#they're bordering on fascism here

[beardedmrbean]

In November, Geert Wilders' stridently anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party swept the Dutch elections in what the media called a political earthquake.

The magnitude of his win came as a shock to the center and left parties in the Dutch legislature. They jointly decided that "Europe's most dangerous man" should never become prime minister.

The Dutch are not alone in seeking an institutional fix against hard-right populism. In legislatures across the European Union, politicians are erecting a "cordon sanitaire" against extremism -- a red-line tactic to block far-right parties from entering governing coalitions.

It's hardly enough, but it's an important first step.

Coalitions against extremism rose to prominence in the late 1980s, when Belgian parties signed a deal to exclude the extreme-right Vlaams Blok from government.

The resulting cordon sanitaire lasted for 30 years and evolved from a written deal to an unwritten convention. But it's become more difficult to maintain in the face of far-right mobilization. Nonetheless, the strategy is being tried in other countries, too.

21st-century populists

In the upcoming EU parliamentary elections in June, center and left groupings of European parliamentarians, known as MEPs, are planning a quarantine strategy to isolate the hard right in parliament. The prospects of success for this EU strategy are far from certain.

In Spain and Portugal, beleaguered governments are turning to anti-extremist coalitions, too.

In Portugal, a new Democratic Alliance government has been formed by center-right and socialist politicians who are working together to exclude Chega, the far-right party that holds the third-largest number of seats in the Portuguese legislature.

In a deeply controversial move, the Spanish socialist government is even prepared to work with Catalans indicted for crimes against the country's constitution. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez apparently believes it's preferable to work with separatists than to turn the government over to authoritarian populists on the far right.

The weakness of this tactic lies in the fact that quarantine only deals with populists once they arrive in government.

Germany is practically alone in Europe in having a popular movement that opposes extremism in the streets.

Hundreds of thousands have marched against the anti-immigrant AfD. Even though the AfD polls at nearly 25% of decided voters and is predicted to win seats in the Reichstag this summer, it will be impossible for any established party to work with them.

Quarantine not a cure

Quarantine is always a half-measure. When populists win outright majorities, the cordon sanitaire becomes useless.

The United States, Poland and Brazil have elected populists. Establishment Democrats are trying to energize a lackluster presidential campaign by arguing they're the democratic wall against Donald Trump's MAGA movement. Such a tactic is a Hail Mary play in the polarized American two-party system.

Even so, Trump doesn't enjoy the benefit of being an unknown quantity for Republicans. Those who like him are true believers. The rest don't like him. But left-leaning and Arab-American Democrats are angry about President Joe Biden's military support for Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu's indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Gaza.

That means the progressive flank could stay home in November. The winner will likely be the candidate who is less hated by voters. Pro-democracy sentiments may not have much to do with it.

Anti-populist efforts abroad

In Poland, Donald Tusk and his coalition are trying to restore the independence of the judiciary and expel hard nationalists from top positions in the bureaucracy. They may succeed because Tusk has the support of Polish voters and the EU bureaucracy.

Brazil's quarantine strategy relies on the judiciary, which has been more effective than the U.S. courts. Former President Jair Bolsonaro and leading supporters have been barred from elected office for the next seven years.

Even so, the upper and lower houses of the legislature are still allied with Bolsonaro and they're resisting all of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's major economic reforms. That said, the disgraced former president and key members of his administration have been accused of plotting a coup to remove Lula.

In Israel, the religious right holds a critical place in the wartime unity government. It has built a wall against the progressive parties -- a reverse quarantine. Even though Netanyahu is detested by a majority of Israelis and has been described as "the worst leader in Jewish history," he will be difficult to dislodge. The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks gave him yet another political life.

Democracy is also under major attack in countries like India, Hungary and Italy. The power structures in these countries make the quarantine tactic difficult, and all three have decades of struggle ahead.

It's always easier to build coalitions with a handful of parties filled with populist and self-interested cynics than it is to build a big tent of people who wish to uphold liberal institutions.

Revolt of the masses

Probably the biggest benefit of populism quarantines today is that they provide some breathing room to pro-democracy parties. How those parties use this borrowed time could determine the fate of nations.

In 1930, José Ortega y Gasset, the Spanish philosopher, wrote The Revolt of the Masses, arguing that spasmodic crises afflict all "peoples, nations and civilizations."

Revolts break through the political status quo as ordinary people confront political authority and bend the arc of history. In the post-Second World War era, citizens pushed for greater social, political and legal equality. The 1963 March on Washington, the Paris occupation of May 1968 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 are three such iconic moments.

Those past uprisings didn't destabilize entire societies because their leaders were not cynical opportunists using anger to create disorder. They had concrete goals to create more just societies. As a result, these movements opened the door to creative political compromises.

Sowing disorder

The populist merchants of grievance have done the opposite, hollowing out political parties that now work against the constitutional order they were elected to uphold.

Mainstream political parties are seemingly losing their capacity to build consensus and defend democracy against conspiracy theories on social media.

The legitimacy of liberalism hangs in the balance. Whether quarantining populism via coalitions formed by weakened parties will barricade the door against populists is an open question.

Many populists, after all, are highly organized, well-funded by the billionaire class and skilled at sowing disorder. It's going to take much more than a legislative lock on the door to shore up our defenses. But it's incumbent upon the courageous Dutch and others to give it a shot.

[apas-95]

'I have just awoken from a seventy-year suspended animation. Please, update me on the political situation.'

'Well, fascism is about to overtake the country!'

'Damn, damn, damn! Well, if that's the case, have we already begun establishing underground cells? Caching arms and equipment? I'm sure you know that links with the trade-union movement are-'

'What? Don't be crazy. What's super important right now is stopping them from getting into power. We can still vote them out.'

'Ah-ha! Though parliamentarianism failed in my time, you must have managed to strike up a favourable position. Who's the communist party put forward as candidate, then?'

'Commu- no, not third party, are you trying to let the other guys win? I'm talking about the Democrats, see - here's video of the DNC for their platform.'

'That police officer just said their goal is to ensure the US military is the most lethal force in the world. They're talking about enlargening the police to secure the border. Those protestors with the sign about genocide, what was that?'

'Yeah! They're the lesser evil, y'know, at least they're not fascists.'

'I see. Before I continue, could you kindly confirm whether people of your era are still vulnerable to handgun bullets?'

[llyfrenfys]

"Fascism and Welsh Nationalism", or "Stop Fawning over the FWA you cont"

This is inspired by things I've been noticing around Aberystwyth lately while out and about.

Some mfer is putting up Free Welsh Army (FWA) stickers and I have to keep on pulling them down. Why? You ask.

Fascism.

Because of the not so subtle links between the FWA and fascist movements (of which those links are quite frankly underdiscussed) this post is necessary.

So, starting with the stickers:

This is just one of three identical stickers I've pulled down this last week in Aberystwyth. They appear more to be car stickers than anything else and must have cost a pretty penny to print and/or purchase. They appear to have been bought directly from a website using FWA imagery and slogans - yet does not claim to be the FWA (that I can see, at least). I'm not going to link to it because they don't need any more web traffic. But we will get onto why this is significant in a bit.

