#theme: islamophobia

[the-boys-analysis]

Thinking about this further, it may be the result of a conflict between accurate representation of how far-right women promote fascism in the modern world and Sonnenshine's desire for a plot depicting Stormfront as likable for a while and then dramatically revealing she is a fascist and the viewer fell for her act. Sonnenshine has described in an interview (NOTE: track down interview) wanting Stormfront to represent modern fascists who seem to say reasonable things and then later reveal a more dangerous worldview. Sonnenshine may have once been a fan of Lauren Southern, not grasping her wider politics, and then later felt betrayed when she saw Southern dog-whistle Nazi ideology (I'm guessing), but this is not a normal interpretation of Southern.

People don't tend to like her unless they're far-right themselves and reasonably okay rubbing shoulders with Nazi and Nazi-adjacent people. Southern particularly appeals to a right-wing libertarian subset that both abstractly supports the right of white supremacists to play a role in politics and winds up concretely supporting them as a reflection of such values, ending up in the crowd pandered to with alt-lite gesticulations of the good western world opposing the scary Muslim world. Maybe Sonnenshine was loosely in this crowd, believing Southern had a general point about women being threatened by scary non-white immigrants injecting misogynistic cultural values and didn't pick up on her literally being a fascist until she said something about a shadowy conspiracy of globalists secretly pulling the strings to lead the western world to ruin, and then Sonnenshine realized Southern was basically just a Nazi pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories... but that doesn't make for good TV.

It's not flattering to say you were taken in by Lauren Southern. Southern's whole platform is based on antifeminism and white supremacism, just abstracted into buzzwords and dog whistles. You can't say you fell for it without that revealing something about your own politics. I highly suspect Stormfront's rant to Adam Bourke (in likable feminist persona) represents Sonnenshine's own politics as a feminist, so it would be embarrassing as a feminist surrounded by other feminists to admit attraction to a far-right antifeminist demagogue, which would encourage Sonnenshine to edit Stormfront's likable side to a straight-up act with overt feminist politics to later be revealed as a lie rather than as two sides of the same Reichsadler-bearing coin.

It's also just more dramatic to have the character project the persona of a progressive activist and then suddenly drop the act in an extreme way, massacring non-white civilians, then slipping back into the act, and later dramatically revealing she's a literal Nazi from WWII, suddenly speaking with a German accent and making Final Solution allusions. That is more interesting than far-right politics dressed up in likable terms, at times revealing antisemitism while not changing that much from the normal patter. It's better TV to have such a dramatic shift.

It's also a bad representation of how far-right women actually function in the modern world. If you want your show to depict the world as it is, just through a bit of abstraction into a superhero metaphor, changing up how it actually works is detrimental to that end. A better depiction might be similar to the cases of Laci Green and Arielle Scarcella, who initially presented as progressive feminist influencers but had noticeable far-right tendencies (Islamophobia and transphobia, respectively) that when routinely criticized, sent them looking for support on the right. When they found the far-right community accepting (plying them with lovebombing), they flipped to advocating for the far-right with their Islamophobic and transphobic values front and center. In Scarcella's case, she remained an influencer and just flipped her content to being Tucker Carlson-esque. If Stormfront were based on one of these cases, she would look a lot different but would accurately reflect how a progressive feminist influencer would end up promoting the far-right.

Or maybe Sonnenshine could just own being susceptible to Lauren Southern's preaching, coming from a right-wing background or something, and make Stormfront more accurate to how far-right influencer women actually work.

Stormfront and Lauren Southern

I'm reevaluating some of my thoughts on the TV show version of Stormfront. Even though I think her main writer, Rebecca Sonnenshine, is a feminist with radical feminist beliefs and that she projects some of them into Stormfront's progressive persona at the beginning of season two when she's supposed to be likable, I'm not sure I would characterize that persona as specifically feminist. I think Stormfront is derivative of alt-right influencer Lauren Southern and that her rant about the "Girls Get It Done" sanitized feminist message being bad for suggesting she would think women are superior ("I think chicks and dicks are in it together,") is a reference to Southern's "Why I am not a feminist" video for the far-right Rebel Media.

In Southern's video, she plainly lays out her politics as against "feminism" or "third-wave feminism" (in quotes because her definitions of these concepts are inaccurate and more just buzzwords about the antagonistic left), and she uses MRA talking points about ways men suffer and doesn't give a nuanced view past demonizing feminists. It all fits into the pattern of far-right propaganda that works in tandem to radicalize its viewers. In Canada, it's scary enough to call it neo-fascist; in America, we just call it normal right-wing media. Though I think Stormfront is supposed to evoke this kind of figure, it's also distorted and abstracted into what appears to be a reasonable feminist (or, at least, the semblance of such) calling out a capitalist distortion of feminism in-line with Maeve standing opposed to rainbow-washing marketing.

