were often unaware of their fate. Bock describes the procedure that he witnessed with a colleague called Holbinger who was responsible for the Zyklon B tins that would produce the lethal gas:

…the new arrivals had to get undressed, and then the order came, 'Prepare for disinfection'. There were enormous piles of clothing…Lots of them hid their children under the clothes and covered them up and then they shouted, 'Get ready' and they all went out, they had to run naked approximately twenty yards from the hall across to Bunker One. There were two doors standing open and they went in there and when a certain number had gone inside they shut the doors. That happened about three times, and every time Holbinger had to go out to his ambulance and they took out a sort of tin – he and one of his block chiefs – and then he climbed up the ladder and at the top there was a round hole and he opened the little round door and held the tin there and shook it and then he shut the little door again. Then a fearful screaming started up and approximately after about ten minutes it slowly went quiet…They opened the door…then a blue haze came out. I looked in and I saw a pyramid. They had all climbed up on top of each other…They were all tangled, they had to tug and pull very hard to disentangle all these people.

(Holmes, 334-5)

Dov Paisikowic, a Russian-Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, was part of the team responsible for taking bodies out of the chambers, removing valuables such as rings and gold teeth, and then taking the corpses to the crematoria. He recalls:

…the doors were suddenly opened to the gas chambers. People, naked people, started falling out. We were all frightened, no one dared ask what it all was. We were immediately taken to the other side of this house and there we saw hell on this earth – large piles of dead people, and people dragging these dead to a long pit, about thirty metres in length and ten metres in width. There was a huge fire there, with tree trunks. On the other side fat was being taken out of this pit with a bucket.

(Holmes, 335)

Thousands of detainees in the camps were subjected to unnecessary and often horrific medical operations and experiments. One of the most infamous SS doctors was Josef Mengele (1911-1979), who performed all kinds of macabre operations at Auschwitz. Mengele was, though, only one part of a large SS medical team, which operated in many different camps. Dr Franz Blaha, a Czech detainee at the Dachau concentration camp, was obliged to work in this area of Nazi terror, specifically performing autopsies. Blaha reported:

From the middle of 1941 to the end of 1942 some 500 operations on healthy prisoners were performed. These were for the instructions of the SS medical students and doctors and included operations on the stomach, gall bladder and throat. These were performed by students and doctors of only two years' training, although they were very dangerous and difficult….Many prisoners died on the operating table and many others from later complications…These persons were never volunteers but were forced to submit to such acts.

(MacDonald, 59)

Auschwitz Bunks

Bookofblue (CC BY-SA)

Hertha Beese, a Berlin housewife and underground resistance worker, recalls that, unlike the general public, the resistance network was more informed about the camps. She states:

We knew that the concentration camps existed. We also knew where they existed, for example Oranienburg just outside Berlin. We sometimes knew which of our friends were there and we also knew of the cruelties in them right from the beginning.

(Holmes, 315)

Anthony Eden (1897-1977), British Foreign Secretary during WWII, notes:

…as the war progressed some horrifying reports began to come out. At first it was very difficult to assess their accuracy and they were so horrible it was hard to believe they could be true.

(Holmes, 314)

Wynford Vaughn-Thomas, a British journalist, recalls the conditions of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany when it was liberated in 1945:

In the huts typhoid, everything, had broken out and you couldn't hear yourself speak for the death rattle. There were people lying on top of each other, sick, vomiting, withered bodies crawling on their hands and knees…It was sealed off in this dark north German plain and you felt you'd reached the cesspit of the human mind.

(Holmes, 337)

Mass Grave, Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

H. Oakes-Imperial War Museums (Public Domain)

The British Lieutenant Colonel J. A. D. Johnson described what he saw when he arrived at Bergen-Belsen:

The prisoners were a dense mass of emaciated apathetic scarecrows huddled together in wooden huts, and in many cases without beds or blankets, and in some cases without any clothing whatsoever…There were thousands of emaciated corpses in various stages of decomposition lying unburied. Sanitation was to all intents and purposes nonexistent.

(Cesarini, 759)

Hans Stark, Gestapo staff member at Auschwitz, stated, like so many others, that he had merely been following orders:

I took part in the murder of many people…I believed in the Führer, I wanted to serve my people. Today I know that this idea was false. I regret the mistakes of my past, but I cannot undo them.