Anyway, returning to the stickers - I pulled down the first one off of an electric box on North Road, opposite Vaynor St in late November. I pulled down the second (pictured) also in late November on Penglais Road off the bus stop near the hospital. And in early December I pulled down the third one off of a wall near the Spar at the end of Vaynor Street. Right off the bat we can assume the guy who wasted a lot of money on these stickers lives local to where the stickers I've found so far were. So they're lazy, for one - not venturing much further than their own front door by the looks of it.

Iconography:

I've written about the iconography of the FWA before here but it bears repeating that if fascists approve of your iconography, then that's a sign your movement is already overrun with fascists.

This is the sticker design which I've been noticing about town. Top to bottom we have "Cymru Rydd/Free Wales" which on its own is fine. No qualms with that. But between the Welsh and English text is a symbol. This one:

Now, this was the symbol of the Free Wales Army. Note that I say *was* because the FWA doesn't exist any more. Yet various actors have tried to resurrect its very unsuccessful corpse over the years. These stickers seem to belong to a new organisation which is the latest to try and capitalise on the ghost of the FWA. Now, if you're like me, you'll have already noticed this design is, for lack of a better word, a bit dogwhistley. The angled, blocky, swastika-like stylisation of what is supposedly an eagle, the black and white void of any other features and the very fact it *is* an eagle depicted all seem a bit *too* similar to the iconography of the Third Reich, don't you think?

Their design choice is no accident. It is a design which appeals to fascists while also has enough Welsh cultural reference for apologists to hide behind with a plausibly deniable reason for why their eagle Looks Like That. The white eagle is a reference to the 13th C. poem Mab Darogan, in which Myrddin prophesises that "a king shall come with heroism from among the Welsh people" and that "generous men shall be reborn of the lineage of the eagles of Snowdonia". The eagle could have literally been drawn in any way. But it rather specifically was drawn like this. That choice is not accidental.

Now this new organisation which is trying to reanimate the corpse of the FWA (we'll call them EW) has incorporated the FWA symbol into their sticker. An endorsement of the failed so-called 'paramilitary' organisation on their part, to be sure. EW also have included a different style of white eagle on their sticker as well - which is blatantly stolen from Wikipedia (the copyright is expired, but 0/10 artistic effort on their part even so). Also not to nitpick but the eagle on the sticker is grey not white so that's also a fail.

Artistic criticisms aside, the sticker is loaded with dogwhistley iconography all round. The Celtic knot border isn't necessarily problematic, however, fascists and/or neo-nazis love to slap Celtic knots onto things because they associate Celticity with whiteness. The colour scheme may also be a coincidence, but it does remind me of the fascist symbol which is the 'Flag of Kekistan" which uses the same colour scheme.

Why does this matter and who were the FWA?:

The FWA were a Welsh nationalist (supposedly 'paramilitary') outfit which formed in Lampeter in 1963 and disbanded in 1969 (just 6 years of activity). They took a lot of their cues from the IRA and were effectively fanboys of them. The group was never really considered a threat and mostly consisted of middle-aged men playing paramilitary dress-up. They did claim to be funded by the IRA and that they had dogs trained to carry explosives. Their claims remain unproven.

HOWEVER - and here's where things get sticky. A lot of the issues the FWA were publicly concerned with were and are actually valid issues (e.g. the drowning of Capel Celyn, the Aberfan Disaster etc.). The problem is that fascists or fanboys of fascists love to get their foot in the door by addressing genuine issues. But what happens is that invariably a minoritised group is blamed for the existence of said issue and naturally that leads to discrimination and violence.

The police started to get a bit antsy with the investiture of then-prince Charles as prince of Wales and the possibility of the FWA doing some terrorism. So some of the FWA's leaders were arrested just prior to this. The group officially ended in 1969.

The nationalism advocated for by the FWA was of the 'blood-and-soil' type. Not just your common or garden nationalism (which still has issues but given context is perfectly able to exist in a non-fashy way). And that's why the idolisation of the FWA in years since is sus. It appeals to romanticised nationalist notions of brave men in uniforms helping free Wales - when in reality they did little terrorism and little to actually further the Welsh nationalist cause. In fact, the leadership of the FWA fell apart after they started to disagree on whether their actions were damaging the cause rather than helping it.

Julian Cayo-Evans founded the FWA and ran it with Dennis Coslett and Gethin ap Gruffydd. Gruffydd went on to found other youth nationalist organisations after he left the FWA due to disagreements with its direction - e.g. he founded the Patriotic Front in 1964 which was later outlawed by Plaid Cymru in 1966. It goes without saying names like 'Patriotic Front' are deliberate nods to other, similarly named fascist organisations like National Front.

Legacy and The Present:

FWA's only legacy is the sycophantic fanclub which ressurects the corpse of the FWA every few years to parade it around and relive the 'glory days' of paramilitary cosplay. But aside from functionally being useless, their iconography and politics are still very much under the fash umbrella and that must be resisted at every opportunity (hence why I'm tearing down their stickers - I don't want fascists to feel welcome here). Part of why people may turn a blind eye to the FWA/sympathise is that they may not be aware of the history of the FWA or see the dogwhistles laden in their work and symbols. Some may even just assume without any other context that they're just another Welsh-language preservation group and may even support them without realising the deeper nature of the organisation beyond just preserving the Welsh language.

Which brings me back to EW. I'm going to put the rest of this under a cut, I do encourage reading the rest though and reblogging to get the word out that

It is always morally okay to tear down fascist propaganda

If you see some in your town, don't hesitate to let fash know they aren't welcome here.

EW:

So, onto the latest in a long line of paramilitary wannabes who idolise a long-dead organisation from the 60s.

The EW website seems... sketch. Lots of banners and sections asking to 'donate now' and 'take action' (with money). So right off the bat this looks like a cash-grab.

Secondly, from their own 'About' section they claim that the Welsh Independence movement has "become inundated with authoritarian Marxist entryists who regard Welsh independence as merely a vehicle for furthering their own political agendas". Which is pretty bold stuff coming from an organisation trying to do The Exact Same. There's also a LOT of emphasis on youth involvement and youth nationalism.

There's also a lot of ahistorical claims in the About section too. E.g. on the prophecy of Myrddin "From this legend derives the very name of Cymru’s greatest mountains, with ‘Eryri’ meaning the ‘Seat of the Eagles’ in Cymraeg." - this is contested as there is no one agreed upon etymology of Eryri. To claim that this is The Etymology suggests that they picked this one just because it conveniently fits the version of the mythology they're presenting. They also claim that "Owain ap Gruffydd, would adopt three such eagles as his royal coat of arms" - this is blatantly incorrect as Owain ap Gruffydd lived before the Age of Heraldry and the three eagles are actually later attributed arms.