It's difficult to determine the precise distinctions in Stormfront's portrayal.

[legallyacceptibleurl]

why is @kick-a-long casually reblogging from this dude 🤨

ID: a screenshot of a post @kick-a-long reblogged from @startrek-themed-barmitzvah. the post itself is not relevant and is cut off, all you can see is a black and white photo of two women. End ID.

transmisogyny, ableism (r slur), anti arabism and islamophobia under the cut

for clarity, this is a different post (from not too long ago)

ID: a reblog by @startrek-themed-barmitzvah on a different post, on 29 aug:

“Some swiss dude makes evidence-free claims about israel on his pink webbed-site w/cat icons and retards on tumblr eat it up like the gazabots fundraisers and hamasnik propaganda from the big islamic terrorist blogs [laughing crying emoji]”

End ID.

this guy has been ban evading for years, most of the time his url is something along the lines of oxford comma. usually he pals around with fash blogs and harasses poc, trans people & muslims before he gets banned (again) and immediately remakes (again)

reblogging a commentless reblog of someone means you have to either be on their blog, or follow them so they show up on your dash

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

man I really would love to see an (explicitly) religious companion on Doctor Who. esp one who's written in such a way as makes their faith relevant to the storylines and challenges and tests it but ultimately remains respectful and keeps the theme of it relevant within the specific science fiction setting that Doctor Who occupies. I personally just think that would be great.

[altschmerzes]

really gonna need everyone who intends to be posting about, following, etc, the met gala tonight to be acutely fucking aware of the racism, antisemitism, misogyny, islamophobia, and other ENORMOUS bigotries behind karl lagerfeld and how reprehensible it is to have an event like this themed and styled after a man like that.

[pbscore]

If a person doesn’t have a single post about freeing Palestine or any posts directly from Palestinian people about their own culture/history and/or they refuse to acknowledge or even use the word ‘genocide’ for what’s happening right now…that person is most likely going to be a Zionist.

This ain’t even a joke y’all and this isn’t about ‘witch hunting’ people either. A LOT of Zionists/soft Zionists (people who do the ‘both sides’ bs) have the same theme to them:

They’ll constantly boost posts only about antisemitism (which on the surface, is valid to talk about at any time) but there will be NO posts about aiding Palestinians, no posts from Palestinian bloggers, news outlets, journalists on the ground, videos of the devastation happening, etc. They’ll hyperfocus ONLY on antisemitism, which can range from posting about an armed antisemite walking around outside of a synagogue (clearly bad) to getting mad at anti-Zionists and Palestinian people in general, validly criticizing Israel’s genocidal policies (literally, bare minimum human decency).

Far too many popular ‘liberal/leftie’ blogs here on tumblr have already unmasked themselves as softcore colonialists just because they need to center themselves in a situation that isn’t about them, specifically and are easily giving ammo to white nationalists against Muslims and Arabic people worldwide.

Listen, I know people want to highlight the importance of how dangerous antisemitism and islamophobia are for Jewish and Muslim people right now and it is paramount that more people can clock it when it happens or try to prevent it from happening.

However…A LOT of liberal/leftie Zionists who act like they’re doing that by speaking on behalf of the current peoples being murdered without actively engaging with or sharing ANY media or material created by Palestinian, Lebanese, or any other peoples that Israel is attacking (especially if that media does not portray Israel in a good light) are not actually dedicated to decolonization or anti-imperialist activism. Period.

And one last point I want to make:

Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. They are not the same thing and Jewish people have a much longer history within anti-Zionist activism than a LOT of liberal/leftie Zionists think. Some of them are fully aware of it and just want to use Judaism as a shield against any criticisms targeting Israel’s inherently colonialist history of the past 70+ years. That isn’t fair to Jewish people who are and have been constantly protesting against Israel’s occupation of Palestine nor is it fair to any of the people in Palestine and Lebanon and Egypt who have been and currently are dealing with the impact of the occupation’s wrath.

[mariacallous]

Recently, Planned Parenthood released a statement on the Oct. 7th attacks and the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. Their statement condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians, and specifically condemned sexual assaults committed against Israeli women during the violence. They also noted how thousands of Palestinian women and children had been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, stated the need for Palestinian women to maintain access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, and condemned both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The social media reaction to such a balanced and empathetic statement? Furious, unrelenting anger.