(Neville, 57)

Rabbi Frankforter, who died in the Holocaust, which Jewish people often call the Shoah or Ha-Shoah in Hebrew, gave this last wish to survivor Yaacov Silberstein:

You are still young and you will remain alive. I have only one request for you that you should never let people forget. Tell everyone what they did to us at this small camp, in Buchenwald. Wherever you go tell this, also to your children so that they should pass it on. To remember and not to forget.

(Holmes, 339)

Continue reading...

[magicalmysteryperson]

The "how to spot fascism and political extremism" resource page

When a lot of people believe that a nazi salute is not a nazi salute, reblogging gifs of nazis getting punched, blocking links to twitter and tiktok, and kung-pow-penising/ratioing Elon Musk will not solve the problem.

But educating others on what fascism is will.

If you have any more resources to share, feel free to put them in the replies or in a reblog.

And I do highly recommend that you read all of these.

[chilewithcarnage]

hi, i have a question in good faith regarding the discourse with that south korean blogger but if you don't want to continue talking about that discourse i understand. in my understanding their point was to say that when it comes to the us military specifically, americans of all race are equally imperialist because in their country all american soldiers are treated as impunable. i am from south east asia where there are also many us military bases here and in my country us soldiers can do whatever they want because they are us soldiers. i know obviously this isnt the case in the usa and that black americans in the usa are not privileged or equal in any possible way. but in my country if they are an american soldier then they are privileged no matter what. so why is it incorrect to say that black americans have american privilege? isn't it true or am i missing something important here?

I wasn't denying that Americans of color when serving the us military aren't agents of imperialism and don't have the privilege granted by said immunity and understand that the role American soldiers regardless of ethnicity play when it comes to imperialism overseas + Americans of color do hold some privilege by living in America. My point of contention came because she unfairly singled out Black & Indigenous Americans, grouped us with our oppressors saying that every American citizen is deeply evil regardless of race, invoked antiblack slurs and imagery, continued to refer to me and other Black users as Amerikkkans and Adolf Hitler, and when I brought up the hypocrisy of her singling out Americans of color when she also belongs to a first world country that involves itself in imperialism and neocolonialism, despite being a colonized people...which I guess newsflash to her Indigenous & Black Americans are also colonized people, but I guess she doesn't consider us that. She was well within her right to speak on America's imperialism in Korea but she went about doing it in an entirely bad faith way that ultimately boiled down to her being extremely racist towards Black people. I don't care how well versed a person is in anticapitalist anti imperialist liberation, if you don't take the time to unlearn antiblack biases; your communist death to america spiel means jack shit. I won't take you seriously as an activist and I'll see you as being an unsafe party to be around as a Black person.

[omgthatdress]

In the immense social upheaval following World War I, Berlin emerged as the global hub for gay life and gay art. In 1921, Berlin was home to 40 documented meeting places for gay people. By 1925, that number had jumped to 80.

Cheif among these hotspots was the cabaret Eldorado, whose drag pageants and performances were immortalized by the likes of artists such as Otto Dix. In 2023, Netflix released a documentary about the club, Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hate.

At the center of the movement for gay rights was Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.

Ins 1896 Hirschfeld was operating as a regular physician, when he received a note from a soldier who was engaged to be married. The soldier was suicidally depressed because he could not get over his attraction to men, and was desperate to be cured of it. Being gay himself, Hirschfeld related tremendously to the soldier, and was spurred begin studying homosexuality in a scientific manner.

He was led to the conclusion that homosexuality was a natural occurrence that happened the world over. More importantly, he argued that homosexuality was not immoral and that homosexuals should be free to live and love as they pleased.

Hirschfeld was also the first scientist to recognize and study what we'd call transgenderism today, and was the person who coined the term "transvestite."

(Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, 2nd from right)

Das Institut acted as both a medical clinic and a center of education. Members of the public could come and be informed on the mechanics of how sex worked as well as receiving non-judgemental medical care for STIs and other sexual conditions. Women could receive information about safe abortion. It was also one of the first places where trans people could come and receive hormone treatment and information about gender-reassignment surgery.

Then, in 1933, with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor, everything changed.