In EW's FAQ there's a section on supporting their organisation - with one paragraph saying that you can buy stickers instead "If you aren’t eligible or willing to commit to becoming an activist". Lol at 'if you aren't willing to fully commit to our FWA fanboy club you can put up some stickers instead'. Also the button to buy stickers suggests you pay via paypal "We’ll accept quick payments using PayPal and will have them shipped to you First Class" - which *totally* sounds legit (what do you bet they ask people to pay via 'friends and family instead of through business means?).

And... that's it. There's very little else on their website. It *looks* like they're trying to be a movement, but appear to lack substance (and money, judging from how many different Donate Now buttons are plastered all over the site). A hollow organisation blatantly bending history and mythology to fit their narrative, proudly using symbols designed to appeal to fascists while asking people to trust them with the future of Wales?

Dim diolch.

For further reading on why we should guard against fascism in Welsh language revival and independence, see my other post here.

Reblogs welcome for an antifascist independent Wales.

[koheletgirl]

Would love to hear about how you became an anti Zionist!

before i get into this, i'd like to direct you to some of @jewishvitya's posts: [x] [x] [x]. i think their perspective is more relevant to the current situation than mine, and they address issues that i won't get into here because they had no personal relevance to me and you asked about me.

so my family is considered left-wing in israel. my parents voted for ha'avoda (israeli labor) in most elections i can remember, my mom even went "as far" as voting for meretz (as far as jewish parties go, they're the furthest to the left. still zionist though. didnt get enough votes to get into the knesset in the last elections). i grew up mourning rabin, hating bibi before i even knew who he was, believing that the settlements are the source of all israeli wrongdoings. in 2005 people would put ribbons on their cars – green if you support dismantling the settlements in gaza, orange if you're against it. we had a green ribbon. my family talks about the two states solution, about going back to the '67 borders. my grandmother jokingly calls herself a "leftist traitor", because that's how the right labels them.

i grew up with these values. i was taught to value human life, i was taught that all people were equal, i was taught that nationalism and imperialism were wrong. we weren't afraid of talking about the occupation. we weren't afraid of calling israeli fascism what it was. you might have heard about the democracy protests that have been happening in israel in the past year; my parents went every week.

i think this is why it took me so long to break out of my zionist worldview. people talk about zionism as if it's explicitly genocidal and built on racial supremacy, and i understand why (and agree with this to an extent), but you have to understand how absurd this idea sounds to people like my parents. they don't think zionism is the issue, they think the israeli right is. they acknowledge the evils of the settlers in the west bank, but they would never consider themselves settlers. it's very easy to see the wrongness of a person going to someone's house and violently kicking a family out of there because they believe it should belong to them (not a hypothetical, this is happening in the west bank as we speak); it's a lot harder to think that maybe everything you were taught to believe about your own right to be here was a lie from the beginning.

and that's the problem, that it is a lie. we are literally taught there was nothing here. swamps and malaria and sand and sand. the zionists built a civilization out of nothing. that's the story, that's the myth.

another aspect of this that's essential to acknowledge is the dehumanization of palestinians in israel, which is still prevalent in leftist circles, despite taking a different form. the israeli left Loves to make the distinction between palestinians and "israeli arabs" - a term that some people that i have met have used for themselves, and i am not the right person to speak on (i'm sure there's nuance here i'm unaware of). these people don't think of themselves as racists. they don't mind arabs in general, they only mind "the arabs who want to harm us". and it's so easy for them to pat themselves on the back because they have plenty of arab friends and they actively oppose the goverment's racism; but they all draw the line when it comes to palestinians. to them, once a person calls themselves a palestinian, it means they believe jews have no right to exist here. it means their existence is at odds with their own. they don't see palestinians as people, they see them as an agenda.

i was going to add a bit about how the israeli left's aversion to religion (which stems from the influence orthodox jews currently have on israeli law) plays into this, but this is getting really long.

anyway. for me, it wasn't a revelation as much as it was a willingness to open my eyes to the fact that everything i had been taught was a lie. it was always there, this doubt, this uneasiness. i knew that there were a lot of people over the world whose opinions i generally agreed with – except when it came to israel. it just took me a really long time to be able to doubt Everything.

because that required tearing down everything my worldview was based on, everything i had believed in, and it was scary. it's a very, very difficult thing to do. not knowing what to believe is horrifying. realizing you have believed in lies your whole life is horrifying.

but at some point i had to ask myself: how can i hate everything this country stands for, and not doubt what it's taught me? how can i know what i know about the idf, and still believe it's acting humanely? and the thing is, i still don't know what to believe a lot of the time. i still doubt everything, all the time. i'm critical of all of my beliefs, and i think it's good to be. but i listen, and i look, and i feel, and above all i try to be compassionate. and there's only one stance you can take here if you value human life above all else.

here are some israel-based organizations that influenced my political views and i recommend checking out (even though i have my disagreements with them): b'tselem, standing together, breaking the silence, mesarvot

[quecksilvereyes]

okay. sure. but lets not forget that the fpö's favourite targets are not in fact the queer community. it's immigrants, refugees, muslims, non-white people, jewish people (because lets not forget where they fucking come from and how they mysteriously keep getting caught with people who do not hide their nazi sentiments AT ALL), the scientific fucking consensus about vaccines, democracy as it works in this country, trans people and same sex marriage are a target *as well*, but it's not the main one and the fact that this is the only part you will mention is sus AS FUCK.

they want to change our laws so the government can spy on your digital communication more easily.

they want to close our borders. they want no one to even ask for asylum at all because its so unattractive and they make their lives here hell. they want to put younger children in prison, they want to take money from immigration efforts to use it on "proper" austrians, they want to slash at our social safety net and undermine union and worker protections. they refuse to condemn russia's invasion of ukraine. they're fucking thrilled about the genocide in gaza.

they want non-citizens (and lets not fucking lie to ourselves here. citizens who aren't "austrian enough") to be blocked from receiving financial aid from the state. they propagandise about the evil muslims raising evil muslim children who kill innocent white austrians.

they want to make sure no immigrant or refugee can get their family here after they're allowed into the country. they want to make sure that "austrian companies" get massive legs up over "foreign companies". what the fpö wants is for every person they consider a foreigner to be kicked out of the goddamn country.

they also want to define marriage as between a man and a woman and are attacking trans rights, yes. they call the lgbt community variations of a "rainbow plague" but holy shit queer people are not the only marginalised people to exist in this country.

this is not just about the queer community and if you need to make it about something that personally concerns you in order to give a shit about poc, religious minorities and non-citizens then i have some bad news for you: there are people other than you in this country and we need to make sure they don't get sacrificed on the altar of fascism.

democracy and many MANY people have in fact not survived this before. what the fuck.

also side note: there are many things wrong with herbert kickl you don't need to break out the fucking ableism. he's a shit person. find something else to attack.