The statement was quote-tweeted thousands of times by social media users outraged by the statement. Planned Parenthood was accused of spreading Israeli propaganda, ignoring Palestinian deaths and fabricating rape claims, and enabling genocide. These outraged users aren’t conservatives who always oppose Planned Parenthood—they’re progressives furious that an organization they normally support put out a statement they hated. Now there are calls to end donations and Planned Parenthood staffers are fighting with donors. Their own employees, affiliates and organizers are making public statements against them.

This outcome was predictable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of social media dynamics. And it raises an obvious question—why release a statement at all?

Metastatic social justice

It’s actually quite common for organizations and activists to get into hot water these days by addressing areas outside their expertise. Trans activists in Vancouver loudly insisted there can be no Trans Liberation without Palestinian Liberation, which caused pushback all over Canada. Two years ago, New York City’s Pride organizations courted controversy by excluding LGBT police officers from the city’s Pride parade in the name of racial justice. There are YIMBY housing organizations taking a stand on abortion rights and climate organizations demanding a Federal Job Guarantee.

There’s a common theme here. Organizations that appear to be single-issue advocacy groups are increasingly commenting and taking stances on issues outside of their narrow focus. Activism is becoming more global in nature—if you are an activist for one cause, you’re expected to speak up about all causes now. It’s not enough to ‘stay in your lane’, you need to be protesting and advocating for all forms of social justice. Pro-choice advocacy is now part of your racial justice non-profit. Jobs packages are in your environmental bills. Your LGBT organization has a stance on ‘Defund The Police’ and your housing group has a stance on Israel/Palestine. Social justice is metastasizing.

This phenomenon has happened on the right as well—see the NRA transitioning from being a somewhat non-partisan group to essentially being an arm of the GOP—but it’s especially striking in the current progressive movement. There’s a real sense in which NYC Pride is no longer an LGBT advocacy organization, but rather an overall progressive social justice organization. That may sound like an exaggeration, but they kicked out a gay organization (the Gay Officers Action League) to accommodate another form of social justice. It’s the internal logic behind a LGBT Pride march excluding LGBT people.

This also explains the online fury at Planned Parenthood. Their statement was thoughtful and balanced, but deviated from the dominant and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian progressive narrative. Their donors expect them to advocate not just for progressive goals in women’s health, but progressive goals everywhere.

This type of activist mission creep risks stunting the progress on the core issues that social justice advocates care about.

The downsides of missions creep

The urge towards mission creep comes from a reasonable place. If you care so deeply that you spend your free time (or your career!) as an activist for a particular issue, the odds are that you also have strong feelings on many other issues. You’re also likely to live in a bubble of activists and people who think like you, and so your conversations professionally and socially may often center around all sorts of political issues. But as an activist it’s important to remember that most people you’re trying to reach are not like you and don’t think like you.

The typical voter is over 50 and does not have a college degree. They also don’t think about politics all that much. They are far, far away from the mindset of a typical activist. And when they do have political opinions, those opinions are far more varied and haphazard than a committed political partisan would guess. I think a few minutes scrolling the twitter feed of the American Voter Bot is invaluable to understand how voters think. This bot takes real voters and profiles them in brief tweets. While some look as expected—a Democrat who supports gun control, for instance—many look like this:

Most people are a confusing mix of demographic signals, issue positions and partisan identification, and they rarely fit squarely within one political tribe. That’s the danger of turning a single-issue advocacy group into a generalized progressive messaging group—you’ll end up alienating a far wider group of potential allies than you realize.

If Issue Group X declares loud progressive positions not just on Issue X but also on gun control, abortion, Palestine, Medicare For All, trans rights, free trade and school prayer, they won’t attract a large diverse group of people who care about Issue X. They’ll end up attracting a narrow slice of progressive activists who are ideologically pristine enough to agree with them on every issue.

The ultimate result of activist mission creep is that your issue ceases to be something that people across the ideological spectrum can work together on. It becomes coded as a red tribe vs blue tribe issue, gets swallowed by the general culture war, and progress grinds to a halt as partisan warfare starts.

The most likely outcome of Planned Parenthood voicing an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that they make any difference at all towards that conflict. It’s that they alienate their own supporters with differing views on Israel/Palestine. They’ve undercut their own ability to make progress on reproductive care and reproductive rights for no gain.

One thing at a time

None of this is to say that individuals shouldn’t care about many issues at once—they obviously should. And general purpose ideological organizations can and should tackle many policy areas. But it’s a poor strategy for single-issue groups to try to become general purpose organizations. There are real benefits to staying in your lane.

One example of a movement that has done a reasonable job at this is the pro-housing YIMBY movement. While there are some instances of YIMBY groups straying from their purpose, for the most part they’ve done a good job staying narrowly focused, and that that focus has allowed them great success.

