#they’re genocidal maniacs.

[mithliya]

btw both judasvibe and biarritzzz are blatant racists on radblr. biarritzzz is openly calling for genocide (& unironically sharing white female IDF soldiers thirst traps and saying they’re hotter than brown women bc that’s very normal apparently) while judasvibe can be seen in every racist post of hers agreeing wholeheartedly.

“the best thing that could happen is for Gaza to be obliterated… Palestinians bring ruin to any country foolish enough to welcome them.” said by biarritzzz is met with agreement from judasvibe, of course.

[iteh3xael]

It is… disheartening seeing how cruel and hardened my fellow Americans have become to this recent election cycle. Everyone is so far up their own materialistic driven ass that they can’t see past the ads they’ve been fed or lies they’ve been told about “self-care” and other faux therapy speak on whatever social media platform fits their narrative. We went from being proud of our diversity and ingenuity by being trend setters to now being the worst offenders of being parrots for trends that are DESIGNED to be brain rot. Y’all, we HAVE to do better 🙃

[bibleofficial]

It’s funny how many rights we lost? 4 more years of hard right Supreme Court justices nominations? Man, Palestine is safe now! This is very funny! What disgusting privilege you must have. I hope your family gets hit by a car.

a)i live in britain so privilege of pointing & laughing ig b) what right was lost that wasn’t already gone (+ it’s hysterical regardless) c) judges either die or retire & a total of 0 bitches are near death so d) go string ur shein pearls into a noose elsewhere

[chailiker]

smth that used to piss me off about the atla fandom was all the fic about the gaang finding out how zuko got his scar bc every one of them had aang and katara and sokka reacting like wow…that is so fucked up and tragic. and it IS but why would aang, who’s people were systematically murdered by a fire lord, be shocked by the scar story. think critically for two seconds

[twerk4mothman]

Next on Out of Pocket Shit I Have to Say at Work: I get where you’re coming from but please don’t compare real life people to cartoons

The context is: the student said that sonic and hitler are the same

[spacelazarwolf]

You know exactly what I mean. Star of David (which has become the modern day swastika), signs with Hebrew, and honestly sorry if you don’t like it but yarmukas too. I’m not going to go up to every person in a yarmuka and make sure they’re not a genocidal maniac, it’s safer to assume they are because in all likelihood they are. If you don’t like it then tell your community to stop supporting genocide

oh ok so full mask off jew hatred then cool.

[thecatundertheladder]

What you've got to understand is that there is a fundamental difference in the way I ship megastar vs megop.

Because megastar is a fun little what if scenario that adds a bit of tension to their dynamic. It's like what if these two evil genocidal maniacs that try to kill each other worked together and were evil and genocidal together.

Meanwhile megop is just. Canon. It is a fact of life that they are in love. Whether pining, together, or divorced? Doesn’t matter, they’re in love.

[azgfggf]

I love Centaurworld but it drives me CRAZY when people go “Oh yeah Elktaur’s human version ruined it all” because NO! THEY ARE LEGIT THE SAME FELLA! THAT IS THE POINT OF HIS CHARACTER! If the half that became the deer was the half that became human then nothing would’ve changed because they’re literally the same person, just with different forms and opportunities. The point is he would never be happy because he don’t love both sides of himself, and making it so that one side is evil and one side is good kind of endorses his flawed point. Nobody forced the deer to become the Nowhere King, and he STILL became a genocidal maniac. They both bad. Should’ve just stayed as a silly centaur and have fucked up deer kids with the Princess

[northcountrymaid]

it does seem like the tide of the western media is finally turning on israel and palestine but like. too fucking late tbh. it almost feels like they’re doing this only to pretend they never backed israel now that there’s absolutely zero plausible deniability that you can support its existence without being a genocidal maniac so when it inevitably falls they’re going to act like the good guys. like how the uk acts holier than thou abt slavery in the us when they literally benefited from the cotton trade

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/742700762243727361/you-can-tell-you-work-in-academia-with-how-much

Hi, sorry, Asshole Anon here (I’m not giving myself that nickname to lash out, I’m saying it because I was an ass)