[tanadrin]

i fired up civ 5 recently bc i wanted to see how it compared to my memory of it, and if anything it's actually much, much worse.

one unit per tile just... does not work with the idiom of the civilization series! units are not like armies in a GSG, they're like units in an RTS game: grist for the meatgrinder. you build them and throw them at your enemy and if they lose combat, they die. they don't retreat and recover morale, you don't get a chance to reposition and try again, they just go poof. but now in addition to that, you can only fit one unit of a type on a given tile, which means combat is forcibly spread out over a huge space. it's slow, slowed down further by the fact that it now takes a couple turns to fully resolve a fight--i guess the idea is that you can have your injured units fall back, except because of the way units get blocked in now, no you can't!--but you still need tons of units to take cities.

which means they didn't get rid of doomstacks. doomstacks are still logistically necessary to win wars! they just made them really fucking annoying to move around the map.

and on top of that, because OUPT applies to all units, it means you are also constantly having your scouts and workers and other civilian units being blocked in by your own units of the same type, or other players' units of the same type, meaning if you sign an open borders treaty with the AI you are frequently signing up to having your own units' movement being jammed up in the worst way by computer players. and on top of all THAT the units cancel their movement orders if the destination tile is blocked, even if the destination tile is on the other side of the map and you can't see it--which means, basically, any long-distance movement order is liable to be randomly canceled if an AI unit ends its turn on your destination tile.

it feels janky at every single level. the worst possible fix to something that wasn't even really a problem--and if they really wanted to they could have implemented some kind of very basic attrition mechanic. or some other kind of soft cap.

and and and on top of all that, it makes roads and railroads substantially less useful, bc frequently you cannot actually fit all your guys on one road or railroad--but you can't just carpet your territory in roads now like you used to do, because roads cost maintenance per turn. just. ugh. fractally bad decisionmaking! like different people were working at different ends of the design doc and not communicating at all!

the global happiness system means expansion is soft capped early in the game, which makes it feel less like an empire management game than a game of managing four to five cities. since very many units are now hard capped by resource availability now, and expansion is limited, AFAICT in most normal games this means you get like.. two swordsmen? ever? mainly it's strong attack units that are capped in this way, but their defensive counters are uncapped, which means actually playing strategically with your army composition is more annoyance than it's worth. in practice, what this incentives is just building the best trash unit you can afford en masse and throwing them at the enemy, but, of course, see the problems with OUPT.

they took out civics and replaced them with Social Policy trees. but everybody has the same set of social policy trees. and there's a bit of a tradeoff here in which trees you choose to fill out first, but you never then switch those old trees out for new ones like civics. they're just permanent bonuses. so there's no sense of, like, choosing your government type.

and then in BNW i guess they realized people missed that, and created Ideologies, which are just a bonus extra-big social policy tree where you get to pick between liberal democracy, communism, and fascism. but of course there's only three. and this isn't unlocked until the late game.

what they really should have done is added more civics and rather than just having you progress from early game civics to late game civics made all civics contextually useful. and maybe given you some extra civics that were unlocked early in the game so you could strategize around them.

as a part of this change culture is now more load-bearing, but cultural victory is just... weird and stupidly complicated. you have to build tourism, and do archeology, and build wonders that provide slots for great works that your three different kinds of great artist create, and all this other crap. versus domination, where you just conquer the other guys. or science, where you just build your spaceship. it's dumb and bad and awkward.

there's no conquest victory now. only domination. but because of the way domination works, it's now not possible to move your capital manually. this is awful and i hate it! let me move my capital, damn it!

buildings no longer go obsolete, which means that if i am founding a city in the year 1973, i still need to build a City Walls in it before i can build a Military Base. this feels ridiculous. and the series already kinda has this problem where it feels like late game it takes forever to get a city really up and running--don't make it even worse by making me build shit from classical antiquity before i can build modern facilities!

the AI is not very bright. they don't expand very much. on big maps, most of the map will remain empty most of the game, at least up through mid-level difficulties i usually play at (that are supposed to be "standard", so I assume the game is balanced around them)

diplomacy is irritatingly primitive. there are few ongoing agreements. declarations of friendship all last a fixed amount of time. the AI is constantly interrupting you to tell you it doesn't like you or it does like you or you and another AI player all like each other. just expose an opinion modifier and be done with it! harun al-rashid and i don't need to pass notes like it's grade school!

they nerfed the range of air units and especially nukes. which feels really weird. the 20th century saw the invention of strategic bombers that had a range of thousands of miles. why can mine only reach cities right next to my own? why do my nuclear missiles have a pathetic range? sure, sub-launched nukes are a thing, but they're only one part of a proper nuclear triad. there's no MAD anymore!

especially because the world congress can order you to stop building nukes and there's nothing you can do about it. you can't defy world congress bans and suffer a penalty. international law has some kind of magical force that even if you are the undisputed hegemon you cannot help but obey. this is very stupid! especially because they could not think of anything interesting for the world congress to do, so it's all shit like banning random luxury goods.

all the stuff i do like--the city-states, the hex grid, the core idea of the trade route system--is swallowed by annoying bullshit. to take the trade route example: you can make money by setting up trade routes. it can be quite lucrative! and you have to protect your trade routes from bandits and shit. but the menu for issuing trade route orders is a mess--way too much scrolling, you can't sort by lucrativeness of destinations, you have to constantly re-issue trade route orders, and the last trade route a unit was on isn't highlighted, or sorted to the top or anything like that. so it's lots of scrolling around, it's very annoying, and it's repetitive as hell.

the real stick in the eye is that this game was not only reviewed well, it was reviewed glowingly when it came out. which is bizarre to me! yes, it looks nice. the art is good and the music is pretty. but it feels awful to play! it is on almost every single metric less fun than civ 4! civ 3 is more fun, and civ 3 was terrible. i hope to god firaxis was bribing people left and right for good reviews because the only alternative explanation i can think of is that everybody who was reviewing strategy games in 2010 was also in the grip of a brutal glue-sniffing habit.

[sunset-synthetica]

also don't russians consider themselves white? isn't there a massive pro-progrom The Nasty Jews Stole All Our Money movement in russia? i know that ukraine is full of neo-nazis but then again i've seen white supremacists over here say that irish and spanish and greek people aren't actually white so maybe us nazis are just imagining putin is holding up some sort of great bastion of whiteness in the savage orient crap

it's. a fucking mess. like tldr and as we all hopefully know, race and particularly whiteness is bullshit and the latter changes its definition like every 5 seconds.

The Russians I've spoken to overall do consider themselves white or white + Slavic, and that's the funny thing. You have white supremacists in Russia claiming themselves to be the bastion of crackerism, and you have white supremacists in Czechia or Ukraine or fucking Germany saying Russians need to be exterminated or whatever the fuck because they're all evil Asians apparently, but also not the Cool Asians™ where they try to interfere with elections or spy on us, but the Barbaric Asians™ where they don't know what a toilet is.

It's basically just a bunch of artificially divided groups of Slavs going "that bitch 20km away from me across the border isn't white" while looking literally identical.