YIMBYism is a far more ideologically diverse movement than many people realize. There are conservative YIMBYs, neoliberal YIMBYs, Democratic YIMBYs, libertarian YIMBYs, and many left or socialist YIMBYs (although in true socialist tradition, some want to break away from the YIMBY label and create a sub-label PHIMBY). This isn’t just a feel good story about how conservatives and liberals can be friends—this has a real impact on YIMBYs getting things done. It’s part of why you see both Republican and Democratic officials at the local level working towards YIMBY solutions in different cities, and why those solutions can often pass without bitter partisan warfare. It’s why the YIMBY Act in Congress had Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. It’s why YIMBYs are scoring victories in blue states like California and red states like Montana.

This sort of thing matters. YIMBYs are a big tent and they’re getting things done. It’s hard enough to make real change happen on a single policy or a single issue. Whole movements try for years and still sometimes fail. Single-issue groups trying to address every issue at once aren’t going to succeed. The urge towards mission creep is strong, and too many groups are weakening their core strengths to address problems they can’t solve. Single-issue organizations shouldn’t burden themselves with having the answer to every question, with having a stance on every issue, and with having to be all things to all people. It’s ok not to comment. It’s ok to stay in your lane and just work on one problem. It’s ok to try to change the world just one issue at a time.

[jsprnt]

eli’s masterlist!

Requests: closed

I will not write anything including:

smut, racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, miscarriages, ignorance, religious hatred/themes.

please keep it respectful on here, and please upkeep the importance of being kind to others 🤍

Liverpool FC masterlist

including: virgil, trent, dominik, darwin and andrew

Jude Bellingham

one shots:

fight

you and your boyfriend fight about how much less time he’s been spending with you

confessions

your vacation with your best friend doesn’t go as expected

series:

Americano (completed)

What happens if two individuals who absolutely despise each other are forced to interact after unforeseen events occur?

Kenan Yıldız

one shots:

jealousy jealousy

still being somewhat friends with your ex brings up some jealousy in your relationship

precious

catching your boyfriend studying about your culture before he meets your parents, makes you a tad emotional

break

a no-contact relationship break, is shaken when your boyfriend finds out you’re getting hit on by other guys

last eight

celebrating the win against austria with your boyfriend

injury

concern and worry gnaw at you when you hear of your boyfriend’s injury, making you rush over as fast as possible

Arda Güler

one shots:

first meeting

meeting your boyfriend’s parents

language barrier

it’s difficult to communicate with a cute boy when you don’t speak each other’s language fluently

[3liza]

i have no idea how i missed this but last Monday three little girls were stabbed to death and eight other children and their dance teachers were stabbed by a 17 year old boy at a taylor swift-themed dance class in Southport, England, and the far right immediately started spreading misinformation that the perp was Muslim and "off the boat", which he isnt, and there have been violent riots and counterprotests since then. this kind of shit is getting worse (all of it)

[fiapple]

Okay, because I literally had no clue what this year's theme was until tonight, here's a few articles on why this year's met gala is especially fucked up.

(If you were unaware, this year’s theme is Karl Lagerfeld & his work.)

Trigger warnings for the articles include: racism (specifically mentions of blackface & yellowface), nazism & discussion of the holocaust, islamophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, fatphobia, & healthism.

TLDR: Lagerfeld was born to nazis who willfully avoided punishment, became an accomplice in said avoidance by never disavowing their nazi ties, put models in both black face & yellowface, made repeated atrocious comments about fat women, compared muslim immigrants to nazis, & a whole lot more.

In short, fuck the met gala.

[hpacearofest]

Harry Potter Ace/Aro-Spec Fest

This fest is created to highlight any character who you see as asexual, aromantic, or anywhere on those spectrums.  Any era, any age, anyone.  Give me your QPRs, your sex-repulsed lovey-doveys, your hypersexual aromantics, and everything else you got.  As long as you give me a main character from the HP fandom who is a-spec, your work has a home with this fest.  Accepting fic, fanart, podfics, any medium your heart desires to give us.

Important dates

Announce: 6/24

Prompting: 7/14-7/31

Claiming:  8/1-9/22

Posting: 10/1

Guidelines

All content is allowed, no restrictions on what can be submitted so long as it is thoroughly tagged and doesn't violate tumblr or AO3 TOS.  Mods will have final approval on whether or not a work is sufficiently tagged in regards to potentially triggering matters in works rated M or above.

Etiquette

The goal of this fest is to celebrate and highlight the joys (and some of the stresses) of the lives of the HP-verse characters who fall into the a- sexual and romantic spectrums.  