Queer lives were officially deemed not worth living, and public queer places became the chief target of Nazi persecution. The voluminous libraries of Das Institut were raided and then burned, destroying so much early queer history and science that was irreplaceable.

Dr. Hirschfeld managed to escape Germany and died in France in 1935. Queer people who were not lucky enough to leave to the country were arrested and sent to die in concentration camps.

The lessons of Weimar Berlin are painfully pertinent today. Progress can be destroyed faster than it gets made. Rights are not guaranteed and must always be fought for. The past cannot be allowed to happen again.

By which I mean, for the love of all that is holy, if you want to continue to have any rights at all, pleasepleaseplease vote for Joe Biden on November 5th. Don't not vote in protest. Don't vote 3rd party. If Donald Trump is re-elected this WILL happen again. Just imagine your favorite local queer hang-out being shut down with "Make America Great Again" signs in the window, and vote to stop it.

[wilwheaton]

Elon Musk’s X is a thriving hub for Nazi support and propaganda, with paid subscribers sharing speeches by Adolf Hitler or content praising his genocidal regime. NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust. The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece.

Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk

This is abhorrent. Elon Musk is clearly a Nazi, and should be treated as such.

[k4iz3rn8t0r]

Literally no one is going to read allat but I still feel the need to talk about this

——————————————

Ever since the last few school shootings dropped, I’ve seen more and more people talk about how the shooters are “unoriginal”. Well, no shit, if we think about it, everybody is unoriginal.

Most school shooters, or even just mass killers in general, have been influenced by former massacres. Just name me a single school shooter who hasn’t actively admired the Columbine shooters, Adam Lanza, Pekka, etc… if not any of them, then fucking Adolf Hitler. Any of the racially motivated violence had most likely been influenced by Brenton Tarrant or any of the other white supremacy activists. Don’t even get me started on the incels. We can’t even judge any of those “unoriginal” killers, because we know damn well that the next school shooter will have been a member of the tcc. Most likely one of the columgooners too.

Even if the shooters don’t actively look up to previous perpetrators, they all have the same goal. Revenge. “Natural selection”, “I’m gonna end what they started”, “I’ll be remembered”… it’s all the same thing just happening at a different time in a different place with slightly different individuals. Is that original? Of course not.

I can confidently say that we will most likely never have an original shooter again.

(I’ll still laugh at the memes though)

[imagitory]

I've never been more heartbroken in my life.

I was gobsmacked in 2016, don't get me wrong. I was devastated and frightened and shaken beyond words. I even had to go behind a wall and collect myself at one point that horrible November 9th, 2016, after colliding with a man wearing a red MAGA hat at work. A good chunk of us at work talked amongst ourselves about it, offering each other comfort.

But this? This is different. I could imagine dumb people making excuses for voting for Trump in 2016 -- saying that they thought a businessman would be good for the economy, saying that they wanted someone who wasn't a "Washington insider" like Hilary Clinton. Sure, it was stupid, but people can be stupid. Quite frankly, a lot of people are stupid, in this country and otherwise.

But now? Anyone who voted for Trump now has voted for a man who not only rounded up immigrants and put them in concentration camps separated from their families; bungled the response to COVID-19 so badly that the American death toll easily surpassed every other country on Earth; has poisoned the Supreme Court to the extent that they overturned years of precedence with Roe V. Wade and has basically given Trump cart-blanche to do whatever he wants while he's president; was the first president in history to refuse to concede on election day; was impeached for crimes in office not once but TWICE; was instrumental to and passionately supportive of the full-on attempted coup at the U.S. capitol on January 6, 2021 that could've very easily resulted in the deaths of his own Vice President and multiple members of Congress; has spoken glowingly of despots like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and even said he will be "a dictator on day one" if elected again; has both used slogans originally used by modern American Neo-Nazis ("America First") and purportedly told one of his ex-subordinates that he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler's...but also has by the day proven more and more just how mentally inept, vindictive, and mean-spirited he truly is.