To clarify: I mean “I don’t know what to trust anymore” in that “people whom I normally respect and would otherwise agree with are now sharing material that I find either morally indefensible or overtly simplistic, and at the same time people on the ground in Gaza are saying that Hamas IS a liberation organization, so I trust their word, but there is also the existence of the “We Want To Live” protests, and the fact that there’s now apparently a protest against a child that got killed that isn’t widely reported, with an attached video of said protest from somebody on the ground in Gaza, but it’s in Arabic, there are no subtitles, I cannot speak Arabic, and I don’t trust Google Translate”

I just want an objective sense of what is happening on the ground. I want to know what is and is not propaganda, because I (white, raised in a liberal(?) household, surrounded by white people) am especially susceptible to it. Once I have that objective sense of what the people in Gaza want, then I will be able to effectively and efficiently advocate for shit. But that also necessitates listening to orgs like Standing Together, B’Tselem, people IN Israel who want this shit to stop, and hoo BOY that ain’t gonna fly with those people I mentioned because of:

1. BDS saying that the org “normalizes the occupation”, but they’re made up of Palestinian activists and anti-apartheid veterans, I can’t discount their statement, not fully.

2. Netenyahu’s… Netenyahu

3. Twitter’s doing a great job of asserting that everyone in Israel is a — quoting directly here from a half-remembered Tweet — “genocidal maniac”, or wants the bombardment to happen. (Which I know for a fact is not the case, if the protests calling for a new election are anything to go by)

That’s not even getting into the domestic stuff. I’m in an org rn and I’m getting the sinking feeling that they’re gonna drop this thing like a hot potato when a ceasefire gets called. Just sucks.

Anyways, back to improvement. Just closing this out

I agree that we're currently in a paradoxical state where there is simultaneously ALL THE INFORMATION EVER and ACTUALLY NO INFORMATION AT ALL, and that's what makes it difficult to sort out true from false. It's also what contributes to compassion fatigue, where we are able to get extensive real-time information and/or eyewitness accounts about pretty much any tragedy or catastrophe anywhere in the world, and social media has created a space where we are expected to both immediately react to all that information and to do so in the "right" and "correct" way. Which is basically impossible, and is also what burns out young well-meaning people so hard, where they insist that there's nothing to be done except The Revolution, because they have been so inundated with this torrent of human suffering and it seems like small steps are in fact useless. I am a historian and I can tell you upfront that humans are simply not made to process that volume of information about ALL THE BAD THINGS EVERYWHERE. It's also impossible to have an informed opinion on all or sometimes any of it, but there is still the pressure to visibly do so and to do it in a way that fits in with what everyone in your peer group is saying, even if you don't understand it. So yes -- that is absolutely very difficult, and it's hard to filter or parse it.

That said, I don't think we actually need to have painstaking piece-by-piece analysis of every single piece of information out there, because there are in fact so many competing narratives, perspectives, fake news, disinformation campaigns, opinions, etc., and it will lead you to the same information paralysis: there's just too much of it to even start processing, and so your brain just gives up and reverts to those same simplistic cliches and things that "feel" right, regardless of whether or not they are. When you're trying to decide on the fine details of something, it helps to have an overall sense of the context and narrative that they're operating in. So for reference, these are some broad and basic analytic paradigms that I personally use when reading or thinking about any material in regard to the Israel/Hamas situation in particular:

No person of basic good faith and human decency wants the current situation in Gaza to be happening. However, the person/group that has the power to call it off -- i.e. Netanyahu and the current Israeli government -- has not done so despite increasing pressure from Western allies, because the situation is beneficial to Bibi personally and he sees more use in continuing it than making the decision for it to stop.

The governments of Western allies, therefore, can voice disapproval of Israel's actions (which they have been doing more and more frequently) but unless Netanyahu himself makes the choice to end the war, it will not stop. The West has recently given more and more signals that they are not prepared to countenance the ongoing destruction and genocide of Gaza, but yet again, Israel is its own sovereign country with its own powerful government, military, intelligence services, etc. The "anti-imperialists" who think the collective West can just reach in and turn off the violence whenever they please, and have just refused to do so because they're "bad people," are not being realistic. Western allies can exert pressure and leverage, but as long as Netanyahu himself wants to keep going, he will.