There will be no ship or character bashing (even if it’s a fandom-wide hated character, this is for bringing others up, not them down).

SALS - Ship And Let Ship.

YKINMKBYKIOK - Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is Okay.  Yes, this fest is about a-spec relationships. Yes, that means they can still be kinky as can be.  No, that does not mean you can shame others for what they want to create so long as it is duly tagged.

Each person has unique lived experiences within and and without the LGBTQIA+ community.  Just because you don’t see yourself in how someone is portraying something, doesn’t make them wrong for it.

NO RACISM. NO ISLAMOPHOBIA. NO SEXISM. NO TRANSPHOBIA. NO HOMOPHOBIA. NO ABLEISM. No hate allowed in your works, even as a plot point.  Find your angst somewhere else, we are trying to cultivate a positive experience.  

Written fic

Written fic should preferably be longer than 500 words

There is no maximum word count

Must be a completed work, no on-going series to be completed after the fest

Works must be stand-alone (can be part of a collection but one must be able to read it without reading previous parts)

Using a beta is strongly encouraged but not required (if you would like help finding one, feel free to join the fest discord server to find them)

Art work

Work must be exclusive to this fest

Digital and physical art are both allowed as long as scans/photos of the physical are clear

Podfic work

Please provide proof of permission from the creator (unless it is yourself) which includes a screenshot of a blanket permission statement on their profile as long as the username matches 

Selected work must fit the theme of the fest as well as the 500 word minimum for written fics

Make sure you upload it with the author’s original tags as well as the fest tags and podfic notation

Submission

All works must be uploaded to the AO3 collection by the deadline of September 28 (3 days before posting  pending any extensions granted

Add acearofest account as co-author so mods can just double check for correctly tagged content and posting as well as a final once over of the SPaG/formatting

[morrotober]

Hi everyone! To kick off our seasonal Morro events, our first one will be the spring collab event!

This year our theme is flowers/flower language.

Here's how it works: Sign-ups for a flower will occur in April (though this is not a deadline and you may continue to sign up for flowers in May).

Please note: you do NOT have to sign-up in order to participate in this event but it does help provide us a way to see who is doing what and help participants find others to collab with!

Participants will then create a work (or multiple if they wish!) that fits the theme/flower they chose and this will be posted any time from May 19-31. Anything goes--fics, art, gifs, cosplay, etc. As this is a "collab" event, we do encourage participants to collab with others and try their hand at any flowers that have not been claimed yet! You're also more than welcome to do multiple flowers/works!

For posting, simply post on tumblr any time from May 19 to 31 and tag this blog and we will reblog it here!

Rules:

No hate (racism, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc) will be allowed, except in the context of exploring those themes.

OCs, AUs, and other non-canon content will be allowed.

Please tag/disclose all adult content properly so we may do the same when we reblog it here (we will allow adult content but we strongly encourage you to keep it rated T as the Ninjago fandom contains a wide range of ages).

Any other questions or concerns? Feel free to drop by and ask us! This really isn't an event with a lot of strict rules as long as you have fun and respect others :)

And as always, come talk to us in the Morrotober discord server!

[trek-tracks]

De Day Redux

So, was DeForest Kelley's 104rd birthday on Saturday (January 20, 2024). Unfortunately, I was incredibly busy this weekend, and couldn't get a screening to work for the day itself! However, today, Monday, January 22, 2024, I will be doing a belated De Day event.

As per tradition, I'm going to screen some of his work, including movies, TV eps, and probably some Trek. It'll be a wild grab bag, and I'll take requests. I'm going to start around 5pm ET on the trektracks kosmi channel.

Rules:

Be kind to others. I run a civil, loving screening room. Racism/homophobia/transphobia/antisemitism/Islamophobia etc. will not be tolerated.

To that end, please remember that De did a lot of westerns, and that these and other films of his era are a product of their time, and include, for example, depictions of Indigenous characters that we would now consider inappropriate (for good reason). The screening of an episode does not indicate my endorsement of its content or message.

I will attempt to include warnings at the start of each episode, but content may include dark themes, sexual content, violence, death, alcohol and drug use, etc. Please know yourself and your ability to handle these, and exit if anything makes you uncomfortable.

The tone is light and joyful. Loving snark and critique are welcome, but remember that people in the room may enjoy these films, and we're not ripping them apart angrily. We're celebrating De and his work.

While the tone of the discussion will probably be PG-13, this is primarily a by-adults, for-adults event. I am an adult. Please only attend if you are over 18.