And unlike in his previous races, Trump is ahead in the popular vote too. We can't just blame this on the electoral college being antiquated and gerrymandered AF like in the Trump-Clinton or Bush-Gore elections. Even if all of the third-party voters in this country had grown a bloody brain cell and voted for Harris so as to show solidarity against Trump and his form of American fascism, it still somehow wouldn't be enough. We could potentially blame this on lower voter turn-out -- according to what I'm seeing so far, even with all the votes not counted in this race yet, it looks like there were far less votes cast this election than in the last one, though likely still more than the 2016 race. But even so, I don't think that's the only problem. I truly think there were just a lot of people who turned out en-masse to vote for Trump. And all I can think in regards to those people is...

This is beyond stupidity or even selfishness. This is cruelty. This is large swaths of people deciding that they want fellow American citizens to suffer -- because in their minds, if those people suffer, that'll somehow make them happy. This is a large chunk of America saying, "yeah, you know all that crap about 'liberty and justice for all'? Screw that, I want a 'strong man' to bully people different from me for my own amusement." And -- perhaps -- there's also an element of feeling like their vote doesn't really have any consequences for them, so why should they care if the man they voted for is a god-awful person? It's not like that man will hurt them.

I had hoped. I had hoped, seeing the outpouring of support from liberals, independents, and conservatives for Harris/Walz. I'd hoped, seeing how many ex-Trump appointees were standing up against him, how much people were shouting their disdain for Project 2025 from the rooftops, and how many women were protesting in the face of Roe V. Wade being overturned. I truly had started to hope that America would prove we'd grown beyond our country's own original sin -- how our United States preached freedom for all while still being built on the backs of slaves and refusing to grant a vote to over half their population -- by electing a smart, successful, charismatic woman of color who sees our country as great in potential and wants us to pursue that potential as our first female president, rather than backtracking all the slow progress we've made over the last 200+ years.

But now...my hope has faded. My heart is in pieces and the world is so dark. I hardly know how I'll function at work tomorrow, even if I know somehow, I have to try. We'll all have to stand somehow. Somehow, someway...we'll have to find the strength. We'll have to stand, and we'll have to keep moving forward, even when it feels like we're a Little Mermaid walking on knives.

We'll have to stand.

[mariacallous]

Rhetoric has a history. The words democracy and tyranny were debated in ancient Greece; the phrase separation of powers became important in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ’40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description of his opponents as “radical-left thugs” who “live like vermin.”

This language isn’t merely ugly or repellant: These words belong to a particular tradition. Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped “cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and the People.” In occupied Warsaw, a 1941 poster displayed a drawing of a louse with a caricature of a Jewish face. The slogan: “Jews are lice: they cause typhus.” Germans, by contrast, were clean, pure, healthy, and vermin-free. Hitler once described the Nazi flag as “the victorious sign of freedom and the purity of our blood.”

Stalin used the same kind of language at about the same time. He called his opponents the “enemies of the people,” implying that they were not citizens and that they enjoyed no rights. He portrayed them as vermin, pollution, filth that had to be “subjected to ongoing purification,” and he inspired his fellow communists to employ similar rhetoric. In my files, I have the notes from a 1955 meeting of the leaders of the Stasi, the East German secret police, during which one of them called for a struggle against “vermin activities” (there is, inevitably, a German word for this: Schädlingstätigkeiten), by which he meant the purge and arrest of the regime’s critics. In this same era, the Stasi forcibly moved suspicious people away from the border with West Germany, a project nicknamed “Operation Vermin.”

This kind of language was not limited to Europe. Mao Zedong also described his political opponents as “poisonous weeds.” Pol Pot spoke of “cleansing” hundreds of thousands of his compatriots so that Cambodia would be “purified.”

In each of these very different societies, the purpose of this kind of rhetoric was the same. If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them. If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If they are vermin, they don’t get to enjoy freedom of speech, or freedoms of any kind. And if you squash them, you won’t be held accountable.

Until recently, this kind of language was not a normal part of American presidential politics. Even George Wallace’s notorious, racist, neo-Confederate 1963 speech, his inaugural speech as Alabama governor and the prelude to his first presidential campaign, avoided such language. Wallace called for “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” But he did not speak of his political opponents as “vermin” or talk about them poisoning the nation’s blood. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps following the outbreak of World War II, spoke of “alien enemies” but not parasites.