"People in Gaza" and "people in Israel" are not homogeneous blocs who think exactly alike. Some people in Gaza support Hamas. Some people do not. Hamas support has recently grown as a result of Israel's post-October 7 response, but it is not unanimous or unquestioned.

Hamas is the entity that started the current war by attacking Israel on October 7 and murdering/raping/kidnapping 1,000+ Israeli civilians. Hamas is also associated with Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and other terrorist regimes/states, which are often defended by Online Leftists simply for being "anti-Western," regardless of how heinous their actions also are.

Netanyahu was wildly unpopular in Israel for MONTHS before this current war, due to his autocratic attempts to neutralize the Israeli Supreme Court and make the country even more of his personal fiefdom. There were huge, massive, ongoing protests against his naked power-grab for almost all of 2023, and he was so preoccupied with pushing it through that he ignored warnings from the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence services that Hamas was planning a major attack. These anti-Netanyahu demonstrations have continued and ramped up in intensity even in the middle of the war/attacks on Gaza.

As such, painting every single Israeli as mindlessly supporting the current actions of Netanyahu and the Israeli government is antisemitic nonsense and reflect the current Western Leftist tendency to assume that "all Israelis" and "all Zionists (read Jews)" are evil and personally responsible for this.

Israeli Jews have a right to exist and to reside on the land currently called Israel. Modern Israel was founded in 1948, three years after the end of WWII and the Holocaust, the greatest incidence of antisemitic mass murder in history, which is a fact that cannot be ignored and which western leftists eagerly calling for its total eradication and treating it as an illegitimate "white western settler colony" nonetheless do in fact repeatedly ignore.

This is why many Jews do not feel safe in other countries, because there has literally been thousands of years of history proving that they often aren't, and which the rabidly antisemitic response to the current conflict is doing nothing to dissuade.

Jews have had a presence in the land alternately called Palestine, Israel, the Holy Land, Judah, etc., for over 2,000 years, and their entire religion and history is founded around the exile from Jerusalem. That is the history that the current state of Israel is drawing on. It does not vanish just because it is inconvenient for western leftists to acknowledge.

Israel currently has a militant far-right government (after tending toward rightist/right wing domestic politics more generally, partially due to post-Holocaust trauma) that has deliberately erased, ignored, and violated the equally valid claims of Palestine and Palestinian people to that same land, and which is currently committing full-scale genocide against them.

Palestine and Palestinian/Muslim people have the same right to exist on that land as Israel and Israeli/Jewish people (and Christian people, and none-of-the-three people). They both have equally long and historically relevant claims to this land and one of them (in an ideal world, which we do not live in) should not be artificially prized over the other.

However, this land is some of the most bitterly and violently contested in the entire world, for the last two thousand years and counting, and there is no one good guy, simplistic answer, or quick way to stop it. The three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have fought bitterly over Jerusalem and its associated territories for a cool few millennia, and human nature being what it is, there is no way for one person, group, organization, government, etc to just step in and make it stop.

The Western/American leftist response to the current conflict has often made absolutely no attempt to take into account any of this troubled and complex history, and has reduced the whole thing down to whichever antisemitic and/or anti-Democratic Party soundbites will get them the most traction on social media. This often rests on whitewashing any moral responsibility belonging to Hamas and defending them no matter what, labeling all Israeli Jews as "evil genocide supporters," and assuming that if Biden wanted to magically shapeshift into Netanyahu and give the order to make it stop, he would, but he's "just not doing it," ergo something something Trump Would Totally Be Better!

These people also often call themselves "anti-imperialist" while thinking/demanding that America swoop in and play Big Global Policeman Daddy (as it indeed has often done in the past) and spank all its naughty children (but if it actually did do this, etc etc it would be evil). Biden could very much do more and has not necessarily done enough, but he has also done more than any other American president in history to shift away from unconditional unquestioning support of Israel only, and to advocate for a Palestinian state, a lasting ceasefire, and other basic precepts of Palestinian self-determination and dignity of personhood. These two things can be true at the same time.