I hope to see you there!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Luke Hallam at The UnPopulist:

For the past seven days, the U.K. has witnessed its worst riots in over a decade. What started off last week as a wave of protests over the horrific murder of three young girls, fueled by false claims about the identity of the attacker on social media, has metastasized into something far more profound: a deep fracturing of relations between communities that threatens to do lasting damage to Britain’s social fabric.

Origin of a Race Riot

Last Monday, a knife-wielding teenager entered through an open fire door at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the seaside town of Southport and killed three participants, all girls under the age of 10. He also injured eight more young children and two adults. It was an evil crime, the horror made all the more acute by the youth of the victims and by the fact that someone would target for such an atrocity, of all things, a joyful summer dance party. What came next should be considered a textbook example of how harmful lies can spread on social media. There are generally good reasons to be wary of finger-pointing when it comes to “fake news” and social media’s role in spreading it. But in this instance, it’s hard to overstate the extent of the hysteria that was unleashed. Mere hours after the attack, the killer was seemingly identified as Ali al-Shakati, a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived in the United Kingdom by boat, and was known to the British security services as a potential threat. Within minutes of the first social media post identifying al-Shakati, the story was picked up by a dubious news organization calling itself “Channel 3 Now.” The al-Shakati story was then parroted by Russia Today, and began appearing in a raft of viral posts on social media, including X, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Right-wing influencers with huge followings, like Andrew Tate, amplified the story, and various posts amassed thousands, often millions, of impressions.

Unrest broke out initially in Southport, Hartlepool, and London. Rioters released smoke flares and set fire to a riot van; they threw trash cans and bottles at police officers. As the unrest spread, it was the far right—an ad hoc coalition of former members of the English Defense League, supporters of notorious far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, and ordinary people swept along on social media—fueling the violence. It was common to see English flags and chants of “English till I die.” Mosques and Islamic centers were targeted in a horrific wave of xenophobic thuggery. It was, in large part, a genuine race riot—not a phrase to use lightly. In the first three days, it was well known that the suspect was only 17 years old, which means that by law they couldn’t be identified in the media. Still, in an attempt to head off the violence, the police released some limited information confirming that the alleged perpetrator of the atrocity was in fact born in the U.K. Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist-right Reform UK party and a newly-minted member of parliament, echoed a widespread fear that the establishment was conspiring with the police forces to protect an illegal migrant for fear of fueling an anti-immigrant narrative, irresponsibly declaring: “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us.”

Finally, on Thursday afternoon, a judge took the unusual step of allowing the media to release the full identity of the alleged perpetrator despite his being a minor, noting that the suspect was only a few days away from turning 18. It turns out that Ali al-Shakati doesn’t exist. The real suspect, Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old born in Wales to Rwandan parents, was not a refugee. We don’t know that he’s not Muslim, nor that his motives were unrelated to some sort of Islamist ideology—though, given that only 2% of Rwanda’s population is Muslim, it seems unlikely. Of course, it hardly matters. There’s no earthly justification for violently attacking mosques, harassing the public, and setting fire to police vans.

[...]

Far-Right Xenophobia Capitalizes On Britain’s Integration Issues

There are two things to say in response to all of this: two things that may at first glance appear to be mutually exclusive, but are nevertheless both true. The first is that the right-wing polemicists have long been packaging these problems together into one overarching, catastrophist narrative of British decline. The problem is, there is no evidence that the knife crime wave has been directly fueled by asylum seekers. As bad as knife crime and other problems may be, it is also simply incorrect to assert that the country has in recent years become, in the words of one representative commentator, “a lawless country where there is no justice at all.” What’s more, right-wing catastrophism is hypocritical insofar as it has often been fueled by the very same politicians who were in government until last month, and spectacularly failed to tackle most of these problems. Indeed, it was the Conservative government that slashed the number of police officers and presided over the arrival of a record number of refugees, while failing to find a humane, durable solution for processing them. (In addition, it’s notable that even as one part of the country, Scotland, managed to successfully bring its knife crime problem under control by adopting a community-led agenda, Conservative politicians in Westminster made vacuous pronouncements about law and order that amounted to nothing for most of the country.)

The second thing to say is that there are real problems with Britain’s model of dealing with ethnic and religious diversity. Whenever there is social unrest or communal strife in France, for example, Brits and Americans like to put the blame squarely on the French model of laïcité—an imperfect approach to the separation of church and state that is often caricatured as consisting in naked animus against religious minorities. But Britain’s own highly communitarian approach—which often gives a free pass to the most radical elements within a religious community—does not seem to be faring much better, with the result that elements within some immigrant communities in Britain’s major cities have failed to properly integrate, and, as the present riots show, longstanding resentments have been left to fester.