Nazism in Europe and particularly Eastern Europe is a whole fucking topic that I'd rather not get into rn because I'm tired as fuck, but tldr from my lived experience, it's given popularity by the staunch anti-communist mentality in post-Soviet countries. The USSR is the Big Bad and was literally the worst thing ever (paraphrasing) and it feels like as a result, Nazism and fascism overall gets not only dismissed, but elevated to a status where its opposition to communism is its saving grace. Communism and fascism are also the same apparently, which does not make sense, but when have reactionary beliefs ever been coherent?

[archivalofsins]

My toxic Milgram fan trait is wanting to normalize being a little hater. Like actually stop trying to justify voting a character Guilty it's so fucking pointless and drenched in hypocrisy it'd be much simpler to say I hate them and move on.

Oh, but Gunsli, you wouldn't do that with a character, would you? Yes, and I plan too. I don't think people understand how little I care about people knowing my biases and exactly why I have them. So, for anyone interested in knowing.

Yeah, I hate Kotoko on an ideological level.

I am not interested in her second song, her crime none of it- I fucking hate this lady. The best Milgram is getting from me is either abstaining from voting or voting her guilty every fucking day of those three months. Bu-but why? Well, I don't really have to explain why I can just hate her like I said. I don't need a reason.

Well, it's because she jumped the other prisoners right- Because she jumped Mikoto and threatened to kill him, right? And you like Mikoto that's your bias, right?

22/12/15 (Kotoko’s Birthday)

Mikoto: Ah, Koto-chan. It’s been a while. Both of us have kinda split off from the group, but how’ve things been? A lot’s happened, but fr now let’s try to get along. I mean, it’s your birthday today, right? I got the feeling nobody else was going to do anything, so I came to celebrate.

Kotoko: ……how carefree. It doesn’t matter, a villain like you won’t be forgiven next time either. And when that time comes, it’ll be the end for you. I’ll make sure of it myself.

Mikoto: Ahh?? Just try and do it, you nutjob. I’ll crush anyone who hurts me…… You’re gonna be totally beaten at your own game……! [TN: The word “me” here uses first person pronoun “boku”.]

Kotoko: Hm. The border between the two is getting a lot vaguer. Your entire existence is a crime. And I will see you’re punished for it. That is what Milgram, and Es, and I have chosen.

Like, Gunsli I could understand if you didn't want to vote her Innocent because of that we all have our favorites we're only human.

Mikoto ain't a bitch like Shidou he can take care of himself. I ain't worried about ya'll girl she ain't about it, she a coward, she needed to order weapons because she really ain't that good. Hope she ordered herself a shield during trial two because she's going to need it. I'm sorry Mikoto better figure it out. Love him but uh nothing I can do about that if he gets killed by Kotoko I'll just be disappointed in him.

Outside of that I already didn't like her before she did that stuff. Well, damn what the fuck did she do? Nothing but be herself. I don't like her. I don't believe she's a good person. I don't think she's doing what she's doing now or did what she did before for anything other than the satisfaction of herself.

I find her mentality a direct threat to my personal safety for various reasons and will not support it. How about any of you guys try growing up and going to high school during the resurgence of fascism? Having people walk around armed with military grade weapons as you're just trying to get a book from a bookstore. All while stating they're going to make the world better through violence and see how you feel about people with Kotoko's mindset afterward.

See how any of you feel about it when you're at the receiving end of constant persecution based solely on how people like you are reported on in the news. Something that is never biased, as we know.

Like she was doing a good thing- To some in some people's opinion! I don't have time to argue about why this sort of mindset is dangerous to people who've never lost a thing from it, and I'm not gonna! I'm tapping out before her trial even starts. I did my investigation already I do not care.

So, everybody can miss me with that she killed bad guys shit because I recognize that I just think she's just as bad as they are and knows it.

I'm never voting her Innocent (Forgiven), it's a kindness I'm even considering not voting her at all. Unless I'm getting something out of voting her that way like a secured Amane and Mikoto Innocent verdict she can kick rocks.

Fuck her, the ideology she espouses, her justifications, the hill she lives on, the hill she'll die on and the horse she rode in on.

The worse sort of person to me is some nosey entitled son-of-a-bitch that comes into my life telling me their actions are going to make the world better by any means. So, if I have a problem with how they do things I can either shut up or they'll shut me up. Because useless weaklings should just be quiet and let themselves be protected by them.

Fuck that I'm not agreeing with that because that sort of thinking ends with people who look like me dead. Someone would have to have me all the way fucked up if they thought I'd agree to letting her of everyone here back out into society. There are enough people like that in my immediate vicinity to my ever-growing discomfort already.

So, yeah normalize hating a bitch for no reason. Normalize not having to explain yourself because I'm not about to hurt my own feelings trying to explain how this mentality is dangerous and harmful to people who don't care. Because they'll never see this behavior as the issue it is.

Simply put it's not about anyone else's ability to understand my reasoning behind my actions. The thing most important to me is that I understand the reasoning behind my beliefs, and I at least put forth an effort to interrogate those. Even if through interrogating those things I arrive right back at the answer I started with.

I at least understand why people like Kotoko at the end of the day and recognize this is my bias alone. While fundamentally understanding how someone feels about any of the characters in Milgram doesn't define who they are as a person or what they're willing to let others get away with in the real world. So, I don't feel like I have to defend disliking anyone or how I vote a character because it's my opinion.

I'm just gonna do what's best for me and keep it moving. If she wasn't a character in a piece of media, I'd care more, but she is. So, I can recognize her good qualities. Those are however outweighed by the multiple red flags and sirens consistently going off every second because of my background belting the words,

WARNING! WARNING! IMMINENT THREAT TO SAFETY!

As though I've entered a fucking sundown town at sunset. There is nothing in me that doubts this bitch would commit a hate crime and is therefore someone just unsafe for me to be around. Avid defenders would be like "Um sweety is it a hate crime to get rid of child abductors and criminals?"

I don't know, has anyone seen the film The Birth of A Nation or looked over the historical context around criminality? Or just read how the news reports on people who deviate from norms committing crimes regularly in contrast to how they report on the dominant culture committing crimes? No, I don't think anyone put that much effort into interrogating the ideology of the good looking subtly gender nonconforming lady.

Because they said oh bad guy bad, news said so- So, they deserve to be killed Kotoko is so right go off girl boss.

So here,

Kellie-Jay & the Neo-Nazis | Shaun One hour, fifty-six minute, and fifty-seven seconds long.

How Police Make Up The Law (ft. LegalEagle) | Philosophy Tube Forty-eight minutes and fifty-six seconds long.

The Hidden Rules of Modern Society | Philosophy Tube Forty-four minutes and fifty-four seconds.

The Americanisation of Blackness. TheStoryteller Twenty-eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds.

Triumph of the Will, or, "Yes, You Might Be a Fascist" | Cinema Antifa Twenty-two minutes and fifty-three seconds long.

How Black Americans Monopolized Racism Foreign Man in a Foreign Land Eighteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

The Cultural Gentrification of Black Britain | EXODUS TheStoryteller Fourteen minutes and ten seconds.