I don't necessarily expect everyone to agree with every single fine detail of these statements, but I do expect them to at least make a basic effort to let all of these facts to inform their response, and not just the ones that they most agree with and which most fit their ideology or preferred conclusion. So that's one way to approach the situation, even if we obviously can't wring every single drop of meaning out of every single competing piece of information or evidence, because there is just too much of it. When we have a broader understanding of the space that we are operating in and the precepts that are factually true, we are able to make better judgments about who is trustworthy, who is worth listening to, what message they are pushing, and whether it corresponds with reality.

Good luck. I'm sure you'll continue to think about this and take the steps that you feel are best. It is all any of us can do.

[epicfroggz]

I wonder why Marika despite her atrocities is giving the benefit of the doubt and people try to invent so much justification for her actions but Messmer is reduced into a genocidal maniac and nothing else. It's getting more confusing when people hate on Messmer for what he did to the hornsent while also justifying Marika. Like how Messmer is irredeemable for committing genocide but Marika is reedamble and righteous for it when she was literally the one who ordered him anyway make it make sense 😅

Man, I don’t know either! Of all the demigods, Messmer was the most committed to being Marika’s weapon of war, her spear, an extension of her desire for justice and revenge. She pointed her spear at the Hornsent, and Messmer wholeheartedly agreed and went after them. (slight rant below)

(please read the following paragraph with great bitterness)

And also reclaimed the native lands of Marika’s people and protects them, and is trying to help those who have suffered in jars for ages, and fosters in his highly disciplined army a culture of acceptance and respect for those of other walks of life (even making them his commanders), and personally mourns those he has lost even if it is because they rebelled against him. But no, no, Messmer is just a genocidal maniac, mhm. Never mind that he and his men are suffused with profound grace, more potent runes than any other army found in the Lands Between, that their cause is deemed holier by the Greater Will itself than all the petty wars of the Shattering combined—nah, they’re just evil to be evil, sure whatever. Marika, though? She was totally correct to write the Golden Order in such a way that her son was branded a traitor for the powers he was born with and can’t change about himself, no matter how much he tried. She was totally correct to make him despise himself. She was totally correct to abandon him out of fear. Look, she condemned the war despite being the one that desired it! She actually isn’t flawed, and can never do wrong!

Going to stop now because it’s making me sick. I hope I’ve managed to express that, I agree, the sentiment you describe in your ask is so nearsighted it’s baffling. I love Marika and her story, but because she is a deeply flawed god—she loves her children, but by loving her children she ruins them, it is absolutely fascinating. And her children all find their own way to fight for themselves, in the end—to become Lords or Gods, just like she wanted. It just took her removing herself from the equation for them to be able to do it. :(((

I digress, but yeah, trying to redeem these people is tiring, why can’t we just enjoy the tragedy instead?

- Froggo

[nimrochan]

Unhinged Antisemitic Comments Hall of Fame

We’ve all had people echo the same nonsense about us all being genocidal maniacs, white colonists, blah blah etc. but I wanted to start a collection of the truly insane comments that stand out to me. Because honestly they’re kind of funny. Feel free to reblog and add your own.

“I love Jews and I support Hamas.”

“Israelis are actually really descended from Nazis who stole dead Jews’ identities and escaped Germany.”

“Jews are like Irish White. They’re only White when it’s convenient to them.” (What?)

“Speaking Hebrew is fascism.”

“The IDF only rescued Farhan Al-Qadi (an Arab-Muslim hostage taken by Hamas) because they hate Islam and insist he’s Jewish.”

[declanisms]

goddamn I knew it was going to happen but why r the 0 reading comprehension booktok “dark romance” girlies who have a collective 2 brain cells giving coryo the same treatment as the darkling like. they’re literal genocidal maniacs they r absolutely not a victim. just say you hate women and go u don’t need to be so loud and proud abt your internalized misogyny

[jammerskrik]

every week in my village nearly a hundred older jews will enthusiastically protest each other, half waving Israeli flags and screaming that the other half are braindead commie scum thirsty for wanton destruction, and the other half waving Palestinian flags and screaming back that they’re genocidal Zionist maniacs who have lost the plot in their ethnonarcissism. idk it’s a bit funny if you don’t have a dog in the fight bc neither are wrong in their estimations of the other.