In the 2024 campaign, that line has been crossed. Trump blurs the distinction between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants—the latter including his wife, his late ex-wife, the in-laws of his running mate, and many others. He has said of immigrants, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.” He has claimed that many have “bad genes.” He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.” He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.” Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”

His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.

These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held up prefabricated signs: Mass Deportation Now. Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan: Trump Was Right About Everything. This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right.

These phrases have not been put on posters and banners at random in the final weeks of an American election season. With less than three weeks left to go, most candidates would be fighting for the middle ground, for the swing voters. Trump is doing the exact opposite. Why? There can be only one answer: because he and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win. The deliberate dehumanization of whole groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “bloodbath” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; the cultivation of hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents—none of this has been used successfully in modern American politics.

But neither has this rhetoric been tried in modern American politics. Several generations of American politicians have assumed that American voters, most of whom learned to pledge allegiance to the flag in school, grew up with the rule of law, and have never experienced occupation or invasion, would be resistant to this kind of language and imagery. Trump is gambling—knowingly and cynically—that we are not.

[thyfleshc0nsumed]

hey crazy question, since you said there is no evil what would you call hitler evil? trump? mussolini? genghis khan? jeffrey dahmer? jeffrey epstein? KKK members? IDF? and if they're evil then i guess you're telling me child rapists are the only ones that shouldn't be called evil? why is that?

I'm gonna ignore your bad faith misreading of my ideas and your attempt to insinuate I am a child abuser and answer your first question for other ppls sake, cuz I think it is a reasonable thing ppl might be grappling with.

In a word, no.

In a few more words, I think the question fails to properly interrogate what I mean when I refer to evil. 'Evil' is a component of a moral framework, and I feel that moral frameworks are by and large shallow and not very useful in furthering for understandings of the world around us, or very conducive to creating material change, from an individual scale to a societal scale.

The central idea I put forward in that post is that it is not some grand moral badness that enables violence and abuse, but rather systems of power. All of your examples speak to this. You mention the wealthy, political leaders, a state backed by a global superpower, and a group that was comprised of people with systemic power over their victims.

Viewing them merely as "evil" is frankly uncurious and in some ways, cyclical and thought terminating. It begs the question: "they're bad because they're bad because they're bad."

We have NO disagreement in the fact that what those people do or did have produced violence and harm, many on a scale which is difficult to fully comprehend the magnitude of. It is equally difficult to understand even how one could act with such cruelty towards fellow human beings. But just because it is difficult to understand does not mean it is impossible. They didn't do those things because they were born with some kind of evil gene or soul.

They, like you and I, were created by the context of the world around them. If Adolf Hitler died as a child, would Germany have been rid of its antisemitism or have lost its imperial ambitions? Would war have been averted? Certainly not. There were specific, relatively measurable conditions which allowed fascism to flower. If not him, someone else would have helmed that movement.

If Adolf Hitler were born in another place and time, he would not be Adolf Hitler in any meaningful sense. A person is more or less a sum of their environment. People cannot exist outside the context that they do in fact exist in.

And so to then declare someone as 'evil' amounts to saying just about nothing. It's zero sum. If people do harm simply because they are evil, then what can be done? Create a list of them and then systematically exterminate them?

Many people have twisted my words and claimed that what I am saying is that we should expose our bellies and allow bigots to gut us, or that I equivocate violence against oppressors and violence against the oppressed. This is categorically untrue. When violence is brought against you, violent response can be prudent.

But what happens after the relations of power have been altered? When the abuser or oppressor no longer has the power to harm you? Is there reason to harm them besides to punish or sate a desire for revenge? If they no longer have the means to do 'evil,' then what purpose does violence against them serve besides for the sake of our own bloodlust?

You will not see me shed a tear for Israeli settlers killed by opposition forces, or for abusers killed by a victim defending themself because those relations of power are still in place. Settlers can leave, soldiers can dodge the draft, and abusers can stop abusing.

But if they settle, kill, and abuse because they are 'evil,' then what choice did they have to begin with? And what can be done to stop colonialism, state violence, and abuse in the future? Are evil people just going to stop being born?

The framework of evil adds nothing, gives no solutions, and hinders progress by giving us amnesty for not looking at our own relationship to power structures. But a materialist, analytical framework provides us tools to deconstruct those structures and hopefully move beyond them.