Over the past week in the United Kingdom, far-right race riots over the UK’s immigration policies and the Southport stabbing have sprung up all over the Home Nations, especially in England.

These riots are fueled by paranoid Islamophobia, anti-immigrant xenophobia, and fake news.

[eretzyisrael]

ByGabe Kaminsky

“It was a lesson when imam told me to go speak to people,” Walz also said at the event. “I have pushed back through my whole career on the demonization of Islam, on the demonization of immigrants. … In this space, Imam Zaman is right on this, there is Islamophobia, there is a hatred that is being stirred.”

Zaman, who is the director of Minnesota’s Muslim American Society, asserted on Oct. 7, 2023, that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks” after 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas terrorists. His organization, which has a related chapter that once came under fire following children at a 2019 event it hosted calling for murdering Jews, said on Oct. 7 that it “reaffirms its unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.”

Zaman’s social media history includes sharing a link to an article on a website in 2015 for a pro-Hitler film called The Greatest Story Never Told and, in one 2016 example, an official press release issued by Hamas. The press release mourned the death of an Islamist leader in South Asia who was executed after being convicted of war crimes.

In a Friday statement, the Anti-Defamation League said Zaman “has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel.”

“Given his hurtful remarks post-Oct. 7, and absent any recognition of the pain he has caused the Jewish community, we urge all public officials and leaders to avoid meeting with him in the future,” the Anti-Defamation League told the Washington Examiner. “Those who have met with Imam Zaman should clarify that they don’t agree with his toxic views about Jews and the Jewish state.”

[fursasaida]

To be sure, their themes of chauvinist triumphalism aren’t so different from what we’re hearing from Israeli government ministers or Christian Zionist leaders. But unlike Benjamin Netanyahu or John Hagee, Bronze Age Zionists swim alongside (and sometimes argue with) literal neo-Nazis in the fetid, irony-drenched swamps of ultra-reactionary internet subculture. So what are nice Jewish boys like these doing on 4chan? Answering this question might offer insight, not only into the nature of contemporary Zionism but into the broader far-right.

Mimicking Bronze Age Pervert, the fascist manosphere author from whom I’ve forged their namesake, Bronze Age Zionists valorize the aesthetics of Jewish muscle, strength, virility, and warrior ethos with deliberately extravagant flair. Memes from this ecosystem show ripped, White Hebrew warriors roaring alongside a lion; wooing Roman women in some ancient marketplace; hanging their enemies, whether Nazi, Palestinian or leftist; or bullying a slovenly, pink-haired ‘soy boy’—a meme caricaturing liberal men as emasculated by consumer culture. By transforming themselves into muscle-Jews, these and other memes signal, they’ve become the Alphas of Jewish history.

This, anyway, is the ethos of 21st-century muskeljudentum or ‘muscular Judaism,’ as early Zionist theorist Max Nordau put it. And, in the wake of the humiliation of October 7, it comes laced with stone-cold retribution and an urgent need to reclaim masculine honor, glory, and pride. They share quotes from Netanyahu like “the weak crumble, are slaughtered and erased from history while the strong, for good or ill, survive.” Or they celebrate Israel as “a true Nietszchean country,” as one Bronze Age Zionist put it during Israel’s assault on Gaza in December, before indulging in a bit of Proud Boys-esque chest-thumping. “Leftoids can’t comprehend the strong willed in a world of weak men. They hate winners because they are LOSERS.” Much like Israel’s assault itself, the cruelty is the point. But amidst the unbridled Islamophobia, and celebration of “unfathomably based” Israeli soldiers mocking Gazans or issuing exterminationist orders in viral videos from the front lines, one detects the frenzied desperation of a cornered animal, lashing out at any target close at hand.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the seething contempt reserved for Jewish progressives, whom Bronze Age Zionists sometimes refer to as “Quislingsteins” or “shtetlibs.” The former term evokes an uber-nationalist siege mentality, with its obsessive contempt for perceived ‘traitors’ and fifth columnists. The latter castigates liberal Jews in the weak, defenseless and submissive mold of that imagined old-country shtetl of their East-European ancestors—the ‘ghetto Jew’ which, through guns, brawn and steel, these muscle-Jews boast of having willfully overcome.

[...]

To be sure, Bronze Age Zionists do not represent a mass Jewish movement in the Anglo world. The accounts surveyed here are perhaps a few dozen in total, many with only a few thousand followers or less. The majority of English-speaking Jews would recoil at their openly supremacist views, and find the prospect of a Magen David-Sonnenrad alliance despicable and revolting.