The Need for Gangs? | TheStoryteller Twelve minutes and twenty-six seconds.

Why You Shouldn't Watch The Birth of a Nation (AND WHY YOU SHOULD) | Brows Held High Ten minutes and forty-nine seconds long.

There's a lot of videos that go over a good deal of the things I think about when considering Kotoko's case and mentality. So, anyone interested can go and take a look over this information and think for themselves whatever they want. I won't be discussing this because a lot of people in my opinion are very willing to cut off their brains and let Kotoko get away with whatever just to make themselves feel good.

People liked to discuss how Futa was radicalized through the Internet yet continue to ignore the clear radicalization of Kotoko through mainstream media. People all over widely accept everything put into mainstream media as true or unbiased. Because unlike the internet people believe mainstream media cannot lie without repercussions. Yet this is not always the case and the fact that Kotoko is so willing to end other people's lives over uncertain or extraordinarily little information based off the bias judgements of others as she continues to do even now is an issue to me and something I do not personally agree with.

Especially considering how mainstream media can be biased and get things wrong. She's just looking at what appears to be a more reputable source, a source with more authority than the internet mob then going it must be true because they said it. Just like how no one fact checked Es when they claimed that they were considered an adult in Puerto Rico and Haiti because why would Es lie? Why would the news lie? When has law enforcement ever forced a confession out of anyone or arrested the wrong person.

As a news article sits in Harrow about the jumping, we know Kotoko did with the police stating they assume the assaulter was a man. Not even going into the news articles that stated people paid to have information buried. But yeah, the information she had is much more concrete than whatever the hell Futa was basing his shit off of.

[jewishvitya]

I got called naive for my views, because someone interpreted them as "what if we all stopped fighting? 🥹" but that's not what I'm trying to express.

When people in Israel talk about peace, it usually means Palestinians accepting their fates as occupied and expelled people. Refugees living their lives in diaspora without hoping to return, people in the West Bank and Gaza not fighting back anymore. They pretend this would mean our soldiers won't be "forced to" kill anyone anymore. It's still the mentality of Golda Meir's famous quote - "We can never forgive the Arabs for making us kill children."

This is what I perceive as "what if we all just stopped fighting." And it's not a solution to anything. There's no justice there.

What I'm talking about is ending occupation, ending Israeli violence not just by laying down weapons but dismantling the system that necessitates them fighting back, and correcting what we can. Israel has so much power, it practically orchestrates the conditions here.

Israel basically imposed Hamas on Gaza, nurtured it to divide Palestinian leadership, and now every Palestinian person is expected to condemn them before they get to talk about losing their families. They're identified with Hamas by force - both by this game of "condemn them" and by being given no other path to resist. Pushed far past what any group of human beings would tolerate, in conditions that make radicalization inevitable, and then branded as evil and violent by nature because they respond like every single group of occupied people responded before.

If Israel wanted to, it could start a process of deescalation. It could find actual solutions in conversation with Palestinians, instead of "sign this, we'll control your borders and resources but you'll technically be a country, and btw we take all the good farm lands and you get the rest - oh, you don't want to! See, you never wanted peace!"

But as long as Israel is a colonialist ethnostate, the tools it uses match that. And I know no oppressive force ever just let go of the power they held. That's why I encourage people to talk about this and support Palestine. Political pressure. Hopefully the violence Palestinians are suffering can be stopped. Maybe the violence necessary to end this can be minimized too, I don't know.

So I guess my position isn't "what if we just stopped fighting," it's "what if the whole concept of a colonialist ethnostate was dismantled." If this sounds like the result won't be Israel as we know it, well, I guess it won't be. But Israel as a state is immoral and discriminatory by nature. You can't create a country that enforces an ethnic majority and prioritizes that group, treating the existence of another ethnic group as an existential threat, and not have that be sliding fast in the direction of fascism. "Us vs. them, their very existence is a threat to ours" is pretty much a one-way ticket.

Framing the question as "we have the right to live in our ancestral homeland" is misleading. The real question is "do we have the right to expell other people from their homeland." And we never had that right.

[inkcurlsandknives]

I don't know if I'm more concerned with whether or not everyone suddenly quoting Andrew Jackson knows that what Andrew Jackson did after this statement was THE TRAIL OF TEARS and went down as the American Tyrant and they're celebrating this and encouraging our rapid decent towards fascism or if they don't know that what he did and they're idiots.

I'm not sure which is worse. But I would like to not be located here when the governor decides to IDK secede from the union. ALSO PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY DIED because of this political stunt the governor is pulling at the border!! DIED!!! wtf.

[thefirstknife]

wanted to share some post Lighfall thoughts in my head with you (im sure most if this has been said or i got key concepts wrong but still)

I personally believe the Witness either is the First Knife or somehow has tricked itself into believing it is. (if the later then that's then it already had the desire to end universe and is using this to justify as an allegory for fascism)

my thoughts are summed up as this:

The Winnower wants to finish this round of the garden game. and wants to keep playing it over and over and over. It didn't seem to care about the Gardener wanting another round until she put herself into the game

The Witness is the Knife or somehow has vague spiritual metaphysical memories of the Knife and took its purpose the the most logical extreme:

It grew sick of round after round of the Game.

It is the Knife it wants to cut and cull all

The Winnower wants to play the game eternally which means restarting the game

The Knife wants to do it purpose and end the Game.

Permanently

To do this it must also end the Players so it can never restart again.

The Witness wants so somehow end the Game, end the Gardener, end the Winnower.

So that

The First Knife

becomes

The Final Shape

That's a really good summary of some of my thoughts as well!!

Obviously, a lot of this is very abstract and we might be looking at the Unveiling too much for hints, but ALSO. I think this would be super cool and would definitely explain a lot of stuff. And I would absolutely adore to see the Unveiling stuff be directly relevant in this way, and not just a metaphorical retelling of how the universe began.

An interesting lore tab from the raid lore book, page 9, that was available to unlock this week (the remaining 2 pages are tied to the red border chest, crisis averted. The chest was just bugged last week. Final raid lore book page next week!). Page 9 was... very peculiar. I'll copy it fully:

No clue who is the author. The first paragraph usually hints at the author, but this time I can't tell. Mention of "dream" and later suffering might suggest Nezarec talking to the Witness... or to something else. Or something else talking about the philosophy in general. This lore tab has Unveiling vibes to me, tbh. Mostly, the part about this data fragment coming from something "warped, barely-real" gives me massive Winnower vibes. It's a metaphor, an allegory, like the Unveiling.

I love the metaphor for the Light and Darkness philosophies, here presented with the story of a man coming upon a crossroads. The man asks the sky where to go, and there's no answer because that is for the man to choose. The Light doesn't direct anyone to anything, it lets you make your own choices. That is the essential part of the philosophy; freedom to choose.