[elendsessor]

the most tragic part about yoko and tao is that, unlike other reps in the series, yoko never becomes some puppet, meanwhile tao slowly loses her humanity.

in a few ways, that’s the mercy alignment reps get. only at the last second do they even slightly acknowledge their past self, just to put them down. that’s if they’re lucky. everyone else gets hyper aggressive regardless.

yoko isn’t like that, and she’s technically the least human. she was a goddess trapped in a human form, yet even once she gets her powers back, there’s still some remorse. some actual humanity. she grew, she changed, realized the mistakes she’s made, but understands she can’t fully go back. unfortunately she chose this path a long time ago and has to see it to the end, like it or not.

even sadder considering tao still gets gutted. she’s not nearly as soulless as she was in canon of creation, with herself and the game acknowledging that fact, but she’s also not the same. her mannerisms changed down even to her speech. she does frequently shift over to her goddess form, which is heavily implied to be amaterasu, but that form is devoid of any personality compared to her siblings. despite not acting the same as in legend, both susano-o/aogami and tsukuyomi/koshimizu actually do develop identities of their own, albeit again quite different, but this is because they spent time with people. the amaterasu here never had human experience. only tao did. she’s still a proto-fiend be design, and thus a husk meant to fulfill a single purpose, never to have aspirations completely separate of that. we don’t see much of the aftermath, but it’s safe to say with her body gone and forever having to use the amaterasu part of her soul to exist, she does end up succumbing to that side.

while yoko gets the ending where the universe is freed from mandala at the cost of everyone in the old universe, she gets to stick with that remorse and humanity.

tao gets the ending where tokyo and possibly all of society is saved, but the goddess tao had to sacrifice basically all of her humanity to go through with what she was meant to do.

they’re actually the most tame reps in mainline, too, only rivaled by roughly one or two others. though a chaotic rep, yoko isn’t a complete genocidal maniac who loves killing, nor goes too off the wall in extremes. though a law rep, tao’s not constantly bowing down to the lord almighty nor spouting her own cult-like bull. both straight up agree to disagree. they never clash the same way others do—kinda only acknowledge the points the other has and that does make both some of their views stronger and has them rethink what they believe.

it’s an interesting contrast yet also one that’s really depressing.

[phanmojac]

I think people forget that what makes Undertale such a good game is the fact that all the characters are flawed. The reverse is also true, the bad characters are also to some extent good. It shows depth in characters that are rare.

Papyrus is kind and merciful, but he’s selfish. He’s all around a good guy, but he shouldn’t have ever tried to kill the human.

Sans is threatening but lazy. A lot of people overlook the fact that both in genocide and pacifist, he’s kind of a bad guy. He’s not the bad guy unless provoked, but he still failed to protect the human. He even failed to give security to the human against Papyrus. But he also doesn’t do this out of malice. He genuinely thinks he’s doing a good job of protecting you.

Alphys is kind for selfish reasons. She’s kind and helps the human, but she does so for her personal gain. She even creates obstacles just so she can feel empowered. She lies to everyone about the amalgamates because she’s to scared to tell the truth. But when given the help she needs, she does change. She is selfless in telling the families about the experiments.

Undyne is a dick for trying to kill the human so many times. But she’s doing it for a good reason. To her, humans are dangerous maniacs. She kills because the monsters she trusts tell her to. She changes her ways when provoked. In genocide, she gives up a peaceful death just to protect her people.

Toriel is irresponsible. She shouldn’t have abandoned us at the beginning in the ruins like that. She’s selfish for trying to keep us in the ruins. She put us in serious danger when she starts fighting us. Even if she didn’t have the intent to kill us, she’s still capable of killing us. But she’s loving to us, and the selfishness comes from the loss of both of her children.

The list goes on, all of the characters, even the side characters, are well rounded. And they all have one flaw in common:

They’re selfish to some extent.

This is a character flaw that all people in real life have. And the fact that all the characters that are within a generally shitty situation are selfish is a great reflection of real life. They live off of be or be killed, just like how Flowey tells us is their truth. But they all are able to change in the end, and it makes them feel more realistic.