At the same time, these accounts reflect, in extreme form, broader trends in the political landscape. “Before Oct 7th, I was an average moderate conservative,” an account named “Kahane Disciple” explained. “Oct 7th changed everything. We saw what people really thought, and that’s when I pulled Kahane down from my book shelf.”

In their thirst for vengeance and dominance, they channel the id of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza as its terrible death toll continues to rise. Right-wing Israeli and American Jewish right-wing leaders eschew 4chan for a larger political stage—but they too seek alliances with White Christian nationalist leaders, denigrate liberal Jews, and celebrate an ethos of muscular Judaism. They have no need for a niche internet subculture, because they possess a state apparatus, and aligned institutions to propagate their ideology.

There are a lot more details on the article, including how these guys' attempts to ingratiate themselves with the neo-Nazis and Groypers are received (not well! It's pretty funny!). For a bit more of a look at the ~respectable, institutional side of this alluded to in this last quoted paragraph, and the common elements running through both scenes, Eli Valley wrote about the run-up to this a few years ago. His piece centered around how his art, which is deliberately grotesque and consciously in the tradition of what the Nazis called "degenerate art," was condoned as antisemitic and even Nazi by other Jews when he caricatured...Meghan McCain. He drew a connection there between Max Nordau's "Muscular Jew," an Israeli distaste for the diaspora, and aesthetics. This piece by Ben Lorber is the same phenomenon, just in the mode of 4chan rather than the mode of august blue checks (of yore) on Twitter: this time, the aesthetics in question lie in right-wing meme culture.

Every nationalism contains the potential for fascism, and this particular version is one that has both haunted and motivated the Israeli project from the beginning. In some ways it is obviously specific to the context of antisemitism and the Holocaust, and in other ways it's bog-standard: a similar reactionary need to prove masculinized dominance through violence has been perceived in the US Gulf War, for instance. But what is, I think, particular to this dynamic is the way it shapes relations between Israel and various parts of the diaspora - racially, institutionally, financially, geopolitically. The role of the muscular Jew psychology or construct in broader Israeli culture (including those who would never identify with it, much as white supremacy functions in the US) is not raised as often as it should be in discussions about Israel as a settler society, IMO.

[mariacallous]

tumbr.com/blog/mariacallous/post/765157871483813888

Yeah related to this and the whole "how to win Michigan" thing is that I know I'm a broken record on this as a Michigander who actually personally knows Arab-Americans in Detroit, but I feel like people not from here talk about it like everyone in that voting bloc is a Palestinian American who personally has family members dying in Gaza. It's a very diverse group of people that has NEVER been a unified voting bloc for either party, but it's people from all over the Middle East, that are not all Muslim, and many whose families came to the U.S. in the early 20th century to work for the auto factories (just like the rest of us descendants-of-immigrants from Detroit!) and so don't have any family members they know who are still there! This includes some Palestinian-Americans. Other Palestinian-Americans came over right after the Nakba in 1948, over 75 years ago... while I'm sure some still have family connections there, many many others do not. But it's just weird that people don't even recognize that huge chunks of Michigan's Arab-American population aren't Palestinian? And obviously, a lot of Arab and Muslim Americans still feel a very close connection to this issue and see parallels to broader Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in how people discuss this, but that doesn't mean they're one-issue voters. Even plenty of Palestinian Michiganders are not. It just feels incredibly ignorant and condescending - and ironically speaking to how much these people fall into these "angry Arab" stereotypes even when they're "leftists" who are supposedly speaking on their behalves. It just makes me mad. What do you fucking know? And also, why do so many people talk about Arab-Americans in Michigan like they wouldn't somehow be counted in the polls that keep showing Harris ahead in Michigan???

My feeling is just that if you're not going to assume that an American purely being of Eastern European descent automatically means they're going to vote based on Ukraine, you should not assume the same of someone about Gaza purely for being of Arab descent. Like Harris was right during the debate that plenty of us Polish-Americans are concerned that if Ukraine falls Poland is next, and how little Trump seems to care about that, but I don't see anyone suggesting that Poles whose families have been in the U.S. for generations are one-issue Ukraine voters... and yet they seem to think that's true with anyone of Arab descent re: Gaza. And point to interviews with activists and students as though they speak for every single person in a group so numerous in the Detroit area that they have theme nights for them at the Major League Sports stadiums there.

Like, when a journalist starts going into random Lebanese or Yemeni delis in Dearborn and interviews the people who work there and the patrons about their politics - doing what they do with Trump voters in white rural areas - then call me. Of course activists are going to fixate on the issue they've dedicated their lives to fighting for. But I'm so tired of people who aren't listening to any other Arab-Americans telling me what my neighbors and friends think.

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