The whole next bit with a wanderer that shows up to tell the man which path to take and even suggests brandishing a knife to exert a threat and force the man to pick is essential to the Darkness philosophy. Darkness wants to funnel you into a specific path and it will do everything in its power to make you go down that road.

But the author also muses about the knife. Is threatening violence a better way to make people obedient or is that actually ceding power? Once you show the knife, you can never sheathe it or else the threat goes away and so does your power. And even if you never sheathe it, someone might still risk fleeing. If you force someone to follow you, you are never allowed to stop threatening them, but the more you threaten, the more chance there is that the person being threatened will take the risk to flee once they're fed up. Which is what happened with several Darkness-aligned characters, most notably Savathun. She was coerced and lied to and threatened, and the longer that went on, the more she contemplated taking the risk to leave. And she succeeded.

The final sentence is also super important because it really explains why a lot of characters fall to Darkness in the first place. Because it makes the choice for them, and many are afraid of the unknown. They are too afraid to take the risk and make a choice for themselves and find it easier and safer to follow what is being told to them. Ergo, Darkness being "salvation."

And if we're on the right track, in this analogy, the wanderer telling the man which road to pick would be the Winnower, the Darkness. And the knife it pulls to make the threat? The Witness. It doesn't need to use the knife, but maybe at some point it considered it and now it's doubting its efficacy. Wouldn't it be easier if the man just listened instead of introducing the knife which complicates the interaction and possible outcomes?

We're in hardcore speculative territory here but it's one of the mos interesting thing to me right now, especially with all the new stuff we learned from Lightfall and the raid.

[hom3land3r]

Can you be a real hero for a moment please?

There's some petty catty fandom bullshit going around right now and it has me pretty depressed. I prefer to just observe and not engage but it feels so wrong to say nothing. However, I don't know what to do.

What would you do if you saw what amounts to a highschool mean girl "clique" trying to alienate and "other" queer people of a different mindset over shipping bullshit?

Or to give you an emotional investment here, what would you do if you saw people doing this Ryan or Zeus or anyone else you loved?

It's one thing to have a different opinion or even be enthusiastic about an opinion, it's another to be so far up your own ass that you try and reinforce your own opinion, unironically as in not joking, as fact.

A worthless endeavor since opinions by definition are not fact and cannot be right or wrong.

All while treating other actual human beings like eyesores for the crime of existing in shared spaces that aren't owned by anyone.

I've seen unnecessary hostility and disingenuity too. I'm not going to mince it. At this point I'm positive it's deliberate and obtuse.

And yes, before you ask, this bullshit is about you and whether you would top or bottom for Butchlander. For reference, the queer person getting "other"ed who thinks you would top is promoting their ideas but not trying to harm, police, or "other" anyone for having different ideas.

The people who think you're a bottom are straight up doing that insidious drama posse bullying type shit to try and snuff it out, bordering on barely veiled soft fascism that is completely devoid of understanding the nuances of your show and story itself.

But they're just "baffled" by these totally insane "outside the norm" or "unpopular" opinions, right?

I wondered why the bottom Butcher club didn't seem so active on here when the AO3 kudos buttons tend to speak for themselves.

"Resurgence" my ass, those grown ass adults acting like children purposely and very subtly, discreetly or overtly, attack that side of fandom to discourage and make sure "No bottom Billy" can happen. And I'm not paraphrasing there, one of them literally went into an artist's ask box just to say that exactly.

I'm so over fandom toxicity but I'm at a loss, what the fuck can I even do about this before it gets any worse?

Without starting a villain arc.

By the way, I don't care about Butchlander and mostly just can't wait for you to finally get yours from humanity after all the bullshit they put you through.

I do, however, care about bullying when I see it.

Alright.

Here’s the thing, I’m used to folk having their ideals and whatnot and all but forcing them upon me. I’ve had my share of folk expressing their strong desire for William and I to get together. While flattered, it’s not my cup of tea. But to each their own.

Whatever stories and fan ideals you have about me, more power to you. Whatever floats your boat. But, and I’m asking here, be sensible about it.

By some miracle there’s been a sense of community building here since I created this fucking blog. Which, I never expected to happen. Truly. You guys are invested in my life and it’s cute, if sometimes a bit…much (ahem…💎). But my point is, that I expect everyone to treat each other with respect. We’re all friends here, right?

For the folk that can’t be reasoned with, I suggest doing all you can to block and erase them from your life. At the end of the day, you’re always going to have a bunch of crazy fanatics pushing their ideals because that is the way. It’s complete bullshit.

Say what you want about me. Write what you want about me. Draw what you want about me. But don’t be a dick to folk who don’t agree with you. It’s as simple as that. And don’t act like a fucking clown over William and I for fuck sake. I mean seriously, of all the things to get so defensive over. My lord. Take a moment and seriously rethink about yourself.

One thing I don’t condone about all of this is bullying others. If you have to bully anyone, bully me. Leave others out of it to do their thing and you do yours. If you have to direct your attacks at someone, fire them my way. Let’s see how long you last then.

C’mon. Grow the fuck up.

[beautiful-basque-country]

Ayuso's [president of Madrid] cabinet director in Durango: "In the Basque Country there's an unbreathable air, without freedom neither democracy". Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, who will be a candidate in this Bizkaian town, has wondered "since when Basques are people that set borders against anybody, and they're sad, and they have to wear a page haircut cut with an axe".

Source

Guess this as*hole saw lots of people wearing masks and gas masks around him and though the air was unbreathable when people were actually tying not to get infected with fascism.

See what I talked about recently, that Spanish nationalists change stereotypes for Basques as needed? Now we're sad. When convenient, though, we're too loud and excessive.

And the axe and the haircut. Another classic. Spanish supremacists keep on thinking that Basque nationalists wear short bangs like this:

It's true that in the early 00s - when the do was trendy, at least around here - there were a couple of Basque nationalist politicians with it and that's where the myth for the far-righters began: the Official Basque Separatist Hairstyle™. They started critizising them because of their looks and saying that they looked like they had cut their bangs with an axe - because, you know, we love cutting trees with an axe in our free time.

This is the level. They still keep on insulting, and hating, and laughing at us. And they have the audacity to come to EH to do it.

F*cking scum.

Edit: oh, and don't wonder, wow, but how are they gonna get any votes from Basques saying that? Nah, they know they won't get votes in Euskadi: their Basque tour is designed to get votes elsewhere.

[makiruz]

Woo! Acolyte Episode 3!

So the spoiler is really not that bad, but it did piss me off. When Aniseya says "we were given the Miracle of Life" I shouted "Fuck you" at the screen; because really fuck you, you're making the Twins an inferior version of Anakin? For Real? At least they have the decency of saying that Mother Aniseya made them deliberately instead of being created by the Will of the Force, they're me-proofing the episode because people like me are gonna complain that they're doing Anakin again, and really?

Actually, Anakin 2.0 is not the only thing that they're copying; the Evil Lesbian Cult are witches, like the witches of Dathomir, and the "it's about who is allowed to use Power" is straight up copied from Harry Potter, it's who Voldermort says (actually I think it was Quirrell, but whatever); like it doesn't have enough original ideas to make their own story.

That said this is the best episode so far, probably because it's not directed by Lesley Headland; the ceremony scene is fantastic, but dear god the cliche that the Good Twin didn't go through it!

Now politics, oh hey it's Philosophy Tube! Here to prove the Evil Lesbian Cult aren't TERFs because I called them TERFs from the beginning and they don't want feminist calling their Lesbian Cult transphobic; with that in mind I question why the Lesbian Witch Coven are a cult, the lesbians are a cult, it's a cult, and border on the Dark Side if they're not straight up Dark Siders, so the Lesbian witches are evil, and like, I know the Witches of Dathomir tend to be antagonistic but they're not uniformly evil, they can be allies friends and lovers, this is a cult; frankly I believe the Republic had good reasons to persecute them.

My brother thinks The Acolyte is trying to complicated the Dark Side, and I think he might be right; but no, shut up you're stupid, the Dark Sides does not exist, it's not the opposite of Light, it's the manifestation of entropy, destruction and decay; also Fascism, the Dark Side is fascism, there's no redeemable qualities to the Dark Side, if you imagine you see a positive, like rightful anger at injustice that's not the Dark Side, that's another expression of the Force that the Jedi do not practice because they're Buddhist monks

Also I'm told people are upset with the witches interpretation of the Force, but like that's nothing really different from what the Jedi believe, The Thread is just another way to explain what we already know about the Force; which is kind of why I got mad at them sneering that the Jedi when they're so similar, it's pedantic, and why oh why is this show made by a lesbian making the lesbians a cult and unsympathetic? Like I'm pretty sure the Jedi are responsible for the witches dead, but even if they did kill them I think the witches instigated them, Dear God this show is frustrating

But it's look pretty. Also I was right the black lady from the trailer looked more like a Jedi than the Jedi, because she's basically one; and meanwhile the Jedi look very stupid, why did they put clothes on a Wookie?

[most-fuck-able-ff14]

see the thing abt emet selch is that even back in amaurot, he already had the Fundamentals of fascism down. maybe he was aghast at the idea of his future having caused mass death, but in the current time the moment Meteion started freaking out he was perfectly ready to Put Her Down for the sake of amaurot's order. idk how much the writers intended all of that, since they still want us to be friends, but hes always had a mentality where "aberrations" had to be erased

i'm just chewing on this thought cause we want to have fun so i hope this doesn't come off as rude but the whole point of being able to go to The World Unsundered is to see how everyone minus Hermes saw *everything that was created with creation magic* could just be deleted, recycled, remade. Everyone's purple boy Hythlodaeus even explains its okay to kill those butterflies- not because they are butterflies, but because they're just aether. Meteion is just aether to everyone except Hermes. With that logic Hythlodaeus is also a Fascist. Every single Ancient is actually since they shared the same world view. the ones who care that us, a "familiar" with thin aether might poof at any moment are those who are trying to study us and help us with our "assignment". we had a purpose and was maintained like a object. a interesting object but still just a object. Meteion was seen as a dangerous object.

again, not defending Emet and fascism, just chewing on the fact that with this line of logic then every ancient minus hermes is also fascist until Venat decides that *continued* slaughter of people is bad and sunders the world.

but i digress- I'm not a lore nerd, i'm just playing a mmo with my friends. This is a most fuckable man tournament. we're having fun here and as interesting as this conversation is I think this will be the last comment I personally have on the topic. It feels like we're bordering on a debate and I would rather not. -Mod Fisher

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

Hey, Pop Culture Detective did a new video on the MCU Marvel's Defenders of The Status Quo

Damn, thank you for sharing, that was really good!

I wholeheartedly agree with OP that in these movies we see the heroes reacting only when the status quo is threatened and them stopping the villains is considered a win - whatever the villains were trying to change is never addressed, they never engage in any socio-political project. The pattern is always the same: to return the world to what it was before the attack, never to use this as an opportunity for change.

And it's especially jarring given that some of the heroes should know better than defending the status quo. Steve is one of them, the disabled child of immigrants born in the '20s living in NYC in the middle of a rise of eugenicism would do anything in his power to actively fight against the status quo, and yet he's content with fighting external fights and stopping a bunch of helicarriers in TWS and getting his people out of the Raft... what about the other inmates? What about the people who will be taken there once the heroes are gone? What about fighting against the system to get the Accords repealed? Nope, we get none of that.

What OP says about Stark reminded me of Luke Cage and Danny Rand's argument in The Defenders where Luke is telling him his wealth leaves him in a privileged position to incite real change in the world but he'd rather go on vigilante mode instead. It's the same with Stark, he doesn't use his money to advocate for social change, if anything he runs Damage Control and takes jobs from the citizens of NYC like we see in Homecoming.

As OP says: "Instead the superheroes engage in random acts of benevolence. A billionaire gifts the world with some fancy new proprietary technology, a soldier asks nicely that corrupt bureaucrats just do better. In the best-case scenario, a wealthy monarch builds an international network of community centers. These Band-Aid approaches may help a few disenfranchised individuals here and there but they're also designed to keep the current economic and political structures firmly in place".

I think probably the worst case offender of villains being right but having their methods be as immoral as it takes in order to get the audience to disagree with them are Killmonger and the Flagsmashers. Erik starts making a little too much sense for Disney's liking so they have him kill his girlfriend out of nowhere (at least they address some of the overarching issue with T'Challa following Nakia's lead but as said above, that's a band-aid), Karli and the others are asking for redistribution of food and medicine, the relocation of refugees, a change of how borders are reinforced and a stop to mass deportations... so of course The Mouse has Karli kill a bunch of innocents out of nowhere so they can be called terrorists. Nobody wants to side with a terrorist, right?

To quote OP again: "Having the villain's methods always involve indiscriminate killing is a deliberate decision by the writers [...] The equating of social justice causes with outright villainy is one of the reasons why the superhero genre is often accused of leaning conservative ideologically."

Lastly, I really like that part about Alan Moore's criticism of superhero movies and the trend that "speaks to a denial of reality and an urge for simplistic and sensational solutions". I like it because it reminded me of the TVA, how in the Loki series we're told HWR is the only bad guy and taking him down will solve the problem as if that kind of fascism would go away by taking down the main guy, as if that organization wasn't comprised of thousands (if not more) of agents who agreed with his methods and worked willingly for an unknown period of time effectively pruning entire realities and killing innocents. You can't destroy the system by punching one guy and it's almost insulting how the narrative in the series tries to convince the audience that's all it takes.

In short, there's a reason why Disney and Marvel got rid of Nomad Steve so quickly + they're choosing to ignore Sam but they're oh so willing to bring Captain Carter to the spotlight. She's as pro-status quo as it gets. These movies should be addressing social change, not defending the system that gets a lot of people discriminated against and oppressed - especially when a lot of the heroes fit that criteria but of course they're never shown talking about it on-screen.